“Oh yes,” said the ambassador, his smile almost maniacal in the weird light. “I believe we have met before.”
Moody couldn’t recall the man at all. He’d probably been part of some milling swarm at a State Department reception, accorded a fleeting “Hi, how’re ya” from Moody as he’d worked the crowd.
Lenore skipped on inside, abandoning Moody to their host. He prattled on about how honored he was to have the White House chief of staff at his residence, and then, pressing a glass of champagne into Moody’s hand from a butler’s tray, led him into the darkened house, the walls of its shadowy corridors and rooms flickering with the candlelight.
There were paintings everywhere—native art, the ambassador said, dancing his flashlight over them. They seemed mostly jungle and mountain scenes, all very primitive, reminding Moody a little of voodoo, though the ambassador was quite light-skinned, and spoke with a French accent.
Finally, Moody escaped him, but to no great purpose. Lenore had disappeared. He stepped into a large, richly furnished room filled with strangers, standing awkwardly a moment, then shrinking back against a wall. He hated being on his own at parties. One of the reasons he’d been so attracted to the idea of marrying Deena was that she was so much at ease at them. His first wife hated formal parties. She was far more comfortable sitting around friends’ kitchen tables.
A very buxom, blond woman with a German accent pounced on him. She obviously had no idea who he was, but began talking to him with great familiarity, snatching him up another drink when he finished his champagne and then tugging him out through large French doors onto a terrace, its flagstones limned by the frail moonlight.
“I want you to meet Albert-Philippe,” she said. “He needs help in finding a country.”
She confronted him with a very thin, almost femininely handsome young man with dark curly hair and light blue eyes. He seemed nervous, on the verge of anger.
“Albert-Philippe drives racing cars,” said the German woman.
“Once I drove racing cars,” he protested. “Now I can do nothing. I cannot stay in Europe. It’s impossible, impossible. I don’t know where to turn.” He studied Moody carefully. “I am thinking of South America. But it is so boring. So lower class. Peasants everywhere. Indians. Disgusting.”
Moody recognized no one else at this gathering, but oddly, he knew about this man. He’d seen his picture in People magazine, copies of which Deena kept in a rack by the toilet of their bathroom. The youth was less a racing driver than a Riviera beach bum. He’d made a pass at Monaco’s Princess Stephanie, getting a richly deserved bum’s rush, and later had hired on as paid companion to a notorious American-born Spanish countess-by-marriage, who’d been rendered a near invalid by her drug habits. She’d died shortly afterward, and more than a million dollars had turned up missing. According to the article, charges had been lodged against the young man in France. Moody began to feel very uneasy in his presence, in this house.
He mentioned the heiress’s name. “You worked for her?”
“Worked?” said the youth, throwing up his hands. “I slaved for her. I got her up. I cleaned her up. I got her dressed. I made her eat. I put her to bed. I do this, day after day, and what is my reward? I am hounded out of my own country!”
“Whatever you took, Albert-Philippe,” said the blond woman sweetly, “you earned it.”
Moody backed away, into some prickly bushes. The youth stalked away, but the German woman moved closer, driving Moody farther into the bush.
“I have big bazooms,” she said, smiling. “They intimidate some men. Like you, I see.”
Leaves scratching his face, Moody pushed his way clear and fled inside. He found Lenore over by the fireplace, beneath a painting depicting what looked to be some hellish crime, or ritual execution.
“Are you having a wonderful time, Colonel?” She gave the last word a French pronunciation.
“I can’t believe I’m in Washington.”
“Ah! Here’s the princess. You must meet the princess.” She thrust him in front of a small, dark, sharp-nosed woman who eyed him disdainfully.
“Your Highness, may I present Colonel Moody. Colonel, darling, this is Marie-Claire of France.”
The woman impatiently offered her hand. It occurred to Moody he was supposed to kiss it, but he’d never done that before. He shook it instead. “How do you do,” she growled, then turned away from him, talking to Lenore in French.
There were refreshments on a sideboard, none of the offerings any kind of food Moody recognized. He made a small plate of what looked to be dessert and went to a couch, sitting down next to a very dignified-looking older woman, who introduced herself as Lady Sansome. She seemed to recognize him, and began a pleasant conversation about the changing Washington diplomatic scene. The buxom blonde had taken a seat on the other side of the room. Eyes glistening in the candlelight, she watched Moody as might a lioness pondering a nearby zebra.
“Who is that woman?” Moody whispered to the Englishwoman.
“Oh, that’s Ilsa. Do you fancy her?”
“Do I what?”
“In English country houses, it’s customary to slip upstairs before the coffee. It’s rather late, but you ought to manage it.”
“I don’t, I don’t fancy her.”
“Brilliant.” She yawned. “Well, then, do you fancy me?”
All of Moody’s alarm bells went off. Excusing himself clumsily, he stood up. He wanted to rush out the door, but decided to make a last stab at getting Lenore out of there.
She was sitting now in a winged chair by the fireplace.
“I have to go,” Moody said, leaning close. “Do you need a ride home?”
“Go? Dear boy.” She got up, presumably to say good night, but once she was clear of the chair, she thrust Moody down into it and thumped herself down on his lap.
He grimaced. She had a bony bottom, and her awkward perch pained his thighs.
“Are you all right, Colonel darling?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s not as though I was sitting on your thingie, or am I?”
“I’ve got to go.” He rose, nearly spilling her on the floor. “Good night. My regards to your husband.”
He fled the house as he once might have a Vietcong ambush, but she came after him, calling out his name, keeping up with him all the way down the hill.
They stared at each other across his car. “Open the doors, dear boy. I want to go for a drive.”
He hadn’t gone half a mile down the narrow road when she asked him to pull over. He almost struck a tree.
“What a zoo,” he said.
She made no reply. Instead, she crept over toward him, placing her knee carefully to avoid the phone console between their seats. She kissed him, her loosened hair falling over him, her lips tasting of champagne. He reached to her back, then slipped his hand down beneath her skirt and up again, pulling down the elastic of her panties. Her bottom didn’t seem so bony now.
“Mmmmmmmmmm,” she said.
“You’re really something, Mrs. Fairbrother.”
“Yes, I am. Yes, I am.”
She leaned back now, he thought to remove her dress, but instead she then scrunched down, opening the fly of his trousers.
“My,” she said. “Your thingie’s most impressive.”
She caressed him. He closed his eyes, waiting.
“Would you like me to kiss you there?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes!”
She sat up. “Then promise me you’ll give David Showers back his job.”
“What?”
“His bloody job. Promise me you’ll reinstate him. Then I’ll kiss you wherever you like.” Her wicked eyes were full of purpose. She touched him once again. “Come on, Colonel. Promise.”
“Is that why you brought me here?”
“Horse country people are very loyal, Colonel. Didn’t you know?”
“You and your goddamn Showers can go to
hell!”
He snapped open his door, then sat feeling very foolish. He had nowhere to go. This was his car. Furiously, he zipped up his pants.
Lenore got out on her side, leaving the door open.
“I suppose you’d prefer to go home to your wife,” she said, standing in the road. “She knows how to kiss you, doesn’t she? I know that very well. I saw her in the Dandytown Inn kissing a man just where you wanted to be kissed, only it wasn’t you, was it, Colonel darling?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Come by sometime and I’ll tell you who it was—after David has his job back.”
Restarting his car, he saw her skipping back up the road in the red glow of his taillights.
Sixteen
Spencer found he was enjoying himself. A newsman’s most useful trait is not his intellect or writing ability but his curiosity, and Spencer’s was flaming along on all burners. He was having such a good time that he even put aside booze for a while.
He kept diligently at his “research” for his horse country feature, pausing only to turn out a few party pieces and art exhibition reviews to satisfy his bureau chief that he was remaining productive. He returned to Dandytown, spending more time with the increasingly helpful prosecutor, Wayne Bensinger, who surprised him by handing over a copy of the inquest transcript.
It wasn’t that useful. After going over all the statements and depositions taken by the sheriff the day after the murder, it seemed that the better part of Dandytown had been in the inn around the time of the homicides, and that, with all the milling about and socializing that night, a sizable number of people had absented themselves long enough to have paid a visit to the Clays’ hotel room. The list included the Blochs, the Moodys, the Fairbrothers, Billy Bonning, Becky Gibbons Bonning, Alixe Percy, and even his cousin David.
All good newsmen possess another quality—the ability to acquire and keep contacts. In a long career, a journalist will traverse virtually every walk of American life, and gather friends and acquaintances all along the way—beat cops and scientists, society grandes dames and grubby politicians, movie stars and mafiosi.
Spencer’s circle was wider than most, and included sports writers. After returning from Dandytown, he’d called a track writer he knew from his old paper in New York, a man who, with the exception of the Chicago Tribune’s Neil Milbert, was probably the best in his field.
The man had to go scrounging in his files, but he did manage to come up with a recent theft of a valuable bay stallion with two white stockings.
“It was an Irish horse. Worth a couple of million dollars. Some of us had expected to see him in the Derby.”
“A colt?”
“A two-year-old. Bloodlines like a rare old wine.”
“We had someone check in both England and Ireland, but they came up with zip,” Spencer said.
“It didn’t happen in England or Ireland. The horse was sold at a colt sale in the West of Ireland this spring. A Canadian bought him. Ted Ryan. He’d hardly gotten it home to British Columbia when someone lifted the horse from his barn. Thought it was a ransom job at first, but there hasn’t been a peep. At least none we’ve heard about. The even-money bet is that the horse is dead. You can kill an animal like that pretty easy if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Would anybody have a picture of this horse?”
“You can try the Irish Times. They run horse pictures the way the London papers run nudies. Or the Vancouver Sun.”
Spencer made a note to do so. He then asked his friend about the racing outfit in New Jersey.
“Have I ever heard of them?” the man said. “Jack, you know how people complain about the way New Jersey smells? I think most of the stink comes from these guys.”
“Have they ever been in trouble with the racing commission? The law? Anything?”
“Nothing that stuck, but, don’t worry, their time will come. What’s this all about?”
“I’m writing a story about horses, and as usual I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You’re writing a story about two-million-dollar Irish horses that got hijacked in Canada?”
“One of the horse people I talked to said they had seen such a horse and wondered where it came from.”
“Saw it where?”
“I forgot.”
“Yeah, right. What’re you on to, Jack?”
“When I find out, you’ll be the first to know.”
It occurred to Spencer that might not be a bad idea. His track writer friend would be a lot more responsive to this particular subject than Sheriff Cooke had shown any indication of being.
Spencer did some checking in his own bureau’s files on Bernard H. Bloch, financier, industrialist, real estate developer, and sportsman. Most of what he found was ridiculous—drooly in-awe-of-the-very-rich pieces of the sort that had been turned out by the ton about Donald Trump, John Kluge, and Henry Kravis. Unlike these estimable gentlemen, Bloch had had some brushes with the authorities, however. One of his chemical plants in Delaware had been shut down by the EPA for pollution control violations. He’d also been not a little smudged by the big savings and loan scandal in the 1980s, and, many years before that, had been tried for attempting to bribe a zoning official in Maryland. He’d been acquitted. The attorney who successfully defended him had been one of his business partners.
His name was Robert M. Moody, later governor of the state of Maryland. Bernard Bloch had been his campaign chairman.
Spencer’s acquaintances also included a number of useful sources in the Pentagon and its attendant civilian defense-oriented think tanks. It was to the latter he now turned. The Defense Department had the best computers in the world, but the machines used by the Beltway Bandits, as the civilian consultants around Washington were known, were no slouches.
A friend with a big consulting firm in Arlington owed him a remembered favor—a story Spencer had held back on a big mistake the company had made on an Air Force project. Spencer could think of no better time to collect.
The man was happy to pay up. It was a story that could always be resurrected. He took Spencer to the most elaborate computer setup the company possessed and got quickly to work, first taking videotape footage of the photo of the mysterious scratches—magnifying and refining the image considerably. Then he fed the tape into his computer’s disc memory, and projected the image on his monitor. Using his display generator, he was able to twist and contort the scratch lines in all manner of ways—causing them to turn dimensionally in the manner of a hologram, expanding them, compressing them, elongating them, superimposing one upon another.
“It’s quite a tangle,” he said. “What the hell is this?”
“They’re scratches on the back of a dead man.”
“I wish you hadn’t told me.”
“Do you see any pattern?”
“Too many patterns. Like a kid drawing the same thing over and over on the same piece of paper.”
“A woman did it. She was dying at the time. Probably paralyzed. Drugs. I have a feeling she may have been trying to use the fellow’s back for a blackboard, trying to say something.”
“Fascinating.” Spencer’s friend fiddled with the computer’s controls a moment more, with no discernible result.
“Don’t give up,” he said. “Let me try something.”
Most of the scratches abruptly vanished from the screen.
“I’ve eliminated all but the deepest impressions. Now I’ll extend all the lines in the directions they were following.”
The screen abruptly filled with what looked like an overturned bowl of spaghetti.
“Terrific,” said Spencer unhappily.
“Patience, Jack. Patience.” He fiddled again. The computer moved in for a tight close-up. “Observe. I’ll now eliminate the sections of the lines that extended beyond the original impressions.”
There was another transformation.
“Good Lord,” Spencer said.
“Science, Jack.�
��
“Whatever. There, anyway, is the letter B.”
“B it is. Now let me work on the rest of it.”
The magic became harder to produce. Spencer’s friend labored like someone programming a space mission, his fingers moving as gently as if a wrong move might detonate the screen.
Finally, wiping perspiration from his forehead, he sat back.
“Best I can do, old buddy. We’ve got a B, what may be an e or an a or an o, and what I think is a small r—though I can’t be sure. The rest is indecipherable.”
“It’s more than I hoped for.”
“I don’t know what this is about, but none of this would be of any use in a court of law. It’s all electronic speculation. It might give you some ideas, though.”
“It has. Can you give me a printout of all this?”
The man pushed a button. “As we speak. And I can also record the whole process we went through on another videotape for you. Just don’t let anyone know where it came from. My boss thinks I’m working on missile trajectories.”
Alixe had tried all manner of entreaties to get Becky out of her cottage and off Showers’ farm for a while, only to be rebuffed with sullen silences or temper tantrums. The girl did not want to stir from her redoubt against the outside world until Showers came home, though she had had little enough to say to him when he’d been hanging about the place before his national guard maneuvers.
She had been staying in bed, or near it, coming to the door in her robe or nightgown, her hair uncombed, her eyes reddened, as though from crying. At length, she stopped coming to the door. Alixe tried the telephone, but Becky never answered. She used it, though. Alixe heard her talking on it one morning when she’d crept up to a back window.
Perhaps the girl’s problem was simply disappointment—dreams suddenly realized with Showers finally leaving the State Department, then just as abruptly dashed when he’d showed no inclination toward settling down to the life Becky had envisioned for him—for them both. All he had on his mind was the bay stallion, and righting the wrong the animal represented. Many in Dandytown thought of Showers as a softy, because of his reflexive kindness, but Alixe knew better. He was a hard man, as hard as she’d ever encountered—the sort of man who’d pursue what he’d set his mind to as resolutely as a barn-crazy horse galloping hell-bent for home without regard for whip or bit or obstacle. Alixe had been grievously in error in suggesting Becky as a wife for him. She was as ill suited for a man like that as she had been for Billy. Lenore wasn’t much up to him, either. Lenore didn’t like to keep weak men for long, but she could never abide a man she couldn’t control.
The Last Virginia Gentleman Page 31