Selesky’s already reddened face turned crimson. His mouth was clamped tight, and there was fire in his eyes. Brixton wondered whether he was about to be attacked by the campaign manager and braced himself. But Selesky, as much as he would have liked to scramble Brixton’s brain, held himself in check. “Get out and take your cockeyed notions with you.”
“Thanks for your time,” Brixton said, giving him what passed for a salute. “And good luck in your next job after Gannon leaves D.C. with his tail between his legs.”
Brixton walked out of the office leaving Selesky steaming. He stood in the midst of the central office area where volunteers for Gannon’s reelection continued to answer phones and lick envelopes. He was tempted to climb up on a desk and shout that they’d been hoodwinked, that they were investing their time and energy—and probably hard-earned money—in a fraud.
He didn’t, of course. The man who’d greeted him intercepted him on the way to the front door and said, “Ready to make a donation to ensuring that the nation has Congressman Gannon for another two years?”
Brixton reached into his pocket and handed the man a five-dollar bill. “Buy yourself a beer to drown your sorrows when Gannon is kicked out of Congress,” he said.
He left the man open-mouthed as he went through the door, stood on the sidewalk, and took a series of deep breaths. He wished that Selesky had taken a swing at him. He would have fought back and discharged the tension that had built up during their exchange.
A few more breaths helped him calm down and he started to walk to his rental car. He came around to the driver’s side and unlocked the door. As he did, a taxi pulled up a few car lengths behind. Brixton turned at the sound of the door being opened and closed. It was Roseann Simmons, Gannon’s chief of staff. He was poised to say something, but she quickly walked from the cab and entered Gannon headquarters.
He decided to linger awhile. Across the street was a bar and restaurant. He checked his watch. Eleven o’clock. Too early for the bar to open? He crossed against the traffic and opened the door. It was empty except for staff getting ready for the lunch crowd. Brixton asked the bartender whether he was serving yet. “Sure,” the young man replied.
Brixton took a seat at the bar that afforded him a view of the entrance to Gannon headquarters and slowly sipped a Bloody Mary. He didn’t have a plan. He simply wanted to see where Roseann went next. Then, ten minutes later, he did a double take as another cab pulled up and Paul Wooster got out and entered Gannon’s campaign headquarters. “What the hell?” Brixton muttered. Wooster had told him that he wasn’t welcome at Gannon headquarters, but here he was with Roseann Simmons going in, undoubtedly to meet with Gannon’s manager, Selesky.
Brixton’s stomach sank. He’d been snookered by Wooster.
It was another ten minutes before Simmons and Wooster emerged from the headquarters and waved down a passing taxi into which they climbed and sped away.
Brixton placed a cell call to his airline to see whether they had an earlier flight back to Washington than he was scheduled for. They did, and for an additional fee he made the change in booking. The airlines seemed to have a fee for everything—he’d read in that day’s paper that an airline in Europe was considering charging to use the lavatories, so much per minute of use—and he silently cursed as he paid his tab and left.
When he crossed the street and was about to enter his rented car, he had a vague, uncomfortable feeling that someone was interested in him. He looked left and right but saw nothing; no one was looking his way. He got in, strapped himself in, started the engine, and navigated the traffic flow.
As he did, a man who’d been sitting in a booth at the luncheonette next to Gannon headquarters paid his bill and stepped outside. He’d followed Brixton from his hotel to the storefront and had waited for him to emerge. While Brixton sat in the bar watching the campaign headquarters, the man had been watching him. He hailed a taxi and told the driver, “Please follow that car,” adding a touch of politeness to the standard grade-B movie line.
When Brixton returned his car to the rental lot and boarded the shuttle bus to his terminal, the man placed a call on his cell phone: “He’s getting on a plane. I assume he’s coming back to Washington.”
To the driver he said, “Thank you, sir. Please take me back to where you picked me up.”
CHAPTER
32
While Brixton was bouncing around Tampa in search of something tangible to pin on Gannon, Mac and Annabel Smith had been busy in Washington.
Annabel was knee-deep in preparing a show at her gallery due to open in two weeks. She’d brought in a number of pre-Columbian pieces on consignment and was hopeful that their sale would generate enough income to expand the gallery’s space. She was in her small office at the rear of the gallery writing descriptions of one of the pieces to be offered during the show when the phone rang. She’d been expecting a call from Mac and said as she picked up, “Hi. How’s it going?”
“Mrs. Smith?” the male voice said.
“Yes.”
“Lay off Congressman Gannon.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Tell your husband to back off on Congressman Gannon.”
“Who is this?”
“Just do the smart thing, that’s all. You’ve been warned.”
The line went dead.
Annabel stared at the phone before replacing it in its cradle. She called Mac at his office and told him of the message.
“No idea who it was?” he said.
“No. I didn’t recognize the voice.”
“Was he specific in his threat?”
“No. He just told me to tell you to lay off Gannon. It was chilling.”
“Of course it was. I’ll call Zeke Borgeldt and report it. Maybe you should close up and come here.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think that’s necessary, Mac. I’ll be fine.”
“Keep the door locked.”
“If I do that, I might as well close the gallery. I just wanted you to know.”
“I’ll call Zeke now,” he said. “Stay in touch.”
Smith had been informed by Gannon’s attorney, Richard Nichols, that his client would be taking the lie detector test administered by a former FBI expert now in private practice. Smith knew that asking to be present during the test was a long shot but called Nichols anyway to make the request.
“That’s out of the question,” Nichols said.
“I can’t imagine why,” Smith said. “I simply want to observe. Having a representative of the Bennett family would go a long way to deflecting any charges that the test was, in some way, slanted in your client’s direction.”
“You aren’t suggesting that I would be a party to that, are you?” Nichols asked, his tone pleasant.
“Of course not,” Mac responded, “but you know how people put a spin on things. If Gannon passes the test, which I’m sure you’re counting on, his enemies, including the man running for his seat in Congress, will accuse the tester of being biased. I’m not saying that he is, or that you would be putting pressure on him. But why not head off that sort of interpretation before it starts?
“I understand where you’re coming from, Mac, but I’ve assured Congressman Gannon that only he, the tester, and I will be present. He isn’t crazy about taking the test in the first instance. It took some persuasion on my part to convince him to do it.”
Gannon’s reluctance to be tested for his veracity said to Mac that he was afraid of flunking. So much depended upon the tester’s questions and how they were worded. Would Gannon be questioned only about Laura’s murder? Would the most recent murder of his press aide be part of the questioning? What about his relationship with Laura Bennett? Would the tester probe the possibility that Gannon and his intern had been intimate? Submitting to a lie detector test without any transparency into the test itself proved nothing. Of course, Mac was well aware that the result of any lie detector test was inadmissible in court. But this test wasn’t for the purpose of a
court proceeding. If the script was followed, Gannon would pass the test and that result, however skewed, would be the basis for a PR blitz heralding his innocence of anything having to do with either murder, and even of having been involved in an illicit affair with his twenty-two-year-old intern.
The conversation with Nichols concluded, Mac leaned back in his tan leather office chair, closed his eyes, and sighed.
Having become involved with the Laura Bennett case and its ramifications had cut deeply into his professional time. He’d had to decline taking on other clients because of it, and as he sat there he wondered whether anything concrete, anything worthwhile would come of it.
He’d been around D.C. long enough to know that rumors about an elected official’s sex life often didn’t punish that politician at the polls. The voting public had a short attention span and an even shorter memory. With enough money to mount a TV onslaught—and there was always plenty of that from lobbyists with deep pockets and agendas of their own—a sitting congressman or senator whose reputation had been sullied could overcome negative rumors and effectively smear the opposition. In Gannon’s case, there hadn’t been one shred of tangible evidence to prove that the rumors were true. What Laura Bennett told her roommate and her college chum was pure hearsay. Rachel Montgomery’s sworn statement to the police would probably be viewed as the bitchy complaint of the proverbial woman scorned. How dare she libel a sitting U.S. congressman, a man with a fine family and a solid voting record in the House of Representatives? Everyone knew that politics was a dirty, cutthroat business. Had she been paid by Gannon’s opposition to dirty his reputation? There was his beautiful wife standing proudly at his side.
What more did a voter need to know?
Of course, Gannon’s extracurricular sex life would be rendered the least of his problems if a link could be made between him and the murders of Laura Bennett and his press aide, Cody Watson. But was that likely? As far as Smith knew, there wasn’t an iota of evidence to make that connection. Brixton’s belief that the congressman was involved in some way with Laura’s murder was just that, his personal belief, nothing more. Try making a case in court based upon that.
Smith got up and paced the office. He had a prospective client coming in and knew that he’d better prepare for that meeting. He’d returned to his desk when Flo Combes, Brixton’s “friend” and receptionist—Brixton would rail at her being labeled his girlfriend—knocked and entered.
“What’s up, Flo?” Smith asked.
“I just got a phone call from a woman who wanted to speak with Robert.”
Mac cocked his head. “And?”
“She says she knows something about Laura Bennett’s murder.”
Mac sat up straight. “Who is she?”
“She wouldn’t tell me, Mac. She says that she’ll only talk to Robert.”
“When is he due back?”
“Soon. He called to tell me that he’s taking an earlier flight. He should be landing within the hour.”
“How did you leave it with this woman?”
“I asked how Robert could reach her when he returns, but she wouldn’t give me a number, said she’ll call again.”
“Then we’ll just have to see if she does.”
“Do you think—?”
“That it might be another Gannon sweetie?” Mac laughed. “If it is, he could hold a hell of a reunion. I’ll be with a prospective client for a while.” He checked his watch. “He should be here momentarily. Let me know when Robert arrives.”
The lawsuit the client wanted Mac to bring on his behalf struck the attorney as ill-advised and a loser as well. Smith was up front with the client and told him he’d have to find another attorney, which seemed to anger the would-be client. Based upon their conversation, Mac was glad that the suit was without merit. He’d taken an almost immediate dislike to the man and was happy to see him leave.
Annabel’s call had concerned him, and he was considering calling her back and insisting she leave the gallery when Brixton walked in.
“Welcome back,” Mac said. “Successful trip?”
“It turned out to be at the last minute. I met with Wooster, the PI, and we got along great. But then I stopped in to talk with Gannon’s campaign manager, a guy named Selesky, who was not happy to see me, damn near through me out bodily. So I go across the street for a Bloody Mary and to see who comes and goes at the headquarters. Who do I see? Gannon’s chief of staff, the lovely Roseann Simmons. That’s okay. No reason for her not to be there. But then who else shows up? Paul Wooster himself, and he goes inside. A few minutes later, Simmons and Wooster come out and get in a cab together.”
“I thought Wooster worked for Gannon’s opponent, Pete Solon.”
“So did I. But he’s obviously a lot cozier with the Gannon people than he let on to me.”
“And told me,” Mac added.
“The question is, what’s he up to? I feel like I’ve been taken, Mac, and I don’t like being taken.”
“It sounds to me like he’s working you for dirt on Gannon, which he can then report back to Gannon’s own people, and maybe to Solon, too.”
“Playing both sides,” Brixton muttered. “I’m glad he lost his license.”
“Better keep a closed mouth with him from now on.”
“Or hit him in the mouth. What’s new here?”
“Nothing, aside from Gannon taking his lie detector test.”
Flo popped in. “That woman’s on the phone,” she said.
“What woman?” Brixton asked.
“She wants to talk to you. She says she knows something about Laura Bennett’s murder.”
Brixton took the call in his office. “Robert Brixton here.”
“Mr. Brixton, my name is Peggy Talbot.”
“Yes?”
“I’m—I was an airline flight attendant.”
Could this be the flight attendant Gannon was rumored to have had an affair with? Brixton wondered.
“I’m calling about the intern who was killed.”
“Laura Bennett?”
“Yes.”
“What do you know about her?”
Smith had followed Brixton to his office, and Brixton motioned for him to pick up the extension on Flo’s desk.
“I saw her picture in the paper and knew she was the same one who threatened Hal—Congressman Gannon.”
“Threatened him? How?”
“I was—oh, I might as well be straightforward. I’d been with Hal in the apartment in the afternoon. I’d worked a flight to Washington that he was on and we—well, we were intimate. It wasn’t the first time we were together. We’d been seeing each other on and off. I live in Dallas and was based there. We met on a flight and—”
“You say you no longer work as a stewardess—as a flight attendant.”
“I worked my final flight four days ago.”
“Go on.”
“As I was saying, I was with Hal one afternoon when someone rang his buzzer. He ignored it, but this person kept buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, and shouting curses into the intercom. She was really out of her mind, had gone ballistic.”
“What did the congressman do?”
“He tried to talk sense to her, but she was beyond being reasoned with. I knew that I’d better leave, and I did. When I got off the elevator on the ground floor, this young woman was there. She was crying, yelling. She followed me out of the building and kept screaming at me, wanted to know who I was. I got in a taxi and left.”
“I assume that this young woman was Laura Bennett, the murdered intern,” Brixton said.
“Yes. When I saw her picture in the paper—that’s how I learned about you—I recognized her immediately. What a horrible way to die, and so young. She was really pretty.”
Brixton checked Mac Smith before he continued. “It’s a good thing that you called,” he said, “but I have to ask why. You told my receptionist that you knew something about Ms. Bennett’s murder.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said
. “I don’t know anything about how she died, nothing like that, but I thought that I had a duty to call and tell someone what I knew about her and Congressman Gannon. I don’t think I could live with myself if I didn’t.”
“I admire you for making the call, Ms. Talbot. Tell me about Congressman Gannon. How did he react when Ms. Bennett was acting irrationally in the lobby, pushing the buzzer and cursing, that sort of thing?”
“He was furious, Mr. Brixton. He was red in the face and swearing at the woman.”
“And you say she threatened him?”
“Yes. I mean, not physically. She didn’t say she’d kill him or anything but—”
“Was he mad enough to want to physically harm her?”
“You mean—?”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. Was he mad enough to kill?”
“Oh, my God, I know what you’re saying. No, I could never say that about Hal. Kill her? That can’t be.”
“Look, Ms. Talbot, would you be willing to give a statement to the police?”
“About—?”
“About what you’ve told me. Do you still see the congressman, I mean personally?”
“Like sleep together? No. I know that you’re probably thinking poorly of me, seeing a married man. I knew he was married, but his marriage was about to end and—”
“He told you that.”
“Yes. He lied to me.”
“Happens every day, Ms. Talbot. About giving a statement…”
“Yes, I would.”
“You’re in Dallas?”
“Yes. I live with my fiancé.”
“He knows about you and the congressman?”
It was her first laugh since coming on the phone. “Of course. We have an open relationship.”
Brixton shook his head at Smith, who smiled and shrugged.
They concluded the call with Talbot agreeing to give a statement to a Washington detective over the phone. It ended with Brixton asking, “How come you quit flying?”
“Have you flown lately, Mr. Brixton?”
“Today, as a matter of fact.”
“Then you know it’s no fun. I got tired of passengers being angry and taking it out on me. We’re on the plane to ensure safety, not to take abuse.”
Margaret Truman's Internship in Murder Page 24
