Murder in the White House Page 4

  “Gib and I know each other,” Fairbanks said to the FBI man. “You and I haven’t met before. It’s essential that we understand each other, and I don’t know any other way for us to do that except to speak frankly. So, frankly speaking, I want you to understand that, for the course of this investigation, you work for me. You don’t work for the Director. You work for me, and so does every man assigned to this investigation. You don’t report to Curt Burke. You report to me. If Curt wants to know what you are doing, he’ll have to ask me. I know Curt’s not going to like it, but under Executive Order 2159, if I want Curt Burke to run an errand for me, I have the authority to send him out to run it. I didn’t ask for this authority and I’m not very comfortable with it, but I have it and I’m going to use it. I know this sounds arrogant, but I don’t know any other way for us to have a quick understanding—”

  “I have no problem with it,” said the Special Agent, “Director Burke understands I’m on special assignment.”

  Ron relaxed one degree. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t last long. Nothing would make me happier than to wrap this up in two or three days and be able to tell the President he can revoke Executive Order 2159.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not going to be that easy, Mr. Fairbanks,” said the Special Agent. “We’ve had a major effort underway for almost fifteen hours, and we have no leads.”

  “No fingerprints…? No…?”

  The Special Agent shook his head. He was a bulky, broad-shouldered man, strong of chin and jaw, middle-aged, handsome. “The fingerprints are a jumble. But we found none we could not identify. They are all of people who had valid reasons for being in the Lincoln Sitting Room—custodial staff, the President and Mrs. Webster, the Secretary of State himself… We vacuumed the room thoroughly. We’ve samples of hair, lint… all the usual stuff. Nothing suggestive. The preliminary autopsy report contains nothing special. We have questioned staff, the guards on duty… Nothing. We don’t know who was in the Lincoln Sitting Room with the Secretary. We have no idea.”

  “Whoever killed him,” said Jill Keller, “was on the second floor, entered the room, killed Blaine, walked out, and was noticed by no one. Isn’t White House security tighter than that?”

  Gibson Dunn answered that question. “Security is by area,” he said. “If you’re authorized to be in an area, and have entered it, you’re not likely to be challenged while you’re in it.”

  “The second floor?” she asked.

  “The second floor constitutes a special area,” said Dunn. “No matter what your authorization you would be checked before you could enter the second floor. The stairs and elevators are covered tightly. On the second floor, we cover the west end—the family quarters—more tightly than the east end—the Lincoln rooms and the Queen’s rooms. Except when official guests are in residence, those rooms are ordinarily deserted at night. Of course, Secretary Blaine did often use the Lincoln Sitting Room…”

  “Still,” said Ron, “more than a few people did have access to the second floor last night.”

  “Right,” said Dunn. “We’ve checked with all the people on duty last night. From ten to twelve last night a dozen people moved in and out of the family quarters—the President and his wife and daughter, the personal staff, Ron here, who escorted the President’s daughter from the Yellow Oval Room to her sitting room before he went to his office in the West Wing”—he paused and glanced at Ron with a wry smile—“the Secretary of State himself, Mr. Gimbel, plus the senators who met with the President in the Yellow Oval Room before they went with him to the Oval Office. A snack was carried to Miss Webster’s sitting room at 10:42. Mrs. Webster’s secretary came to her sitting room at 10:48, and sandwiches and beer were brought to them at 11:04. We know all that. Downstairs, we don’t know so much. The senators were in, and some representatives—some of them with staff. They were in the West Wing, mostly, but some of the staff were in the State Rooms, looking around while the meeting continued in the Oval Office. The kitchen staff, the custodial staff, the security staff… There were one hell of a lot of people in the White House last night.”

  “You can tell us that sandwiches and beer were taken to Mrs. Webster at 11:04, but you can’t tell us who was in the Lincoln Sitting Room between 10:30 and 11:30,” Jill Keller said.

  “That’s right. We protect the family more thoroughly than we do the house.”

  “Nevertheless,” Ron said through fingers interlaced in front of his mouth and chin, “we have a relatively small group of suspects to deal with, don’t we? A dozen people?”

  “Two dozen,” Dunn said, “assuming there wasn’t a crack in our security.”

  “All right. As many as two dozen could have been on the second floor last night and could have reached the Lincoln Sitting Room for a minute or so and left there without being challenged. That’s still at least limited odds for us, isn’t it?”

  “Motive,” said Locke, the FBI man. “The key is motive—”

  “Exactly,” said Ron. “Who of the two dozen had a motive? What was the motive? What was Blaine doing that gave someone reason—real or imagined—to kill him?”

  “I suggest two categories,” said Jill Keller. “Public and private. He was killed for a public reason having to do with his conduct as Secretary of State, or for a private reason having nothing to do with his public office.”

  “Considering the setting,” said Dunn, “the public motive seems more likely.”

  “I agree,” said Ron. “But we can’t assume anything.”

  “Where do we go from here, then?” asked Jill. “With all due respect to present company, it seems to me the detectives have done all the detective things, to no avail. Our killer was too smart to leave fingerprints, or samples of his hair, or fingernail parings or whatever. What’s next?”

  “Gabe Haddad is at the State Department,” said Ron, “picking up Blaine’s desk calendar and telephone log, and his secretary’s. I’ve ordered the White House telephone supervisor to prepare a list of every telephone call logged to or from the Secretary of State in the past six months. We’ve ordered copies of his home telephone long-distance bills. We’ll continue the check on the people who were in the White House last night. We have to build a file and keep cross-checking it. Somewhere it ought to show an anomaly.”

  Somewhere.

  Special Investigation Office, The West Wing, Wednesday, June 13, 6:00 PM

  L. Gabriel Haddad sat on the couch, facing Ron. He was the second Justice Department lawyer Ron had asked be assigned to him. Of Lebanese extraction, he had an olive complexion, piercing dark eyes, and a sharp, prominent nose. He was Ron’s age, thirty-four, and a graduate of New York University School of Law. Ron had borrowed him from the Civil Rights Division.

  Gabe had brought back from the State Department most of the documents Ron had asked for—the Secretary of State’s telephone log, his desk calendar, his appointments book, his secretary’s telephone log and calendar. He and Ron had been reading the names when someone from the White House News Office brought in the evening’s Star, marked with red pen. Ron had read, and now Gabe Haddad was reading, a byline story by Douglas Madison:

  History probably will remember Lansard Putnam Blaine as one of the ablest men ever to serve this nation as Secretary of State. The manner of his death will require the publication of certain facts about his life that might otherwise have remained known only to a few Washington insiders. The fact was, Secretary of State Blaine was a lover of good food, good wine—and complaisant young women.

  Especially complaisant young women. Lots of them.

  He had been long divorced, and certainly he was entitled to the company of young women. It will be remembered, however, that at the time of his Senate confirmation three years ago a few questions were raised about indiscreet episodes in the past life of Professor Lansard Blaine. It was said in Ann Arbor that Professor Blaine rarely slept alone for long.

  The same has been said in Washington.

  A regular a
t Le Lion d’Or, where he is remembered for invariably paying his checks with cash, never by credit card, Secretary of State Blaine never dined alone. He dined only rarely in male company. A succession of anonymous and attractive young women shared intimate, hand-holding dinners with him, month after month. It was a point with the Secretary of State, apparently, never to introduce these young women to acquaintances who happened past his table. Since the shy young women were less than femmes fatales, they inspired little curiosity—only a little wry amusement.

  Inquiry at the State Department today, however, produced the identity of one of them. We will not publish her name, but it is commonly understood that a 23-year-old woman in the Information Management Section was a recent Bagatelle companion of the late Secretary of State—more than once—and spent the night, again, more than once, in the Secretary’s Watergate apartment.

  This is not speculation or rumor—nor is it idle gossip. Secretary Blaine’s private and personal life may well not have been the origin of the motive for his murder. We are not suggesting he was killed by a jealous lover or by a woman scorned. The investigators, however, will have to look into this element of the story—unless they come up with the killer very soon…

  “I heard this story over there,” said Gabe Haddad.

  “Who is the girl?” asked Ron.

  “Her name is Judy Pringle. She’s a system designer in the Information Management Section. She didn’t come in today. Called in sick.”

  “Would it be worth talking to her?” Ron asked.

  “I suppose we have to.”

  “I’m already getting to hate this job,” Ron said, shaking his head.

  “Her name is on his telephone log,” said Gabe. “Did you notice? His secretary noted calls from her and calls to her. Apparently she could call right in.”

  Ron nodded. “Efficient secretary. If she kept—”

  “She’s smart, and good,” said Gabe. “She kept a tight office. She maintained his telephone log and appointments calendar with more thoroughness than he probably knew. Could be a break for us.”

  “Did you question her?”

  “No. She was shaken. We’ll have to do it later.”

  Ron glanced down the final page of the telephone log the secretary had kept for Blaine. “Most of these names are what you would expect,” he said. “People who had obvious reason to call the Secretary of State. Some of them—”

  “We should check every name on there,” Haddad said.

  “Which should give our FBI people plenty to keep them busy,” said Ron, feeling increasingly uneasy about going through the “effects” of a man, the record of so much of his life. Ghoulish, but, he reminded himself, unavoidable.

  The thought didn’t wash away the uneasy feeling, though.

  2

  The Special Investigation Office, The West Wing, Wednesday, June 13, 9:00 PM

  Before he closed the office for the night Ron checked with Honey Taylor, the President’s personal and confidential secretary, to see if the President wanted a report before he left. Honey had left for the evening, but her assistant, Claire Bond, said the President had gone up to dinner with his family and had left instructions that he did not want to talk to anyone except in an emergency.

  Jill and Gabe had been with him until eight. Gibson Dunn had left only at eight-thirty. Locke, the FBI man, had gone back to the FBI building; but Ron had spoken to him on the telephone and had told him to pick up copies of the Secretary of State’s telephone logs and the other documents and to begin checking the listed names. After eight-thirty, Ron had spent half an hour reading a file of clippings sent in by the News Office. He was interrupted once: by a doctor at Bethesda who called to say the final autopsy report would be ready in the morning.

  A discreet rap on his door. It was one of the new secretaries temporarily assigned to him by Fritz Gimbel—a young black woman, a Mrs. Walsh if he had heard her name correctly. “There’s someone waiting to see you, Mr. Fairbanks. She asked if you were still here and if she could see you.”

  Ron checked his watch. It had been a long day, but he buttoned his collar and pulled his necktie tight. “Who is it?”

  “A Miss Kalisch, sir. She works for Mr. Eiseman.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know her. Well, I’ll see her for a moment. Are you waiting for me to go before you do?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, thanks. Why don’t you go now? I’ll only be here a few more minutes.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Fairbanks.”

  The Miss Kalisch who had waited to see him was a diminutive young woman who hesitated at the door. Only when he motioned to her did she come in, and only when he indicated a chair facing his desk did she sit down. “I waited for the end of the day to try to see you,” she said. “I wanted to see you alone.”

  He had switched off all the lights in his office but the lamp on his desk, as he often did when he was tired; and the light from the shaded lamp fell on her only from the shoulders down, leaving her face in the shadow. He could see that she wore glasses and that her hair was tied back, otherwise that her face was plain and unblemished; but the light was not enough for him to read her expression. He saw her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

  “About the investigation?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well…?” He tipped back his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. His own face was only half in the light.

  “Mr. Blaine…” she began in a low voice. “Last night… he was talking on the telephone. I read in the papers that he was talking on the telephone when he was killed.”

  “Go on.”

  “He was talking to me.”

  Ron tipped his chair forward again and, leaning over his desk, peered up at her from beneath the shade of the lamp. Her shadowed face was solemn, apprehensive. “Did you hear…?”

  She shook her head. “I thought he hung up on me.” She lowered her face for a moment and sighed. “I think I heard him die,” she whispered.

  Ron’s immediate reaction was to be skeptical. “Miss… uh, Kalisch,” he said. “I would like to turn on this Dictaphone and make a tape of our conversation—”

  “Before you do…” she said with indrawn breath. “I… I want to know what you have to make public.”

  “Since I don’t know what you’re going to tell me, I don’t know what I have to make public.”

  “Do you know why he was talking to me on the telephone?”

  “I’m beginning to have an idea, but I’d rather you told me.”

  She drew her chair closer to his desk. Her face was in the light. “He was calling me to tell me when he would come home. I was in his apartment. When you have it gone over, you’ll find my fingerprints on everything. I slept there last night, even after he was dead, because I didn’t know. I thought he had just hung up. He sometimes did when he was interrupted—”

  “You were living with him?”

  “No, Not really. Not all the time. I… It has to come out, doesn’t it? There’s no way to keep it secret.”

  Ron shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t promise to keep it a secret, and I can’t vouch for what someone else will find out and publish.”

  “I’m divorced, Mr. Fairbanks,” she said quietly, grimly. “I have custody of my little daughter, but my ex-husband would like to take her away from me. Lan and I were discreet, but—”

  “Lan?”

  “Lansard Blaine.”

  Ron nodded. “Well… may I turn on the tape?”

  “Yes.”

  He took a tape cartridge from his center drawer and inserted it in the machine. He switched the Dictaphone to “Conference” and laid the microphone on his desk. “Let’s start with your name.”

  “My name is Marya Kalisch,” she said reluctantly.

  “It is… a little after nine, and this is Wednesday, June 13,” said Ron. “Miss Kalisch, will you say for the record that you are talking with me voluntarily and have consented to my making a tape?”
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  “It is voluntary,” she said. “And I have consented.”

  He heard in her speech the trace of an accent. She adjusted her glasses and clasped her hands in front of her on the edge of his desk.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Tell me where you work.”

  “I work here in the West Wing of the White House,” she said. “I am an administrative assistant to Alfred Eiseman, the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs. Among other things, I do some translation for Mr. Eiseman. My parents are Russian, and I am fluent in Russian.”

  “Tell me about your relationship with the Secretary of State.”

  She sighed, audibly enough that it would be on the tape. “I met him one day about six months ago when he asked me about a word in a translation, whether the Russian word could have been translated in a slightly different sense. We talked. Later he would stop in to say hello when he was in the White House. Then he asked me to dinner. And since about four months ago I have… had an intimate relationship with him. He stayed overnight in my apartment a few times. Then I began to go to his.”

  Ron nibbled the hair on the back of his hand as he listened to her too intimate recital. “How old are you, Miss Kalisch?”

  “I am twenty-seven.”

  “You were in his apartment at the Watergate last night?”

  “He called me during the afternoon and told me to go there. I had—have—a key. I put my child to bed, left her with a babysitter, and went to Lan’s place about nine o’clock. I prepared a snack in the kitchen and chilled a bottle of wine. That is the way it was with us—late suppers… He called about ten to say he would be late, maybe as late as midnight. It wasn’t unusual. I watched television while I waited. He called again… the call that was interrupted. He said he had been in a meeting with the President and was ready now to leave the White House. He asked me what I was wearing—I mean, was I wearing something… intimate? I said I was. Then I heard him… I suppose you could say, sort of, grunt. Then the line went dead.”