Murder at Union Station (44 page)

Stripling knew the Watergate was Mackensie Smith’s apartment. It occurred to him that no one knew he was on a train headed for New York, seated behind the subject of the search, Richard Marienthal—or that he was within reach of the infamous tapes at the heart of the search. Not that it mattered—except to the cop who would have his car towed. His whereabouts were otherwise irrelevant. What did matter was taking possession of the tapes and delivering them to Curly and Moe, or Mark Roper, or Gertrude Klaus, or whoever else wanted them.

He surveyed the rest of the car. No wonder Amtrak was losing money, he thought. There were only three other passengers, two women working on laptops seated at the far end of the car and a man at the opposite end who’d dozed off, his head resting against the window.

“We’ll shortly be arriving at Baltimore International Airport,” a voice soon announced over the PA system. “Passengers getting off at that station should be sure to gather any personal belongings.”

Stripling’s mind now shifted into a higher gear. How many new passengers would board this car at Baltimore? Would Marienthal decide to change his seat, perhaps move to another, more crowded car? Was there anything to be gained by waiting to arrive in New York before making his move to snatch the bag? He decided there wasn’t. He’d been on this train before. The Baltimore airport stop would be a brief one, no more than a few minutes.

This was the time to act.

When the train stopped and the doors opened, he would move quickly and definitely. He would get up, step to where Marienthal sat, press the gun to the writer’s head, simultaneously grab the bag from the seat, and run from the car. It would take only seconds. He mentally timed out his moves. Two seconds to get from his seat to Marienthal, two seconds to brandish the gun and swipe the bag, three seconds to run from the seat to the door. Seven seconds in all. It would happen so fast that by the time Marienthal recovered from the initial shock of a gun at his head, Stripling would be gone, down the stairs from the platform and into the crowd. Marienthal wouldn’t even see who’d taken the bag. And if he did, he’d never be able to mentally process the man he’d seen in those fleeting two seconds of face-to-face contact.

The train slowed as it neared the station, and Stripling tensed. He slipped his hand beneath his suit jacket and wrapped his fingers around the stock of the Smith & Wesson.
Just don’t make a dumb move,
he silently warned Marienthal.
Don’t get hurt over some silly tapes.

Almost there.

Marienthal stood.

Stripling blinked. What was Marienthal about to do, get off at the Baltimore airport station?

Marienthal stood in the aisle next to his seat, looked down at his shoulder bag, and headed up the aisle toward the restrooms. It took Stripling a moment to shake off his surprise. He looked back and saw Marienthal disappear into one of the lavatories. The train came to a noisy stop, and Stripling heard the whoosh of doors opening. He jumped up, reached over Marienthal’s seat back, grabbed the bag by its shoulder strap, walked quickly from the train, went down the steps two at a time, and hailed a waiting taxi.

“Where to?” he was asked by the driver.

“The nearest car rental agency,” Stripling replied, settling back and smiling.

He was delivered to a Hertz office, where he rented a midsize sedan, drove from the garage, and headed for the highway leading back to Washington. While stopped at a light, he unzipped the bag and shoved his hand inside. What he felt was soft, cloth. He pulled two pairs of socks and shorts from the bag, followed by a black T-shirt, a handkerchief, and a leather kit containing toiletries.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

The light had turned green; drivers behind him leaned on their horns. He went through the intersection, pulled to the curb, and surveyed what he’d taken from the bag. “Son of a bitch!” he said loudly, flinging the clothing to the floor. “Son of a bitch.”

FORTY-THREE

T
he taxi carrying Kathryn Jalick and Geoff Lowe from Union Station pulled up at the entrance to Mac and Annabel’s Watergate apartment building. Kathryn had taken money from her purse prior to arriving and handed it to the driver. She opened the door on her side. Lowe opened his and grabbed the handles of the shopping bag. So did Kathryn.

“I’ll carry it for you,” Lowe said.

“I’ll carry it myself,” she responded angrily.

They entered the lobby, where Kathryn gave her name to the uniformed man behind the reception desk and said she was there to visit with the Mackensie Smiths.

“Yes, Ms. Jalick. Mr. Smith told me you’d be coming and said to send you right up.” He pushed a button behind the desk that activated the lock on a set of glass doors leading to the inner lobby and elevators. Lowe headed for them with her.

“Sir,” the lobby guard said sternly.

“I’m with her,” Lowe said.

“No he’s not,” Kathryn said, pushing open the doors.

“I’m on Senator Widmer’s staff,” Lowe said.

“I’ll call Mr. Smith,” said the guard.

The doors closed behind Kathryn, and Lowe watched her enter a waiting elevator.

Mac Smith answered the internal call from the front desk.

“Mr. Smith, there’s a Mr. Lowe here who accompanied Ms. Jalick. He wishes to come up.”

“Have him wait,” Smith said, “until Ms. Jalick arrives. I’ll ask her.”

A few minutes later, Smith called back. “Tell Mr. Lowe he’ll have to wait until Ms. Jalick says he can join her.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lowe visibly fumed. “Senator Widmer won’t like this,” he told the guard. “Somebody’s going to answer for this.” He paced the outer lobby while pulling out his cell phone and calling information in New York City. A minute later he was connected with Sam Greenleaf at Hobbes House.

“Rich Marienthal is on his way to New York,” Lowe told Greenleaf. “He has the tapes.”

“He’s coming here?” Greenleaf said.

“Where else would he be going?”

“His
parents
live in New York” was Greenleaf’s reply.

“That’s right. But why would he take the tapes to his parents’ home?”

“This whole project is becoming nightmarish, Geoff. Pamela’s on the warpath and—”

“Who’s Pamela?”

“Pamela Warren. My publisher. We’ve gotten a couple of early notices already. They’re dismissing the book as the figment of the old mobster’s imagination. One reviewer is labeling it a hoax.”

“Don’t blame me,” Lowe said. “Marienthal’s the one who’s screwed everything up.”

Greenleaf abruptly ended the call.

Mac and Annabel Smith greeted Kathryn at their apartment door and led her to the dining room, where she placed the shopping bag on the table. “The tapes,” she said.

“The tapes,” Smith said, emphasizing the words. “Rich gave them to you?”

“In a sense. He’d had them in a public locker at Union Station. He gave me the key before taking the train to New York.”

“He’s on his way there now?” Annabel asked.

“Right. He’s going to visit his mother and go to Hobbes House at some point.”

“Why is Mr. Lowe with you?” Mac asked.

Kathryn explained, ending with a rueful laugh. “He thinks Rich has the tapes with him. If he only knew they were in this shopping bag that he was sitting next to in the cab.”

Kathryn removed the plastic bags containing the tapes and Rich’s handwritten notes from the shopping bag and laid them on the table.

“Have you heard them?” Mac asked.

“No,” Kathryn said, “and I don’t want to. You can listen if you’d like.”

“I have no interest in hearing them,” said Smith. To Annabel: “You?”

She shook her head.

“What does Rich want you to do with them?” Annabel asked.

Kathryn inhaled and blew air through pursed lips. “He told me to ask for your advice, Mac.”

“He did, did he?” Smith said. “What if I don’t have any advice?”

“That would be a first,” Annabel said, playfully.

“Let me explain,” Smith said. “These tapes—or more accurately, the use they might be put to—have significant political ramifications. If they end up with Republicans like Senator Widmer, they’ll be used to attack a sitting president, who, I might add, is doing a good job in my opinion. But what if the charges made by Russo on the tapes are true? What if the president
did
order the assassination of a visiting head of state while CIA director? Hardly the sort of thing a president of the United States should have on his résumé.”

Annabel went into the kitchen to get something to drink and returned with a pitcher of iced tea she’d prepared earlier. She poured three glasses, handed them to her husband and to Kathryn, and raised her glass in a toast. “To the famous tapes,” she said, adding, “are you interested in my opinion about what should happen to them?”

“Of course,” Mac said.

“The question is whether the man on those tapes is telling the truth. Unfortunately, he’s dead and can’t vouch for what he told Rich. It’s my understanding that Rich never came up with any corroborating evidence to support the claims about President Parmele. Am I right? Mac, you’ve read the book.”

“Skimmed it,” he said. “No, there doesn’t seem to be anything to corroborate Mr. Russo’s story.” He looked at Kathryn: “Do you know of anything, Kathryn? Has Rich indicated any supporting evidence he might be sitting on?”

“No,” she said, sipping her cold tea. “He said a few times that he wished there were some hard facts to back up Louis Russo.”

“Well, Kathryn,” Smith said, “the only advice I can give you is to do with the tapes what Rich wants done with them. After all, they do belong to him.”

Annabel chimed in: “Has Rich told you, Kathryn, what he wants done with them? Has he instructed you what to do with them?”

“He told me—”

“Yes?”

“He told me that if you didn’t feel strongly about the tapes going to someone—to the president or Senator Widmer—that I should use my own judgment.”

“I’ve thought recently,” Smith said, “that another option would be to donate them to an institution for safekeeping, not to be opened to researchers for a specified period of time.”

“But does it matter how much time passes,” Kathryn asked, “if what’s on the tapes isn’t true?”

Neither Mac nor Annabel replied.

“I think I’d better go,” Kathryn said, “but I don’t want to bump into Geoff Lowe again if he’s still downstairs.”

“No problem,” said Annabel. “We’ll leave through the garage. I’ll drive you.”

“Oh, no, there’s no need to—”

“I insist,” Annabel said.

Kathryn put the tapes and notes back into the shopping bag, and Mac walked her to the door. “I wish I had some wisdom to dispense,” he said, “but somehow I know you’ll do the right thing without anyone’s advice.”

“I’ll try,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

When they were gone, Smith called down to the desk. “Is Mr. Lowe still there?” he asked.

“Yes, he is, Mr. Smith.”

“Send him up.”

Lowe’s first words upon entering the apartment were “Where’s Kathryn?”

“She left,” Smith said.

“Left? Where did she go?”

“I have no idea, Mr. Lowe. We haven’t been formally introduced.” Smith extended his hand, which Lowe took weakly. “Iced tea?” Smith asked. “My wife makes very good iced tea.”

“No. Thanks anyway,” Lowe said, looking past Mac into the apartment’s recesses.

“I told you she’s not here,” Smith said. He walked to the open sliding glass doors to the terrace and looked back. “Join me, Mr. Lowe?”

They stood side by side, their hands on the terrace’s railing, their attention on the Potomac River. “I’m well aware, Mr. Lowe, why you and Senator Widmer would like to have those tapes. Your hearings won’t have much bite without them.”

“We can do without them,” Lowe said, his voice betraying his true feelings.

“Perhaps,” said Smith. “Let me ask you a question. There’s considerable doubt about the veracity of what Mr. Russo said on those tapes. What I don’t understand is why you and the senator would want to hold a public hearing based upon allegations that can’t be substantiated.”

Lowe’s hands in motion substituted for words. “The book, the taped voice of a dead man, the questioning. It’s politics,” he said finally.

“Politics,” Smith repeated, not trying to keep scorn from his voice. “The
game
of politics. Well, though everybody seems to say it is, I don’t consider politics a game, Mr. Lowe. Politics are more important than that. Is winning the political game that vital to you and your boss, Mr. Lowe? Are you and the senator really willing to destroy a president of the United States in order to win what you consider a game?”

“Parmele doesn’t deserve a second term,” Lowe said.

“Isn’t that for the voters to decide?”

“As long as they have the facts.”

“The facts as you perceive them. Mr. Russo’s claims don’t represent facts. They might be true, but there’s not a shred of evidence to back them up. I’m a lawyer, Mr. Lowe. I deal in evidence. I deal in the facts. And one fact, as far as I’m concerned, is that you and others like you don’t belong in government on any level. I find you despicable. I think it’s time you left. Thanks for stopping by.”