Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [42]
“That’s right.”
“We’d like to meet with you, Mr. McMahon.”
“What about?”
Billy went through a fast mental calculation. The payoffs to the vice squad cops are up-to-date.
“About the murder of Rosalie Curzon. When’s a good time for us to get together?”
“I don’t know. I run a busy business and—”
“We can dispatch officers to bring you here to headquarters,” Jackson said. “Or we can talk to you at your place of business. Your choice.”
“I don’t know anything about a murder.”
“Ms. Curzon worked for you as an escort.”
“She did? I don’t remember her.”
“Shall I send officers to pick you up, Mr. McMahon? Or—?”
“All right, all right, you can come here. How about tomorrow?”
“How about in an hour?” Jackson said.
“An hour? Jesus, I—”
“A half hour,” Jackson said.
“You’re breakin’ my chops over nothing. Yeah, all right, an hour.”
Hatcher walked into headquarters as Jackson and Hall were winding up their conversation with McMahon. They filled in the senior detective on what had transpired, and also told him of their telephone conversation with Craig Thompson, and of Jackson’s chance meeting with the owner of the Silver Veil, which revealed that Thompson had lied about when he’d last seen Rosalie Curzon.
“We’re heading over to interview McMahon,” Mary said.
“Okay,” Hatcher said. “Give me the contact info on Thompson. I’ll take a shot at him.”
“How’re you feeling, Hatch?” Mary asked.
“Good. I feel good.”
Which was true in a relative sense. His headache’s severity had lessened, but was still there, and waves of nausea came and went, like the tide.
“What about Patmos, Senator Barrett’s chief-of-graft?” he asked.
“I couldn’t reach him yesterday,” Mary said, “but I’ll try again later.”
After another fifteen minutes of conferring, Jackson and Hall checked out an unmarked vehicle and headed for the offices of Beltway Entertainment and Escorts.
“The fact that Curzon worked there doesn’t mean much,” she offered as they sat in a traffic jam created by a disabled truck.
“Except that Micki Simmons told me that the owner was furious with Curzon for leaving the agency and taking clients with her. She claims he threatened to kill her.”
“We all make angry threats once in a while,” Mary said.
“I never have.”
“You’ve never been mad enough at someone to say you wanted to kill them?”
He shook his head.
“Well,” she said, “I have, but I didn’t mean it literally. It was just a figure of speech.”
“Yeah, but the way Micki Simmons put it to me, this McMahon character wasn’t into figures of speech. He meant it.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
Billy McMahon sat behind a desk, wearing a wireless telephone headset. Next to him was a middle-aged woman logging in calls as they were received. Ordinarily, Billy wore jeans, sandals, and a T-shirt of various bright colors to work. But knowing he would be receiving a visit from cops, he changed into a dark blue suit, white shirt with an open collar, and black tasseled loafers he kept in a locker. He was in the midst of a call when Jackson and Hall entered. They waited patiently just inside the door for him to acknowledge their presence. He mumbled something to the woman to his right, indicated with a finger that he would be with them in a moment, removed the headset, handed it to the woman, and stood.
“Welcome to Beltway Entertainment,” he said.
“Mr. McMahon?”
“That’s right, William McMahon.” He came around the desk and extended his hand, first to Mary, then with some reluctance to Jackson. “You must be the detective who called. Like some coffee, soda pop, maybe something stronger?”
“Where can we sit down and talk?” Jackson asked.
“How about my conference room?” Billy suggested, leading them through a door into a small office that contained a rickety card table and four chairs. “Pardon the mess,” he said, “but I’m just in the process of moving the offices downtown, a nice high-rise, as high as you can be in this town.” He laughed. “They have a law that says no building can be taller than twenty feet higher than the width of the street it’s on. Bet you didn’t know that.”
“It’s a 1910 law,” Jackson