by Stuart Woods
“Holy shit!” Fair said. “How do you know this?”
“It’s Washington. Also, she admitted it to us ten minutes ago.”
“Does the president know?”
“He knows of a rumor that Kendrick was having affairs. He doesn’t know with whom yet, unless the grapevine in this town is even faster than I thought.”
“It is,” she said. “It moves faster than the speed of light, defying science.”
“Then you should have Milly Hart’s address in a millisecond,” Stone said.
“Hang on,” she said, and put him on hold.
“You making any progress?” Dino asked. “With the address, I mean?”
“I’ll have it in a millisecond,” Stone said.
Fair came back on the line. “She lives at the Watergate apartments. Who is she?”
“Didn’t the White House operator fill you in?”
“I asked only for her address.”
“Then you know just as much about her as I do,” Stone said. “See you tomorrow night.” He hung up. “She was flabbergasted to hear that Brix was having affairs,” he said to Dino.
“I guess I’m the only guy in town who isn’t,” Dino said. “I always assume everybody is fucking everybody.”
“That saves time,” Stone said. “Can you find the Watergate apartments on the map?”
Dino consulted it. “Right by the Potomac River,” he said. “I’m on my way.” He put the car in gear.
“Then I’ll come along for the ride.”
Entrance to the apartment house required a stop at a reception desk.
“Milly Hart,” Stone said to the uniformed doorman.
“Who shall I say is calling?”
“Mr. Stone Barrington and Lieutenant Dino Bacchetti.”
The man wrote down the names, then dialed a number and spoke for a moment. He covered the receiver with his hand. “She doesn’t know you,” he said.
“May I speak with her?” Stone asked. The man handed him the phone. “Hello, Ms. Hart?”
“Yes?” It was a low voice, nice to listen to.
“This is Stone Barrington. I am here to speak to you at the request of the president of the United States.”
“Really? Then give the phone to the doorman.”
Stone did so, and the doorman gave him the apartment number and pointed him toward the elevators.
“We know nothing about this lady?” Dino said. “Nothing you haven’t told me?”
“Zip, Dino.”
“You sure about that?”
“Dino, you’re sounding more like a wife at every turn.”
The door opened directly into a handsome foyer, where a large arrangement of fresh flowers sat on an antique mahogany table.
“Very classy,” Dino said.
A door opened, and a uniformed maid, their second of the day, beckoned them in. “This way, please.”
Milly Hart simultaneously entered the living room through another door and walked toward them. She was a striking redhead wearing a negligee with a matching silk dressing gown, right out of an Arlene Dahl movie. In fact, she resembled Arlene Dahl in one of her old films. “Mr. Barrington? Lieutenant Bacchetti? How do you do?” she said, with an accent right off the New York stage. She extended a perfectly manicured hand and allowed both of them to shake it, then waved them to a sofa and took a chair. “You’ve piqued my curiosity with talk of the president,” she said.
“We’re speaking with you at his request.”
“I’m flattered, but I’ve met the gentleman briefly only a few times, at White House dinners and such. What are you a lieutenant of?” she asked Dino. “I was expecting an army uniform.”
“Of the New York City Police Department,” Dino replied.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I hope this isn’t about that parking ticket last winter. It was a hired car and driver, and I assumed his company would take care of it and bill me.”
“No, ma’am,” Dino said. “It’s not about-”
“Would you gentlemen like some tea?” she asked. “It isn’t too early, is it? Or would you prefer something more potent?”
“Tea would be lovely, Ms. Hart,” Stone said.
“Please call me Milly,” she said. “Absolutely everybody does.”
“Thank you, Milly,” Stone said. “I assure you the president has not taken an interest in your parking tickets.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Frankly, I thought you were making that up to get past the doorman.”
“No, the presidNo,y curiosent has asked us to look into the murder and apparent suicide of Emily and Brixton Kendrick.”
For a moment, she nearly lost her composure, but she quickly recovered. “Really?”
“Really. We understand that you and Mr. Kendrick were . . . close.”
“And where did you come by that particular item?”
“It’s Washington,” Dino said, looking pleased with himself.
“Ah, yes, so it is. Am I suspected of murdering one or both of them?”
“No, Milly,” Stone said. “We’re here because you and Brix Kendrick were having an affair.”
“I remember the day the news broke,” she said, ignoring his remark. “I was in New York at the time.”
“You spend a lot of time in New York, do you?” Dino asked.
“I suppose I’m up there once a month, sometimes more often.”
“We don’t need an alibi from you,” Stone said.
“Then, pray tell, what do you need?”
“We’d like to know who else Brix Kendrick was seeing.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she said, “but I am not privy to that information. Frankly, Brix did not seem to be the sort who would have affairs.”
“And yet you were having an affair with him,” Stone pointed out.
“I mean, multiple affairs,” she replied. She still had not admitted her own affair, explicitly.
“What else can you tell us about Brix?” Stone asked.
“Gentlemen, I’m afraid I have nothing else to tell you.” She looked at a diamond wristwatch adorning her slender wrist. “And I’m afraid I have forgotten another appointment for this hour. Will you gentlemen excuse me? I’m sorry about the tea.”
She stood up, and the maid appeared as if on cue. “This way, gentlemen,” she said.
Milly Hart turned and left the room without another word.
Stone and Dino found themselves in the entry hall, waiting for the elevator.
“I wonder what she’s hiding,” Stone said.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Dino asked.
“Get what?”
“Milly Hart is a hooker.”
21
They got into the elevator. “Why on earth do you think Milly Hart is a hooker?” Stone asked.
“Stone, sometimes you are so fucking naive.”
“What?”
“We go to see a woman without an appointment. She walks in clad in Hollywood lingerie, then, while we are questioning her, she suddenly remembers another appointment.”
The elevator doors opened, and, standing before them was Muffy Brandon’s husband. They got off, and he got on.
“Are you getting the picture now?” Dino asked.
“I believe so,” Stone said. “I’m sorry to be so slow on the uptake.”
“The No,y ze="3">“question is, how did Brixton Kendrick afford a high-priced hooker like Milly Hart? He was a government employee, for God’s sake.”
“Private income?” Stone asked.
“Not according to his son. Remember meeting him?”
“Ah, yes, and he was terribly concerned about getting the max out of selling the old man’s house.”
“And we’ve gotta be talking about at least a grand a pop for an hour of Milly Hart’s time.”
“I don’t have any experience with rates for hookers,” Stone said.
“Well, you’ve gotta admit that Milly is a rare beauty, especially in a town full of women like Betty Trask and
Muffy Brandon.”
“I can’t argue with that. I don’t suppose Brix Kendrick would have any trouble wanting her. Except that his days already seemed pretty full.”
“Yeah,” Dino said, “he must have been short of time with Muffy waiting for him in the afternoons, and he couldn’t have been seeing somebody else in the evenings, because he was busy being an ideal husband. The question is, how could he get it up that often, at his age?”
“How old was he?” Stone asked.
“According to the FBI report, both he and Mimi were fifty-one, the age at which half of American men have what is politely called ‘erectile dysfunction.’”
“Well, Brix was obviously not having those problems, because he was keeping at least two ladies happy on a regular basis.”
“Maybe his wife had cut him off, for one reason or another,” Dino suggested. “And believe me, they don’t really need a reason.”
“Horniness is not a motive for murder, especially when he couldn’t possibly have been horny.”
“Shame is a motive for suicide, though,” Dino pointed out.
“I guess,” Stone said.
They got into the car.
“Where to?” Dino asked.
“Home, James. We’ve got nobody else to talk to, except each other.”
Teddy Fay and Lauren Cade finished cleaning their hangar apartment and got into a shower together.
“You know,” she said, soaping Teddy’s back, “this place isn’t half bad.”
“Have I ever asked you to live in a place that was half bad?”
“No, you’ve done very well by me in that regard. Tell me, what are we going to do with ourselves in D.C.?”
“Well,” Teddy said, starting to soap her front, “I’ve got some work to do on a couple of gadgets.” Teddy had made a fortune inventing kitchen tools that were sold on late-night television. “Gotta keep the money tap running.”
“I won’t argue with you about that,” Lauren said. “I want to see the National Gallery and the Smithsonian. I’ve never been to Washington before.”
“There are enough museums and galleries to keep you busy for a year,” Teddy said. “Not that I think we’ll be here for a year. I know you get antsy if you’re too far from a beach for too long. I just want to be here long enough to throw Todd Bacon and his crew off the track.”
Todd Bacon, at that moment, was in San Diego fielding phone calls from his team, and he was baffled by the result. They had found three instances of Cessna 182 RG landings at West Coast general aviation airports, but each of them had been traced to owners who were obviously not Teddy Fay.
“You look puzzled,” his number two said.
“Aren’t you? Where the hell did he go?”
“Well, if he isn’t on the West Coast, that leaves forty-five other states where he could have landed. Oh, and did I mention Canada?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Todd said.
“Todd, if we don’t get a solid lead soon, they’re gonna pull the plug on us,” number two said. “We’re going to find ourselves in some South American jungle looking for drug factories, and I don’t like bugs and snakes.”
“I’m thinking,” Todd said, “I’m thinking.”
22
Stone, Dino, and Shelley turned up at Fair Sutherlin’s place fashionably late; they were the first ones there. Fair lived in a small, elegant apartment building on a broad avenue near Dupont Circle, and her space, its furnishings and pictures indicated an income of which her government salary was but a small part.
As Dino was introducing Shelley, two other couples arrived, and before those introductions had been made there were six couples present, including a network anchorman, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a right-wing Republican senator, each with a wife in tow. Everybody was terribly glad to see everybody else.
A young man in a white jacket took drink orders, and a young woman in a white jacket poured champagne for those who did not have another choice. They drank for forty minutes, then someone opened a pair of sliding doors, and the twelve took seats around a long, beautifully set table.
“Fair,” the senator’s wife said, “I don’t know how you have amassed so many beautiful things in your short life.”
“By the deaths of my parents and all four of my grandparents,” Fair replied. “I’m an only child, and I have three very complete sets of china, silver, and crystal, in opposing patterns. By the way, since Stone, Dino, and Shelley are new at my table, I should tell them about my one rule: no politics will be discussed.”
There were murmurs of assent, then there was complete silence for a little more than a minute.
“How ’bout those Redskins,” the anchorman offered.
“Not until next month,” Fair said.
The senator spoke up. “Stone, Dino, tell us about how your investigation is going.”
“First of all, Senator,” Stone said, “I am not shocked that you know about our investigation. Second, as you must know, we can’t discuss it before we have made our final report to the president, and maybe not even then.”
The columnist gave a snort. “I would imagine that the collective knowledge about your investigation by those present at this table amounts to very nearly everything you have learned so far. For instance, I hear that you had a conversation with the notorious Milly Hart yesterday.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” Stone said, “but I would be interested to know why she is notorious.”
“Because she’s a high-priced hooker,” Dino said.
The table made an affirmative noise.
“What is Ms. Hart’s story?” Stone asked the columnist.
“Well, let’s see if I can encapsulate it in one short paragraph,” the man said. “Well-brought-up girl comes to Washington and works for an important senator, one Gerald Hart, of Virginia; marries senator; senator dies, leaving a widow surprised that he left her so little; senator’s federal pension is insufficient to keep widow in style to which she has become accustomed; then someone offers her funds to tide her over, affection presumed; then someone else offers, and pretty soon widow is living stylishly again.”
“I hear Milly has a stylish clientele, too,” the anchorman’s wife said.
“Was Brix Kendrick among them?” the columnist’s wife asked, directing her question to Stone.
“You tell us,” Stone said, “please. We’re new in town.”
“Frankly,” said the anchorman, “I don’t know how Brix could afford her, on his White House salary.”
The senator grinned. “Perhaps someone should audit Brix’s books at the White House,” he said, pointing his fork at Fair. “After all, he reigned over a considerable budget. My committee has seen the numbers.”
“Senator,” Fair said, “the audit has already been done, and everything was in apple-pie order.”
“Apple pie can be messy,” the senator replied.
“Not our apple pie,” Fair said.
“Oh, that’s right,” the senator said. “Will Lee is notoriously proper about budgets.”
“And notoriously transparent, too,” Fair responded.
“No skeletons in that closet, then,” the senator admitted.
“Well,” said the columnist, “not the budgetary closet, anyway. There are, of course, other closets, and upright, dull Brix was, apparently, occupying a crowded one.”
That got a laugh from the table.
“I should think,” the senator’s wife said, “that that would make Brix neither upright nor dull. I can’t imagine how a man of his age could manage so well.” She shot a meaningful glance at her husband across the table, and he looked uncomfortable.
“Someone has pointed out to me,” Stone said, “that, at fifty-one, Brix’s age, half of American males are experiencing erectile dysfunction. Has it occurred to anyone that Brix might be among the other half? Or perhaps among an even smaller percentage who are raging bulls at that age?”
“Hugh Hefner is in his eighties,” Fa
ir said, “and he seems to be holding up well.”
The senator snorted. “All that guy has to do is lie still,” he said, “and they do it for him.”
The anchorman laughed. “I hope I can lie that still when I’m his age.”
“I hope so, too, dear,” his wife said.
Shelley spoke up. “Would anyone care to hazard a guess as to who else is on Milly Hart’s preferred list?”
“At least one senator, I hear,” the columnist said, raising his eyebrows in the direction of the senator present.
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“I wouldn’t know about that,” the senator said. “And even if I did, senate cloakroom gossip is privileged.”
“Only if we can’t pry it out of you,” Fair said.
Everybody laughed.
“He’s apparently right,” his wife said. “He won’t even tell me what’s said in that cloakroom.”
“I recall,” the columnist said, “that Warren G. Harding, when he was a senator, is alleged to have impregnated a young woman on a sofa in that cloakroom.”
“That the young woman was impregnated by Warren G. is not in doubt, though the geography in question is a little hazy. I think that information,” the senator said, “was traced to the young woman herself, though she may have embroidered her story for effect. It did not come from one of Senator Harding’s colleagues, though.”
Everyone moved back to the living room for coffee, and Stone asked Fair for the powder room.
“I believe it’s occupied,” Fair said, “but use my bathroom.” She pointed to a door.
Stone opened it and found himself in a very feminine bedroom. He crossed it and found the bath, and while he stood at the toilet, he could not keep himself from opening the medicine chest on the wall before his nose. He found prescription bottles for a painkiller, a sleeping pill, and a couple he did not recognize.
Also, he was intrigued to find a clear plastic case containing four lipsticks, the same brand that he had been told about by Shelley, apparently part of a promotion, none of which was Pagan Spring. There was, however, an empty space in the case. One lipstick had been removed.
