Murder at Union Station - Margaret Truman [38]
“I don’t see how we can. I told him we’d be there.”
“Okay.”
“When are you leaving there?”
“A couple of minutes. I’ll give you a call from the airport.”
“Sorry,” he told his father, turning off the phone and returning it to his pocket.
“Have you spoken with Mac Smith lately?”
“No, but Kathryn and I are having dinner with Mac and his wife tomorrow night.”
“You’ll discuss this with him?”
“Discuss what?”
“Your book. Pulling it in view of what’s occurred.”
Rich floundered before coming up with a response. “Pull it? That’s ridiculous. I wouldn’t think of it.”
“Maybe it’s time you did a little thinking, Richard. Why haven’t you given me the book to read?”
Rich made a point of looking at his watch. He stood. “I have to go, Dad. There’s a train back into the city in a half hour. Drive me to the station?”
“Your mother will. It will do her good to get out of the house.”
Frank Marienthal left the room. It was the last time Rich saw him that day. His mother happily announced that she would take him to the train station. After saying goodbye to Carrie, Rich joined his mother in her green Mercedes and they pulled away from the house.
“Have a nice chat with your father?” she asked, obviously unaware of what father and son had discussed.
“I’m not sure I’d characterize it that way,” Rich said.
“He worries about you,” she said. “So do I. How is that lovely young lady you’ve been seeing?”
“Kathryn? She’s fine. She said to say hello.”
Kathryn had accompanied Rich on a few of his infrequent visits home, and Mary Marienthal had once traveled to Washington to spend a week touring the city with them.
“Well, please say hello back from me,” she said, pulling up in front of the station.
Rich kissed her on the cheek and opened the door on his side.
“Richard,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Don’t be too harsh with your father. He loves you very much.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “And I love you both. I’d better get inside. The train will be here in a few minutes.”
He went to the platform and looked back to where his mother still sat in the car. She waved and blew him a kiss. He returned her wave as the train came into the station and wiped her from view.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Detectives Bret Mullin and Vinny Accurso spent the morning showing the composite sketch of Louis Russo’s killer to people in the predominantly black community of Logan Circle, in the city’s northeast quadrant. Once a fashionable neighborhood, Logan Circle had deteriorated into an area known more for its drug dealers, pimps, and prostitutes than for its once stately and genteel four-story Victorian mansions and town houses. For a while, prostitution was less of a problem after the police rounded the prostitutes up and took them to Virginia, to the chagrin of residents of that state. But they eventually drifted back. A few working their shifts on the hot streets of Logan Circle this morning watched warily as Mullin and Accurso passed.
“Good morning, ladies,” Mullin said, chuckling.
“You know anybody looks like this?” Accurso asked, showing the prostitutes the composite sketch.
Heads shook.
“You take care,” Mullin said as he and his partner continued down the street. “Don’t get mixed up with any wackos.”
They showed the sketch to doormen and bellhops at the Vista International Hotel on Thomas Circle, the infamous scene of former mayor Marion Barry’s arrest for possession of crack cocaine, and went through Meridian Hill Park, also known as Malcolm X Park. The gardens there, which re-created the splendid formal gardens of seventeenth-century France and Italy, were in stark contrast to the assortment of down-and-out men and women occupying the park’s benches. On one was a hefty, brooding black man wearing a hooded blue sweatshirt despite the oppressive heat and humidity.
“Hey, Lucas,” Mullin said, sitting on one side of him. Accurso took the other end of the bench.
“What’s happening?” Mullin asked, wiping perspiration from his face with a handkerchief.
“Not much,” Lucas said. “What are you guys doin’ here?”
“Looking for him,” Accurso said,