Murder at the Opera (46 page)

The phone in their apartment rang incessantly the following morning, the calls a combination of questions and theories about the thwarted assassination attempt on the president and first lady, and the one against the congressman that had succeeded, others rehashing the ball’s success. It had raised more money for the Washington National Opera than any previous Opera Ball. Bad news with good news, the bitter with the sweet.

At eleven, Mac and Annabel took their car from the underground garage—the parking spot had added $35,000 to the condo’s sale price—and drove to Great Falls, where they found Pawkins’ home. He was in front hauling bulging green leaf bags to the garage. An odd sight.

“Welcome,” he announced grandly. “Come on in. Onion soup, a salad, and the best French bread in D.C. is on the menu.”

They entered the house. “Get over last night?” he asked.

“It’s not something you get over,” Annabel said, “at least not this soon.”

“We live in perilous times,” Pawkins said. “Might as well get used to it. Nothing new on the news. Just confusion. Come, take a tour of the old homestead.”

They ended in his elaborate study, where the strains of an opera—
Death in Venice
by Benjamin Britten, he explained—poured out of speakers. “Britten wrote it for his lover of many years, Peter Pears. That’s Pears singing the title role.”

They gravitated to the kitchen, where Pawkins had set a long table of antique French pine. A vase of freshly cut flowers dominated the middle.

“A drink to celebrate?” he asked. “Bloody Marys are mixed and ready to go.”

“I don’t think a celebration is in order, Ray,” Mac said.

“I disagree, Mac.
Tosca
is a smashing success. Last night’s Opera Ball raised a ton of money and is still D.C.’s social highlight. We lost a congressman, but the president emerges unscathed. And I am about to embark on a new phase of life.”

Pawkins poured drinks whether they wanted them or not, and joined them at the table. He raised his glass in a toast. “To all things good, Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” One of the cats jumped up on the table, and Pawkins shooed him down. “All right,” he said, smacking his hands together as though cueing someone, in this case himself. “One, I did not murder Aaron Musinski.”

“We know that,” Mac said.

“Oh? How?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I knew it was Grimes from the beginning. So, my friends, your assumption that I did in the crotchety old bastard was wrong, terribly wrong. Frankly, I’m hurt that you would even think me capable of such a thing.”

“It wasn’t an unreasonable possibility,” Mac said, “considering what Josephson told us. Now we know differently.”

“I would certainly hope you do, and an apology is in order.”

Annabel ignored his call for them to apologize. “What about the Mozart-Haydn scores? Did you take them? Josephson claims you did. He had an impressive array of evidence to back up his accusation.”

“Of course I took them. Everything he told you about that is true.”

His easy admission of guilt silenced Mac and Annabel.

“You look shocked,” Pawkins said. “I can’t imagine why, a pair of worldly people like you. I spent twenty years with MPD, watching my fellow officers steal whenever it was convenient. They’d do a drug bust where a hundred packets of crack were found. How many were reported? Eighty? Ninety? The rest were sold to the same drug dealers who were busted and who walked, thanks to our screwed-up legal system.”

“Are you justifying what you did because of what others have done?” Annabel asked.

“You bet I am,” Pawkins said without hesitation. “I never did any of that. Steal drugs to put a few bucks in my pocket? Disgusting. I was a straight arrow, a complicit one maybe, looking the other way when my colleagues crossed the line. And do you know what? I never really blamed them. Cops don’t make a lot of money for putting their lives on the line every day to keep fat cats like you and the rest of official Washington safe from the bad guys. How much did you rake in, Mac, when you were defending the scum of the earth?”

“That misses the point,” Mac said. “And don’t broad brush your fellow cops, Ray. Most of them are honest, and you know it.”

Pawkins sat back and slowly shook his head. “How could you ever have thought I’d killed Musinski? Why would I have? I didn’t know he had those manuscripts. He’d come back from Europe with them only a few days before. No, I just happened upon them while I was spending time in the house trying to figure out who’d killed him. There they were, in his briefcase. They looked valuable, but I couldn’t be sure. I took them and had them authenticated by a source in Paris. He put me on to a collector named Saibrón, who gladly coughed up a half mil for them, which I graciously accepted. Everybody was happy, including yours truly. Nobody got hurt. I got paid enough to live decently. I took care of that whining little creep, Josephson. He’ll have enough to live happily ever after in some British old folks’ home. Saibrón made a profit, and the guy he sold the scores to can sit every night and drool over them. Everybody’s a winner.”

“A lot of people got hurt,” Annabel said, “and nobody won. Dr. Musinski’s heirs got hurt. So did the public that might have enjoyed those scores at some credible arts institution. You’re the biggest loser, Ray. You’re as bad as any cop who stole drugs from a dealer and sold them for a profit. Interesting that you’ve never once used the word ‘stole.’”

“Want me to?” Pawkins said. “I
stole
them. Feel better?”

“I’d like to go, Mac,” Annabel said.

“And miss lunch? I make a dynamite onion soup.”

“In a minute, Annie,” Mac said. To Pawkins: “Doesn’t it concern you, Ray, that you’re sitting here and openly confessing to us that you committed a major felony?”

“Why should it? What are you going to do, run to Carl Berry at MPD and tell him what I just told you? You don’t have any proof, unless you have a tape recorder going, which I seriously doubt. They’ll laugh you out of the place, Mac. I’m a retired Homicide detective. I left the force with honors, enough citations to cover a wall. Besides, defense lawyers like you aren’t the most popular people with cops.”

Pawkins stood. “Ready for lunch?” he asked.

“We’ll be leaving,” Smith said. “We’ve lost our appetite.”

“Suit yourself,” Pawkins said, following them from the house to where their car waited in front. “Last chance for Raymond Pawkins’ gourmet onion soup. I won’t be around here much longer to make it again. I’m selling this house back to the guy who originally owned it. He lives over there in that mansion. He wants it for his daughter and her family. Make a nice family compound, everybody close to the old man so he can rule the roost. I’m heading for Florida, Fort Lauderdale. The Florida Grand Opera’s pretty good, not up to WNO’s standards, but not bad. They’ve been around for more than sixty years. Plenty of work as a super. I’ll get my PI license and—”

Mac started the engine, put the car into gear, and drove away, seeing in the rearview mirror a smiling Pawkins waving good-bye.

Annabel’s anger turned to tears. “Damn him,” she said. “Everything’s been so wonderful lately, so perfect, the opening, the ball, everything.”

“Life’s like opera, Annie,” Mac said as he pulled onto the G.W. Memorial Parkway. “You have to have a villain to put things into perspective. There wouldn’t be a
Tosca
without a Scarpia. By the way, do you think I should cheat a little more to the right while I’m on the stairs in the last act? It’s my good side.”

EPILOGUE

At five o’clock, Milton Crowley did what he did every evening at that time since returning to his cottage in Wareham, Dorset, southwest of London, the home of T. E. Lawrence, and the site of his fatal motorcycle crash in 1935. An effigy in St. Martin’s Church of Lawrence of Arabia, in Arab dress, was a popular tourist attraction.

He pulled down a wicker tray with handles from where it perched on a hook in his kitchen, and placed it on the table. Each item he positioned on it was in precisely the spot where he always placed it—a small, cut-glass decanter into which he’d poured enough single-malt Scotch for two drinks; two Venetian crystal goblets that he and Cora had purchased during a holiday in Venice; four white-bread tea sandwiches, two with egg, two with salmon; a compact Grundig shortwave radio; two napkins; and a photograph of Cora in an oval, gold filigree frame with a stand.

He carefully opened the screen door of the cottage with his foot and walked down a short, grassy slope to where a white wrought-iron bench and table sat next to the gently flowing stream that had been the main reason for him having purchased the cottage, which was stoutly made of ashlar blocks of local Purbeck stone.

He set the tray on the table, brushed off the bench with one of the napkins, sat, and drew a deep, contented breath. It was a fair day, the sun warm, the sky all blue and white. The chirping of reed warblers from a patch of wild celery on the opposite bank caught his attention, and he returned their message with a bird sound of his own. Bluebells, rhododendrons, and azaleas grew along the stream’s bank; he imagined painting a still life of them, had he that talent.

He removed the glass stopper from the decanter and poured the Scotch into both glasses. He stared at the photograph for a moment before raising his glass to it: “To us, Cora. To many beautiful days in this lovely spot on God’s earth.”

He drank from his goblet and ate two of the sandwiches. His eyes became moist. He turned on the radio, which was already set on the BBC, lit a cigarette, and listened to that day’s news. British news items came first. Then the announcer turned to news of international interest.

“The simultaneous terrorist attacks on American political leaders, which resulted in the death of a United States congressman, and includes an attempt on the lives of the mayor of a major American city and the president of the United States, were part of a much wider terrorist plan, according to an American spokesman, Wilbur Murtaugh, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.”

An excerpt from Murtaugh’s statement played:

“This diabolical scheme to simultaneously attack our government leaders has been thwarted in all but one case, which resulted in the death of a revered member of the United States Congress. It was through the diligent and unyielding efforts of this department, and related federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies, that the plan was uprooted, the potential perpetrators identified and apprehended. For those who have doubted the efficacy of our efforts to protect American citizens through such initiatives as the Patriot Act and the National Security Agency’s Subversive’s Surveillance Act, our success in this, the latest terrorist assault on our government leaders, should lay those concerns to rest.”

The newscast ended with a review of Covent Garden’s production of Mozart’s comic opera,
Le nozze di Figaro,
which the reviewer found wanting.

Crowley turned off the radio, leaned back, closed his eyes, and listened to the faint sound of the flowing water, and of the birds. He opened his eyes, leaned forward, and again held up his glass to the photograph. “To another day in this insane world, Cora. How fortunate we are to be here.”

He finished what was in his goblet, poured the contents of the second one back into the decanter, stood, stretched, picked up the tray, and carried it to the cottage.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

M
ARGARET
T
RUMAN
has won faithful readers with her works of biography and fiction, particularly her ongoing series of Capital Crimes mysteries. Her novels let us into the corridors of power and privilege, poverty and pageantry in the nation’s capital. She is the author of many nonfiction books, most recently
The President’s House,
in which she shares some of the secrets and history of the White House, where she once resided. She lives in Manhattan.

B
Y
M
ARGARET
T
RUMAN

First Ladies

Bess W. Truman

Souvenir

Women of Courage

Harry S Truman

Letters from Father: The Truman Family’s Personal Correspondences

Where the Buck Stops

White House Pets

The President’s House

I
N THE
C
APITAL
C
RIMES
S
ERIES

Murder in Foggy Bottom

Murder at the Library of Congress

Murder at the Watergate

Murder in the House

Murder at the National Gallery

Murder on the Potomac

Murder at the Pentagon

Murder in the Smithsonian

Murder at the National Cathedral

Murder at the Kennedy Center

Murder in the CIA

Murder in Georgetown

Murder at the FBI

Murder on Embassy Row

Murder in the Supreme Court

Murder on Capitol Hill

Murder in the White House

Murder in Havana

Murder at Ford’s Theater

Murder at Union Station

Murder at The Washington Tribune

Murder at the Opera