Murder at Ford's Theatre (6 page)

“That’s right, Mr. Bancroft,” Johnson responded.

“I am entitled to a lawyer.”

“Of course. But we’re not here because you’re a suspect in the murder,” Klayman said. “We’re simply questioning anyone who might be able to help us understand something about the deceased, and maybe give us some leads as to any persons who might have wanted her dead.”

“Who could that possibly be?”

“How well did you know her?” Johnson asked gruffly.

“Not well at all. I’m afraid I cannot possibly be of any help to you. She was simply a pretty young thing who was enamored of theatre and seemed to enjoy being close to it. I suppose there was a modicum of hero worship in it, the starstruck young woman wanting to rub elbows with the stars.” His tone was world-weary.

Stars like you, I suppose,
Johnson thought, not kindly.

Klayman had just started to ask another question when Bancroft silenced him with a finger to the lips and a loud “Shhhhhh.” The actor turned to the TV, where he was playing a romantic scene with an actress. They stared at the screen, and at Bancroft, in silence. The look of disgust on Johnson’s face wasn’t lost on Klayman, although Bancroft was too involved with what was happening on the screen to be aware of anything else.

As Klayman watched, he was reminded of how handsome a much younger Sydney Bancroft had been, not quite a leading man, but an actor with an intensity, eyes that drew you in, a nicely modulated voice, subtle virility—an actor who was undoubtedly attractive to women in his heyday, moviegoers and offscreen romantic interests alike. Klayman tried to recall what he’d read about the actor’s marital history. One marriage to a British actress early in the career, maybe another. Always lots of women, of course, plenty of drunken scenes, unpleasant public displays, a woman he slapped once in a restaurant bringing charges, an underage girl, if Klayman’s memory served him right. The scandal sheets had always focused on Bancroft’s hard drinking and its impact upon his artistic temperament. He’d become increasingly difficult, the detective had read, alienating directors and producers to the extent that roles had become scarce and age diminished them further.

The scene ended, and Bancroft turned back to the detectives. “I’m sure you virile young men never have a problem when playing your bedroom scenes. But let me assure you, it is never easy with cameras and lights and dozens of people gawking at you as you attempt to portray the seductive leading man.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s true,” Johnson said.

“Any further questions?” Bancroft asked, standing to signal that the visit was about to be terminated.

“Just one more,” Klayman said. “We were told by people at Ford’s Theatre that you showed a particular interest in Nadia Zarinski.”

“Oh?”

“They said you tended to try to . . . well, become close to her. I don’t know, touching her, things like that.”

“And who might have made this outlandish claim?”

“That’s not important.”

“It is to me. I insist upon being able to face my accuser.”

“Is there any truth to it?” Mo Johnson asked.

“Absolutely not. While my libido might have suffered slightly in the aging process, I assure you I am still a virile man who is blessed with numerous female companions, none of whom are below the age of thirty. I have absolutely no interest in very young women, except perhaps to enjoy them in photographs, and I further ensure you that my interest in the young Ms. Zarinski was purely as someone she could look up to. No, my new friends, I never stayed close to her or touched her, as you so crudely stated. I barely knew her. She was there only occasionally at night. This is preposterous. I feel like John Wilkes Booth, being accused of some vile act.”

“‘Accused of’ a vile act?” Klayman said. “He did kill Lincoln.”

“And he had his reasons, I assure you. I have studied Mr. Booth in depth. A brilliant actor and dedicated activist. I don’t believe there is another person in this world who knows more about Booth, the inner man and great actor, than yours truly.”

“I’m a bit of a Lincoln buff myself,” Klayman said.

“Are you? How impressive. One would not expect that of a policeman.”

“What do you expect of a policeman, Mr. Bancroft?” Johnson asked.

“Certainly not scholarship, sir, and I mean no offense to you personally.”

“That’s nice of you,” Johnson said. “By the way, how come you never showed up at the theatre for the meeting this morning? They say you called it.”

“And they are mistaken, I assure you. I have little to do with the technical side of things. There must have been a miscommunication.”

“Thanks for your time, Mr. Bancroft,” Klayman said, extending his hand. “It was a pleasure meeting you.”

“I am glad to have been of help.”

Johnson didn’t offer his hand as the detectives left the apartment.

“He’s a trip, isn’t he?” the doorman asked as they walked through the lobby.

“Interesting gentleman,” Klayman said.

“You ever see him bring young women up to the apartment?” Johnson asked.

“Doorman-tenant privilege,” the doorman said, chuckling.

Johnson glared at him.

“Sometimes,” the doorman said. “Young. Old. You mean young like the kid who got it over at the theatre? No. No teeny-boppers. At least I can’t remember any.”

“She wasn’t a teenybopper,” Johnson said sternly.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” said the doorman. “He’s really a pretty nice guy, polite and all, always holding the door for the women in the building.”

“That’s nice to hear,” Klayman said, leading Johnson to the street.

“What did you think?” Klayman asked once they were in their car.

“Pain in the ass. Pretentious bastard. You catch that getup he was wearing? Man, there’s nothing sadder than an old guy trying to look young.”

“I kind of liked him.”

“You would. You starstruck, too? Only he’s no star. What’s he reduced to, working with teenagers at Ford’s Theatre? Some star.”

“I wonder why.”

“Why what?”

“Why he works at Ford’s Theatre. Why he’d want to. Why they’d want him.”

“We should ask.”

“We will. What do you want to do now?”

“Aside from cuddling up next to Etta? Let’s call this Saul Jones.”

“Yeah, let’s.”

“You think Bancroft might have done the girl?”

“Done as in had sex with her, or done as in kill her?”

“Either one. Or both.”

Klayman said nothing as he pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket and dialed the number for Saul Jones that Bancroft had given them.

EIGHT

R
ICK
K
LAYMAN ENTERED
his apartment on Wisconsin Avenue, not far from the National Cathedral, turned on a floor lamp, and looked across the room to his answering machine. The message light was flashing; he counted the blinks, seven messages. He checked his watch. Almost ten-thirty. Always a dilemma; too late to return calls, or early enough? Depended upon the caller, of course. Night people or day people? Early to bed or up watching late movies?

He turned on a table lamp in his bedroom and slowly undressed, emptying pockets, blue blazer first, which he carefully placed on a hanger in the closet facing in the same direction as other jackets; then inserted wooden shoe trees into black loafers which he returned to their designated empty space on the closet floor; gray trousers joined other pants in their own section; tie carefully unknotted and nested with others on a battery-powered rotating tie rack; and blue button-down shirt removed and held up to the light to ascertain its usefulness for another day. It passed muster and was draped over the back of a desk chair. He deposited his underwear into a hamper, got into pale blue short pajamas, slippers, and a white terry cloth robe, and went to the answering machine, where he wrote down the callers’ names, numbers, and messages. The seventh call was from Mo, which surprised Klayman. He’d seen him just a half hour ago, when they’d signed out at headquarters.

“It’s Rick.”

“Yeah, Ricky, thanks for getting back so soon. You got home okay, huh?”

“Of course.”

“You alone?”

Johnson meant whether there was a woman with him. “Yes, I’m alone.”

“Ricky, you buy this guy Saul Jones’s story?”

“So far. He says he and Bancroft were together all night, never lost sight of each other. They both said they had dinner at Duangrat’s and Rabieng, in Baileys Crossroads. Jones had the AmEx receipt to prove it.”

“Yeah. So how come Bancroft said he had a bellyache from too much Indian food?”

“Meaning?”

“It’s a Thai restaurant, Rick. Etta was there a month ago.”

“So Bancroft got his cuisines confused. They’re all the same when your stomach’s on fire. We can stop by the restaurant and see if anyone remembers them together.”

“I think they got together on their story. Too pat. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“I didn’t like either of ’em.”

“So I gathered. Look, I’ve got a bunch of calls to return. See you in the morning. We’ll head over to American University and scout up her friends.”

“Right, Ricky. Have a good night.”

Klayman winced and hung up. He preferred that Johnson not call him Ricky, although he never made a fuss, knowing that his partner didn’t mean anything demeaning. Mo would outgrow it—hopefully.

He perused the names and numbers on the pad. Two calls from his mother in New York; his sister from Boston; a neighbor wondering whether they’d caught the person who killed the young woman at Ford’s Theatre, and saying it was comforting to have a police officer living in the building; the building’s super informing all tenants that there would be no hot water the following day between noon and four due to boiler repairs; and a call from Rachel Kessler, whom Klayman had been seeing on an irregular basis.

“Just wanted to touch base, Rick,” Rachel’s voice said, “and see if you were up to dinner or a drink some night this week. Are you involved in the murder today at the theatre? I know how much you love that place. Call me, okay?”

He dialed his mother’s number.

His father answered. “How are you, Richard?”

“Fine, Dad. You?”

“Aches and pains, but I’m alive. Took a breath when I got up this
morning . . .”

. . . and it worked, so no complaints.
Rick smiled as he silently completed the statement. It was one of his father’s favorite lines.

“Dad, Mom called and left a couple of messages.”

“I’ll get her. Are you involved in the murder there in Washington?”

Which murder?
Rick thought. There would be a dozen murders in D.C. that day. “The young woman at Ford’s Theatre? Yes, I am. My partner and I are working on the case.”

“Mr. Johnson?”

“Right. Mo and I are—”

“How are you two getting along?”

“Great. Why?”

“Well, you’re so different, Richard. Very—different.”

He could see his father standing in their small living room in the Bronx, thin and stooped, wiry gray hair beyond taming, thick glasses, a two-day growth of gray beard; he shaved only occasionally since retiring as a cutter in the garment district.

“Is Mom there?”

“I’ll get her.”

His mother and father had been vehemently against Rick’s joining the Washington MPD—any MPD, for that matter. His degree from City College of New York had been in history, and he’d graduated near the top of his class. The world was open to him: law, medicine, investment banking—all respected and lucrative professions, from his father’s perspective, options that were unappealing to their son.

Rick had been fascinated with law enforcement since his early years, envisioning himself as a cop, a detective, questioning people, solving puzzles, and bringing criminals to justice.
Doing something.
There was a fantasy dimension to such visions when he was young. He saw himself as considerably taller and more muscular than he was in reality, athletic, able to scale tall fences in mean alleys in pursuit of bad guys, or drop on them from fire escapes. Kid stuff. Cops and robbers. But he learned early in his career as a uniformed cop with the Washington MPD that his self-perception of his physical abilities was, more accurately, self-deception.

H
E
’
D BEEN WALKING
a downtown beat when he came upon a mugging of an older woman. The attacker was a bear of a man, which didn’t deter Klayman from leaping on his back as he tried to flee the scene. The mugger tossed Klayman off, slammed him against a wall, and was pummeling him when another uniformed cop intervened and helped subdue the mugger. Klayman broke a finger in the fracas and spent a week on medical leave. It wouldn’t be his last physical challenge as a cop.

Despite his slender build, he earned a reputation as a fearless cop, willing to put his life on the line in almost any situation, especially when it involved the safety of a fellow officer. Mo Johnson was somewhat aware of that reputation when he was paired with the skinny Jewish kid from New York, and had a chance to experience it firsthand during their early months together.

They were working backup for an undercover narcotics officer involved in a buy-and-bust operation on Martin Luther King Boulevard in the Anacostia section of the city, an impoverished, hardscrabble area seething with crime, much of it fueled by drug trafficking. Their target was a young Hispanic drug dealer, Manuel “Chi Chi” Ortiz, with whom the undercover detective had forged a relationship. Klayman and Johnson were stationed in an unmarked car parked around the corner from the buy; a small loudspeaker delivered what was being said between the narc and Ortiz.

At first, only the voices of the detective and Ortiz were picked up by a tiny microphone worn beneath the cop’s jacket. But then other voices were heard, three or four, speaking rapid-fire Spanish and black street slang, sounding angry. Then the spray of voices was shattered by rapid gunshots.

Klayman peeled away from the curb and the car careered around the corner. The undercover narcotics detective was face-down on the sidewalk. Klayman barked into his radio, “Officer down! Officer down!” and gave the location. He and Johnson leaped from the car and pursued Ortiz and another dealer, who disappeared behind a row of boarded-up stores. Johnson pointed at an alley to his left; Klayman went in that direction. Johnson followed the route taken by the dealers, which led to a garbage-strewn lot separated from an auto repair shop and junkyard by a crumbling six-foot-high concrete wall.

As Johnson sprinted toward the rear of the stores, the dealers had almost reached the wall and were preparing to scale it. But Ortiz suddenly stopped, ducked behind a small Dumpster overflowing with trash, looked back at Johnson, and raised a Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter automatic. As he did, Johnson tripped over a broken, twisted bicycle frame and sprawled a few feet from the dealer, his own weapon flying from his hand and landing six feet away. Ortiz slowly stood, the pistol held steadily in both hands and pointed at Johnson. Johnson came up on his haunches and extended a hand toward Ortiz, who was dressed in a black
T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, black pants, black boots, and wearing a red bandanna on his head. Ortiz smiled, and tensed, ready to fire.

“Hey!” Klayman yelled. He’d entered the area from the other direction, weapon drawn, and stood fifteen feet from the Dumpster. The dealer turned and aimed at Klayman, the smile still on his lips.

“Get down, Ricky!” Johnson called.

But Klayman began closing the gap between him and Ortiz, walking deliberately, step-by-step, weapon held out in front with both hands and aimed at the dealer’s head. “Don’t be stupid,” he said in a firm voice. “Drop it. Just drop it.”

Johnson crawled toward his gun but never took his eyes from the face-off between Klayman and Ortiz. It was as though Klayman had hypnotized the dealer, a cat stalking a mesmerized bird. Johnson reached his weapon when Klayman was only a few feet from Ortiz. He came up to a sitting position and squeezed off a single shot. It struck Ortiz in the left temple, shattering his skull and sending a plume of blood into the air. Ortiz’s finger froze on the trigger of his pistol as he fell to his right, the remaining rounds from his weapon popping like Fourth of July firecrackers.

Johnson scrambled to his feet and joined Klayman, who stood over Ortiz’s lifeless body.

“You crazy bastard,” Johnson muttered, his breath coming hard. “Why didn’t you take cover?”

“He would have shot you,” Klayman said. His eyes were still on Ortiz. He was numb, disassociated from the reality of what had just happened and its aftermath. Johnson had lowered his weapon to his side; Klayman still held his in both hands, pointed at the dead drug dealer. They heard sirens and cars coming to a noisy halt in front of the ramshackle buildings.

Johnson shook his head. “You should’ve taken cover, Rick.”

Klayman returned his gun to its holster beneath his arm. He nodded. “I know,” he said, walking away. “I know.”

Because Johnson had used his weapon and a death had occurred, a department inquiry was conducted, a pro forma hearing. There was no question that the veteran detective had been justified in shooting Ortiz in order to not only save his own life but his partner’s as well. When Klayman was asked during the proceedings whether he considered his actions to have saved Johnson’s life, he replied in a voice so soft that the chairman of the investigative panel had to ask him to speak up: “I don’t remember anything about it,” he said. “It’s all a blank.”

He didn’t have to recall the incident, for word of his bravery quickly made the rounds at First District headquarters. Johnson recounted the experience every chance he got, and Klayman basked in its glory.

“A
RE YOU FEELING ALL RIGHT,
Richard?” his mother asked.

“I feel fine. You?”

“All right, I suppose, considering my age. Did you speak with your sister today?”

“No. She left a message while I was out. I’ll call after we hang up.”

“Please do. She isn’t happy.” She lowered her voice. “I don’t think the marriage is going well. Harry is such a difficult man, so stubborn. I wish—”

“I just got in, Mom, and I haven’t had dinner. I’ll call Susan. I promise.”

“Good. I worry so about you and Susan. The doctor says it isn’t healthy for me to worry. How is your lady friend?”

“I—who are you talking about?”

“I don’t remember her name. You mentioned her once. Rachel, maybe. Or Roxanne.”

“Rachel. She’s fine. Heard from her today, in fact. Have to run. Glad you and Dad are doing okay. Love you both.”

He was relieved when he reached his sister’s answering machine. He heated up a can of tomato soup, sliced some bread, and ate in front of the TV. Nadia Zarinski’s murder was the lead story on the eleven o’clock news.

“An intern who worked for Senator Bruce Lerner was found murdered early this morning in Baptist Alley, behind Ford’s Theatre. The victim, Nadia Zarinski, had been bludgeoned to death by what a police spokesman has termed a blunt object. Ms. Zarinski, who graduated from American University, had worked as a part-time volunteer at Ford’s Theatre. There had been rumors of a romantic relationship between Ms. Zarinski and Senator Lerner, which was denied by all parties involved. Police say they have no leads at this point in the investigation.”

Klayman clicked off the set and went to his computer in a corner of the living room, where he brought up one of many electronic folders he’d created, each devoted to an unsolved murder to which he and Johnson had been assigned. This particular folder dealt with the disappearance a year earlier of another congressional intern, approximately Nadia Zarinski’s age and who looked a great deal like her: five feet four inches tall, face with prominent cheekbones (chipmunk cheeks), brown eyes and hair, full-figured. The missing girl, whose name was Connie Marshall, had interned with the House majority leader. Like the Lerner-Zarinski connection, there were rumors that the congressman and Ms. Marshall had had an affair, but that had never been proved.

He stared at the photos of Connie Marshall provided by family and friends and suffered the same emotions he always felt when opening that file. The search for her had consumed months, without results. She was a missing person, presumed dead. No one searched for her anymore.

He created a new file,
N
ADIA
Z
ARINSKI,
and typed in what information the day had delivered. He made a series of notes that reflected what the next investigative steps would be, saved the file, and closed the computer.

Were the cases connected? Had Nadia’s murderer also been involved with Connie Marshall’s disappearance and presumed death?