Paramour

by Gerald Petievich

  She sat down and crossed her legs. There was a gold anklet above her right foot. Was it a band of tiny hearts? She ordered coffee from the counter waiter, and he served her immediately.

  Powers checked his wristwatch again. It was 7 P.M.: time for Morgan to make the call.

  The phone rang. The waiter picked up the receiver. "I'll check, sir," he said after a moment, then scanned the customers. "Is there someone named Marilyn here?"

  Poised, Marilyn came to her feet and moved to the end of the counter. The waiter stretched the expandable cord to hand her the phone, and she put the receiver to her ear. A moment later she spoke softly, just a few words, and then reached across the counter and set the receiver down.

  There was the sound of five distinct transmitter clicks via the radio earpiece, Sullivan's prearranged signal that Morgan had phoned Marilyn and informed her the President had to cancel the meeting.

  Without finishing her coffee, Marilyn took money from her leather bag and set it on the counter. She hoisted the bag and arranged its strap on her shoulder. Male customers turned their heads as she sauntered out the door.

  Powers took out his wallet and left enough money on his table to cover the bill and a tip. Waiting until she made her way to the bottom of the few steps leading to the pavement, he followed.

  Marilyn walked along the sidewalk with the long strides of a fashion model, her leather bag moving to and fro. At the corner of Connecticut Avenue, she stopped and joined a crowd of pedestrians waiting for the light. Crossing the street with them, she strolled north for a block, stopping now and then to window-shop. At M Street, she glanced at her wristwatch, then suddenly turned to her right and entered the lobby of the Dupont Hotel.

  Powers hurried inside. The hotel's expansive lobby, with its lush, red carpet and highly polished antique furniture, was nearly empty. Walking briskly, he checked the registration area, the coffee shop, the elevator bank. She wasn't there. "Shit," he said out loud.

  He moved quickly across the lobby and past a balustrade. In a wide hallway, he hurried past a Hertz rental car desk and an American Airlines ticketing counter. He checked the small gift shop and moved slowly along a bank of wooden telephone booths.

  Marilyn was sitting in the booth on the end with her leather bag propping the accordion door open. Was she waiting for a call?

  Powers stepped into the gift shop and stood near the window. Marilyn glanced at her wristwatch, then leaned down, reached into her bag, and took out a filter-tip cigarette and a small gold lighter. She stepped out of the booth and lit the cigarette. Staying close to the phone she paced about, nervously changing the lighter from hand to hand.

  Because the young man behind the counter in the gift shop was staring at him, Powers purchased a Snickers bar, which he figured would suffice for the rest of his dinner while on surveillance. He moved back near the window and thumbed through a magazine.

  The phone rang once and stopped.

  Marilyn slowly picked up her bag, and stepped inside the phone booth, and pulled the door closed. With the light on inside the booth, she took change from her purse, lifted the receiver, and dropped the money in the slot. She dialed, then spoke quietly. For a moment, she fumbled with her purse again and took out a checkbook. With her head cocked to hold the telephone receiver, she made a note. Hanging the receiver back on the hook, she stuffed pen and checkbook back in her purse. Then she pulled open the door, stepped out, and headed toward the lobby.

  The moment she was out of sight, Powers hurried to the telephone booth. Using a ballpoint pen he dug out of his shirt pocket, he wrote the telephone number on the back of his hand. Having been in charge of making advance security arrangements at the hotel a few months earlier, when the President had delivered a speech to a convention of religious broadcasters, Powers was familiar with the building's layout. He headed immediately through the hotel's busy restaurant and exited onto the sidewalk. He was fifty yards or so behind her. Perfect timing, he told himself.

  Without looking back, she strode cast past tall office buildings with first-floor retail businesses to Rhode Island Avenue, a wide thoroughfare lined with a mixture of multistoried apartment houses, hotels, retail outlets, and the Gramercy Park Hotel.

  At Scott Circle, a convergence of six major streets with a circular traffic island guarded by a pigeon-stained statue of General Winfield Scott on horseback, she approached the glass door of an apartment house. The building was a ten-story upended brick rectangle, like the rest of the lodgings in the area. The number 1152 was affixed to the door in gold.

  Using a key she took from her purse, Marilyn unlocked the front door and entered. She crossed a carpeted, well-lighted lobby and stepped into an elevator. The doors closed.

  Powers moved to the door and pushed. It was locked. To the right were an intercom phone and a creased black felt board covered with glass and secured at the corner with a small lock. The names of the residents were affixed to the board in small white plastic letters. The name M. KASINDORF was listed for apartment 721. Checking carefully, he noted no video camera or other security device at the entrance or, as far as he could tell, inside the lobby. To the right, a wide entrance to the apartment house's underground garage was protected by an automatic steel gate.

  Powers looked both ways and made his way across the street. He turned, looked up at the apartment house, and counted floors. On the seventh floor, the lights came on in the apartment second from the right. Powers walked to the corner and sat down on a bus bench.

  During the next few hours, the apartment house's front entrance was used infrequently: a man walking his miniature collie, two women arriving in a taxi and unloading groceries, a jogger (Powers thought his pace was particularly slow) doing his nightly mile.

  The lights in apartment 721 remained on until shortly after midnight. Powers, his clothing sticky from the humidity, hailed a cab.

  At his apartment, Powers turned on the air conditioner, He picked up the phone and dialed Sullivan's number. The phone rang once and Sullivan answered.

  "I think I've identified the residence," Powers said.

  "Good."

  "And there was a phone call made from a pay phone in the Dupont. "

  "What the hell was she doing there?"

  "Looked like she just went in to use the phone. She waited at a booth. There was one ring, like a signal; then she made a call-a short one."

  "Give me the number."

  "Outgoing from 274-1169 at 1912 hours," Powers said, referring to the note on the back of his hand.

  "I'll get the subscriber information."

  Powers set the receiver down. He stripped off his damp clothing, took a quick shower, and dried off. In the bedroom, he turned out all the lights except his reading lamp and climbed in bed. Picking up a TV remote control from the nightstand, he turned on the television. Johnny Carson was interviewing a confused young blond starlet who appeared to be under the influence of narcotics.

  "I mean, like, I go, 'How do you expect me to sing if I'm supposed to be eating?' and he goes, 'I'm the director,'" she said. The audience laughed, then stopped abruptly. Johnny Carson made a face at the camera and straightened his necktie. There was another four-second burst of laughter.

  Powers pressed the POWER button on the remote control. He reached to the nightstand, set the clock radio alarm for 4 A.M., and turned off the lamp. He wanted to be sure Marilyn didn't leave her apartment before he could follow her.

  Lying in bed naked, covered only by a sheet, he relived Marilyn's walking into the restaurant and wondered what he would have done if he hadn't been on duty. After some thought, he decided that, because of her aloofness, he would have hesitated to make a pass at her. She looked like the kind of woman who would coldly rebuff an advance.

  He also decided that the President had good taste. Marilyn Kasindorf was one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen . . .

  An electronic buzz sounded. Powers slapped the clock radio to shut it off and bounded out of bed. Marilyn was sti
ll on his mind as he shaved and dressed.

  ****

  SEVEN

  Darkness was turning to daylight on Rhode Island Avenue as Powers steered his Chevrolet into a parking space down the street from Marilyn's building. Using binoculars, he checked her apartment. The lights were still off. He leaned back in the seat. For the next two hours, traffic increased. A few early-bird bureaucrats walked briskly to work, sanitation trucks moved along both sides of the street, a few joggers and walkers hustled past. Washington, DC-city of power brokers and street criminals; of shiny limousines transporting both Congressmen and dope dealers; of call girls, pages, lobbyists, diplomats, and spies; of multistory apartment houses occupied by single women working at Agriculture or justice or HUD; of paper shredders and empire builders, idealists and greedy fixers; of the majesty of democracy and its delicate practice-came slowly alive.

  By 6 A.M. he was tired of the morning news and weather on his radio and regretted having forgotten to pick up a newspaper before taking his surveillance position. By 7 A.M. his stomach was rumbling with hunger.

  At 7:04 A.M. exactly, a light came on in Marilyn's apartment. With the light from the rising sun, the drapes were only slightly illuminated.

  During the next hour or so, residents of the apartment house began leaving. Most were on foot, a few left in automobiles from the underground garage. Powers used the binoculars to check if Marilyn was among them.

  By 8:30 A.M., Powers became concerned he'd missed her. Could she have slipped away without his spotting her?

  Less than a minute later, Marilyn came out the front door and walked to the corner. He left his car and followed. She crossed the street at the light and walked to M Street, where she followed the sidewalk to the Bentley Thompson building, a modern multistory office structure. As she waited in a small crowd for an elevator, Powers checked the building registry. Every listing was a U.S. government agency. Undoubtedly, one of them was a cover name for the CIA and she was going to work . . .

  At 5:30 P.M., Marilyn came out the front door of the building and retraced her morning route. She went directly to her apartment and remained there for the evening.

  The next day, Saturday, Powers was sitting in his sedan in front of Marilyn's apartment house at dawn. Though it was not a workday, he'd arrived early anyway. At 9:47 A.M., as he considered leaving to phone Sullivan, Marilyn strolled out the front entrance. She was wearing a white shirtdress, white tennis shoes, and a casual blue tunic. It was nice to see her in something other than her conservative CIA clothes. He had the urge-it sometimes happens on surveillance-to speak with her; perhaps tell her that he liked the outfit. Fantasy helped pass time.

  He started the engine.

  Marilyn looked both ways, crossed the street, and walked along the sidewalk in his direction. Fearing to come face-to-face with her, Powers pulled into traffic and drove past. At the corner, he turned right and sped up Fifteenth Street to the next block. For cover, he parked behind a truck. A minute or so later, she crossed the street. He quickly turned off the engine. Though his car was in a one-hour parking zone and would probably be towed away, he crossed the street and continued after her on foot.

  At Sixteenth Street, a wide thoroughfare lined with retail businesses, she walked north, passing some clothing stores, a hotel, and a candy store. Stopping on the corner, she allowed other pedestrians to move past her in the crosswalk. Then, suddenly, she turned around and looked behind her.

  To protect himself from her view, Powers stepped into the candy store. Marilyn looked up at the tall buildings, then at cars on the street, then at the other people on the sidewalk. This continued for what must have been three or four minutes. Then she headed back the way she came.

  Powers felt his heart race.

  "May I help you, sir?" said a youthful black woman standing behind the candy counter.

  "No, thanks," Powers said, hurrying out the door.

  Marilyn continued to the end of the block, then stopped abruptly in front of Dorothy Bullitt's, a large women's clothing store. To keep from being seen, Powers stepped into an alcove in front of a leather goods establishment next door.

  As if window-shopping, Marilyn moved slowly along the length of the display window, but without stopping to study any particular item. Then, suddenly picking up her pace, she turned, crossed to his side of the street, and entered a diminutive concern whose window was filled with travel posters. The sign above the door read THE TRAVEL BUREAU. Powers recognized it as a branch office of a nationwide chain of franchised travel agencies.

  Marilyn came out of the place twelve minutes later and moved down the street.

  Remaining behind at a discreet distance, Powers followed as she made her way back to her apartment house. Ignoring a black female mail carrier shoving mail into the receptacles in the joint mail collection box at the entrance, Marilyn used a key to unlock the front door and entered without looking back.

  Powers hurried around the corner to his car. He climbed in, started the engine, and raced around the block. He pulled into a curbside parking space down the street from her apartment house. From the car he had a clear view of both the window of Marilyn's apartment and the apartment house entrance.

  Thus ensconced, he leaned back in the seat, using the headrest to relax. Wondering what Marilyn was up to, he took deep breaths. Later, he turned on the radio and tuned it to a jazz station. Blossom Dearie, his favorite female vocalist, was singing a melancholy cabaret tune. Because of lack of sleep caused by the long hours of surveillance, his eyelids started to feel heavy. The morning passed.

  Nothing else happened at the apartment house for the rest of the day.

  By 7 P.M., he was starving.

  In the Gramercy Park Hotel, he purchased three Snickers bars in the gift shop and hurried back outside. Behind the wheel again, he unwrapped one of the bars and ate it in three bites. Though it didn't fully satisfy his hunger, he dropped the other two bars in the glove box to save them for later because he had no idea when he would get to eat a square meal again. Once in Bangladesh, protecting Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, he'd lived on Snickers bars for three days. Though this was a source of mirth among the other special agents, when everyone else including Kissinger himself came down with a raging dysentery it was Powers who had the last laugh.

  Later that evening, Powers headed across the street and entered the Gramercy Park Hotel. At a pay phone, he dropped change and dialed Sullivan's home number. Sullivan picked it up after the first ring.

  "Sullivan here."

  "She's in bed. Can we talk on this line?"

  There was a pause. "No. Meet me at Blackie's."

  Blackie's cocktail lounge, located on I Street around the corner from Secret Service headquarters, had become the Secret Service hangout after Powers and Ken Landry had rescued the owner, Blackie Horowitz. Headed home from working a night shift at the White House the previous summer, they happened upon Horowitz as he was being pistol-whipped by two armed robbers in front of the bar. In the running gun battle, one robber was stopped by a bullet piercing his buttocks laterally. The other, throwing his empty gun into a trash can so he too wouldn't be blown up, continued along Connecticut Avenue for more than a mile until he finally fell down in exhaustion. After the shooting, Horowitz had invited Powers and Landry to the restaurant for dinner. They, in turn, had invited the entire seven-man White House Detail working shift. The grateful Horowitz had torn up both the bar and restaurant tabs for everyone, and the word spread quickly to other White House Detail shifts, groupies, and, eventually Headquarters divisions that Blackie's was the place to go. Blackie Horowitz not only earned the price of the shooting celebration back a thousand fold but became the permanent sponsor of the White House Detail softball team. In fact, once, when faced with happy hour competition from the Dock, a secretary-loaded downtown bar that was the former Secret Service hangout, Blackie responded by offering Secret Service agents half price on all drinks any time, night or day. From then on, off-duty agents never cons
idered going anywhere else.

  Powers pulled to curbside. Sullivan, dressed in slacks and a windbreaker, was waiting on the sidewalk in front. He pulled open the passenger door and climbed in.

  "This morning she took a walk from her place to the District Mall," Powers said. "On the way she kept doubling back, checking window reflections. It looked like she was checking to see if she was under surveillance. The only place she stopped was a travel agency. She went inside for twelve minutes, then headed straight back to her apartment."

  Sullivan reached into his windbreaker and took out a package of cigarettes. He lipped a cigarette from the pack and lit it with a disposable lighter. He took a puff and blew a sharp stream of smoke out the window. "Twelve minutes is long enough to pick up an airlines ticket," he said ominously.

  Powers nodded.

  Sullivan took out a small note card. "The call she made Thursday night from the Dupont Hotel lists to a pay telephone located at 2711 Cumberland Avenue Northwest." He handed the card to Powers. The address was typed on it. "Calls from pay phones, street countersurveillance-people don't take these precautions unless they have something to hide."

  Powers nodded gloomily. "I agree."

  "But we're gonna need more than phone calls and a visit to a travel agent, a hell of a lot more." Sullivan dragged on his cigarette, then turned his palm and looked at it as smoke rose from his mouth. He rubbed his chin for a moment. "There are other ways to further an investigation."

  Nothing was said for a while. A faint sound of music came from the jukebox in Blackie's. Powers knew what Sullivan was getting at.

  "The best evidence is physical evidence," Sullivan said, looking Powers directly in the eye.

  Powers felt his face and hands flush. In Uncle Sam's Secret Service the code words "best evidence" meant illegal entry.

  "How hard would it be, Jack?"

  Powers' throat suddenly felt dry. He swallowed. "It uh ... can be done. "

  "If she's involved in espionage there's a good chance you'll find something incriminating in her place. If so, the mission is accomplished. We'll have enough to convince the man. Even if the place isn't dirty, at least we'll have learned something about her to help in going forward with the investigation. Considering what we have to gain, I feel it's worth the risk."