Murder Inside the Beltway

by Margaret Truman

  Colgate listened to the variety of suggestions offered by the staff. When the ideas had been exhausted, he said, “Facing it head-on is the only way.” He turned to Rollins. “You agree, Jerry?”

  Rollins nodded. “I see no other approach,” he said.

  Most of the staff eventually drifted from the hotel, leaving Colgate, Rollins, and a press aide to field calls from media that had tracked down the candidate. Colgate and Rollins went into the bedroom and closed the door.

  “I’ve been trying to reach Deb. She’s laying low. Can’t blame her. I’m going to the house. I want you to come with me.”

  “I won’t do that, Bob.”

  “I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  “This is between you and Deb,” Rollins said. “There’s no role I can play that would possibly help.”

  “I need a buffer, Jerry. Deb has always respected you. You two have been close for a long time.”

  Rollins read more into that statement than Colgate intended.

  “No,” Rollins said. “You and Deb have to work this out. You have a marriage to salvage, as well as a campaign. I work on your campaign. Your marriage isn’t in my job description.”

  Colgate stayed in the suite until nine, when he announced to the press aide that he was leaving and could be reached at home. She briefed him on the calls from the press—there were forty-seven of them—and asked whether he had decided to address the media.

  “That depends,” he said.

  “The hotel says that there’s a slew of them downstairs,” she said.

  He called the hotel manager and asked that an alternative exit be arranged. Twenty minutes later, he was escorted from the suite by hotel executives and the Secret Service agents who’d been camped outside his door. They led him through the inner recesses of the Willard to a rear door used by deliverymen.

  There was no escaping the reporters in front of his Georgetown townhouse, however. Uniformed police dispatched to maintain order cleared a path for Colgate as he ignored the chorus of questions hurled at him, bounded up the steps, and used his key to open the front door, shutting out the cacophony behind him.

  The housekeeper heard his arrival and came to the foyer.

  “Where’s Mrs. Colgate?” he asked.

  The housekeeper fought back tears. “Upstairs, sir.”

  “What’s wrong?” Colgate asked.

  She shook her head and ran from the foyer.

  He approached the stairs and looked up. The landing was dark, but light from the master bedroom seeped through the door, which was slightly ajar. He walked up slowly, his legs heavy, his breath shallow. He paused at the top. “Deb?” he called. There was no response. He went to the door and pushed it fully open. Deborah sat in a wing chair by the window, an empty glass next to her. His eyes shifted to her designer luggage, which was nestled together at the foot of the bed.

  “Hi,” he said, stepping into the room.

  She was mum.

  He crossed the room and took the matching chair. “I came back early,” he said.

  “I heard.”

  “I know what you must be thinking, Deb, but—”

  She held up her hand. “I don’t want to hear it, Bob. Please, I don’t want to hear it from you.”

  “Is there someone else you’d rather hear it from? The press?”

  She dropped her hand and turned away.

  He reached for her knee. She remained motionless.

  He looked at the luggage. “You have an appearance scheduled?” he asked.

  “No.”

  She abruptly stood and walked to another window. “I’m leaving,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m leaving, Bob. I’m leaving the marriage and the campaign.”

  “Oh, now, wait a minute,” he said. “I know this is rough, but we can get through it. We have to get through it, and we can only do that together, as a team. We’ve come so far that to—”

  “Shut up!” she snapped, now facing him. “Do you really think I’d continue with this farce?”

  “It’s anything but, babe,” he said, closing the gap between them but having the good sense to not close it all the way. “We knew going into this that it would be tough, dirty, slime tossed at us. Pyle and his people are ruthless, Deb. That’s all this is, Pyle and his people throwing the kitchen sink at us, character assassination, gutter politics. We can overcome it. I know we can. The voters don’t give a damn about sexual slurs and innuendos. What they do care about are the issues, the economy, this immoral war Pyle got us into through lies. Health care, college tuition, gas prices—those are the bread-and-butter is-sues that hit them in the pocketbook.”

  “Is that all this is, Bob, sexual slurs and innuendo?”

  “You bet that’s all it is, Deb. Look, we can ride this out, provided we act as one. We can set up something on TV, a prime-time interview, go straight to the American people. Believe me, I know how to spin this—and it will work.”

  Her voice was as hard as her face. “No, Bob,” she said, “we will not go directly to the American people. Do you really think that I’ll be at your side like those other pathetic women who stand by their men, aging by the minute, looking adoringly at their philandering husbands while inside they’re seething with rage and loathing? No, Bob, you won’t get that kind of performance from me. You’re on your own.”

  She went into the bathroom and closed the door, leaving him to ponder what she’d just said and to contemplate his next move. Surely she couldn’t mean it. You didn’t just walk away from becoming the most powerful woman in the land.

  “Deb?” he called.

  Her driver appeared at the bedroom door.

  “What do you want?” Colgate said.

  “Mrs. Colgate’s luggage,” he replied meekly.

  “She won’t be needing it.”

  Deborah came into the room. “Thank you, Joe,” she said. “I’ll be down in a minute. You can take the bags.”

  The driver wrestled the luggage from the room and into the hallway. Colgate followed him and slammed the door, turned and faced his wife. “This is insanity,” he said. “You’re overwrought, and I can understand that, but you don’t just toss away years of working together to reach the goal we’ve had our eyes on. Please, sit down and let’s discuss this like two rational people, the way we’ve always done when we’ve faced a problem.”

  She ignored him as she checked herself in a full-length mirror. She wore one of his favorite outfits, a smart teal pants suit and tailored white blouse, not unlike a man’s tux shirt. She was always attractive, he thought, but at this moment she was stunningly beautiful.

  “One last thing, Bob,” she said. “I don’t want you to be blindsided. A second tape might show up on YouTube, or some other video blog site.”

  “A second tape? What are you talking about?”

  “A tape of me with your whore.”

  “What kind of crazy talk is that?”

  “I knew about Ms. Curzon, Bob, knew that you’d had sessions with her. Meeting her at hotels was at least prudent, but going to her place was so stupid.”

  “How did you know?”

  “You assume everyone around you is loyal. Your ego doesn’t allow any room to think that maybe there are people who find your behavior to be shabby, people who have some feelings for me. I called Ms. Curzon and made a date, just like you did.”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” he said.

  “Oh, you’d better believe it, Bob. It’s true.”

  “And you… ?”

  “That’s right. I went there. I wanted to see what it was that attracted you to her, what she had that I didn’t. I intended to go through with the reason I was there, to have sex with her, but I chickened out halfway through. It wouldn’t have been my first lesbian experience. Connie and I tried it in college, just an experiment, just once, but it didn’t do much for either of us.”

  “This is insanity,” he said, no energy behind hi
s words.

  “The point is, Bob, don’t be shocked if Ms. Curzon caught me on tape, too.” She forced a rueful laugh. “Quite a pair we make, huh? We can always find new careers in the porn movie business.”

  She went to the door and opened it, turned, and said, “You probably don’t believe this, but I hope you win the White House, Bob. Pyle has been a disgrace as president. You’ll make a much better one.”

  He sat stunned for a minute before going to the second-floor landing and looking down to where she spoke with the Secret Service agents assigned to her. “I won’t be needing you anymore,” she said. “I’ll no longer be campaigning. Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

  She stepped through the door while the lead agent used his radio to report this unexpected turn of events. Colgate heard a car start and pull away, followed by a chorus of shouts from the press. The agent looked up at Colgate as though asking what his next move was.

  He heard nothing from Colgate, who walked back into the bedroom and shut the door.

  FORTY

  Robert Colgate, former governor of Maryland and candidate for the president of the United States, was interviewed in prime time by Barbara Walters.

  “Although you aren’t legally divorced yet,” Walters said during the interview, “you will go into the White House if elected in November as a bachelor, the first since James Buchanan. Buchanan never married, but do you expect to marry while in office, the way Presidents Tyler and Cleveland did?”

  “That’s impossible to say, Barbara,” he replied, “but I wouldn’t rule it out.” His smile was charming, as it was throughout the interview.

  “Do you think being a separated and soon-to-be-divorced man will hurt your chances to win in November?”

  “It didn’t hurt Ronald Reagan,” he responded. “He was the first divorced man to win the presidency, and I intend to be the second.”

  Questions about the tape on which he was captured with a prostitute were nimbly skirted and quickly turned to what he intended to say about his policies versus those of his opponent. “I’m a human being,” he said, “one who had a momentary human weakness. But what’s important to the American people is that they have a president who understands their concerns and needs, a president who…”

  Pyle’s surrogates wasted no time, of course, in jumping on the bandwagon and piling it on. They made the rounds of talk shows, denouncing Colgate for being a brazen philanderer and law-breaker. “Is this the sort of man the American people want to lead them through these perilous times?” they asked, always adding, “Our hearts go out to the family of Governor Colgate at a time like this.”

  Conservative spiritual leaders were also quick to chime in from their pulpits, delivering fiery sermons bemoaning the lack of moral values in the nation and calling for a cleansing of America’s soul.

  Naturally, the fact that the woman in the tape, an acknowledged prostitute, had been murdered came up tangentially, but no one attempted to create a direct link between Colgate and the crime except for a rabid publisher of a right-wing newspaper, who demanded that the Washington MPD conduct a thorough investigation. “We’ve had a variety of scoundrels in the White House,” he editorialized, “but having a murderer place his hand on the Holy Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution would be a first, as well as a travesty.”

  Many Americans followed the tale of the tape, but eventually even those with the most prurient interests tired of seeing it and returned to their less real reality shows.

  Although overt harassment at MPD of Jackson and Hall had abated by October, he announced to her that he was resigning from MPD to return to pursue an advanced degree at the University of Chicago. She tried to dissuade him but knew his mind was made up.

  “I don’t think I was ever cut out to be a cop,” he said.

  “I think you were a great cop,” she said. “I’ll miss you.”

  “I’d like you to meet my folks,” he said. “You’d like them.”

  “I’m sure I will. Just say the word and I’ll be there.”

  As Election Day approached, polls showed that Colgate trailed Pyle. Although the tape’s importance had faded, Pyle’s people worked hard to keep it front-and-center, and succeeded to some extent with sympathetic bloggers and talk show hosts. Jerry Rollins continued to advise the Colgate campaign but found his importance waning as the days went by. His role abruptly ended on a rainy Sunday afternoon when the Porsche he was driving slammed into a bridge abutment. Police estimated he was traveling at close to 100 miles an hour. His obituary was long and glowing, a fitting tribute to one of Washington’s most influential power brokers. Although the insurance company that had written his multi-million dollar life insurance policy initially questioned whether it was an accident or a deliberate crash, they eventually, albeit reluctantly, paid up.

  Mae Hatcher sold the house in which she and her husband, Walter, had spent so many years together and in which they brought up their children. While cleaning out the garage in preparation for the move to Florida, she discovered $250,000 in cash hidden behind old tires, oil cans, and other paraphernalia. There was a moment when she considered reporting it to someone, but quickly scotched that idea. Her husband’s frugality had paid off. He’d always provided for them when he was alive, and had done the same after his death. She said a silent prayer in praise of him right there in the garage, and took the cash on the drive to her new life.

  And on the November Wednesday after Election Day, headlines proclaimed:

  Colgate Bests Pyle in Squeaker

  Challenger Closes Gap in the Final Days

  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, and 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.

  «——THE END——»