Murder in the White House Read online

  Ron stayed. He saw what they did. He reported to the President.

  He was even obliged to view the ghastly remains of Donald Hooper. He was present when they searched his luggage: everything personal of his that was in Chicago. He was present when a Secret Service agent telephoned the man’s wife and told her her husband had attempted to assassinate the President and had been killed. He watched and listened for the required twenty-four hours, then hurried back to Washington.

  Hooper, they said, was mentally deranged. He had fired at the President with a .357 magnum revolver, a weapon with which he had no experience and which was unsuited at best for a long-range shot. He had acted on an impulse apparently formed no more than forty-eight hours in advance and had traveled to Chicago from Wichita with the newly purchased pistol in his luggage. He had talked of suicide in recent weeks, it was reported from Wichita. He must have been, everyone concluded, insane.

  Ron thought otherwise. Hooper was employed by a Wichita corporation that manufactured a line of 35 mm single-lens reflex cameras under the name Digiflex: a high-quality, high-price line, matching excellent optics with sophisticated electronics. The line was new, but it had begun to compete successfully in many markets with the Japanese lines that had long dominated the high-price camera market. Hooper was a high-school graduate who had educated himself to be a skilled technician for Digiflex. Under the multilateral trade agreements proposed, this kind of camera was assigned to the Japanese. Japanese cameras were to have tariff concessions—in return for, among other things, similar concessions for American-built cars. Digiflex faced economic disaster. Hooper faced unemployment.

  Hooper was a prospective victim of the multilateral trade agreements. The jobs of tens of thousands of other Americans might be made more secure by the agreements, and the overall prosperity of the country might be improved; but for this American and his company the proposed agreements would be a disaster.

  No one covered up the fact that Hooper might have tried to kill the President out of frustration with the consequences of the trade-agreement proposals. It was just too easy to reach another conclusion. But Ron suspected he saw in this one man a manifestation of the kind of intense disruptions and conflicts the agreements were going to create. They would trade some people’s prosperity for that of others—for the greater good of the greatest number, some of the Administration loyalists would put it.

  Don Hooper, he felt, had decided otherwise. And it was not unreasonable to suspect he was not alone.

  Jill Keller’s Apartment, Friday, June 15, 12:15 AM

  Ron, shirtsleeves rolled up, tie and collar loosened, sat alone on Jill’s couch, idly swirling the scotch in a glass and frowning over his thoughts.

  She returned. “Everything’s okay,” she said. She had heard a sound in her children’s bedroom and had gone in to check them. “I’m sorry I had to come home,” she said. “It was a good evening in every sense, but—”

  “I have no right to complain.”

  “The babysitter—”

  “No problem, Jill. It was time for Chris to be on his way, anyhow.”

  She sat beside him on the couch and picked up her own glass of scotch.

  “Do you remember what I told you?” he asked. “I mean, when you said you had to know everything, that you wouldn’t work for me if you weren’t told everything. Remember, I said I wanted to make a record of every interview, every thought.”

  “I remember.”

  He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m going to talk right now. I’m going to tell you what I’m thinking. And I’m not going to make a record. This is just speculation. It’s just something that has to be brought out. I’m not sure we even need to tell Gabe.”

  “Well…?”

  “There was talk the President had asked Blaine to resign. The rumor was denied, but it persisted, Marya Kalisch says he told her he was thinking of resigning. He—”

  “The President told the press conference Blaine had spoken to him about resigning.”

  “Yes, but he insisted it would have been voluntary. Anyway… there was… I’m sure I saw it, there was real tension, something was wrong. I know the Websters pretty well, I think. I knew Blaine. I’d seen them together many times. The other night, the night when Blaine was killed, there was something unspoken between them, some”—he shook his head—“tension. I even saw it between Blaine and Mrs. Webster. They were great friends but—”

  “Is this just a feeling, or did you see something specific?”

  He shook his head. “The President and Blaine… there was always a degree of what I suppose you could call competition between them, Blaine was, after all, Mrs. Webster’s friend from the University of Michigan faculty, and the President, I always supposed, made Blaine his adviser and Secretary of State because he respected his judgment, not because he liked him all that much. You had to wonder ii he didn’t suspect his wife’s friendship with Blaine was maybe a little too close. He called Blaine professor sometimes, and it wasn’t exactly in an affectionate way… you could hear in his voice that he was putting Blaine in his place… a subordinate, an academic abruptly elevated to a position of power. And Blaine… Blaine tended to show some contempt for anyone he didn’t consider his intellectual equal, which pretty much included everybody. You couldn’t think the two of them liked each other very much if you saw them together. I always thought maybe the President considered Blaine the way I did… I often wanted to tell him to go to hell… I think he and I might have at least gotten on better after something like that cleared the air between us—”

  “Tuesday night…?” Jill prompted.

  “The facade was down. Blaine was uneasy. It was as if he had somehow overstepped his bounds and been called down for it. And the President, I thought, was maybe a little pleased for having called him down and having settled something between them.”

  “Speculation,” Jill said, and sipped her scotch.

  Ron shook his head firmly. “The tension was there. It was palpable. Maybe it had something to do with Lynne. Mrs. Webster didn’t seem to like the way she was rubbing Blaine’s shoulders… although come to think of it I’d seen her do it before…”

  “Do you suppose Blaine had made a pass at Lynne?”

  “Well, I could see the way the President and Mrs. Webster watched Blaine let Lynne massage his shoulders. They didn’t like it. They’d not minded before, but they clearly did now…”

  “Do you think anyone else was aware of this… tension?”

  “Gimbel. No one else.”

  “Well, do you really think it possible the President killed Blaine, or somehow conspired in it?”

  Ron tipped his glass and gulped the last of his drink. “No. No, I don’t think that. And I’m not just being loyal—”

  “Ron…” she said quietly. “You’ve got to protect yourself. I’ve said this before and now I’ll say it again… it’s possible he may have set you up to take a fall for him—”

  “If I just had some hard evidence…” He pressed his forehead with his clenched fist. “Right now all we’ve got is theories… suspicions… no evidence to back any of them. We’re no damn closer to knowing who killed Blaine than we were Wednesday morning.” He stopped, his face creased with deep lines. “I can’t seem to—”

  “Ron…”

  “If we could just… can’t you see? If—”

  “Ron. It’s after midnight, you’re exhausted…”

  “Oh, right… I’m sorry, I’ll go—”

  “No, not what I meant.” She put her hand on his shoulder and pulled him toward her. “Come here. Put your head down. Relax, for God’s sake.”

  Awkwardly, a little embarrassed, he put his head down on her breasts, where she guided him. He closed his eyes but felt her hand moving and opened his eyes to see that she was unbuttoning her blouse. She pressed his head down so that his cheek was against one of her full, soft breasts.

  “Ron,” she whispered, “you have another day to face tomorrow, and
another one after that… you’ve got to take care of yourself too. You don’t have to leave here tonight, but if you want to, just sleep a little now and I’ll wake you up.”

  He reached for her hand.

  “Thank you, lady. You are, to coin a phrase, just what the doctor ordered.”

  4

  Ronald Fairbanks’s Apartment, Friday, June 15, 8:30 AM

  Ron let Johnson’s telephone ring, suspecting he was at home but in bed. He sat with the telephone in his left hand, pressed to his ear; with his right he sipped from a glass of orange juice. He would let it ring twenty times. The Washington Post lay on his breakfast table. He had made coffee and had a croissant, warmed slightly in his microwave oven, with good English marmalade. He sat there in a short black-and-white silk robe and a pair of shorts. Ten rings, or twelve. If Jeremy Johnson didn’t answer he would call Locke and have him put a couple of agents out to find him.

  “Hullo?” A dulled voice exhaled.

  “Jeremy Johnson?”

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “My name is Ronald Fairbanks. I’m Special Counsel to the President, and I’m in charge of the Blaine murder investigation.”

  “Hullo, Jamie, or Georgia, or whoever it is. It ain’t funny, you know. You’ve woke me up in the middle of the night practically, for naught. Goo-by, and be a good chap and don’t ring me again.”

  “This is serious, Mr. Johnson. I need to talk to you.”

  “Wha’d you say your name was?” His cockney accent was thick.

  Ron repeated it, and his position with the President.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Let me suggest you try—”

  “All right, all right, you’re the special… whatever. Investigation of the murder of Blaine, you say.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what do I know about that?”

  “I’d like to find out.”

  “Nothing.”

  “I need to see you just the same. This morning.”

  “Out of the question. I’m not coming into town this morning—”

  “I can have you brought in.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I can have you picked up and brought in.”

  “Wha’? By the police?”

  “By the FBI.”

  “Now, see here! What is this? Maybe I’d better talk to my counselor first.”

  “Well, that’s your right. You can bring him with you. But I want to see you in my office at the Justice Department this morning—”

  “This morning? It’s…”

  “It’s eight-thirty. Let’s say eleven?”

  “What’s your name again, one more time?”

  “Fairbanks. Ronald Fairbanks.”

  “Bloody fancy name, that. All right, Ronald… see you at bloody eleven.”

  Special Investigation Office, The Justice Department, Friday, June 15, 10:30 AM

  “I’ve got another one here you’d better know about,” Walter Locke was saying.

  “You worry me,” Ron said. “I wonder what you have in those files on me.”

  “Well, you work for the government… or did the Secretary of State…”

  “A lot of personal stuff,” Ron said. “I don’t know if—”

  “It may help us find out who killed him. Remember that.”

  Ron glanced at Jill Keller, who sat to one side, taking in this sparring between Ron and the Special Agent. They were talking about the women in Blaine’s life. Ron had been surprised to learn how much the FBI did in fact know about Blaine’s personal life, and it troubled him that the FBI should know so much. He put aside his feelings for now. He had no other choice… “All right, who else?” he asked.

  “A woman named Martha Kingsley. She’s the wife of a naval officer. We have a separate file on her… separate from the file on Blaine. She worked once as an aide to Senator Killbane, which is why the file was open. There’s reason to think—it can’t be proved—that she once used confidential information from the files of the Armed Services Committee, gave it to a defense contractor, probably for money. There was a leak, and she’s the most likely source of it. She moves around. Her husband is on sea duty much of the time, and when he’s away—sometimes even when he’s not—she is seen in the company of members of Congress, members of the Administration, prominent lobbyists, wealthy men… She’s an exceptionally good-looking woman. She’s Washington-wise. If she slept with the Secretary of State, she got some advantage from it, you may be sure.”

  “Do you know he slept with her?” Jill asked.

  “We know he visited her apartment,” said Locke. “At night.”

  “You know too much for my comfort,” said Ron.

  “We don’t know anything about you that need make you uncomfortable,” said Locke, this time smiling openly.

  “You’ve looked.”

  “I’ve looked.”

  “If you read history,” said Ron with a shrug, “you know that the files of any police organization, anywhere, contain a lot of… gossip.”

  “You can’t keep it out,” said Locke.

  ***

  Johnson was late. He said he had reached the Justice Department building by eleven, but he swore no one knew where Fairbanks had an office—and some swore he had none, had no connection with the Department—and it had taken half an hour to find the Special Investigation Office.

  “I require information, not punctuality,” said Ron. “Let me introduce Mrs. Keller. She’s a lawyer with the Justice Department, assigned to temporary duty with me.”

  “It’s right Christian of you not to complain about my bein’ late,” Jeremy Johnson said.

  He glanced around the shabby temporary office, sat down. He was a young man, maybe thirty-one or -two, tall, broad-shouldered, and roughly handsome. His thick sandy hair hung errant across his forehead. His jaw was broad and strong, and his face was flushed. He had brought the butt of a cigarette in his hand, and as soon as he was seated he crushed it out and took another from a pack. The aroma of whisky was discernible on his breath.

  “You knew Lansard Blaine,” Ron said. He did not intend to give Johnson a chance to balance himself. “How did you come to know him?”

  Johnson shrugged. “Ah… well, I represent my company in the States, I see a lot of people. I met your Secretary of State at some party somewhere—I don’t remember where. We struck up an acquaintance.” He shrugged again. Ron noted that his East End accent had diminished.

  “Did you know him well?”

  “No, not very well. He was, after all, your Secretary of State.”

  “Did you know him socially or in business?”

  Johnson took a drag on his cigarette. “A bit of each, I guess.”

  “Talk to him often?”

  “Not often.”

  “You live on Stirrup Lane in Alexandria. I called you at home this morning. I took your home telephone number off the telephone bill for Lansard Blaine’s Watergate apartment. He called you at home, from his apartment, six times in the past four months. How many times did you call him?”

  Johnson crushed his cigarette between his lips. “I find that ’ard to believe—”

  “Your name also occurs in the State Department telephone log eighteen times for the same period.”

  Johnson nodded. His face was red. “I believe I should ask,” he said, “whether you’re suggesting I had anythin’ to do with the death of Lansard Blaine? Because if you are, I want to talk to—”

  “He was killed in the White House.”

  “Never been in the White House.”

  “I believe it. So you didn’t kill Blaine… but you can help us find out who did—”

  “I don’t know anythin’ that’s got to do with his being murdered—”

  “Did you ever pay a girl to sleep with him?”

  Johnson glanced at Jill. “Yes.” He said it quietly.

  “Buy him liquor, meals… entertainment?�
��

  Johnson nodded. “I represent a company with important business interests in this country. I wine and dine a lot of people—”

  “We know. Why Blaine?”

  Johnson sighed. “The bloody multilateral trade agreements, of course. They’ll destroy my comp’ny—or could.”

  “You wanted Blaine to do what for you?”

  Johnson shrugged. “To make us an exception. If he couldn’t kill the damned agreements outright maybe he could have got us out of them anyway. Your President… well, you know, he set up the agreements to take care of his friends in Detroit, at the expense of European and Japanese companies like mine.”

  It was plain to Ron that Johnson only played at being the cockney fool, that in fact he was a shrewd operator who used his East End accent (turned off and on at will) for all the advantage he could gain from it. He was, on the other hand, frightened by this investigation. Keeping him off balance with questions was a useful tactic…

  “Winning an exception for British automobile manufacturers would be worth millions, wouldn’t it?” Jill said.

  “I’d say so.”

  “So you spend your company’s money,” Ron said. “You’re not a registered representative of a foreign government, though, are you?”

  Johnson grinned. “Representative of my government? Hardly. That’s the last thing in the world I am—”

  “Blaine,” Ron said, “was murdered, as you may recall. Millions of dollars—”

  “Wait a minute ’ere—”

  “If Lansard Blaine was worth millions to you, alive, then he was worth as much to someone else dead. Or, if he was on the other side, then he was worth all that to you dead. It depends on whether or not you’re telling me the truth about where your real interests lay—”

  “Blaine,” Johnson said, “was against the damn trade agreements your President wants…‘E could’ve been our salvation.”

  “Spell it out.”

  “By convincin’ Webster—who knows nothin’ about foreign relations…”

  “Was Blaine going to do what you wanted?”

  “He was against the damn treaties, he was on our side.”

  Ron glanced at Jill. “What did it cost you to get him there?”