Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [62]
“I’ll leave you here, Max.”
“We can share a cab.”
“No, I prefer the Metro. Almost as good as Washington’s, clearly superior to New York’s. Join me, Max?”
“No. I’ll enjoy a walk. Bill, I assume coming up with a million bucks isn’t a problem.”
“No problem at all. The entire budget of the United States is at our disposal. So to speak.”
“Good night, Bill. Thanks for the sauna.”
“My pleasure.”
Lerner took a few steps down into the Metro station when Pauling stopped him. “Bill, do you think our fat friend played a role in selling those missiles to the bastards who used them?”
“Possibly. Money was involved, and he is, after all, in the money business.”
“So he collects from both ends.”
Lerner came back up the two steps. “Max, shelve your feelings. I’ve opened the door for you. Now you can hobnob with your people and get to the bottom of it.”
“ ‘My people’?”
“The criminal types to whom our fat banker friend owes his Mercedes and fancy dacha, his whores, and his pinky rings. Large, weren’t they?”
Pauling smiled. “I didn’t see his girlfriends. Go catch your train, Bill. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Chapter 19
The Next Evening
Washington, DC
Roseann Blackburn slammed the door to her apartment and came down the stairs with purpose. She stopped and looked back when the door opened.
“Look, you know I didn’t mean it,” Potamos, wearing shorts, said from the top of the stairway.
“Then you shouldn’t have said it,” she snapped.
“So forget I said it,” he said, hands extended in a gesture of surrender.
“That’s so typical of you, Joe; say something nasty, then say forget you said it. I’m late.”
“We’ll have dinner after the gig?”
“You’ll have dinner after the gig! Or before. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”
She waved down a cab and ten minutes later was seated behind the gleaming black Steinway grand in the large lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel, playing an un-characteristically dark version of “It Had to Be You.” She finished that song and had just started “My Funny Valentine” when her eyes went to a cushioned chair across the room, near the bar. Seated in it was Craig Thomas, the Canadian embassy’s public information officer. He raised his glass and smiled.
She was booked to play two forty-five-minute sets at the Four Seasons. At the end of the first, she went to the bar for her usual diet soft drink. Thomas sauntered up to her.
“What happened to Cole Porter?” he asked pleasantly.
“He’s alive and well. Next set.”
“How have you been?”
“Fine.”
“It’s Craig, Craig Thomas.”
“Oh, I remember your name.”
“I wouldn’t be offended if you hadn’t. How’s your journalist friend?”
“Joe? He’s as good as ever.”
“Look, Ms. Blackburn, I’m not the aggressive type, the ‘I won’t take no for an answer’ type. I’m Canadian.”
The comment struck Roseann as funny, and she laughed. “Canadians aren’t aggressive?” she said.
“On occasion, I suppose. Maybe this should be one of them. Free for dinner?”
“No. Well—”
“Just a pleasant, nonaggressive, hands-off dinner. To put it simply, I’d like to know more about you.”
“Not much to know. I play the piano and… all right.”
“A preference in restaurants?”
“No. I’ll leave it to you. I’d better get back.”
“I’ll be here. ‘I Concentrate on You’?”
“If you insist.”
“The song.”
“I know what you mean.”
She finished the final set with a long medley, which brought polite applause from Thomas and two or three others. As she stood, closed the keyboard cover and saw him approaching, she had a fleeting moment of doubt. But when he arrived at the piano, smiled, and said, “Ready?” she simply said, “Yes.”
Chapter 20
That Same Evening
The State Department
State’s officer in charge of educational outreach programs to area universities concluded his brief remarks and stepped away from the podium in the smallest of the eighth-floor diplomatic reception rooms. The forty people in the audience applauded, including Mac and Annabel Smith, and Jessica Mumford, who’d invited them along