Murder at the Watergate (17 page)

But then came the investigation, the sting, the secretly recorded meetings between his father and political leaders during which money changed hands, the arrest, and this man, who owed his son a future, was rendered impotent.

Chris Hedras had silently hated his father from that day forward.

Still, while most turned their backs on the senior Hedras, there were those who stood tall (and who still had something to gain by remaining in the Hedras fold), who helped the son with the bright future, the sterling academic record at Harvard, the good looks and ready smile, the developing political acumen, the understanding of why rubbing backs and greasing occasional useful palms and demonstrating loyalty to those who’d been loyal to you was the way it was done, the way things
got
done. There hadn’t been many of his father’s legion of friends who stayed the course once the disgraced labor leader sunk into an ever-deeper closed, bitter world, but those who did reached out to the son. It was the least they could do, was the way Chris viewed it.

“He wanted cremation,” Pauline Hedras-Brady said.

“It was the scandal that killed him,” a family friend said. “The heart attacks. How many? Three? Four?”

“It was the politicians that did it,” the uncle said. “The Republicans. They set him up. He’d be alive today if …”

Chris said nothing, simply wondered at this need to rehash the past. It was so typically Boston; sports and politics, not necessarily in that order, dominating thought and conversation.

“You agree, Chris?” the uncle asked.

“What?”

“The Republicans. They were behind what happened to your father.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

Chris hadn’t seen Johnny Harrigan and his wife in the church. Now they came from it and stood on the steps, holding hands. The young man waved. Chris jerked his head in friendly response.

“Come with us,” Pauline said. “We have the van. Plenty of room.”

“We’ll bring Mother,” the aunt said. “She’ll be so happy you’re there.”

The gloomy atmosphere at the church gave way, as it usually does, to more of a celebration of the deceased’s life. Everyone soon had beer, wine, and sandwiches in hand at Pauline Hedras-Brady’s unassuming house in Newton, a few miles outside Boston. A large urn dispensed coffee into Styrofoam cups. Cold cuts and cheese were rolled and arranged on two large plastic platters. Rock ‘n’ roll music from WHDH came softly from a boom box on the kitchen counter. Pauline had made a sheet cake for dessert.

“Man, it’s great to see you again. Wish it was under more pleasant circumstances, but I guess that’s the way it goes. That’s life, I guess.”

Harrigan, the young man Hedras had seen on the church steps, was his best friend in high school. His wife, who’d immediately started helping Pauline in the kitchen, was named Mary.

“How’ve you been, Johnny?” Chris asked.

“Real good. Yeah, very good. I got married, you know. We sent you an invitation.”

“Right. I wanted to come but I was out of town or something.”

“Yeah, man, I know. You must be racking up those frequent flier miles, huh?”

“I do a lot of traveling. You, ah, still working for that company? What is it, ah—?”

“Hopkins. Sure. Been there ever since we got out of high school. Doin’ real good. I’m a supervisor now.”

“That’s great, Johnny. They must treat you good.”

“They do. Nothing like you, though. The White House!” He rapidly shook his open hand up and down to indicate he was impressed. “What’s this guy like?”

“Who?”

“The president.”

“He’s, ah—he’s good. Terrific.”

Harrigan looked around as though about to spill a state secret. He lowered his voice: “To me, he really sold us out. You know what I’m saying? This NAFTA thing. Man, that was a dumb move. All those jobs goin’ south. Good-paying jobs. What ’a those spicks get down there? A buck a day? No wonder we can’t compete. Know what I’m saying? Know what I’d like to see?”

“What?”

“I’d like to see Joe Aprile get in the White House. He gave the union a talk a couple ’a months ago. I was there. Shook his hand. I think he feels about NAFTA the way we do. The union guys. I think if he was president he’d shove NAFTA down the spicks’ throats. Right?”

“Well, maybe. It was great seeing you, Johnny. Nice of you to come.”

“Hey, your father was good to me. Got me the job at Hopkins. Bailed me out when I had that—” He giggled. “When
we
had that hassle, huh?”

“Right. We’ll catch up soon.”

Chris started to walk away but Johnny grabbed his arm, used his conspiratorial tone again. “You still smoke a little?”

“Huh?”

“Mary and me still have a joint now and then.” A whisper now. “Some coke, too. Nothing heavy duty. But you know, on the weekend. Only when the kid’s asleep, though. To relax. I’ve got a great dealer at the plant. Only the best stuff. Says he gets it from some Mexican guy. Pure Colombian. You want some while you’re in town? I got it out in the car.”

“No, I—”

Harrigan pulled him close. “Man, remember that broad … what was her name? The one you banged in the car? Barbara—yeah, that’s it. Man, she was hot stuff, huh? Rape! Bull … Man, your old man could fix anything. I’m sorry he died, Chris. I really am.”

Chris managed to avoid Harrigan for the next half hour, until he and Mary left.

“I have to go, Pauline,” Chris told his sister.

“I know. Momma’s laying down in the bedroom.”

“I don’t want to wake her. I talked to her before. She looks old.”

“She is. You really should try to get up to see her once in a while, Chris. How much longer will she be around?”

Chris felt a familiar anger well up at being chided by his sister.

She read his face. “I know how busy you must be in Washington. Thanks for coming.”

The bedroom door opened and Hedras’s mother emerged, slowly, sleep-induced confusion on her lined face.

“Chris was just leaving, Momma,” Pauline said.

The old woman nodded.

“I have to get back,” Chris said. “Business.”

“I know,” his mother said.

“Can’t you stay another half hour?” Pauline asked. Her husband called for her from the kitchen. “Be right back,” she said.

Hedras awkwardly shifted from one foot to the other.

“Go, Christopher,” his mother said.

“Momma, I—”

“Catch your plane. I understand.”

He was sure she
didn’t
understand. No one did. This house, this city, these people were what he’d worked so hard to escape. His father’s fall from grace—how stupid could the old man have been, taking petty graft?—had transformed Boston into a depressing, odorous sewer for Chris. He’d watched his father wither away, sitting in his worn chair, Daddy’s chair, and being waited on hand and foot by his mother in their modest row house in South Boston, “Southie.” Before the sting, there had
been a steady stream of visitors to the house, his father’s cronies sucking up to him for favors, politicians seeking his union’s blessing, union officials huddling with him late at night in the finished basement. The few who bothered to keep coming were pathetic in Chris’s eyes, symbols of smallness of mind and even smaller ambitions.

He winced as he looked into his mother’s tired eyes, shifted his gaze to the floor. He was, at once, ashamed at the revulsion he felt, yet justified in feeling it.

Pauline rejoined them. He kissed her cheek. “Come down to Washington. Bring the kids. There’s lots to see there. I can arrange something.”

Pauline said to her mother, “We could all go. Wouldn’t that be fun, to see Washington? With an insider, no less.” She laughed.

Mrs. Hedras managed a small smile. “Very nice.”

“Maybe we will,” Pauline said brightly, “if Jack can get some time off. Maybe some weekend. You’re flying back to Washington?”

“Mexico. I’ll be there until the elections.”

“Elections? In Mexico?”

“Yes. They have them.”

She returned the kiss. “Take care.”

“You, too, Pauline. It was great seeing you.”

He turned to say good-bye to his mother, but she’d retreated into the bedroom, slowly closing the door behind her.

He used his frequent flier miles to upgrade to first class. After a layover in Chicago, he boarded another plane for Mexico City. Before boarding, he placed a call on his cell phone to San Miguel de Allende.

“Hello, Chris,” Elfie Dorrance said. “Where are you?”

“Chicago. Boarding a plane for Mexico City.”

“Give me the flight number. I’ll send Maynard.”

“No. I have to stay in Mexico City a day or two. I’ll call when I’m free.”

“All right. How was the funeral?”

“How is any funeral? Grim.”

He slept most of the way to Mexico City, eschewing the meal service. It was a fitful sleep, and he awoke in a sweat an hour before landing. He asked the flight attendant for a beer. As he sipped it, he thought of the day, of his father and mother, his sister’s house, what the priest had said during the funeral, his conversation with Johnny Harrigan.

He knew that had he stayed overnight in Boston, he would have taken his high school buddy up on his offer. He didn’t use coke nearly as frequently since coming to Washington as he had in Boston, but there were times when its kick, its ability to alter thought, its magical quality to bury bad karma in a haze of euphoria were needed, and welcomed.

This was one of them. Lately, there seemed to be more and more.

Ramon Kelly, president of The Mexico Initiative, muttered to himself as he left police headquarters. The detectives who interviewed him seemed oblivious to the obvious, that Laura Flores had been murdered by Mexicans acting on behalf of the government of Mexico. At one point he’d slammed his fist on the table and called them incompetent.

“Calm down, Mr. Kelly,” Detective Wendell Jenkins said. “Just tell us what you know as fact, and we’ll take it from there.”

“You don’t understand, do you?” Kelly said. “You’re treating this as some crime of passion, the act of some demented individual who just happened to pick Laura as a victim. I’m telling you that …”

The interview—Kelly did not view it as an interrogation, so inept was the questioning—lasted an hour. Kelly hadn’t thought it necessary to dress differently for the police than for any other day of the week. His well-worn jeans, cowboy boots, button-down shirt, and sweater, selected
from a dozen in his dresser drawer, represented a uniform of sorts. But no matter what he wore—and he had a few suits, even a tuxedo for those occasions demanding formality—it was his face that caused people to look at him a little longer than they might at others. His heritage of a gringo father and a Mexican mother of Aztec lineage had resulted in curly red hair, a broad brow, copper skin, and a Milky Way of brown freckles covering his upper face, particularly around his cheeks, nose, and blue eyes. Guessing Ramon Kelly’s origins was never easy.

Kelly apologized on his way out, explaining that Laura Flores was a special friend.

“Don’t sweat it,” Detective Peterson said, walking him through the squad room to the main entrance. “I understand.”

“Thank you,” Kelly said.

“But you know what?”

“What?”

“We’re not incompetent, just overworked and underpaid.”

Kelly managed a thin smile.

“Give a call if you think of anything else. Have a good day, Mr. Kelly.”

He returned to the Initiative and closeted himself in his office, asking that no calls be put through. He spent an hour making notes in a small notepad. At noon, he announced he would be out for the afternoon: “I can’t be reached. Call my machine at home at the end of the day and tell me who called. I’ll get back to some of them from Mexico. See you in a few days.”

He walked two blocks to the garage where he’d parked his gray 1992 Honda Accord, paid, put in a tape of Astrid
Hadad, Mexico’s answer to Madonna, and slowly drove south on Seventeenth Street until veering off onto the access road to the George Mason Memorial Bridge. He reached the historical port town of Alexandria, hometown of George Washington and Robert E. Lee, found a parking space on Union Street, got out of the car, and entered the Union Street Public House. Ferguson was already there, at the bar. Kelly took a stool next to him.

“Traffic?” Jim Ferguson asked.

“Am I late?”

“No. Just wanted a traffic report.”

Kelly smiled. “What are you drinking?”

“Virginia Native. They brew it especially for here.”

“Oh?” To the bartender: “A Virginia Native.”

“Hungry?” Ferguson asked.

“No. A little. I spent an hour this morning with the police.”

“An inspiring experience.”

“Yeah.”

“So, shall we talk and order, or order and talk?”

Kelly looked around. The bar, the room itself, was filling up. “Let’s find a table.”

“Upstairs.”

They carried their beers to the second floor and settled in a private, cozy nook. Ferguson ordered crab cakes, Kelly a club sandwich.

“Fill me in,” Ferguson said when the waitress left the table.

While Kelly recounted his morning with the police using his notepad, as well as sharing other information regarding the deaths of Laura Flores and Morin Garza, Ferguson sat quietly and erect. His twenty years as a
naval intelligence officer were written all over him: salt-and-pepper hair cut short and close to his temples, eyes clear and seldom blinking, skin youthful and unblemished for a forty-five-year-old man, but not surprising considering the discipline of his life—daily vigorous exercise, never a cigarette, an occasional beer usually left half consumed.

His approach to dress was also different from Ramon Kelly’s. For twenty years he’d proudly worn the military uniform dictated by the season. Now retired from the navy, he was seldom seen without his civilian uniform—immaculate blue blazer, white shirt, tie, gray slacks, and shoes polished to a mirror shine.

The arrival of their lunch temporarily interrupted Kelly’s monologue, which lasted through coffee. Ferguson said little, waiting for natural pauses to ask an occasional question.