Murder at the Washington Tribune - Margaret Truman [13]
“How goes?” Grant asked.
“I’ve been better,” Wilcox said. “You?”
“Good, considering the terrorism Popsicle is now orange flavored. You realize our Muslim friends never have to actually attack us again? All they have to do is keep chattering, as our security experts term it, and we spend another billion protecting targets that aren’t going to be hit in the first place. What’s new with the Kaporis murder?”
Wilcox sipped his wine. “What’s new? Not a thing. You pick up anything around town?”
A shrug and an order for a second drink. “Just the ex-boyfriend,” he said to the glass.
“What ex-boyfriend?”
Grant turned to Wilcox. “I was working that real estate scandal—excuse me, alleged real estate scandal—involving Congressman Coakely from Maine. Somebody at MPD, who shall remain nameless, told me Kaporis broke up with a boyfriend a month or so before the murder. Hell hath no fury like a spurned boyfriend, especially when the fox you lost in the hunt looked like her. I was looking at pictures the other day. Man, she was gorgeous.”
“Yeah, she was. A really nice looking young lady.” Although they hadn’t worked stories together, he’d gotten to know her a little, casual chats in the halls or cafeteria, a wave when she passed his cubicle. Whenever he thought of her and her brutal murder, he thought of Roberta. How could he not?
“So, tell me about this ex-boyfriend,” Wilcox said.
“Nothing there, Joe. The kid split for California right after the breakup. The cops out there interviewed him. From what I’m told, he came up clean. Wasn’t even near DC the night she died.”
“Thanks,” Wilcox said. “Nothing else?”
“Hey, I don’t cover the cops beat, Joe. That’s your bailiwick.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry. It’s just that I need—”
“Need what?”
“A story. An angle, something new on this story. You know that old joke about Casey, crime photographer?”
“No.”
“They called him Casey, crime photographer, because the way he took pictures, it was a crime.”
“Sounds like a line from some old Borscht Belt comic.”
“It was. They’re looking at me at the Trib like Casey.”
“No.”
“I’m serious.”
“Tell ’em to go screw. What’ve you got, a year, two, to the pension?”
“Two, but that’s not the point.”
They took a table away from the bar and ordered BLTs.
“You okay, Joe?” Grant asked mid-meal.
“Yeah, sure. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know, you seem down, really down. Everything okay at home?”
“Sure. Fine.”
“Your daughter’s doing great. I catch her on the news. Ratings up since she went over there, or so I hear.”
“That’s right. She’s terrific. Makes her old man look like an amateur.”
They went to the lobby where Wilcox pressed the elevator button.
“You up for some poker?” Grant asked. “Carlos has a game going in the back.”
“Thanks, no, John. I’ve got some interviews this afternoon.”
“About the Kaporis case?”
Wilcox nodded as the elevator doors opened.
“If I pick up on anything, I’ll call.”
“Great. Thanks,” Wilcox said as the doors slid closed, leaving him alone with a knot in his stomach for the thirteen-floor descent.
CHAPTER FOUR
Task forces in Washington, D.C., are as ubiquitous as Frisbee tossers on the Mall. When in doubt, and the pressure is on in the military, in government, in corporations—whatever—announce the appointment of a task force by whatever name. Which is what the MPD did that morning for the unsolved Jean Kaporis murder at The Washington Tribune. In reality, it consisted only of the two detectives already working the case, Edith Vargas-Swayze, and her partner of the past year, Wade Dungey. They met with their boss, Bernard Evans, over a lunch of hoagies and Diet Cokes in a cramped office at First District headquarters at 415 Fourth Street, SW. On the scarred table were recent clips of stories that had appeared in newspapers and magazines, and transcripts of radio and television news reports.
“See what I mean?” Evans asked.
“Big deal,” Dungey said. “Since when do we march to what the media says?”
Evans, whose nickname was “the Professor,” was a sixteen-year