Murder Inside the Beltway (3 page)

J
ackson and Hall drove in his car from the Met to Adams Morgan. After finding and securing a rare parking spot on the street, they went to the Diner on 18th where they had bacon and eggs before walking in the opposite direction, to Jackson’s apartment building. It was eight o’clock. They were due back on duty in four hours.

He’d lived in the apartment for the five years since leaving Chicago to join the Washington MPD, and had immediately felt comfortable in the ethnically mixed, lively Adams Morgan community, Washington’s only truly integrated neighborhood. Originally, it had attracted primarily a large influx of Hispanics, but they were soon joined by Ethiopians and Asians, as well as middle-class blacks looking for a community in which skin color meant little, and enlightened whites looking for the same thing.

Jackson’s apartment was on the top floor of a six-floor building that had been built in the 1950s. It lacked certain modern updates, but was in overall well-kept shape. Directly across from his apartment was a door leading to a roof garden that he made good use of when off-duty.

The first time Mary had been there, six months before, she’d commented on how neat he was.

“Yeah, I’m a real Felix Unger,” he’d said with a laugh.

“No, I mean it. You put me to shame. Remind me to never invite you to my place. It looks like Baghdad on a bad day.”

It was on that first visit to his apartment that they’d made love. All the signs had been there that they would eventually end up in bed, the furtive flirtations, provocative comments, and their growing need to spend off-duty time together, coffee dates, the movies, and dinners at some of Adams Morgan’s ethnic restaurants. But as their relationship deepened, they both knew one thing: they had to keep it sub-rosa, secret, quiet, under the covers as it were. Bad enough they were both MPD detectives; department regulations discouraged romantic relationships within the MPD. But they also worked together on the same squad, with Walt Hatcher as their boss. If anyone was capable of screwing up a budding relationship, it was Hatcher.

Entering into a personal relationship with Matt hadn’t been easy for Mary. She’d developed a hard shell as a defense against the cruelty of her father, who when not slapping her around, substituted verbal abuse: “You’re no beauty, that’s for sure,” he often said. “Better hope you meet some blind guy who won’t know how ugly you are.”

The shell that she wrapped herself in had been off-putting for many men and had worked to shield her from further hurt. But there was something compelling about Matt Jackson’s calm and gentleness, and intelligence, that worked to lower the barrier little by little, that allowed her to believe him when he said he thought she was very attractive, and enabled her to drop her guard and let him into her life. He’d meant what he’d said about her looks. He liked her slender figure and full breasts, and the way her lip curled into a sly smile when she didn’t buy what someone said. He found her especially sexy when she removed her contact lenses and donned reading glasses, and told her so. Neither talked about anything long-term, which served them both well. One day at a time, one shoe before the other.

They slept until eleven. She kept some clothing at the apartment, and changed into another outfit before they headed back to work on that overcast day.

Walt Hatcher also slept until eleven when his wife of many years, Mae, woke him as she’d been instructed to do when he’d arrived home that morning.

“Time to get up, sleepyhead,” she said softly, sitting next to him on the bed and touching his thinning hair.

He groaned and turned away from her.

“You said you had to get up,” she said.

He struggled to prop himself against the headboard and squeezed his eyes open and shut.

“Do you really have to go in?” she asked. “You worked all night. You deserve a day off.”

“Yeah, I gotta go in. We caught a homicide last night in Adams Morgan. People to interview today.”

“I’m sorry you missed dinner. I made lasagna the way you like it.”

He swung his legs off the bed and scratched his belly. “Sorry about that. By the time I got off last night I figured I missed dinner.” He laughed. “Hell, I knew I missed it. I stopped in at Tommy G’s place for a drink and something to eat, got involved talking to Tommy and some others. I got the call there. We brought in some Chink food after we came back from the scene.”

“I’ll make you some eggs.”

“That’d be nice, Mae. Thanks.”

He took an abbreviated shower, put on fresh shorts, socks, and T-shirt, got back into the wrinkled, stained, gray pin-striped suit, white shirt, and tie he’d worn the night before, and went to the kitchen. He came up behind his wife and kissed her neck.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, continuing to scramble eggs in a frying pan.

He sat in the breakfast nook and turned on a small TV. The local news was being reported—two drive-by shootings in Southeast, a major drug bust in Alexandria, a homosexual knifed to death by a jealous partner in a DuPont Circle apartment. He clicked off the set.

“Nothing but bad news,” Mae said as the toaster oven dinged.

“So what else is new?” he grumbled. “It’s a rotten world, Mae, with too many rotten people.”

“You see the worst of it,” she said, taking two halves of an English muffin from the toaster oven and buttering them. She delivered his breakfast and joined him. “I spoke with Christina today about all of us getting together at the Florida house. She loved the idea.”

“Yeah, that’d be okay,” he managed between bites of egg and muffin. He finished what was on the plate, wiped his mouth, and sat back. “You know what I think, Mae?”

“What?”

“You’ve been after me to pack it in at MPD for a long time now. I—”

“Only because I worry about you, Walt. You’re getting older and—”

“Just me?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do. Anyway, I’ve pretty much had it. This city’s being turned over to the scum—the whole country is, for that matter. You can’t find a store clerk who speaks English anymore. The government’s run by a bunch of morons who only care whether they get reelected, big money from lobbyists buying their votes, and I end up playing nursemaid to a rookie detective who can’t find his own rear end with both hands. Maybe it’s time I turned in the gold badge and we headed for Florida, like you’ve been wanting to.”

She beamed. “You mean that?”

He patted her leg and nodded. “Yeah, I mean it. It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but maybe we should start planning for it, huh? I might even drag out the golf clubs, if I can find them, and become—” He gestured broadly and intoned, “A man of leisure.”

She giggled and squeezed his hand. That was one of the things that had attracted him to her twenty-five years ago, her fresh-scrubbed naiveté, and the fact that she found almost everything he said to be funny.

“Gotta run,” he said. “I’ll see if I can leave today at a decent hour, maybe grab something out tonight. Okay?”

“Okay, boss,” she said, tossing him a snappy salute.

As she watched him drive away, her sunny face turned cloudy. She hoped he was serious about planning to retire and move to the Florida house they owned. Their three children were in different parts of the country—two sons, one in San Francisco, the other in Colorado, and a daughter living and working in Atlanta. And there were the precious grandchildren, four of them, living too far away. Planning a family reunion in Florida had been a dream of hers for the past few years. Maybe now that Walt seemed serious about considering a change, it would become a reality.

She didn’t harbor any delusions about her cop-husband. He was a difficult man by any standard, crusty, cranky, and opinionated, incapable of accepting any views that didn’t mesh with his—a true my-way-or-the-highway personality. And he was cheap, too, although she preferred to think of him as being frugal and responsible. There were times when she wished he wasn’t quite as tight-fisted with their money. He often criticized her for having spent too much at the market for foods he didn’t feel they needed, or for failing to make better use of coupons and not seeking out bargains. Buying the house in Florida had been a wrenching decision for him, and it took more than a year of cajoling, coupled with her making the case that it was a good investment, before he budged and agreed. She knew he’d come from a family in which money was always tight, and felt she understood his frugality. He was obsessed with saving every possible dollar from his paycheck, as though he expected the bottom to fall out of their financial lives at any moment. Aside from an occasional dinner out at the local Italian restaurant, or a hot dog at a mall, little was spent on anything but the necessities. He was a responsible man and husband when it came to their money and family, and she respected that. Still…

Mae knew how to handle him, however, or at least felt she did on most occasions. It was all a matter of tapping into his gentle, caring side, a side few knew he possessed. Sure, they’d argued on many occasions, and there were times that she’d felt belittled. But those times never lasted long. She’d wait for him to say something he considered clever and amusing and laugh heartily, which seldom failed to defuse the situation. Walter Hatcher was, as she often told her kids and friends, a good man in a lousy job, seeing the underbelly of society, responding to grisly murders and brutal rapes, young punks killing one another over a marijuana cigarette or a pair of sneakers. He tried to pass off those experiences as simply part of the job: “If it got to me, I wouldn’t do it.”

She knew better. It affected him deeply; how could it not? There were times when he came home with the smell of death on his clothing, even spots of blood. No one, she knew, could spend his or her day in those circumstances without it leaving its mark.

She wished he’d stayed with Vice and not transferred to Homicide two years ago. Not that the vice squad spent its days with a better class of people. Far from it. He would tell her of arresting pimps and prostitutes whose lives were, as far as she was concerned, dredging the bottom of the human condition, spreading disease and destroying families. Gambling rings took money from men and women who couldn’t afford to lose it, their rents and food money tossed down the drain while their families suffered. All of it, her husband told her, fed the coffers of organized crime, funding its drug trade and the thousands of addicts whose lives were ruined. “Victimless crime?” he would say, snorting at the mere suggestion. “Nothing
but
victims.”

Would he follow through on what he’d said that morning and leave his job behind, walk away in one piece and with his head held high for having made Washington a better, safer city? She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer that he would, before a stroke or heart attack or cancer dashed that dream.

W
hen Jackson and Hall arrived at headquarters on Indiana Avenue a little after noon, they were told that Hatcher was in a meeting upstairs with the white shirts. They passed the time talking with other detectives until Hatcher walked into the room at twelve-thirty.

“What’s up?” Hall asked.

“Nice outfit,” Hatcher said to Hall, referring to the black slacks and sweater she wore. “Goes nice with your black hair.”

“Thanks.”

Hatcher looked at Jackson. “You ever wear anything besides that jacket with the patches on the sleeves?”

“No,” Jackson replied, tempted to say that Hatcher’s suit looked like he’d slept in it.

“Here’s the drill,” Hatcher said. “Our esteemed leaders looked at the tapes, at least the portions I flagged for them. That cop at the academy, Mary, is Al Manfredi. There’s somebody else we didn’t recognize.” He consulted a note he’d written. “Lewis Archer. He’s a well-connected lobbyist with hooks into the White House. So, it looks like we’ve got a few jerks to interview.”

“Where do we start?” Jackson asked.

“With Congressman Slade Morrison, champion of the people of Arizona. I want you to call his office, Mary, and set up an appointment.”

“Why me?”

“A woman’s less threatening.”

Jackson saw the wisdom of having Mary make the call, but doubted that it had been Hatcher’s idea. More likely it came from one of the chiefs with whom Hatcher had been conferring. Approaching Congressman Morrison was sensitive; sensitivity wasn’t Hatcher’s strong suit.

“Here’s the number, Mary,” Hatcher said. “See if you can set up something for later today. In the meantime, the three of us will pay a visit to this Lewis Archer character. Depending on what happens with the congressman, you two get hold of Manfredi, maybe swing by the academy, remind him that you were a student, Mary, get him in a chatty mood, catch him with his pants down, too.” He chuckled at his witticism. “I’ll take care of Joe Yankavich. I know the creep. We on the same page?”

Hatcher and Jackson waited, and watched, while Mary made her call to Congressman Morrison’s office in the Cannon House Office Building.

“This is MPD Detective Mary Hall,” she told the staffer who answered. “Is the congressman available?”

There was a pause as Mary listened to the response. “It’s a police matter,” she said.

Another long pause. “Congressman Morrison? This is MPD Detective Mary Hall. We’d like to speak with you about a homicide last night in Adams Morgan.… That’s right. The victim was a Rosalie Curzon. She was a prostitute and… Oh, yes, sir, I am serious. We have reason to believe that… What?… Sir, all I’m asking is that we have the opportunity to sit down with you and ask a few questions.… Sir, I’m not accusing you of anything. If you’d prefer, we can just stop at your office and… No, sir, I’m not threatening anything.… What? Yes, I think sometime tomorrow would be acceptable.… What? You’ll pick the place?” (She glanced over at Hatcher, who nodded.) “Yes, sir, that will be fine.… You’ll call? Here’s my cell number, Congressman. I’ll expect to hear from you by the end of today. Thank you, sir.”