The Now-And-Then Detective Read online

  “I get that,” I told her. “It’s a troubling and complicated issue for people to deal with.”

  “Do you still go to church?” she asked me.

  “Not in the sense that I show up at a building every Sunday. It’s more of an internal kind of thing for me.”

  “Interesting,” she said. “I’ll have to think about that.”

  I’d booked a flight from Logan to Reagan national airport. My plan was to try to interview Alan and June Dumont and wing it from there. Sometimes, winging it worked. Other times, you were in for a hard landing.

  I called Marisa and Sam from the airport while waiting for my flight. They assured me that everything was under control. I wished I could have said the same.

  Just for fun, I had a reservation at The Watergate Hotel. Bob Woodward had a book out about the current president. His first book, All the President’s Men, written with his fellow Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, told the story of President Richard Nixon’s downfall which began with a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex.

  My flight from Logan was delayed. When I arrived late at The Watergate, the desk clerk told me the hotel was overbooked and the only room available was the presidential suite, where I could stay at no additional cost.

  “A Middle Eastern sultan I am not at liberty to name just checked out,” he said.

  “I hope you changed the sheets,” I told him. “Hard to sleep with sand in the bed.”

  With a straight face, he assured me that the sheets, of course, had been changed.

  I called Marisa using Facetime on my cell phone and walked her through my lodgings. There was a full kitchen, a butler’s pantry, a dining room, a living room with a fireplace, a library, and four bedrooms. All the President’s Men and Woodward’s new book were not in the library. I checked the master bedroom. The sultan had not left behind any sand, or any of his wives.

  “Plus, there is twenty-four-hour room service and a butler on call for all the suites, I was told.”

  “I don’t know why you would ever leave,” she said.

  “I’ll milk it as long as I can,” I assured her. “Gotta hang up now and order a hamburger from room service.”

  “Tell them to do it with white truffle and béarnaise sauce. Or perhaps foie gras and hollandaise.”

  “I believe I’ll go with American cheese,” I said. “Velveeta, if they have it.”

  “Pearls before swine,” she said.

  I slept like a sultan, but without the harem, and then showered and ordered a stack of buttermilk pancakes with sausage links, OJ, and coffee, which I ate at the long dining room table while wearing a thick white terrycloth robe with a hotel logo, which I was tempted to appropriate as a souvenir, plus another one for Marisa. But I didn’t want to get put on the feds’ no-fly list. The shiny mahogany table held two candelabras worthy of Liberace’s piano top, fine china, crystal glassware, and silverware that was nearly heavy enough to require two hands.

  A room-service kid delivered the food. My butler, who was waiting outside my door in the hallway, served it and stood at attention while I ate, which made me feel self-conscious, so I was careful not to burp.

  “What did the sultan like for breakfast?” I asked him.

  “I’m afraid that’s confidential, sir,” he answered.

  “Did he have a food taster?”

  He smiled. “One of the women, sir,” he said.

  “Better her than you.”

  “Not part of my service,” he said.

  I dressed in my grown-up outfit and took the hotel Mercedes to Alan’s law firm, Chesney, Hartson, Dumont & Hamilton on Constitution Avenue. The driver was a man in his forties, it appeared, wearing a black chauffer’s uniform.

  “I suppose you drive a lot of famous people,” I said. “Like a Middle East sultan.”

  “He flew over his own Rolls-Royce limo, along with three black Suburbans for his security people,” he told me.

  “Too bad,” I said. “You missed a big tip.”

  “The sultan’s people gave generous tips to the entire hotel staff, including me,” he told me.

  Even though I didn’t have oil money behind me, I gave him a twenty when we arrived.

  Alan Dumont’s law firm was housed in a tall, glass-sided, high-rise building overlooking the National Mall. From the sidewalk in front of the building, I could see the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.

  I found the name of the law firm on the lobby directory and took the elevator to the top floor, which opened into the firm’s spacious reception area done up with expensive furniture, rugs, and paintings. It was hard to imagine that the partners could afford the overhead by doing honest work.

  I approached the receptionist, a perfectly tailored young man, and said, “My name is Detective Jack Starkey. I’m here to see Alan Dumont.”

  “What is this regarding, if I may ask,” he asked.

  “You may,” I answered. “Tell him the jig is up.”

  “Of course,” the young man said.

  He spoke into the phone, leaving out the jig-is-up part, I assumed. Then he instructed me to take a seat, asked for my beverage order, and said that Mr. Dumont’s executive assistant would be with me momentarily. I declined a beverage because I’d adequately topped my tank at breakfast.

  After about three days, or maybe it just seemed that long, a woman, turned out in a green linen skirt-suit with a cream-colored silk blouse, accented with pearls just like Libby Leverton and Leila Purcell, and black heels, appeared through a door in the back wall of the reception room and said, “Detective Starkey?”

  She was in her forties, I’d estimate, and tall; stylishly cut black hair; smooth, tanned skin suggesting she’d recently returned from a sunny vacation or tanning salon; and tortoise-shell reading half-glasses hanging from a gold chain around her neck, all of this producing the look of a well-paid librarian who enjoyed a good time after work. If that was true, I’d definitely want a library card.

  I stood to greet her and said, “Guilty as charged. Not unlike your boss.”

  She smiled. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

  Paraphrasing John 8:7, if I remembered my Bible verses correctly.

  I liked her for that.

  “Stone throwing aside, I’d like just a few moments of Mr. Dumont’s time, if that can be arranged,” I told her.

  “Is this official police business?” she asked me.

  “Let’s call it unofficial,” I told her.

  She winked and said, “Official will get you an audience.”

  I winked back and said, “Official it is.”

  Now I liked her a lot.

  She instructed me to follow her to a conference room. Along the way, she asked where I was staying in town.

  “The Watergate,” I answered.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Is the crime scene tape still up?”

  More points for her side. If she was carrying a gun, I might have asked her to dinner.

  When we reached the conference room, she seated me at a table about twice as long as the dining room table in my hotel suite, nodded at a bar built into one of the walls, asked if she could fix a drink for me, which I declined, and left to speak with her boss about his unexpected visitor.

  About five minutes later, a man appeared in the conference room doorway with a dour look on his face. He was tall, tanned (vacation with his assistant?), a bit overweight, jowly, and was wearing the de rigueur uniform of the Washington power elite: navy blue pinstriped suit, blue shirt with white collar, rep-striped tie, and black loafers with gold horse bits on them. His wardrobe said, “If you’re not dressed like me, make it quick, I don’t have time for the hoi polloi.”

  Without entering the conference room, Alan Dumont said, “I thought I made it clear when you called, Detective, that my wife knows nothing about your investigation. And neither do I. So I can’t imagine why you are here.”

  “There’s been a
new development,” I said.

  “And that is?”

  “Henry Wilberforce was killed by a professional assassin.”

  It was time to lay that on the conference table and see how he reacted.

  “I can assure you that June is not a professional assassin,” he said. “Nor am I.”

  If Alan Dumont was a contract killer, customers could probably not afford his hourly rate.

  “I don’t imagine that either of you are,” I said. “But maybe your law firm has one on call for clients who are slow to pay.”

  He scowled. I hadn’t seen anyone actually scowl in a while. He did it well. Maybe he practiced the look in the mirror.

  “This conversation is over,” he said. “You can direct any future inquiries to my personal attorney. You can get his card from the front desk on your way out.”

  With that, he turned and walked away, no doubt to get back to some white-collar felony he was aiding and abetting for a zillion dollars an hour.

  Bingo! Alan Dumont, husband of June Dumont, who was one of Henry Wilberforce’s three living relatives, an attorney himself, had just lawyered up.

  I decided I’d try to speak with June by showing up on her doorstep. I flagged down a taxi and gave the driver the address of the Dumonts’ house, which I got from Brandon Taylor. We got to the Dumont residence in fifteen minutes. The house was not much smaller than my hotel. I told the driver to wait, walked up steps to the front porch, and rang the bell.

  A short, middle-aged Hispanic woman, with her grey hair in a bun, wearing a white maid’s uniform, opened the door. She asked how she could help me, a variant of, “What is this regarding?”

  “Please tell Mrs. Dumont that she has won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes,” I said.

  The maid gave me an uncertain look. She didn’t want to bother her mistress needlessly, but neither did she want to turn away a possible potful of cash, surely a cause for her termination.

  She said, “Just a moment, sir,” and closed the door.

  I waited more than a moment. The cabbie used the time to stand outside the car and smoke a cigarette. Then the door opened and a woman who had to be June Dumont asked, with icy annoyance in her voice, “Now what’s this about some sort of sweepstakes?”

  It was cold, but June didn’t invite me inside. I’d seen photos of her on the Internet taken from the society pages of newspapers and magazines. All of them were younger than she was now, an indication of the way powerful people can control their environments. The June of today remained attractive, with perfectly coiffed short blonde hair, smooth skin, blue eyes, a straight nose, and eyebrows created by a pencil, not Mother Nature. I wondered how much the body shop charged her for all that work. She was wearing a yellow sweater set and, of course, a strand of pearls with matching earrings.

  “I think your maid misunderstood me, Mrs. Dumont. I’m Detective Jack Starkey from the Naples, Florida, Police Department. I assume that your husband told you that your uncle, Henry Wilberforce, has passed away.”

  “Yes, of course he did,” she said. “We haven’t been in touch for years, so I didn’t know before Alan reported your conversation with him. Uncle Henry was very old, so I wasn’t surprised. He had a long and happy life.”

  “The thing is,” I said, noticing that I could see my breath, “he didn’t die of natural causes.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I mean that he was murdered,” I said. “In his winter home in Naples.”

  “How awful,” she said.

  There was a moment of silence, indicating that she did not want to know any details about her uncle’s death, so I handed her my Naples PD business card and said, “If you feel you need any further information about that, you can reach me at this cell phone number.”

  “Okay,” she said, and closed the door.

  Maybe she was ordering the maid to prepare a pot of tea for us with those little crustless sandwiches you have to eat several dozen of to be satiated. After five minutes or so, as I stood there shivering, it became clear that I wasn’t going to have high tea with June Dumont. And it was also clear, from the old gambler in me, that she knew more about her uncle’s death than she was revealing.

  A black sedan came up the street and pulled into the driveway. The car had some sort of markings on the doors that I couldn’t make out. I assumed they ID’d the vehicle as belonging to some sort of private security service. The driver got out and joined me on the porch. He was wearing a blue blazer with a crest on the pocket that said Peterson Security Services. He was built like a fireplug, with a bald head and a ruddy complexion and spiderweb veins on his nose, which most likely came from indulgence in alcoholic beverages. A bulge under his blazer indicated he was packing heat.

  “I’m Dick Humphrey, with Peterson Security,” he said, giving me the evil eye. “And you are?”

  “Jack Starkey.”

  “So Mrs. Dumont said. A detective from Florida.”

  “She got it right.”

  “And you’ve registered your presence with the Metropolitan Police Department?”

  “That’s my next stop.”

  “Mrs. Dumont says she doesn’t wish to speak with you any further, so it’s time to move on,” he told me.

  He didn’t say, “Move on or I’ll put you in Boot Hill,” but that was clearly implied.

  “Tell me, Dick,” I said, “where were you on the job before this gig?”

  “Bethesda PD,” he answered. “The pay and the hours are better now.”

  “I guess I’m done here,” I said. “Wouldn’t want to keep the lady of the house from doing whatever it is the idle rich do with their afternoons.”

  Now that Dick could tell I wasn’t going to give him a problem, he relaxed and said, “Beats the hell out of me, pal. I work for a living.”

  I said, “Have a nice day,” walked back to the taxi, and told the driver to return me to my hotel.

  When I walked into The Watergate lobby, I noticed that my overnight bag was on the floor beside the front desk.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked the desk clerk, a man of about forty wearing the uniform of the hotel. He had the small, closely set black eyes and pointy nose of a weasel.

  “I’m afraid we needed your room, Mr. Starkey,” he said.

  “But I have a reservation for one more day,” I told him. “Any room will do. I don’t require quite that much space.”

  “I’m sorry, but we are fully booked,” he answered. “Perhaps the nearby Holiday Inn has a room. Would you like me to check?”

  “Do they have a free breakfast?” I asked.

  “I believe they do,” he said.

  “Never mind,” I told him. “I’ll find a Marriott, where I get rewards points, plus the free eats.”

  I considered ripping off his head and shitting down his neck, as my marine drill instructor liked to say. But that would have negatively affected my relationship with the Metropolitan Police Department, not to mention the hotel industry’s lobbying organization, which could put me on their no-lodging list. It was clear that the hotel’s Mercedes would not be available to take me to my next appointment, now that I was persona non grata, so I didn’t bother to ask.

  Alan Dumont was clearly a man of power and influence, and he was flexing his muscles by having me evicted from The Watergate. Making a point: Don’t mess with me or suffer the consequences. His executive assistant, nice as she seemed, had ratted me out. She must have a good salary and benefits package. Dumont wasn’t going to talk to me, and neither was June, so no reason to hang around DC any longer, especially without a presidential suite to keep me in the manner to which I’d become accustomed.

  I decided to go home and think about what I’d learned on this road trip, and what I had not. Sometimes that helped. Sometimes it didn’t.

  I went into the hotel bar, done in mahogany and brass, with framed, autographed photos of politicians and celebrities on the walls, none of them Richard Nixon or his men, I sat on
a stool, one of five or six people in the place, called the airline and changed my reservation to the next flight to Fort Myers, and killed time watching a hockey game on TV.

  The game between the Washington Capitals and Detroit Red Wings was not interesting enough to prevent me from noticing a sexy young blonde wearing a skimpy black dress and spike heels when she slid onto the barstool next to me, smiled, and asked if I’d like some company. Maybe that description could be considered sexist, but that was exactly what she looked like and, I guessed, what she was going for. That sort of appearance didn’t happen accidentally.

  A story that’s told in Florida: An old man walks into a bar, takes a stool next to a woman he doesn’t know, and asks her, “Do I come here often?”

  I smiled back at the woman, didn’t ask if she came there often, and thought, Maybe Alan Dumont is setting a honey trap for me like the Russians did, using sex to gain the advantage on a male target. Headline in the National Enquirer: FLORIDA DETECTIVE CAUGHT WITH HIS PANTS DOWN. The story accompanied by a photo showing same.

  “No thanks,” I told her. “But say hi to Putin for me.”

  She gave me an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile, which might have been significant, or it might not have.

  While waiting for my flight, I remembered Marisa and Joe. I found a gift shop in the terminal and bought Marisa a nifty snow globe with a little White House inside. When you wound it up it played “Hail to the Chief.” It was certain to occupy a place of honor on her living room fireplace mantel. Or maybe in her garage in a box of Christmas ornaments. Joe was harder to shop for. There were no cat toys, so I selected a children’s book called Pete the Cat by Eric Litwin. The blue cat on the cover was wearing four white basketball shoes. There must be quite a story behind those shoes and about why the cat was blue. I couldn’t wait to read the book to Joe to find out.

  12.

  The Dark Web

  It was a 285-mile drive from Fort Myers Beach to Key West, the southernmost tip of the continental US. MapQuest said you could do that distance in five hours and fifteen minutes, but that didn’t allow for someone driving a red ’63 Corvette Stingray convertible with the top down and the kickass aftermarket Alpine stereo system providing traveling music. I made it in four hours and forty-five minutes. The Florida Highway Patrol must have been busy with more pressing matters.