Murder at Union Station - Margaret Truman [58]
Gale looked at Stripling across the table and felt what he always did when in Stripling’s company. He hated this man who’d intruded into his personal life and who’d used a single, solitary incident to blackmail him into submission.
Although few had expressed such feelings to Stripling over the years, he was well aware that those emotions existed. He waited until the waitress had delivered their salads, slowly buttered a roll, leaned his elbows on the table, and said, “Now, Jimmy, let’s start over. The Widmer hearings. I know that you know what they’re all about.” He took a forkful of shrimp. “Let’s eat while we talk. While you talk. Shrimp shouldn’t sit out in this heat.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Sasha Levine had debated long and hard about flying to Washington to claim Louis’s body.
Her initial reaction when called in the evening, Israel time, by someone from the Washington MPD, was resignation. Louis was a sick old man. His death was just a matter of time, and she’d mentally prepared for the day it would come. Still, projecting an acceptance of the inevitable and experiencing it in real time are quite different things, which she would soon discover.
She slowly lowered the receiver into its cradle, went to the small terrace on which they’d spent so many lazy evenings, looked up into a threatening sky, and bellowed a cry of anguish that stopped passersby on the street below. She collapsed into a chair and wept softly and steadily until there were no tears left to shed.
Dry-eyed and carrying a freshly lit cigarette, she returned to the living room and stared at the phone. The caller hadn’t said how Louis had died. Had he collapsed on the street? Been rushed to a hospital? She hadn’t asked and now wanted to know. The caller had left a twenty-four-hour number in Washington. It was morning there, and she made the call.
“Murder?” she said, incredulous. “He was shot dead?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The end of that second call did not result in any hysterical outburst by Sasha. In a sense, his having been gunned down fit more neatly into who he was. At least what she knew about him.
Russo had been living in Tel Aviv under the witness protection program for almost a year when he met Sasha at the Tango nightclub in the Tel Aviv Sheraton Hotel, on Hayarkon Street. It was 1993; he was sixty-one years old, still physically and mentally fit, virile and self-assured. Although he wasn’t tall—five feet, seven inches—he carried himself in such a way that he appeared to be. Shoes with built-up heels contributed to the effect. She noticed that he dressed nicely, although he was overdressed in the informal atmosphere of the club—an Italian-cut double-breasted black suit, a white shirt with a high collar, a black tie, and pointy, polished black shoes.
Sasha was dressed that night in a tight black sweater and slacks, which showcased her full figure and complemented her close-cropped raven-colored hair. Of Jewish-Hungarian parentage, she’d immigrated to Israel from Budapest ten years earlier. Well-schooled, she spoke excellent English and quickly found work as an administrator in an Israeli import-export firm, whose major clients were American companies. Her decision to leave Hungary had been an easy one. Trapped in an abusive marriage, she’d happily walked away from it and looked forward to an exciting, fulfilling new life in that new frontier called Israel.
She accepted a drink from Russo at the nightclub’s bar and found him amusing. His New York accent was thick, adding to his colorful stories of life in Manhattan.
“What do you do?” she asked.
“I’m a businessman,” he said.
“What sort of business?”
“Construction.”
“Oh, you