Murder at Union Station (3 page)

THREE

W
ASHINGTON,
D.C.

L
ike most professional bartenders, Bob McIntyre was adept at doing and hearing many things at once—mixing drinks while taking in conversation at his small bar, and listening to the latest news from CNN that played on a plasma screen TV behind the bar. He mixed martinis, stirred not shaken, heard the CNN anchor report on news breaking in the Middle East, and listened to the arguments in progress between members of the Capitol View Restaurant’s luncheon club, where congressional staffers and mid-level executives paid fifty dollars a month for the privilege of having lunch at the restaurant, on the roof level of the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Capitol Hill.

McIntyre placed two frosted, stemmed glasses containing gin and vermouth on the bar in front of Geoff Lowe and a portly man named Rex, who managed a branch of the Riggs Bank. They were discussing President Parmele’s recent speech in which he opened the door to the possibility of raising taxes to bring a ballooning deficit under control.

“Can you believe it?” Lowe snarled, sipping his drink. “Can you friggin’ believe it? He wants to raise taxes so there’s more money for the government to spend on Democrat giveaway programs.”

The bank manager laughed heartily. “Raisin’ taxes when you’re runnin’ for a second term is pretty damn dumb, even for a politician.”

“At least he didn’t come up with ‘read my lips’ BS,” a Parmele defender said from the end of the bar. “At least he’s honest.”

Rex turned to McIntyre, who was pouring red wine into a glass. “What do you think, Bobby?” he asked the veteran barman.

“Well, balancing the budget’s a good thing,” McIntyre replied. “Wish I could balance my own. On the other hand, nobody wants to pay more taxes.”

Smooth. He was good at seeing both sides—or at least sounding as though he did. What he thought privately about Washington’s major and sometimes seemingly
only
topic of conversation was another matter, reserved for discussion with regulars later at night who wouldn’t comment on his views with the size of their tips. At lunch, there were certain members whose beliefs were so set in stone that a mild challenge, even when their opinions were based upon shaky facts, was akin to spitting in their drinks. Lowe was one of those, his strident viewpoints mirroring those of his graying, crusty, outspoken boss, Karl Widmer, the senior senator from Alaska.

McIntyre glanced at Ellen Kelly, who’d turned from the conversation to speak with a woman, a House staffer from Mississippi, about a less volatile but no less provocative topic—the sexual scandal du jour.

How could a nice, pretty, polite young woman like Ellen put up with Lowe’s bellicosity? McIntyre wondered. Did he yap away about politics in bed? Probably.

“Another martooni, Geoff?” McIntyre asked, noting the empty glass.

“No can do, Bobby,” Lowe said. “Can’t afford to nod off during one of the old man’s speeches this afternoon.” He laughed. “At least not before he does.” His moment of levity was fleeting; he returned to his condemnation of the sitting president and dragged a reluctant Ellen Kelly back into the conversation. McIntyre smiled to himself as he watched the young woman with the curly red hair, the large green eyes, and a splatter of freckles across her nose and upper cheeks enter into the discussions, which by now included others at the bar and one or two nearby tables. It was impossible to know whose political views prevailed on any given day, although the anti-Parmele Republicans tended to talk louder and use more vitriolic language than their Democratic counterparts. If noise levels dictated a winner, Geoff Lowe and his supporters usually carried the day.

Lowe and Kelly brought plates from the buffet to the bar and ate there. McIntyre continued to mix drinks for those at the bar and to fill orders brought by the waitress, Mei, who was as adroit as McIntyre at sidestepping attempts to engage. The lavishly appointed room offered a stunning view of the domed Capitol, but not much of what was new in politics, where not much was ever new. His practiced ears picked up on what his wards were saying, particularly Lowe, who pontificated on why Parmele would fail in his bid for a second term. “I’m telling you,” he told a Democratic staffer from the Hill who’d joined the knot of people at the bar, “Parmele’s got plenty of skeletons in his closet, and Widmer knows what they are and where they are.” To Ellen: “Am I right, Ellen?”

She nodded and finished the Maryland crab cake she’d carried from the buffet.

Ellen Kelly had been working for Senator Widmer for less than a year; Lowe had been with the Alaska pol for seven. While she basically shared Lowe’s right-wing views of politics, she would never be, could never be, as strident as he and their boss, Senator Widmer, were in defense of them. Although she’d majored in political science at Georgetown University, for her, politics had never reached the level of passion. She’d sought a job on Capitol Hill following graduation and was recommended to Geoff Lowe by a mutual friend. He hired her almost immediately following a cursory interview, partially because her educational record at Georgetown was solid, more because he loved her looks. Their relationship commenced during her second month on the job. It wasn’t as though she’d fallen for him, at least not in the classic way. Physically he wasn’t her type, nor was he particularly attentive or loving, although he was capable of performing thoughtful acts from time to time—flowers without an occasion to prompt them, a surprise dinner out, an endearing comment now and then. The attraction was, she eventually decided when allowing retrospective thoughts to intrude upon her busy days and nights, Geoff’s dynamism, and the clout he possessed by virtue of his boss’s powerful position in the Senate. It wasn’t a forever relationship, she knew. It simply had come about and would run its course.

Lowe’s cell phone rang. It wasn’t always easy to know whose cell phone was ringing, for so many went off throughout lunch. Lowe had programmed his ring to play “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” which created a unique signature tone. Unless, of course, someone else did the same.

“Yeah?” Lowe turned away from the group and placed a finger in the ear opposite the one against which the small phone was pressed. Ellen watched as he squinted, as though that would help him hear better. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Rich.”

He snapped the phone shut and gave Ellen a thumbs-up. “Got to go,” he announced to the others at the bar, standing and motioning for Ellen to join him. She looked at him quizzically. “No sweat,” he said as they walked to the door. “Everything’s on track.”

FOUR

H
ow much longer to Washington?” Russo asked the conductor.

“Should be in Union Station in about forty-five minutes,” she said.

He nodded and closed his eyes again, the gentle swaying of the train combining with his natural fatigue to cause drowsiness.

He’d bought a piece of Danish and coffee from the café car, but had to ask another passenger to carry it for him to his seat because he was unsteady on his feet. He silently cursed his increasing feebleness. And cursed the watery, lukewarm coffee.

There was a time—and it didn’t seem very long ago—that he was strong and fast, a tough guy who could hold his own in a fight with anyone, including the bigger boys from the New York City neighborhood where he was born and raised. And he could run faster than any of them, which came in handy when boosting merchandise from local stores and having to outrun the owners, or when escaping from the local beat cop.

His father, Nicholas Russo, had come to New York from Italy as a young boy and worked hard to raise and support his growing family. After a series of odd jobs, he was hired by a local bakery to drive its delivery truck and had done that until he dropped dead of a heart attack at forty-eight, leaving his wife, Lillian, and six children without a source of support.

In a sense, his father’s death liberated the fifteen-year-old Louis. He’d begun hanging out with local members of the Gambino family, whose social club was two doors down the street from the building in which the Russo family lived. His father had forbidden his son from hanging out with many of his newfound streetwise friends, and had smacked him one day when Louis returned with money earned by running errands for the mobsters. Now, with his father dead and the family really needing money, he felt free to pursue what soon became a full-time criminal career—loan-sharking, numbers collections, running prostitutes, and acting as an enforcer for his second family. It was in that role that he committed his first murder, whacking a Gambino soldier who’d been accused of holding back money, skimming from his loan-sharking operation. The twenty-one-year-old Russo took no particular pleasure from the act, nor did he suffer any particular pain. It was what he’d been paid to do, and he’d done it effectively, including dumping the body in a landfill. The body was eventually found and Louis attended the funeral, where he paid his respects to the victim’s widow and children.

Those were good days, he mused, half asleep, dreams and fragments of such memories filtering in and out of his mind. Better days than what the last dozen years had been.

He straightened and looked at his watch. The conductor had said they were forty-five minutes from D.C.’s Union Station. That was fifteen minutes ago. He neatly gathered the paper in which the Danish had been wrapped, put it in the half-empty coffee cup, checked that his return airline tickets were still in his jacket pocket, and gazed out the window as the train neared its destination. Then, sitting up straight, he fell deeply asleep.

FIVE

U
NION
S
TATION

J
oe Jenks had been shining shoes at Union Station for three years. If you were going to shine shoes for a living, you couldn’t pick a better spot than the hundred-year-old beaux arts landmark, created in 1903 by an act signed by President Teddy Roosevelt, falling into disrepair over the ensuing years, but restored in the 1980s to an even greater architectural monument than it had been in its previous splendor. The working philosophy of its original architect, master builder Daniel H. Burnham, was “Make no little plans.” Had Roosevelt known that the Wright Brothers would prove man’s ability to fly a mere ten months after he’d put into motion the lavish plans for this centerpiece of rail transportation, he might not have called for such a grandiose design.

Working there as a bootblack was a dream come true for Jenks, who’d plied his trade on the street for too many years. It was comfortable working inside the sprawling station, now bright and beautiful, with all its shops and movie theaters, restaurants and services—a pleasant, fancy setting for spit-shining the shoes of important men and women passing through on their way to other cities and other business.

“Back when it opened in nineteen and eight,” Jenks’s grandfather, who had worked there as a Pullman porter, often told him, “old Union Station had some mighty fancy restaurants, like the old Savarin. My goodness, anybody who was anybody in the city dined there at the Savarin. Barbershop had a dozen chairs and a bootblack and a valet to press your clothes all nice and fine. Back then, Savarin was the only real decent place in all of D.C. where a white man could dine with a black man and nobody seemed to notice. Nobody seemed to care. Way it should be.”

Although Jenks was the oldest by far of the three bootblacks at Exclusive Shoe Shine, his was the shortest tenure, so he worked chair 3, alongside the two younger men who didn’t demonstrate the same sort of reverence Jenks had for the station. Once he’d started working there, he’d read up on the station’s history and enjoyed it when a customer, usually an out-of-towner, climbed into his chair and asked questions about Union Station. That was when Joe Jenks shined, in both senses of the word.