The Widening Gyre Part 10

"I hope so," Susan said.

"Want me to pick you up after work?" I said.

She shook her head. "I can't until late," she said. "There's a staff c.o.c.ktail party. They have one every month on the a.s.sumption that morale will be uplifted."

I nodded.

"I'll make a reservation for nine," I said. "Any suggestions? It's your city, not mine."

She shook her head. "No, I'd trust you with a restaurant reservation in Sri Lanka."

"Everybody's good at something," I said. "I'll pick you up here."

"Yes." She kissed me good-bye carefully, so that her lipstick didn't smear, and then she was out and off to work leaving the smell of her perfume to gloss up the rented car.

I drove back intown on North Capitol Street and then rook M Street out to Georgetown.

Georgetown is nearly gorgeous. The buildings are elegant, the setting along the Potomac is graceful. You can run along the tow path of the old Chesapeake and Ohio ca.n.a.l and you can eat and shop and drink along M Street and Wisconsin Avenue with the heartening certainty that you're chic. Like L. A. and New York, the dining and drinking spots were ornamented with the possibility that you might see somebody famous. Even if it was a politician.

I parked the car in the lot of a Safeway on Wisconsin Avenue. Early winter in D.C. was around fifty and pleasant. I went across the street and bought a cup of coffee to go in a small food store that advertised empanadas in the window, but didn't have them made yet for the day. I strolled along Wisconsin Avenue and thought about a plan. The more I thought about it, the more I didn't have one. I could work on my restaurant selection for tomorrow evening. But that didn't do much for Meade and Ronni. Maybe there wasn't much to be done for Meade and Ronni. I stopped at the corner of Reservoir Avenue to sip on my coffee. Only the second cup of the day. Then I went on. I couldn't talk with Ronni. I couldn't even let on that she wasn't perfect. I had gotten all I was going to get from Vinnie, and Vinnie was the town crier compared to Joe Broz. The last communication I'd had from Joe Broz was some years back when he told me he was going to have me shot. Not many people follow up on a promise anymore. I knew that Broz had a copy of the videotape of Ronni's indiscretion. I didn't know how he'd gotten it. I finished my coffee and looked for a place to throw the cup.

Littering in Georgetown was probably a capital crime. Maybe if I reconstructed it. Broz had purchased Robert Browne some years back. This year Browne's position seemed threatened by Meade Alexander. By a means not yet apparent, Broz had some tapes of Mrs. Alexander and he sent a copy to Meade and told him to drop out. He had probably, though not certainly, been responsible for the death threats that had got me hired in the first place. And he was demonstrably responsible for the two hoods in Springfield who had roughed up the kids. I could look into Broz's candidate, Browne, but even if I nailed him, Broz would still have Alexander as long as he had the indiscreet tapes. And my business was to save Ronni's reputation. The rest was unimportant. I understood that. I even agreed with it. I reached the corner of M Street and turned right. If I got the tape back, it didn't solve much. There was no way to know how many copies there were, or even if Ronnie had made others. There was no guarantee she wouldn't make another one. Across M Street there was something called the Market. I crossed and went in. It was a miniature version of the Quincy Market building in Boston, a collection of small food stands quaintly housed in an old brick building. I bought some coffee from a young woman wearing a red checked kerchief for a headband and a white T-shirt that said HOYAS above the college crest. The T-shirt was tight and the lettering in HOYAS was somewhat distorted. I read it carefully. A detective learns to study things. It was still early and the place was nearly empty. I cruised through, looking at all the food and wrestling with the urge to sample everything. Iron control won again and I went out with only my black coffee. One more cup wouldn't hurt. I could stop in on my way back, after I'd walked some more and thought of a plan: A victory lunch. I'd have one of everything and maybe make small talk with the young woman and her T-shirt. HOYAS. A pugnacious bulldog wearing a derby had been on the flat lands of her abdomen and thus unbent. I turned down a side street and walked to the ca.n.a.l. Two joggers moved along the tow path at an easy pace. I'd seen the crest before on a beer mug in the tape of Ronni Alexander. I stopped dead. My coffee was half drunk. I stood stock still and finished it in small sips. Georgetown University. Joe Broz. Ronni Alexander. A plan?

I went into an ornate high-rise shopping mall where everything was marble and gilt and looked like something left over from Caligula's birthday. Hidden down by the washrooms were a couple of utilitarian phones and under them hung some D.C. phone books. I looked under B and there he was-Gerald Broz with a Georgetown address. How many Brozes could there be? I found the number for the dean of students' office at Georgetown University and called and asked if they had a Gerry Broz in the college. They said they did. I asked if they could give me his address and they said they couldn't, but if I would leave my name and number they'd ask Mr. Broz to call me. I said never mind and hung up. My plan was taking shape. It was a little soon to go back to the Market and eat everything, but I'd keep it as a goal. A man's no better than his dreams.

I checked Gerry Broz's address in the phone book, then went back out and strolled west on M Street. Gerry's place was on the corner of M and 35th Streets opposite Key Bridge. It rose three stories on the north side of M Street and looked out at the Potomac through window walls at each level. Perfect for indoor videotaping by daylight. Even the first floor insured privacy, for it began above a three-car garage on the street level. I went over and looked at the mailboxes. It was three apartments, one per floor, and G. Broz occupied the top. I went back out and stood on the corner. The D.C. weather wasn't pleasant anymore. It was cloudy and the temperature had dropped and the wind had picked up. Compared to Boston in December it was like a morris dance, but for D.C. it was chilly. I turned up the collar on my leather trench coat. I looked at the apartment some more. It began to rain, and the temperature being what it was, it mixed some snow in. I moved a little closer to the wall of the liquor store on the corner where I was standing. Did Boston Blackie spend a lot of time standing on the corner in a freezing rain saying to himself, Now what? He did not. As time went along I seemed to be doing more of it. The Tightness of myself isn't enough anymore. How would an eighteen-year-old kid know that? Thoughtful little b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Probably didn't waste a lot of time standing on cold corners thinking, Now what?

I could burgle the apartment, but what would that get me? I wouldn't know till I burgled it. If he caught me, he'd know I was onto the tape business, although if he was involved in it, and it was a h.e.l.l of a coincidence if he wasn't, he knew that already. Vinnie would have spoken to Broz and Broz would have spoken to Gerry. I decided it was better than what I had been doing, so I went across the street and rang Gerry Broz's bell. No one answered. I rang a long time to be sure. Gerry was probably, in cla.s.s. Probably discussing Savonarola and the Italian Renaissance, or pointing out the errors of Malthusian economics.

The outside door was easy. It took less than a minute. But Broz's apartment door was not easy. It was clearly a special lock, specially installed, and it was better at staying locked than I was at picking it. The door was special too, and I knew I wasn't going to kick it loose. I went down one flight andknocked at the door of the second-floor apartment. No answer. The door had a conventional lock.

When I was inside with the door closed I went directly to the window wall, opened the sliding doors, and went out on the little balcony. Without any hesitation, looking like I was supposed to be doing this, I took off my coat, tossed it down to the street below, stood on the balcony rail, caught hold of the bottom railing on Broz's balcony, and chinned myself up. Then I got one hand over the top rail and pulled myself up and over onto his balcony. I wasn't even puffing. The Great Wallenda. I glanced casually down toward the street. n.o.body seemed to be gathering. No cops were screaming to a stop, no concerned citizens were pointing up at me. I stood close to the gla.s.s door, took out my gun, and banged out the gla.s.s around the door catch. Still no hue and cry. Even if there had been, I figured the cops in Georgetown carried fowling pieces and I'd be out of range. I reached through the hole and unlatched the door. Then I carefully pulled my hand back out. You never cut the hand going in, always coming out because you let down. I slid the door open and went in and closed it behind me.

It was the same room. Bed, bureau, desk, beer mug with pencils in it. To my left above a ma.s.sive Mediterranean-type bureau was a very large mirror framed in ornate mahogany and secured to the wall at all four corners with triangular plastic hasps. I went through one of the bedroom doors into a large green-tiled bathroom with an Italian marble sink set in a mahogany cabinet. Above the sink was another large mirror. There was a door on the opposite side of the bathroom and when I opened it I found another bedroom. I took a quick house tour to make sure I was alone. The bedrooms and connecting bath lay along the front of the building; the building was a big living-dining area and an open kitchen at one end. Normal-sized windows looked uphill away from the river toward Georgetown. The place was ornately furnished in mahogany and expensive carpeting.

I went back to the bathroom and looked at the mirror over the sink. On the right side it was hinged, and I swung it open, ducking under it, and pushed it aside, up against the pebbled-gla.s.s tub enclosure. What remained was of course the see-through side of a one-way mirror. It commanded a full view of the bedroom beyond, and anyone who wanted to watch or photograph what went on there had only to do so from here. It was where Ronni Alexander had made her (as far as I knew) videotape debut.

I closed the mirror and looked through the rest of the apartment. I wasn't careful. The broken gla.s.s door to the balcony would suggest that apartment security had been violated. I had two purposes: to see what I could find that would be useful, like other videotapes or a picture of Gerry Broz, and also to give the impression that this had been a random burglary. There was no point in making Gerry more careful than I needed to.

There was a wall safe in the apartment. I tried it. It was locked. I didn't give it a second glance. I knew my limitations.

There was nothing else in the apartment that you would be surprised to find in the apartment of an affluent college kid. As far as I could tell, Gerry had no roommate. The lock that had been impenetrable from the outside was easy from the inside. I took about twenty dollars I had found in an old tobacco humidor in loose bills and change, and what appeared to be a small quant.i.ty of cocaine, and a pair of diamond cufflinks. Then I left. Outside I walked out onto the bridge and un.o.btrusively dropped the c.o.ke and the cufflinks into the river. The money wasn't incriminating. I kept it to spend at the Market.

Chapter 18.

Back at the Market I had a sausage sandwich with fried peppers on French bread and my absolute last cup of coffee for the day. It was my victory lunch, but I was cheating. I knew a lot more than I had before I'd seen the chesty young woman in the HOYAS T-shirt, but I was no closer as far as I could see to solving Alexander's problem.

On the other hand I knew how Broz got the pictures. What I didn't know is how his kid got the pictures. He must be twenty, twenty-one at the most. Ronni Alexander was more than twice his age. Where would their paths cross? What the h.e.l.l was she doing in his apartment indelicato? The forty-six-year-old wife of a U.S. congressman picking up college kids? Possible. If it was true, she'd picked a good one. Talk about luck.

I finished my sandwich and sipped the rest of my final cup of coffee. I looked at my watch, twenty to one. Around eighteen hours till breakfast. Coffee with breakfast was okay. I went back to the Safeway parking lot on Wisconsin, got my rental car, and drove back to the Hay Adams.

From the hotel I called Martin Quirk, who was not in. But Belson was and took the call.

I said, "I'm in Washington, D.C., and I need to know whatever you have on Joe Broz's son Gerald."

He said, "What am I, Travelers Aid?"

I said, "If you will get that for me, when I return I will buy you a case of Rolling Rock Extra Pale beer in the long neck returnable bottles."

"Are you attempting to bribe a law officer?"

"Yes."

"Lemme see what I've got," Belson said. "I'll call you I gave him the number and hung up and stood and looked out the window at the White House. Below, between me and the White House on my side of Pennsylvania Avenue, three busloads of people had unloaded and were demonstrating their support for something in Lafayette Park. I watched them for a while but couldn't figure out what they were demonstrating about and went back to looking at the White House. The mixture of snow and rain and sleet was still falling. I got out the phone book and looked in the Yellow Pages under Restaurants to see if I found one that jogged my memory. While I was doing that Belson called back.

"Gerald Joseph Broz," Belson said. "Born November 18, 1962. Six feet tall, one-ninety-three pounds, black hair, brown eyes, no distinguishing scars or other characteristics. No arrest record. Presently in his senior year at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Political science major."

"You got a picture?" I said.

"No."

"He going into the family business when he graduates?"

"n.o.body knows. He's the eldest son, the guess is he will, but no way to know. Far as anyone in OCU knows he's clean."

I said, "Thank you."

"You're welcome. When do I get the beer?"

"Soon as I get back," I said. "You come pretty cheap."

"Cheap?" Belson said. "You fish, you coulda had me for a six-pack."

I hung up and went back to my restaurant listings and found one I remembered and called and made a reservation.

Then I called Wayne Cosgrove at The Boston Globe to ask if they had a picture of Gerry Broz. He wasn't in. I looked at my watch. Almost eight hours till I picked up Susan. Time for visions and revisions.

Paragraph six of the gumshoe's manual said when in doubt, follow someone. Paragraph seven said when there is time on your hands, follow someone. I had time on my hands and I didn't know what else to do, so I put on my leather trench coat and my new low-crowned cowboy hat that Susan had bought me for my birthday, and headed back to Georgetown.

The drive back was harder. There was nearly an inch of snow acc.u.mulated and Washington was rapidly sinking into hysteria. No school announcements were being broadcast and storm updates were cutting in on the radio every ten minutes. It took me nearly half an hour to get to a meter on M Street, half a block from Gerry Broz's apartment.

At the corner of Thirty-fifth and M, I loitered near the package store, checking my reflection in the window. Actually the cowboy hat Susan had bought me was one of those high-crowned ten-gallon things with a big feather in band, like Willie Stargell wears. When I had tried it on I hadn't looked like Willie Stargell. I had looked like the Frito Bandito, so we took it back and bought the more modest Gunclub Stetson, with an understated little feather a trout fly in the band. Susan was after me to get cowboy boots too, but I wasn't ready for them yet. When I got further upscale. Then I could get some, and maybe crossed ammunition belts in the same tone.

As I stood and considered my image a Ford van pulled up in front of Broz's building. It said ca.n.a.l gla.s.s on the side. Two guys got out and removed a large gla.s.s sheet from the back and carried the gla.s.s into the building. In a couple of minutes I could see them at work on the broken gla.s.s door to Broz's balcony. There were no police cars around. I'd bet Broz didn't report it. A kid of Joe Broz's would not be likely to call the cops. He'd either ignore it or turn it over to his father's organization. On the whole I'd prefer he ignored it.

It took the gla.s.s-repair crew maybe an hour to take out the old gla.s.s and put in the new. In that time nothing else stirred at the apartment. The snow, occasionally mixed with rain, came down, most of it melting, a little bit collecting. Cars coming off Key Bridge were making a continuous high whine as they spun their wheels. The two workmen came down carrying the broken gla.s.s panel, slid it into the back of the truck, got in, and skidded away. Above in Broz's apartment all was secure. As I looked the lights went on in the bedroom, stayed on for maybe three minutes, and went off. About a minute later someone emerged from the apartment building. It was a young man with dark hair. He looked about six feet tall and appeared to weigh a soft 190 pounds. He also looked like the male partner in Ronni Alexander's stag film.

It didn't have to be Gerry Broz. There were two other apartments in there, and probably each one housed more than one person. It could be someone else. But it could be him. Paragraph six applied. He headed up Thirty-fifth Street. I followed him.

Where it slants up from the river Thirty-fifth Street is San Franciscan in its ascent. The snow and rain slick that had covered it didn't help matters any. Broz ahead and me behind expended a lot of energy getting up there. We turned left on Prospect, walked two blocks, and there was Georgetown University. Broz went straight to the library and got a stack of bound periodicals out of the stacks and sat in the reading room thumbing through them and taking notes. I couldn't see from where I was what periodicals they were. I nosed about here and there in the reading room and adjacent places. Except at the checkout area, which looked like the security at an airport, there was no one to pay me any attention. Many coeds went about their activities, heedless of my presence. I was not pleased by that.

One of them did pay attention to my subject however. She came in wearing tight jeans and a green vest over a white cable-knit sweater. She sat down opposite my subject and said, "How'd ya do in the poli-sci final, Gerry?"

"I think I aced it," Gerry said. "How about you?"

"I think I knew the stuff, but that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Ekkberg hates me."

Gerry shrugged. "Ekky hates everybody, especially girls."

She nodded. They did some more small talk and then the girl got up and left. Unless the fates were snickering up their sleeve, the kid was Gerry Broz. He even looked like his father, or like his father had. There was a kind of theatricality to him. He sat as if he were being viewed from all sides. But he was softer-looking than his father, not so much overweight as undersinewed, as if he'd walked slowly everywhere he went. He had taken off the tan parka with the dark blue lining he had worn to the library. He was wearing a blue oxford cloth shirt with a b.u.t.tondown collar and chino pants over Frye boots. His belt was blue with a red stripe running through it and his hair was short and carefully cut. The more I looked at him, the more I was sure it was he in the videotape, and that he was Gerry Broz.

At 6:30 Gerry got up and put on his parka and stowed his notebook in a green book bag and left the library. He allowed them to check the book bag on the way out, and with me discreetly distant he went out into the darkness and walked back to his apartment and went in. I left him there. It was time to get ready for Susan.

Chapter 19.

I was dressed to the teeth, dark blue suit and vest with a faint white pinstripe, white silk show hankie, dark red tie with tiny white dots. White broadcloth shirt with a pin collar and French cuffs. My cordovan loafers were shined, I was close shaven, my teeth sparkled. Had the weather been better I'd have worn white flannel trousers and walked upon the beach. Instead I sat beside Susan on a banquette in Rive Gauche and ordered beer.

Susan said "Dewar's and water" to the waiter. Off to our right there was a family group, obviously mother and father with son and daughter-in-law. The old man was explaining to the son and daughter-in-law what a really world cla.s.s big deal he was. Occasionally the mother chimed in that yes, he really was a big deal. The son and his wife listened in glum silence, the daughter-in-law forcing a bright smile through it all. Obviously the parents were paying.

There were few other people in the room. The howling storm had paralyzed Washington as drifts of nearly an inch and a half had piled up along some major arteries.

The waiter brought our drinks. Dewar's and water," I said.

"Yes. I don't care really, but everyone at work says if you don't order by name they give you bar whiskey."

I drank a little beer. Molson. Rive Gauche didn't have Rolling Rock Extra Pale either. The All World Big Deal at the next table was telling his kid about how tough you had to be to prevail in business and giving a number of examples of how tough he'd recently been.

"Lonely at the top," I said to Susan.

"But not quiet," Susan said.

"How about I threaten to kill him if he doesn't shut up."

"It would probably work, but the rest of the evening might be a bit strained."

"I know. The world is never simple, is it?"

Susan shrugged. "He's excited by his success. He wants to pa.s.s along to his son some of what he knows. He's showing off a little. I'm not sure it's a capital offense."

"He's showing off for the daughter-in-law," I said.

Susan shrugged again, and smiled. "He's male."

The waiter appeared to take our order. I ordered pigeon stuffed with cabbage. Susan ordered sole Veronique. I asked for a wine list. The Big Deal listed some people he'd recently fired. I studied the wine list. Control. If I concentrated on Susan and dinner and wine, I could block the guy out. It was simply a matter of control. The wine steward came by. I ordered Gewurtztramminer. He smiled approvingly, as they always do, took the wine list, and departed.

The Big Deal explained to his son some of the ways the son could improve professionally. I could feel the muscles bunch a bit behind my shoulders. Susan noticed my shrug to loosen them.

"Getting to you, is he?" she said.

"Takes his work seriously," I said.

"Don't you?"

"Not as seriously as I take you," I said.

The food arrived, and the wine. We were quiet while it was served.

When the servants had departed, Susan said, "Is there an implied criticism there?"

I didn't answer.

"Do you think I take my work more seriously than I take you?"

"At the risk of oversimplification," I said, "yes."

"Because my work has taken me away?"

"In part."

"Your work takes you away. How is that different?"

"When I leave, I leave because I must," I said. "You could have stayed in Boston." Susan started to speak. I made a stop sign with my hand. "It's more than that. You went willingly, you aren't..." The more I talked the more churlish it sounded. It wasn't churlish inside. "You aren't sorry. You're having a good time."

"And you'd like it better if I weren't?"

When I had been a small boy someone told me that the blood in your veins was blue, the way it looked through the skin, and that it only turned red when you exposed it to air. What I felt was one thing when I kept it in. It changed color entirely when I exposed it.

"I would like it better if you seemed to be missing me more."

Susan drank some of her wine and put the gla.s.s down very carefully, as if the table were shaky. She looked at the gla.s.s for a time, as if it were something she'd suddenly discovered. Then she raised her eyes and looked at me.

"Until I was twenty I was my father's princess, his little j.a.p. And then I was my husband's wife, the ornament of his career, and after the divorce, not very long after, I met you and became your"-she made a wiffling gesture with her hand-"friend. Always me was perceived through you- you my father,you my husband, you my friend."

"By whom?" I said. When I was serious my English was good.

"By all of us. By me and by you, all of you. Down here there's no intermediary lens, no you through which me is seen. Here I am what I am and a great many people are very much taken with me because of what I am and they never even heard of you. Yes, I love that. And yes, I miss you. But missing you is a price I have to pay in order to become completely me. At least for a while. And G.o.dd.a.m.n it, it's a price I am glad to pay. I sort of expected you'd understand better."