“Of course I took them. Everything he told you about that is true.”
His easy admission of guilt silenced Mac and Annabel.
“You look shocked,” Pawkins said. “I can’t imagine why, a pair of worldly people like you. I spent twenty years with MPD, watching my fellow officers steal whenever it was convenient. They’d do a drug bust where a hundred packets of crack were found. How many were reported? Eighty? Ninety? The rest were sold to the same drug dealers who were busted and who walked, thanks to our screwed-up legal system.”
“Are you justifying what you did because of what others have done?” Annabel asked.
“You bet I am,” Pawkins said without hesitation. “I never did any of that. Steal drugs to put a few bucks in my pocket? Disgusting. I was a straight arrow, a complicit one maybe, looking the other way when my colleagues crossed the line. And do you know what? I never really blamed them. Cops don’t make a lot of money for putting their lives on the line every day to keep fat cats like you and the rest of official Washington safe from the bad guys. How much did you rake in, Mac, when you were defending the scum of the earth?”
“That misses the point,” Mac said. “And don’t broad brush your fellow cops, Ray. Most of them are honest, and you know it.”
Pawkins sat back and slowly shook his head. “How could you ever have thought I’d killed Musinski? Why would I have? I didn’t know he had those manuscripts. He’d come back from Europe with them only a few days before. No, I just happened upon them while I was spending time in the house trying to figure out who’d killed him. There they were, in his briefcase. They looked valuable, but I couldn’t be sure. I took them and had them authenticated by a source in Paris. He put me on to a collector named Saibrón, who gladly coughed up a half mil for them, which I graciously accepted. Everybody was happy, including yours truly. Nobody got hurt. I got paid enough to live decently. I took care of that whining little creep, Josephson. He’ll have enough to live happily ever after in some British old folks’ home. Saibrón made a profit, and the guy he sold the scores to can sit every night and drool over them. Everybody’s a winner.”
“A lot of people got hurt,” Annabel said, “and nobody won. Dr. Musinski’s heirs got hurt. So did the public that might have enjoyed those scores at some credible arts institution. You’re the biggest loser, Ray. You’re as bad as any cop who stole drugs from a dealer and sold them for a profit. Interesting that you’ve never once used the word ‘stole.’”
“Want me to?” Pawkins said. “I stole them. Feel better?”
“I’d like to go, Mac,” Annabel said.
“And miss lunch? I make a dynamite onion soup.”
“In a minute, Annie,” Mac said. To Pawkins: “Doesn’t it concern you, Ray, that you’re sitting here and openly confessing to us that you committed a major felony?”
“Why should it? What are you going to do, run to Carl Berry at MPD and tell him what I just told you? You don’t have any proof, unless you have a tape recorder going, which I seriously doubt. They’ll laugh you out of the place, Mac. I’m a retired Homicide detective. I left the force with honors, enough citations to cover a wall. Besides, defense lawyers like you aren’t the most popular people with cops.”
Pawkins stood. “Ready for lunch?” he asked.
“We’ll be leaving,” Smith said. “We’ve lost our appetite.”
“Suit yourself,” Pawkins said, following them from the house to where their car waited in front. “Last chance for Raymond Pawkins’ gourmet onion soup. I won’t be around here much longer to make it again. I’m selling this house back to the guy who originally owned it. He lives over there in that mansion. He wants it for his daughter and her family. Make a nice family compound, everybody close to the old man so he can rule the roost. I’m heading for Florida, Fort Lauderdale. The Florida Grand Opera’s pretty good, not up to WNO’s standards, but not bad. They’ve been around for more than sixty years. Plenty of work as a super. I’ll get my PI license and—”
Mac started the engine, put the car into gear, and drove away, seeing in the rearview mirror a smiling Pawkins waving good-bye.
Annabel’s anger turned to tears. “Damn him,” she said. “Everything’s been so wonderful lately, so perfect, the opening, the ball, everything.”
“Life’s like opera, Annie,” Mac said as he pulled onto the G.W. Memorial Parkway. “You have to have a villain to put things into perspective. There wouldn’t be a Tosca without a Scarpia. By the way, do you think I should cheat a little more to the right while I’m on the stairs in the last act? It’s my good side.”
EPILOGUE
At five o’clock, Milton Crowley did what he did every evening at that time since returning to his cottage in Wareham, Dorset, southwest of London, the home of T. E. Lawrence, and the site of his fatal motorcycle crash in 1935. An effigy in St. Martin’s Church of Lawrence of Arabia, in Arab dress, was a popular tourist attraction.
He pulled down a wicker tray with handles from where it perched on a hook in his kitchen, and placed it on the table. Each item he positioned on it was in precisely the spot where he always placed it—a small, cut-glass decanter into which he’d poured enough single-malt Scotch for two drinks; two Venetian crystal goblets that he and Cora had purchased during a holiday in Venice; four white-bread tea sandwiches, two with egg, two with salmon; a compact Grundig shortwave radio; two napkins; and a photograph of Cora in an oval, gold filigree frame with a stand.
He carefully opened the screen door of the cottage with his foot and walked down a short, grassy slope to where a white wrought-iron bench and table sat next to the gently flowing stream that had been the main reason for him having purchased the cottage, which was stoutly made of ashlar blocks of local Purbeck stone.
He set the tray on the table, brushed off the bench with one of the napkins, sat, and drew a deep, contented breath. It was a fair day, the sun warm, the sky all blue and white. The chirping of reed warblers from a patch of wild celery on the opposite bank caught his attention, and he returned their message with a bird sound of his own. Bluebells, rhododendrons, and azaleas grew along the stream’s bank; he imagined painting a still life of them, had he that talent.
He removed the glass stopper from the decanter and poured the Scotch into both glasses. He stared at the photograph for a moment before raising his glass to it: “To us, Cora. To many beautiful days in this lovely spot on God’s earth.”
He drank from his goblet and ate two of the sandwiches. His eyes became moist. He turned on the radio, which was already set on the BBC, lit a cigarette, and listened to that day’s news. British news items came first. Then the announcer turned to news of international interest.
“The simultaneous terrorist attacks on American political leaders, which resulted in the death of a United States congressman, and includes an attempt on the lives of the mayor of a major American city and the president of the United States, were part of a much wider terrorist plan, according to an American spokesman, Wilbur Murtaugh, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.”
An excerpt from Murtaugh’s statement played:
“This diabolical scheme to simultaneously attack our government leaders has been thwarted in all but one case, which resulted in the death of a revered member of the United States Congress. It was through the diligent and unyielding efforts of this department, and related federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies, that the plan was uprooted, the potential perpetrators identified and apprehended. For those who have doubted the efficacy of our efforts to protect American citizens through such initiatives as the Patriot Act and the National Security Agency’s Subversive’s Surveillance Act, our success in this, the latest terrorist assault on our government leaders, should lay those concerns to rest.”
The newscast ended with a review of Covent Garden’s production of Mozart’s comic opera, Le nozze di Figaro, which the reviewer found wanting.
Crowley turned off the radio, leaned back, closed his eyes, and listene
d to the faint sound of the flowing water, and of the birds. He opened his eyes, leaned forward, and again held up his glass to the photograph. “To another day in this insane world, Cora. How fortunate we are to be here.”
He finished what was in his goblet, poured the contents of the second one back into the decanter, stood, stretched, picked up the tray, and carried it to the cottage.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARGARET TRUMAN has won faithful readers with her works of biography and fiction, particularly her ongoing series of Capital Crimes mysteries. Her novels let us into the corridors of power and privilege, poverty and pageantry in the nation’s capital. She is the author of many nonfiction books, most recently The President’s House, in which she shares some of the secrets and history of the White House, where she once resided. She lives in Manhattan.
BY MARGARET TRUMAN
First Ladies
Bess W. Truman
Souvenir
Women of Courage
Harry S Truman
Letters from Father: The Truman Family’s Personal Correspondences
Where the Buck Stops
White House Pets
The President’s House
IN THE CAPITAL CRIMES SERIES
Murder in Foggy Bottom
Murder at the Library of Congress
Murder at the Watergate
Murder in the House
Murder at the National Gallery
Murder on the Potomac
Murder at the Pentagon
Murder in the Smithsonian
Murder at the National Cathedral
Murder at the Kennedy Center
Murder in the CIA
Murder in Georgetown
Murder at the FBI
Murder on Embassy Row
Murder in the Supreme Court
Murder on Capitol Hill
Murder in the White House
Murder in Havana
Murder at Ford’s Theater
Murder at Union Station
Murder at The Washington Tribune
Murder at the Opera
Murder at the Opera is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Margaret Truman
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN-13: 978-0-345-49566-2
eISBN-10: 0-345-49566-7
www.ballantinebooks.com
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