Murder at Union Station - Margaret Truman [30]
“I’m sure you will.”
Stripling hung up and again read the information he’d received from the detective in New York and the newspaper clips on the Russo murder. Why the continuing focus on this old guy? Stripling’s initial assumption that the murder was a mob hit was now a little shaky. He was to meet with the FBI agents again. Surely, having someone killed who’d been in the witness protection program for thirteen years couldn’t be the reason for the Bureau’s sustaining interest. And why bring him, Timothy Stripling, into it? The Bureau had plenty of ex-agents looking to freelance.
He made himself a salad from leftover chicken, did a half hour of light stretching exercises, took the two handguns from where they were secured in a safe inside a bedroom closet and checked them, almost a daily, obsessive ritual, returned the weapons to the safe, and stepped out into the bright, hot sunlight.
Five hundred a day, he thought as he looked for a taxi to take him to FBI headquarters. It would do, at least for the moment. But money aside, he now had another reason for playing along. He wanted to know who this Louis Russo really was and why he was here, and why both the FBI and CIA wanted the answer, too. One thing was certain in his mind. Their interest reflected that of someone high up the chain, very high.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Marienthal’s Delta shuttle flight to New York was delayed by thunderstorms that moved through Reagan National Airport that morning. He arrived at La Guardia almost a full hour later than planned and took a taxi into the city, where he was left off in front of an office building on Park Avenue South. He checked his watch; he still had fifteen minutes before his scheduled meeting and used it to grab a coffee and Danish at a luncheonette next door. Fortified, he entered the lobby, took the first available elevator, and rode to the ninth floor, where the offices of the publishing company, Hobbes, were located.
“I’m Rich Marienthal,” he told the young, moonfaced blonde receptionist. “I have an appointment with Sam Greenleaf.”
“Have a seat,” she said pleasantly. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Marienthal browsed a recent issue of People until Greenleaf appeared. “Hello, Rich,” he said, crossing the reception area and shaking hands. “Come on in.”
Greenleaf, Hobbes House’s managing editor, was a large man in all ways—head, face, body, and hands. Sporting an unkempt reddish beard, he wore brown corduroy slacks, well-worn space shoes that showed the result of supporting excess weight for too long, and a checked shirt undoubtedly bought through a big-and-tall-man catalogue. He led Marienthal to a sizable office as disorganized as his personal appearance, moved files from a chair in front of a desk overflowing with books and papers, and invited Marienthal to sit. Photographs dangled crookedly on the walls. A window in need of washing reluctantly allowed gray light into the room. The powdery remains of crumb cake were scattered on a piece of foil on the desk.
“Good trip?” he asked.
“Delayed. Weather in D.C. But I’m here.”
“Good, good. Coffee?”
“Just had some.”
Greenleaf used the phone on his desk to ask someone to fetch him a cup, sat back, and shook his head. “Couldn’t believe the news when you called me,” he said. “Incredible. Who the hell could ever have forecast such a thing?”
“Not me, Sam. That’s for sure.”
Greenleaf came forward and rested his chin on a bridge formed by his hands. “What’s the latest, Rich? I mean, do you know who did it?”
“I have no idea.”
Marienthal adjusted his position in the chair and looked at one of the photographs on the wall, a formally posed portrait of the publishing house’s founder and namesake, Wallace Hobbes. The founder, now deceased, claimed to be a distant relation—very distant—to the seventeenth-century English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes had spawned the movement known as Hobbism, whose creed claimed that human beings were so lazy, selfish, and self-aggrandizing that only an absolute monarchy could control them. Why Wallace Hobbes—or anyone for