“I have a feeling that my associate, Annabel Reed, and I have not been skipping through life these days unnoticed. Fair statement?”
A shrug.
“Annabel was recently in New York and noticed a few nondescript gentlemen exhibiting interest in her on the street. Now, I recognize that she is an extremely beautiful woman, and thousands of men have undoubtedly cast their eyes in her direction on many streets. But this was different. Have we been followed?”
“How would I know? I’m just a lawyer.”
“And I’m just a college professor. Have I … have we been followed?”
“I think it’s probably safe to assume that.”
“And because my associate, this beautiful woman, made a visit to the law office of the distinguished Herbert Greist, these people with whom you have occasional contact were naturally interested.”
“Sounds that way, doesn’t it?”
“Why are you interested in whether Greist has a connection with opera?”
“I’m not. My friends are.”
“Why don’t your friends simply go talk to Greist?”
“They’d like to. In fact, they intended to do that yesterday, but they can’t find him.”
Another missing person, Smith thought. He said, “Annabel was with him last week.”
“A week is a long time. Evidently, Mr. Greist has decided to abandon his law office on the West Side and to maintain an even lower profile. By the way, Mac, as long as we’re having this friendly chat, can I toss another question at you?”
“I suppose so.”
“You’re pretty tight with the Ewald family, aren’t you?”
“Yes, as everyone knows. We go back a long way.”
“I really enjoyed that show put on for Senator Ewald the other night. Tragic what happened after it, the death of that young woman. I was very upset to hear it.”
“You and a lot of other people.”
“I admire many things about Senator Ewald, including the fact that he’s a jazz lover. I am, too, you know.”
“I wasn’t aware of that.”
“Oh, yes, I have an extensive record collection. One of the things I found interesting about the show was that all kinds of music were represented. Probably a good indication of Ewald’s determination to appeal to a wide variety of voters. I assume you enjoyed Roseanna Gateaux, loving opera as you do.”
Smith started to confirm that he had enjoyed the performance when it dawned on him that this portion of the conversation had nothing to do with the Kennedy Center gala for Ken Ewald. He decided to be direct. “Why are you mentioning Roseanna Gateaux? Do your friends have an interest in her, too?”
Shevlin laughed and stood. “No, of course not. Somebody brought up her name at lunch the other day.”
“In what context?”
“I don’t remember. Forget it. I don’t even know why I asked. Thanks for dropping by, Mac, and please give my best to that beautiful woman who turns heads on city streets.”
“I certainly will, and tell your friends they ought to go back to Surveillance 101.”
29
Smith made himself a drink when he got home, and spread leftover country pâté on stone crackers. He sat in his recliner and stared at his desk. Should he? He’d always prided himself on upholding agreements. A deal was a deal was a deal. No one had ever been burned by confiding in Mac Smith.
But he decided that this might be the time to violate his principles. Marcia Mims may have wanted him to open the diary only if something happened to her, but maybe something was happening to her and what was in it would preclude that something from a sad result. A weak rationalization, perhaps, but it would do.
He took the envelope from the desk drawer and returned to his chair. It wasn’t one of those diaries with a lock, but he had trouble opening it—not because of any physical problem, but because of the guilt he felt. Guilt? He silently reprimanded himself for assigning something as decent as guilt to what he was about to do. He knew why his fingers fumbled: What kept him from immediately opening the diary was fear at what he might find.
Two hours later, he’d finished skimming the diary’s pages. The phone hadn’t rung once. Now, as he closed the cover, a succession of calls came.
The first was from Annabel. She was at the gallery, and wondered how his day had gone.
“Damned interesting. I caught up with Ken at the airport, and spent an hour with Jim Shevlin, ex—or almost-ex—FBI. And I’ve been sitting here for the past two hours reading a remarkable document.”
“What document?”
“One I would like very much to share with you, but not over a telephone. Were you planning to come here tonight?”
“Sure, unless you want to go out for dinner.”
“No, I think I’d rather stay here. Spend the night. I think we’re in for a good long evening of reading and discussion.”
“Fine. I’ll swing by home and pack my bag. What’s for dinner?”
“You. That’s the main course. As for the rest, your choice. Bring something from the American Cafe.”
He’d no sooner hung up when Rhonda Harrison called. She said she’d just left WRC and was calling from a booth. “Are you alone, Mac?”
“For the moment. Annabel is coming over.”
“I really need to speak with you.”
“About your article on Andrea Feldman?”
“Yes, but it won’t be one-way. I have something you might be interested in.”
Should be quite an evening, he thought. “Sure, come over any time. Annabel is bringing in dinner. I’ll call and suggest she bring a third dish.”
“No need for that, Mac.”
“Time the two of you met anyway. I’ve been talking about you to her for years. She’s bringing in from the American Cafe. Any favorites?”
“Oh, anything will do. Make it chicken tarragon with almonds on a croissant. I’ll be there in an hour.”
Another call, this one from Tony, still in his hospital room in San Francisco.
“Tony, how are you? How’s the leg?”
“Good, Mac, yeah, really good. Feeling better every minute. I can’t wait to get on that plane tomorrow.”
“It will be good to see you. I’ve arranged for a car to meet your flight. Look for it. The driver will hold up a sign with your name on it.”
“Make sure he spells it right, with an o instead of an a.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Mac, I came up with something interesting out here.”
“From the hospital?”
“Yeah, it’s boring here. The old guy next to me died, and they haven’t brought me a new roommate yet. I’ve been waiting for some dynamite chick to be brought in who’s just had her tubes tied, but no luck so far. Mac, I got hold of that friend I mentioned at Wells Fargo Bank.”
“And?”
“The old lady—Mae Feldman—did pretty good.”
“You found her account?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t easy. My friend is in charge of a lot of accounts, including Mrs. Feldman’s. What made it tough was that the account isn’t just under her name.”
“Whose name is it under?”
“My buddy.”
“Which buddy?”
“Carla. Carla Zaretski. My friend, who shall remain nameless so that he doesn’t end up a former Wells Fargo employee, told me that the account was opened a little more than a year ago, and that the deposits into it were pretty regular.”
“If it’s in Carla’s name, how did Mae Feldman get to use it?”
“Because she’s one of the signatures on the account. It was kind of a joint thing. But now it’s cleaned out.”
“How much was in it?”
“Two hundred thou.”
Smith grunted. “Any connection between the account and Mae’s daughter, Andrea?”
“I wouldn’t know. At least, my friend didn’t say anything.”
“And you say the account was cleaned out?”
�
��Yup.”
“Who did the cleaning, Carla Zaretski or Mae Feldman?”
“Ms. Zaretski. She took every cent out in cash.”
“Cash. That’s a lot of money to be carrying around. Have you seen her lately?”
“No, and that’s kind of funny. She’s been hanging around here like she was my mother. The nurses were ready to strangle her. A real pain in the ass. Then, yesterday, she says she has to run an errand and that’s the last I see or hear from her.”
Smith looked down at the blue diary in his lap. “Good job, Tony. I want you to do nothing now but concentrate on getting back here tomorrow. Forget about this case until you’re settled here and we can talk. There’s a lot happening on this end that I’ll fill you in on.”
“Great. Did you call my wives?”
“Damn it, no, I forgot. I’ll do that right now. Give me their numbers.”
After Buffolino got off the line, Smith tried both numbers, reached the second wife, Barbara, and told her Tony had been shot but was recovering nicely. She was sincerely upset and asked if there was anything she could do.
“No, I don’t think so. I understand you and Tony and the kids were to have a party at the Watergate suite.”
She sounded embarrassed. “Yes, but Tony and I had a fight and …”
“Don’t bother to explain. All I want to say is that once Tony has recovered, we’ll all have a party at that suite to celebrate.”
“That’s … that’s a wonderful idea, Mr. Smith. Tony told me what a fine man you are and—”
Embarrassed himself, Smith mumbled something about having to take another call and got off the phone.
Now he had a decision to make. Should he show Marcia Mims’s diary to Rhonda Harrison? It would only be fair, he told himself. She’d been open with him, and obviously was coming to the house that night to share even more information. Had the diary dealt only with Marcia and her family and the Ewald family, he wouldn’t have considered it, but there were many provocative entries concerning Andrea Feldman, the subject of Rhonda’s article for Washingtonian.
He was still grappling with that decision when his doorbell rang. He slid the diary into the middle drawer of his desk and greeted Rhonda at the door.
“Oh, my God,” she said as Rufus stood on his hind legs, which put his head above hers.
“Get down, Rufus,” Smith barked. “She’s a beauty but not your type.” The Dane reluctantly obeyed his master, but every muscle in his huge, powerful body twitched with the desire to continue greeting this new visitor.
“Come in, Rhonda, and make yourself comfortable. Annabel should be here soon.”
“What a lovely house,” Rhonda said as they moved through it.
“Yes, it’s very comfortable, especially for one person, and it puts me within walking distance of the university, Kennedy Center, and the Foggy Bottom Cafe. Drink?”
“Sure. White wine?”
“You’ve got it.”
Smith joined her with the drink he’d previously made for himself. “Well, you sounded as though you had some exciting revelations,” he said.
“Yes, I might have, Mac. Do you remember a year or so ago when Washingtonian did an exposé on that San Diego–based group, the Democratic Action Front?”
“No, I don’t think so, although I have heard of it. Holds itself out as a staunch anti-Communist organization, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Yes, that’s the one. The writer who did that investigation was Kyle Morris. He was from California and had wormed his way into DAF. He did a hell of a good investigative job, linked a lot of DAF’s activities right back here to Washington, which was why the magazine commissioned the piece.” She looked at him for a reaction. He didn’t give her one. She continued, “Not long after the article was published, Kyle died.”
“A young man?”
“Yes. The official report was that he was drunk and ran his car into a tree in California.”
“Drinking and driving never did mix,” Smith said, fighting off a fleeting, terrible image of the night his wife and son died on the Beltway.
“If you believe he’d been drinking.”
“You don’t?”
“They said so—but Kyle didn’t drink. Besides, it struck more than a few people as strange that right after he does this exposé on DAF, he dies, like all those people who had something to say about the Kennedy assassination and ended up falling out of hotel windows or drowning.”
“All right, let’s say that this young man, Morris, paid the ultimate price for exposing the group. I’m sad to hear it. But why would that necessarily interest me?”
Rhonda sat back, sipped her wine, and smacked her lips. The look of a contented cat was painted on her pretty face. Her audience was now hanging on every word, and she seemed to be reveling in that moment of undivided attention.
Smith said, “I’m all ears, Rhonda.”
She leaned forward. The smile was gone, and her eyes formed narrow slits. “Mac, Andrea Feldman was paid a lot of money by DAF.”
Now it was Smith’s turn to lean forward and to narrow his eyes. “By DAF? Andrea Feldman supposedly was a champion of liberal causes,” he said. “That’s why she went to work for Ken Ewald. Why would she be taking money from a right-wing organization?”
They sat silently and looked at each other. If their thoughts were printed out on paper, they would have read almost identically.
“She was being paid to spy on Ewald,” he said.
“Has to be, right?”
“Not that it’s set in stone, but it makes sense. The DAF organization supports the current administration.”
“Sure. They’ve also contributed—undoubtedly under the table—to various campaigns of Senator Jody Backus, whose political persuasions have never been out of sync with theirs.”
“I just learned from Tony Buffolino, my investigator, that Andrea Feldman’s mother had a sizable account that was recently cleaned out.”
Rhonda asked, “Did he come up with any evidence that the money came from the Democratic Action Front, and was paid to Andrea Feldman?”
“He didn’t mention anything about that. No, in fact, I asked whether he knew the source of the money and he said he didn’t. How did you come up with it?”
“I got pretty friendly with Kyle Morris when he was working on the piece. He shared a lot of things with me, especially the information he never used because he couldn’t prove it to the point of satisfying his editors that they wouldn’t be hit with a nasty libel suit.”
Smith raised his eyebrows. “Are you telling me that you were told a year ago by this writer, Kyle Morris, that Andrea Feldman was being paid by them?”
“No, Mac, but Kyle did tell me that he knew DAF was an extension of the Garrett Kane Ministries. He couldn’t prove it, but he knew it, said to me that there wasn’t any doubt in his mind that Kane funded DAF.”
“Which would mean that if Andrea Feldman was being paid by the DAF, the money really came from the Garrett Kane Ministries.”
“Exactly.”
“Back up a second, Rhonda. How did you come up with the information that Andrea was, in fact, receiving money from DAF?”
“Kyle Morris’s sister lives in Washington. I got to know her, too. I called her yesterday, and we got together. She has everything of Kyle’s, all the articles he’d written during his short life, his research, his notes, his tapes, and other materials an investigative journalist turns up. One of the things she had were two bank statements from DAF. Lord knows how he got hold of them. His sister didn’t know. But there they were in a neatly labeled file folder.”
“And?”
“And I browsed through them. There were two checks that had been issued to Andrea Feldman, endorsed over to her mother, and deposited in the Wells Fargo Bank of San Francisco.”
There was the sound of a key in the front door. “Must be Annabel,” Smith said, going to the hallway. “Hi, Mac,” Annabel said as she stepped into the house, a large shopping bag from
the American Cafe dangling from her arm.
He kissed her lightly on the lips and took the bag from her. Rufus tried to shove his nose into it, but Smith deftly swung the bag away from him and put it in the kitchen. As Annabel passed the entrance to the living room, she saw Rhonda Harrison, stepped into the room, and extended her hand. “He certainly has spoken of you a great deal, Ms. Harrison, and always in glowing terms. And, of course, I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time.”
“Thank you,” Rhonda said. “You’re no stranger to me, either. He uses the same kind of terms when he talks about you.”
Annabel looked at Smith. “Do you really?”
Smith said, “Usually, unless you’ve done something to upset me. Then …” He smiled. “Then I make sure I don’t talk about you at all. Drink?”
“Love one. Make it out of real liquor and make it dark.”
A few minutes later, the three of them sat in the living room. “Annabel has been working on every aspect of this case with me, Rhonda.” He told her about Annabel’s meetings in New York with Herbert Greist, and then mentioned the photograph she’d found in Mae Feldman’s house of Greist when he was a young man.
Smith enjoyed the wide-eyed expression on Rhonda’s face. It’s called getting even, he told himself. “Can you top this?” as a parlor game.
Rhonda asked questions about the Greist connection with Andrea Feldman, and Mac and Annabel answered them. Now, Smith made an instant decision. He would no longer choose what information to give her. She deserved better than that, and time was running out. They had to pool information. “Excuse me,” he said. He returned carrying Marcia Mims’s diary. “I received this from Ken Ewald’s housekeeper, Marcia Mims,” he said, handing it to Annabel.
Annabel asked, “Why did she give it to you?”
“I have no idea. We have to keep it confidential for now. I’d do a dramatic reading of the entire work, but I think that would bore everyone. I don’t know how long you two want to sit around reading, but we have the night. I’ll put the food on plates. Why don’t you huddle on the couch and dip into the world of the rich, famous, and messed up?”
Smith served their food on a coffee table in front of them and took his plate to his study, where he reviewed shorthand notes he’d made while reading the diary. He checked in on them a few times. They’d hardly eaten anything.
Murder at the Kennedy Center Page 24