Murder in the White House

by Margaret Truman

“Except you’ve left out the most important thing—”

  She nodded. “What it was that Lan knew about the Websters, their lie, their secret. Well… sorry, Mr. Fairbanks, Lan didn’t tell me.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Once again she got up from the couch and walked between the stacks of boxes to stand at the window and stare out at nothing. “Whatever he said to me, he said it while he and I were in bed. If I say he didn’t tell me, he didn’t tell me. And you can’t prove he did.”

  Ron sighed. “God, do we have to go through this again? I don’t like to threaten you—”

  “Then don’t.” She turned around and faced him. “Don’t tell me you’re going to put me in jail as a witness. Anyway, it just occurred to me that you’re not going to.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  She took a step toward him. “Lan was on the ragged edge when he came home that night,” she said. “I sympathized, rubbed his back, held him… And he talked. And talked. And talked. He told me the Websters’ secret. It’s a personal thing. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your investigation. It’s really sad, I feel sorry for the Websters. And so did Lan. In fact, that was what bothered him most: that he’d threatened to tell their secret, something so personal that would hurt them so much if it got out. But he did tell me—the scarlet woman in the case. Can you beat it? Just like in the movies. Anyway, now I figure he wouldn’t mind if I used it to protect myself. If I go to jail… in fact if I don’t go to Paris day after tomorrow, I’m going to let out the secret of President and Mrs. Webster. I promise you.”

  “All right,” Ron said. He was furious, but managed to control himself. “Let’s drop it for now. One more question… and I’m going to have an answer to this one. So save your threats… Who’s your White House phone pal? Who did you call after I left here Saturday morning? I know it has to be one of three people.”

  She was smiling. “I do have a friend at the White House,” she said, “and he’s a perfect gentleman.”

  “Who?”

  “I guess I can tell you. What’s the difference?” She nodded. “He’s a damn sight bigger man than you—”

  “Who, damn you…?”

  “Fritz Gimbel.”

  2

  Martha Kingsley—Deep Throat. Gimbel… her contact was Gimbel. She had called Gimbel to report what Paul-Victor Chamillart had told her about the French foreign minister and Martine Nanterre. God knew what else she had learned and reported over the years from all the men she’d gotten to confide in her or who had done it on their own. Gimbel, the cold, deadly, and so loyally efficient administrator, had a private intelligence operation in a call girl’s bed. She had called Gimbel as soon as she’d left Blaine’s Watergate apartment. She had called Gimbel the previous Saturday to report that Ron had questioned her. She would likely call him now. She was on the telephone at this very moment, almost certainly, while he was cabbing back to the White House, and by the time he got there Gimbel would know every detail of their conversation.

  Gimbel. It had been his instinct from the beginning to suspect Gimbel. Gimbel could go where he wanted in the White House. No one would question him any more than they would question the President. He knew how to kill with a loop of wire… he had learned it in the marines. He was the President’s man. Everyone took orders from him. He could have called off the Secret Service detail the previous Saturday night, making it possible for the van to run Ron’s Datsun off the road. He could have planted the story that Ron was drunk. He could have planted all the stories about Blaine’s women too… he knew about them…

  But his motive, why would he kill Blaine… Was he the executioner for the disgruntled consortium? Not likely. But the alternative was nearly unthinkable… that he had killed a blackmailer to keep him quiet… and if he’d done that, then who was he protecting…? The President? Catherine Webster? Did the President know? Not necessarily… But Blaine was murdered in the White House. Wouldn’t it have been smarter to get him outside? Maybe not, if Gimbel—working, say, with the President’s knowledge—had to do it alone, without involving anyone else… and it was decided that doing it on the President’s very doorstep, literally, was the surest way of diverting suspicion from him, from anyone in his official family…

  ***

  It would be a long summer evening. A red sun was still high above the Potomac when the cab stopped at the Executive Office Gate and Ron checked into the Executive Office Wing. As he walked toward his office he wondered if the gate guard was on the telephone advising Fritz Gimbel that Ron Fairbanks was back…

  Both Jill and Gabe Haddad were in his office waiting for him. They had called the Supreme Court, knew he had left there and had become anxious about him, not knowing where he was. He called the switchboard—immediately, after no more than a quick word of greeting to Jill and Gabe—and learned that Honey Taylor was still in the White House. He spoke to her and told her he had to speak to the President. She said she would be calling upstairs in a few minutes to give the President several messages and she would give him this one.

  He turned to Jill and Gabe, told them what he had learned and what conclusions he drew from it. Jill did not agree that the murderer was, inevitably, Gimbel… “Anyway,” she said, “I’ve warned you already—it would be a bad error to accuse that man unless you have overpowering evidence. He’s tough, he has the President’s confidence, in a showdown between you and him you’d come off second, face it… You can’t bring down the President’s hatchet man on the word of a Martha Kingsley…”

  Gabe spoke cautiously. “Ron, I can see how Martha Kingsley is a link between Blaine and Gimbel… she slept with Blaine, reported everything he said to Gimbel. But where’s the connection between Gimbel and what we’ve been calling the consortium to defeat the multilateral trade agreements? Or have we given up the idea that the consortium is somehow behind the murder?”

  “Martha Kingsley links Gimbel to the consortium too,” Ron said. “The connection is Osanaga. He fronts as a Japanese journalist. You and I didn’t know he was really something else. The FBI didn’t know either. It was the CIA that had the file on Osanaga and told us he’s actually a lobbyist, an influence buyer. But Martha Kingsley knew. When I mentioned Osanaga to her, she called him the bag man for certain Japanese companies. And remember, when I had the FBI bring Osanaga to the Justice Department office for questioning, Senator Finlay was on the phone to me almost before we got Osanaga in there—telling me to take it easy on his good buddy Osanaga. The FBI file on Martha Kingsley lists Finlay among her intimate friends. She knew Blaine took money from the consortium and promised them he could kill the trade agreements. If she knew, Gimbel knew. If Gimbel knew Blaine took a bribe from the consortium and Gimbel still didn’t blow the whistle on Blaine, then—”

  “Not necessarily,” Jill interrupted. “The fact that he didn’t blow the whistle doesn’t prove he too was bribing Blaine.”

  “We don’t even know that he didn’t blow the whistle,” Ron said. “A private whistle—”

  “Yes, strictly private to the President…”

  Ron nodded. “So when the President accused Blaine of dishonesty and provoked the blowup between them, maybe he wasn’t guessing, maybe he knew.”

  “And then,” Gabe said, “Blaine threatened to reveal the Websters’ big secret… It comes back to that… was Blaine killed to protect that secret? Maybe the consortium’s scheme to defeat the trade agreements was only the spark that led to the very personal motive for killing Blaine.”

  Ron was spinning the dial of the combination lock on his file cabinet. “Suddenly some really damned unpleasant thoughts come to mind.”

  “You’re not exactly alone in them,” Jill said.

  Ron tugged on one of the heavy drawers of the cabinet, which finally slid forward. “Forgive me, Jill… Gabe, tomorrow you may decide to certify me…” He pulled from under some hanging file folders a .25 caliber Browning automatic. He showed it to them for a moment, then pushed it uneasily,
like a dangerous live thing, into the waistband of his trousers on his left hip. He buttoned his jacket over it. He looked at them. “You guys figure I’m nuts?”

  “An hour ago I’d have said yes,” Jill told him. “Now…”

  Ron sat down behind his desk. “Martha Kingsley talked too much. Your intrepid leader got her off balance by convincing her he knew a damn sight more than he did. It played pretty well, if I do say so myself. But she also talked too quickly. I thought about it on the way back in the cab. Why would she open up and tell so much, so easily? Well… she knew she would call Gimbel and report everything that was said. Maybe she decided she could throw out any information she wanted to because—”

  “No,” Gabe said firmly. “It’s too much, I can’t believe it—”

  “They ran Ron’s car off the road Saturday night,” Jill said. “What he knows now is a whole lot more dangerous to them than what he knew Saturday—”

  Gabe shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help thinking we’re getting a bit melodramatic. There has to be some other explanation, some logical explanation—”

  “We’re civilized, is what we are,” Jill said. “Here we sit—three smart lawyers who don’t think in terms of doing violence on people, who look always for the rational solution. But let’s not lose sight of a basic, Gabe—we’re investigating a murder—”

  “I’ll tell you what I want to—” Ron began, and was interrupted by a buzz on his telephone.

  The President. He had gotten Ron’s message and was asking if it was really necessary for Ron to see him this evening. Ron said it was and that he thought Mrs. Webster should be on hand too. To convince, he told the President he thought he had a good idea who had killed Blaine. The President promptly said he would see him in half an hour and hung up.

  “I think you’re being a little premature, Ron,” Jill said. “Are you really going to meet the Websters and accuse their long-time friend Gimbel of murder?”

  “Or are you going to accuse the President himself?” Gabe put in.

  “I don’t know,” Ron said. “I’m going to put what I know in front of them. Maybe then they’ll tell me what they’ve obviously held back.”

  “Eight to five that when you come back down here tonight you’ll be an ex-chief investigator,” Gabe said. “And probably an ex-counsel.”

  “I didn’t ask for the job.”

  “Are you going to tote that pistol upstairs in the White House?” Jill asked.

  Ron looked sheepish but didn’t say otherwise. “Something else, you two, I want you to take some record of what we’ve found and think out of the White House. At the least, take a Dictaphone tape. I’m going to make a tape now. I’ll make two. Be sure you get them out of here. Take some of the files. Go separately—”

  “Ron—” Jill began to protest.

  “Maybe I’m crazy,” Ron said sharply. “I know that. But do what I ask anyway. Now, please.”

  3

  The President kept a small private office in a room across the hall from his bedroom—a small room other First Families had used as a guest room. It was furnished with a desk that had once been in the Oval Office—Ron forgot which President had used it there—and President Webster’s high-back leather chair from the Senate. There were two overstuffed armchairs and a couch, all upholstered in a nubby, cream-white material. There were few books on the bookshelves; most of the space was taken up by family photographs, including pictures of the President’s parents and grandparents. It was the President’s private untidy office… stacks of file folders and briefing books covered the desk. With the elaborate telephone on the desk he could pick up any of twenty lines, and by pressing a button could dial any of forty numbers held in the instrument’s electronic memory.

  Ron had often met with the President in this office, had sometimes found him here in faded blue jeans and a cashmere sweater, once in white tennis shorts. The office was never photographed. Outsiders never were allowed here. Ron had often seen Gimbel here and occasionally Blaine. Members of the President’s personal staff were brought here from time to time, but except for Blaine no cabinet member ever came here and no member of Congress had ever seen this office.

  The light in the room was dull gray when Ron came in. The sun in the west did not shine on this room’s one window, and the President and Catherine Webster were sitting in the gloom talking quietly when Ron arrived. It was Catherine who got up and switched on the lamp on the President’s desk, and the light shining through the top of the lampshade fell on a painting Ron had always wondered about—uncharacteristic of this president, he would have supposed, and out of place among the other furnishings of the room: a nude of a young girl, by Edvard Munch. Ron had never had the nerve to ask if the painting was on loan or owned by the Websters. It symbolized for him a contradiction in this president’s character.

  There had apparently been an early dinner, probably with guests since the President was still dressed in a dark gray suit, white shirt, and tie, and Catherine wore a dark blue knit blouse and a full white, green, and blue skirt. Both of them, in Ron’s experience, were likely to be more casually dressed in the middle hours of a summer evening.

  The President opened with, “You say you think you know who killed Blaine?”

  “I can’t prove it,” Ron said, “but everything I know so far seems to point to one man.”

  The President sat down on the couch beside Catherine, pointed to one of the armchairs for Ron. “Go ahead.”

  “Before I tell you what, who, I suspect, let me tell you why I suspect it. Otherwise, it’s very hard to believe.”

  The President nodded.

  Ron glanced apprehensively at Catherine, then back to the President. “I’ve tried to stay away from it as much as possible, Mr. President, but every way I turn I keep coming back to that… confrontation between you and Blaine when he, as I understand it, threatened to reveal some personal secret of yours… I’ve of course accepted your word that that could have nothing to do with Blaine’s death, but still, it keeps coming up—”

  “Blaine wasn’t killed on account of that,” Webster said flatly. He scowled and looked away from Ron. “If he had, I’m the one who would have killed him—”

  Catherine broke in. “How does it keep coming up, Ron?” She glanced at the President, apparently annoyed by his obvious impatience. “Who brings it up?”

  Ron was watching the President, who was still staring angrily at the wall.

  The President, apparently sensing that Ron was hesitating, glanced around. “Go on,” he said.

  Ron took a deep breath. “Blaine was killed in the White House. Here, and by someone who had access to the second floor. We also know that Blaine had been bribed by several people over the years, mostly over things of no great importance. But lately he’d taken a good deal of money, more than ever before, and he’d promised the people who paid him that he could kill the multilateral trade agreements. Failing that, he’d promised, he at least could get exemptions from the restrictions for the people who were paying him… exemptions for Japanese cars, for example. So—”

  “So he was killed by some greedy murderous people who were paying him,” the President interrupted. “That has nothing to do with our personal lives—”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but there’s sort of a link.”

  “Let Ron talk, Bob,” Catherine put in.

  “We’ve called the group of people involved in bribing Blaine a consortium,” Ron said. “He took their money and couldn’t deliver. But I’m not so sure they would kill him for that. It would, they might figure, be against their interests to kill the only prominent member of this administration who was opposed to the agreements. Of course, they might have been afraid Blaine would crack under pressure from you and compromise them—which would mean disgrace and perhaps jail sentences here or at home… Anyway, if they were behind it they still had to do it through someone inside the White House. Blaine wasn’t killed by a Japanese influence buyer or a British gambler. He w
as killed by someone with free access to the second floor of the White House.”

  “Yes…?”

  “There’s a link,” Ron said quietly. “One person who links the consortium to the White House insider. A woman. Blaine was involved with her too.”

  “Another one of Lan’s women,” Catherine said glumly.

  “Her name is Martha Kingsley. She calls herself a prostitute, but I’d use another word… she’s a courtesan in the old sense. She is very knowledgeable. She knows her way around Washington. She knows, in fact, too much, things I’ve had to work very hard to find out. The FBI links her to Senator Walter Finlay. Finlay is a hired hand of the consortium—”

  “No surprise there,” said the President.

  “One of her… clients was Lansard Blaine. I realize Blaine was an intelligent man, brilliant, with some marks of greatness. But it means he had a side he didn’t control too well… he could drink too much, sometimes talked too much to Martha Kingsley. Unfortunately for him, confidences were… are her stock in trade. She sells the information she gets… she was selling it regularly to someone here, in the White House…”

  “And you know who?” Catherine said.

  “In a moment… Blaine told her about the favors, bribes, he was taking. She reported that to her contact here at the White House. Her contact has known for months that Blaine was being paid to scotch the trade agreements. I have to ask you a question, Mr. President. Did anyone ever report to you that Blaine was being paid to argue you out of the trade-agreement program?”

  “I suspected it—”

  “But did anyone tell you?”

  The President shook his head.

  “On the night when you had the blowup with Blaine, he was very upset. He went to Martha Kingsley for consolation, spent the night with her. And he told her—I’m sorry to tell you this—what he had threatened you with. She knows your secret…”

  The President reached quickly for Catherine’s hand, shook his head and looked closely at her. She lowered her head for a moment, then drew a deep breath and looked up at him.