Murder at Union Station

by Margaret Truman

“Have a nice day, man,” Jenks said, shaking his head as Russo continued to glare at him before resuming his path deeper into the mass of humanity that was Union Station at that hour. Marienthal’s phone number was in his pocket but Russo didn’t look for a phone. He needed to get outside, away from the crowds whose chatter, mixed with music from restaurants, and blaring train announcements, assaulted him.

  A woman brushed him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, smiling.

  For a moment, he thought she was Sasha, and he wondered where he was. Tel Aviv? No, Washington, D.C.

  He turned right, in a direction that promised an exit from the huge station to sunlight and fresh air, passing a florist’s kiosk and one selling Godiva chocolates, the Main Hall with its soaring 96-foot-high ceilings, modeled after the Baths of Diocletian and the Arch of Constantine in Rome, ahead, its doors leading out.

  He tried to walk faster, but pain in his legs and side prevented it. He stopped and took in air, closed his eyes against the blur of movement around him, then opened them.

  The light-skinned black man stood between him and the Main Hall. The trench coat he carried over one arm had no right hand showing.

  Deterred from continuing into the Main Hall, Russo turned and limped in the direction of a set of swinging yellow doors, next to a tobacco shop whose sign read PRESIDENT CIGARS. The light coming through small windows on the doors beckoned him. To what? To safety?

  The doors opened and a man in kitchen whites pushing a laundry cart came through, allowing the doors to close behind him. Russo looked back. The black man was following-casually, not in a rush it seemed, but following.

  Russo’s heart tripped as he continued toward the doors. He thought of the handguns he’d never been without years ago, and wished he had one now. He would blast the black bastard into oblivion, he thought, save himself. You don’t mess with Louis Russo. But that bit of braggadocio was fleeting, displaced by palpable fear.

  He was within ten feet of the doors now, and stopped again. The man had closed the gap, was only a few feet behind. Russo shoved against one of the two doors, causing it to open. The long hallway was brightly illuminated by overhead fluorescent fixtures, which momentarily blinded him. Ahead, men pushed service carts and carried trays to and from restaurants served by this off-limits employee area.

  Russo took steps into the hallway and shouted at the men. “Hey, hey! Listen to me. I need-”

  His voice was cut off by two shots from behind, the first striking him squarely between the shoulder blades, the second tearing a gaping hole in the back of his head. The force of the shots sent him pitching forward, cane and suitcase flying into the air. One of the workers in the hall who was carrying a large tray heaped with dirty dishes struggled with it. He lost control, the dishes smashing into pieces against the hard floor. Other workers looked at the black man, who’d covered the weapon he’d used with his trench coat but made no move to bolt from the scene.

  “What the hell?” a worker yelled.

  “Get him,” another shouted.

  But no one approached Russo’s killer, who slowly went through the swinging doors, turned left into the Main Hall, and turned left again into the East Hall Gallery, where kiosks were open for business-a Radio Shack, a handbag shop, a U.S. Mint outlet, clothing and accessories kiosks, and one devoted to miniature replicas of Washington’s most famous buildings and monuments. All the kiosks were on wheels and could be rolled away when the East Hall was booked for receptions and other social events.

  The man carrying the gun beneath his trench coat moved smoothly and quickly, but without a sense of urgency that might draw attention to him, past the kiosks and to an auxiliary entrance to the popular B. Smith’s restaurant, which led to a small bar area. People at the bar paid him no mind as he passed them and entered the main room.

  “Table, sir?” he was asked by one of the restaurant’s maître d’s.

  “No, thank you. Not today.”

  He left the restaurant through its main entrance and stepped out onto Massachusetts Avenue, in front of Union Station, where taxis waited for and dropped off passengers, and a long line of tourist buses and trolleys stood ready to take visitors on tours of the nation’s capital. A large contingent of uniformed police, augmented by National Guard soldiers, patrolled the area. The Homeland Security Agency had recently elevated the colored alert system from yellow to orange; the city was blanketed by security forces.

  He waited for a break in the traffic, crossed the wide boulevard, stopping for a second to observe a short, pudgy man playing a trumpet to entertain tourists and hopefully to have them drop money into the hat at his feet, circumvented the 1912 Columbus fountain depicting the Old and New Worlds and the adventurous Italian who’d linked the two, and stepped aboard an Old Town Trolley that was about to transport a dozen sweaty, ebullient tourists around the city.

  “Ticket, sir?” he was asked.

  “Didn’t have time to buy one inside,” he said, pulling out his wallet and handing money to the driver.

  “Thank you, sir,” the driver said. “Welcome aboard. Great day for it.”

  NINE

  Once clear of the accident scene, Rich Marienthal drove as fast as he thought he could get away with. Of the many things Kathryn Jalick liked about him, his patience behind the wheel usually ranked high on the list. Not this day. He weaved in and out through traffic approaching the Key Bridge into Georgetown and on M Street until turning down Massachusetts Avenue.

  “What a mess,” he said as they approached Union Station.

  “Must be the terror alert,” she offered, referring to the legion of law enforcement personnel milling about the station. Cars were being prevented from pulling up directly in front, so Rich squeezed into a no-parking zone on First Street, at the side of the station.

  “Wait here,” he told Kathryn as he bolted from the car and dodged traffic until he’d reached an entrance leading into the West Hall. Although uniformed armed guards patrolled that side of the station, too, no one was stopped from entering and exiting. Marienthal fought the urge to run as he made his way through the throngs of people to the gate area, looking for Russo. Failing to see him, he headed for the information desk in the Main Hall.

  “I’m looking for an old Italian man,” he breathlessly told the woman at the desk. “I was supposed to meet his train from New York, but I got tied up in traffic-an accident in Virginia -and…”

  The woman’s expression said she didn’t know what he expected her to do.

  He went back into the train concourse, where a crowd had gathered in the east end of the station, in front of a tobacco shop. He managed to snake through the gathering until he could see activity next to the shop. Yellow crime-scene tape had been strung to create a wide off-limits area near a set of yellow swinging doors. A large contingent of uniformed and plainclothes police came and went through the doors, leading to what appeared to be a hallway.

  “What’s going on?” Marienthal asked a bystander.

  “Somebody died,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Somebody got shot,” said a man standing next to them.

  “Shot?”

  “I heard it,” yet another person said excitedly. “I was right here.”

  “I heard it was an old guy with a cane.”

  A male voice came through a bullhorn: “All right, all right, everybody stand back. There’s nothing to see. Please leave the area.”

  Marienthal’s stomach tightened into a painful knot. He backed away until he was clear of the crowd and walked slowly toward the gate area where Russo would have left the Amtrak train. Although his eyes swept the station in search of the old man, he knew deep in his gut that he wouldn’t see him. “I heard it was an old guy with a cane,” the man in the crowd had said, and his words reverberated through Marienthal’s brain. It had to be Louis, he thought-he knew!

  “Hey, man, they get the guy?” Joe Jenks asked Marienthal from the shoeshin
e stand.

  “Huh?”

  “The shooter. The guy who gunned down the old dude. They find him?”

  “No, I… I don’t know.”

  Marienthal stood by gate A-8 for what seemed a very long time before going to the Main Hall. He stepped outside and watched the police and military vehicles moving in and out of position. An antenna was extended high above the roof of a TV news remote truck with WTTG-Channel 5 emblazoned on its side. A reporter and cameraman prepared to beam a report back to the station.

  “Any word on the victim’s name?” Marienthal asked, his voice weak.

  The reporter, an attractive young woman holding a microphone and clipboard, turned to him and shook her head.

  “Russo,” Marienthal said automatically. “Louis Russo.”

  The reporter pulled a cell phone from where it was clipped on her belt and said into it, “I’ve got a witness who sounds like he knows the name of the victim. Russo, Louis Russo.” She listened intently for the reply. Once she’d received it, she turned to talk to Marienthal. But he was gone, back inside Union Station and on his way to where Kathryn waited for him in the car.

  TEN

  If it weren’t that a vicious killing had taken place, the multitude of law enforcement officers in Union Station might have been viewed as a fashion show of uniforms. Amtrak’s own police force had been the first on the scene of Louis Russo’s murder. Simultaneously, a call went out to the Washington PD’s First District headquarters, under whose jurisdiction Union Station fell, and men and women from that agency converged quickly on the scene. The Capitol police also responded because of the station’s proximity to Capitol Hill, in the event the shooting had political overtones that might herald an attack on members of Congress. Outside, the park police attempted to maintain order, while officers from Washington ’s underground Metro system took up positions at Metro stops close to Union Station. And because of the elevation of the Technicolor terrorist alert system from yellow to orange, heavily armed members of the area’s national guard were being posted to stand grim-faced throughout the station. There were blue, brown, and white shirts; blue, tan, and black pants; a variety of ties; camouflage outfits; and plenty of tin, brass, and copper badges being flashed.

  “Get these people outta here!”

  The order came from MPD detective Bret Mullin, a bulky, crusty twenty-nine-year veteran of the department, who’d been parked in an unmarked car around the corner from Union Station’s main entrance when the call went out from a police dispatcher. Two recent muggings outside the station had prompted increased police scrutiny, and intelligence sources indicated an increase in small-time drug dealing. Mullin had been assigned to a surveillance detail and wasn’t happy about it.

  There was a time earlier in his career that long stretches of surveillance didn’t bother him. He’d sit in a car and drink coffee and smoke and eat doughnuts and enjoy the parade of humanity. He’d watch men and women pass and wonder where they were going; where they lived; the sort of people they were close to-family, friends; the TV shows they enjoyed watching. Attractive women were mentally undressed as they moved by, and Mullin would speculate on the sort of men allowed to share their beds, starting with himself.

  But there were times, especially when surveillance had to be conducted on foot and the weather was bad, that the urge to abandon the assigned post for the warmth of a dry and convivial bar and restaurant was too compelling to ignore. That was the beginning of the corpulent Mullin’s troubles, succumbing on occasion-on too many occasions, according to his superiors-to the warm ambience of neighborhood bars and fast-food shops, and the pleasures they provided a footsore, bored, and gregarious detective.

  “Get ’em outta here,” Mullin repeated.

  He stood in front of the swinging yellow doors, now propped open by rubber wedges provided by the station’s maintenance crew. Beyond the door lay the lifeless body of the victim, a pool of blood surrounding his head. His toupee had been blown off and was against a wall a few feet from the body, looking very much like a dead red rodent. His splintered cane had been blown a dozen feet up the hallway; the small suitcase he carried had split open on impact with the floor, its contents scattered.

  The workers who’d been in the hallway at the time of the murder had been corralled at the far end.

  “Get their statements,” Mullin instructed another detective in plainclothes. He said to other officers: “Fan out through the station and see if anybody saw anything-the victim, maybe the shooter.”

  Evidence technicians in white lab coats entered the area, followed by a specialist from the medical examiner’s office. After conferring briefly with Mullin, they entered the hallway to begin the process of photographing the murder scene and identifying, documenting, collecting, and preserving what physical evidence might be present. Two empty shell casings between the body and the doors had already been noted and marked by small cards with numbers on them.

  “I hate scenes like this,” Mullin grumbled to Vince Accurso, a detective with whom he’d been paired for the past two years. He looked back at the crowd that was still gathered and shook his head. “Give me a nice, empty dark alley anytime,” he said. “What the hell do they expect to see, the victim get up and do a buck-and-wing?”

  Accurso laughed without a sound.

  Mullin belched and inhaled noisily. His sinuses had been particularly bad the past few weeks.

  “He got whacked by a black guy,” Accurso commented flatly.

  “What evidence?”

  “People,” Accurso said, nodding.

  Witnesses to the shooting in the hall had blurted out their recollections of the shooter’s appearance to the first cops on the scene.

  “Tall, thin, well dressed, brownish suit, carrying a raincoat,” Mullin said, reciting what he learned the workers had told the police. “Consistent.”

  “How about that? Good, huh? Nobody saw a short, fat white guy in a blue suit.”

  “Keep things going here, Vinny. I’m taking a walk.”

  Mullin hitched up pants that seemed always to be slipping below his belly and pushed through the crowd.

  “Who was he?” a woman who’d been there from the beginning asked. “A political big shot? Nobody else worth shooting in Union Station.”

  “Go get a cup of coffee,” Mullin told her. “It’s over.”

  “Are you a detective?” a teenager asked as Mullin gestured for him to get out of the way.

  Mullin muttered something profane at the boy and continued walking through the train concourse until he reached Exclusive Shoe Shine, where Joe Jenks had just finished a customer’s shoes. Mullin was no stranger to the bootblack station and its employees, especially Jenks. Although never accused of being a fashion plate-sloppy was a more precise description-Mullin liked clean shoes and often stopped in Union Station to have Jenks practice his own special brand of spit-shine magic, minus the spit. At the same time, Jenks was one of dozens of people Mullin had cultivated in the area to lend their eyes and ears to any crime. Joe was at his post in Union Station every day, and on more than one occasion had called in a tip about someone he considered an unsavory character, or a potentially troublesome situation.

  “Hey, Mullin, my man,” Jenks said. “Caught yourself a big one, huh?”

  Mullin climbed up into Jenks’s chair.

  “What happened, man?” Jenks asked as he pulled cloths and polish from a drawer beneath the chair. “Somebody says an old guy with a cane got it. I think I seen him.”

  “Is that so, Joe?”

  “Yeah. He limps on by and I ask him if he wants a shine. He looks at me like I just called his mother a dirty name, says somethin’ in Italian or Greek or somethin’, and goes on his way.”

  “Italian or Greek?”

  “He talked foreign, that’s all I’m saying. You nab the perp?”

  Mullin gave forth what could be considered a laugh. He always found it amusing when people tried to speak cop talk.

  “No, we didn’t n
ab the perp, Joe. Maybe you saw him.”

  A shrug from Jenks as he brushed off Mullin’s shoes in preparation for shining. “Maybe I did. You know what he looks like?”

  “We had a couple of descriptions. A black guy, skinny, expensive suit, maybe carrying a raincoat. Light, mulatto style they say.”

  Jenks leaned back and his eyes opened wide. “Oh, I know the dude you’re talking about, man,” he said. “Four dollars.”

  “You do?”

  “Shined him up. Very cool, like aloof, you know. No field hand or house slave. Uppity is what I thought.”

  “You gave him a shine?”

  “Yup. I didn’t much care how he acted ’cause he tipped big.”

  Mullin pulled a narrow steno pad and a pen from the pocket of his suit jacket. “I’m listening, Joe. Tell me all about this cool one who tips big.”

  Shoes polished to a mirror finish, and notes made of Joe Jenks’s description of his customer-brand of shoes, kind of socks, knife-edge creases, label in the raincoat, New York Times-Mullin continued his walk through the station, stopping to ask those in a position to observe whether they’d seen the man now described as Louis Russo’s killer.

  “I noticed him,” a shopkeeper in the travel accessory store near gate A-8 told him. She was in her deep thirties. “He was standing near the gate reading a newspaper.”

  “How come you noticed him?” Mullin asked. “Was he doing something that caught your eye?”

  “He was-” She smiled sheepishly. “I thought he was really good-looking,” she said.

  “Anything else?” Mullin asked.

  There wasn’t. But the details checked.

  Mullin concluded his walk-through by entering the East Hall, where the rolling kiosks were located. Two detectives were already there asking questions of the kiosk owners.

  “This lady says she saw the guy we’re looking for,” Mullin was told by one of the cops. A conversation with her revealed that the tall, thin man had passed her kiosk and gone into the bar behind B. Smith’s restaurant. Mullin and one of the detectives went in and talked to the maître d’ at the front door of the restaurant. It featured southern cooking, which attracted a sizable African-American clientele.