Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [59]
He’d known for some time, certainly for the past few months, that she was close to unraveling. During recent assignations, there had been more talk than sex. That didn’t disappoint Rollins. A chill had set in between them that was hardly conducive to steamy, naked romps. He was actually relieved that their occasional meetings involved no more than a cursory kiss, maybe a squeeze or two, and long and occasionally intellectual conversations of the sort that had drawn them to each other in the first place.
He sat in his office pondering the situation. He’d been doing a lot of that lately, trying to codify his thoughts and feelings, attempting to cram sense and inject order into what were, damn it, jumbled thoughts. He knew that were he and Deborah no more than a married man and married woman who’d lapsed into an affair, the ramifications would be purely moral, with the possibility of something legal injecting itself should their affair be discovered and result in divorce. He and Sue had friends for whom that scenario had played out, creating domestic turmoil, accusations and guilt, damaged children, and hefty counseling and attorneys’ fees.
But this was different, as any third-party observer would certainly agree. He’d found himself sucked into the cortex of a presidential campaign. His friend of many years, Robert Colgate, former governor of Maryland and poll leader in the presidential race, depended on him to offer sage counsel, and to always do the right thing, say the right words, do nothing to derail what had become Colgate’s freight train to the White House. That the man himself had acted recklessly countless times wasn’t the issue, at least not for Rollins. He’d always prided himself on the ability to compartmentalize and to detach himself from a situation in which he’d been fully attached. Take Colgate’s marital transgressions, as an example. Rollins was not only aware of some of them, he’d played the beard at times, booking a hotel room for his politically ascending friend, knowing all too well what would transpire in that room. But here was detachment at its finest. Booking the room, and forgetting that he had if asked, had nothing to do with who was in that room, or what he did there. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Ignorance is bliss. My hands are clean.
If only he’d been able to do that with Deborah Colgate. There was no ignorance of what he’d done, nor was there bliss beyond the purely physical type. His hands were dirty.
He fielded a call from the insufferable Karl Scraggs, who asked what Rollins had thought of his book proposal.
“Very interesting,” Rollins said, as he told friends who’d performed poorly in a community theater production and awaited his evaluation backstage. A very interesting performance. That seemed to placate them, although God knew what a cliché it was. We hear what we want to hear.
“I thought you might have a check for me for a half-million bucks,” Scraggs said, laughing. Always laughing.
“I want to give it some more thought, Karl,” Rollins said. “I’ll need a few more days.”
“You take all the time you need, Jerry Boy. I’m not going anywhere.”
No, you’re not, was Rollins’s thought as he hung up the receiver.
His secretary appeared at the door. “Jerry, there’s a reporter on line two.”
“A reporter. From where?”
“City Paper. His name is Langdon.”
“What does he want?”
“He wants to talk to you.”
“About what?”
She shook her head and bunched her lips together.
He sighed, swung around in his swivel desk chair, stared at the phone for a few seconds, and picked it up. “Rollins here.”
“Hi, Mr. Rollins. I’m Josh Langdon. With City Paper.”
“Hello.” It occurred to Rollins at that moment that he knew the name of the reporter, not from City Paper, but from a blog the reporter ran that purported to expose corruption in Washington, sort of a poor man’s Drudge Report. Watch what you say, Rollins silently told himself.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Langdon?”
“I’m wrapping up a story on the murder of that prostitute in Adams Morgan, Rosalie Curzon.”
“Yes?”
“I understand that videotapes found