Murder Inside the Beltway (26 page)

It was agreed. When Kloss returned to the home, he filled in Jackson and Hall.

“The officers inside will alert you when Rollins leaves his office. Never let him out of your sight, only don’t get too close. Just position yourselves where you can watch for anyone approaching him. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Stay apart from each other,” was Kloss’s final word. “Always observe him from two different vantage points.”

“Okay,” Hall said.

“I don’t expect anything to come of this, but I want to cover all the bases. Our hands are tied until we hear from the kidnapper again.” Kloss suggested to Mary that she dress the next day in tourist clothing. He smiled and said to Matt, “You look like the studious type. Maybe you should play college student—you know, carry a couple of books and a knapsack. Mr. Rollins has a busy day on his calendar, including lunch with a congressional staffer. He’s keeping the appointment. They’re going to Primi Piatti, on I Street.” He consulted his notebook. “They’ve booked a twelve-thirty table in their sidewalk café. One of you get there earlier and grab a table. Maybe you should do that, Mary. Have lunch and read some tourist guides. Matt, there’s another outdoor spot across the street, just a couple of tables in front of a fast-food joint. You hang there. Everybody involved has your cell numbers. Keep ’em on and charged. Any questions?”

“Where do we hang out until lunch?” Jackson asked.

“A white van a half block from the restaurant. It’s got an electric company sign on the sides, Colonial Electric. There’ll be a command post set up in it. We’ll keep in touch with you there. Like I said, nothing may come of this, but without another call, we don’t have much of a choice.” He handed each of them an envelope. “Spending money,” he explained. “Lunch is on MPD.”

For the Rollinses, sleep that night was out of the question. They tried to divert their attention from the activity in the house, and the reason for it, by watching television in the bedroom—anything but the news—but everything on the screen was irrelevant, meaningless. Kloss or Garcia monitored news channels on a second set, in the den. The constant ringing of the telephone had lessened to some degree. Rollins handled the personal calls from friends and his professional colleagues, keeping them short to clear the line in the event Samantha’s abductors called. They didn’t.

“Damn!” Rollins exploded to Kloss at two o’clock Monday morning. “Why haven’t we heard anything?”

Kloss had nodded off in a chair. He snapped awake. “I don’t know,” he said, “but there’s nothing we can do but wait. Look, Mr. Rollins, go lie down. Try to sleep. I want you wide awake when you head downtown in the morning.”

“I hope you know how much my wife and I appreciate everything you and your people are doing. It’s just that—” Rollins collapsed in a chair and sobbed. He hadn’t cried since he was a child, and was embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Nothing to be sorry about, sir,” Kloss said, extending his hand and touching Rollins’s shoulder.

“It’s just that to think of Samantha out there in the hands of these bastards is too much to bear.” He turned to Kloss. “She will be all right, won’t she?”

“We’ll do everything we possibly can to make sure that she is. Everything!”

Unstated was the reality that no matter what they did, no matter how many cops were on the case, no matter what elaborate plans were put into play, the Rollinses might never see their daughter again.

R
ollins’s staff was already at work when he arrived on Monday.

“Good morning,” he said as he passed them on the way inside.

“Good morning, Jerry,” said his secretary, who followed him. “How are you doing?”

“As well as can be expected, I suppose. How was the birthday dinner?”

“It was fine, lots of fun.” How typical of him, she thought, to remember such a trivial thing in the midst of his personal travail. “Is there… is there anything new on… ?”

“On the kidnapping? No.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d be here today, but Brian told me you were coming in, something about keeping a normal schedule.”

Rollins shook his head as he slipped out of his blue pin-striped suit jacket and draped it over the back of his chair. “Normal schedule,” he said into the air. “Is anything normal anymore? So, what’s on the agenda?”

She gave him a rundown of things she thought he might want to look at, and calls to return.

“Thanks, Caroline. You’re the best keeper a man could have.”

She fought against tearing up and left.

At ten o’clock, she called him on the intercom. “Jerry, Kevin Ziegler is on the phone.”

“Ziegler?” Rollins said. “What’s
he
want?”

“I don’t know. He just said that it was important that he speak with you.”

“Tell him I’m on another call but will be off soon.”

He hadn’t spoken with Ziegler for months. Prior to the launch of the Pyle and Colgate campaigns, they’d occasionally run into each other at social or political events around town, and had shared a table at luncheons and dinners at the National Press Club and other venues at which speakers of interest appeared. He disliked Ziegler, which put him in the mainstream of general feelings about Pyle’s puppet-master. At the same time, he recognized the man’s intellect and admired his steely resolve to get what he wanted, for his candidate and, by extension, for himself.

Why was he calling? Rollins wondered. Was it to express his concern for what the Rollins family was enduring? He preferred to think that was the case.

He picked up the phone. “Hello, Kevin,” he said.

“Jerry. I wasn’t sure I’d catch you at the office, considering what’s going on. Good God, man, what an ordeal.”

“Yes, it’s been rough.”

“Especially for that lovely wife of yours,” Ziegler said. “How is she holding up?”

“She’s standing tall. How are you, Kevin?”

“I’m doing just fine. Jerry, I’ll get to the point. We have to talk.”

“About what?”

“That’s better left for when we get together. Are you free for lunch?”

“As a matter of fact, I’m not.”

“Can you
make
yourself free for lunch? It’s important, Jerry. I realize that everything pales in comparison to your personal ordeal, but there may be something we can do to help in that regard.”

Rollins’s face twisted into a question mark. What could Jack possibly mean?

“Jerry,” Ziegler said, “the president is deeply concerned about what’s happened to you and your daughter. He wants to do everything in his power to get that little girl home safe and sound, and to pull out all the stops to accomplish that. We can discuss the role he might play, along with other things I need to run by you.”

“I, ah—all right, Kevin. I’ll cancel my lunch. Where would you like to meet?”

“I’ll set it up at my club.”

“Which one? You belong to a few.”

“It isn’t a club exactly, Jerry. Sort of a sanctuary from the madness of everyday life in the White House. It’s a lovely, secluded country retreat only a few miles into Maryland. I’ll come by and pick you up at the office, say at twelve thirty?”

Rollins thought for a moment. Could he agree without running it past the detectives? He knew he couldn’t.

“Twelve thirty will be fine, Kevin.”

He hung up and pondered what had just transpired. Ziegler’s call was unseemly. To have had no contact with him for all these months and then to receive a call out of the blue the day after Samantha’s kidnapping was, well, bizarre. President Pyle wanting to help? Absurd. There was nothing he could do. Rollins knew that if he played into such a scenario, anything that came from Pyle and his administration would be spun purely for political posturing and gain, an empty offer to reach across the aisle to his competitor’s best friend and chief advisor, in his time of need. The spin machine had always been distasteful to Rollins, but he was as much a part of it as anyone else in D.C.

He called Massie into the office. “Brian, my plans have changed. I need to cancel my lunch date with Testa from Senator Prescott’s office. Would you please call him for me and offer my apologies.”

“Sure. Want me to suggest I meet with him?”

“Not a bad idea. You know what it’s about.”

“Why the change, Jerry?”

“A last-minute thing. I’m having an unchangeable lunch with someone else.”

Massie waited to see whether Rollins would elaborate, mention the name of his new lunch date. He didn’t.

Rollins’s next decision was whether to call Colgate and tell him of the meeting with Ziegler. Until this day, that decision would have been automatic. Colgate would want to know about such a get-together, and Rollins wouldn’t have hesitated filling him in. But he decided not to bother. He still carried a sour taste in his mouth from yesterday’s meeting, at which Colgate had so callously shifted from Samantha’s kidnapping to his upcoming speech on the economy. No, he’d go through with the lunch, and if anything came from it that would impact the campaign, he’d pass it along.

One of the detectives monitoring phones from the vacant adjacent room came in. “Detective Kloss, sir.” He handed Rollins a cell phone.

“You’ve changed your plans,” Kloss said.

“You—of course, you heard the conversation,” Rollins said. “I was about to let you know.”

“I gather from the call that you don’t know your destination.”

“You know everything I know, Detective. No, I have no idea where we’re going. Somewhere in Maryland.”

“He’s picking you up?”

“Yes. He’ll have a car and driver.”

“We’ll follow.”

“I’m sure you will. I’m sorry for the change.”

“No problem. I’ll assign Jackson and another detective. Ignore them. They’ll keep their distance. Detective Hall can stay here with your wife.”

“All right.”

“Mind a suggestion, Mr. Rollins?”

“Of course not.”

“How would you feel about wearing a wire?”

“To the lunch?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No, that’s out of the question.”

“Just a thought. Your caller referred to your daughter.”

“It was just a gesture on his part, I’m sure. No, it would be inappropriate to record our conversation during a campaign.”

Rollins couldn’t see Kloss. Had he, he would have seen the quizzical expression on the detective’s face.
Inappropriate to record a conversation during a campaign
? As far as Kloss knew, there was nothing inappropriate during any presidential campaign, especially this one.

“As you wish, sir,” Kloss said.

“How is Mrs. Rollins?” Jerry asked.

“She’s fine. Doing just fine.”

Rollins considered asking to speak with her but decided not to. Better to concentrate on the lunch with Ziegler.

As he waited until it was time to be picked up, he tried to concentrate on legal matters before him, but it proved impossible. His thoughts flew in a dozen directions, never landing long enough to allow focus on any one. He decided he needed to relax, and put a Horace Silver CD on the stereo, a particular favorite of his. As Jerry closed his eyes and allowed the music to soothe his nerves, Brian Massie stopped by Caroline’s desk to say he was going out for a smoke.

“When are you going to give up that dreadful habit?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” he replied pleasantly. “Who’s Jerry having lunch with?”

“I don’t know.” She lowered her voice. “He got a call from Kevin Ziegler.”

Massie’s eyebrows went up. “What’s that about?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

Massie went to the street, lit up, pulled out his cell phone, and placed a call.

“Hello?” a male voice answered.

“It’s Brian. He’s canceled his lunch date at Primi Piatti.”

“We know.”

“He might be having lunch with—”

The call was clicked off at the other end.

Caroline received a call at 12:30. “This is Kevin Ziegler,” the caller said. “My car is waiting in front for Mr. Rollins.”

Rollins had been looking at his office window and saw the black Town Car with darkened windows glide up to the curb. As he strode through the reception area, he said to Massie, who stood by Caroline’s desk, “What about your lunch with Testa?”

“He canceled, said he preferred to meet with you, whenever it’s convenient.”

Rollins rode the elevator to the lobby. As he stepped through the building’s revolving glass doors, he looked to his left and saw a sedan parked a few car lengths behind the Town Car. He could make out two faces in the front seat, one of them Detective Matt Jackson.

The rear door to Ziegler’s car opened and Rollins got in.

“Hello, Jerry,” Ziegler said. “I’m glad you could clear the decks.”

Rollins said nothing as the driver pulled away and joined the traffic flow. He glanced over at Ziegler, who sat square in the seat, facing forward. He was a tall, angular man with what could only be described as an unusual face. It had a rubbery quality to it. Large, puffy, red cheeks seemed to sit unnaturally atop the rest of his face, which was basically gaunt. His nose was large and bulbous, his lips so thin as to be almost nonexistent. His hair grew at odd angles, shafts of it pasted against an irregularly shaped skull. He wore a black suit, white shirt, and silver tie. Despite his unconventional looks, he carried himself with the self-confidence of a handsome man, a powerful man sure of who he was and what he expected of others.

“I take it that the car that pulled in behind us contains some of the city’s finest,” Ziegler said, adding what passed for a knowing laugh.

“It’s to be expected,” Rollins said.

“Are they doing their job, Jerry?” he asked.

“Yes, I think so. We don’t have much choice but to believe that they are.”

“Of course. How is Governor Colgate these days?”

“He’s fine. The president?”

“As ornery as ever but very much on top of things. He asked me to personally convey his concern about your daughter.”

Rollins winced and looked through the tinted side window; it appeared to be nighttime outside.

“You know, Jerry,” Ziegler said, never turning to look at his backseat companion, “there are times when we can put politics aside in a time of personal need.”