Senator Love

by Warren Adler

  With only limited success, she tried to brush away such thoughts. Next, would she be contemplating the meaning of love? Oh God. Not that.

  "Still, she might not act for weeks," the eggplant said. Her heart lurched. Could she handle weeks without slipping over the edge? Edge of what?

  "I don't know if the Senator will sit still for that," she had replied.

  "Considering the potential downside for him, I doubt it too," the eggplant had pointed out. "He's liable to say, 'Look, I've been a good soldier. I've given my conscience a good ride. Done my duty as an honest citizen. Gimme a break.'"

  "I think she'll act fast," Cates interjected. "She's motivated. Nobody unmotivated hangs around hotels. I'd say she's agitated, ready and plotting her move."

  "Looks like it," the eggplant said. "Sure you don't need more backup?"

  "Either I'm a real target or I'm not," she had managed to say with some authority. "She spots backup, the ballgame is over."

  The object had always been to foil her in the act, force her to confess. They were all betting that the confrontation would induce an overwhelming need to tell all. Criminologists were divided on the premise. Human behavior was too complex for slide-rule verisimilitude.

  To record such a confession, if it came, they had fit her with a trick brassiere with a mini-tape recorder attached. It was laughable, but practical, Miranda notwithstanding. The woman had to be stopped one way or another.

  "Wearing it?" the eggplant asked.

  Fiona nodded and the eggplant showed a thin smile.

  "No 'talk to my tits' jokes," she warned.

  "Would I joke about something so serious?" the eggplant had commented, unable to suppress a broader smile.

  Actually such jokes would have lightened the load. It wasn't only the fear of Frances. She had the courage to face that. It was the other that troubled her more, the female trap. Wanting it to be meaningful. There was no solace for it, except to curse her gender.

  "I'm going along, but I still don't like it," the eggplant said yet again.

  "I'm ready," she told him firmly.

  "Talk about macho."

  With Cates, she had practiced how to resist a garrote attack from the rear and had polished up her karate. She did not fear a one-on-one physical attack, especially by another female. On the other hand, the woman could use another method, a gun, poison, explosives. Here again, they were betting that the same MO would be used, strangulation by a strong, soft object like a scarf.

  Frances' telephone call was a surprise. They had figured on a more surreptitious method, a sneak job. Frances would suddenly appear behind her, flip the garrote around her neck and squeeze. Fiona would overpower her. Cates would come running to her aid. Defeated, the woman would sing her sad song. Finis.

  "This is Frances Langford," the voice said after Fiona had identified herself. They had been drinking coffee in the kitchen. Cates had run to the extension in the den.

  "Oh yes," Fiona had replied.

  "I guess you know who I am?"

  "Yes, I do."

  "We've met casually," Frances said. For a moment, she seemed tentative, pausing. "We saw each other at the OAS a couple of weeks ago." Her voice was pleasant and chatty. Saw each other indeed, Fiona thought, remembering her face peering above the balustrade.

  "We probably did," Fiona said cautiously.

  "You know we did."

  Now it was Fiona's turn to pause. She was genuinely confused.

  "I saw you and Sam. Then you looked up and saw me."

  "That was you?" Fiona said, trying to generate surprise, knowing she wasn't convincing.

  "I know you must think I'm crazy. I've actually been following Sam and you. I mean, I know where you go."

  "Really, Mrs. Langford," Fiona replied, reaching for indignation.

  "I have to see you," Frances said. "I just can't wait any longer."

  "What for?"

  "I don't want to say over the phone. But it's very important. Very."

  "When do you suggest?"

  "Today. As soon as possible."

  "Where?"

  "You know the Four Seasons in Georgetown?"

  "Yes."

  "Noon okay?"

  Fiona looked at the digital clock on the microwave.

  "I'll be there."

  Still, she did not hang up. Fiona could hear her breathing.

  "And, Miss FitzGerald."

  "Yes."

  "Be very careful."

  Cates rushed back to the kitchen after the call.

  "How do you read this?" he asked.

  "Obviously a ploy," Fiona said.

  "A public place. Witnesses. She's taking risks she may not have taken with the others. Why?"

  Cates shrugged.

  "She must know you're a cop."

  "I have to assume she knows everything."

  They called the eggplant at home and told him what had happened.

  "Think she knows we're tailing her? Setting her up?" he asked after they told him about the call.

  "No indication," Fiona said crisply. "But we can't be sure. Not yet."

  "Sounds weird," the eggplant said.

  "Cunning," Fiona corrected. "She has something up her sleeve, that's for sure."

  "Cates."

  "Yes, Chief."

  "Like glue. Understand?"

  "Perfectly."

  "And you, FitzGerald. Be careful."

  He hung up. Funny, Fiona thought. That's what Frances said to me.

  28

  THE FOUR Seasons in Georgetown boasted a cocktail lounge that had the look and feel of a huge reception room in a European luxury hotel. Floor-to-ceiling windows opened to gardens that were carefully constructed to give the illusion of a great expanse lying beyond the immediate view. Deep upholstered chairs and couches were strategically placed for both comfort and privacy. The decor was impeccable. A pianist in black tie played popular tunes on a shiny black baby grand.

  Frances was already there. She had chosen an out-of-the-way spot in a far corner. She was, Fiona noted, carefully groomed, wearing a beige suit that set off brown eyes flecked with yellow. Blonde hair fell gently to her shoulders, and, while her appearance was very youthful from a distance, closer up tiny nests of smile-wrinkles around her eyes and lips gave hints of an ominously accelerated aging process. Long, tapered fingers played with a double string of what looked like genuine baroque pearls.

  She appeared open and friendly, with a real estate salesman's flair for ingratiation. Her handshake was firm, strong as a man's.

  Studying her as the waitress poured coffee from a silver urn into delicate cups, Fiona could not detect any sense of the viciousness and evil that motivated those crimes which the woman had allegedly perpetrated. Were they wrong? Fiona wondered. Yet her experience had taught her that the most ruthless murderers often seemed docile and benign.

  "I'm so glad you could make it," Frances said. Only then, as she spoke, did the sunny mood conveyed by her appearance change abruptly. When she bent to raise her coffee cup, Fiona did a quick take, catching Cates just as he opened a newspaper at his seat at the other end of the room.

  "Your invitation was more like a summons."

  "I know. I'm sorry. But I'm deeply troubled."

  "You are?"

  She took a deep sip and put down her coffee cup.

  "I've been following you, Miss FitzGerald," Frances said. "Spying on you. On one level I'm terribly ashamed."

  "And on the other?"

  Fiona tried to mask her confusion with a show of sarcastic indignation.

  "I'm frightened for you," Frances said flatly. "And I only hope I can sell this idea as good as I sell real estate." Her gaze revolved around the room. Was it genuine fear Fiona saw in her eyes?

  "What idea?"

  Frances continued to play with her pearls.

  "I think..." Frances hesitated, then sucked in a deep breath, offering an expression that one might make when one is about to ingest some foul-tasting medicine. "...I think
you're exposing yourself to extreme danger. Someone is going to attempt to kill you."

  "There's a happy thought," Fiona said with a deliberate air of skepticism. She would resist the idea, make Frances push harder.

  "I know I sound off-the-wall. But hear me out before you make any judgements. The essential point is that you're having an affair with my ex-husband."

  Should she stand up? Make some obvious gesture of indignation? No, she decided. She might not be able to pull it off.

  "You said it up front. You've been spying on me."

  "I had to be sure."

  "Sure that we were having an affair?"

  "Sure that it was the real thing."

  "How in the name of hell could you determine that?"

  "I can't really. I'm making an assumption based on experience and intuition."

  "And of course, it's none of your business."

  "You're right."

  "Then why all the interest?"

  "I could say it's because I want to see justice done, but that would be corny. Let's call it a sisterly thing then. An alliance of the gender."

  There was, after all, something compelling about such a female call to arms. Fiona shrugged and said nothing, her silence an encouragement for Frances to continue.

  "Fourteen years ago, he was having an affair with a young black woman, Betty Taylor. She was never heard from again. Ever since then, I've been, well ... uncomfortable. We were still married then and I found out. Caught them actually in the throes of passion. Quite embarrassing all around. He was up for his first Senate seat. He wasn't exactly contrite, but he was realistic. I made a bargain with him. If he stopped the affair, I would stay with him through the campaign. Oh, the marriage was over. I knew that. And I kept my end of the bargain."

  "Did he?"

  She remembered Sam's explanation, comparing versions now. So far everything fit with what Sam had told her.

  "Perhaps too well," Frances said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "The woman disappeared."

  Fiona's heart lurched.

  "How do you know?"

  "Because I tried to contact her."

  "When?"

  "Must have been a couple of weeks after the incident. Sam told me that it was over by then. That was his part of the bargain. But you see, I felt badly about the poor girl. Can you understand that?"

  "Yes. I think I can understand," Fiona said, nodding her head.

  "She was probably a sweet but very naive young woman and I had embarrassed her. I felt uncomfortable about that. I really felt a sense of compassion for her. More than that."

  "The sister thing."

  A tiny smile belied any bitterness. Fiona could not detect a single false note.

  "Her telephone was disconnected and she had moved out of her apartment. Even the people on the Committee were in the dark about her. She had simply upped and left."

  "Disappeared?"

  "There's no other explanation," Frances said. "I even called her mother in West Virginia. I told her I was a friend of Betty's from Washington. The poor woman was beside herself. I used to call from time to time, to see if Betty had contacted her, then, what with one thing and another, I stopped calling."

  "What do you think happened to her?"

  Her whole body seemed to mobilize itself. She lifted her chin, focused her eyes, straightened her back.

  "I think she was done away with. Murdered."

  "By your ex-husband? By Sam?"

  She shook her head.

  "Sam couldn't kill anyone. Especially a woman."

  "Then who?"

  "Let me continue," Frances said. "A few years later, Sam had made it to the Senate. We were long divorced, but I would see him from time to time. Observe him, actually. I know. None of my business. But he had married Nell by then. Anyway, I read in the paper that a woman staffer, Harriet Farley, was killed in an automobile accident."

  "What did that mean?"

  "I checked it out. A woman driving alone, dead sober, on a lonely road in Virginia suddenly wraps herself around a tree."

  "That's pretty circumstantial," Fiona said.

  "Who would know better than a homicide detective?" So she does know lots more about me, Fiona thought. Frances plunged ahead with her story. "It just didn't sit well. I couldn't prove it. But I would bet that this Harriet Farley was having an affair with Sam."

  "You think foul play did her in?"

  Frances nodded.

  "I suspected it then. I know it now."

  She paused.

  "The murder of Helga Kessel has convinced me."

  "But the woman was robbed," Fiona said cautiously.

  "The papers said that this is the police contention, Miss FitzGerald. I also know that's the way you met Sam." She studied Fiona and smiled. "You are a lovely looking woman, Miss FitzGerald, although, I must say, a very unlikely detective. But I bet you must hear that frequently."

  "So you've added all this up in your mind. Three murders."

  "I believe it sincerely."

  "And no evidence."

  "No."

  She hesitated, then spoke again. "Believe me. For your sake, I hope I'm wrong. But I've decided to speak out regardless of what you might think of me."

  "And who do you think is the culprit?"

  "I have nothing to hang it on. No hard facts or evidence to impart. I know in my gut. That's all I can give you."

  Fiona knew what was coming and she was busy concocting alternate scenarios.

  "Bunkie Farrington," Frances said. "This man is diseased. He is corroded by ambition. He would stop at nothing."

  Fiona saw the flash of anger, the effort to keep it under control. It seemed perfectly appropriate to the moment. Was this woman such a superb actress? Was her own theory faltering? Could she be right?

  "We are not fools, Mrs. Langford," Fiona said. "We considered all that."

  "I've always felt there was more to it," Frances sighed. "More than just protecting Sam's career. I remember this boy when he first came with Sam. A young, pretty boy just out of Yale. He took immediate possession."

  "You seem to be implying something beyond ambition," Fiona said.

  "Oh, I've always felt that. It's a breed very common in politics, a kind of a homosexual psychopath that hides his real motive under the guise of ambition."

  "And Sam?"

  "There's a theory that philandering men need to keep proving their manhood to themselves."

  Suddenly, she felt Frances' scrutiny become more intense. She knew she was blushing to her hair roots and it was playing havoc with her objectivity.

  "Are you saying—" Fiona began.

  "Sam and Bunkie? I'd vote no to anything overt. As for Sam knowing and willing to manipulate Bunkie, that's another matter." She had let go of her pearls. Now she took them up again.

  "Heavy stuff," Fiona said. She turned it over in her mind, rebuking herself for blocking out the obvious. And yet, hadn't they "rousted" Bunkie, put him through their gauntlet without success?

  "I feel better now," Frances said. She signaled for the waiter. "I can use a drink. You?"

  The waiter came over.

  "A bloody Mary," Frances said, looking at Fiona.

  "Same," Fiona said. Again, she stole a glance at Cates, who was watching her peripherally now. Then she looked at Frances, who exuded credibility, a hundred and eighty degrees from where she had been in her mind. Still, Fiona had made no move to test the woman, largely because she had not been able to think of anything that might trip her up.

  "Forewarned is forearmed," Frances said. "It's not like you would be out there in the cold. You're police people. You know how to handle these things."

  "He couldn't know about Sam and me. No way." This had to be a hard fact. He had been deliberately taken out of the loop. The trap was set for Frances, not for Bunkie. Had they been playing to the wrong gallery?

  "I know he's out of town. I checked. I figure that he may not know with who, but he surely knows someth
ing is up. There's a real gap in Sam's schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the middle of the day. No way to hide that. He'll find out. Count on it."

  There was a test, Fiona thought. A test of something. She had a question ready.

  "Did you know that Sam kept some of his business to himself?"

  "Maybe that's what he thought. Believe me, Bunkie finds out. He'll find out about you and Sam and put two and two together."

  "He might think it's just another roll in the hay. Not worthy of much attention."

  "Not Bunkie. Bunkie would know."

  "But we've kept him out-of-town," Fiona said, wondering if she had gone too far.

  "Out-of-town for Bunkie does not mean out-of-mind. Besides, he'll be back. He'll know. He has his methods."

  "Wouldn't he question it. So—soon after Helga?" Fiona asked, then wished she hadn't. Was she asking for herself? Or professionally?

  Frances shrugged. "Ask yourself that question."

  The message, because Fiona had shrouded it in obfuscation, was reaching her obliquely. In her heart lay the answer to that. But to confront it would mean that she was expecting more from Sam than was given. Jesus, this was getting out of hand.

  The drinks came, concoctions containing a large flowering stalk of celery. Frances reached for the stalk and bit off a piece. The act was purposeful, primitive, and it arrested Fiona's attention for the moment, further confusing her.

  Fiona removed her stalk and took a deep sip. It was spicy, a little hot for a Washington-inspired bloody Mary.

  "You ever bring this up with Sam?" Fiona asked.

  "Absolutely not," Frances said, her eyes squinting over the rim of the glass. "He'd think I was being vindictive." She paused and put her glass down. "About Bunkie."

  "And what if he did? What would it matter? You've been divorced all these years."

  "It matters," Frances muttered. "I can't bear the thought of what has happened to those women. He must not be allowed to get away with it." Her intense gaze suddenly focused on Fiona. "Not again."

  "Meaning me."

  "I could never live with myself if I didn't have this conversation."

  "Why didn't you have this talk with Helga Kessel?"

  She nodded her head, picked up her drink again and sipped, obviously taking the time to frame an answer. Surely she knew now that her credibility was under scrutiny, although she showed no signs of vacillation from her position.