Murder on K Street

by Margaret Truman

  “I assume you told your dad about Marlene,” Rotondi said.

  “Yes, I did. He was running off to a meeting so he didn’t really have time to talk about it.”

  A group of six men and women came through the door.

  “Let’s take a booth,” Rotondi suggested. “You wanted a quick dinner. Why don’t we eat here? It’s early but—”

  “Sounds good,” Neil said.

  The barmaid insisted upon the drinks being paid for at the bar before the men took a table, and Rotondi obliged. They chose a booth at the rear of the place, and she brought them menus.

  “I’ll get to the point,” Rotondi said after they’d chosen pasta dishes and salads, which seemed safe. “You know that Jonell Marbury is under suspicion in your mother’s murder.”

  Mentioning that seemed to have a physical effect on Simmons. He made a sound as though he’d been poked in the ribs, and slowly shook his head. “When I heard about Jonell, it was almost as much of a shock as when Dad called me about Mom’s death,” he said. “Jonell and I have been friends ever since he came to work for Marshalk.”

  “He didn’t do it, Neil.”

  “I hope not.” A second thought came to him. “How do you know?”

  “I’ve been working with Jonell’s legal counsel. Somebody set him up.”

  “You mean like framing him?”

  “That’s another way to put it.”

  “Who would do that?”

  Rotondi waited a beat before answering. “Someone at the Marshalk Group.”

  Again, Neil reacted physically, lowering his head and splaying his hands on the table. “That can’t be,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  Simmons sat back. “Why would anybody at Marshalk want to frame one of its employees? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Rotondi let enough time to pass to allow Simmons to answer his own question.

  Neil faced Phil. “If that’s true,” he said, “it means that somebody at Marshalk killed Mom.”

  Rotondi locked eyes with him.

  “No,” Neil said. “You’re wrong. Maybe Jonell did do it. What about Camelia Watson?”

  “What about her?”

  “He was with her the night she died. He was having an affair with her.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Rotondi said, not aware that Neil didn’t believe it, either. “Let me show you something, Neil.” He pulled the six pieces of paper from the envelope Marbury had delivered to the house and handed them to Neil.

  “What’s this?”

  “This is the envelope that Rick Marshalk asked Jonell to deliver to the house the day your mother was killed.”

  Simmons handed them back.

  “No,” Rotondi insisted, shoving them into Neil’s hands. “Look at them, Neil. They’re worthless pieces of paper. The letters are a year old. Marshalk sent Jonell to the house to establish that he was there close to the time of the murder. Why else would he have Jonell deliver worthless documents?”

  Simmons gave the papers back to Rotondi, who returned them to the envelope. “I’m sorry, Phil, but it couldn’t have been somebody from Marshalk. What about Marlene? I told you what she did, believing she’s my mother.”

  Rotondi decided not to debate that scenario. Instead, he said, “Neil, I wanted to talk to you because of something I’ve come to learn about the Marshalk Group—and about your father.”

  “What’s that?” Simmons asked as their salads were served, along with beers.

  “Did your mother discuss with you a package she’d received from someone in Chicago?”

  Rotondi’s question obviously took Simmons by surprise. His eyes mirrored that surprise, as well as concern.

  “I believe that she did, Neil,” Rotondi added.

  “How would you know about that?”

  “She told me she intended to.”

  “You know about that package?”

  “Yes, I do. In fact, I have it.”

  “You have that package?”

  A nod from Rotondi.

  “Mom gave it to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t believe she’d do that.” He shifted his position as though to create distance between them. His level of agitation was palpable. “What was in that package?” he asked.

  “Damaging material about your father and the Marshalk Group.” He didn’t wait for Simmons to respond. “Did you share with your father what your mother told you?”

  Simmons’s awkward silence testified that he had.

  “So he knew,” Rotondi said. “Who else knew?”

  “No one.”

  “What was your father’s reaction when you told him?”

  The pasta arrived. Neither salad had been touched. “Is something wrong?” the barmaid asked.

  “No, everything is fine,” Rotondi said. “We’ll have it with our pasta…Neil,” he went on, placing his hand on Simmons’s arm, “I want to know who killed your mother as much as you do. I don’t care how it ends up as long as there’s justice. Who else did you tell about your mother having that package?”

  “No one. I told you I didn’t say anything to anybody except Dad.”

  Rotondi closely observed Simmons. He didn’t buy his answer. “What was your father’s reaction?” he repeated.

  Neil gathered his thoughts before replying. “He said it was nothing to worry about and that he would take care of it.”

  “Meaning what?”

  Neil shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Rotondi speared a piece of pasta. The red sauce was sweet, too sweet.

  “You hate my father, don’t you, Phil?” Neil said almost under his breath.

  It was Rotondi’s turn to be surprised. “Why would you say that?” he said. “Your father and I have been friends for a very long time.”

  “You hate him because of what he did to you in college, stealing Mom from you.”

  “That’s—that’s not true, Neil. Your father told you about that?”

  Neil shook his head. “Polly did. Mom told her.”

  “That’s water over the dam, Neil, and you’re wrong. I don’t hate your father and never have. Was I in love with your mother once? I sure was. And I continued to love her but in a different way. If I hated your father, I would have turned the material over to the police, or to some reporter. I haven’t done either. But I am convinced that your mom was murdered because of what’s in that package, and I intend to prove it.”

  “I don’t want to see my father hurt.”

  “Neither do I. I understand wanting to protect him, Neil, but what about the people at Marshalk? Do you have that same need to protect them?”

  “Of course not. I mean, I wouldn’t want to hurt them. Rick Marshalk has been good to me, Phil. I’m sorry, but suggesting that Rick or someone else there might have had something to do with Mom’s death is ridiculous. They wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  Neil’s desire to protect his father came across as sincere and credible. Marshalk was a different story. What Neil said sounded forced, a denial rammed through reality.

  The barmaid passed the booth and observed that their pasta and salads had barely been touched. Rotondi smiled at her. “It’s good,” he said. “We’re not as hungry as we thought.”

  She continued on her way without comment.

  “Phil,” Simmons said.

  “What?”

  “Could I see what Mom gave you?”

  “No. It wouldn’t serve any purpose.”

  “I don’t care if it’s offensive or harsh. I just want to see it for myself. Mom never showed it to me and—”

  “For good reason,” said Rotondi.

  “I should be the judge of that.”

  “Sorry, Neil, but it remains with me.”

  Up until this point, Simmons had been low-key, almost lethargic. He spoke without animation or emotion, his face unexpressive. But a flush of anger was now evident. “I really resent this, Phil. What are you going to do, blackmail my father over t
hat garbage?”

  “That’s not worthy of an answer, Neil.”

  “You really do hate him.” Rotondi started to respond, but Simmons continued. “You come off like some saint, some holier-than-thou person. You limp around with that cane so people cut you some slack, but what you really are is a goddamn Judas. Whatever Mom had belongs to me, not you. Who the hell do you think you are telling me I can’t see it? Give it to me!”

  He’d become loud, which caused people at the bar and in a nearby booth to turn in their direction.

  “Calm down,” Rotondi said.

  “I’ll make you give it to me,” Neil said, sliding from his side of the booth. He now stood over Rotondi. “I’ll get a lawyer and make you give it to me. You have no right to do this.”

  A man appeared through a door beyond the booths. “Is there a problem?” he asked.

  A red-faced Simmons responded, “Yes, there is,” before walking through the bar area and out the door.

  “There’s something wrong with the food?” the man, who’d said he was the manager, asked.

  “No, the food was fine,” Rotondi said. “The conversation wasn’t. I need a check.”

  Rotondi stood in front of the restaurant and looked for Neil on the street. There was no sign of him. He hadn’t had time to react to Neil’s charges inside, but now that he did, he ran a gauntlet of responses. There was anger, of course, but that quickly dissipated. What was left was more pity than ire. He wondered whether his friend’s son was teetering on the verge of some form of breakdown. He’d been through a lot. He was the son, conceived out of wedlock, of one of the Senate’s most influential members, a domineering, overbearing man who wasn’t likely to win the father-of-the-year award. His mother had become a browbeaten semi-recluse who’d turned to the bottle for solace. His sister had fled at the earliest possible moment and harbored a continuing resentment of her father and what he stood for. Aunt Marlene was mentally unbalanced. He knew little about Neil’s marriage to Alexandra. He’d attended their wedding, a happy, festive, albeit tense event as many weddings can be. Lyle had dropped hints that he didn’t approve of his son’s choice in a mate, and had made similar remarks long after the wedding and the birth of their two sons. Too, Neil worked in a high-pressure environment at the Marshalk Group where, as far as Rotondi could ascertain, he was still nothing more than a figurehead, one whose sole contribution was his relationship to Senator Lyle Simmons, possibly the next president.

  Not a life to be envied.

  He decided to walk until his leg protested. As he did, he focused on Neil’s admission that he’d discussed with his father the material Jeannette had received from the weasel in Chicago. Lyle had never let on that he was aware of it; nor had he shared with Rotondi any discussions of divorce. Not that he would be expected to. While close friends share many intimate secrets, some remain off-limits.

  He stopped at a corner when a particularly sharp pain shot up his leg and caused him to grunt in protest. He waved down a taxi and gave the driver Emma’s address in Foggy Bottom.

  “Hi,” she said as he came through the door. Homer got to his feet and wagged his tail.

  “Hello,” Rotondi said, dropping into a cushioned chair.

  “How was your day?”

  “Okay. You have a gig tonight?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Can you believe—another Marshalk party.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “A reception for a couple of congressmen and their fat-cat supporters.” She disappeared upstairs, returning minutes later with freshly applied makeup. “Sorry to run out, Philip, but duty calls.”

  “Where’s the bash?”

  “National Building Museum. One of my favorite venues. Cocktails and dinner. I’ll be late. Don’t wait up. There’s a killer lasagna in the freezer and a Caesar salad in the fridge.” She kissed the top of his head and was out the door.

  He went upstairs, opened a closet door, and rummaged through a succession of shoe boxes on the floor until coming up with the envelope he’d been given by Jeannette Simmons. He returned downstairs and took the envelope to his car, where he did what Jeannette had done: He hid it in the trunk beneath a pile of things he thought he might need on the road one day, and that he hadn’t used since putting them there. He returned to the house and the chair and used the remote to turn on the TV. A rerun of Law & Order, one of his favorite shows, had just started. He watched a few minutes before leaning his head back and falling asleep.

  He’d dozed through the first commercial break, and would have continued sleeping had his cell phone not sounded.

  “Phil, it’s Lyle.”

  “Oh, hi.”

  “You sound sleepy.”

  “I conked out. A power nap as they say.”

  “I need to see you tonight.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “Does there have to be an occasion, Phil? I need your counsel.”

  Rotondi’s antenna went up. He’d learned over the years that when Lyle claimed to need “his counsel,” it more than likely meant a large favor.

  “Sure,” Rotondi said.

  “I have a fund-raiser in an hour, a quickie, a drink and out of there. Come to the hotel. I’ll be back by nine. We’ll order up.”

  “Okay, Lyle.”

  While Rotondi watched the end of Law & Order, the senator returned to where Neil waited in the bedroom. “He’s coming here at nine,” Simmons said. “I appreciate you bringing me this information.”

  “You can’t trust him, Dad. He’s not the friend you think he is.”

  Simmons said nothing.

  “He’ll blackmail you, Dad. He’s got that material and he’ll hold it over your head.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Neil.”

  “I’m glad I found out that he had it.”

  “Yes, that was good, son. Good job. I have to leave now.”

  “I have to go, too. Rick is hosting a fund-raiser. I need to stop by.”

  “You go on then,” said the senator. “I’ll be in touch with you in the morning.”

  Father and son left the Willard together. The senator got into the Mercedes driven by Walter McTeague, and Neil hailed a cab to take him to the National Building Museum where Emma Churchill’s catering staff was receiving last-minute instructions from her, the “battle plan” for the evening the basis of her comments.

  “Good to see you again, Emma,” Rick Marshalk said after she’d dispersed her crew.

  “Hello, Mr. Marshalk. Always a pleasure catering one of your events.”

  “If you’re going to throw a party, always go with the best,” he said, flashing a wide white smile and patting her back.

  She watched him head to where a contingent of men and women were arriving. The group included a familiar face to Emma from watching C-SPAN’s gavel-to-gavel coverage of the House of Representatives, a veteran congressman from California who’d recently been the target of a well-covered investigation into campaign finance irregularities. Marshalk warmly greeted the congressman and his friends, and waved over a server carrying a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Emma had to admit to herself that since Phil told her about the materials he’d been given by Jeannette Simmons, her view of Marshalk—of all lobbying firms for that matter—had changed.

  Lobbyists who exploited loopholes in ever-changing campaign finance laws—lawmakers seemed to leave such loopholes in every piece of legislation—certainly were nothing new. They’d been snidely known for years in Washington as “the fourth branch of government,” so pervasive was their influence on lawmakers and the laws they passed. Much of it was unsavory and cynical, politicians’ unquenchable thirst for money creating conflicts between big-money interests and sound public policy.

  But if what Phil had said was valid, the Marshalk Group made other controversial lobbying firms look like bastions of morality and pristine ethical conduct. They’d become a sophisticated money-laundering conduit between organized crime in Chicago—and undoubtedly other places—and S
enator Simmons. Were other politicians the beneficiaries of the mob’s largesse? she wondered. A more chilling question was whether someone at the Marshalk Group, aware that Jeannette Simmons had possessed the sort of information that could destroy them, had ruthlessly silenced her.

  And would they do the same to whomever else held the power to bring them, and Lyle Simmons, to their knees?

  Someone like Philip Rotondi.

  Since he’d shared the information with Emma, she hadn’t taken the time to appreciate the danger he might be in. Of course, she rationalized, it wasn’t established definitively that the Marshalk Group had been behind the murder of Jeannette Simmons.

  But someone had.

  Jonell Marbury had been framed via a glass with his prints that matched the glassware she used in her catering business; an African American hair belonging to Jonell; and his being at the scene that afternoon to deliver an envelope. Nicely packaged forensic evidence but, as Phil had pointed out, all easily choreographed to point a finger elsewhere.

  Am I feeding food and drink to murderers?

  She forced that grim contemplation out of her mind and got busy helping her staff serve the increasingly large crowd. She was checking with one of her bartenders when she saw Neil Simmons come through the door. He headed directly for the bar and ordered a white wine. Emma had met him half a dozen times, fleeting occasions, and wondered whether he would recognize her. He didn’t. He accepted the glass from the bartender and walked toward Rick Marshalk, who was entertaining a group of people with a story that had them laughing. Marshalk spotted Simmons and waved him into the conversation. Emma continued to observe. While everyone else laughed as Marshalk continued with his humorous tale, Simmons stood quietly, a stony expression on his face. Emma sauntered in their direction. But when the punch line had obviously been delivered—the laughter erupted then faded away—Marshalk and Simmons left the knot of happy people and headed for an unoccupied, dimly lit corner of the vast party room. Emma considered for a moment trailing behind them and getting close enough to eavesdrop. But she scotched that notion. She was a caterer, not a private eye. She went in the opposite direction and contented herself with standing where the piano-and-bass duo wove popular melodies as background for the guests. As she allowed the soothing sounds of their playing to wash over her, she saw another man heading toward the corner where Marshalk and Simmons had gone. She remembered him from a previous party; he’d been introduced as the Marshalk Group’s chief of security, a name like Parish, she thought, a former MPD officer.