Murder in Foggy Bottom

by Margaret Truman

  “Any survivors?” he asked.

  A shrug.

  “Where did it come down?”

  “Out near one of the reservoirs. Joe is monitoring it.”

  Lazzara left the office and went to where Special Agent Joe Pasquale sat in the midst of communications equipment.

  “The accident?” Lazzara said. “Where? What reservoir?”

  “Near the Kensico Reservoir. Plane crashed on takeoff. There’s been another.”

  “Another what?”

  “Another aircraft accident. In Idaho.”

  “Not a good day for the airline industry. Or for a lot of people. Any details on that one?”

  “Only a few. Just happened. About the same time. Commuter, too.”

  “Frank, Washington on the line,” Lazzara’s secretary said.

  He returned to his office and picked up the phone: “Lazzara.”

  His supervisor said, “Send everybody you’ve got out to the scene of this airline accident near you.”

  “Everybody? Okay. Special instructions?”

  “Yes. Put a clamp on everybody there. No statements to the press. No statements to anyone.”

  “Yes, sir. I just heard another commuter plane went down in Idaho.”

  “You heard right, but no comments on that, either.”

  “Criminal acts involved?” Lazzara asked, trying to determine whether his agency would be in charge of the investigation.

  “Let’s assume there are until we know otherwise.”

  Lazzara called the four special agents who were on duty that morning into his office.

  “What’s up?” Pasquale asked.

  “The plane accident. Get a fix from the locals where it went down.”

  “State police just called in, Frank,” his secretary said. She handed him a piece of paper on which she’d written information on the downed plane’s location.

  “Let’s go,” Lazzara said.

  Notification of the downed Dash 8 in Westchester County had come through earlier via the communications center at the National Transportation Safety Board’s headquarters at L’Enfant Plaza. It was forwarded to their Office of Aviation Safety, where that day’s standby instant-response team, known as a “go team,” which included experts on airframe and power-plant analyses, human performance, radar data, fires and explosions, and witness statements, was alerted to make ready to fly to Westchester County airport. Other calls were made simultaneously to NTSB’s Northeast regional office in Parsippany, New Jersey; the de Havilland Corporation in Ontario, Canada, the Dash 8’s manufacturer; the airline; the Federal Aviation Administration; and to FBI headquarters. The NTSB public affairs duty officer was brought into the loop to be ready to handle media and public queries. The initial team that would rush to the accident scene would soon be augmented by designated parties not directly affiliated with NTSB, but who could give the lean-and-mean agency needed expertise. With only four hundred employees, the chairman of NTSB had proudly testified at a recent congressional budget hearing, his agency was “one of the best buys in government.” They investigated more than two thousand aviation accidents each year, as well as five hundred other transportation mishaps, and had issued more than ten thousand safety recommendations since NTSB’s inception in 1967, “at an annual cost of fifteen cents per American citizen.”

  The team flying to Westchester would be led by Peter Mullin, one of eight NTSB vice chairmen and a thirty-year veteran of aircraft accident investigations, a commercially rated pilot with thousands of hours in the cockpit, and whose reputation for running a tight ship at accident scenes was well known. His team assembled at Hangar Six at Reagan National, where NTSB maintained its own fleet of aircraft. Mullin, a tall, angular, balding man who walked slightly hunched to accommodate a bad back, grimaced as he took the right seat in the Learjet 45 twin-engine jet aircraft with NTSB markings. A full-time bureau pilot slipped into the left seat. Seated behind them were six members of the initial instant-response team. The engines had just come to life when Mullin was called on a radio channel linking the aircraft to NTSB headquarters.

  “Peter, there’s been a second accident.”

  “Where? Commercial? A jumbo?”

  “Boise. Another commuter flight.”

  Mullin set his jaw, turned, and told the others of the news, then got back on the radio: “What’s the status in Boise?”

  “Vague. Denver’s got a team ready to go.”

  “Good. Keep me posted.” To the pilot he said, “Let’s move!”

  They were given priority takeoff clearance ahead of a string of commercial jets and were airborne within minutes. They’d reached their cruise altitude when Mullin was again contacted on the NTSB reserved radio channel. “Peter, you’re not going to believe this but there’s been a third accident involving a commuter plane.”

  “You’re right, I don’t believe it. Where?”

  “San Jose. A Saab 34.”

  “Status?”

  “Unknown. The Gardena office is on it.”

  “Three,” Mullin grumbled.

  “What?”

  “I said three, goddamn it!”

  “Peter, there’s an eyewitness to the San Jose incident who’s come forward.”

  “Oh?”

  Mullin listened silently to what his assistant at headquarters said.

  “Tell Gardena to stash him away. We don’t need unsubstantiated stories like that getting out.”

  “It’s a woman.”

  “What the hell difference does that make? Stash her away.”

  “Okay, Peter.”

  “What’s up?” a team member seated behind Mullin asked after he’d ended the radio transmission.

  “Another commuter plane down, a Saab, San Jose.”

  There was silence in the aircraft. Someone broke it by saying, “Three? Can’t be a coincidence.”

  “No, it can’t be, especially if an eyewitness in California has twenty-twenty eyesight and isn’t too whacked out.”

  He used the same cleared frequency to reconnect with headquarters. “This is Mullin. I’m on my way to New York to investigate the downed plane there. Give me Poe.”

  Poe took the call and listened intently to what Mullin had to say. “Thank you, Peter,” he said, ending the conversation with his thumb on the cradle’s plunger, then dialed another number.

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation. How may I help you?”

  “This is NTSB Vice Chairman Poe. Put me through to the director’s office. It’s an emergency.”

  5

  That Same Day

  Washington, DC

  Potamos was in that indeterminate stage between sleep and wakefulness. He wondered what he was doing in a powdered wig, dancing in Austria. Roseann had taken Jumper for her morning walk and now sat at the piano in the living room struggling through Viennese waltzes to play at a cocktail party that evening at the Austrian embassy. Ordinarily, Potamos enjoyed hearing her play, but not when he was trying to sleep, and not waltzes by Strauss. Billy Joel, maybe.

  He’d been up late the night before, which wasn’t unusual. Potamos was a night person, which was fortunate considering that Roseann was a musician who usually worked at night. If he wasn’t out on an assignment, he stayed up late anyway watching old movies on TV, or indulging his recent passion of surfing the Internet, the small screen beginning to win out over the tube.

  This was a scheduled day off. Late yesterday, he’d filed a longer story on the body found in the park after gathering information about the deceased, digging into sources more giving than the cops. The murdered man’s name was Jeremy Wilcox, age forty-seven, attached to the Canadian embassy in its trade and commerce office. A diplomat. No suspects. Wilcox’s father had come from Toronto to claim the body but had been told it would have to remain in Washington until further forensic tests had been conducted. Jeremy Wilcox was single—forty-seven years old and never married. Gay? Not a very enlightened reaction, Potamos knew, but one that came to mind.

  Po
tamos himself had been married twice. Ungay and unhappy.

  Wife number one was Patty Kelly, an Irish Catholic (“Don’t tell me,” Potamos had said when they met) with fair skin, blazing green eyes, and a field of freckles splashed across her pretty cheeks. Potamos had just graduated from New York University with a degree in journalism, a proud moment in the Potamos family. His father owned a quintessentially Greek diner in Queens and routinely told customers that his son, Joseph, was about to win a Pulitzer Prize even though he hadn’t landed his first job.

  When he brought Patty Kelly home to meet the folks, his father awarded him no prizes. He took him out in the yard and said, “If you marry someone who is not Greek, you are no longer my son.” He maintained that posture through two grandchildren, although Potamos’s mother and two sisters kept in touch.

  Joe and Patty tried marriage counseling before officially calling it quits. The sessions with the female therapist, six in all, found each of the warring parties expressing opinions about why the marriage wasn’t working. For Patty, it was Joe’s love of his job to the exclusion of her and the children, his family’s dislike of her, even his disinterest in dressing better. Joe’s take on the failing marriage was Patty’s lack of interest in sex, her hatred of his family, her choice of friends, and her harping on how he dressed. By the sixth session, the therapist came to the conclusion that they’d be better off separating and divorcing, although she refrained from suggesting it. Just another case of two people who shouldn’t have married each other in the first place.

  Patty became a Unitarian-Universalist before the divorce, which salved her Catholic guilt. Joe’s father softened when they divorced, although it became Potamos’s mother’s turn to be anguished when Patty moved to Boston and visits with the grandchildren became less frequent.

  Things settled down in Potamos’s life until he fell in love with Linda, a bright, vibrant, intense, occasionally hysterical Jewish woman who worked as a secretary at the CIA. That marriage lasted four months after he discovered she was cheating on him. That her lover was another secretary at the agency named Gertrude gave Potamos a certain comfort; at least he hadn’t lost out to another guy. The divorce was routine and quick, without kids to complicate things as there had been in marriage number one.

  When his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and told he had no more than six months to live, he summoned Joe to New York and handed him a check for $100,000: “Take it now. It makes no sense to wait until I’m dead.”

  Potamos used the money to buy his one-bedroom Rosslyn condo. On the day he closed on it, he made a silent pledge: He’d never marry again. So far, so good, although there were times with Roseann when his resolve threatened to wilt. She was good-looking—but weren’t they all?—slender and small breasted, with long, strong fingers, a pianist’s hands. She wore her blue-black hair short and swept back at the sides, exposing the graceful line of a lovely neck. Her makeup was applied with a deft hand, just enough to add the proper touch of color to her naturally pale face. Well, maybe someday . . . maybe not.

  Although he’d buried his head beneath the pillow to muffle the incessant one-two-three rhythm of the waltzes, he heard the phone ring. Roseann entered the bedroom. “It’s for you, Joe. Gil Gardello.” Gardello was Potamos’s editor at the Post.

  Potamos moaned as he kicked Jumper off his legs, dragged himself from bed, and went to the phone in the kitchen.

  “Yeah?”

  “Joe, you hear about the plane that went down in New York?”

  “No.”

  “Was DC bound. Locals on board. No survivors.”

  “Gee, I’m really sorry to hear that. What the hell does it have to do with me?”

  “As soon as we get a passenger list, I want you to contact family members, get their reactions.”

  “Jesus! What’s this—TV time? You want me to ask some wife how she feels about her old man dying in a plane wreck?”

  “Be subtle, gentle.”

  “Not me, Gil. Send some breathless intern.”

  “Be here in an hour, Joe.”

  “I’m not asking those questions.”

  “An hour. Better still, a half hour. No point in washing up, the way you dress.” Gardello hung up.

  Roseann, still in a film of nightgown, returned to the piano.

  “I got to go,” Potamos said.

  “On your day off?” she said, still playing. “Sorry.”

  “At least I won’t have to hear you play those apple strudel songs.”

  Her response was to play louder and with greater flourishes. He closed the bathroom door, showered, got dressed in his fashion, and left the apartment to the strains of “Wine, Women and Song.”

  6

  That Same Day

  New York

  Within an hour, hundreds of people had converged on the area where the Dash 8 aircraft had crashed after taking off from Westchester County airport. State and local police, airport and airline personnel, volunteer fire departments, ambulance corps technicians, elected village officials, and Special Agent Frank Lazzara and his three colleagues looked out over what had once been a tranquil wooded area a hundred yards from the reservoir. A police helicopter hovered low overhead, its incessant chopping sound making conversation difficult.

  There was understandable confusion. Lazzara had been alerted that the NTSB contingent would be arriving shortly. Unless there was suspicion that the plane had been brought down by a criminal act, NTSB would control the scene and the ensuing investigation.

  But in the absence of NTSB officials, Lazzara took charge, ordering uniformed police to further secure the area as far up as where the troopers who’d originally answered the call had parked their vehicles, and instructing medical and fire personnel to search for survivors, no matter what. There was always a chance. Those earthquake victims buried under rubble until—

  His cell phone rang.

  “Lazzara.”

  “Frank, it’s Will.” Wilfred Fellows, Lazzara’s second in command at the White Plains office, had been out of the office when the call came to head for the crash scene. “I think you ought to know there’s a third plane down.”

  Lazzara was speechless.

  “California, outside San Francisco. San Jose. A commuter plane like the others. There’s an eyewitness to it. . . . You there, Frank?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Three. This eyewitness. Credible?”

  “I don’t know. A woman. I just got a call from the San Francisco office.”

  “What’s she say?”

  “She claims she saw something hit the plane after it took off.”

  “Something hit it? Like what? Another plane? An asteroid?”

  “That’s what they told me. Thought you’d want to know.”

  “Yeah, thanks. We’ll need more agents here. It’s thickening up. Call Manhattan, get them to dispatch some.”

  “Shall do.”

  Lazzara pushed the off button and slipped the small phone into his jacket pocket. As far as he was concerned, the question of whether there was criminal involvement was now a no-brainer. Had the Dash 8 been the only plane down that day, he would have been slow to come to that conclusion, and would have taken NTSB’s lead once its officials had made their preliminary evaluation.

  But the Dash 8 hadn’t been the only commuter aircraft to fall from the skies that morning. Two others had. There had to be a connection among the three. Had to be. Only a naive fool would even consider the possibility that three well-maintained, professionally piloted commercial aircraft had, within four hours, in good weather (if Westchester was any indication that morning), fallen to earth due to natural causes—mechanical failure, pilot error, air traffic control mistakes, metal fatigue, fuel tank explosion, or other noncriminal causes of aircraft falling from the sky.

  He wasn’t happy with what Fellows had told him about the California eyewitness. He hadn’t worked aircraft accidents before, but having followed every aspect of the TWA 800 accident over Long Island, he was well aw
are that the missile theorists, for example, were less than credible—a generous lay psychological evaluation.

  A young volunteer fireman came up to him. “There’s nobody alive,” he said.

  “What’s that?” Lazzara asked, referring to something the firefighter held.

  “A necklace. Found it over there.” He pointed. “Must have belonged to a passenger.” He handed it to Lazzara, who fingered the four-leaf clover.

  “A good luck charm,” Lazzara said grimly. “Some luck.” He handed it back to the firefighter—“Give this to the NTSB people”—and turned as several men arrived. They wore blue windbreakers with NTSB emblazoned in yellow on the back.

  “Frank Lazzara, FBI,” the special agent said, extending his hand to the leader.

  “O’Connell, NTSB, Parsippany. Any survivors?”

  “Negative so far. I’m afraid it’ll be negative forever.”

  O’Connell looked back up the trail he and his people had used to reach the scene. “We’ll need a bulldozer to widen that out, get a road down here.”

  The mayor of a nearby village overheard the comment and said, “I’ll arrange it right away.”

  Lazzara took O’Connell aside. “You’ll be heading the investigation?” he asked.

  “No. Pete Mullin from Washington should be here any minute.”

  “You’ve heard about the other two,” Lazzara said.

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s got to be a link.”

  O’Connell shrugged. “To be determined.”

  “Got to be,” Lazzara repeated. “What were the other planes?”

  “Another Dash 8 in Boise, a Saab 34 in San Jose.”

  “Saab? Like the car?”

  “Yeah. A commuter plane operated by a regional carrier.”

  “Survivors?”

  “None reported.”

  Lazzara pondered whether to mention the eyewitness report. O’Connell spared him that decision. “An eyewitness in California says she saw something hit the Saab shortly after takeoff.”

  “I heard that. Play for you?”