Murder at the Kennedy Center

by Margaret Truman

  “That they’ll say you killed Andrea Feldman? It won’t happen, believe me.”

  “No, Mac—I’m afraid that they might kill me, too.”

  Smith’s laugh was involuntary.

  Janet’s face hardened.

  “I’m not laughing at what you’re saying, Janet, but the idea is simply too farfetched for me to give much credence to it. Will you come back with me? If your physical safety is a legitimate concern, I can arrange to have you protected.”

  “How?”

  “Leave that to me. Will you come?”

  She shook her head.

  Smith stood. “Well, you put me in a difficult situation. The police are looking for you, because they must talk with you as they have with everyone else. I know where you are now, and if I fail to make that known to them, I’m obstructing justice, something no one, especially an attorney, is supposed to do.”

  Janet turned to Marcia and said, “See, I told you this was a mistake.” Marcia put her arm around her and said, “It wasn’t a mistake. I trust Mr. Smith. He won’t tell anyone.”

  “Don’t place that burden on me, Marcia,” Smith said sternly.

  “Please, Mac, don’t tell them where I am. Oh, go ahead, I won’t be here anyway.” She jumped up from her chair and paced the room, her thin arms wrapped around herself as though an arctic blast had hit.

  “Look, Janet,” Smith said, “let’s leave it this way: Think about it. I won’t tell anyone that I’ve seen you and had this conversation, no one. I promise you that. Think about it for twenty-four hours, and then let’s talk again. I’ll come back here tomorrow night. Promise you’ll be here.”

  She turned and said angrily, “I don’t trust anyone connected with that family.”

  “Suit yourself, but I’ll keep my part of the bargain. I’ll be here tomorrow night at the same time. I hope you’ll be here, too.” He looked at Marcia. “Are you coming with me?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’ll stay with her a while.”

  “Fine. You know where to reach me. Good night.”

  Smith was angry, and the speed at which he drove back to Washington reflected it. He went to the Watergate suite, where Tony Buffolino sat alone watching television.

  “Where’re your wife and kids?” Smith asked.

  “Ah, they came up here, but I got into a hassle right away with my wife and they took off. Typical, man—I want to do good, but I shoot off my mouth and we end up in a brawl. I’ll make it up to them. What was your trip all about?”

  “Nothing, wasted time. Anything new here aside from a near-homicide fight with your wife?”

  “I made my reservation to go to Frisco tomorrow.”

  “Good.” Smith picked up the phone and dialed Joe Riga’s number. To his surprise, he reached him immediately. “Joe, Mac Smith, I need to talk to you.”

  “Now?” Riga said.

  “Now, or in the morning.”

  “Let’s make it tomorrow, Mac.”

  “As early as possible. Will you be in at eight?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be here.”

  “Sorry your party didn’t work out, Tony,” Smith said as he prepared to leave for home.

  “Story of my life, Mac. Have a good night. I’ll keep in touch from Frisco.”

  19

  “You want some tonsil varnish, Mac?” Joe Riga asked. Smith laughed and shook his head. It was apt slang for station-house coffee and, for a coffee snob like Mac Smith, it was even worse than that.

  Riga fussed with paperwork on his desk before asking, “What can I do for you?”

  “Tell me what’s going on with the Andrea Feldman investigation.”

  Riga crumpled a piece of paper into a ball and tossed it over his shoulder. It missed the wastebasket. “Just plodding ahead, Mac. Lots of players, but no scorecard yet. Why do you ask? Your boy Ewald hasn’t been charged with anything.”

  “True,” said Smith, “but he’s spending his days waiting for the proverbial second shoe to drop. Is he still your prime suspect?”

  Riga smiled, exposing yellowed teeth. “Let’s just say that we haven’t crossed his name off the list.”

  “When can we expect the autopsy report?”

  Riga took a sip of his coffee, made a face, and said, “We? You don’t have any official connection. You don’t even have a client.”

  “Not necessarily true, Joe. Yes, Paul Ewald has not been charged with the murder, but I’m on tap with the Ewald family. I just want to be ready in case you decide to send a couple of wee-hours visitors to his house again. Only for questioning, of course.”

  Riga threw a couple more spitballs at the wastebasket. “If I didn’t know you better, Mac, I’d think you were ambulance chasing.”

  “Careful, Joe.”

  Riga’s smile was big enough to assure Smith he was half kidding.

  “What about the autopsy?” Smith repeated.

  “Nothing’s come down on it yet.”

  “Any preliminary findings?”

  “Just scuttlebutt.”

  “Any determination whether she’d had sex that night?”

  “Check Forensics.”

  “I will.”

  Riga leaned forward and said, “Look, Mac, let me level with you. All of us … me, the DA, a couple of others … wanted to break this case fast. We figured Paul Ewald did it, and we brought him in hoping he’d decide to make it easy for us, ’fess up. We figured with the circumstantial we had, plus the ID by the motel owner in Rosslyn, we could shake Mr. Ewald up enough to get a confession out of him.”

  “You could go to jail for that kind of police procedure,” Smith said sternly.

  “Why, because you claim I told you this? Come on, Mac, I’m being up front with you because we go back a ways, huh? We got a little pressure on us to solve this thing.”

  “I can imagine. You must have been disappointed when Paul Ewald didn’t hand you a written, notarized confession when you knocked at his door in the middle of the night.”

  A grin from Riga. “Yeah, that would have been nice. Look, we took a shot and it didn’t work, so we let him go. You came on strong with Kramer, and your client took a walk. Wanna know something, though, Mac?” Riga asked, leaning even more forward and staring at Smith.

  “Life is a continuing education, Joe. Go ahead.”

  “I still think he did it. We’ve interviewed more than a hundred people so far, and when I line everybody up in my mind, I keep seeing Paul Ewald stepping forward, raising his hand, and saying, ‘I did it!’ ”

  “Not a very open-minded way to conduct a murder investigation,” Smith said.

  “That’s for juries, Mac, not for cops. I go into an investigation with my mind closed against all the distractions, you know? My gut tells me who the major players are, and I keep the spotlight on them.”

  Smith went to the window and leaned against the sill. He’d come to Riga’s office hoping to learn whether MPD’s questioning of Secret Service agent Robert Jeroldson had revealed Ken Ewald’s rendezvous with Roseanna Gateaux the night of the murder. He was reluctant to ask, but decided that if he didn’t, he wouldn’t learn anything. “A hundred people, you say. Everybody had an alibi except Paul Ewald?”

  Riga shook his head.

  “Any of the others people I might know?”

  Riga nodded. “Yeah, Senator Ewald for one.”

  Smith raised his eyebrows and looked surprised. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “Your senator buddy cut out of his office that night for a couple of hours.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, he and the Secret Service agent, Jeroldson, went to the Watergate Hotel.”

  “What did they do there?”

  “Beats me, but it’s on my list of questions the next time I talk to Ewald. Jeroldson says Ewald insisted they split up, and Ewald went into a room at the hotel.”

  “Whom did he see?” Smith asked.

  “Damned if I know, but I will.” Riga leaned back in his wooden swivel chair, bringing
forth a loud groan from its metal tilting mechanism. “I got a feeling you’re not leveling with me, Mac, and that means we’re playing with two sets of rules here this morning. I showed you mine, now you show me yours.”

  Smith laughed and came to the desk, perched on the edge of it. “What is this, a game of doctor-nursey? Why do you want to know whom he saw that night? Maybe it was personal.”

  “I assume it was. Last I heard, Senator Ewald wasn’t up for any Husband of the Year awards.”

  “Looking for gossip, Joe?”

  “I got no use for gossip. What I got is a murder to solve.”

  “Is Senator Ewald high on your list of suspects?”

  “He’s part of the crowd. Anything else you want to discuss, Mac—the baseball season, Star Wars, spring fashions?”

  “No, Joe, I just wanted to touch base with you. As I said, I’m on retainer to the Ewald family, and would like to avoid being blindsided. By the way, the motel owner in Rosslyn. He’s a liar. Paul Ewald wasn’t at that motel that night.”

  “I know that. Well, maybe he’s not a liar, just a guy who likes to cooperate with the law to keep the law off his back. Besides, he’s not what you’d call a prize witness for the prosecution. I don’t think he could pass a driver’s test eye exam.”

  As Smith went to the door, Riga asked, “How’s the senator’s campaign going?”

  “All right, I guess. I’m not involved much in his political life.”

  “This kind of thing could hurt him, huh?”

  “Depends on what you decide to do, Joe.”

  “What I decide to do?”

  “Yes. Think of the awesome responsibility you have. Accuse anyone in the Ewald family of murder, and you potentially blow Ken Ewald’s campaign for president away in smoke. You’re a regular king-maker. Thanks for the time, Joe. I’m still looking forward to having that drink with you.”

  A long black limousine carrying Colonel Gilbert Morales, his aides, and bodyguards, passed through the Lincoln Tunnel and moved slowly in clogged Manhattan noontime traffic until it went past the front of the Waldorf, turned right at the corner, and stopped at the smaller entrance to the Waldorf Towers. The sidewalks had been barricaded by New York City police, and a cadre of uniformed officers lined the length of them. A group of onlookers strained to see who was arriving by limo.

  “Who’s that?” a man from Cleveland with a large video camera around his neck asked his wife.

  “It’s that Morales from Panama, the one fighting Communism there.”

  “Good thing we have Manning in the White House,” the husband said gravely. “If that jerk Ewald becomes president, all Central America will go Commie.”

  Morales and his entourage were greeted in the small lobby of the Waldorf by a representative from a public-relations agency that had been retained to promote Morales’s cause in the United States.

  They all went up to a large and ornately furnished two-bedroom suite, where, after food and drinks had been delivered, they discussed Morales’s scheduled appearance that night on Ted Koppel’s Nightline.

  When that discussion was concluded, one of Morales’s aides and a bodyguard were assigned to escort the securely girdled, long-lashed Mrs. Morales for two hours of shopping. Everyone departed, leaving Morales alone to go over answers he’d prepared to questions that Koppel was likely to ask.

  A half hour later, the phone rang.

  “¿Sí?”

  “It is Miguel,” the voice on the other end said. “I am downstairs.”

  “Bueno. Come up.”

  A few minutes later, Morales opened the door to admit a rapier-thin young Panamanian wearing an expensive, tightly tailored blue pinstripe suit. His silk tie was the exact color of the suit. His shirt was medium blue; the collar stood high above his jacket neck, and his cuffs were below its sleeves. He wore a plain gold wedding band; a thin gold chain dangled from his left wrist.

  “Come in, come in, sit down,” Morales said, continuing in Spanish.

  Miguel went to a sideboard, where he poured himself a glass of tomato juice. He turned and looked at Morales, who had resumed his seat.

  “Sit down,” Morales repeated, gesturing to a chair next to him.

  Miguel sat. Morales looked into his youthful face and smiled. “So young,” he said.

  There was no response from Miguel, who simply took a tiny sip of the juice and placed the glass on a table in front of them.

  “So young to be so good at your craft,” Morales said.

  “Good because I am young,” Miguel said in an evenly modulated voice.

  “Sí sí,” Morales said. “You are ready?”

  Miguel narrowed his eyes and said, “I am always ready.”

  “Bueno. Then let us go over this again.”

  20

  Tony Buffolino retrieved his .22 revolver from Security at San Francisco International Airport. He was licensed to carry the weapon, and had checked it with airline security in New York before boarding the flight. Revolver securely nestled beneath his arm, he pulled the new suitcase he’d bought at a Watergate luggage shop from the baggage carousel and went out front to take the shuttle bus and pick up the Hertz Continental he’d reserved.

  “Nice, nice,” he said aloud as he settled behind the Lincoln’s steering wheel and adjusted the seat and mirrors. He read over the printout he’d gotten from the Hertz direction-giving computer, and carefully studied a map of San Francisco, placing an “X” on Santiago Street, in the Sunset district. He’d intended to go to the hotel first, but changed his mind. He started the engine and headed for the “X” on the map, reaching it almost an hour later after a series of frustrating, obscenity-producing wrong turns.

  The house he was looking for was nondescript, on a nondescript street, in a nondescript neighborhood. Still, there was a refreshing neatness and cleanliness to the area. The houses were all painted in pastels, as was most of the city; a shower of sun gave them a recently washed look. He parked across the street from number 21, got out of the Lincoln, spent a moment taking in more of his surroundings, then crossed to a two-family house; the numbers were 21A and 21B. The only number he’d been given by Mac Smith was 21—no letters. He took a chance on 21A and rang the bell. When there was no immediate response, he rang again, longer this time. Eventually, he heard an interior door open and close, and a female hand with chipped red nail polish pulled a flowered green curtain aside. Half her face was visible.

  Buffolino flashed his biggest nonthreatening smile. The half-face continued to stare at him. “I need some help!” he yelled through the glass. The curtain returned to its original position, a key was turned, and the door opened as far as its chain would allow.

  “Mrs. Feldman?”

  “Next door.” She had a deep booze-and-cigarette voice.

  “Thank you,” Buffolino said.

  “She’s not here.”

  “Do you expect her back soon?”

  “No. She’s gone away.”

  “Is that so? Has she gone away for good?”

  “She still pays the rent.”

  “Then I suppose she’ll be coming back,” Buffolino said, annoyed at the crabbed conversation and the narrow opening through which it was being conducted.

  “Are you a friend of Mrs. Feldman?” the low voice asked.

  “Yeah, I am, from New York.”

  “I used to live in New York.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes. Are you with a company?”

  “Huh? No, I work by myself.”

  “An opera company.”

  “Opera company? No, ah … I dabble, if you know what I mean. Opera! Hey, are you an opera singer?” Before the low voice behind the door could answer, Buffolino said, “Opera is my chief love in life. What a coincidence. How about a cup a’ coffee and some opera talk?”

  She looked him up and down.

  “I mean, just open the door and let’s talk for a minute.” The chain was released and the door opened, revealing a tall, full-bodied woman with
dyed red hair and an imposing bosom that threatened the thin fabric of a pink housecoat.

  “Anthony Buffolino,” he said, extending his hand.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Buffolino. I am Carla Zaretski.”

  “Pleased, I’m sure. Gee, I’m sorry I missed Mae. Any idea when she’ll be back?”

  Carla slowly shook her head. “She had family business to attend to.”

  “That so?”

  “Yes. There has been a tragedy in her life.”

  Buffolino looked serious and said, “Andrea being murdered. I guess Mae had to make a lot of arrangements.”

  Carla placed her hands over her bosom and sighed. “A terrible thing to lose your only daughter. It devastated Mae, absolutely devastated her. Poor thing. Andrea was her only child … and such a good daughter. She visited often, always bringing things. And then that news. So tragic.”

  “Like opera,” said Buffolino.

  Carla glared at him.

  “I mean, it’s just that opera is always … tragic … the plot, I mean.”

  Carla’s sudden flash of anger subsided as quickly as it had flared. “Great tragedy is what opera is made of.”

  “That’s what I was saying. Where do you figure Mae went?”

  “To New York.”

  “How come New York?”

  “To find solace with her many friends. You say you are a friend?”

  Buffolino shrugged and shifted from one foot to the other. “Actually, I was more a friend of Andrea’s. We were … well, we were pretty close once.”

  The expression on Carla Zaretski’s face was sheer horror. “Then you, too, have suffered a great loss. Were you there when … when it happened?”

  Buffolino looked at the ground and slowly shook his head. “No, and that makes it even harder. If I had been, maybe I could have done something. I can’t get that out of my mind, you know, always wondering if I could have done something to prevent it.”

  Carla, who was a few inches taller than Buffolino, looked down into his eyes and asked, “Would you like a drink?”

  Buffolino gave her his best aren’t-you-a-wonderful-person-for-thinking-of-it look, and broke into a smile. “That’s very kind of you. Yes, I would enjoy a drink, but only if you’ll join me.” He had no doubt that she would.