Murder in Georgetown

by Margaret Truman

  Potamos opened it and read the brief declaration of intent and terms. He was ready to leap from his chair and attack them all. Instead, he pulled a pen from his jacket and signed it, handed it back to McCarty, who was profoundly surprised at the ease of it.

  Potamos ignored McCarty and said to Nebel, “Okay, Walter, let’s get to the nitty-gritty. Why would a rich and powerful man like Marshall Jenkins hire Sam Maruca to scare his best friend’s daughter? And no stutter-steps. Straight talk—nice, simple sentences with subject and a verb and the right punctuation at the end.”

  “It was because Sam worked for Jenkins. So did I.”

  “What’a you mean, ‘worked’ for him? Doing what?”

  “Whatever he wanted, I guess. Sam got me into it. Mr. Jenkins wanted to get people to sell their houses in Georgetown at cheap prices and figured a good way to do that was to cause some problems in the neighborhood. At least, that’s how it started.”

  “Demonstrations, things like that?”

  Nebel shrugged. “Lots of street people, bikers, vandalism. He brought in kids from school to help him. That’s what I did when Sam first got me involved.”

  There was silence. Potamos said, “And?”

  “Then Sam started doing other things for Mr. Jenkins. There was this old guy who lived in a house that Mr. Jenkins owned someplace in Georgetown. Jenkins wanted him out, but the old guy wouldn’t go, so Sam went there and…”

  “And what, beat him up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He was a goon for Jenkins?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You, too?”

  “I never… I did some things for him like that.”

  “Jesus, a campus Mafia,” Potamos said.

  “It was nothing terrible,” Nebel said. “I mean, we never killed anyone or—”

  “Until Valerie.”

  “That was a mistake. It really was, Mr. Potamos. You have to believe me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because… Look, I don’t want any part of this anymore. I’m supposed to graduate, but now I won’t. My folks are real upset and—”

  “Nice of you to think of them, Walter.”

  Nebel slumped back in his chair and looked like he was about to cry. It was a crybaby generation, Potamos thought. Do your own thing, get your act together, snort and smoke and do whatever else turns you on until somebody catches up with you. Then, you cry, and hope daddy and mommy come to the rescue—which they too often did.

  “Where’s Maruca?” Potamos asked Lewis.

  “We don’t know.”

  Potamos said to McCarty, “Give me back that paper. No Maruca, no deal.”

  “He left,” Nebel said.

  “Where?”

  “Europe.”

  “Just Europe.”

  “Spain, I think. At least that’s what he talked about.”

  “Okay, let’s get back to this business of Jenkins and his campus mobsters. No, let’s get back to Valerie Frolich. I read her diary.”

  Everyone’s eyes opened. Lewis said, “You did?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Tony showed it to me. She indicated in it that she had an affair with Bowen. All of you know that?”

  They looked at each other.

  “So you all knew it. Now, Fiamma ended up with the diary and was going to write stories based on it. You knew that, too?”

  More glances at each other.

  “Come on, who knew in this precious group?”

  “I did,” McCarty said. “How could I miss? That’s all he talked about, how he was going to make it big because of it.”

  Potamos looked at Lewis. “You knew it, too?”

  She lowered her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Nobody thought to call the police?”

  “That would have gotten Tony in trouble,” McCarty said.

  “You cared that much about him?” Potamos asked, his tone answering his own question.

  “He said he was working with you on it,” Lewis said.

  “See what it got him?” Potamos said, not comfortable with his flippancy. He turned to Nebel. “Look, Walter, if you’re telling the truth, you haven’t got anything to worry about. Maruca’s the one who’s got to worry. What the hell is with you guys, running instead of facing things and working them out?”

  “It was dumb, I know,” Nebel said.

  “It sure was,” Potamos said, “and you know what it did? I still wonder who’s telling the truth here, you or Maruca. Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe you killed Valerie and are laying it on your friend.”

  “I swear that’s not it,” Nebel said. “Sam was told by Mr. Jenkins to make sure she didn’t talk or write about the real story behind the condo.”

  “Which is?” Potamos asked.

  McCarty jumped in. “Which is, Mr. Potamos, that Marshall Jenkins is just a front for the CIA, like he is in lots of things—businesses, buildings. He has been for years. In the case of the condo, it’s being built with West German money that’s being laundered through him.”

  “Why West German?”

  McCarty said, “It doesn’t matter. It could be Arab money, or British or French. When the Russians started building their new embassy on Mount Alto, Senator Frolich was told by the president to come up with a plan to counteract their surveillance activities from it. Frolich has used Jenkins before. He’s a silent partner in a big employment agency in New York that’s really a CIA operation to get information on people. He’s also behind a publishing company in New York that publishes books the CIA wants in print. This time, it was to get something tall built near the embassy so that we can put in our own electronic equipment and…” He looked at Anne Lewis. “And weapons.”

  “Weapons?”

  “Yes, missiles aimed at the embassy.”

  Potamos shook his head. “If the Russians knew that, they’d raise hell.”

  “That’s right,” McCarty said. “It would make us look like fools, and with a summit coming up we’d be in a bad negotiating position.”

  Potamos sat back and chewed what he’d been fed. “Two questions,” he said. “First, why would Jenkins build the condo with foreign money?”

  Lewis said, “Because it had to be a purely private enterprise. There couldn’t be any government money involved or it would look like the president was building a launching pad against the Soviets. Senator Frolich wanted Jenkins to raise private capital here, but he wouldn’t do it. He had easy access to the German money and made a deal with them. They’d own a valuable piece of real estate here and we’d have what we wanted, a listening post and strategic advantage over the embassy.”

  “How come Jenkins calls the shots in something like this?” Potamos asked. “If it’s a matter of national security, Frolich and the president should be making those decisions.”

  Anne Lewis looked toward the stairs leading up to the kitchen. Confident that the housekeeper wasn’t there, she said, “Mr. Potamos, Marshall Jenkins owns Senator Frolich. The senator benefits financially from everything Jenkins does.”

  Potamos said, “Question number two: How do you know all this?”

  “Steve and I…” She looked to McCarty for confirmation that she could continue. He nodded, and she said, “Steve and I have known for a long time about the condo. I picked up pieces of it from conversations my father had with Senator Frolich.”

  “Which you eavesdropped on,” Potamos said.

  “Yes. At the time I just considered it interesting. That was long before Valerie was murdered. You hear so much when you live in a house like this.”

  “Why’d Frolich discuss something so sensitive with your father? He’s not a government official, he’s a paid lobbyist.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “You don’t have to tell me, Anne,” Potamos said. “What is your father, in business with Frolich and Jenkins?”

  She looked Potamos in the eye and said, “My father is involved with them financially. He has no connection with the murders. If I thought he did…”<
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  “Enough said.” Potamos looked at McCarty. “You got all this from what she heard her father say during conversations with Frolich?”

  “No. We got most of it from Valerie.”

  “She talked about it?”

  “Yes, but that was long before her murder. She wasn’t telling tales out of school to hurt anybody, wasn’t looking to use it, but she was disgusted with it. We’d sit around talking and every once in a while she’d get on the subject of how our government operates, really operates. When she was killed, Annie and I compared notes and realized why Valerie was murdered—to keep her quiet. Once things really got bad between her and her father, she started using what she knew to get even with him. She told us one night that she’d laid it all out for him, everything she knew about the condo and Jenkins and…”

  “And what?”

  “And his extramarital affairs, particularly with Mrs. Jenkins. That’s been going on for years.”

  “Does Jenkins know?”

  Nebel answered that one. “Jenkins had Sam follow her over the past few months. He told Jenkins about it.”

  “Which gives Jenkins an even greater hold over the esteemed senator from New Jersey,” Potamos said, more to himself than to them.

  “Like Mr. Bowen,” Fitzgerald said.

  Potamos snapped his head to the right, where Fitzgerald sat. “Bowen knows about the affair?”

  “Sure.” Fitzgerald turned to Lewis. “You were there that night, Annie, when Valerie got a little drunk at that bar and called her father a puppet for Jenkins and Bowen.”

  “That’s right,” Lewis said. “Bowen’s always preaching to us about ethics in journalism, but we all know you don’t get scoops like he gets without lots of inside contacts.”

  McCarty said, “I’ve been doing some heavy checking on Bowen and his relationship to Jenkins and Senator Frolich. He’s got a financial piece of a lot of the businesses Jenkins has set up for the CIA, and he writes whatever Jenkins tells him to write. Some ethics, huh?”

  “You can prove that?” Potamos asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, but did Bowen have anything to do with Valerie’s murder?”

  “We don’t think so,” McCarty said.

  “Did he know Jenkins sent Maruca to warn her off?”

  “We don’t know that, either.”

  “The senator—does he know that his friend Jenkins is behind his daughter’s murder?”

  “We talked about that last night,” Fitzgerald said, “and we decided he must know. How could he not?”

  “That’s a heavy load to carry around,” Potamos said. He shook his head. “You’ve really come up with a lot of answers, but there’s still a big question.”

  “Tony.”

  “Right, Tony Fiamma. Who killed him? Maruca, at Jenkins’s behest?”

  Nebel shook his head. “That’s why he took off. I saw him for a couple of minutes just before he left. It was the day Tony died. He told me he’d had it, was through with doing what Jenkins wanted. He said they wanted him to do the same thing to Tony that he did to Valerie that night.”

  “Kill him or scare him?” Potamos asked. “Another accident?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nebel. “I asked him if Jenkins told him to meet Tony, but he didn’t answer me. The only thing he said was that he wasn’t going to do it and was leaving. He said ‘they.’ That, I’m sure of.”

  Potamos thought for a moment, then asked Nebel, “What other students worked for Jenkins, did his dirty work?”

  “None that I know of. Sam was the only one until he brought me in. I needed the money and—”

  “Knock off the rationalizations, Walter. It doesn’t matter why you did it. What did Maruca think about your coming back here? You’re a big threat to him. You’ve already blabbed about his being the one who killed Valerie.”

  “He told me that he didn’t care what I did or said, because I was the only one who knew it was an accident. Right after I met up with Valerie that night and we had our fight, I went to Sam’s apartment and told him what had happened. He asked me where she was, and I told him. When I asked why he wanted to know, he explained what Jenkins wanted him to do and figured that was as good a time as any.”

  Potamos smiled ruefully. “Some friend he turned out to be, Walter. He probably figured if something went wrong, you could be the patsy because you were with her.”

  Nebel looked at the floor. “I know. Sam always used me.” He looked up at Fitzgerald. “You used to tell me that, Bob.”

  Fitzgerald nodded. He turned to Potamos. “What happens now?”

  “I don’t know,” Potamos said. “I do know that everybody here had better lie low for a day or two. I have an appointment in the morning that might shed some light on the rest of it. I’ll be back to you later tomorrow.” He stood and took in each of their young faces. “I have to admit I don’t like any of you much. I also have to admit you’re probably all going to end up pretty good reporters. We have our deal, and I’ll honor it. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  He went up the stairs, with Fitzgerald and Lewis at his heels. She opened the front door and said, “Don’t think too poorly of us, Joe. We just happened to be here. None of us planned this.”

  “Yeah, I know. Neither did Valerie Frolich or Tony Fiamma. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  Fitzgerald went with him to his car.

  “You stay here, Bob,” Potamos said. “Keep everybody cool, make sure they don’t decide to do anything else on their own. Oh, and one more thing.”

  “What?”

  Potamos handed him a set of keys. “There’s a red Corvette parked in my garage. These are the keys to it. If you don’t hear from me by Sunday morning at eight, go to the police, give them the keys, tell them where the car is parked, and tell them to look in the trunk. Then tell them I went to Marshall Jenkins’s retreat down in Leesburg, Virginia.”

  “That’s where you’re going?”

  “Yeah, but that’s between us. Not a word to any of them in there. Right?”

  “Right. What’s in the trunk?”

  “A mistake, mine. Take it easy.”

  | Chapter Thirty-three |

  Before Potamos went upstairs, he checked the garage to be sure the red Corvette was still where he’d parked it and that the smell of death hadn’t begun to seep out of the trunk yet. Then he walked Jumper, made himself a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, opened a beer, and took deep breaths to relax at the kitchen table. The centerpiece was Krindler’s .380 Manurhin. It was one o’clock Saturday morning. He was tired and craved sleep but knew that unless he took the time to sort things out, he’d just lie in bed, eyes open and thoughts whirling. He had to be organized: an hour of thought, five hours of sleep, an hour to prepare for the arrival of the limousine.

  At eight, showered and dressed, the revolver in his waistband in back, the dog’s needs satisfied, he left the apartment and went downstairs. The limo wasn’t there yet. He sat on a bench in the lobby and looked out through the glass doors at the curb. Eight-fifteen… eight-thirty… Was it coming? He’d give it until nine, which he did, then went upstairs and called George Bowen’s home number. No answer.

  He went down to the garage, got into his car, and headed for Route 7. Forty-five minutes later he reached Leesburg and drove down its main street, past rows of antebellum red brick buildings, until reaching a gas station at the edge of town. “I’m looking for Marshall Jenkins’s house,” he told the gangly young man who came out of the office.

  The kid shook his head, then said, “I think it’s out that way,” pointing to a small paved road that jutted north from the main road.

  “How far?” Potamos asked.

  A shrug and painfully puzzled frown. “I don’t know. Never been there, but it’s out there someplace.” He grinned. “He don’t hang signs, you know.”

  Potamos took the small road and drove slowly, looking left and right as the town faded away and the northern Virginia countryside turned rural. There were driveways
off the road but few signs, and after a mile he began to curse. He’d never find it, wasn’t even certain it was Jenkins’s “retreat” that the limo was scheduled to bring him to. It had to be, he reasoned, and kept going, wondering whether he’d get lucky, see something that would give him a clue to which driveway to take. Ten minutes later he found it, a small mail truck making deliveries to roadside mailboxes. He pulled up alongside and said to the pretty young woman wearing a U.S. Postal Service uniform, “I really got turned around. I’m visiting Marshall Jenkins and lost count of the driveways.”

  She smiled and said over the sound of their engines, “You have a lot more counting to do.”

  “Yeah? I’m that far off?”

  “A couple of miles. What directions did Mr. Jenkins give you?”

  Potamos had hoped it wouldn’t come to that, hoped he’d come off as someone who belonged at the Jenkins estate. He said, “He told me to come up this road for about a mile and then count from the boarded-up red house I just passed.”

  She looked at him as though she were making a decision. Potamos added pleasantly, “I’m already late for the meeting. You know him, he doesn’t like his people being late for anything.”

  It brought a smile to her face. “You work for him?”

  “Yes, public relations. Been on his staff for over a year now.”

  “And you’ve never been out here?”

  Potamos was getting angry. Why was she being so protective of him? Was everybody in the greater D.C. area on his payroll? He kept his tone pleasant and said, “Big moment for me, getting invited to the old man’s house. Looks like I’ll keep my job for another week—if I ever get there.”