Insatiable Appetites (24 page)

Manolo suddenly appeared at tableside, apologized for the intrusion, and whispered something into Elton’s ear. Elton’s eyes widened a bit, but he gave no other outward sign of anything out of the ordinary. Elton thanked him, Manolo left, and Elton said, “Manolo wanted me to know that he found a parking place near the door, so we won’t have to hunt for him when we leave.”

“That was very thoughtful of him.”

“Bruce, will you excuse me for a moment? I’d like to wash my hands before dinner.”

“Of course.”

Elton went down the hallway toward the men’s room; it was quiet until a waiter opened the kitchen door, then it was noisy, until the door closed again. He noticed that the door was covered in tufted leather. He walked into the men’s room and saw that the inside of the door and the walls were covered in the same tufted leather; it was dead quiet in the room. Then he heard the sound of toilet paper unrolling and noticed that the door of the last stall was closed. He took the pistol, still wrapped in his handkerchief, from his coat pocket and rapped on the stall door.

“There’s a free one next door,” a voice responded, sounding irritated.

“I believe you dropped something of value out here,” Elton said. “If you’ll unlatch the door, I’ll hand it to you.”

There was a cranky noise from behind the door, then it opened to reveal Creed Harker standing there, holding up his trousers with one hand. “What the hell?” he said.

Elton pushed him, and he fell backward onto the toilet seat. Elton pointed the pistol at him. “Hands on your head,” he said.

Harker looked terrified, but he put his hands on his head.

Elton reached out and pinched Harker’s nostrils. When he opened his mouth to breathe, Elton cocked the pistol, inserted its barrel into the open mouth, and pulled the trigger.

Harker’s brains exploded against the wall behind him, and he slumped to one side. Elton took Harker’s hand and wrapped it around the pistol, then let it fall to the floor. Elton backed out of the stall, pulled the door shut, and with a small penknife from his pocket, he lowered the inside latch into place. He washed his hands thoroughly and made sure that none of Creed Harker had stuck to him, then he turned and walked out of the men’s room, folding the handkerchief and slipping it into his pocket. He doubted if the noise of the pistol had made it past the tufted walls. A moment later he sat down across from Bruce.

“Dinner will be here in a moment,” Bruce said.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Elton replied, smiling.

Bruce wondered why he suddenly looked so happy.

They were well into their main course when a man came running from the men’s room, looking for someone. He disappeared in the direction of the front desk.

Elton looked at his wristwatch; some twenty minutes had passed since he had left the men’s room. He reckoned there had been other visitors who had taken no notice of the last stall.

A couple of minutes later, a pair of uniformed police officers appeared outside the dining room; they were followed by plainclothes types and, eventually, by men with a stretcher. An out-of-order sign appeared at the entrance to the hallway.

“Looks as though something has happened in the men’s room,” Bruce said.

“Oh?”

A man wearing a badge on his belt approached their table. “Excuse me, gentlemen, can you tell me if you saw anyone go into the men’s room recently?”

“My back is to the men’s room,” Elton said politely.

Bruce looked at Elton, then at the police officer. “No, I didn’t,” he replied. The officer moved on to the next table, then he came back. “Excuse me, sir, but someone at another table says that you went into the men’s room.”

“Well, that isn’t what you asked me, is it?” Elton said irritably. “I went in there, perhaps half an hour ago, urinated, washed my hands, and came back to my table.”

“Is that so?” the detective asked Bruce.

“It is. Did something happen in the men’s room?”

“Someone needed medical attention.”

“I saw no one else when I was in there,” Elton said. “I hope that’s helpful.”

The officer thanked them, then left the table, apparently satisfied.

Later, on the way out of the hotel, Elton dropped his soiled handkerchief into a trash bin, then got into the waiting Bentley.

“If you don’t mind, Elton, I’ll walk,” Bruce said. “It’s a nice evening, and I like to window-shop on the way home from here, to see what the competition is offering.”

“Of course,” Elton said. “I’ll be going home first thing in the morning, but I’ll be in touch.”

The two men shook hands, and the Bentley drove away.

As Bruce started to walk away, the police detective who had spoken to them earlier appeared at his side. “Excuse me,” he said. “Can you give me the name of the gentleman who was dining with you?”

“His name is Elton,” Bruce replied.

The man wrote down the name in a notebook. “Do you think he might have noticed that something might have been amiss in the men’s room?”

“Well, he certainly has his wits about him, but he’s in his late eighties, and somewhat reclusive. I doubt if he’s been in a public men’s room for the past thirty years.”

“Thank you,” the man said, and went away.

Bruce wondered why he had not asked for his name and why he had given the policeman only Elton’s first name.

Bruce Willard woke at his usual 6:30 AM, brushed his teeth, then went to his little kitchen and made coffee, poured orange juice, and toasted himself a muffin, as he did every day of the week, except weekends, when he made himself scrambled eggs and bacon.

He retrieved the
Washington Post
and the
New York Times
from his front doorstep, then went upstairs and took his tray back to bed. At the stroke of seven AM he switched on the TV to the morning CBS TV show and watched as he ate his muffin and sipped his coffee. He finished with the orange juice just as the network handed off to the local news show. A beautiful young woman gazed into the camera and read from a teleprompter:

“Last night at the swank Georgetown Four Seasons Hotel, a well-known lobbyist and security expert, Creed Harker, died in the men’s room of the hotel’s restaurant, apparently at his own hand.” They switched to tape of the police officer Bruce had spoken with the evening before. “This is only preliminary,” the detective was saying, “but we found Mr. Harker’s body locked in a men’s room stall. He had received a gunshot wound that appears to have been self-inflicted. We found a loaded semiautomatic pistol on the floor beside his body, and his fingerprints were on the gun. A single shot had been fired.”

Bruce gulped his orange juice. This could not be happening.

•   •   •

At police headquarters, Detective Avery Morris was called into his captain’s office, along with his partner and their lieutenant.

“Are we ready to wrap this up?” the captain asked.

The lieutenant turned to Morris. “Avery? Bring us up to date.”

Morris nodded. “We processed the men’s room last night and found nothing to indicate the presence of anyone but Creed Harker in the stall. The gun contained only Harker’s fingerprints. The medical examiner did the autopsy early this morning, and he reports that Harker’s wound was consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot.”

“Well, that’s it,” the captain said, “in the absence of any other evidence.”

Morris removed a plastic evidence bag containing a handkerchief from his pocket. “We did come up with one thing that I haven’t been able to explain. We searched the various trash cans in the lobby, which was routine, and just outside the front door we found a man’s handkerchief, neatly folded.”

“Anything odd about it?”

“It’s made of a very fine linen and appears to have some age on it. It had been starched and ironed and it had oily stains that might be gun oil, as if it had been used to wipe a gun clean of fingerprints. It bears no manufacturer’s label and no laundry marks, indicating to me that it was custom-made and had only been laundered and ironed in the home.”

“Well, shit,” the captain said, “I was hoping that we could announce to the press that this case is closed. No indication of who it might have belonged to?”

“There was an elderly man sitting near the men’s room, who left the hotel by that entrance. He might have thrown it away as he left the hotel.”

“Who was he?”

Morris read from his notebook. “A Mr. Elton, apparently.”

“Did anyone see this Mr. Elton deposit the handkerchief in the trash can?”

“There are no witnesses to that effect.”

“So, it could have been deposited there by anyone leaving or arriving at the hotel at any time?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“Well,” the captain said, “in my book it’s not evidence, since it has no identifying marks and no witness who can connect it with any person.”

“I’m inclined to agree, Captain,” Morris said. “I just thought I ought to mention it.”

“What about the gun Harker used? Was it registered to him?”

“No, sir, the serial number tells us it was sold to the U.S. Army in 1949. It’s a .45 Colt, of a size that makes it issued to general officers. Army records are not computerized back that far, and I have no reason to think that a paper trail exists. However, Harker’s secretary told us that he collected weapons of various kinds, and it could very well have been part of his collection.”

“Okay, we’ve pursued this case to its natural conclusion,” the captain said. “Death was by self-inflicted gunshot wound, using the man’s own gun. I’ll announce it to the press at my noon media conference. Any objections from anybody?”

Nobody spoke.

Stone sat at his desk and looked at his wristwatch. It was mid-morning, and Mary Ann Bianchi had not phoned. She was the first step in setting up everything, and he itched to call her to find out what was going on. Before he could do that, his attention was drawn to a bound document on his desk, titled
Journal
,
Volume I
, which lay on the first of Eduardo’s red leather-bound, handwritten volumes. That was fast, he thought. Anna Fontana had been working for only two days in the office next door.

Stone flipped open the binder. The first entry was dated January 1939.

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