Her eyes grew wide. "Is that really necessary?"
"I'm afraid so. I need to know where it was filmed, if anyone was operating the camcorder, watch the President's demeanor. I also need to see him and Marei together, how they interact, her manner, listen to the kind of questions she asks. I can think off hand of a dozen details I could take from a viewing, things you and Becky aren't likely to have noticed."
"I have to check with Mrs. Tufts. Can it wait?”
“No." Powers listened to the water and wind for several steps. Wilbur Mills had ended his political career somewhere along this walk when his enthusiastic Latin companion, known henceforth as the Tidal Basin Bombshell, had frolicked in the water. "Are you certain Becky's told me everything about this?"
"I don't know what you mean." He could sense her withdraw. "Is there something she or you know that I haven't been told?"
"Of course not! What are you suggesting?"
"Only that this situation has spun out of control faster than I can move. I'm wondering if there isn't something else going on here."
Alta appeared stunned. "I... I don't know how to respond. She trusts you. Don't you see that? Have you any idea how many of her so called 'friends' have betrayed her these last four years? Just consider the number of books that have been written. Those vicious stories in the tabloids. She's depending on you!"
"I was just asking if there is anything else. It might not have seemed relevant at the time when this appeared straightforward, but now everything is relevant. That's all I'm getting at."
She considered that. "All right then. I'll try and think if there is something other than what we've told you. Is there anything else I can do?"
"Can you obtain a list of telephone calls made to and from Marei's apartment for the last two days and through today?"
"I think so. I need to be sure I can do it without it coming back that I'm the one who requested it. What else?"
“I need to know where the President was last night. Say between 10:00 p.m. and midnight. I don't care what the official logs say. I want to know where he was for a fact. Can you find out?"
The question startled Alta so much she nearly stumbled. "What are you getting at?"
"It's information I need."
"You're not suggesting..."
"I'm suggesting nothing. You're the one who said he was obsessed with the woman and that you read her note as a ‘plea to end the relationship,’ those were your words, rather than as straight blackmail. What would he do if he went to see her last night and she told him what she was up to? How would he react? Is he a violent man? Forget everything else. Who had the single greatest motive to take those tapes when he first learned of them? You tell me."
Alta’s green eyes turned shrewd as she answered. "I see where you're going. It never... Maybe I should learn where Marty was last night as well. The President doesn't just get into a car and drive to Georgetown. Marty's the one who takes him."
Powers stopped Alta with his hand. "You be careful now. That tap dance from Karp could only be a cover and all he's really after is to learn how much I've figured out. Maybe he killed her for reasons of his own. Perhaps he did it for Tufts. Either way, maybe he wants to know how well he covered his tracks. Just remember this. When you start checking on the President's whereabouts, and Karp's, he'll know I suspect one or both of them. Do you understand?" She nodded slowly. "Tell me this. Could Tufts have done it?"
Alta considered the question. "I've seen him mad enough."
"How about Karp?"
Alta laughed cynically. "In a heartbeat. But why soil his hands when he has Lily? I think he’s capable of killing." They resumed walking. "I'll be careful, Dan. Thanks for thinking about me. What are you going to do now?"
"First, I'm conducting a thorough search of that apartment. I don't expect to find anything but I need to make a proper job of it. After that I'll do my best to locate Marei and the tapes. But this isn't going to be easy, or fast."
"But it has to be! Done quickly I mean. There's the convention and nomination. Reporters from all over the world are watching everything they do. If there's any hint of a scandal, after so many... You can see what I mean."
"I'll move as fast as I can. Have you considered the other possibilities from what I've told you? Who would want to kill Julie Marei, then carry off her body? And why even take her body? What's the point? So who has the tapes now? I don't see how to avoid the implications. It seems to me the best you can hope for is what seemed so threatening just hours ago: simple blackmail. A foreign power or other interests could well possess those tapes by now. If all they'll settle for is money, I'd be very surprised. The President needs to call in the cavalry for this."
"He can't. He just can't. We don't have any friends in Washington. Oh, everyone talks like they love us, but we're just country hicks to them. The agencies we'd go to can't wait to get something like this on us. If they got their hands on those tapes they'd own our second term. Then they'd probably leak them anyway just for spite. You are our only hope."
Powers spoke quietly. "Let's be realistic, Alta. I'm just one person and I’ve never done anything like this with such high stakes."
The small woman looked surprisingly frail as she stared up at him and finally said, "You're all we have. Mrs. Tufts is relying on you.”
He sighed. They were at the end of the Tidal Basin. Across Independence Avenue was the Lincoln Memorial, well lit, even on a Sunday night. To the right and farther away was the obelisk that was the Washington Monument. He wondered if he'd have time to visit either as a tourist. "I better get to the search then."
Alta nodded her head. "I'll drive."
"I don't think that's such a good idea."
"It's simpler this way because I'm coming with you.”
SEVEN
The West Wing, 11:16 p.m.
The President stood at the wet bar in his working study where he poured himself a double shot of bourbon, neat, without asking Karp if he cared for one.
"I had enough coffee with those Thai geeks to keep me up all night. Asians are a crafty race, you know? I don’t trust any of ‘em.” He took a pull of bourbon. “I want someone to explain how I’m supposed to save the world when I spend most of my time being polite to slant eyes or sneaking around for meets with people we don’t want anyone to know I see?”
“You set the priorities three years ago. You were right too. We’re going to need the money to be absolutely certain of reelection. The Veep’s in Baltimore working the Singapore people and there’s your nest egg to consider. ”
Tufts took another sip from his glass. “At least he does something useful once in a while. I was just looking over my acceptance speech for Thursday night. It’s a piece of shit. I'm gonna have to rewrite the damn thing myself as if I didn't have enough to do already. Can't we get any decent writers around here?"
"After the election."
"She-it, I'm not waiting that long. Guthers is one hell of a public speaker and he'll eat me alive if I keep talking down to everybody." Tufts warmed to his subject and became animated as his speech slipped into its regional mode. "I want some rhetoric. Damn it, I want a speech somebody's gonna give a goddamn about the following week. Is that so much to ask for?" He took a gulp of bourbon as he crossed the room then plopped down behind his desk, placing his feet up, stretching leisurely.
"Did you see the dailies?" Tufts was referring to the daily polls that had successfully guided Tuft's decision making despite one scandal after another. "Guthers has been so demonized he is now the most disliked American politician." He chuckled. "God, I love this game. I think the way we're gonna do this is..."
"I just talked to Powers."
Tufts winced. "This isn't gonna be one of those conversations, is it?"
"Events are moving very quickly. There's something you should know."
"Ah she-it, it is! Look now," he jabbed his forefinger at Karp, "that's Becky's deal. You start sticking your nose in it and she's liable to snap it off. I
thought you understood that. Why'd you talk to him anyhow? He was just here, what, four hours ago?"
"He had finished going through Marei's apartment."
Tufts' eyes turned to slits. When he spoke his voice was slow and careful. "You don't say? What's he report?"
"It took some doing but Powers told me what he found. The woman wasn't there. There were signs of a violent struggle and blood everywhere. No tapes he could spot immediately, but he's at the apartment now conducting a search in detail." Karp paused. "I'm afraid it appears Marei's dead."
Tufts stood up and strode quickly to the fireplace. After a moment he threw his glass smashing into it. "I don't wanna hear that! Goddamn it, Marty, all you ever do is bring me shitty news! You're worse than that fuckin' bitch. Sometimes I wish she’d have a fuckin’ accident. Christ in heaven, goddamn it to hell!" The President began crying and his voice rose an octave. "How much of this am I supposed to take?"
Karp approached Tufts. "Easy now. We've got to figure this thing out."
Tufts was sobbing as he slowly collapsed to the carpet. He slammed his fist into the floor, over and over. "No! No! No! No!"
Karp poured another glass of bourbon then took it to Tufts. "Here. Drink this. It will help.” The President fumbled with the glass then gulped the drink down. “Come on! You've got to get hold of yourself!"
"Fuck you! You did this to me!" the President shouted. "All you bastards!" He sat up on the carpet. Tears were running down his face and his skin was mottled with patches of blush.
Karp refilled the glass then handed him the drink. "Get up now. We've got to talk."
Tufts sat crossed legged, inhaled the drink then extended the glass for another. Slowly he rose to his feet. "I'm ruined," he said. "You understand that? I am fuckin' ruined!"
"Powers is supposed to be good," Karp said soothingly. "I feel confident he can pull this off. I arranged to have my outside people discreetly contact the chief of detectives on the St. Louis Police Department. He's worked robbery-homicide, narcotics, burglary and on a couple of task forces. For the last few years he was occasionally assigned special projects by the police chief because he was good, sensitive to political realities and kept his mouth shut. The only knock was that he appeared to have friendlier contacts with the criminal element than anyone in command was comfortable with. Powers argued it was necessary for his work and there was never a problem over it. My report is that he is tenacious and clever. I’d say he's got a good shot at finding the tapes. It doesn't look as if the woman is going to be a problem after all and that's a plus. And if he doesn't find them, we have our own resources. Failing those there's the entire intelligence apparatus and Federal law enforcement. We can keep this bottled up."
"Marty, you’re so full of it sometimes. Maybe, and I say maybe, we could get away with using others. Chesty's good but frankly he's not very subtle. Worse, he's on the White House payroll. I told you that was a dumb idea. We aren't having a Howard Hunt situation here. When I suggested using the Secret Service the bitch nearly took my head off. But she was right, I'll give her that. I don't know what I was thinking. We can't go to the others! Don't you understand that! Hasn't three and a half years in this cesspool of a capital taught you one goddamn thing?"
Karp answered in a steady, neutral voice. "We'll know by tomorrow if Powers is making progress. If not we should rethink our options."
"Yeah. Right." Tufts slumped into a leather chair where he often napped. He chewed at his lower lip which Karp knew was a bad sign. After a long moment he said, "I've got to come clean with you here. Right now, if you told me you had every paper in Julie's apartment and knew for a fact there were no copies, but the media had those tapes of me with her and all that, I said, I'd be the happiest man alive. I swear to God."
"I'm not following you. Isn't the point here to get those tapes back, because whoever has them owns you?"
Tufts peered into his glass then wiped his nose with his bare hand. "You remember Judith Campbell?" he finally asked.
Karp considered that for a long time before making a match. "You mean Kennedy? She's the broad he was fucking who carried private messages from him to the mob about killing Castro." Karp stopped as realization slowly came to him. "I... I..." The words wouldn't leave his mouth.
The pair sat there in the White House, each in his own thoughts, both with visions of the world they'd spent 25 years building falling in ruins around them.
Georgetown, 11:37 p.m.
En route to Julie Marei’s apartment, Powers tried to talk Alta Fort out of coming but she was insistent. She cruised the block three times before finally claiming a spot on the street around the corner, wedging her green BMW between two cars, with deep concentration. The wind was blowing with some force now and she wrapped her head with a scarf after she locked the car. She pulled her coat tight about her and told him not to worry. She was not in the public eye and with the scarf and her heavy glasses no one would remember or recognize her. "I've been known to spend an entire evening at a party without drawing a single glance." Still, it struck Powers as an unreasonable risk.
The General Burnside Apartments building was still as an abandoned tenement when they entered. Shanken's key fit and Powers eased the apartment door open then closed it behind them. If he had been working a crime scene he would be wearing gloves but he hadn't arrived in Washington expecting to need them. Nothing appeared changed except that a trio of flies was now buzzing over the blood in the living room. "Look," he said to her, "but don't touch." He checked under the kitchen sink but found no gloves. He removed a kerchief from his pocket.
"You said Chesty was cleaning up after us."
"He is, but better not to leave something, then trust to others to erase it."
From the hallway closet he removed a pillow case. "Alta. Take this and put all the video tapes you can find into it. We don't have time to view them here, even if the television and VCR worked, which I doubt."
She was standing near the television which lay face down in the living room, video tapes scattered about her feet. "They're just movies."
"Maybe. I once worked a child molester. The victims claimed he taped them, but we had no luck finding any. What he had done was buy videos of films then taped his exploits somewhere in the middle. We had to watch every tape, all the way through to catch him. Put the tapes in the pillow case. You can search them yourself later."
Powers now focused on the job at hand. He did not take notes as he usually would at a crime scene but knew he'd recall later anything that was significant. He began with his nose and closed his eyes. In addition to the blood there was the lingering scent of fine cigar smoke and expensive perfume.
When he opened his eyes, he immediately noticed something that the search and ensuing mess had concealed. There had been a violent struggle in the living room. The blood pattern at the base of one wall suggested a knife attack, but not one by a pro.
In the kitchen Powers checked the knives. He had no idea what Marei owned, but there was no carving knife. The refrigerator door was open just as he had left it. Inside was a package of thinly sliced, very lean ham wrapped in butcher paper; two types of cheese, both white; four cartons of plain yogurt; skim milk; orange juice; Evian and Perrier water; coffee beans in a paper sack marked “Gourmet”; four eggs in a split paper carton; Dijon mustard; a partial loaf of twelve-grain bread; a half-eaten baguette rewrapped in paper; and a square slab of butter laying uncovered on a white porcelain dish. There were half a dozen pears and two apples but otherwise no produce. He closed the door lightly.
On the counter was a black espresso coffee machine for two and a French press coffee maker of red plastic and glass. In the cabinets he found more than twenty airline-size bottles of various French wines, the usual glasses and dishes, and American breakfast cereals, Raisin Bran and Cheerios. Obviously Marei had been influenced by her time in America. There were also a number of spices, several with which he was unacquainted, along with the usual staples. Below were three pots and a
n omelet pan.
Powers didn't know what to make of Alta. The steely reserve he had witnessed in the White House had developed holes by the time they met at the Tidal Basin. The dutiful automaton had actually shown signs of humanity. For all her toughness he had seen surprising vulnerability. But now she was poking around in the living room, not paying a lot of attention to his instructions to touch nothing.
Her coming here didn't make any sense to him, not after the lecture Becky had delivered earlier. He wondered if there was something special she had neglected to mention and for which she was now attempting to unobtrusively search.
The kitchen flowed into a dining area with a high end maple table and four matching chairs. Overhead was a gold colored lamp suspended from a chain, neither expensive nor cheap. The fine linen centerpiece was Portuguese and placed on it was expensive crystal. The President had said Marei's parents were rich. Obviously they helped their daughter out.
Powers returned to the living room and Alta stood watching him. The inlaid carpet there and throughout the apartment was a neutral beige. There was a large oriental rug of burgundy and purple which dominated the living room. It looked old and expensive. There were three oil paintings on the wall, two by painters he didn't recognize. The other said it was a Monet, and Powers could see nothing that made him think it was either a copy or forgery. It was a Parisian scene, a pleasant summer day in a park. The stereo was top of the line, matte black, very small with Bose speakers. The CD's were primarily Mozart and Bach, but there was also Beethoven, Debussy, Brahms and Ravel, the last containing the inevitable Bolero. He saw a box set of Edith Piaf and several CD's by Yves Montand. On the glass and gold framed coffee table was an ashtray designed for cigars. Discreetly placed at the end of the couch near the corner was a state-of-the-art air purifier.
The place had been wiped clean. There was no sign of a fingerprint on any of the surfaces where they were usually found. Despite the frenzy the room said occurred, someone had been very cool at one point.
Shadows and Lies Page 6
