Murder at the Kennedy Center

by Margaret Truman

  They’d first met when Ewald had begun to push, vigorously and at great political risk, for legislation on gun control, particularly handguns. Smith, at the time, was one of Washington’s most respected attorneys, especially in criminal law, and had been asked to testify at hearings held by Ewald’s committee. Shortly after Mac Smith’s appearance, he received a call from Ewald inviting him to a dinner party at the senator’s home. That began a limited friendship that had deepened over the years. It wasn’t that they spent much time together; their busy individual lives precluded that. But there were other parties, issues, occasional plane trips together, and Smith found himself not only the senator’s friend, but an unofficial legal—and, at times, personal—adviser to Ewald and his family.

  Issues beyond gun control drew Smith to Ken Ewald. The current president, Walter Manning, had little interest in the arts, and his administration reflected it. Ewald, on the other hand, was the leading Senate voice in support of all things cultural, and every writer and artist, every musician and theatrical performing-arts group in the country, knew that any slice of the Federal pie designated for them was the direct result of these years of Ewald’s unfailing championing of their cause.

  From Smith’s perspective, Ewald was a well-balanced politician. As a freshman in Congress, he’d vigorously opposed the war, yet was a staunch supporter of maintaining military superiority over the Soviets. He’d called for the return of a WPA in which all able-bodied welfare recipients would work, or undergo training while collecting assistance, except the mentally ill, homeless, and AIDS victims. He had his faults, of course, but Smith had few reservations about supporting the man in his run for the White House, especially after the reign of Walter Manning.

  Smith turned the corner at Twenty-fifth and headed for home, his narrow, two-story taupe brick house with trim, shutters, and front door painted Federal blue. Attorney general? he thought. It brought a smile to his face. He had thought of many things he might be interested in doing with the rest of his life, but being directly involved in executive-branch politics was not on the list.

  He opened the door and entered the place that had been his home for the past seven years. Rufus greeted him with unwelcome enthusiasm. “Stay down,” Smith said, pushing on the blue Great Dane’s huge head. When Rufus stood on his hind legs, he looked his master in the eye.

  Smith answered the ringing phone in his study, making sure to put his sandwich on top of the refrigerator, out of Rufus’s reach.

  “Mac, it’s Leslie.”

  “Hello, Leslie, how are you?”

  “Tired but happy. I just came from the final meeting on the show and party. It’s going to be lovely, Mac. I’m so excited.”

  “Splendid. I assume Ken shares your enthusiasm.”

  “I think so, although I haven’t seen him enough to find out. I’ll be glad when the last of the primaries is over, the convention is behind us, and …”

  Smith laughed. “And you’re choosing drapes for the Oval Office.”

  “I don’t dare say it. Bad luck to say such things. At least that’s what gloomy Ed Farmer would say.”

  “Somehow, Leslie, I don’t think luck will have much to do with it.”

  “I just wanted to tell you how well the meeting went, and to thank you again for your help.”

  “I didn’t do much.”

  “More than you think. It’s always comforting to have the clear-headed wisdom of Mackensie Smith on tap. I’ve got a last-minute idea Boris and Georges won’t like. Have to run, Mac. See you tomorrow. Don’t forget to shave and wear a clean shirt.”

  3

  Ken Ewald, senior U.S. senator from California, stood alone in the anteroom behind the president’s box in the Kennedy Center’s opera house. Chairs upholstered in a white, green, and red floral pattern surrounded a glass-topped coffee table. The carpet was the color of ripe cherries. Small paintings dotted pale green walls.

  He walked to where the seal hung next to the door and removed it from its hook. His fingers traced the raised wording: SEAL OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. The letters were in blue, the background gold. An eagle dominated the center, its breast a shield of red, white, and blue. The seal was always on the wall, unless the president and his party were attending an event in the opera house. When that happened, it was hung in front of the box for the audience to see. Tickets to the box were part of the president’s patronage—to give, if he wished to share them. Otherwise, the box stood empty during performances.

  Ewald opened the door and stepped into the box. Below were twenty-three hundred empty seats. The party to kick off that night’s musical gala was in progress onstage. Ewald had been down there moments before. Bored, he’d wandered up to the box. The lead Secret Service agent assigned to him for the night, Robert Jeroldson, remained outside in the foyer on Ewald’s instructions.

  He looked down at the stage where Leslie, their son, Paul, and daughter-in-law, Janet, stood with some of the celebrities who would perform that night. His physical distance from them at that moment was symbolic; never before had he and Leslie worked so closely together, yet he knew the inherent pressures of seeking the presidency created tremendous and understandable pressures on her, and on their marriage. A politician’s wife—she garnered more votes than any platform could.

  He surveyed the stage for other familiar faces. They certainly were there, some pleasing, others representing necessary evils. He looked around the empty box and wondered at those who’d occupied the White House in the past. Some had spent considerable time in this presidential box. Others, like the sitting president, Republican Walter Manning, had been openly without interest in the artistic events that gave life to the nation’s cultural center.

  He looked down at the seal in his hands and was suddenly overwhelmed at the significance of the office it represented. The decision to run for president had not come easily to him. He’d spent countless hours of private debate over whether he was indeed qualified to lead a nation that not only was the most powerful on earth, but meant so much to him. He knew he was up to the task as far as experience and insight into the workings of government went. Years in Congress—first in the House, then in the Senate—had given him a broad and deep understanding of how things worked, how things got done. But was that enough? Did he want it badly enough, was there enough of the proverbial fire in his belly to carry into the job itself?

  He thought back to when Eugene McCarthy had sought the presidency. McCarthy had been on a television talk show. The host—Ewald couldn’t remember who it was—commented that certain critics of McCarthy claimed he did not want to be president bad enough, to which McCarthy replied, in his urbane manner, “No one should want to be president that bad.” McCarthy had gone on to say during that interview that he thought every president should take off one day a week to read poetry, or to listen to music. Ewald had smiled at that comment; it represented, to some extent, his own feelings, even though he knew the suggestion was impractical.

  He also thought back to Ronald Reagan, the only president who seemed to come out of the White House looking better and almost younger than when he’d entered. Days off to read poetry and listen to music (or to watch old western movies)? Perhaps. It really didn’t matter. The fact was, Ken Ewald did want to be president of the United States, because he felt the things he believed in were good for the country, would take it from a White House mortgaged to big business, oil, and the furthest right of military interests, and return it to a White House in which people mattered more than machines and money.

  He went back to the anteroom and hung the seal on the wall. Critics said that he was naive in some of his plans involving social welfare. There were his own dark moments when he thought they might be right, that the only way to govern America was to be hard-nosed, isolated, ruthless. Maybe. But even in those small hours, he told himself that he was not without his own hard edges, his own recognition that to govern effectively was to compromise, to allow pragmatism to take the edge off dreams. He w
as ready to do that. His dreams would be accommodated in the larger context of being president. First, you had to win. You had to be there if any part of any dream was to be realized.

  By the time he returned to the stage, the party had gained momentum.

  Ewald was delighted to see Paul. His son’s successful import-export business had kept him in the Far East for two weeks, and there had been a question whether he would make it back in time for this salute to his father. Ewald had to smile as he thought of the telephone conversation they’d had a few days ago. Paul had called from Hong Kong, and after some talk about how well the campaign was going, he’d concluded with, “Dad, you know I’ll be there if I have to rent a Chinese junk and row it all the way back myself.” Ewald often told his friends that if you were only going to have one child, you were lucky to have one like Paul.

  His daughter-in-law was another story. Small and slender, lips abstemious and poorly defined on a pinched face, Janet was a moody young woman—at least when Ewald was around her, which, he was grateful, wasn’t often. What his handsome, successful son saw in her was beyond him, although he’d settled long ago on her superior bosom, surprising for such an otherwise meager frame.

  Ed Farmer joined him. Ewald grinned, nodded, and said, “She’s a beautiful woman, isn’t she?” referring not to Janet but to Roseanna Gateaux, surrounded by a group of admirers off to the side of the sixty-four-feet-deep stage, a stage almost as large as the Metropolitan Opera House at New York’s Lincoln Center, or Russia’s Bolshoi.

  His campaign manager said nothing.

  “Just lusting in my heart,” Ewald said, his smile expanding at the corners of his mouth. That smile, and the form it took, was part of the boyishness that balanced the crags and lines in his tan face. Soft, curly brown hair helped, too. He was forty-six, one of the youngest presidential candidates since John Kennedy.

  Farmer looked meaningfully in the direction of a Washington columnist, stationed nearby behind a glass of champagne. “Keep those lines to yourself until after you’re president … Senator,” Farmer said sharply. “Come on, we need photos.”

  Ewald watched Roseanna Gateaux move gracefully to where a pianist, bassist, and violinist recruited from the National Symphony played show tunes, their melodies floating harmlessly up into a canyon of lights, pipe battens, grids, fly lines, and counterweight pulleys.

  “Let’s do some photos,” Farmer repeated.

  “Now?”

  “Yes. How often are all of you together? We’ll pose you with some of the stars, then do the family.” Farmer gripped Ewald’s arm and guided him to where his family stood with a few of the artists who would appear later that night. Ewald extended his hand to the pianist Oscar Peterson. “I’ve been collecting your records ever since they came out of Canada on ten-inch discs,” Ewald said.

  Peterson shook Ewald’s hand and smiled. “That’s nice to hear, Senator Ewald. You’re talking about a long time ago.”

  “Yes, I know,” Ewald said. “I was turned on to jazz in my early teens. I remember very well the first two records I ever heard. Really heard, that is. One featured you—it might have been your first recording—the other was a Dixieland album led by Muggsy Spanier.”

  “That’s an eclectic beginning,” said Peterson, considered among the greatest pianists in the history of jazz. Leslie Ewald joined them.

  Ewald turned next to Sarah Vaughan. “I’ve been a fan of yours for almost as long, Ms. Vaughan. I still say the record you cut for Emarcy when you were nineteen—the one with Clifford Brown, Herbie Mann, and Jimmy Jones—is the finest jazz vocal album ever recorded. My wife will testify to the fact that it’s played loud and often in our house.”

  She thanked him. “How nice it will be to have a president of the United States who appreciates American music.”

  Ewald laughed. “More than just appreciates it. Devoted to it is more like it. I plan to have regular jazz concerts at the White House.”

  “Provided you get the nomination and are elected, Ken,” Leslie Ewald said. His smile never broke, but there was a fleeting anger in his eyes as he looked at her.

  Peterson graciously excused himself.

  Sarah Vaughan turned to Ewald and said, “I understand one of your favorite songs is ‘Lover Man.’ ”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll be singing it tonight just for you.”

  “Wonderful! I can’t wait.”

  The singer walked away to join trumpeter Ruby Braff, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Mel Lewis, who were laughing at a joke one of them had told.

  Farmer had collared the campaign photographer and set up shots of Ewald and family with some of the jazz musicians. When they were through, Ewald turned to his son. “I’m very happy you could make it back, Paul. This whole thing wouldn’t have meant nearly as much without you.”

  “Well, I have to admit that rowing that junk took something out of me, but here I am.” They both laughed. Ewald turned to his daughter-in-law and asked how she was.

  “Just fine,” Janet replied. To Paul, she said, “Let’s go.”

  “They want a picture of us, son.”

  Paul looked at his wife. “Two more minutes, Janet. I want my picture taken with the next president of the United States.”

  Janet tugged Paul’s arm. “Please.”

  “Take the picture,” Leslie Ewald said to the photographer. She moved close to her husband; Janet was at Ewald’s other side.

  “Big, happy smiles on everyone,” Farmer said. “This is a gala.”

  Ewald put his arm around his wife and smiled, exposing a solid set of white teeth. Leslie’s smile matched his in intensity and attractiveness. As the photographer tripped the shutter and the strobe went off, Paul turned to look at his father. His expression was one of sincere admiration. Janet Ewald, her delicate clasped hands a fig leaf below her waist, managed to look as though she suffered only minor pain.

  After a dozen more shots had been taken of the family, Ken and Leslie posed together, just the two of them. Having their pictures taken obviously caused them no discomfort. Every shot was quick, smooth—candidate and wife at a celebrity cocktail party at the national arts center named after John F. Kennedy, whom Ewald frequently quoted in his speeches. He was a “Kennedy man,” part of the cosmetic as well as ideological legacy, cut from the same political cloth, tailored and barbered to heighten the effect, and every bit as handsome and charming. After eight years of a conservative administration, the country seemed ready for a return to Camelot. Ewald felt confident that in the general election in November he could defeat the current vice-president of the United States, Raymond Thornton, the obvious Republican nominee.

  For a time, he’d been less confident about the Democratic Convention in July in San Francisco, where he would have to bring in enough delegates to defeat his chief opponent for the nomination, southern senator Joseph “Jody” Backus, the leader of the conservative wing of the Democratic party, preferably by the second ballot, after the favorite sons—and daughters—and such.

  Backus had started strong in the early primaries, but had fallen behind. Still, the party had changed dramatically as the nation shifted into a more conservative stance. Liberal Democratic beliefs had been denigrated again. There were still some powerful Democrats who were convinced that a candidate like Ken Ewald, with his well-documented commitment to the sort of social programs that seemed to scream of big government expenditures, was anathema to the majority of the electorate, Republican and Democrat alike. It needn’t be that way—not all progress and programs required billions. But Jody Backus, even though the numbers coming out of the primaries had placed him behind Ewald in Democratic voter preference, retained considerable clout within the party. Now, with the latest changes in regulations, you could win the primary battle—and lose the war.

  Yes, Ken Ewald was confident he could defeat Raymond Thornton in November. But first he would have to work down to the wire to ensure his nomination in July. Tonight’s televised gala fro
m the Kennedy Center would help.

  Gerry Fielding, a congresswoman from northern California and an ally, walked up, smiling. “What are you going to do for an inaugural gala, Ken,” she said, “with this big production number tonight for a mere candidacy? Remember, for one event Bush had Sinatra and Baryshnikov and Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

  Ewald said, “We’re doing The Messiah and I’m singing the title role.”

  A white-jacketed waiter carrying leftover hors d’oeuvres passed the Ewalds. The senator picked a spanakopita from the silver tray and popped the phyllo pastry filled with spinach and cheese into his mouth. Leslie started talking with other people, freeing him to wander away, Farmer at his side, Agent Jeroldson maintaining his usual watchful but discreet distance behind. Ewald stopped to exchange banalities with friends (“Looks like campaigning agrees with you, Senator”; “Your wife looks as lovely as ever, Ken—and you seem to be holding up, too, ha-ha”), or to be gracious to strangers who wished him well in his pursuit of the nomination (“No, Jody Backus and I work closely together in the Senate. It’s just that we see things a little different sometimes”).

  He left the theater, stood on the landing, and looked out over the red-carpeted grand foyer, longer than two football fields (“You can lay the Washington Monument in it and still have room to spare,” the tour guides all said). Eighteen Swedish crystal Orefors chandeliers, each weighing a ton, cast uncertain light over the expanse. Ewald saw through floor-to-ceiling windows that a jet aircraft, its whine snuffed out by the building’s impressive soundproofing, was making its approach to National Airport, just across the Potomac.

  He started down the stairs when a “Good evening, Senator” stopped him.

  Ewald turned to face Mackensie Smith.

  “Be back in a minute,” Farmer said.

  “Hello, Mac.” Ewald extended his hand.

  “You look bored,” Smith said.

  Ewald laughed. “I can’t be bored at my own party, can I? Even if it’s just another excuse for photo opportunities. I think the bash after the show will be a hell of a lot pleasanter. I assume you know, Mac, how much I appreciate your efforts in helping to put this night together.”