Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [44]
“Inevitable,” Annabel said, “and unfortunate. I’d better pack.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’re off to New York tonight.”
“I’m really excited about seeing those pieces Mr. Relais has up for sale.”
“I’m sure you are. What shuttle are you taking?”
“The seven-thirty.”
He drove her to the airport in time for her flight to New York and dropped her off in front of the busy terminal. They embraced. “I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “If all goes well, I should be able to catch a flight around three.”
“I’ll be teaching.”
“I know. A taxi will do just fine.”
“Provided you find a driver who knows how to get to the city from the airport.”
Annabel didn’t respond. She couldn’t help but reflect on Mac’s comment about DC’s cab drivers. Most of them were foreign-born; their reputation for not speaking good English or knowing their way around Washington was as established in the minds of visitors and residents as was the confusion of the city’s system of traffic circles and one-way streets, thanks to Pierre L’Enfant, who designed it in 1791 “like a chessboard overlaid with a wagon wheel.”
Stereotypes.
Cab drivers wearing turbans.
A store owner with dark skin.
Anyone different.
Someone to look down on, feel superior to.
She’d ridden the Metro that day and realized she was especially wary of foreigners carrying packages. Not Americans. Just foreigners. She felt slightly ashamed. And justified.
What was the world coming to?
Homicide detective Pete Languth, too, was pondering the fate of the world as he sipped his Black Velvet at the bar in the Carlton Hotel waiting for Joe Potamos to arrive. He’d come from a particularly grisly double murder, a domestic dispute that got out of hand, and as inured as he was to violence and its predictable after-math, this one got to him.
“You’re late,” Languth said to Potamos when he walked in at six-fifteen. Nathan, the bartender, delivered a Rob Roy without being asked.
“Right, I’m late,” Potamos said. “You know any editors?”
“Editors? No. Why should I know editors?”
“There aren’t any good ones anymore. I work for an idiot. Name’s Gardello. I just left him.”
“You hit him, Joe?” the big detective asked, chuckling at the question.
“No, I didn’t hit him,” Potamos said, laughing, too. “You come up with anything on the Canadian, Wilcox? Gardello told me to get off the story, stick with human-interest stuff on the grieving widows from the plane crash.”
“So why do you want this?” Languth asked, sliding a thin file folder along the bar. Potamos opened it and glanced at its contents.
“This all you have, Pete?”
“Hey, how about showing a little gratitude? That’s the case file. They wouldn’t be happy I copied it for you.”
“Yeah, sorry. Thanks. Anything you know that’s not in this?”
“You are buying, right?”
Potamos slapped his American Express card on the bar.
Languth waved for another drink, turned to Potamos, and said, “The deceased, one Jeremy Wilcox, was working on some sorta treaty on fishing rights.”
“You already told me that.”
“Don’t interrupt. Because you’re so interested—why? I don’t know and don’t care—and despite the fact you’re a hardheaded Greek with no common sense, I called a friend who knows another friend who knows somebody who knew the deceased. He was supposedly a trade type at the embassy, but maybe he wasn’t.”
“Meaning? Nathan, one more, please, a little sweeter this time.”
“Meaning he might have really been a spy type.”
“ ‘Spy type.’ What the hell does that mean?”
“You know, making like he’s here in the States to negotiate fishing treaties, but maybe working for some Canadian intelligence agency.”
“No kidding? Who is this person who knows that?”
“I wrote it down inside. I didn’t know they had one. An intelligence agency. The Canadians.”
“Everybody’s got an intelligence agency.”
“Yeah, but I can’t figure why the Canadians would want to spy on us. We’re friends, right?”
“Everybody spies on us, Pete, and we spy on everybody. Remember Israel?”
“What about it?”
“They got caught spying on us, and we’re friends. Do you think Wilcox