“Getting back together is a better way to put it. Maybe. It’s my idea. I don’t know how she feels about it yet.”
Conklin sighed heavily. “Listen,” he said, “you can call me in a few days, maybe a week, when the heat’s off. Maybe I’ll be able to tell you more. You can use the stuff I told you back at the office, but if you do, no names, huh?”
Pace nodded. The rest of the ride passed in silence.
By the time Pace got back to the office, he was running right up against his first deadline, but he was able to base a story on the material from Conklin, quoting him only as a source with knowledge of the investigation, a descriptive broad enough to cover Conklin. Glenn, as promised, had covered the Lund briefing and filed a memo to Pace’s basket. Steve read it with a sense of relief. There was nothing new, but he pumped a few quotes from the NTSB official into his story to flesh it out and gave Glenn a credit line at the end.
But on his way home, shortly before nine, Schaeffer stopped at Pace’s desk. “So, you finally tracked down your friend, huh?”
“I staked out the building this afternoon,” Pace said, continuing to type. “Actually, I don’t know if it was worth the time. The quotes are good, but they don’t tell us much.”
“Well, you’re chipping away at it. That’s the way these things go. You only get lucky in detective and spy novels. In real life, it takes time and a lot of trips down blind alleys.”
Pace wished he felt that confident.
Julia Hershowitz, the Sunday national editor, finished with Pace’s copy shortly before 9:30 and gave him a thumbs-up sign.
“Another winner, Steve,” she said confidently.
“They get thinner every day,” Pace complained. “I wish I could get my hands on some substance.”
“It’ll come. As long as you’re out on the streets twenty hours a day, seven days a week, looking for it.”
“Gee, thanks,” he replied.
He was shutting down his computer when Bobby Clack, a young news intern, hailed him. “Hey, Steve. The call on line four’s for you.”
He punched the button and picked up the receiver. “Pace.”
“Steve, we’ve got to talk.”
Pace recognized the voice immediately. But the cryptic greeting was unlike Mike McGill. “Sure, Mike. Go ahead.”
“Not over the phone. Someplace I can get to pretty quick from Dulles, but someplace where no one will know us.”
Pace’s concern grew. This was squirrelly as hell. “How about a place called the Toodle Inn? It’s on Route 50 about ten miles east of you. Do you know that area?”
“I know Route 50. I never heard of the place. Are you serious? The Toodle Inn?”
Pace gave him directions.
“Okay. An hour. Be there. Something lousy’s coming down.”
8
Harold Marshall was more than fashionably late, and Evelyn Bracken was furious.
Evelyn’s annual spring bash, a society-calendar highlight in the nation’s capital, was well into its third hour. Marshall had promised to get there early to help with final preparations, but he’d called at seven, as the first guests arrived, to say he was detained unavoidably on Capitol Hill by events relating to the Dulles accident.
Angry though she was, Evelyn put on her party face and explained to her guests that Marshall’s tardiness was due to the incredibly important responsibilities of his Senate position. By touting her lover’s status, she elevated her own, and that alone made her feel better about spending the first critical hours of her party—including the dinner—unescorted. So convincing was she that when Marshall finally made an appearance in the lantern-lit gardens behind Evelyn’s Potomac, Maryland, manse, it was an entrance of sorts.
It was attention he received too rarely since the Republicans lost control of the Senate in 1986, and he was forced to hand the gavel of the Transportation Committee back to Democrat Garrison Helmutsen, whom Marshall regarded as a singularly retarded Minnesota farm boy.
The senator was enjoying the moment, saying brief hellos on the three brick steps at the end of a corridor running from the main front foyer through the house to the backyard. Evelyn swept the conversation away by embracing Marshall, kissing the air beside his right ear and crooning, “Darling, I was certain you’d never be able to come because of that simply awful mess at Dulles. I’m so delighted to see you. Come, let’s find someone who can fetch you a drink. You must be dying.” She drew out the last word as if she were playing a scene, as indeed she was.
When they reached a spot on the trimmed lawn somewhere between the magnolias and the dogwood, dimly lit by two Polynesian flame lanterns, Evelyn stopped abruptly and withdrew her right hand from the crook of Marshall’s left arm. Amid the lanterns, Evelyn Bracken was on a burn of her own.
“There’s nothing about that damned accident that couldn’t have waited until Monday morning. Do you do these things on purpose, to humiliate me?”
Marshall, who had drawn a deep breath in anticipation of this sort of confrontation, exhaled slowly. He looked down on Evelyn from a height of six-feet-two and put his hands on her shoulders.
“Darling, don’t you think, instead of railing at me, you should be singing the praises of whatever deity gave you this magnificent evening for your little gathering? No? Well, since you insist on railing at me, I must tell you this isn’t your average Senate business, and no, it could not wait until Monday morning. I do not crash large aircraft with more than three hundred people aboard on purpose, especially if they are powered by engines built in my state. And you are not humiliated. You are the consort of United States Senator Harold Kingsley Marshall, who would appreciate it if you would act the part… and your age, while you’re at it.”
“Harold, stop it. I hate it when you lecture. This is my big occasion. It only happens once a year. It’s all so difficult to manage properly in the best of circumstances, and it’s particularly difficult without an escort. Is it any wonder I’m miffed?”
“Miffed?” Marshall repeated with mock alarm. “You’re miffed? Does that go hand in hand with beautiful, rich, and bitchy?”
Evelyn smiled and dropped her eyes. “I’m sorry. How would a double martini suit?”
“Fine, in a minute,” Marshall said in clipped words, his voice suddenly cold. He held her by the upper part of her left arm, his grip tighter than it needed to be. “Don’t ever question me, or my office, or my business again. I will do what my duties—and my peculiar personal interests—require, and then, as time permits, I will get to you.” Evelyn was trying to pull free. Marshall continued, holding fast to her arm, his cold blue eyes intent and angry on her face. “We’ve had this conversation before,” he said. “I do not wish to have it again.”
He released her. “Now I’ll have that drink,” he said.
She spun to the task of his martini, catching the eye of a cocktail waitress working the crowd. “Be a dear and fetch me a double Absolut martini, on the rocks with a twist, very, very dry. On second thought, make it two. I could use one myself.”
Evelyn turned back to Marshall, but he had been cornered by Charles Lauder, the Republican congressman from Los Angeles and the ranking minority member of both the House Public Works Committee and its aviation subcommittee. As important as it was to Marshall to have Converse in his state, it was equally important to Lauder to have Sexton in his district.
Evelyn feared the men would remain locked in conversation on the fringes of her party for the rest of the evening, although by their presence they added to the desired prestige of the get-together in her garden. And their conversation, carried on at a voice level that would not reach nearby ears, added an aura of intrigue that would spice reports on the party in Monday’s newspapers. The old adage about politics in Washington was proved again: There is more business conducted over drinks after 6:00 P.M. than in all of the regular working hours combined.