Murder in the White House Page 13

  “We were going to have a minute-by-minute of Blaine’s last day,” Ron said. “What progress?”

  “It has gaps in it,” said Locke. “We don’t know where he was all day—”

  “How much do we know?”

  Locke pulled a paper from a flat leather folder. “He left his Watergate apartment at 7:20. He was picked up by his limousine and driven to the State Department. He had breakfast with some members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—a champagne breakfast.”

  “Blaine knew how to live,” Ron said, and didn’t smile when he said it.

  “So do two or three of the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” Gabe said.

  Locke went on. “He spent the morning after the breakfast in his office. We have a list of his appointments and telephone calls. His chauffeur drove him to the Madison Hotel at 1:30. His secretary, Mary Burdine, says he had an appointment for lunch but doesn’t know with whom. No one at the hotel recalls his having been there. The chauffeur picked him up at 3:30 and drove him to his apartment. He picked him up there at eight and drove him to the White House. He was there until he was killed.”

  “Where was he in the White House?”

  “With Eiseman, for half an hour or so, then with Gimbel for a while. He spent some time in the Cabinet Room making telephone calls. He was in the men’s room at least twice. Eventually he went up to the Yellow Oval Room, which is where he was when the President arrived.”

  “The autopsy report says he had an ejaculation within the last eight hours before his death,” Ron said. “The Madison… He could have let his chauffeur drop him off, and he could have taken a cab and gone anywhere. More likely, though, he had a lady with him in his apartment between four and eight, when the chauffeur picked him up. If so, where did he go when he was supposed to be having lunch at the Madison Hotel? And who was the lady?”

  “And where did he get the dextroamphetamine?” Gabe asked. “You remember it was found in his stomach. His doctor didn’t prescribe it, didn’t even know he was taking it.”

  “We haven’t been able to locate a doctor who prescribed it or a pharmacy that filled the prescription,” Locke said.

  “How about his supply?” Ron asked. “Did you find a bottle of the pills in his apartment or office?”

  “No, and we looked,” Locke said. “He didn’t have any on his person or in his briefcase either.”

  “It’s an upper, right?” Ron said. “Mood lifter. Did he need it? In the Yellow Oval Room that night I noticed how nervous he was. Where’s the cause and effect here? Had he taken dextroamphetamine because he was upset, or was he upset because he had taken dextroamphetamine?

  “Whose fingerprints did you find in his apartment?” Ron asked.

  “Blaine’s. Judith Pringle’s. Marya Kalisch’s. Martha Kingsley’s. Gus Meridian’s…”

  “Gus was his administrative assistant at the State Department,” Ron told Gabe.

  “The chauffeur’s,” Locke went on. “The maid who cleaned up the apartment every day, hers were there too. A man had been in to work on the dishwasher… Nothing, in short, we couldn’t account for.”

  “Maybe someone came in after he was dead and cleaned up the place,” Gabe suggested. “I mean, got rid of his uppers.”

  Ron shook his head. “Marya Kalisch slept in the apartment that night.”

  “She didn’t know he was dead when she left the apartment in the morning, or so she says,” Locke pointed out.

  “I’ve asked around a little and have come up with something you may find interesting,” Gabe said. “I asked some military types who, if anybody, teaches killing with a loop of fine wire. It seems some military units do. Some others used to. It may only be a coincidence, but the technique was taught for years and drilled into the members of the First Marine Ranger Battalion.”

  “Where’s the maybe coincidence in that?”

  “Fritz Gimbel,” Gabe said, “served two years in that outfit.”

  The White House, Sunday, June 17, 9:45 PM

  Ron went back to the White House at nine. The President had asked him to be available after the dinner being given that evening for the Prime Minister of Australia. It was an unusual state dinner, being given on a Sunday evening; but the Prime Minister was in Washington only on Sunday and was flying Monday morning to London for the opening of a Commonwealth Conference. The President very much wanted to entertain him, having been himself entertained at a memorable dinner in Australia only four months before. When Ron arrived at his office in the West Wing he found a telephone message telling him to go up to the private residence and wait for the President there.

  Lynne was sitting in the west hall. It was she who had sent down the telephone message. “Sit down,” she said. “Let me order you a whisky, you look as if you could use one.”

  She had a cast on her arm, a shallow red scrape covered her right cheek. She was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and a white cotton T-shirt lettered in blue: FIRST DAUGHTER. She picked up a telephone and, without his having responded to her suggestion, told the butler to bring in a glass of white wine and an Old Bushmills on the rocks.

  “Do you believe everything you read in the newspapers?” he asked wryly. A stack of newspapers lay on the floor beside her chair, and it was plain she had been reading the accounts of their accident.

  “I called three reporters this afternoon,” she said. “Mother suggested I do it. I told them you were not drunk.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I had to face a gaggle of them this afternoon.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “Doctor Sekulve”—the President’s personal physician—“suggested a session in the steam room and a light rubdown. I accepted the suggestion, went home and took a nap late this afternoon… You’re the one who got the worst of it—”

  “It wasn’t an accident, was it, Ron?”

  “I doubt it. It could have been a drunk, but I’m afraid it was a deliberate attempt to—”

  “To kill us?”

  “No. If they’d wanted to do that they would have done it. We were helpless.”

  “Where was that damn Fitch? Mother really gave it to him this morning. He said you drove so fast he couldn’t keep up with you. I called him a liar to his face.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He was very apologetic, but I thought it was an act, it was too smooth. I think he dropped back and made it possible for that van to ram us.”

  “It’s quite a situation. Using the powers your father gave me in the executive order I’ve now put the FBI to work investigating the Secret Service. That’s a hell of a note. The Secret Service protects me from the world, but who protects me from the Secret Service?”

  She showed him some of the newspapers that had come in that evening, including early editions of Monday morning papers. The story that he’d been drunk the previous night made the headlines of two of them. One columnist had picked up the reporter’s story that Ron had ordered the Secret Service car to drop back so he and Lynne could have privacy, that they’d been parked at the side of the road, in the dark, when the van came around the curve and hit them…

  The butler brought their drinks. He’d also, Ron was glad to see, put some cheese and crackers on the tray. He’d eaten almost nothing all day.

  Lynne tossed a newspaper across the room. “Nuts. Let’s talk about something else.” She kicked off her shoes and propped her bare feet on the ottoman in front of her chair, then began to talk about a movie that had opened the previous week to rave reviews.

  Ron, who had been in the private quarters many times, idly noted the furniture the Websters had brought from their Michigan home, to surround themselves with what was comfortable and familiar. They liked to live, he realized, in something of a clutter—their sitting room in the west hall was littered with untidy heaps of magazines and newspapers—and they did not receive visitors in their private rooms. That Ron was received there conferred a status on him that very few in
the White House enjoyed. Fritz Gimbel came there. Blaine had come there. Ron had begun to be invited there after he began to have frequent dates with Lynne.

  ***

  Both the President and his wife were clearly enjoying the ceremonial duties of their office. When they came to the west hall a little after ten-fifteen they were visibly up, smiling and chatty. The President wore a tuxedo, Catherine Webster wore a raspberry-colored silk gown. It had been prearranged, apparently, that Lynne would go to her sitting room when the President came to the west hall; she immediately got up, got a kiss from her mother and from the President, kissed Ron on the cheek and left. The President called the butler and ordered coffee and brandy. He sat down. Catherine sat beside him on a couch. Ron faced them from an overstuffed chair.

  “Neither of us for a moment believe you’d had too much to drink last night,” the President began. “I’m sorry to ask you to come here on a Sunday evening, but Catherine and I wanted to see you together, to assure you on that personally. We can cope with the lousy stories that are going around, and I think we should just put the accident thing behind us.”

  “I appreciate your saying that.”

  “It’s not so easy as that,” Catherine Webster said rather sharply. “Ron, I join Bob, of course, in telling you we continue to have complete confidence in you, both in your job and your friendship with Lynne. But I’m not so ready to put what Bob calls ‘the accident thing’ behind us. I’m not so sure it was an accident—”

  “Catherine…” the President protested gently.

  “Bob,” she said firmly, “Lynne was hurt last night. She could have been killed, so could Ron. The Secret Service failed to protect them. They were rammed by a truck and run off the road. Ron was not drunk, but immediately the stories began to circulate that he was. It’s perfectly obvious that the whole thing was arranged, and it comes very close to home. At the least, someone is trying to discredit Ron, have him removed from the investigation.”

  The President shook his head. “The news media will always jump on a story like this, and any little suggestion—by anyone—of excessive drinking or whatever else will be picked up and exaggerated and repeated ad nauseam, just because the President’s family is involved. We’re public property. Public opinion loves to build us up into demigods, then tear us down. Every President and every President’s family for two hundred years has had to live with that. It’s an American game, and Americans love to play it. It also sells news—”

  “But who’s been planting the stories?” Catherine demanded. “Lan was a womanizer for twenty years, and he pretty much managed to keep it quiet. The day after his death we begin to read in the newspapers and hear on the news broadcasts about all the little girls he slept with. Ron was not drunk last night, but this morning the papers say he was. Where’d they get the idea? Who planted the story? Bob, you appointed Ron to investigate Blaine’s death. You did it because you have confidence in him. It appears it’s in someone’s interest to undermine that confidence, to discredit him before the public. And as to the stories about Blaine… maybe it’s in someone’s interest to divert attention from the real issue, to divert our attention to a sideshow—”

  “But if we’re not diverted, what’s the difference? My attention’s not diverted. Is yours, Ron?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well…”

  The butler entered with the coffee, and Catherine stopped, took the tray of coffee and brandy and a plate of cookies. She poured coffee and brandy for the three of them.

  “Bob,” she repeated wearily, “Lynne was hurt last night. We’re lucky it wasn’t worse. Maybe it was an accident, I don’t think so. At least you have to admit the strong possibility that it was not an accident. If it wasn’t, then somebody is hitting awfully close to us, and I’m not ashamed to say I’m frightened. I think it’s time to quit playing games with this investigation and tell Ron the truth about our old friend Lansard Blaine.”

  Ron could not conceal his surprise as he put down his coffee cup.

  “I think,” the President said quietly, “we have given Ron all the authority he needs to conduct this investigation, and I think he has all the relevant facts—”

  “No, he hasn’t,” she said flatly.

  The President frowned. “Well…”

  “I won’t tell him,” Catherine said. “It has to be your decision.”

  “Catherine, I’d say you have made my decision for me. After what you’ve already said, how can I not tell Ron?”

  Catherine shrugged, looked away from the President and sipped the Courvoisier from her snifter.

  “Ron,” said the President, “bluntly said, maybe I had a motive to kill Blaine. Before I tell you what that reason was, I want you to summarize for me—and for Catherine, who hasn’t heard it—what you’ve found out about Blaine. Maybe you’ve found out more since you last reported to me. Anyway, whatever it is…”

  Ron put his cup and brandy snifter on the table by his chair. The President sat leaning forward on the couch, his hands clasped between his knees. Catherine Webster sat straight up, staring hard at Ron.

  “Short and not so sweet,” Ron said, “Blaine took bribes. He was influenced in the conduct of his office by payoffs he received from foreign governments and representatives of foreign economic interests—and maybe by payoffs from American interests too… I haven’t found out about that yet. He spent a great deal more money than he earned. Even so, I suspect there’s a Swiss numbered account with a very large amount of money in it. When it’s all traced out, it may be a major scandal. Or maybe, since he’s dead, it doesn’t have to be traced. Personally, I hope we don’t find he was killed because of one of these deals of his. But I’m afraid we will, and it will all come out…”

  “I’m not surprised,” Catherine said quietly.

  “He betrayed us, simple as that,” the President said, his voice tight.

  “And in more ways than one,” Catherine said. “You must tell Ron now.”

  It was a painful moment. The President and his wife for once did not hide their intense emotions, which made Ron acutely uncomfortable. They apparently felt compelled to tell him something neither of them really wanted him to know. The situation compelled it…

  The President sighed, nodded. “When I began to develop my ideas about the multilateral trade agreements—this was before I ran for President, when I was still in the Senate—Blaine made some halfhearted arguments against those ideas, all based on his old liberal adherence to the notion of absolute free trade, and then he conceded I was right. He conceded grudgingly maybe, but he conceded. And he helped me convert a loose body of ideas into a specific program. He was a part of it, Ron—I mean, a part of my program, one of the authors of it. He played a role in some of the early negotiations. He went along. If he didn’t really believe in what we were doing, at the very least he went along. Then, maybe a year ago, he began to talk against me. Privately, of course. In meetings. More often with me alone. He turned around and became an outspoken opponent within the Administration.

  “I didn’t know why. I suppose his old liberal conscience hurt. Maybe he got some criticism from the academic community. Anyway, I was willing to concede that his opposition was honest. Then it changed. He stopped reasoning with me and became emotional. He argued with me, vehemently. It was always in private, and as time went by he became downright irrational. He badgered me about it, every chance he had, every time we were alone. It was—”

  Catherine interrupted. “He began to talk about exemptions from the agreements. The exemptions he wanted didn’t make any sense. We had to suspect some motive other than reason and honest judgment. Looking back, it’s perfectly obvious. But you couldn’t believe it. The idea of the Secretary of State being influenced by… money, or whatever. We couldn’t believe it. Maybe we were too naive.”

  The President drank his brandy as Catherine talked, and when she stopped he shook his head and sighed again. “About ten days before Blaine was killed—in other words sho
rtly before Catherine and I went to Europe—there was an ugly scene between Blaine and myself. Ron, I don’t think we need to go into the details. I will tell you it was extremely painful. After it was over, it was impossible for him to continue to serve in my administration in any position of trust and confidence. And he knew it. When Ted O’Malley of CBS asked about rumors that Blaine was going to resign, he was onto something. Blaine was going to resign, he was on his way out—”

  “Tell Ron all of it, Bob,” Catherine said. “He probably knows most of what you’ve just said.”

  A quick nod. “What happened was that… well, there’s no other way to put it but to tell you that Blaine tried to blackmail us.” The President glanced at his wife. “In our background, Catherine’s and mine, there is something we would not want revealed. It has nothing to do with my qualifications to be President. It does not involve any crime or anything of that nature… but it would be extremely painful for us if it were revealed. Lansard Blaine had been our close personal friend for a very long time, and he knew about this thing. He threatened to tell it… to influence me to drop the multilateral trade agreements”—the President said it with grim anger—“he threatened to tell this thing that would hurt us so personally. It was done in a fit of temper, I suppose, and the next day he apologized and promised not to mention the matter again, but our confidence in him was completely, permanently destroyed. Neither of us would ever have trusted him again. He understood that. He offered to resign and I accepted his resignation immediately. Then he asked me for a little time to put a good face on it. He thought he could arrange a faculty appointment—maybe a chair in history—at some university if he had a few weeks to explore it. I agreed to give him a few weeks. But not more. He had to go.”

  From now on, Ron realized, the investigation took a new turn, more dangerous for him, more dangerous for the President. “How many people knew about this?”