Murder at Union Station

by Margaret Truman

  “Yes, please. That would be good.”

  An electric-powered cart driven by an airport employee delivered him to the rail link between the airport and Amtrak. He stood stoically on the platform, leaning on his cane, the small carry-on suitcase at his feet, waiting for the Acela Regional train, which had left New York’s Penn Station a half hour earlier. He’d used the men’s room at the station and considered buying a hot dog and soft drink at a Nathan’s stand, but his stomach was unsettled from the bumpy flight and he thought better of it. He stepped into a phone booth, pulled a slip of paper from a pocket, and dialed the number written on it in large letters.

  The train pulled smoothly into the station as Russo completed his call. He showed his business class ticket to the female conductor, who pointed to a car toward the rear of the train. He chose one of the comfortable blue seats at the end of the car, close to the restrooms and the café car, wearily settled into it, and sighed. It had been a long, tiring day.

  He’d departed from Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport at dawn, flying to Barcelona and waiting for the Delta flight to the United States. Sasha had packed his medications in a plastic bag and proudly showed him a red-and-blue-striped tie she’d bought for the trip. “You want to look nice,” she’d said. He thanked her and checked that his tickets were safe, swelling the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “Don’t forget the yellow pills at lunchtime,” she said as he climbed into the taxi in front of the apartment building. “And call the doctor if you don’t feel well.” His Israeli oncologist had given him the name of a physician at George Washington University ’s hospital.

  He turned as the cab pulled away from the curb, saw her wave, wiggled his fingers in response, and sat back.

  Israeli security forces had stopped them twice at checkpoints. Russo was asked to show them his airline tickets, which he did, and they were allowed to proceed.

  Now, as the train pulled from the station on its way to Washington, and after he’d presented his ticket to the conductor, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. There had been a moment while waiting for the train at the Newark station that he considered going in the other direction, to New York City, where he’d been born and raised, and where the happier days of his life had been spent. But that thought came and went. He would go to Washington where he was expected to be, where they would be waiting for him.

  THREE

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Like most professional bartenders, Bob McIntyre was adept at doing and hearing many things at once-mixing drinks while taking in conversation at his small bar, and listening to the latest news from CNN that played on a plasma screen TV behind the bar. He mixed martinis, stirred not shaken, heard the CNN anchor report on news breaking in the Middle East, and listened to the arguments in progress between members of the Capitol View Restaurant’s luncheon club, where congressional staffers and mid-level executives paid fifty dollars a month for the privilege of having lunch at the restaurant, on the roof level of the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Capitol Hill.

  McIntyre placed two frosted, stemmed glasses containing gin and vermouth on the bar in front of Geoff Lowe and a portly man named Rex, who managed a branch of the Riggs Bank. They were discussing President Parmele’s recent speech in which he opened the door to the possibility of raising taxes to bring a ballooning deficit under control.

  “Can you believe it?” Lowe snarled, sipping his drink. “Can you friggin’ believe it? He wants to raise taxes so there’s more money for the government to spend on Democrat giveaway programs.”

  The bank manager laughed heartily. “Raisin’ taxes when you’re runnin’ for a second term is pretty damn dumb, even for a politician.”

  “At least he didn’t come up with ‘read my lips’ BS,” a Parmele defender said from the end of the bar. “At least he’s honest.”

  Rex turned to McIntyre, who was pouring red wine into a glass. “What do you think, Bobby?” he asked the veteran barman.

  “Well, balancing the budget’s a good thing,” McIntyre replied. “Wish I could balance my own. On the other hand, nobody wants to pay more taxes.”

  Smooth. He was good at seeing both sides-or at least sounding as though he did. What he thought privately about Washington ’s major and sometimes seemingly only topic of conversation was another matter, reserved for discussion with regulars later at night who wouldn’t comment on his views with the size of their tips. At lunch, there were certain members whose beliefs were so set in stone that a mild challenge, even when their opinions were based upon shaky facts, was akin to spitting in their drinks. Lowe was one of those, his strident viewpoints mirroring those of his graying, crusty, outspoken boss, Karl Widmer, the senior senator from Alaska.

  McIntyre glanced at Ellen Kelly, who’d turned from the conversation to speak with a woman, a House staffer from Mississippi, about a less volatile but no less provocative topic-the sexual scandal du jour.

  How could a nice, pretty, polite young woman like Ellen put up with Lowe’s bellicosity? McIntyre wondered. Did he yap away about politics in bed? Probably.

  “Another martooni, Geoff?” McIntyre asked, noting the empty glass.

  “No can do, Bobby,” Lowe said. “Can’t afford to nod off during one of the old man’s speeches this afternoon.” He laughed. “At least not before he does.” His moment of levity was fleeting; he returned to his condemnation of the sitting president and dragged a reluctant Ellen Kelly back into the conversation. McIntyre smiled to himself as he watched the young woman with the curly red hair, the large green eyes, and a splatter of freckles across her nose and upper cheeks enter into the discussions, which by now included others at the bar and one or two nearby tables. It was impossible to know whose political views prevailed on any given day, although the anti-Parmele Republicans tended to talk louder and use more vitriolic language than their Democratic counterparts. If noise levels dictated a winner, Geoff Lowe and his supporters usually carried the day.

  Lowe and Kelly brought plates from the buffet to the bar and ate there. McIntyre continued to mix drinks for those at the bar and to fill orders brought by the waitress, Mei, who was as adroit as McIntyre at sidestepping attempts to engage. The lavishly appointed room offered a stunning view of the domed Capitol, but not much of what was new in politics, where not much was ever new. His practiced ears picked up on what his wards were saying, particularly Lowe, who pontificated on why Parmele would fail in his bid for a second term. “I’m telling you,” he told a Democratic staffer from the Hill who’d joined the knot of people at the bar, “Parmele’s got plenty of skeletons in his closet, and Widmer knows what they are and where they are.” To Ellen: “Am I right, Ellen?”

  She nodded and finished the Maryland crab cake she’d carried from the buffet.

  Ellen Kelly had been working for Senator Widmer for less than a year; Lowe had been with the Alaska pol for seven. While she basically shared Lowe’s right-wing views of politics, she would never be, could never be, as strident as he and their boss, Senator Widmer, were in defense of them. Although she’d majored in political science at Georgetown University, for her, politics had never reached the level of passion. She’d sought a job on Capitol Hill following graduation and was recommended to Geoff Lowe by a mutual friend. He hired her almost immediately following a cursory interview, partially because her educational record at Georgetown was solid, more because he loved her looks. Their relationship commenced during her second month on the job. It wasn’t as though she’d fallen for him, at least not in the classic way. Physically he wasn’t her type, nor was he particularly attentive or loving, although he was capable of performing thoughtful acts from time to time-flowers without an occasion to prompt them, a surprise dinner out, an endearing comment now and then. The attraction was, she eventually decided when allowing retrospective thoughts to intrude upon her busy days and nights, Geoff’s dynamism, and the clout he possessed by virtue of his boss’s powerful position in the Senate. It wasn’t a forever relationship, she knew. It simply had
come about and would run its course.

  Lowe’s cell phone rang. It wasn’t always easy to know whose cell phone was ringing, for so many went off throughout lunch. Lowe had programmed his ring to play “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” which created a unique signature tone. Unless, of course, someone else did the same.

  “Yeah?” Lowe turned away from the group and placed a finger in the ear opposite the one against which the small phone was pressed. Ellen watched as he squinted, as though that would help him hear better. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Rich.”

  He snapped the phone shut and gave Ellen a thumbs-up. “Got to go,” he announced to the others at the bar, standing and motioning for Ellen to join him. She looked at him quizzically. “No sweat,” he said as they walked to the door. “Everything’s on track.”

  FOUR

  How much longer to Washington?” Russo asked the conductor.

  “Should be in Union Station in about forty-five minutes,” she said.

  He nodded and closed his eyes again, the gentle swaying of the train combining with his natural fatigue to cause drowsiness.

  He’d bought a piece of Danish and coffee from the café car, but had to ask another passenger to carry it for him to his seat because he was unsteady on his feet. He silently cursed his increasing feebleness. And cursed the watery, lukewarm coffee.

  There was a time-and it didn’t seem very long ago-that he was strong and fast, a tough guy who could hold his own in a fight with anyone, including the bigger boys from the New York City neighborhood where he was born and raised. And he could run faster than any of them, which came in handy when boosting merchandise from local stores and having to outrun the owners, or when escaping from the local beat cop.

  His father, Nicholas Russo, had come to New York from Italy as a young boy and worked hard to raise and support his growing family. After a series of odd jobs, he was hired by a local bakery to drive its delivery truck and had done that until he dropped dead of a heart attack at forty-eight, leaving his wife, Lillian, and six children without a source of support.

  In a sense, his father’s death liberated the fifteen-year-old Louis. He’d begun hanging out with local members of the Gambino family, whose social club was two doors down the street from the building in which the Russo family lived. His father had forbidden his son from hanging out with many of his newfound streetwise friends, and had smacked him one day when Louis returned with money earned by running errands for the mobsters. Now, with his father dead and the family really needing money, he felt free to pursue what soon became a full-time criminal career-loan-sharking, numbers collections, running prostitutes, and acting as an enforcer for his second family. It was in that role that he committed his first murder, whacking a Gambino soldier who’d been accused of holding back money, skimming from his loan-sharking operation. The twenty-one-year-old Russo took no particular pleasure from the act, nor did he suffer any particular pain. It was what he’d been paid to do, and he’d done it effectively, including dumping the body in a landfill. The body was eventually found and Louis attended the funeral, where he paid his respects to the victim’s widow and children.

  Those were good days, he mused, half asleep, dreams and fragments of such memories filtering in and out of his mind. Better days than what the last dozen years had been.

  He straightened and looked at his watch. The conductor had said they were forty-five minutes from D.C.’s Union Station. That was fifteen minutes ago. He neatly gathered the paper in which the Danish had been wrapped, put it in the half-empty coffee cup, checked that his return airline tickets were still in his jacket pocket, and gazed out the window as the train neared its destination. Then, sitting up straight, he fell deeply asleep.

  FIVE

  UNION STATION

  Joe Jenks had been shining shoes at Union Station for three years. If you were going to shine shoes for a living, you couldn’t pick a better spot than the hundred-year-old beaux arts landmark, created in 1903 by an act signed by President Teddy Roosevelt, falling into disrepair over the ensuing years, but restored in the 1980s to an even greater architectural monument than it had been in its previous splendor. The working philosophy of its original architect, master builder Daniel H. Burnham, was “Make no little plans.” Had Roosevelt known that the Wright Brothers would prove man’s ability to fly a mere ten months after he’d put into motion the lavish plans for this centerpiece of rail transportation, he might not have called for such a grandiose design.

  Working there as a bootblack was a dream come true for Jenks, who’d plied his trade on the street for too many years. It was comfortable working inside the sprawling station, now bright and beautiful, with all its shops and movie theaters, restaurants and services-a pleasant, fancy setting for spit-shining the shoes of important men and women passing through on their way to other cities and other business.

  “Back when it opened in nineteen and eight,” Jenks’s grandfather, who had worked there as a Pullman porter, often told him, “old Union Station had some mighty fancy restaurants, like the old Savarin. My goodness, anybody who was anybody in the city dined there at the Savarin. Barbershop had a dozen chairs and a bootblack and a valet to press your clothes all nice and fine. Back then, Savarin was the only real decent place in all of D.C. where a white man could dine with a black man and nobody seemed to notice. Nobody seemed to care. Way it should be.”

  Although Jenks was the oldest by far of the three bootblacks at Exclusive Shoe Shine, his was the shortest tenure, so he worked chair 3, alongside the two younger men who didn’t demonstrate the same sort of reverence Jenks had for the station. Once he’d started working there, he’d read up on the station’s history and enjoyed it when a customer, usually an out-of-towner, climbed into his chair and asked questions about Union Station. That was when Joe Jenks shined, in both senses of the word.

  His customer, a tall, slender, light-skinned black man dressed impeccably in a well-tailored tan suit, white shirt, and muted patterned green tie, and carrying a tan trench coat over his arm, had immediately pulled out a pair of half-glasses and opened a newspaper; no historical chitchat with this dude, Jenks knew. The man’s shoes were expensive two-toned leather, pointy and with perforations across the toe. Jenks pegged him as an outlander, a visitor to D.C., his judgment helped by the New York Times in the man’s hands.

  The customer looked up occasionally from the newspaper to check the arrivals board.

  “Meeting somebody?” Jenks asked as he put the finishing touches on the mirror shine he’d accomplished with his polish and brushes and rags.

  “No. What do I owe you?”

  Uppity, Jenks thought. Probably owns a couple of slums. “Six dollars, sir,” he said.

  The man stood, reached in his pocket, and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. Jenks went to give him change, but he’d already walked away in the direction of gate A-8, where the Metroliner from New York ’s Penn Station would be arriving.

  “What he give you, man, four bucks?” asked a younger bootblack who’d watched the transaction.

  “Yeah. Sometimes you can’t figure a man up front, you know? Sometimes the really talky ones stiff you.”

  “I’d like to catch me about ten or twenty a those today,” the younger man said with a laugh.

  Jenks ignored him and watched his generous customer saunter toward the arrival gates. What’s he all about? he wondered. Then passersby diverted his attention. That was one of the pleasures of shining in Union Station. Seventy thousand people passed through every day, a fascinating parade of humanity, and Joe Jenks had a front-row seat.

  “You available?” a casually dressed white man asked.

  “Yes, sir, jump right up in the chair.”

  “Been working here long?”

  “Three years,” Jenks said, pulling out the appropriate polishes.

  “What’s the best restaurant?”

  “Oh, now, let me see. Lotsa good ones. Got about fifty casual places, you know, and seven or eight places for finer dining. You
know, gourmet-type food. Back when it opened, there was the Savarin Restaurant, where… ”

  SIX

  As Joe Jenks shined shoes in Union Station, dispensing historical insights to his customers, business as usual was being conducted in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, home to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. President Teddy Roosevelt created the FBI in 1908 to fight political corruption. Fortunately, the federal law enforcement agency eventually went on to focus on more manageable crime.

  This day, a meeting took place in a secure room in the rear of the unlovely beige concrete Hoover Building, dedicated in 1975 and immediately branded a prime example of the architectural school known as New Brutalism. Two of the three men in the meeting were FBI special agents. The third, Timothy Stripling, had been a CIA operative, or still was; it was hard to know with such men, who spent their professional lives functioning in the shadows. Chain of command could seldom be applied to people like Stripling. He was one of many who worked for that gray entity known as the government, his various official titles not necessarily indicating his true affiliations.

  “Where was he last seen?” Stripling was of medium build, medium height, moderately balding, almost nondescript. He was so average-looking that he didn’t stand out in or out of a crowd.

  “Tel Aviv,” an agent answered.

  “So much for the world-renowned crack Israeli Mosad,” the other agent said.

  “They’re certain he’s left the city?” Stripling asked.

  “They are now. A little late at the switch. When we heard he might be coming here-your people told us that-we set up surveillance through the Mosad. But-”

  “My people?” Stripling said, smiling.