Murder at Union Station - Margaret Truman [90]
The officer scrolled down to where available information about the subject was written. There was surprisingly little on Stripling. The MPD’s central data bank, augmented by the considerably more extensive FBI data bank, had been collecting and adding information to its files for years. Dossiers on D.C. citizens, famous and not so famous, had burgeoned recently as more focus was placed on gathering information and new software had made the larger files possible. Some subjects had information on them that ran for pages. Not Stripling. Facts of his life were contained in a single paragraph.
There was his Foggy Bottom address; his Social Security number; two moving vehicle violations, one for speeding, the second for running a light; place and date of birth (Dover, Vermont—1951); no felony arrests or convictions; credit score of 730; no bankruptcies; registered handguns—9-millimeter Tanarmi parabellum model and snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum, custom; Occupation: Consultant.
“Consultant,” Mullin said aloud.
“Government,” said the officer.
“Sensitive job. What’s he need two handguns for?” Mullin said.
The officer shrugged.
“CIA maybe. The Bureau,” Mullin added.
Mullin took a printout of the listing back to his office, where he drank his cooling coffee and thought about the past few hours. This guy Stripling contacts Sasha Levine, uses a phony name, claims he’s a friend of the writer, Marienthal, and gets her to spend time with him.
One thing was certain. Stripling’s meeting with Sasha was no social visit. The Russo murder? Marienthal’s disappearance? An hour later, after having left a message for Chief Leshin that he was taking a personal day off, and fortified with fresh coffee and a half-dozen doughnuts, Mullin was parked up the street from the Lincoln Suites Hotel.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Washingtonians awoke that morning to thunderstorms that dumped torrential rain on the nation’s capital. It wasn’t an unwelcome event. The downpour broke the intense heat wave that had gripped the city the past week and boosted spirits, although that didn’t apply to Geoff Lowe and Ellen Kelly. He sat in a chair by a window and watched the rain cascade down the panes. Ellen sat up in bed. Next to her was an advance copy of Rich Marienthal’s book, which Lowe had taken from Senator Widmer’s office the previous night.
It was now a little after six A.M. They’d been up since five arguing.
He turned in the chair and said to her, “Don’t you get it, Ellen? How many times do I have to explain it to you?”
She bristled at his tone, but said nothing. He’d been ranting since they awoke, pacing the floor, standing over her, yelling, lowering his voice to an almost inaudible level for effect, slapping his hand on the nearest surface, chopping the air with open hands as though the gesture would cut through what he considered her denseness.
“Okay,” he said in a less strident voice, sitting on the edge of the bed and taking her hand, “we have got to find Rich and the tapes. It’s just that simple.”
“Maybe we don’t need the tapes or Rich,” she offered tentatively, “now that we have the book.”
“Oh, man,” he said. “Don’t you get it? The book only has what Rich wrote, what he claims Russo told him. But Russo saying it on tape in his own voice is something else. Come on, Ellen, get with the program. Christ!”
She wished she were back in her own apartment, away from him, away from Washington and politics and senators and hearings, all of it. “Don’t you think I would do something to help if I could?” she said.
“The Dems on the committee caucused late last night,” he said. “They’re holding a press conference this afternoon condemning the hearings in advance. They’re dismissing the charge against Parmele as nothing more than a writer’s unsubstantiated claims in a book. Somehow they got their hands on a copy of his contract with Hobbes House. The contract is for a novel. They’re using that to claim the book is fiction, made up, his imagination.