Murder on K Street (6 page)

He picked up that day’s copy of
Roll Call
, the publication covering congressional news—Monday through Thursday when Congress was in session, Monday only otherwise—and was into an article on the backstage machinations behind a contentious bit of legislation when Simmons burst through the door, followed by Press Secretary Markowicz, Chief of Staff Alan McBride, and three other staffers. Simmons stopped and said to Rotondi, “Philip, good to see you. Give me ten minutes. We need to talk.”

Ten minutes later, Rotondi had finished the article he was reading. Simmons’s personal secretary opened the door to his private office and motioned for Rotondi to come in. Simmons was in shirtsleeves and on the phone, his feet up on his immense, custom-crafted teak desk. The walls were filled with autographed photographs of him with a Who’s Who of political heavyweights, top business leaders, and Hollywood, sports, and television celebrities. He motioned for Rotondi to sit, and ended the conversation he was having with “I’ll be damned if I’ll let that amendment sneak its way into the bill. Got that? Good!” He slammed down the receiver, withdrew his feet from the desk, and asked his secretary to leave. When she had, he asked, “What do you hear, Phil?”

“Nothing you haven’t heard, Lyle. The investigation is barely twelve hours old. I stopped in to see my friend Morrie Crimley at MPD. He says the detective you mentioned, Charlie Chang, is good, a real stickler for details.”

“I want him off the case.”

“That’s not your call.”

“Don’t count on it. I want back in my house. They tell me maybe this afternoon.”

“That’d be good. Are funeral plans under way?”

“I suppose so. I’m leaving that up to McBride and Neil. Polly’s due in today. I wanted her to stay with Neil, but he’s got her at the Hotel George. I suppose that wife of his put the kibosh on Polly staying there. I never will understand what Neil saw in her.”

Rotondi suppressed a smile. This was vintage Lyle Simmons, blustery in one situation, buttery smooth and conciliatory in others. It often occurred to Rotondi that he should be flattered that one of the Senate’s most powerful members, and a potential future president, would be so open and candid with him, a mark of how close they were. But each time that notion crossed his mind, he reminded himself of Jonathan Swift’s characterization of flattery, terming it “the food of fools.” That his former college roommate was now a national leader meant nothing to him. They were friends, that was all, two men with wildly different views of most things, but with a bond born of time and shared experiences.

And there was Jeannette.

“Look, Phil, I’ve got my hands full with Senate business.” Simmons sensed that Rotondi was about to comment, and quickly added, “I know what you’re about to say, Phil, that this isn’t the time for me to worry about things on Capitol Hill. But when
is
there a good time to put everything else aside and focus on grieving? You knew Jeannette. She was a no-nonsense lady who would have wanted us to forge ahead with our lives.”

“What do you want me to do, Lyle?”

“Keep Polly on an even keel while she’s here. I don’t need her using Jeannette’s death as a platform for one of her causes. Stay close to her and—”

Press Secretary Markowicz knocked, entered, and handed Simmons a sheet of paper. Simmons read it and handed it back. “Sounds fine, Pete.

“A statement from me thanking everyone who’s shown kindness and understanding,” Simmons told Rotondi, as though seeking approval.

“You say Polly’s staying at the George. What time does she get in?”

“Plane lands at Dulles a little after eleven. She always liked you, Phil. I think she’ll listen to you.”

“All right,” Rotondi said. “I’ll head over to the hotel when I leave here.”

Simmons walked him to the door, his arm over Rotondi’s shoulder. “I need you, pal. I need someone around who I can trust.” He looked down at Rotondi’s cane. “You think about that night a lot, Phil?”

“Hard not to, Lyle. Nature has a way of reminding me. If I didn’t say it last night, I’m sorry about your loss.”

Simmons grimaced. “
My loss
. There are so damn many euphemisms for death and dying. But thanks. I know I’ll get through this.”

As Simmons opened the door and Rotondi stepped into the reception area, Neil Simmons arrived, accompanied by two well-dressed men, one white, one black. Neil greeted Rotondi.

“I’m just leaving,” Rotondi said. “I’m going to the George to be there when Polly arrives.” He looked back at the closed door to the senator’s office. “Your father asked me to.”

The younger Simmons nodded grimly. “Makes sense. I won’t have any time, with funeral arrangements and all. The police want me to come in for questioning. I told that detective everything I knew last night, but they want more.” He, too, checked his father’s office door before saying, “Has he mentioned anything about Aunt Marlene?”

“No,” Rotondi answered, not wanting to repeat what the senator had said last night about Marlene being crazy. He looked over at the African American, who’d stepped away to let them have a private conversation. “Jonell Marbury,” Neil said. “I work with him at Marshalk.”

Annabel Smith had mentioned that one of the dinner guests that evening was a Marshalk employee. One and the same? Probably not. The Marshalk Group, Rotondi knew, was one of D.C.’s largest lobbying organizations, with more than a hundred lobbyists and support staff.

“I’ll call you after I hook up with Polly, Neil.”

“Okay. I’m sure Dad appreciates everything you’re doing, Phil. Just having you here is a great comfort to him.”

Rotondi had never stayed at the Hotel George before, although he knew people who had and who were universal in their praise. He and Emma had eaten at Bistro Bis, the hotel’s restaurant adjacent to the main building, and had enjoyed their visits. This morning, he entered the ultramodern entrance and paused in the lobby to allow the air-conditioning to wash over him. Dominating the space was a colorful Steve Kaufman portrait of George Washington, more a colorful collage against a blow-up background of a dollar bill. That Kaufman was a protégé of Andy Warhol surprised no one. At least it wasn’t a soup can, Rotondi mused. He took a comfortable chair and picked up that day’s paper. Looking back at him from the front page’s lead story was a photograph of Lyle and Jeannette Simmons. Rotondi knew that photo only too well. He’d taken it.

Rotondi and his wife, Kathleen, had spent a long weekend with Lyle and Jeannette at a Delaware beach resort. The sight of them smiling as though at peace with themselves and the world caused their friend to close his eyes against what threatened to be tears, and to open them only after the threat had passed. Two additional photos accompanied the piece: one of the Simmons home cordoned off and draped with crime scene tape, another a more recent shot of the senator giving a speech sometime, somewhere. Rotondi read:

Jeannette Simmons, wife of Senator Lyle Simmons, a potential presidential candidate, has been murdered…an anonymous source at MPD said that she was killed with a blunt instrument, a blow to the back of the head…her body was discovered by her husband when he returned from a speaking engagement…there are no suspects at this time, although the police are speaking with “persons of interest”…funeral plans have not been announced…

The article jumped inside the paper to chronicle Senator Simmons’s career and point out that the couple had two grown children: Neil, president of the Marshalk Group; and Polly, a peace activist living in California.

He returned to the front page and gazed at the photo of Lyle and Jeannette, which triggered thoughts of another time and place.

It was 1970, his senior year at the University of Illinois. Homecoming Weekend was in full swing. The football team had defeated Michigan State, a cause for celebrations on the Urbana-Champaign campus and in student hangouts in town. He had a second reason to celebrate. Earlier that week, he’d been named All Big Ten, second team. He’d called his father with the news.

“That’s good, Philip, very good,” his father said in his Italian-tinged English, “but remember, your studies are the most important thing.”

Phil smiled at his father’s admonition. Their conversations always ended with those words.

His father had come to America from Milan and set up a shoe repair shop in his adopted town, Batavia, New York, outside Buffalo. The shop generated enough money to support the family—two sons and two daughters—but left little for anything other than necessities. Phil and his siblings appreciated their father’s hard work and helped out in the store whenever possible, pitching in with household chores. Unlike the father, their mother resisted assimilating into her new culture. She’d learned little English and kept to herself, limiting her social life to the small Italian American community that had sprung up in Batavia. She was a stern woman who ran the household with precision and an iron hand; the kids said—muttered, really—that she’d taught Mussolini how to keep the trains running on time. She always seemed to be cooking; memories of growing up in that modest home invariably included the smell of simmering tomato sauce and baking bread.

Philip was twelve when his mother died of a burst aneurysm, a congenital defect according to the doctor at the hospital. Philip’s father, never a gregarious man except after consuming too much cheap wine, went into even more of a shell, spending virtually all his waking moments at the shop. Philip’s two older sisters took over most of the household duties with help from their brothers. It was a difficult, challenging time, but the Rotondi children faced it head-on and made it work.

College was out of the question unless scholarships and student-aid packages were involved. The oldest sister felt it was her obligation to help support the family and took a job following graduation as a secretary in an accounting firm. She eventually married a boy she’d dated in high school who worked in his father’s insurance agency. They’d had two sons and appeared happy.

The middle sister, only a year younger than the eldest, enrolled in a community college, supporting herself as a waitress. She excelled in school, and prior to graduating was offered a full scholarship to a New York State university. After a stellar career in college, she went on to law school and was now a corporate attorney in Cleveland.

Philip’s brother, two years younger, floundered during and after high school, to everyone’s disappointment, and ended up drifting through a succession of menial jobs. He eventually moved to Los Angeles, where he thought he might find work as an actor. The last Phil heard, he’d ended up in Las Vegas managing a pawnshop. Married and divorced three times, he’d virtually severed all relations with his family. Out of guilt or embarrassment? Phil and his sisters didn’t know the answer, nor did they try very hard to come up with one.

It was no secret among the children that the father favored Phil, and viewed him as the bright and shining light that would make worthwhile all his years bent over stitching machines and rubbing polish into other people’s shoes. His favoritism didn’t cause resentment among the kids. They understood that their father was from the Old World where men succeeded in business, and women married and had babies. Phil was an outstanding high school student, both academically and athletically. He was energetically recruited in his senior year by a number of top colleges and universities, and chose the University of Illinois, whose aid package covered virtually everything apart from spending money. His father had never seen his son play basketball or run track in high school; nor did he ever venture west to see him at the university. After many attempts to coax the man to Urbana-Champaign, Phil gave up. He thought he knew why the old man wouldn’t come. He was embarrassed at what he’d become, stooped, bald, his hands grotesquely swollen with arthritis, his breathing labored and voice hoarse from years of smoking. And so Phil contented himself with a weekly phone call to bring his father up to date—to make him proud.

This day in 1970, a Saturday, he sat drinking beer at a favorite student watering hole with his roommate. Earlier, he and Lyle had been to a party at their fraternity, Kappa Phi Kappa, and had driven to the bar in Simmons’s new, fire-engine-red Ford Thunderbird. Rotondi had balked at joining a fraternity. He considered it an extravagance, one that neither he nor his father could afford. But the fraternity recruited him aggressively in his sophomore year the way all fraternities rushed star athletes. When he told them he couldn’t afford the difference in cost between the dormitory and the frat house, they assured him they could work something out. It wasn’t until he graduated that he found out that his dorm roommate, Lyle Simmons, who’d also pledged Kappa Phi Kappa, had agreed to pay the difference in order to have his new friend as a fraternity brother. It was too late to resent it. Nothing was to be gained. Lyle was his best friend.

Lyle had had considerably more to drink than Phil that day, and Rotondi became concerned about his driving. But they’d made it safely and were now ensconced in a booth in the noisy bar, B. J. Thomas singing “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” through the sound system.

“So, buddy, ’fess up to Uncle Lyle.”

“About what?” Rotondi said.

“That delicious female creature you were with last night at the house.”

Rotondi dismissed the question with a shrug and a slow grin, and sipped his beer.

Simmons reached across the table and grabbed his roommate’s wrist. “Come on, pal, come on. You really scored. She’s a knockout. An absolute knockout. Who is she?”

“Name’s Jeannette.”

“Jeannette what?”

“Boynton.”

“Irish?”

“Alpha Phi. She’s from Connecticut.”

“So?”

Rotondi’s expression asked a question.

“Did you score, do the deed?”

“Come on, Lyle. I only met her a week ago. She’s in my political science class.”

Simmons’s leer was exaggerated, as though mugging for a camera.

Rotondi changed the subject. “You’re definitely going to Chicago for law school?”