Murder on K Street (9 page)

“I’m not doing the interview,” Crimley said. “Detectives Chang and Widletz are.”

“The Asian detective who spoke with me at the scene last night?” Simmons said.

“Right. Here they are.”

Charlie Chang and Amanda Widletz entered the office and were introduced to the attorney and to Neil. “Use Room Three,” Crimley instructed the detectives. “I’ve cleared it.”

They’d been gone for only a few minutes when U.S. Attorney Matt Bergl arrived. Bergl had recently received considerable press coverage for changing the way assistant U.S. attorneys were assigned to prosecute homicides in the District. Until his appointment to the post by the president, the District’s three hundred assistant U.S. attorneys had been assigned geographically, each attached to a specific police precinct, which meant handling all crimes occurring in those jurisdictions—fraud, robberies, rape, and murder. The result? Homicides were often prosecuted by attorneys who were inexperienced in that area of the law. The further result? While the murder rate continued to climb, homicide convictions had gone down considerably.

Under Bergl’s reign, the system was changed. Assignments were now based upon experience and expertise. All murders, from every precinct, were prosecuted by an elite team of seasoned homicide attorneys. Recent results? The conviction rate had risen to more acceptable levels.

Bergl was well dressed, well groomed, and well mannered. He was a little too slick for Crimley’s taste, but the chief detective also recognized that along with putting bad guys away, the U.S. attorney’s other job was to remain in political favor. He was good at both.

“Got a minute?” Bergl asked.

“Sure,” Crimley responded. “Grab a chair.”

“I wanted to run something by you, Morrie.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’re aware of the rumor about Senator Simmons.”

“
The
rumor?” Crimley guffawed. “I’ve heard lots of rumors about him. Get specific.”

“The one about his having a girlfriend in Chicago.”

“Oh,
that
one. Sure. What about it?”

“A state’s attorney out there—a friend—tells me that the senator’s extracurricular squeeze has connections with the wrong people.”

“Mob?”

Bergl nodded. “Not the sort of woman a United States senator ought to be sharing a bed with.”

“Your friend in Chicago, he—”

“She.”

“She validates the rumor?”

Another nod. “The Chicago AG is buttoned up, sharing nothing with us.”

Crimley slipped fingers between buttons of his shirt and scratched an itch. Relieved, he smiled at Bergl. “You think the senator’s wife might have been killed by someone out there?”

“Far-fetched, right, Morrie?”

Crimley shrugged and attacked the itch again. “Yeah, far-fetched,” he said. “Then again—”

“I just thought I’d toss it into the mix. I’ll be finding out more.”

“That’s good. In the meantime, I don’t think I’ll add it to my list of possibles, if that’s okay with you.”

“Fine with me.” Bergl stood, took a few steps toward the door, stopped, turned, and asked, “You’re a friend of Phil Rotondi, right?”

“Yeah. Phil was in earlier today.”

“Was he? He and the senator go back a long way, college buddies.”

“Roommates.”

“Think he might know something we don’t?”

“Ask him.”

“You ask him, Morrie. I wouldn’t want it to get back that I’m questioning a senator’s love life.”

“Politically incorrect,” Crimley said.

“Something like that. I’m holding a press conference at six. Your chief will be with me.”

“Give him my best.”

“I certainly will. Let’s do this one by the book, Morrie. I don’t want some defense attorney finding holes in whatever you come up with. See ya.”

Crimley watched Bergl leave. He sat back, arms behind his head, and had two immediate thoughts.

The first was that Bergl’s suit looked good on guys built like that.

The second thought was also unpleasant, and he grimaced against it. He’d investigated plenty of high-profile cases in his twenty-three years on the force, but this one—the murder of the wife of a U.S. senator and rising presidential possibility—was in a class by itself. Having turned down early retirement suddenly didn’t seem like such a smart decision after all.

E
arlier that day, Rotondi had called Neil Simmons.

“Neil, it’s Phil Rotondi. I just left Polly at the Hotel George.”

“How is she?”

“She’s fine. Where are you now?”

“At the office. The press won’t leave me alone. I ducked in here to get rid of them.”

“Have you spoken with your father?”

“A couple of times. He wants to see you.”

“I was there this morning.”

“He wants you to call him.”

“As soon as I hang up on you.”

“I have to go to see the police this afternoon.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m bringing a lawyer.”

“Can’t hurt, although you probably don’t need one at this stage.”

“You’re saying I will later?”

“Bring a lawyer, Neil. Look, I have to run. I’ll call your dad. Anything I can do for you?”

“Yes. Make it all go away.”

“If only I could.”

Rotondi had called Neil Simmons’s cell phone from the District ChopHouse and Brewery on Seventh Street, where he’d settled at the bar and enjoyed a beer and a cheeseburger. Although the restaurant was crowded and noisy, he felt very much by himself. He was good at that, creating solitude in the midst of chaos. Kathleen used to comment after leaving a party that he seemed in his own little world. To which he invariably replied, “I was, and it was a more pleasant place than the party.” He wasn’t necessarily antisocial, nor was he a stereotypical loner. But he treasured his inner spaces, and his ability to summon them when it suited.

He called Senator Simmons from outside the restaurant.

“Oh, Mr. Rotondi, the senator is waiting to hear from you. He’s in an important meeting, but he said to put you through.”

The senator’s voice broke in. “Hello, Phil. Polly arrived all right?”

“Yes. She’s at the hotel. I’m sure she’ll be calling.”

Would she?

“Hold on a second, Phil.” Rotondi heard Simmons ask those meeting with him to leave. When they had, he came back on the line. “Phil. I need a favor from you.”

“Sure.”

“The police have told me that I can go back to the house. I’d like you to come with me.”

Rotondi hesitated. “Sure you wouldn’t rather have Neil and Polly?” he said.

“I’d like you with me.”

Another pause from Rotondi.

“Please, Phil.”

“Okay. Emma and I are having dinner with friends tonight at seven. Other than that—”

“Come by the office at five. Walter will drive us.”

“I’ll be there. Oh, Lyle, by the way. I spoke with Neil a few minutes ago. He’s giving an interview to the police this afternoon.”

“I know. He was going without a lawyer. I told him to get smart. I’m negotiating now for a convenient time and place for them to interview me. It’s bad enough when you lose your wife, but they’re making it doubly hard. I can’t even arrange for a proper funeral for Jeannette. The medical examiner says he won’t release the body for God knows how long. See you at five. And thanks, Phil. I knew I could count on you.”

Rotondi went to Emma’s house, where he took Homer for a walk. He intended to make it a long one, but the combination of the heat—when would it break?—and his aching leg precluded that. He settled on the couch and watched the ongoing TV news reports about Jeannette’s murder. He tried to focus on what the talking heads were saying, but it was a lost cause. Images of times past dominated, rendering the words from the TV nothing more than a drone. He turned off the set, closed his eyes, and allowed his thoughts to take him where they wanted him to go, back to his senior year at the University of Illinois.

Back to when Jeannette was alive.

It had been two months since Rotondi first got up the courage to ask Jeannette Boynton out. He’d dated little during his first three years at the university. Between his studies, and basketball and track practice, there didn’t seem to be time for the opposite sex. At least that’s what he told himself. He often closed the library at night, and was the last athlete to leave the gym and weight room.

Not that he’d failed to notice the multitude of attractive coeds in his classrooms and around the campus. Nor was he a virgin. The sexual freedom of the 1960s was pervasive on campus, as it was across America. As a freshman, he’d had sex with a “townie,” a young woman from Champaign-Urbana. The experience had been revelatory. He wasn’t sure what he’d learned, but it had been pleasurable aside from the fear that she might become pregnant, which as far as he was concerned would ruin his life. Fathering a child out of wedlock, before his education was completed and he’d become a married man, would devastate his father. His relief was palpable when she called one evening to advise that she’d had her period. He didn’t see her again after that.

There had also been a woman back in Batavia, a waitress ten years older than he was, with whom he’d ended up in bed—twice. These brief encounters happened one week apart while he was home on the Christmas break during his junior year. She provided protection, and told him after their second experience that she was going back to her husband. Her decision made him happy.

None of these encounters was particularly memorable; nor had they piqued his masculine interests the way Jeannette did. When attending one of two political science classes he’d enrolled in early in his senior year, he often found himself tuning out the lecturer and looking at Jeannette, who sat one row in front and to his left. Objectively, she wasn’t any prettier than many other young women at the university, but there was something different about her, an intangible quality that tripped his male synapses and caused warm feelings from head to toe. They barely spoke in that classroom, nothing more than pleasant greetings and farewells.

Their first real conversation occurred in the coffee shop of the school’s Student Union. He was sitting alone at a booth studying for an English lit exam when she suddenly appeared at his side.

“Hi, Phil. Mind if I join you?”

“What? Oh, sure. Please do.”

“Studying?” she asked.

“Yeah. English lit.”

“Can I help? That’s my major.”

“It is? Thanks, but I don’t think so. Just have to finish this assigned reading and—”

“I saw the game last night. You were terrific.”

“Thanks. We almost lost it.”

“You scored the winning basket.”

“I got lucky.”

“You’re too modest. Where are you from?”

“Upstate New York. A small town called Batavia.”

“I know it.”

Her perfume was intoxicating. So was her smile. It was that smile that he’d first noticed in class, wide and genuine and full of life. She wore a powder-blue sweater over a white blouse, a simple gold chain, and gold earrings in the shape of tiny birds. Her large, hazel eyes said she was thinking of nothing but him.

“You do? Where are you from?”

“Greenwich, Connecticut.”

“Oh.” He’d heard that Greenwich was a wealthy place. “Connecticut’s pretty, huh?”

“It is. I like it.”

“Why did you decide to come to school out here?”

“My father thought it would be good for me to see another part of the country. I’m glad I did.” She moved as though she was about to leave. “I’ll leave you alone with your book,” she said.

“No, no, that’s okay. Want a cup of coffee or something?”

That smile
. “I’d love it,” she said.

They spent the next half hour learning a little about each other. When she announced she had to leave, he stood.

“That’s so nice,” she said.

“What is?”

“That you stood. It’s so—so old-fashioned.” She sensed he might have taken it as a criticism and quickly added, touching his hand, “I like the old-fashioned way. There isn’t enough of it these days.”

“I’ll walk you home,” he said.

As they stood in front of the Alpha Phi house, he said, “We’re having a party Friday night at the fraternity house. I was wondering whether you’d like to go.”

“I’d like that very much, Philip. See you in class.”

She was gone, but only physically. The vision of her, her voice, her scent lingered far into the night as he sat in his room at the fraternity house and tried to finish the book he’d been assigned. It was after midnight when his roommate arrived.

“There you go again,” Simmons said, “hunched over a book. All work and no play—”

“I am doing some playing,” Rotondi said, allowing a sly smile to emerge.

“You are?” Simmons said, exaggerating how impressed he was. “A girl?”

“Yeah, a girl. Now shut up and let me finish before I flunk the exam tomorrow.”

Simmons laughed. His roommate was always expressing concern that he would do poorly on exams, but seemed never to receive anything but straight A’s.

The Friday-night party at the Kappa Phi Kappa house turned boisterous, as such parties often did. Beer flowed freely from a keg in the basement rec room, and there was a lot of male posturing for the benefit of the females. Lyle Simmons was absent for most of the party. He arrived a little after eleven, saw Rotondi sitting with Jeannette, gave his roommate a wink, and disappeared, not to be seen again that evening. Some of Rotondi’s fraternity brothers, including a few who were there without dates, spent time talking to Rotondi and Jeannette, and a few of their comments were inappropriate in Rotondi’s opinion. One frat brother in particular made a crude reference to Jeannette’s bosom. When he walked away, Rotondi muttered, “He’s such an ass, pardon my French.”

Jeannette laughed and grabbed his hand. “You don’t have to apologize, Philip. I’ve heard all the four-letter words, and three-letter ones, too.”

“He shouldn’t have said it in front of you,” he countered.

“It’s okay. I’ve heard worse. Want to dance?”

Despite being a skilled and graceful athlete, Rotondi knew he was a clumsy dancer, and told her that. His protestation went unheeded: “There you go being modest again,” Jeannette said. “Come on, just move with me.”