Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [36]
Nathan placed a Rob Roy in front of Potamos, who raised it in Languth’s direction. “To my father, may he rest in peace. If he’d been more forceful, I’d be happily whipping up burgers swimming in grease and loving every minute of it. What’s new on the Canadian, Wilcox, who got it in the park?”
Languth drew on his drink, a Black Velvet, dark porter with champagne. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “Assailants unknown.”
“Yeah, fine, but what’s your read on it?”
Languth finished his drink, motioned for Nathan to refill it, and shifted his bulky body on the stool so that he faced Potamos. “Why’re you asking?”
Potamos hunched his shoulders and leaned his elbows on the bar. “I’m a reporter, for crissake.”
“Yeah, but why are you so curious about this stiff?”
“I have a gut feeling about it, that’s all. He was killed with a knife in the side, right?”
“Right.”
“Not in the chest, not in the back, in the side.”
“Yeah. So?”
“His wallet was intact, nothing taken, credit cards, cash, nothing.”
“You okay, Joe?”
“No. Where was Wilcox coming from when he got it? Where had he been that night?”
Languth seemed to lack a neck, which made his shrugs less obvious. “I didn’t catch the case after he was found. Cox did.”
“What did Cox say? Where had Wilcox been?”
“I don’t know. No, maybe I do. Cox said something about the deceased coming from some affair at the State Department, something about fishing rights.”
“Fishing rights?”
“Yeah, fishing rights. A flap between us and the Canucks over fish.”
Potamos grunted, finished his drink, and asked Nathan for another: “A little sweeter this time, huh?”
“What’s new with your friend Bowen, Joe?”
Focusing on the murder of the Canadian trade rep, Jeremy Wilcox, had cooled Potamos off. The mention of George Alfred Bowen stoked the furnace again. “You could’ve talked all night and not mentioned him, Pete.”
“Yeah, I know it’s a sore spot with you, but you never really talk about it.”
Potamos looked into Languth’s wide, flat face and tried to see inside his head.
When Potamos was covering the State Department, he functioned in a world that didn’t include DC cops like Languth. But after his demotion to general-assignment reporting, with rape and murder and assault replacing diplomatic niceties, he found himself bonding with cops, including the plodding Pete Languth. In a sense, Potamos’s temperament was more in line with the gritty world of a police officer than the striped-pants, cutaway-coat crowd, and he quickly came to appreciate the way cops spent their days and nights, wallowing in criminal human garbage that DC’s more genteel citizens escaped from at night by fleeing to their suburban sanctuaries.
Although they were markedly different in every way, and seemed always to be at odds with each other, it was Potamos’s appreciation of what Languth did for a living that initially forged a friendship of sorts. Languth loathed the press but soon recognized in Potamos a different breed of reporter, scornful of his profession’s abuses, often disgusted with its excesses, yet dedicated to being the best.
They weren’t friends in a social sense, never got together simply to enjoy each other’s company. Their conversations always revolved around some aspect of their jobs. Languth was married with four grown children, Potamos twice divorced and with kids he seldom saw. Potamos enjoyed music and theater and books. Languth’s idea of high culture was an imported beer while watching “professional” wrestling on TV. What they did share was a distrust of people. They both made their living asking questions, and had come to the conclusion that people lie more often than they tell the truth. Maybe that was why Potamos liked the lumbering, plodding, sarcastic detective. Potamos believed him, even when he didn’t like what he was saying. Believing what people said in Washington, DC, was worth something.
“Did you really hit the guy?” Languth asked.
“Bowen? Yeah, I hit him,” Potamos said.
George