Murder on the Potomac

by Margaret Truman

  Annabel glanced down. She was not afflicted with a fear of heights but suddenly felt dizzy. She pushed away from the railing toward the security of the wall. But instead of coming in contact with a hard surface, she was in someone’s arms. Her scream was primal and loud.

  “Quiet,” a male voice whispered.

  “Who is it? Let me go!”

  The man maintained his grip on her as someone else stepped into view. It was Sun Ben Cheong’s lookalike. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Let me go! My husband is—”

  “Shut up, Mrs. Smith,” Sun Ben said, his arms still wrapped tightly around her.

  She screamed again. “Mac! Mac!” But her words coincided with a drum roll and fanfare from the orchestra and an accompanying burst of cheers and applause. The microphone voice said that someone had won a Saint Laurent Rive Gauche gift certificate.

  As Annabel struggled to free herself—she thought of the young woman who’d been pushed to her death from a balcony in the National Building Museum by a disgruntled lover—her husband was about to leave Tierney. “Naturally, Wendell, I’m shocked and dismayed by what you’ve told me. You’re certain?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. I feel betrayed, of course, but not shocked. I made it too easy for him, gave too much. Strange, isn’t it, how his actions parallel Ziang Sun Wan. He was the Chinese student who murdered officials of the Chinese Educational Mission back in 1918. We’ve studied that case at Tri-S a number of times but never produced a re-creation of it. Too sensitive. Too easy to be accused of prejudice against Orientals. I know one thing, Mac. No matter what I feel, I won’t abandon him.”

  “Of course you won’t,” Smith said. “As difficult as it may be, the only course of action for him is to come forward to the police and cooperate fully. The attorneys I’ve recommended are the best. They’re not only superb criminal attorneys and litigators, they’re decent, sensitive people who’ll do everything they can to minimize the impact upon the family.”

  Tierney stretched his arms above his head, twisted his torso, and yawned. “Money does corrupt. At least it has in this instance. It makes me think that—”

  Smith snapped his head in the direction of the door. “That’s Annabel,” he said.

  “What?”

  “That scream. It’s Annabel.” He was on his feet, moving toward the door.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Tierney said to Smith’s back; he’d run out to the narrow balcony. Smith wasn’t certain he’d heard Annabel scream. It was more like a mother sensing a child’s dilemma when no one else would, or could. A sixth sense.

  “Annabel!”

  “Mac—”

  He started toward her voice and the vague shapes in the shadows but stopped when John Cheong’s revolver flashed reflected light in his direction.

  “Let her go,” Smith shouted.

  “What’s going on?” Tierney said from behind Smith. At the sight of his adoptive father, Sun Ben reflexively released his grip on Annabel. She’d been trying to pull away, and the momentum carried her toward the railing. At that instant, Chip Tierney stepped from a doorway and grabbed her. He’d been sitting silently in a small, dark room since delivering Smith to his father.

  “… and the winner of the luxurious trip to gay ol’ Paree is—”

  “Chip …” Annabel said, her voice mirroring her relief.

  Tierney walked past Smith and extended his hand to John Cheong. “Give me the gun, John. You and your brother have done enough hurt.”

  “The winner is—Mackensie Smith!” The band began to play “April in Paris.”

  Tony Buffolino had left Alicia with the wife of a detective friend and was on his way to the men’s room when Smith’s name was announced. “Son of a gun,” he said as he scanned the vast hall for Mac and Annabel. “Let’s not be shy, Mac Smith,” the chairwoman said into the microphone.

  Buffolino fixed his attention on the dais. When neither Mac nor Annabel stepped forward to accept their prize, Buffolino’s antennae went up. Something’s wrong, he thought. He looked up into the soaring recesses of the building, to the domed roof and the balconies. Smith had gone to meet with Tierney and obviously wasn’t back yet. Dinner was well under way. Where was Annabel?

  His eyes went to the upper reaches of the northeast corner. There seemed to be people up there. He went directly to the stairs and bounded up three at a time.

  “Seems Mac and Annabel Smith are hiding on us,” said the chairwoman. “We’ll move on to one more prize, and then the main course will be served.”

  “The gun,” Tierney said.

  John Cheong handed the weapon to his brother, who pointed it at Tierney.

  Tierney halted his advance, raised his hands, and forced a smile. “We’ll work things out, Son,” he said. “I’ve told Mac everything. He’ll help. We’ll go to the police together. We’ll hire the best lawyers and—”

  “No!”

  Everyone now looked to Chip.

  “Get away from him, Annabel,” Smith said. She looked quizzically at her husband, then into Chip’s eyes. Tears came from them. His grasp of her had been comforting. But his moist eyes gave sudden credence to her husband’s warning. Smith repeated it. “Annabel, come here. Let her go, Chip.”

  “What the hell are you doing, Chip?” Tierney asked. “Shut up.”

  “I won’t shut up, Dad. I can’t shut up anymore.”

  “Damn it. Everything is worked out.”

  “Meaning having me take the fall,” Sun Ben said. “That’s what he wants,” he said to Smith.

  “I know,” Smith replied. He said to Tierney, “I didn’t buy what you told me, Wendell. Too neat. Sun Ben’s problems with the law create a perfect setup to pin Pauline’s murder on him.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Cheong said.

  “Get the police,” Tierney instructed Chip. “Get them up here.”

  “To arrest me?” Chip said.

  “To arrest him,” Tierney said, pointing at Sun Ben.

  Sun Ben slowly lowered the revolver to his side. He turned to Chip. “I know why you killed her, Chip, to help me, to keep her quiet about the money. It doesn’t matter now. It’s over. Let’s stand together and take whatever they dish out. We’re brothers. We can—”

  “I won’t go to prison,” Chip said. His voice, soft, frightened, now had a harder edge. He grabbed the weapon from Cheong’s relaxed hand and held it to Annabel’s head. “I tried to do the right thing for you, Dad. Pauline knew everything about the family, about Sun Ben laundering money through his diamond business, the land deals, the payoffs, all of it. She would have ruined us all.”

  Smith took a step in his direction. “Hurting another person won’t help anything, Chip. Give me the gun.” He saw over the young man’s shoulder the crouched figure quietly creeping up behind Annabel.

  “And now, let’s see who the lucky person is to drive that magnificent, sleek Rolls for a year. The winner is—”

  Buffolino’s movement was sure and quick. His right hand struck Chip’s hand, sending the revolver into the air and down into the Great Hall. Simultaneously, the investigator drove his shoulder up into Chip’s back, which bent him over the railing.

  Chip Tierney didn’t have to go over the railing. Everyone could see that.

  Buffolino reached for the collar of Chip’s tux jacket in order to straighten him up, yank him back to safety. But the young Tierney moved quicker. He pushed up and out, his feet leaving the ground and following him over the rail.

  “No,” Tierney said, lunging for his son.

  But he was gone, arms and legs akimbo, falling, twisting, spinning, until he landed facedown in front of the dais.

  The band was playing “A Foggy Day.”

  39

  Two Weeks Later

  Mac and Annabel finished lunch in Les Princes, the stylish restaurant in the George V, the opulent hotel included in their Paris “package.” Mac had enjoyed his entrecôte cooked perfectly à point; Annabel opted for a regional stew, blanquette de v
eau. Their bottle of Beaujolais was empty.

  They’d attended Annabel’s conference in San Francisco, then taken the polar route to Paris. The glorious week was almost up. One more day and they’d be heading back to their normal lives in the nation’s capital.

  “I suppose the Tierneys are what they mean by a dysfunctional family,” Annabel said.

  “I suppose so. Functioning in many ways—but in the end … Tony made a comment the day we took a ride on the river. He said that when men like Wendell fall, they fall far and they fall fast. That was certainly the case, wasn’t it?”

  Annabel tasted a petit four. She said, “Imagine Suzanne a bagman for Sun Ben.”

  “Bagwoman,” Smith corrected.

  “Sounds wrong,” said Annabel. “How hard will they be on her?”

  “Hard enough. She claims she never knew what she picked up for him, but that’ll be tough to establish.”

  “I’m still not clear on how Sun Ben’s laundering operation worked,” she said.

  “A complicated setup, Annabel, but not original with him. John Sims did a good job of explaining it to me.” Sims, a Treasury agent, and Mac had been friends for years. “It only works if the bankers involved are greedy enough, which too many are.

  “About eight years ago, according to John, some South American gold merchant set up a laundering system for the Medellín cocaine cartel. He established an office in California where drug money was delivered in large quantities. That’s what Suzanne did for Sun Ben. She was one of dozens picking up the cash and delivering it to the laundry, in this case his diamond business.

  “The guy in California who worked for the Medellín cartel used the cash delivered to him to buy gold. The trick was to buy the gold at a premium price, way over market—which rewarded those dealers selling to him for moving the money through their bank accounts—and then selling the gold quickly to pay off the drug dealers in Colombia. Problem was that consistently buying high and selling low was sure to attract attention. As I understand it, he solved that by claiming the gold had been bought out of the country, rather than from within the United States. Something to do with foreign gold being lower-quality. Anyway, it was a big operation. His slice off the top was worth millions to this guy.”

  “And Sun Ben did the same thing?”

  “Yes. Only he used diamonds bought through his brother in Hong Kong.”

  “The profits must be enormous to entice otherwise honest people to get involved.”

  “Potentially. Of course, Sun Ben had an additional motivation to set up his laundering operation. He lost so much playing baccarat, he couldn’t keep up with what he owed the casinos. His reputation as a financial guru caught the attention of the mob, which had all this drug money to launder. They cut a deal. Sun’s been very upfront about how it happened. The mob had its hooks in him pretty deep. Deep enough to get him to throw over a sterling career in finance to launder drug money in a diamond bath. Tragic.”

  “Do you believe Sam? That he knew nothing about what Sun Ben was doing on the side?”

  “Yes, I do. Tankloff’s a straight arrow, Annabel. He trusted Sun like a son. The accounts Sun set up in the Caymans for Sam were legit. Sun’s other, private accounts obviously weren’t. John tells me there’s to be no further investigation of Sam. They took a look at him because of his close connection with Sun Ben. Evidently, he’s clean. And broken up about Sun. He took it hard.”

  “Harder than Wendell, I gather.”

  Smith nodded and ate a petit four. “Boy, that’s good.”

  “We keep this up and we’ll both be ungodly fat.”

  Mac had one more.

  “Merci,” Annabel said to the waiter, who poured café filtre.

  “Wendell seems to be taking a perverse comfort in the police not being able to prove that Chip murdered Pauline. At least not in court. Our statements about Chip’s confession just before his death close the case, as far as the police are concerned. But the family won’t have to go through a murder trial.”

  “Small comfort,” Annabel muttered. “A son is dead.”

  “Wendell’s biggest problem, it seems, is Sun Ben’s testimony against him. He’s cooperating with the police in the case against Wendell.”

  “I wonder if he would if Wendell hadn’t tried to set him up to take the fall for Chip in Pauline’s murder,” said Annabel.

  “Probably not. Sun Ben really loves the family. Or did. A father attempting to sell his son down the river—adopted son or not—isn’t calculated to foster love, or loyalty. Wendell ran his own funny-money operation, including all the bribes to Hal Mason and others. Insider stock trading. Fraudulent land deals. Father and son both gone astray.”

  “But different motivations,” Annabel said. “Sun Ben had his terrible weakness for gambling, which led to a gun being held to his head.”

  “And with Wendell, it was pure greed. One thing’s for certain. There’re lots of chips still waiting to fall in our beloved D.C.”

  “Chips waiting to fall?” she said.

  Mac said, “Unintentional. I don’t go in much for tragic puns. Forgive me.”

  They spent the misty afternoon walking the narrow streets of the Left Bank. They stopped to admire a young artist’s efforts. Annabel’s enthusiasm was greater than her husband’s. “There’s a Monet quality to this,” she said, picking up a small watercolor and holding it up to the sky’s diffused light.

  “If you insist. It doesn’t do much for me. Like Ben Johnson said about the ‘adulteries of art,’ it strikes my eyes but not my heart.”

  “It scores a bull’s-eye on my heart,” she said gaily.

  They bought the painting from the grateful artist and continued their stroll. The sun broke through at five, and they whiled away an hour in an outdoor café along the Seine.

  “Not unlike the Potomac,” Smith said. A young couple embraced on the riverbank.

  “A lot more peaceful.”

  “We’ll find that peace again back home,” he said.

  “Were you truly concerned that a real gun might be used during the Key-Sickles reenactment?” Mac had casually mentioned that to her during their long polar flight.

  “It crossed my mind as we stood there and watched. Make a good plot, if nothing else.”

  “Shame the Scarlet Sin Society is no longer. You could have brought it up at a meeting.”

  “Another missed opportunity in the life of Mackensie Smith,” he said.

  Annabel broke a silence of short duration. “Pauline knew too much.”

  “What?”

  “She knew too much. That was her only crime, and it got her killed.”

  “It’s been known to happen. According to Sun Ben, Pauline threatened to blow the whistle on both his and Wendell’s illegal activities. He’d confided in his brother about the hold the Mafia had on him and what he was doing in servitude. Pauline already knew everything about Wendell’s shady financial dealings. When she and Chip were having their affair, he told her about Sun Ben. Now she knew enough about two members of the family to go after what Wendell claims she always wanted more than anything else—money and power.”

  “And Chip killed her to keep her quiet. To protect his family.”

  “Sounds noble, doesn’t it? It isn’t.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “One thing we’ll never know,” said Mac.

  “What is?”

  “How Chip got Pauline’s body to Roosevelt Island. Took her out in a boat? Dumped her in the river and didn’t worry where she’d end up? Carried her across the pedestrian walkway and tossed her over it?”

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to Tony. He says he won’t enjoy a good night’s sleep again until he figures it out.”

  “Poor Alicia.”

  They fell silent again. Mac held a glass of house wine in both hands in front of his lips, his brow knitted.

  “A frame for your thoughts,” Annabel said.

  “I was thinking about Da
rcy Eikenberg.”

  “You were?”

  “Yeah. Not a bad person. And a good detective, I think.”

  “She was taught by a pretty good professor.”

  “Nothing to do with it. It’s all instincts. Tony has good instincts. So do you, as a matter of fact.”

  “About solving crime, or when another woman has set her sights on my man?”

  “A little of both. There’s something inherently sad about the Darcy Eikenbergs of this world.”

  “Because of what you said the other night? Too attractive to be taken seriously?”

  “That coupled with being a cop. A female cop. An alien intruder into a male domain, no matter how far you’ve come, ‘baby.’ Who does she talk to? Other cops? She’s brighter than most. Needs a higher level of discourse.”

  “A college professor, for instance.”

  “Hmmmm. Know what I want to do the first weekend after we get home?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Go up to Great Falls.”

  It was her turn for a creased forehead. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to be a victim of what happened there. Like falling off a horse and getting back on, I suppose. It’s so beautiful up there. I want to be able to enjoy that beauty again. Maybe if I go, it’ll put a rest to my vision of the child going over.”

  “If it will, I’m all for it. We were all headed for a fall, in your dreams. Speaking of the river, you promised me a day of fishing.”

  “And you shall have it, Mrs. Smith. Maybe Tony will drive us to a peaceful spot on the river in his Rolls. His for a year. Ready for a nap? We should pack for our getaway tomorrow.”

  “Nap? Yes. Pack? That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

  “And what was on that pretty mind?”

  “A nap, during which we celebrate our last night in Paris, the painting we bought—that you will learn to love—and maybe find the fireworks.”

  By Margaret Truman:

  MURDER IN THE SUPREME COURT*