Murder in the White House Read online

  “Besides Catherine and myself—and now you,” the President said, “I guess it’s just Fritz Gimbel and the Attorney General. Fritz and me and the Attorney General… we discussed it—”

  “And Lynne,” said his wife. “We talked about it over dinner, and Lynne heard. In fact, we considered not telling her, but we decided to. She had to know why we were so upset. Anyway, Blaine was a special friend of hers and she had to know why he was leaving and why we weren’t friends anymore. Naturally it upset her.”

  “Yes,” the President said, “it was a cruel thing to do, I wish we hadn’t.” He glanced at Catherine, as though to remind her of his original feelings.

  Ron got up to leave, thoroughly embarrassed now by such a personal exchange.

  6

  Office of the Attorney General, Monday, June 18, 8:45 AM

  Ron lifted his coffee cup from the tray on the Attorney General’s desk. They were having breakfast in the Attorney General’s office. Attorney General Charles Sherer had eaten little of the scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon on his tray. Now he leaned back in his tall leather chair, a cup of coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and regarded Ron with a wry smile.

  “I know it’s a tough damn question,” Ron said as he sipped from his cup. “I don’t expect an answer, just a reaction.”

  The Attorney General was sixty-two, one of the oldest members of the Webster Administration and one of the most experienced. He had been a deputy assistant attorney general as long ago as the Johnson Administration; he had been special counsel in the Carter White House; and in the years between his tours of duty with the government he had practiced law with the Washington firm of Wiley & Salmon. He was an old Washington hand, and he maintained—at least in Ron’s judgment—a degree of separation from the Webster Administration. Like Ron, he withheld something of himself. Ron trusted him and over the years had come to him for advice a number of times.

  Attorney General Sherer reached now to the big ashtray on his desk and ground out his cigarette. “I suppose she did,” he said. “Sometime or other…”

  Ron had just asked him if he thought Catherine Webster had possibly had an affair with Lansard Blaine, and, more important, if that was what Blaine had threatened to reveal to embarrass the President. “But it hasn’t been recently, not since they’ve been in the White House. At least I don’t think so.”

  Ron thought of how Catherine Webster had said she felt someone was creating a diversion with the publicity about Blaine’s social life, and how that would seem to have argued against her as a suspect. But it might also have been a clever diversion of her own… especially if she retained strong feelings about Blaine.

  …No, the Attorney General was saying, “I suspect it was something more damaging than that… I think they should tell you—”

  “Lynne…?”

  The Attorney General shrugged. “Could be.” He paused for a moment. “The day it happened, the day Blaine threatened blackmail, I was called to the Oval Office. When I got there the President was with Gimbel, and the two of them were as angry as I have ever seen two men. They were so angry, Ron, it makes them suspects, yes, either one of them, even the President… especially the President… was capable of killing Blaine… at least that afternoon. They didn’t tell me what it was Blaine had threatened, only that he had threatened to publicize something that would be personally devastating to the Websters. They wanted to talk about getting rid of Blaine, how to get rid of him. They wanted to know if we could hold a prosecution over his head to keep him quiet.”

  “Prosecution for what?”

  “Malfeasance in office. They said they knew something about him—”

  “He took bribes,” Ron said.

  “Yes. They told me. They suspected it, they thought evidence could be found.”

  Ron shook his head. “Then why in God’s name hadn’t he fired him?”

  The Attorney General shrugged. “After a couple of days the President called and told me Blaine had offered to resign. I assumed he had fought fire with fire—had threatened to prosecute him for taking bribes unless he kept his mouth shut and got out.”

  “The President told me Blaine had a change of heart and offered his resignation.”

  “Well, maybe…”

  “Do you really think the President was involved in his death?”

  “Do you? You’re the official investigator.”

  Ron shook his head. “But I think Gimbel could have been.”

  The Attorney General, a ruddy-faced man whose fierce black eyebrows sometimes all but hid the upper rims of his eyeglasses, threw up his hands. “Despite what I’ve just said, I find it difficult to believe either of them did it… Bob Webster is a well-organized personality. He’s smart. He’s in control of himself. If he had killed Blaine—it’s really a farfetched notion—he’d have done it differently, and somewhere else. Fritz Gimbel is easy to underestimate. But he’s surely too smart to kill a rat for his master and leave the carcass on his master’s doorstep.”

  “Dammit, I’m still betting he’s involved some way,” Ron said.

  “Blaine was corrupt, you’ve identified one man who was paying him bribes. There’s your lead, in my judgment. Maybe it does come back to Gimbel some way. Maybe it even comes back to the President. But there’s your lead. Put the pressure on that fellow Jeremy Johnson. Put it on the others, if you can find them. That’s my advice to you.”

  Ron heard it, nodded, and at the same time wondered if perhaps the Attorney General, like himself, just couldn’t face the possibility of the unacceptable… that someone on the White House staff… in the White House… was somehow responsible…

  Special Investigation Office, The White House, Monday, June 18, 10:00 AM

  Jill Keller was in Ron’s office. Walter Locke, the FBI man, sat beside her on the couch reviewing once more Blaine’s telephone log. He’d identified several more of the names that initially had escaped identification.

  “But nothing on Philippe Grand,” he was saying. “I’m betting it’s a code name.”

  “Which would make it all the more interesting,” Ron said.

  “Yes. Inoguchi Osanaga… he’s interesting too. He covers himself too well. All of us leave a trail—bills, checks, tax returns, medical records, credit applications, correspondence… we leave a trail of paper behind us—perfectly innocent, usually, but a record that tells who we are and where we go and what we do. It’s usually nothing that needs to be covered, we don’t worry about it. But not Osanaga. He does business in cash. He even pays his apartment rent with cash. He gets no mail but ads. His trail is too clean.”

  “Not much of a reason to suspect someone,” Jill put in.

  “Pick him up and bring him in,” Ron said.

  “He’ll squawk, he’s a heavyweight.”

  “Treat him with elaborate courtesy,” Ron said.

  Locke nodded. “I’ll make a call.”

  “Next,” said Jill. “I think we’d better take a look at this.” She handed Ron a newspaper. “Have you seen the morning’s offering from New York?”

  THE PLAYBOY BLAINE

  $$$?

  By Barbara Dash

  While Secretary of State Lansard Blaine was alive, he managed somehow—probably with the cooperation of a lot of us in the news business—to keep quiet that he was a high liver, devoted to the good life in many forms. If we knew how many young women passed through his life, we helped him maintain his privacy; after all, the day has long since passed when there was anything unusual in even a top government official enjoying the company of a variety of playmates. If we saw that he lived well, we smiled and shrugged.

  Perhaps we were wrong. Now that the Secretary is dead, facts have begun to emerge which suggest that Blaine spent money far beyond what he earned as Secretary of State or what he could have earned and accumulated as a professor of diplomatic history.

  Item: In the Secretary of State’s office at the State Department a Louise Nevelson wood sculpture hangs on the w
all. It was purchased by Blaine with personal, not government, funds. The price? The gallery where he bought it in New York reluctantly disclosed to this reporter that he paid $57,000 for it in April of last year.

  Item: In the late Secretary’s Watergate apartment hangs a painting by Symbari, one of the artist’s “Crazy Horse” series. Blaine acquired it within the last six months. We have not yet learned where he bought it, or for how much, but art experts tell us its market value six months ago exceeded $20,000.

  “Damn,” Ron said. “What else?” He scanned the article. The writer went into Blaine’s furniture, the wines in his rack, his clothes, his tabs at expensive Washington restaurants, his resort vacations… his lifestyle. She concluded that all this could not have been supported by his salary and other visible earnings such as the royalties on his books. So where did he get the money to live “like a sheik”?

  “We don’t have much time, Ron,” Jill said. “There’s already competition for the evidence. Our investigation is going to be smothered in a hundred unofficial ones. From now on it’s going to be tougher and tougher to get anybody to talk, and whoever we’re after will have a blueprint of what to expect and how to protect themselves from it…”

  Ron looked at Locke. “Get me Osanaga,” he said.

  Special Investigation Office, The Justice Department, Monday, June 18, 1:30 PM

  Inoguchi Osanaga was tall for a Japanese. He sat facing Ron across the desk in the shabby Justice Department office, where Ron had told the FBI to bring him. From the outset of the interview it was apparent to Ron that he had not frightened Osanaga by having the FBI pick him up and bring him to the Justice Department. Osanaga was angry, curt. He did not withhold answers but he volunteered nothing.

  “Did you know Blaine? Do you deny you ever talked to him?”

  “I do not,” Osanaga said impassively.

  “In what capacity did you talk to him?”

  “As a journalist, interviewing him for my newspaper.”

  “Did you call him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he call you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Often?”

  “Yes.”

  Perhaps fifty years old, Osanaga showed gray at the temples, his face was smooth and flat, his small black eyes communicated nothing. It was difficult to imagine him laughing.

  “What was the chief topic of your interviews with the Secretary of State?”

  “The multilateral trade agreements. They will have a profound influence on the economy of my country—”

  “You wrote articles based on your interviews with Blaine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you provide me copies of those articles?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you ever give Blaine a gift?”

  “On a number of occasions, after he had been particularly courteous to me, returning my calls, giving me information, I sent the Secretary a bottle of plum wine.”

  Ron could not help smiling. “Did you ever buy him dinner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Other entertainment?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever give him money?”

  “No.”

  Ron picked up a pencil and for a moment tapped it on the yellow legal pad that lay before him on the scarred old desk, then dropped it, regretting he had shown Osanaga any sign of frustration. “Mr. Osanaga,” he said slowly, “the United States government is under no illusions about who you are and why you are in this country. You are not a journalist. You are the confidential representative of certain large Japanese corporations, and your function in the United States is to lobby for their interests, to influence the U.S. government to adopt policies advantageous to the companies you represent. Specifically, you would like to block the multilateral trade agreements that would exclude the products of your clients from the U.S. market. You tried to influence the Secretary of State to oppose the President. You try to influence members of the Senate to vote against the treaties when they come up for ratification. That’s why you had repeated meetings with Blaine, not to interview him for Honshu Shinbum. We know this.”

  “I had supposed you did.”

  “Did you happen to read the Barbara Dash column this morning?”

  Osanaga nodded.

  “We know where he got the money.”

  Osanaga nodded again. “Indeed?”

  “So I ask you again, did you give Blaine money?”

  “Mr. Fairbanks, if you are suggesting I made an improper gift to a high official of your government, you are in effect accusing me of a crime. I shall have to consult legal counsel.”

  “Mr. Osanaga—”

  Ron was interrupted by a tap on the office door. It opened, and Gabe Haddad gestured that he should come outside. Ron excused himself and went out.

  “Telephone,” said Gabe. “Senator Finlay wants to talk to you.”

  Senator Walter Finlay, Republican from Indiana, was a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a bitterly outspoken critic of President Webster’s multilateral trade agreements.

  “H’lo, Ron,” said the Senator. (First name, like an overanxious insurance salesman: the old political game. Ron had met the man only once.) “Y’ feelin’ okay after that accident?”

  “Yes, Senator, thanks. Just a few bruises.”

  “Well, take care of yourself. Listen, Ron, I understand you had the FBI pick up Inoguchi Osanaga this morning. Is that right?”

  “I just want to ask him a few questions. I’m talking with him now.”

  “I don’t see the connection, Ron. Surely he’s not suspected of having anything to do with Blaine’s murder—”

  “Not really”—he tried to sound off-handed—“I just need some information he may have.”

  “I see… well, I just wanted to put in a good word for the man, Ron. I’ve gotten to know him a little. I’d say he’s a pretty straight fellow. You know, you can scare the devil out of a fellow like that, bringin’ him in, questioning him. He doesn’t know our way of doing things, of course. I just wanted to put in a word for him.”

  “He’s all right, Senator, and I can assure you he’s not scared.”

  “You gotta remember, Ron—you being fairly new at this and all—that you can embarrass our government pretty bad if you’re not very careful, hauling in a citizen of another country like that. I hope you’re being very careful. You know, too, there’s some question about how much power you’ve really got under that Executive Order. I mean, how much authority the President can give that way. I wouldn’t want you to get your tail in a crack, Ron.”

  “I’ll remember the advice, Senator. I appreciate your calling.”

  “Okay, son… and you be sure you don’t have any hidden injuries from that accident. I’d get myself X-rayed if I were you.”

  When Ron sat down again behind the desk in his temporary office he was still unhappy about Osanaga… the man had revealed nothing new, but at least picking him up had smoked out Finlay. The Secretary may have been on the side of his clients, worked hard to earn his pay, but in the end he was getting panicky… and who really trusts a man who takes bribes? Sooner or later he might turn on you… blackmail… The net wasn’t closing, though, it was widening…

  “Mr. Osanaga. You will persist, I take it, in your denial that you paid Blaine money?”

  Osanaga nodded. “If you have evidence that I did, I assume you will present it.”

  “And of course you know nothing about Blaine’s murder.”

  “I was at a dinner with two members of Congress at the time the newspapers say the Secretary of State was murdered. Indeed, Mr. Fairbanks, I have never had the honor of being inside the White House.”

  “And you have no idea who might have killed him, or why?”

  “No. I have no idea. None at all.”

  ***

  “Finlay…” Ron said to Gabe Haddad and Jill Keller. They had brought him a ham salad sandwich, a Coke, and an apple, which he now sat munching
. “That old son of a bitch—”

  “If Osanaga wasn’t paying Blaine, he has for sure been paying Finlay,” put in Gabe. “A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee… it fits.”

  “Be careful,” Jill said. “There is, after all, some honest opposition to the trade agreements.”

  “Not in the person of Senator Walter Finlay,” Ron said. “Incidentally, has either of you that list of the friends of Martha Kingsley?”

  “I’ve got it,” Gabe said, reaching into his open briefcase. He handed the list to Ron. “The Senator is on the list.”

  The list was the one the FBI had compiled of the men who’d been seen in the company of Martha Kingsley. “I thought I remembered Finlay on here… Finlay and Blaine…”

  “The fascinating Mrs. Kingsley looks like an important link,” Gabe said.

  Ron nodded. “And here’s an old friend of mine. I didn’t pay much attention before—it doesn’t make sense. Paul-Victor Chamillart. I think I should talk to our friend Paul…”

  La Bagatelle, Monday, June 18, 9:00 PM

  “Mon ami! Comment ça va?” Ron laughed. He hadn’t seen Paul-Victor Chamillart for two years, but Chamillart had not changed. Preceded by his great Gallic nose, his short, fat, smelly French cigarette dangling in the corner of his mouth, Chamillart ambled carelessly into the restaurant, straight past Ron, overlooking him and his outstretched hand.

  “Ah, Ron-ald, good to see you.”

  Chamillart was a lawyer at the French Embassy. During the days when he was practicing law in Washington Ron had lived in the same apartment building with Chamillart. They’d become friends, had played handball together, gone to a few plays, gallery openings, had eaten together often in restaurants Chamillart always criticized with the fervor of an offended gourmet. They saw each other less frequently after each moved out of the building, and since Ron had been at the White House it had been difficult for him to find the time for the long restaurant evenings Chamillart especially loved.

  Their table was waiting. Paul-Victor ordered a half bottle of champagne as an apéritif.