Paramour

by Gerald Petievich

  The note was signed Raymond Stryker.

  "Holy shit," Powers said.

  "We'll have to handle this by the numbers," Landry said, his voice cracking with emotion.

  "By the numbers" meant moving cautiously, getting the approval of the Secret Service chain of command. If the potential for embarrassment to the President was great enough, the White House Chief of Staff or perhaps even the President himself would be contacted before proceeding.

  They stood there for a moment. Powers took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. Landry moved into the adjoining room and picked up a White House secure phone. Powers noticed his hand was shaking.

  "This is Ken Landry. I need to speak with the Deputy Director, now...Interrupt the meeting," he said. "Mr. Sullivan, Landry here. I'm going by the numbers in the Special Projects Office. We need you here code three." He set the phone down and turned to Powers. "I was doing a security check. The door was locked," Landry said.

  "Ray worked till midnight. I remember seeing his name on the duty roster," Powers said. Feeling a lump in his throat, he realized they were both avoiding looking at the body.

  Five minutes later there was a knock on the door. Powers turned the handle. Sullivan, a well-built man of Powers's age, stepped inside. He had a powerful jaw and reddish cheeks. His black hair was parted neatly. Known for his expensive taste in clothes, he wore a starched white shirt, a Chanel necktie and a well-tailored Brooks Brothers suit. Though at various times he'd sported a mustache, taking the time to trim it carefully as it grew in, at present he was clean-shaven.

  "What's up, gents?"

  Powers stepped away so he could see. Sullivan blanched visibly, the edges of his lips turning white. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. "

  Slowly, almost reverently, he moved forward and knelt by the body. Craning his neck to read the suicide note without touching it, he grimaced and got to his feet. He stood there for a moment staring, then followed Powers and Landry into the adjoining room. Sullivan took a deep breath and let it out. "Who else knows about this?" he said, running his hands through his hair.

  "No one," Landry said.

  Sullivan picked up the telephone receiver and dialed a number. "Chief of Staff."

  Before Chief of Staff David Morgan arrived, Powers, acting at Sullivan's direction, obtained Ray Stryker's personnel file from the Secret Service personnel division. The three of them reviewed the contents of the manila folder quickly. It revealed nothing Powers didn't already know: Stryker was a fourteen-year Secret Service veteran, had been a longtime member of the Secret Service soccer team, and was divorced. He'd never been the subject of any disciplinary action and consistently received "satisfactory" on his yearly personal evaluations ... always with an eighty-seven, the score secretly designated by the Director's staff as a code designating Stryker, and hundreds of other special agents who weren't counted among the Director's political allies, as someone who'd never be promoted to supervisory rank.

  There was a knock on the door. Sullivan opened it. Morgan sauntered confidently into the room and Powers closed the door behind him. "I hope this is a true emergency-" His eyes widened as he saw the body, and he backed away slowly. "What the hell?"

  "It looks like a suicide, sir," Sullivan said.

  "Who is it?"

  "Special Agent Ray Stryker."

  Morgan reached behind him for the door handle.

  "You'd better read the note, sir," Sullivan said.

  Morgan looked at Powers and Landry. He moved forward, bent down to read the note, and returned to the door. Sullivan motioned him into the adjoining room. "It's probably best if we remain here until we decide what to do," Sullivan said.

  "Yes, of course."

  Morgan shrugged off his suit jacket and sat down. He wore plaid suspenders, a gift he and other members of the White House staff had received from the Prime Minister of Great Britain during a recent presidential trip to London. "How many people know?"

  "Only those of us in this room," Sullivan said.

  "No one heard the gunshot?"

  "All rooms on this corridor are soundproof," Landry said.

  Morgan cleared his throat. "Gentlemen, I have to make some very important decisions and I want you to help me. First, is there any chance this is a murder and not a suicide? I want your frank opinions."

  Sullivan rubbed his chin. "It sure as hell looks like a suicide. The gun's next to his hand and there are powder burns on his temple, which means the gun was fired at close range-not to mention the note."

  "Do we have any reason to believe someone would want to kill him?" Morgan said. Adhering to protocol, he looked first at Sullivan.

  "He had no enemies as far as I know."

  "He was well liked, got along with everyone," Powers said.

  "If I was going to kill a man-a premeditated murder-I sure as hell wouldn't do it in the White House," Morgan said.

  "On the other hand, Ray Stryker's not the kind of man to kill himself." Landry wiped perspiration from his upper lip and looked at it.

  "Who the hell knows what kind of man would commit suicide?" Morgan said.

  "You asked for opinions; that's mine," Landry said in his nonthreatening way.

  "I spoke to Ray a couple of days ago. He didn't seem depressed," Powers said. "Not in the least." Nothing was said for a while. Powers shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was fidgeting, like the others in the room. It was hot. He wondered if the air conditioning was on.

  Morgan stood up. "That brings us to the next question," he said pensively. "If this is a simple suicide, as it appears to be, can we keep the lid on it?"

  "If we handle this through normal channels the cat's out of the bag," Sullivan said. "The wire services will have the story within minutes."

  Morgan loosened his necktie ... the first time Powers had ever seen him do so.

  "By law we're required to notify the police," Landry said.

  "And they notify the coroner," Powers added.

  Morgan looked at Sullivan. "Am I safe in assuming the Secret Service has a contact on the DC police department who can be trusted to handle a hot potato?"

  "Yes," Landry said. "But for special handling on something this sensitive he'll need the backing of the chief of police. "

  Morgan nodded. "I need to make a phone call in private."

  Powers, Sullivan, and Landry walked into the other room. Sullivan closed the door. Perhaps because they were all trying to hear what Morgan was saying in the next room, little was said for a few minutes. Sullivan, always the efficient planner, took out a small pad and pen and made notes.

  Finally, Morgan called them back. "Gentlemen, I've just spoken with the President. He pointed out that we are nearing the end of a very close and difficult election campaign. The President wants to take the proper legal steps, but he asks that we do everything we can to keep the incident from the press. Are there any questions?"

  Powers thought of a good one: Why are you such an imperious, insensitive prick? No one said anything. Morgan shrugged on his jacket and strode out of the room.

  "Who do we have at Metro Homicide?" Sullivan asked Landry.

  "Art Lyons."

  "Can he be trusted to keep his mouth shut?"

  "He's solid," Powers said. Lyons, with whom he'd worked on other sensitive matters, including the investigation of several presidential threat cases, was a man who could keep his word. In any law enforcement bureaucracy, where perfidy is frequently rewarded by promotion, such a man was hard to find.

  "How do we get him assigned to the case?" Sullivan said.

  "If we call the chief, he might assign someone we can't trust. The best way is to phone Lyons directly, bring him inside the tent, and then let him deal with his boss."

  Landry phoned Art Lyons and asked him to come to the White House to discuss a "protective intelligence matter." Without asking questions, Lyons arrived at the White House fifteen minutes later.

  As Powers and Landry sat in desk chairs watching, Lyons, a diminutive
fortyish man with a heavily fined face and dark circles under his eyes, moved deliberately about the Special Projects Office, stopping now and then just to stare at things. Powers figured Lyons must have spent a full two minutes contemplating the bloodstain on the curtain. Once he shed his jacket, they saw that his trousers and short-sleeved white shirt were baggy. His revolver, its butt wrapped neatly with black mechanics tape, hung in a sweat-ringed leather shoulder holster. Powers had last spoken with Lyons at Lyons's watering hole, the English Grille in Georgetown. He remembered Lyons telling him he'd lost forty pounds in a month on a liquid protein weight-loss diet ... stopping only when he'd been hospitalized with a mild heart attack.

  Finally, Lyons stepped back from the body, lifted a package of Camels from his shirt pocket, and lit up. He coughed richly. "You said there was nothing in his behavior to indicate suicide?" he said, staring at the body.

  "Nothing obvious," Powers said.

  "Was he married?"

  "Divorced."

  Lyons nodded. "Heavy drinker?"

  "He liked his suds. But there was never any drinking problem that I know of. At any rate, none that ever came to our attention," Landry said.

  "Any ideas about what it means in the note about violating his oath?"

  "Got me," Powers said.

  "Sometimes something will set a man off ... something no one knows about. Maybe his girlfriend telling him to get fucked." Holding his cigarette loosely between his fingers, Lyons took a double drag, then blew a heavy stream of smoke at the body. "A secret of some kind coming to light. I take it you checked the serial number of the gun?"

  "We checked it in the files," Landry said. "It's his gun, all right."

  Lyons squatted down next to the body. "In most suicides the hand is gripping the gun . . . a cadaveric spasm ... the hand tightens involuntarily on the piece. But as you can see, the gun is just lying next to his hand."

  "Does that mean...?"

  "It doesn't mean anything. I've handled suicides where the damn gun was thrown all the way across the room... Hell, I had one where a guy shot himself twice. The first one was right into the nasal cavity. If he didn't have a good reason for killing himself before, he certainly did after taking a red hot bullet right up the ol' schnozz."

  "Do you see anything at all out of the ordinary with this suicide?" Powers said.

  Lyons came to his feet. "He was standing up... Most suicides like to lie down-or at least sit down, make themselves comfortable-before they pull the ol' plug. But some people do it standing up. Not often, but it happens. Hell, I had one where a guy killed himself while jerking off."

  There was a knock on the door. It was Sullivan and Morgan. Landry introduced them to Lyons. They shook hands.

  "How do you read this, Art?" Morgan said.

  "It was his gun, there's a note matching the handwriting in his personnel file. It looks like suicide to me."

  Landry, who seldom smoked, asked Lyons for a cigarette. Lyons tossed him the pack and a plastic throwaway lighter. Landry lit a cigarette, perhaps to mask the odor of death in the room, which seemed to be getting stronger.

  "I have to make a telephone call," Morgan said, on his way to the adjoining room. About fifteen minutes later, he opened the door and asked them to come inside. As they entered, Morgan handed the telephone receiver to Lyons. "Your chief."

  Lyons set his cigarette in the ashtray.

  "Yes, sir," Lyons said, holding the phone to his ear. "Yes.... That's right, sir.... I'll handle it.... Roger." He set the receiver down. "The chief received a call from the President. I'm to handle this any way you want."

  "What about the coroner's office?" Landry said.

  "The chief's already touched base with him," Lyons said, grinding his cigarette butt into a large glass ashtray. "He gave permission to handle this outside normal procedures."

  Morgan turned to Sullivan. "You have your marching orders," he said. He left the room.

  The others watched as Lyons took photos of the body and the room with a Kodak Instamatic camera he'd brought with him, made a rough pencil sketch of the room on a tablet, and recovered the spent bullet from the wall behind the curtain. He placed the round and the revolver in clear plastic evidence bags and dropped them in his briefcase.

  Lyons shrugged. "You need me for anything else?"

  "Thanks for coming over, Art."

  Lyons said to call him if there was anything else he could do. He put on his jacket and left.

  Landry shook his head slowly. "Hell, I still can't see Ray taking his own life. No way."

  "We need to find out what Stryker meant in the note. Violating his oath could mean anything," Sullivan said. "You'd better go search Stryker's place. I'll notify the next of kin."

  "What about the body?" Powers said.

  "We take it to a funeral home. There's no way we can hide the fact that he committed suicide, but we can keep the location a secret."

  "There's no way to cover a body being taken out of the White House."

  "We wait until after dark and use a tactical van. No one in the Press Room will think anything of that. In the meantime, we'll have briefed all three shifts not to discuss the matter. "

  "What exactly are you going to tell the press?" Powers said.

  "That he committed suicide . . . We'll just leave out where it happened. If they press for more, we tell 'em he was on extended sick leave for depression and killed himself at home. A suicide in the White House is a story. The newsies won't go with a sick man eating his gun at home. If one of 'em decides to try, the Press Secretary can have it quashed as an embarrassment to the Secret Service ... and Stryker's next of kin." Sullivan ran his hands across his face and took a deep breath. "And even if one of the papers insists on writing the story, it would be nothing more than a one-inch column on the back page of the Post..." His voice trailed off. He made eye contact with Powers, then Landry, noting their reaction. "Look, I know Ray was a good man. I don't like this any more than you do. "

  "We'll head for Stryker's place," Landry said.

  "Keep me informed."

  As Landry drove to Fairfax, Virginia, Powers kept reliving the sight of Ray's corpse. The effect of all that had happened seemed to sink in for the first time. He felt weary, and his vague foreboding reminded him of his first day in Vietnam.

  Ray Stryker’s two-bedroom condominium was wedged into a colorless six-block tract of similar dwellings. The entire development was surrounded by a six-foot concrete-block wall, and young trees had been planted at acceptable intervals along the parkways. There were neatly trimmed squares of recently planted grass sod and wooden planter boxes with lines of drooping pansies in front of each residence. Powers had once considered purchasing a similar town house but preferred his uncomfortable Georgetown Arms apartment to paying on a huge mortgage and living in such a sterile, lusterless suburb.

  Landry parked at the curb. They climbed out and walked along a curving walkway to the door of Stryker's place. Powers knocked. There was no answer. After trying a few keys on Stryker's key ring, Landry unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  "Anyone home?" Landry said.

  They walked in cautiously and checked the bedroom and bath. No one was there. After a few words about how they should proceed with the search, Landry took the kitchen and Powers the bedroom.

  In the bedroom, Powers not only searched the dresser drawers but methodically removed them from the cabinet and checked each bottom. He found nothing but socks and underwear. In the closet, he lifted each hangered piece of clothing and fingered every pocket. Finding a Santa Claus hat on one hanger he paused for a moment, remembering Stryker in the hat when tending bar at the White House Detail Christmas party. In a box of papers on the closet shelf were Stryker's U.S. Army discharge papers, a few Series E savings bonds all agents had to buy under the Secret Service payroll savings program, a Jimmy Carter tie clip, a few Ronald Reagan ballpoint pens, and some coupons for the Fairfax car wash.

  In Stryker's nightstand Powers found
a photo album with clear plastic pages. There were only a few photographs: Stryker at Yosemite with some other Secret Service agents...Stryker as a lanky child...Stryker as an army paratrooper...Stryker at the Secret Service firing range...an eight-by-ten of Stryker and some other agents and young women in Eastern European folk costumes. They were sitting around a long table in what Powers guessed was a beer tent. Powers remembered: the President's trip to Hungary. At the bottom of the box was a color shot of Stryker's ex-wife, Dora, a flight attendant, and his gangly, blue-eyed young daughter. The daughter, whose name he couldn't recall, looked to be about six years old and was wearing a dance leotard. Perhaps, thought Powers, the photo had been taken at a dance recital. He was suddenly thankful Sullivan hadn't assigned him to make the death notification to Stryker's family.

  Under the bed was an Easy Glider fold-up walking exercise devise, three pairs of soccer shoes, a Scrabble game, and a box of photos in cheap frames: some autographed black-and-whites of Presidents and foreign heads of state like those all Secret Service agents owned. Powers imagined Stryker probably had had the photos hanging in a den or recreation room before his divorce. Though unaccustomed to introspection, it also occurred to Powers that Stryker had been much like himself. A man whose persona was formed almost solely by his job.

  In the other drawer in the nightstand, among some paperback Charles Willeford and James Jones novels, was a black patent leather pocketbook. Powers picked it up and opened the clasp. As well as a lipstick, a compact, and a few hairpins, there was an outdated White House parking pass. The name on the pass was Marilyn Kasindorf.

  "Ken," Powers said.

  Landry entered the bedroom.

  "Ever heard of a woman named Marilyn Kasindorf?" Powers handed him the pass.

  Landry studied it and shook his head. "A Y pass," Landry said. "A civilian. Y usually means CIA."

  Powers picked up the telephone on the nightstand and dialed Sullivan's direct number. "This is Jack Powers. We're inside. We found a White House pass."

  Sullivan asked for the name.

  "Marilyn Kasindorf."