Murder in the White House

by Margaret Truman

  “Corruption in the Webster Administration?” asked Jill lazily.

  “I hope not,” Ron said. “I’d like to see this case resolved without damage to the President—”

  “I’ve read the autopsy report,” Gabe said. “Word for word. Gruesome damn thing. We need to interview the pathologists. Personally I don’t see anything in it except what we expected—that Blaine’s throat was cut and he strangled and bled to death. There’s one thing I’d like to know more about, though. Why did the contents of his stomach and intestines include distinct traces of dextroamphetamine?”

  “How much alcohol was in him?” Jill asked.

  “Point zero eight percent,” said Gabe. “He was sober enough to drive a car. I expect, though, he was feeling pretty good.”

  “What’s dextroamphetamine?” Ron asked.

  “A mood lifter,” said Jill. “An upper, as they used to say.”

  “He’d had sex within the preceding eight hours,” Gabe said as matter-of-factly as he could manage. “Since we know it wasn’t with Judy Pringle or Marya Kalisch, we have to wonder who it was…”

  “I want a minute-by-minute of his last twenty-four hours,” said Ron. “Everything…”

  A courier delivered the FBI file on Jeremy Johnson. Ron called the British Embassy and asked Christopher McLeod to have dinner with him at Dominique’s while Jill and Gabe scanned the Johnson file.

  “Spooks,” Jill said. “Sneaks. They know a lot about this man, and there’s nothing in here to so much as suggest he’s a criminal. It makes me wonder what they have on me.”

  “Spare me the editorial,” Ron said, “What’s it say?”

  “‘Johnson, Jeremy Richard. Stirrup Lane, Alexandria, Virginia. Vice President and North American representative, Great Britain-Hawley-Burnsby Motors, Limited.’” She stopped reading and summarized. “Londoner, red-brick university. An engineer. Spent some time in Africa, some in India. Seems to have gotten around all the colonies. Divorced, father of three. Ah… married and divorced a second time. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, looking at some of the other junk in here… He frequents the gambling casinos in the Bahamas and Las Vegas, where he’s known and where his room and board are invariably given him free of charge.”

  “Standard procedure for a high roller,” Gabe put in.

  “Yes. He has virtually unlimited credit at the casinos. On the other hand he brings cash and takes away cash, sometimes in large quantities. That’s what the FBI is interested in. That’s why they think maybe he launders money.”

  “Is there any mention of Blaine in the file?” Ron asked.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. Jeremy Johnson gives parties—large and small, all expensive. He’s not a registered representative of a foreign government but has taken the trouble—and gone to the expense—to entertain prominent members of Congress and some members of the Administration. Including Secretary of State Lansard P. Blaine…”

  Dominique’s, Thursday, June 14, 8:00 PM

  Ron had particularly chosen Dominique’s for his dinner meeting with Christopher McLeod because of its small, private niches—favorites by couples looking for intimacy. He knew Christopher would prefer to meet him inconspicuously; and he knew that Christopher appreciated good food and wine. At the last moment, just before he had left the office, on impulse he had invited Jill to come with him. He had asked her to bring a pad and be prepared to make a few notes of the dinner conversation, but his invitation had been on an impulse that had nothing to do with taking notes.

  McLeod was late.

  Jill ordered Glenlivet on the rocks, and Ron went along. In the light of the candle they toasted each other quietly and for minutes sipped thoughtfully and said nothing.

  “Are you going to marry Lynne Webster?” Jill asked.

  Ron only shook his head.

  “The newspapers think you are.”

  “It makes copy.”

  “I saw you holding her hand on television.”

  “I’ll hold yours.” He put his hand over hers on the table. “I’m basically just an affectionate guy, I also react to attractive women.”

  “But not enough to marry them?”

  He smiled. “Not enough to marry them just because they let me hold their hands.”

  “You’d make a fetching couple.”

  He closed his hand around hers. “Why don’t you drop the subject, Jill?”

  She lifted her glass. “This job you let Webster talk you into, it will make you or break you, you know. You don’t get two jobs like this. Just one. To make or break.”

  “Which do you think it will be?”

  Her eyes followed her glass back to the table and stayed there, fixed on the scotch and ice. “I happen to think it’s more likely to break you. If you don’t find out who killed Blaine, they’ll say you were either stupid or covered up for somebody. If you do, probably it will destroy somebody Webster doesn’t want destroyed, and he won’t appreciate it. Neither will the Democratic Party.” She shook her head. “Between the proverbial rock and a hard place.”

  “Why’d you agree to come work with me then?”

  “I’m career civil service. Whatever happens, I’ll go back where I was. Whatever happens, I’ll never get up to where you are. I’ll go back to Justice. Whatever happens, I’ll pick up where I left off… He’s thrown you to the wolves, you know.”

  “Webster?”

  “Sure. The President’s bright young man, likely son-in-law. If things don’t work out and he has to sacrifice someone, he’ll sacrifice you—with great reluctance and crocodile tears. The bright young man who held his daughter’s hand on television… the public will figure he’s really suffered, the ladies in plastic curlers will weep real tears.”

  “Your cynicism isn’t very attractive.”

  “Neither is his—”

  The waiter asked if they wanted another round of drinks, and Ron nodded, grateful for the interruption.

  And then—“Sorry to be so tardy,” said Christopher McLeod brightly, bustling up to their table. “Taxis. Traffic. You know. Well! Will you introduce me?”

  “This is Jill Keller, Chris, Jill’s a Justice Department lawyer assigned to the Blaine investigation. Jill, Christopher McLeod, a career diplomat who does something or other at the U.K. Embassy. Lies for his country, I suspect. Isn’t that the definition?”

  “I wish it were,” said McLeod gaily. “That would make it all so simple.” He smiled at the waiter. “Whisky,” he said. “Ah, same as they’re having.”

  McLeod was a slight, bespectacled, graying young man whose appearance was older than his age. He was, as Ron knew, only thirty-six, but he looked over fifty if not older—florid, wispy, lined. He wore a gray suit, white shirt, bow tie. He had served in Washington for eight years, and Ron had met him before the Webster Administration came to power—by applying to the Embassy for the quick resolution of a client’s problem in the days when he was practicing law.

  “I saw your name in the morning papers,” McLeod said to Jill. “Let me think… how did it say?‘… an exceptionally capable lady lawyer…’ Right? Journalists! Sickening fellows.”

  “I’ve been called worse,” said Jill.

  “I’m afraid I have as well,” said McLeod.

  “We’re one drink ahead of you.”

  “I shall catch up. Well! All must be in an uproar at the White House. And you, picked to put it all to rights! I was amazed when I saw your name.”

  “So was I.”

  “The two of you. Detectives. I am afraid this dinner is part of the official inquiry. Am I right? What could I know about the murder of Lansard Blaine?”

  “Let’s don’t spoil a nice dinner,” said Ron. “Let’s talk about Blaine first and get it out of the way.”

  “Ah, well… I assume you have questions.”

  Ron nodded. “This is just a line of inquiry, there’s no accusation in it.”

  McLeod smiled. He smiled a lot.

  “The North American sales manager fo
r Great Britain-Hawley-Burnsby Motors, Limited is a Jeremy Johnson. You know him?”

  “Yes, I’ve met him. Actually I know of him.”

  “Tell me.”

  McLeod shrugged, raised his eyebrows. “Not my sort of chap, if you know what I mean. Hail-fellow-well-met. A drinking man. Raconteur. Devotee of the table—the gaming table, that is. Something of a… ladies man, if you’ll forgive me. Also a boor, if I may say so.”

  “Officially,” Ron said, “he’s in this country as North American sales manager for a British company. What does he really do?”

  “Oh, I think he represents his company,” said McLeod. “Hawley-Burnsby ships a few cars into the States, you know.”

  “So he’s just a car salesman?”

  “Well… may I ask why you ask?”

  “Give me a couple more questions before I tell you?”

  McLeod shrugged, looked up and nodded at the waiter who served his drink. “Ah,” he said after he had sipped. “Glenlivet. Good whisky. As to your questions, I may invoke diplomatic immunity, but go right ahead.”

  “Do you have any reason to think Johnson may be involved in any sort of criminal activity?”

  McLeod raised his eyebrows. “In London he consorts with the gambling crowd. What that signifies, I don’t really know. He gambles here. Whether it simply means he’s fond of gambling, or in some way is involved in nefarious schemes of theirs, I have no way of knowing. I should be surprised if he’s involved in anything illicit in any large way, though. He’s too much the drinker, the talker. I doubt they’d trust him.”

  “I ask because his name appears often on the Secretary of State’s telephone log. Also, Blaine made long-distance calls to Johnson at his home in Alexandria, Virginia. I’d like to know why.”

  “I can suggest a reason why Johnson would call Blaine,” McLeod said, “but I can’t imagine why Blaine would call Johnson.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, as you know, the President just returned from Paris, where he and the President of France and the Prime Minister initialed the protocols for the multilateral trade agreement. The new trade arrangements, as you also know, abandon—philosophically, at least—the old liberal idea of free trade and take the world backward a long step toward mercantilism. That’s my judgment, at least—that it’s a step backward. My government, of course, does not agree and has entered enthusiastically into the Webster talks. At any rate the multilateral agreements, when they go into effect, will recognize the right of each participating nation to erect protective barriers around specified protected industries. In the case of the United States, one of the protected industries will be the automobile industry. I need hardly tell you what that will do to Great Britain-Hawley-Burnsby Motors, Limited. In effect it will shut them out of the American market. Jeremy Johnson is by no means the only representative of a foreign industry lobbying to defeat the multilateral trade agreements. Indeed, there’s a gaggle of your chaps in London trying to persuade Her Majesty’s Government to abandon the talks and the rush to the treaty. Johnson’s an embarrassment to us. He entertains senators. He lobbies shamelessly. I’m not aware that he had conversations with the Secretary of State, but I’m not surprised that he had.”

  “As you suggested,” said Jill, “that would explain his calls to Blaine, but not Blaine’s calls to him.”

  “I suppose the circumstances do suggest an explanation,” said McLeod, “but I’ll not be the one to give it…”

  “I can’t help but wonder,” McLeod said after two whiskies and they’d ordered their dinner, “if there weren’t a bit of disagreement between President Webster and Secretary Blaine over the multilateral trade agreements. Blaine was, after all, a student of international relations. His writings suggest, I think, the traditional liberal’s commitment to free trade. Webster’s policy has shocked a lot of old liberal consciences, and I wonder if Blaine’s might not have been among them. I notice, too, that Webster negotiated the trade agreements himself, along with close aides, not through the Secretary of State—not, indeed, through the State Department. There were rumors of Blaine’s pending resignation. I wonder—”

  “So do we,” Ron interrupted, “but right now we’re focused on his death, and I can’t believe any kind of policy difference with the President had anything to do with that—”

  “Oh, of course not,” McLeod said hastily. “Please don’t take my little digression to suggest anything sinister.”

  “The Webster Administration’s commitment to protection for the automobile industry is not sinister at all,” Jill said. “It’s perfectly rational, perfectly cynical. Robert Webster made his personal fortune in the automobile industry, and he’s going to help his friends in that industry any way he can.”

  “Carburetters, as I recall,” said McLeod. “‘Carburetors,’ I believe you call them.”

  “And fuel-injection systems,” said Ron. “Half the cars in the country run on Webster fuel systems of one kind or another.”

  “Yes, a hard-headed industrialist, your President. It’s hard to imagine how an academic fellow like Blaine could have gotten along with him.”

  “It’s hard to imagine how a Prime Minister like Harwood gets along with the Queen,” remarked Jill dryly.

  “Ah. Very good,” said McLeod. “Very good.”

  Ron shoved his empty whisky glass across the thick white tablecloth toward McLeod. “There’s a lot of money at stake in those trade agreements. Fortunes are going to be lost—and made. How many dollars do you suppose it’s worth to certain people to have barriers put up against the importing of British, German and Japanese cars?”

  “Yes, of course,” said McLeod. “And perhaps somewhere in that tangle you might discover your motive for the murder of Secretary Blaine.”

  “If he was opposed to the agreements,” said Jill, “he was subtle about it—”

  “Subtle, yes,” said Ron, “but it was known he wasn’t enthusiastic. Privately, in conversations with the President, he may have been fighting hard against the agreements. Someone may have known that. Someone in a position to profit from the adoption and ratification of the agreements would have had a damn powerful motive to get rid of Blaine.”

  “Whole multinational industries are going to live and die by what’s agreed to, or isn’t. Nations have gone to war for less than’s at stake for many of them in these agreements. One man’s murder would be, in their view, a good piece of business if it got them what they wanted….”

  ***

  Seven months before, in Chicago, a man named Hooper had fired a shot at the President from the roof of a hotel. His motive had been almost lost in the rush to judge him insane and inconsequential.

  Ron had been with the President that morning. The President had asked him to make the early-morning trip from Washington so they could use the hours on the plane to review the draft of a speech the President wanted to make about law reform and expediting criminal procedures. The President had given a talk at a breakfast meeting at the Merchandise Mart in support of the multilateral trade agreements. He had a short meeting scheduled in mid-morning with a group trying to raise funds to pay off the debt of the Illinois campaign committee. When they left the Merchandise Mart in the limousine, rain was falling on snow and ice. The mayor was in the car and wanted to talk, but the President was distracted by the sight of Chicagoans struggling against the weather and the conversation was fragmented and strained. The car slid twice, once until its front wheels came to a stop against a curb.

  “You must have the worst weather in the United States,” the President said to the mayor just as the car pulled to a stop in front of the building where the campaign-fund group was waiting. Sensing that the comment had an abrasive sound, he added, “Maybe we can get the Congress to vote you two extra months of sunshine.”

  The President and the mayor stepped out on the sidewalk. A Secret Service man was handing the President a coat, and Ron was just emerging from the car, when the shot was fired. The President was in almost
no danger. The bullet struck the building behind him, four feet above his head; and the Secret Service man grabbed him instantly and wrestled him to the icy sidewalk in the shelter of the door and fender of the big car. Another man grabbed the mayor and threw him back into the car, knocking Ron to the floor.

  Ron had not heard the shot. He had not seen the bullet whack against the stone facade of the building, chipping out a hole the size of an egg. On the floor under the mayor he could see nothing, but he heard furious bursts of automatic-weapons fire. He thought the presidential limousine was under attack by a heavily armed group. He was properly scared.

  Actually, the automatic weapons were fired by the Secret Service. The man who had fired at the President had remained standing on the roof of the hotel across the street, eight stories up. The Secret Service had spotted him, aiming his pistol at the limousine, and they had cut him down before he could fire a second shot.

  Before Ron and the mayor could disentangle themselves and get up, the Secret Service men shoved the President into the backseat with them and slammed the door. The car lurched forward, and the motorcade sped away in a howl of sirens. They returned to the airport, and the President boarded Air Force One.

  The “incident” was over.

  At the airport the President asked Ron to return to the city with the Mayor of Chicago and the Secret Service contingent that would remain for the initial investigation. Ron would have no part in the investigation, but the President wanted a personal representative to stay in Chicago for at least twenty-four hours to see how the follow-up was handled and to report personally and confidentially.