Murder on K Street - Margaret Truman [7]
He opened the front door with his key and turned on lights—some were already on because of timers he’d purchased and installed. Let the bad guys think someone was home.
“Okay, buddy,” he told Homer, who sat with his head cocked as though waiting for instructions. “Remember what I taught you about being a good houseguest. No barking, and no rummaging for food in the kitchen. Take a nap before Emma or I get back. Capisce?”
Homer whined, which Rotondi took as affirmation. After writing a note for Emma, he got back in his car and drove to Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street, where he handed over the vehicle to a valet parker. He knew he wasn’t dressed for the Willard—he’d left home wearing jeans, a maroon T-shirt, a blue chambray shirt, and deck shoes sans socks—but he’d decided that his presence was more important than his outfit.
“My name is Rotondi. Senator Lyle Simmons is staying here,” he told a woman at the desk. “He’s expecting me.”
She’d obviously been well trained. Any doubt she had about him because of what he wore, and his five o’clock shadow, wasn’t reflected on her pretty face. “One moment, please,” she said with practiced pleasantness.
Rotondi grimaced against a shooting pain in his leg, and leaned against the counter to take some of his weight off it.
“Sir, the senator is staying here but hasn’t arrived yet.”
“Oh?”
“If you’d like to wait in the lobby, or in the bar, I’ll see that you’re paged when he arrives.”
“Let’s make it the bar.”
Before entering the hotel’s venerable Round Robin Bar, Rotondi called Simmons. No answer.
“A perfect Rob Roy,” Rotondi told the bartender after taking a stool beneath a portrait of Calvin Coolidge, who’d lived at the Willard in 1923 while serving as Warren Harding’s vice president. When Harding died in office, the hotel became the official presidential residence, and the official presidential flag flew from its rooftop until Mrs. Harding moved out of the White House.
The bartender placed his drink in front of him. Rotondi had no sooner picked it up for his first taste when a female staff member, pert and pleasant, entered the bar and asked for Mr. Rotondi.
“That’s me.”
She stepped close and said softly, “Sir, Senator Simmons has arrived and asks that you join him in his suite.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll have your drink sent up.”
“Really? That’d be nice. Put it on the senator’s bill.”
He threw a tip down on the bar and followed the staffer. “We heard about the terrible thing that happened tonight,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Are you—?”
“Just a friend. And slow down.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, now noticing his cane.
She escorted him up in the elevator to the suite, gave him a final look that said she was sympathetic, and left as Alan McBride answered his knock.
“Hello, Phil.”
“’Lo, Alan.”
Rotondi followed McBride into the Willard’s fifteen-hundred-square-foot Oval Suite. To his right was the elliptical-shaped parlor, its sunburst carpet inspired by design motifs in the White House.
“The senator is on the phone in the bedroom,” McBride said. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Rotondi stepped into the parlor and stood by large windows that afforded stunning views of the U.S. Capitol. McBride joined him. “He’ll be out in a minute, Phil. Drink?”
“I have one being sent up, but thanks. I heard news reports on the way here. Anything new?”
McBride shook his head. He was shorter than Rotondi, and stockier, more a linebacker than a fleet wide receiver.