Murder on the Potomac (32 page)

“Not that I’m aware of,” said Eikenberg.

“Excuse me,” Annabel said. She headed toward the staircase at the western end of the museum.

“Please find your tables,” the chairwoman of the event announced from the microphone. “Dinner is about to be served, and we are in for a scrumptious treat.”

Annabel’s progress was impeded by the crowd. But
she eventually reached the perimeter of the Great Hall and stood at the foot of the broad brisk staircase. Behind was a festival of lights, music, and cheerful chatter. In front of her and above were silence and furtive darkness. She debated going farther. Mac would not have stayed this long unless there was a pressing need, and she didn’t want to barge in on the middle of an important conversation. On the other hand, she decided he might need rescuing. Once Tierney had your attention, he was a master at keeping it, especially with someone like Mac, who was, among other things, a patient listener.

She was about to turn, rejoin the party, and find her table. Surely, Mac would have heard the announcement that dinner was being served and would break away from Tierney. But her feet took a contrary position, and she started up the stairs.

When she reached the first balcony, she wasn’t sure what to do. It ringed the Great Hall, as did the balconies above it. She went to the railing, held a hand over her eyes to shield them from the party lights downstairs, and scanned the three upper balconies. As far as she could tell, there were no lights on in any of the exhibit rooms and offices. All was dark. But from the northeast corner of the fourth level, she saw a faint light. Is that where Mac had gone? she wondered. Why all the way up there?

Should she make the climb? It was either that or forget about her husband, go downstairs, and join their table alone. No, that wouldn’t do.

She completed her ascent to the fourth level, somewhat out of breath, and slowly walked in the direction of the light from the corner office. It looked to be miles
away. She stepped carefully, one foot slowly placed in front of the other, tentative, one shoe secure on the floor before the other was moved. It occurred to her that she probably appeared to be drunk. Alcoholics often walked that way, reaching with uncertainty for the ground.

She paused and looked over the railing. The milling partygoers almost one hundred feet below were smaller now. Like going up in an airplane, she thought. She tried to blot out party sounds and to focus on her immediate surroundings. It was hard to see in the somber light. A fleeting vision of a small child toppling into Great Falls came and went. She drew a breath and continued toward the light from the office. A sound stopped her. It had come from her left and in front. She looked in that direction, squinting against the blackness. Nothing. She cocked her head. No such sound now. What had it been? It sounded like a dull thud. Someone’s hand coming in contact with a wall? A foot inadvertently hitting a desk or chair? Maybe it hadn’t emanated from the balcony. Maybe it was a sound that had drifted up from the party.

She looked up. Above her head was a metal document track that circled the Great Hall. When the building had housed the Pension Bureau, trolleys traveled the track, each loaded with documents. A dumbwaiter in the northwest corner, now covered by a wall, had moved papers vertically.

Annabel moved closer to her destination, passing a number of doorways, each leading to an office, workshop, or display room. She turned the corner and began her trek on the long leg of the balcony. When she reached the halfway point, she stopped.

“Mac?” she said in a quiet voice.

Silly, she realized. He—no one would hear her. She gripped the gold railing with her right hand and waited. She’d come this far and intended to find her husband and return with him to the festivities.

A thin, amplified voice from downstairs drifted up to her ears.
“Before the first course is served, there are so many people to thank for making this wonderful evening possible. Goodness, I hope I don’t forget any.”

Annabel glanced down. She was not afflicted with a fear of heights but suddenly felt dizzy. She pushed away from the railing toward the security of the wall. But instead of coming in contact with a hard surface, she was in someone’s arms. Her scream was primal and loud.

“Quiet,” a male voice whispered.

“Who is it? Let me go!”

The man maintained his grip on her as someone else stepped into view. It was Sun Ben Cheong’s lookalike. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Let me go! My husband is—”

“Shut up, Mrs. Smith,” Sun Ben said, his arms still wrapped tightly around her.

She screamed again. “Mac! Mac!” But her words coincided with a drum roll and fanfare from the orchestra and an accompanying burst of cheers and applause. The microphone voice said that someone had won a Saint Laurent Rive Gauche gift certificate.

As Annabel struggled to free herself—she thought of the young woman who’d been pushed to her death from a balcony in the National Building Museum by a disgruntled lover—her husband was about to leave Tierney. “Naturally, Wendell, I’m shocked and dismayed by what you’ve told me. You’re certain?”

“Unfortunately, yes. I feel betrayed, of course, but
not shocked. I made it too easy for him, gave too much. Strange, isn’t it, how his actions parallel Ziang Sun Wan. He was the Chinese student who murdered officials of the Chinese Educational Mission back in 1918. We’ve studied that case at Tri-S a number of times but never produced a re-creation of it. Too sensitive. Too easy to be accused of prejudice against Orientals. I know one thing, Mac. No matter what I feel, I won’t abandon him.”

“Of course you won’t,” Smith said. “As difficult as it may be, the only course of action for him is to come forward to the police and cooperate fully. The attorneys I’ve recommended are the best. They’re not only superb criminal attorneys and litigators, they’re decent, sensitive people who’ll do everything they can to minimize the impact upon the family.”

Tierney stretched his arms above his head, twisted his torso, and yawned. “Money does corrupt. At least it has in this instance. It makes me think that—”

Smith snapped his head in the direction of the door. “That’s Annabel,” he said.

“What?”

“That scream. It’s Annabel.” He was on his feet, moving toward the door.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Tierney said to Smith’s back; he’d run out to the narrow balcony. Smith wasn’t certain he’d heard Annabel scream. It was more like a mother sensing a child’s dilemma when no one else would, or could. A sixth sense.

“Annabel!”

“Mac—”

He started toward her voice and the vague shapes in
the shadows but stopped when John Cheong’s revolver flashed reflected light in his direction.

“Let her go,” Smith shouted.

“What’s going on?” Tierney said from behind Smith. At the sight of his adoptive father, Sun Ben reflexively released his grip on Annabel. She’d been trying to pull away, and the momentum carried her toward the railing. At that instant, Chip Tierney stepped from a doorway and grabbed her. He’d been sitting silently in a small, dark room since delivering Smith to his father.

“… and the winner of the luxurious trip to gay ol’ Paree is—”

“Chip …” Annabel said, her voice mirroring her relief.

Tierney walked past Smith and extended his hand to John Cheong. “Give me the gun, John. You and your brother have done enough hurt.”

“The winner is—Mackensie Smith!”
The band began to play “April in Paris.”

Tony Buffolino had left Alicia with the wife of a detective friend and was on his way to the men’s room when Smith’s name was announced. “Son of a gun,” he said as he scanned the vast hall for Mac and Annabel.
“Let’s not be shy, Mac Smith,”
the chairwoman said into the microphone.

Buffolino fixed his attention on the dais. When neither Mac nor Annabel stepped forward to accept their prize, Buffolino’s antennae went up. Something’s wrong, he thought. He looked up into the soaring recesses of the building, to the domed roof and the balconies. Smith had gone to meet with Tierney and obviously wasn’t back yet. Dinner was well under way. Where was Annabel?

His eyes went to the upper reaches of the northeast corner. There seemed to be people up there. He went directly to the stairs and bounded up three at a time.

“Seems Mac and Annabel Smith are hiding on us,”
said the chairwoman.
“We’ll move on to one more prize, and then the main course will be served.”

“The gun,” Tierney said.

John Cheong handed the weapon to his brother, who pointed it at Tierney.

Tierney halted his advance, raised his hands, and forced a smile. “We’ll work things out, Son,” he said. “I’ve told Mac everything. He’ll help. We’ll go to the police together. We’ll hire the best lawyers and—”

“No!”

Everyone now looked to Chip.

“Get away from him, Annabel,” Smith said. She looked quizzically at her husband, then into Chip’s eyes. Tears came from them. His grasp of her had been comforting. But his moist eyes gave sudden credence to her husband’s warning. Smith repeated it. “Annabel, come here.
Let her go, Chip
.”

“What the hell are you doing, Chip?” Tierney asked. “Shut up.”

“I won’t shut up, Dad. I can’t shut up anymore.”

“Damn it. Everything is worked out.”

“Meaning having me take the fall,” Sun Ben said. “That’s what he wants,” he said to Smith.

“I know,” Smith replied. He said to Tierney, “I didn’t buy what you told me, Wendell. Too neat. Sun Ben’s problems with the law create a perfect setup to pin Pauline’s murder on him.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Cheong said.

“Get the police,” Tierney instructed Chip. “Get them up here.”

“To arrest me?” Chip said.

“To arrest
him
,” Tierney said, pointing at Sun Ben.

Sun Ben slowly lowered the revolver to his side. He turned to Chip. “I know why you killed her, Chip, to help me, to keep her quiet about the money. It doesn’t matter now. It’s over. Let’s stand together and take whatever they dish out. We’re brothers. We can—”

“I won’t go to prison,” Chip said. His voice, soft, frightened, now had a harder edge. He grabbed the weapon from Cheong’s relaxed hand and held it to Annabel’s head. “I tried to do the right thing for you, Dad. Pauline knew everything about the family, about Sun Ben laundering money through his diamond business, the land deals, the payoffs, all of it. She would have ruined us all.”

Smith took a step in his direction. “Hurting another person won’t help anything, Chip. Give me the gun.” He saw over the young man’s shoulder the crouched figure quietly creeping up behind Annabel.

“And now, let’s see who the lucky person is to drive that magnificent, sleek Rolls for a year. The winner is—”

Buffolino’s movement was sure and quick. His right hand struck Chip’s hand, sending the revolver into the air and down into the Great Hall. Simultaneously, the investigator drove his shoulder up into Chip’s back, which bent him over the railing.

Chip Tierney didn’t have to go over the railing. Everyone could see that.

Buffolino reached for the collar of Chip’s tux jacket in order to straighten him up, yank him back to safety.
But the young Tierney moved quicker. He pushed up and out, his feet leaving the ground and following him over the rail.

“No,” Tierney said, lunging for his son.

But he was gone, arms and legs akimbo, falling, twisting, spinning, until he landed facedown in front of the dais.

The band was playing “A Foggy Day.”

Two Weeks Later

Mac and Annabel finished lunch in Les Princes, the stylish restaurant in the George V, the opulent hotel included in their Paris “package.” Mac had enjoyed his
entrecôte
cooked perfectly
à point
; Annabel opted for a regional stew,
blanquette de veau
. Their bottle of Beaujolais was empty.

They’d attended Annabel’s conference in San Francisco, then taken the polar route to Paris. The glorious week was almost up. One more day and they’d be heading back to their normal lives in the nation’s capital.

“I suppose the Tierneys are what they mean by a dysfunctional family,” Annabel said.

“I suppose so. Functioning in many ways—but in the end … Tony made a comment the day we took a ride on the river. He said that when men like Wendell fall,
they fall far and they fall fast. That was certainly the case, wasn’t it?”

Annabel tasted a petit four. She said, “Imagine Suzanne a bagman for Sun Ben.”

“Bagwoman,” Smith corrected.

“Sounds wrong,” said Annabel. “How hard will they be on her?”

“Hard enough. She claims she never knew what she picked up for him, but that’ll be tough to establish.”

“I’m still not clear on how Sun Ben’s laundering operation worked,” she said.

“A complicated setup, Annabel, but not original with him. John Sims did a good job of explaining it to me.” Sims, a Treasury agent, and Mac had been friends for years. “It only works if the bankers involved are greedy enough, which too many are.

“About eight years ago, according to John, some South American gold merchant set up a laundering system for the Medellín cocaine cartel. He established an office in California where drug money was delivered in large quantities. That’s what Suzanne did for Sun Ben. She was one of dozens picking up the cash and delivering it to the laundry, in this case his diamond business.

“The guy in California who worked for the Medellín cartel used the cash delivered to him to buy gold. The trick was to buy the gold at a premium price, way over market—which rewarded those dealers selling to him for moving the money through their bank accounts—and then selling the gold quickly to pay off the drug dealers in Colombia. Problem was that consistently buying high and selling low was sure to attract attention. As I understand it, he solved that by claiming the gold had been bought out of the country, rather than from
within the United States. Something to do with foreign gold being lower-quality. Anyway, it was a big operation. His slice off the top was worth millions to this guy.”