Washington Masquerade

by Warren Adler

As if she was reciting a law brief, she related chapter and verse with careful accuracy and articulation, almost as if she had prepared herself for this moment. She spared no details. To see her, this graying woman in her Judge’s robe, offering what amounted to a relentless saga of pornographic images and words, was mind-boggling, even to Fiona, who had indulged in similar practices.

  Judge McGrath made no effort to prevaricate. It was a genuine catharsis, and it fired Fiona’s erotic imagination. It also triggered her compassion, since Fiona knew that this was the hard truth, an intimate confession that was unlikely to be fully understood except by certain persons of the same gender. The Judge had wisely opted to tell her story unknowingly to exactly the right woman, perhaps betting that such a confession had more of a chance of being kept hidden. Fiona recognized the Judge’s gamble but, sadly, knew that its outcome would be negative.

  “I knew I was on the short list for the Supreme Court. I had been vetted and interviewed for months. Adam wanted, above all, to protect me from harm, to take every possible precaution, just in case. We both knew from the beginning that we were taking a big risk, but it was unstoppable. You cannot imagine how this thing took over my life. I yearned for it. So did he. We both admitted that when we were apart, we thought of nothing else, and when we were together, it was like we had reached the epitome of human feeling, of ultimate pleasure. Was it love or lust? God knows. To tell you the truth, however it destroys me, I will never be sorry for the experience.” She looked fixedly into Fiona’s eyes. “Do you understand that, Fiona?”

  “Yes, I do,” Fiona said, remembering incidents in her own life where passion trumped caution. In her police career, she had seen how such obsessions lead to mayhem and murder. She was quite familiar with the power it exerted over human beings. That part was never a mystery.

  “And then, suddenly, it ended. I couldn’t believe it. Adam gave not the slightest hint of behavior that might be construed to be suicidal. It was the biggest blow I had ever experienced in my life. Do you know how difficult it is for me to function, to keep hidden what we meant to each other? I was dumbfounded. I am still wobbly. I don’t think I’ll ever recover.”

  “So how do you account for it? His death?”

  “It had to be an accident,” she said, obviously fully convinced of her own verdict. “A moment of carelessness on Adam’s part. He was coming to meet me. I waited. Then, as it was planned, when something interfered and he didn’t show up, I went back to my office. What else could it have been? We were absolutely committed never to break up our families. Suicide? No way. Murder? Where is the evidence? A hit engineered by the President? Or his fanatical supporters? Doubtful. Actually absurd.” She was silent, reflective. “Was it love? Unbearable romantic love? We rejected that idea. Our explanation was that it was an addiction, and let it go at that. Would it ever burn itself out? It hadn’t up to then. It still hasn’t, Fiona. Do you know I have orgasmic dreams? Be that as it may, this had to be accidental. He must have been thinking of something else, and he just walked off the station platform. That is my assessment.”

  “We rejected the notion of accident early on,” Fiona said. “There was absolutely no one around. Even if he was daydreaming, the train was oncoming, and the sound would have pushed him into reality. Besides, it is not a common form of accident.”

  An hour had gone by. Judge McGrath’s confession seemed honest, accurate, and revealing. In telling it, a sense of calm suffused her face.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “I can’t be sure how it will play out, not yet.”

  “I understand. What can I do? Most people never realize their dreams. I wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice. Everything I did in my life was to get to that goal.” She shrugged. “The pity of it is that I could have been acceptable. My paper trail does not characterize me as a screaming ideologue. My decisions reflect my judicial philosophy, which does not put me into an ideological box. In other words, I was, until now, a good bet—female, the right age, sort of centrist. All for naught, dead in the water, I’m afraid.” She was remarkably philosophical and dry-eyed. “Now my worry will be the effect it will have on my husband and daughter. My husband will undoubtedly forgive me. As for my daughter, I don’t know. Teenagers are very strange. She came late to me. I was nearly forty when we conceived.”

  “Judge McGrath, please understand that I have to do my job. If there was nothing more at stake here, this could be buried forever. We both know what’s been put into play in the public arena. We are living in a poisoned political climate, as you well know. Some news organizations have daggers out for this President. Some support him, but the story is, to say the least, very compelling. Worse, there are those who believe it implicitly, and it is spreading and having enormous consequences. At least one man has committed suicide. Careers will be aborted.” Fiona looked pointedly into the Judge’s face. “Others are sure to fall. Some will rise. Who knows where this will end and how many people will be hurt? Unfortunately, my mission is much narrower. I can’t allow myself personal judgments. Accident? Suicide? Murder? Those are my options. I’m very much afraid that of the three, the first two, no matter how ironclad the explanation, will be ignored, and the last option will linger in the public mind.”

  The Judge nodded. Suddenly her eyes became moist, but she seemed to quickly gain control over her emotions. Then she smiled. “You know. I have always been so disciplined in my life and never knew the power of desire, passion, and pleasure. Until… well… until it happened.” She looked pointedly at Fiona, and their eyes made deep personal contact.

  “Believe me, Judge. I know exactly what you mean.”

  A long silence ensued as their gaze held.

  “It will be the end of my dream,” the Judge said, standing up. Fiona did the same, and both women embraced.

  “Thank you,” the Judge said. “I needed to get it off my chest.”

  “I hope you feel better for it,” Fiona said, a sob gathering in her chest.

  “Yes, I do,” the Judge whispered before they parted.

  Chapter 25

  “All that girl talk ended?” Izzy asked, clearly irritated.

  “I’m sorry, Izzy,” Fiona said, “but she did open up.”

  “Does this mean that if a black man wants to confide, I ask you to leave the premises?”

  She was well aware that he had a point and a right to be angered.

  “The only justification I can offer is that she might not have spilled all the beans that needed to be spilled for us to fully understand the situation.”

  “Sounds like a Catholic rationale for confession.”

  “Once a Catholic always a Catholic. So I played the priest role and got her to reveal all. In a way that’s what we cops do. I got what we needed so put your nose back in joint. She told us all we needed to know. They were having this hot, no-holds-barred affair….”

  “So the means justifies the ends?” Izzy interrupted.

  “In this case, yes,” Fiona shot back. “The truth by any means.”

  “How can you be so sure it’s the truth?” He paused and looked at her. “Woman’s intuition?”

  She was just getting used to having Izzy as her partner. He was judicious, introspective, and creative, aside from technical know-how, the three most important qualities in a homicide detective. Unfortunately, he was overly sensitive and, as she had just discovered, quick to be resentful and perhaps too thin-skinned.

  “Am I supposed to apologize? If so, I do sincerely. I probably violated police protocols. But I got what we needed, and that is the bottom line,” she said, as they moved out of the courthouse. “Think of it like birds of a feather flocking together. She told me things believing that women understand women, more than men understand women.”

  “We are cops, not confessors. Let’s take it out of race and gender. Suppose a black man said to you: Get that white woman out of here. This is n
ot for her to hear. What would she know about life in black moccasins? How would you react to that?” He paused. “Note I have left out the Jewish component.”

  “Okay, I surrender. From a professional point of view, I was wrong. So let’s cool it and bury your fucking ego and high moral indignation.”

  For a long moment he retreated into silence, then stopped, raised both hands as a sign of retreat, and nodded.

  “End of rant,” he muttered. “Sometimes things have to be said and thoughts alone don’t cut it.”

  “Message delivered, partner. In a nutshell, she was obsessed with Burns, addicted to the sex, knowing that if it came to light her career would go kaput. She needed to get that part said.”

  She felt certain he understood both the irony and the similarity to his own conclusions.

  “Not to mention playing on your sympathy and sisterhood, hoping you could squelch any mention of the affair.”

  “That too, I’m sure.” A lot more to it, Fiona thought.

  He was silent as they walked to their car, obviously still in a funk despite his retreat. He did not talk until he had sat down in front of the wheel.

  “So how does all this girl talk impact this case?”

  That was the central issue, of course. What her confession did was tear the lid off the main supposition of the stories in the press and the subjective attitude of the talking heads on television. Burns was not wearing his disguise to meet people who were planning the President’s assassination. He was simply involved in an affair with a high-profile lady who was on a track that may or may not have led her to the Supreme Court.

  “I’m not sure. You tell me, Izzy.”

  He thought about it for a long moment, not starting the car, slumped slightly over the steering will.

  “My response starts with an anomaly. What attracts a younger man with a beautiful wife to an unattractive middle-aged woman? The woman does not exactly strike one as a sex kitten. Some people will buy it, some not. There will always be a cloud over the explanation. Frankly, I don’t think her story will turn off the media spigot. They’ll treat it as a sidebar since it doesn’t explain the story they’re flacking, namely that the man was iced by Presidential proclamation. Yes, her hopes and dreams will go down the toilet, but the bottom line for us is whether she pushed the man into the path of the train.”

  Fiona could tell he was feeling better through airing this explanation and, of course, he was dead right.

  “She thinks that Burns’ death was an accident.”

  “So what? We’ve passed that point days ago. Suicide, too, is losing its cachet. The woman had a motive: revelation. It would bust her, and she knew it.”

  “And she followed him and pushed him over?” Fiona said, posing it as a question.

  “You really believe that, Fi?”

  “No, I don’t. She could have simply said bye-bye. Why take such a risk? Expose herself to an act of homicide in a public place?”

  “Could have been a spur-of-the-moment thing. She saw the opportunity and took it.”

  “That would imply her exposure was imminent. And besides, he had a lot to lose himself. He had gone to elaborate methods to avoid exposure, to preserve his family ties. Doesn’t wash. As I said, the woman thinks it was merely an accident.”

  “So he was daydreaming over his hot sexual escapade and got lost in some orgasmic fantasy and took one step too many?”

  “Okay, wise ass,” Fiona said, “where do we go from here?”

  “To there,” Izzy said, pointing to the golden arches. “When in doubt, stuff your face.”

  His ill temper was dispelled finally, and they parked and went into McDonalds and ordered everything unhealthy. But just as they were sitting down, Izzy’s mobile went off.

  He looked at the caller ID.

  “Our friendly subway driver.”

  She watched as he muttered into the phone, then listened, and flipped the phone closed.

  “He’s out of the hospital, laid up at home. Lives in Southeast. I told him we’d be there within the hour.”

  “Has he remembered something?” Fiona said, biting into her hamburger.

  “Didn’t say.”

  “Probably sorry he’s not in on the media blitz. Wants a piece of the action. Am I being cynical?”

  Izzy didn’t answer. They finished their hamburgers and drove to Parson’s Southeast address.

  August Parsons lived in a rehabbed row home in Southeast Washington. His wife met them at the door. A thin black woman, she wore her hair close-cropped and her eyes appeared troubled behind her glasses.

  “He’s had a very tough time,” she told them. “He’s still not quite himself.”

  A small, puzzled boy stood in the corner, holding a stuffed animal. Mrs. Parsons shooed him away. This was not a home used to a visit from policemen, even those wearing civilian clothes.

  “He insisted on seeing you,” she said disapprovingly. “We really don’t want to get involved. He has not been the same since the accident. I mean the one that killed that man.”

  The woman led them upstairs to their bedroom where Parsons lay in bed watching television. He switched it off with his remote when they arrived, and smiled weakly. Mrs. Parsons offered them refreshment, which they both declined. She brought two open bridge chairs close to Parson’s bed and beckoned them to be seated. Then she bent over August’s face and kissed him on the forehead.

  “Easy, baby,” she whispered, then turned to Fiona and Izzy. “Try not to upset him, please.”

  “Been rough,” Parsons said, shifting his weight and maneuvering himself into a higher position. He moved the quilt that covered him, revealing a cast covered with signatures.

  “You look better than last time,” Izzy said.

  “I wish I felt the same way,” Parsons said. He watched them for a moment. “You said to call if something came up.”

  “We’re all ears, August,” Fiona said.

  “Turned into one big story. Hell, you can’t look at the TV without something going on about that incident. It really started something.”

  Neither detective commented, waiting for whatever revelation was in store for them.

  “You remember I said this thing about seeing colors? I think I now know what I was driving at. At first, I thought I dreamed it. You know what I mean? Killing a man doesn’t rest easy in my mind. It does cloud one’s memory. Well, I now believe I was right. I did see a flash of color—yellow. Something yellow, all in a split second or less, a sense of movement, then the man falling—I see it like in a haze. Not the amber light of caution, but something deeper, yellow—I know it was yellow.”

  Parsons became reflective, silent, searching their faces.

  “Could be my imagination. You know what I mean? Like a hallucination, it’s like a movie you watch from the last row through sunglasses. I’ve been seeing all this stuff on television about this guy being killed, like in a movie. Look, I’m not political. I don’t give a crap who is in charge. One politician is like another to me.”

  “Did you see someone colliding,” Fiona asked, “pushing the victim?”

  “Just a flash of yellow, like when a flashlight hits you in the eyes, when before that it was dark.”

  “Not a person?”

  “Just yellow, a flash of yellow.”

  “Something painted yellow?” Fiona prompted.

  “Yeah, something like that,” August said, bobbing his head up and down in emphasis.

  “A tool, an article of clothing, a hat maybe?” Izzy pressed.

  “Nothing more?” Fiona asked. “Man, woman, what?”

  “Just yellow.”

  “Was the color connected to a person?” Fiona prompted again. Parsons shrugged.

  “I just can’t get it out of my memory. It’s weird.”

  “Was it a vivid blast of colo
r?” Izzy asked.

  “It’s driving me nuts.”

  Fiona contemplated hypnosis that might heighten or further clarify the image in his mind but did not suggest it, fearing that the man was still too fragile to endure someone playing games with his head. It seemed bizarre—the color yellow. Could it be, someone wearing such an easily identifiable color to carry out a murder in a public place? And if it were the case, how could it square with the accusation of being a hit man’s method of disposal?

  “That it?” Izzy asked.

  “You said if I remembered something, I should call.”

  Again Fiona weighed the idea of someone wanting to get on the publicity bandwagon, craving for recognition, a bit player wanting to be a star. Or was it a desire for exculpation, a powerful motivator?

  “What you’re telling us, August, is that just before Adam Burns went over,” Fiona said, studying the man’s face, “you saw a flash of yellow, no other detail, just the color.”

  She watched as he passed his hand over his face, which had sprouted a few days’ growth of beard.

  “I guess so,” he said tentatively, adding, “Yellow, just yellow.” Parson’s nodded, obviously struggling to define the image. “It bothered me not being able to tell you even if it makes no sense.”

  “It hasn’t gotten clearer than that?” Fiona asked.

  “I’m afraid it’s going to stick in my head forever.”

  “You just rest, August,” Fiona said. “If things get clearer, let us know.”

  They stood up and each shook the reclining man’s hand.

  “Thank you very much,” Fiona said, contemplating the revelation, fighting any temptation to agree with the prevailing notion being retailed throughout the world. They started to leave the room, but Fiona stopped and turned to face Parsons again.

  “I have a favor, Mr. Parsons.”

  His eyes widened, and he waited for her to articulate the favor.

  “Keep this under wraps.”

  “Who would I tell?”

  Parsons thought for a moment. He seemed puzzled.