Murder on K Street (4 page)

Rotondi had sat silently during the exchange. Now he stood, grabbed his cane from where he’d hooked it over the arm of his chair, and limped to the window.

“That leg’s really bothering you, isn’t it?” the senator said.

“Sometimes worse than others.”

“Let’s go in the bedroom, Phil. We have some talking to do.”

Simmons leaned back against the king-size bed’s ornate headboard. Rotondi took a small club chair he pulled out from a French cherry desk.

“Why do I get the feeling that you’re judging me, Phil?”

“Paranoia, probably. I don’t judge anybody these days. I did plenty of judging people when I was putting away Baltimore’s garbage, but that was then. Still…”

“Still what?”

Rotondi shrugged and smiled. “I think you ought to pull Neil and Polly in closer, Lyle, especially at a time like this. You need them.”

Simmons chewed his cheek. His expression was unfriendly.

“The situation with Polly really tore Jeannette up,” Rotondi said.

“I don’t need to be told that, Phil. I heard it damn near every day for the past four years.”

“Yeah, I know. Not my
problemo
. Look, I’m here to help in any way I can. I won’t get in the way, but tell me what you need and I’ll do it.”

Simmons’s face softened. He gave forth a small smile. “I’m sorry about Homer’s TV show,” he said.

“Maybe he taped it before we left.” Rotondi came forward and leaned with both hands on the cane. “Mind a suggestion?”

“My driver, Walter, gave me one when he dropped me home tonight.”

“McTeague? Good man. You have a lot of good people around you.”

“Maybe Walter had a premonition. He said Jeannette and I should get away for a while, we both looked tired. If only.”

“My suggestion is that you go with the flow of this tragedy, Lyle, and stop playing United States senator, at least until the right people get their arms around it. The so-called business of the people can wait.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re retired.”

“Happily so, but that’s irrelevant. I—” His cell phone rang. “Sorry.”

Simmons got off the bed and walked out of the room.

“Hi.”

“Phil, I just heard,” Emma Churchill said. “Jeannette Simmons? Good God.”

“I’m with him now, at the Willard. Where are you?”

“Supervising the cleanup. I should be home in an hour.”

“Homer’s at your house. I swung by there on my way here.”

“You’ll stay with him at the hotel?”

“No. I’ll meet you at the house. Frankly, I’m not sure why I’m here. He’s in command—insufferably so.”

“He needs your friendship.”

“He needs more than that. What was the party?”

“A going-away bash for someone from Homeland Security.”

“I hope you made them take off their shoes before entering.”

He heard an exasperated sigh, coupled with an abbreviated laugh. “I’ll see you later,” she said.

R
otondi had been awake for an hour but opted to stay in bed, enjoying his painless repose. The moment he placed his feet on the floor, the pain would stab his leg and stay with him throughout the day.

Emma slept sweetly next to him, on her side, facing away, one foot jutting out from beneath the rose-colored cover. Homer had co-opted a position at the foot of the bed, muscles twitching from a dream. Chasing cats? Being chased by a bigger dog? A lifetime supply of steak bones? A perpetual belly rub? Such simple pleasures.

Emma’s body blocked Rotondi’s view of the clock radio, but he knew it was early morning from the color of the outside light.

Rotondi’s thoughts continued to be dreamlike, and apropos of nothing: contrails high in the sky—did only military jets fly high enough to create them?—chocolate-covered cherries; an egg frying on a D.C. sidewalk in its current heat wave; a cemetery where all the buried sat up, stretched, yawned, and sang “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” a ten-foot-tall judge in black robes smashing Rotondi’s hand with his gavel when he placed it on the bench; and occasionally more mundane matters such as wondering when Homer would wake up and have to be walked. He’d been trying to get Emma to fence in her postage-stamp-size backyard to no avail.

Homer stirred, lifted his head, looked at Rotondi, and flopped down again. Emma stirred, turned, and flung a leg over her lover.

“You awake?” he asked.

“No.”

“Sorry.”

Her movement had caused the cover to slide mostly off, revealing her in the oversize pale blue man’s shirt she routinely wore to bed. Despite spending her waking hours preparing and serving food, Emma Churchill’s figure didn’t reflect that vocation. Not that she was the anorexic model type. Far from it. She packed a solid 145 pounds on her five-foot, seven-inch-tall body, her alabaster skin smooth and firm. A date had once asked whether she was a lesbian, citing coal-black hair that she wore extremely short and her dislike of makeup beyond absolute basic necessities. “Maybe we could do a threesome some day,” he’d suggested, leering. It was their first and final date: “He was lucky I didn’t deck him on the spot,” she told Rotondi when recounting the story. “
Schmuck!”

Emma and Rotondi had stayed up for hours last night after they’d arrived separately at her house, watching the news and providing their own commentary and analysis during breaks. Of course, aside from the murder itself, Rotondi had much more to discuss than the TV talking heads, who speculated on everything and knew little. He and Senator Lyle Simmons went back a long way together, a very long way. They’d been college roommates at the University of Illinois since their freshman year, inseparable friends despite a few incidents, one in particular that would have undoubtedly shredded other friendships.

He swung his legs off the bed and stood, giving out a customary groan as his left leg protested. He ignored the cane on the floor next to his side of the bed and limped into the bathroom, where he placed both hands on the sink and lowered his head, moving it in circles until he was ready to face the mirror.

“Good morning,” he said to his reflection, not expecting a response. He wasn’t
that
crazy. He stepped back and took a longer-range view of himself. Above his boxer shorts was a lean torso with plenty of dark chest hair. That he hadn’t put on weight was more a matter of genes, he knew, than lifestyle, although he did work out regularly. His bad leg had put an end to his running routine, which he missed. He’d been recruited to the U of Illinois on a basketball scholarship—second-team All Big Ten his senior year—and had been a miler on the track team. After the damage to his leg, he’d had to content himself with weight-bearing exercises that toned the muscles in his arms and shoulders, along with painful, terribly dull trips on a stationary bike.

Below the shorts were legs slightly bowed. He yanked up one side of the shorts to reveal the wicked, eighteen-inch scar from groin to knee where the surgeons had done their best, cutting through muscle, tissue, and bone in an attempt to salvage what was left of the leg, and to avoid having to sever it from the rest of Philip Rotondi. They’d succeeded, for which he was grateful. His mind wandered, as it had while in bed, but the moment Kathleen’s face joined the dozens of other conjured images, he turned it off as suddenly and easily as turning off an appliance, splashed water on his chiseled face, and returned to the bedroom, where Emma sat in front of a small television set to catch yet another report on the murder. Rotondi threw on some clothes, snapped on Homer’s leash, and took the dog out for his daily ablutions. Back in the bedroom, he again stripped down to his shorts, slipped into a robe he kept at the house, and joined Emma.

“Anything new and exciting?” he asked. “Or true?”

“The police are still conducting their investigation at the senator’s house. He evidently wanted to return there this morning but couldn’t. They had a video of him entering his Senate office building. No comment from him, of course.” She turned off the set with the remote. “Will you be seeing him today?”

“I’m sure I will. I told him I’d check in with friends at MPD to see how the investigation is
really
going. Lyle isn’t impressed with the detective who arrived on the scene. There’s not much else I can do for him.”

“He needs a friend.”

Rotondi nodded. “I wish I could intervene with Polly. He’s always chalked up the problems between them to their political differences, Polly the raving left-wing liberal, her father, the U.S. senator, the calculating centrist. I’ve never bought it. You don’t sever ties with a daughter just because she sees things different politically.”

“Some would, Phil. Besides, she’s been a vocal opponent of virtually everything he stands for. It’s one thing to disagree with your father’s political views, another to attack him in the press at every turn. You’ve said it yourself, how some of these liberal causes have taken advantage of her, put her out there whenever they wanted to make a point about an issue championed by her father.”

Rotondi grunted and looked out the window into the haze of another hot one in Washington. “Maybe the funeral will salve things between them. Funerals sometimes accomplish that. I know that Jeannette would be pleased if that happened.”

“What about the funeral?” Emma said.

“I don’t know. I suppose they’ll announce plans today. I’d better get moving.” He started for the bathroom but turned. “As long as I’m in D.C., I’d like to catch up with Mac and Annabel Smith.”

Mac Smith had been a top criminal defense lawyer in D.C. and Maryland for years, until on a rainy night years ago his wife and son were slaughtered on the Beltway by a drunk driver. The personal loss was, of course, devastating. But when a skilled fellow defense lawyer had managed to plea-bargain the drunk driver’s case down to what Smith considered an insultingly small sentence—a slap on the wrist, and not a very hard slap at that—he’d lost his zeal for trial work, left the firm he’d established, and accepted a teaching position at George Washington University’s law school.

His wife, Annabel Lee-Smith, had experienced a similar epiphany, although without the accompanying personal tragedy. She’d been a respected Washington matrimonial attorney with a thriving practice. But years of mediating between warring spouses, many of whom were willing to destroy their lives and those of their children in order to “be right,” had taken a toll. She’d always loved art, especially pre-Columbian art, and dreamed of opening a gallery. She hadn’t acted upon that dream until meeting Mac Smith and falling in love with the handsome, brilliant widower. He encouraged her to retire her lawyer’s shingle and to follow her true passion. Together they found charming space in Georgetown where Annabel opened her gallery. The fulfillment of that ambition was closely followed by another, the marriage of Annabel Lee to Mackensie Smith. Life couldn’t get any better for either of them.

Rotondi had butted heads with Mac in Baltimore courtrooms where he’d prosecuted cases, Smith defending the accused. Their courtroom confrontations were spirited, skillfully conducted, and often heated. But they’d simultaneously developed a personal friendship that transcended these professional bouts, and had nurtured that friendship to this day.

“I stopped in Annabel’s gallery the other day,” Emma said. “I’m catering an affair at the Mexican embassy and needed some advice on decorations.”

“I’ll set up a dinner.”

“Great, only check my schedule. It’s a busy month.”

As Rotondi got himself ready to leave Emma’s home, Neil Simmons was in the midst of a domestic tornado. He hadn’t slept all night. Both phone lines had rung nonstop and continued into the morning. His wife, Alexandra, had pleaded with him to turn off the ringers, but he was afraid he’d miss an important call from his father, or from someone else not associated with the media. Now showered and dressed, he sat with Alexandra in their kitchen.

Their two sons, ages nine and six, were excited about the large press encampment outside their front windows and repeatedly parted the drapes to peek, provoking an exasperated father to send them to their rooms.

Alexandra tended to be high-strung even when surrounded by calm, and chastised Neil for being so harsh with the children. He, in turn, reminded her that his mother had just been brutally slain, and that she should show some compassion.

“Maybe you should show some compassion for your own family.” She was approaching the screaming threshold. “You’re always so damn understanding of everybody else.”

The muscles in his jaw gave away the anger he felt, but he avoided responding. Instead, he said, “I have to call McTeague about picking up Polly at the airport. He’ll bring her directly here.”

“Why here?”

“Please, Alex, let’s not start on—”

“She’s staying
here
? With
us
?”

“That’s right.”

“Put her in a hotel, for God’s sake. It’s a circus here already. She’ll—”

“She wants to stay here.”

“So tell her it would be better if she stayed in a hotel.”

Polly Simmons and Alexandra Simmons had never been loving sisters-in-law.

“You’re putting me in the middle again, Alex,” Neil whined.

The nine-year-old snuck down the stairs and pulled aside a drape.

“Damn it!” Neil exploded. “I told you to—”

Alexandra rushed to the crying boy, wrapped her arms about him, and said everything was fine and that everything would soon be normal again and that Daddy didn’t mean what he said and…

Neil picked up the ringing phone and shouted, “Hello?”

“Neil. It’s Rick. I’ve been calling half the night.”

“I’m avoiding the press. I don’t know why I picked up this time.”

“I’m sorry, man. About your mom.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“That’s all anybody’s talking about. It’s all over the news.”

“I know. Jesus, do I know.”

“I talked to Karl this morning. We’re going to put up a reward for finding your mom’s killer. We’ll do it through CMJ.”
CMJ
stood for “Center for American Justice,” one of many front organizations controlled by the Marshalk Group, a leading Washington lobbying firm. The caller, Rick Marshalk, was the founder and force behind the firm despite Neil Simmons’s title of president.