“That’s right, but now I’m on Mr. Bowen’s payroll.”
“Give him my best, tell him to come around himself again. He’s okay.”
“That he is, Jim, a prince among men. Thanks again for getting wet.”
Potamos drove straight to National Airport, where he was told all flights to New York were temporarily canceled due to fog in New York. He got a sandwich and a beer and called Roseann from a booth, woke her, told her he was going to New York on business but hoped to be back that night. “Maybe I’ll stop at the Watergate,” he said.
“Okay,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, hassled but hanging in. You?”
“I think so. At least the police haven’t been around again. Joe, be careful.”
“Sure. You, too. If I don’t get back, I’ll call you.”
They resumed flights at three that afternoon and he was at his mother’s house at five. She was clearly upset and he cursed himself for putting her through it. But, he reminded himself, it didn’t matter whether he’d left the diary there or not. As long as the police thought he might have, they would have visited her anyway.
He sat with her in the kitchen and calmed her down, got up and said he’d be down in a minute. The diary was gone from his closet. No surprise but disappointing anyway. He rejoined her in the kitchen and explained that the FBI had probably been there because of a very sensitive story he was working on for the paper. “Other reporters on the story had the same thing happen, ma. Nothing to be upset about. I’m sorry they ruined your day.” He kissed her cheek.
She smiled and hugged him. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you, Joey.”
“What could happen to me?” he said, laughing.
“I don’t know, but I worry sometimes. You haven’t forgotten the party here?”
He had. “No, of course not. It’s in big red letters on my calendar.”
“Good. You’re bringing that pianist?”
“Ah, probably. It depends on whether she has a concert or something.”
He stayed another hour before announcing that he had to be back in Washington that night “for a meeting.” His mother cried when he left and he promised to come back even before the party, which seemed to satisfy her. He would be back soon, he told himself as the cabdriver took him to LaGuardia.
Roseann was in the middle of a set when Potamos walked into the Terrace Lounge. She saw him, smiled, and continued with a medley of Cole Porter songs. When she finished, a man one stool removed from Potamos applauded. Potamos looked at him. He’d learned since meeting Roseann that few people applauded lounge piano players, who, Roseann explained, were there to provide background music unobtrusively. “If they applaud,” she told him, “you’ve done a bad job.” He didn’t necessarily understand why, but who was he to argue? The man continued applauding and Potamos joined him, felt good doing so. Roseann nodded toward them and started another tune.
Potamos ordered a double scotch with a splash of soda. It had been a long day. I’ll probably get pneumonia, he told himself as he reflected back on his visit to the condo. It made sense that the condo represented more than a simple real-estate investment; the location was perfect for electronic surveillance and countersurveillance. But West Germans behind it? Why? What was Marshall Jenkins’s stake in it except to get richer? Potamos could understand why Senator Frolich might be involved. He was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Jenkins could have agreed to cooperate with the government by installing electronic gear on the building’s roof. The CIA, or FBI, or any one of a dozen intelligence-gathering agencies could be dictating Frolich’s moves. But so what? Was the project so sensitive that it was worth killing people? Frolich’s own daughter? Preposterous, Potamos concluded.
Roseann finished the set and came to him. “Hi, Joe,” she said. He kissed her cheek and suggested she sit between him and the man on his left. “Can’t,” she said. “How about the coffee shop?”
They had coffee and talked for a few minutes. Then she checked her watch and said she had to get back.
“I have to go, too. I left Jumper by herself.”
“I would have walked her.”
“I didn’t want to inconvenience you. Besides, it’s good training for her. Maybe I can get her up to twenty-four hours. Call me when you get home?”
“Sure. Drive carefully. You look beat.”
“I am. I’ll take it easy.” He left her at the entrance to the lounge and drove cautiously home.
Blackburn had a number of requests during her next set, a few from the man who’d applauded her earlier. She responded favorably to him because his requests were for songs that she enjoyed, melodies rich in harmonic structure on which she could discreetly improvise. She also appreciated his attention to her playing. Most customers requested a tune and immediately went to a rest room. Not he. He sat there, a large brandy snifter in his hand, legs crossed, entirely focused on her playing.
They chatted briefly during her next intermission, which was a short one so that she would have sufficient time to play a longer final set. He never left the bar, barely seemed to move except for his foot, which kept time in the air during songs with a strong underlying rhythm. She finished the night with “Limehouse Blues,” closed the piano’s fallboard, and walked across the room toward a rear door leading to employee lockers. The man at the bar said, “A wonderful evening, Ms. Blackburn. I haven’t enjoyed music this much in a long time.” He reached into the pocket of the tan bush jacket he wore over a dark blue turtleneck and pulled out a roll of bills, some of which he laid on the bar.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I was wondering if you’d be interested in a cup of coffee. I’ll try not to bore you, and promise I won’t linger past one cup.” His smile was broad and pleasant. He was a handsome man. She’d been aware of that all evening.
“Thanks, but I can’t. I’m… well, I’m spoken for.”
“The fellow who was in before?”
“Yes. Goodnight, and thanks for the applause and good requests. I enjoyed playing them.”
She got her coat from her locker and left through a rear door that emptied onto a small employee parking lot. She didn’t see the tall, handsome man in the bush jacket sitting in a car close to hers. In a dark green sedan next to his were two other men. The man in the bush jacket nodded and the others quickly got out and approached her. She was putting the key in the lock when she realized they were behind her. She turned and said, “Who are you?”
One of the men said, “Come with us, Ms. Blackburn.”
“I will not. Who are you?”
The man who’d spoken stepped closer and grabbed her arm. When she opened her mouth to scream, the other man clamped a large hand over it. They dragged her across the lot to their car, tossed her into the back seat, climbed in, and drove away. The tall, handsome man in the bush jacket watched from his darkened car. When they were gone, he started his car, turned on the lights, and left in the opposite direction.
***
As the scene in the parking lot unfolded, Senator John Frolich and Elsa Jenkins lay side by side in a king-size bed in the Watergate’s largest suite. It had not been as carefully choreographed an assignation as previous ones had been. She’d called him that afternoon at his Senate office and said they had to meet that night, that something was wrong.
She sat on the bed wearing a robe provided by the hotel, her knees drawn up to her chin, her long blond hair still damp from their lovemaking. Frolich, also in a robe, sat in a chair at the desk, his brow furrowed, shoulders hunched.
“What do we do?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, rising and coming to the bed, where he sat down against a mound of pillows. “Obviously, we should have been more discreet.”
“How could we have been? It’s gone on too long to cover every moment, every minute.”
“We knew Marshall suspected it a month ago, Elsa. Maybe that’s when we should have called it quits.�
�
She stiffened and faced him, her hand on his bare thigh. “You could do that so easily?”
“Easily? Of course not, but there are ramifications here for both of us that aren’t pleasant. Tell me again what he said before he left for Rome.”
She waved her hand in front of her face as though to brush away webs that were in the way of her thoughts. “We were packed and ready to leave when he said, ‘You’ve betrayed me, Elsa.’ He said my name with such scorn. I asked what he meant. I knew, of course, but hoped it was something else. He shook me—I fell back on a suitcase, his anger was so intense. He said, ‘You and my best friend. You’ll both pay.’”
“You’re sure he said that?” Frolich asked.
“Yes.”
“Did he use my name?”
“No, but…”
“I am his best friend, and as far as I know I’m the only one who’s been sleeping with his wife.”
“My God.”
“What’s the matter?”
“So cold, so matter-of-fact. Is that what you’ve been doing, sleeping with me?”
Frolich smiled. “As far as I know.”
She scrambled from the bed and lit a cigarette near the window. He came up behind her and placed his hands on her long, graceful neck. “Calm down, Elsa. That won’t help either of us.” He could feel the anger in her body and slowly began to massage her neck and the tops of her shoulders. The feeling was intensely pleasurable and she actually cooed.
When he was through, she turned to face him. He undid the sash on her robe, did the same with his, and led her back to the bed.
Later he said, “How did he find out? I mean, for certain?”
“He’s been having me followed.”
“When did you learn that?”
“I suspected it a long time ago, but I became certain of it two weeks ago.”
“Damn it, Elsa, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because…” She touched his face and tears glistened in her eyes. “Because I didn’t want to lose this.”
“We may lose a lot more,” he said.
“But we’ll have each other.”
He didn’t respond. His thoughts were on his wife, Henrietta. She knew, too, of his affair with Elsa—nothing tangible, just knew. She’d brought it up once. He’d denied it, and that was the end of any conversation about it between them. And there was Valerie, who had also known. She had had tangible evidence: She had seen it with her own eyes. He’d had no idea she’d been at the inn in Leesburg that same weekend he and Elsa spent a night there. Just one night, and his daughter had to be there to see them coming from their room, kissing, fondling in the hall, walking hand in hand until reaching the public area, where they parted with a curt, proper goodbye. But she’d seen it, and as he was leaving the inn to meet with Jenkins at his retreat, she’d confronted him about it. The look on her face had frightened him. He’d never seen her look or sound that way before, venom in every word, her eyes bright, glowing coals ready to be ejected at him.
As far as he knew, Valerie had never told her mother, but it had hung over him ever since, a constant threat to the sort of family unity he so desperately needed, not only because of his presidential aspirations but for his own peace of mind.
“He will divorce me,” Elsa said, which snapped him out of his thoughts.
“Maybe not,” Frolich said. “I can talk to him. We can all have a talk.”
She guffawed. “Don’t be silly,” she said.
“I don’t consider myself silly, Elsa.”
“I didn’t mean… What does it matter? He comes back Friday. I’ll be there to face him. You stay out of it, John. It is my indiscretion with my husband. I’ll see that you aren’t hurt by this.”
He took her in his arms and whispered, “You’re a remarkable woman, Elsa,” but she knew what he was thinking: that he wanted to be shielded from any fallout of the affair. She also knew that he would be successful in avoiding it. Her husband would vent his anger on her, which was only proper. But between these two rich and famous male friends there would be only words, apologies, and then life would go on, deals would go forward, the fishing and hunting would never miss a beat.
She silently cursed that reality.
| Chapter Twenty-eight |
Potamos had intended to stay up for Roseann’s call but the day’s rigors had taken their toll. He awoke at seven in the morning, realized she hadn’t called, and picked up the phone. There was no answer at her apartment. He was worried. An accident? Had she gone off with some jazz-musician friends for a jam session? Another man? He ruled that out. If there were, she wouldn’t play it this way.
Which left an accident or a jam session. She wouldn’t have gone off to play without calling him. That left only one possibility, an accident. He called MPD, identified himself, and asked for an accident report from that night. There had been a few, but none involved her.
He drove up in front of her place an hour later and knocked, peered in windows, looked for her car. “Damn,” he said. He returned home to a ringing phone.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Potamos, this is Bob Fitzgerald.”
“Yeah, Bob, how are you?”
“Sorry I didn’t call last night, but I got tied up.”
“Yeah?” He was concentrating on Roseann; Fitzgerald’s words meant nothing to him.
“I saw Walter Nebel last night.”
“Wait a minute… you know where he is?”
“No, but I saw him.”
“Where?”
“In town. I went to a movie and when I came out, my friends and I felt like pizza, so we—”
“Get on with it.”
“We were walking along and I saw him, by the kite shop on M Street.”
“Was he with anybody?”
“Yeah, Anne Lewis.”
“Did you talk to him, to her?”
“No. I saw them from a distance. I was with these friends, so it took a minute to explain why I was running off. By the time I went after them, they were gone.”
Potamos’s sigh said it all.
“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help it. Anyway, he’s here in Georgetown, and Annie knows where.”
“Why would she be with him?”
“Beats me, Mr. Potamos.”
“Joe.”
“Yeah, Joe. Want me to call her?”
“No, I will. What about Tony Fiamma? Find out anything about where he went that night?”
“No, except that a buddy of mine who tends bar said he saw him. I guess he came into the bar, looked around, then left.”
Potamos’s thoughts went back to the missing Blackburn. He said to Fitzgerald, “Okay, Bob, thanks. Good work. Keep in touch.” He hung up.
The phone rang. He answered. “Mr. Potamos, this is Mary Hlavaty at the bank. That big check you deposited the other day—”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess. He stopped payment on it.”
“No, it was returned for insufficient funds in his account.”
“No kidding. That…”
“Should I put it through again?”
“No, don’t bother. I’ll talk to him. Thanks.”
“Sure, but you’ll still be charged.”
“For what? It’s his bum check.”
“Policy.”
“Some policy. Get it from both ends.”
“I’m sorry but—”
“Hey, not your fault. Thanks for calling. I appreciate it.”
He dialed Bowen’s Mass. Ave. number. “Mrs. Carlisle, this is Joe Potamos. Is he there?”
“He’s in a meeting.”
“Get him out of it. He gave me a bum check.”
“He cannot be disturbed.”
“Get him on the line or I’ll come down there with a baseball bat and really disturb things.”
“You are a crude, disgusting—”
“Yeah, and you’re somebody’s blue-haired grandmother. I want him.”
She hung up.
He was ju
st as glad. All he could do was sputter and threaten and then what? Go out and buy a bat? It didn’t make sense, Bowen’s writing him a bad check. He’d expected Bowen to stop payment on it, but a bum one? Maybe it was a mistake, maybe he forgot to balance his checkbook. He decided he’d deal with that later. Right now there was the matter of one person found, the other missing—Walter Nebel and Roseann Blackburn, in that order.
He called the Watergate Hotel and asked to be connected to the Terrace Lounge. Too early; call at 11:30.
He called Elite Music and got the redhead, asked for William Walters. Too early for him, too. “Have you had any contact with Roseann Blackburn?” Potamos asked. “You booked her into the Watergate this week.”
“No.”
“Thanks.”
He considered calling her parents but struck the idea. No sense worrying them, at least not yet. There had to be a reasonable, logical explanation for it. Calm down, he told himself. She’ll show.
When she hadn’t by noon, he made another pass at her house, then went to MPD headquarters, where he found Peter Languth in his office. “Got a minute?” he asked.
“Yeah, come in. What do you need?”
“I need to know what’s happened to Roseann Blackburn.”
“Your girlfriend?” Languth shrugged. “What’s the matter, she skip on you?”
“No, I don’t think that’s it. She never came home from the Watergate last night and I’m worried. I checked the accidents, but nothing there. I just figured since you’ve been on her case, you might know something.”
“Not me, Joe.”
Potamos sighed and slumped into a chair. Languth stared at him across the desk and said, “You look like hell. You want coffee?”
His offer surprised Potamos. “Yeah, thanks,” he said. “Black, no sugar.” Languth called out for two coffees. “If she doesn’t show up today, Pete, I’d like it to go on the wire.”
“Sure, happy to. Actually, I’m glad you stopped by, Joe. I want to talk to you.”
“About what, my mother?”
“Your mother?”
“The FBI coming to her house in New York and turning it upside down.”
Murder in Georgetown Page 19
