Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [62]
“You got anything else to say, Hatch?”
“No, that’s it, except if what I said got your noses outta joint, I—I apologize. All right?”
“All right, Hatch,” Williams said, leading his partner through the doors.
“Screw you,” Hatcher muttered. “What’a you want from me, blood?”
He needed that vodka more than ever.
• • •
Yankavich wasn’t in the restaurant when Hatcher arrived. He took his usual spot at the end of the bar and ordered a Bloody Mary from a waitress doing double duty as barmaid. “Where’s Joe?” he asked.
“At the bank. He’ll be back in a couple’a minutes.”
A pile of that week’s edition of City Paper rested on the bar. Hatcher absently took one and started skimming it. He wasn’t a fan of the paper, didn’t particularly like any newspaper, especially the Post and the New York Times and all the other media he considered knee-jerk liberal. He often called the Times “Pravda,” which brought a laugh from like-minded friends. City Paper was termed an alternative weekly, focusing on local news and the arts. It had been around since the early ’80s. Its stated circulation figure was more than eighty thousand readers. It was one of the most prestigious and influential of the nation’s alternative weeklies, a must-read for everyone in D.C. wanting a different take on D.C. politics.
The Josh Langdon article on the Rosalie Curzon murder took up all of page three, and it caused Hatcher to stop scanning and to read more closely. The article’s thrust was that the call girl’s murder had politicians scurrying for cover. The writer relied on a few “unnamed but credible sources,” including the possibility raised by someone “high up in political circles” that presidential front-runner Robert Colgate might have had a connection with the victim. Langdon had referred to his call to Colgate friend and senior campaign advisor Jerrold Rollins, quoting Rollins as saying “…you’re chasing after some politically motivated rumor that’s nothing but trash.”
Langdon went on to mention the possibility that the murdered call girl had videotaped some of her trysts with prominent politicians, and that a source within the Metropolitan Police Department indicated to the reporter that cops in that agency might, too, have bought sexual favors from the deceased and been caught on tape.
Hatcher angrily closed the paper and cursed the leaks alluded to in the story. You couldn’t keep anything under wraps in Washington, D.C., leak city. Reporters were worse whores than Curzon ever was. Hatcher had once heard on a cable news show that the Constitution protected only two classes of people, two specific professions: lobbyists and journalists. Between them there wasn’t an ounce of honor, as far as Hatcher was concerned. He was stewing in that thought, his glass half-empty, when Yankavich walked through the door. Seeing the hulking detective prompted a sour expression on the owner’s face. He tried to ignore him, but Hatcher motioned for the owner to join him.
“How’s things, Joe?”
“Things are fine. You?”
“Fine. I need to talk to you again about the hooker murder around the corner.”
“What for?”
“To go over your alibi.”
Yankavich snorted. “I don’t need no alibi.” He whispered into Hatcher’s ear. “So I got me a piece now and then. That makes me a normal guy, right? It don’t make me a murderer.”
“You never told me how much she charges, Joe.”
“What’s it matter?”
“Tell me.”
“We worked out a deal.”
Hatcher’s face brightened. “Like a barter deal?”
The waitress answered a phone call and told Joe it was for him. “I got things to do,” he told Hatcher, walking to where the waitress waited, the phone in her outstretched hand.
When Yankavich hung up, he returned to Hatcher. “I’ve got to go someplace, Hatcher. Enjoy your drink. It’s on me.”
“Keep your drink, Joe,” Hatcher said, tossing bills on the bar. “I’ll be back. We’ve got more to talk about.”
Yankavich watched Hatcher exit into the sunlight. He noticed that the detective was walking funny, a little unsteady on his feet. He mumbled curses under his breath. He’d shed no tears