Murder at the Library of Congress (28 page)

35

Lucianne Huston didn’t bother booking a hotel in Los Angeles. She grabbed the first available flight from Washington, got off the plane, and took a taxi directly to Parker Center.

“Detective Davis, please,” she told the desk sergeant.

“Who wants him?”

“Lucianne Huston, NCN.”

He cocked his head and smiled. “Yeah, it is you.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” she said, going to a corner and sitting, her carry-on bag at her feet.

A few minutes later LAPD homicide detective Sam Davis emerged from a door behind the desk, came up to Lucianne, stopped a few feet away, and laughed.

“What’s funny?” she asked, not getting up.

“Seeing you, Lucy. You always bring a smile to my face.”

“You know I hate being called that,” she said, standing and closing the gap between them. She kissed his cheek, causing him to look nervously at the desk sergeant.

“Still the handsome, dashing foe of all evil,” she said, stepping back and making an exaggerated point of looking him up and down.

Davis was a strapping middle-aged man, forty-five years old, an LAPD veteran who’d been assigned to, and solved, some of the city’s high-profile cases. And in Los
Angeles, many cases quickly became high profile, even if the profile was altered by cosmetic surgery. Local media had given him a lot of play as a celebrity; he’d become known as a hunk, a homegrown heartthrob whose appeal to the opposite sex soared when his divorce from his wife was reported three years ago.

“And still the globe-trotting reporter,” he said. “I saw you last night on the tube. Things must be slow at the network, Lucy—Lucianne. The Library of
Congress
?”

“More exciting than you think.”

“Let’s go outside. Leave your bag.”

“With cops around? I’m not that crazy.”

They walked up Los Angeles Street until reaching the Otani Hotel at the corner of First Street. Lucianne looked up at it. “Returning to the scene of the crime?” she asked.

“Sleeping with me was a crime? I thought I was supporting the First Amendment.”

“I considered it more a matter of search and seizure.”

“I was good, wasn’t I?”

“You were—good. Time for a drink?”

“Sure. I went off duty two hours ago but hung around to catch up on paperwork. Your timing’s impeccable, as usual. Another fifteen minutes and I’d have been on my way up the coast. Two days off starting tomorrow.”

They settled in the Rendezvous Lounge in the center of the main lobby.

“So, here we are,” Davis said after they ordered from the kimono-clad waitress, “déjà vu all over again. Another case of looking for inside information, Lucianne, or tired of sex with the wimps of your profession and looking for something better?”

“Your modesty is overwhelming.”

“Just fishing for the
real
reason you’re here. I’d rather it be the second one, but—”

“I’m looking for information.”

“Ah ha,” he said, smiling and nodding his approval. “The lady has learned to be candid with her sources. Ask away, only it’s your treat this time.”

“It was last time, too, in a different way. Sam, I’m out here following up on a murder case at the Library of Congress.”

Davis looked at her quizzically. “What would I know about a murder in Washington?”

“Maybe more than you think. Is the name David Driscoll familiar to you?”

“Sure. Richer than God and aspiring to the title. Why? Oh, that’s right, you reported something about him having paid money to someone at the Library of Congress. The guy who was murdered?”

“Uh huh. I’m out here hoping to interview Driscoll. He’s in Mexico, I’m told. Let me fill you in.”

She ran through what she knew of Driscoll’s connection with Michele Paul and laid out the details of the theft of the Reyes painting in Miami, the shooting of the guard at the museum, and Warren Munsch’s flight with the painting from Florida to Los Angeles, disappearing in Mexico only to be gunned down by Mexican authorities.

“So?” Davis said when she was through. “Are you suggesting that Driscoll had something to do with all that?”

“I’m suggesting that I’d like to know whether LAPD has anything on it. Look, I know from cops in Miami that your people were informed that the painting headed this way, and that this slob, Munsch, who was wanted for the theft and guard shooting, was here, too, before skipping across the border. No bells ringing?”

Davis shook his head.

“But you will find out for me, won’t you?”

“For a lousy drink?”

“Dinner’s on me, too. Spago. Morton’s. Your choice— provided you give me something I can use.”

“It’s a deal. The Belvedere at the Peninsula Hotel. Got your credit cards with you? It’ll run you a couple of hundred.”

“Nickels and dimes, my friend. But first the info, then dinner.”

Davis ordered another round and pulled out a small cell phone. He settled back in his chair and made three calls, making notes as he did. Lucianne watched, a bemused smile on her face. When he completed the third call, he flipped the phone closed, returned it to his pocket, and said, “This is worth six dinners. The painting ended up with an art restorer named Abraham Widlitz. The art squad—yeah, we have an art squad—they pulled a raid on Widlitz’s studio looking for stolen art. They came up empty
except
for the painting that was stolen in Miami. Piece of junk, according to our art experts. Widlitz told them the painting had been brought to him on Driscoll’s behalf by a guy named Conrad, only it turns out that’s his first name, Conrad Syms. Mr. Syms is some sort of a gofer for Driscoll and was picked up after leaving Driscoll’s house. He confirmed he took the painting to Widlitz on Driscoll’s orders. How am I doing?”

Lucianne looked up from notes she was taking, grinned, and replied, “Not bad. What else?”

“What do you mean, ‘what else’? I’ve just handed you your story.”

“What’s the disposition so far?”

A shrug from Davis. “They want to bring Driscoll in for questioning but, as you say, he’s out of the country.”

“He’s an accessory to murder,” Lucianne said.

“He’s a rich and powerful guy. Sits on a dozen boards, big arts benefactor.”

“Including the Library of Congress.”

“I’m hungry.”

She placed an American Express card on the bill.

“Where are you staying?” he asked.

“Haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Stay at my place. I’m leaving in the morning.”

“Visiting an elderly spinster aunt? Or a nubile young starlet?”

“None of your business.”

“True, but I’ll have the answer before the night is over.”

Davis laughed and stood. “Yeah, I’m sure you will. But you’ll have to drag it out of me.”

“Oooh, sounds like fun. I can’t wait to get started.”

36

Upon returning from lunch, Annabel spent a few minutes with Sue, who sat at a computer in a semi-isolated corner behind the Hispanic division’s reference librarian’s desk. She’d started making copies of each file on the five discs and printing out a hard copy of each.

“How’s it coming?” Annabel asked, sipping from a mug of the intern’s coffee, which, as promised, seemed to instantly jolt her awake.

“Pretty good, only I have to get over to the main reading room. My shift starts at three.”

“I can do some,” Annabel offered.

“No need,” Sue said, reading a printout of the file she’d been copying. “Dolores said she’d take over for me.” As she said it, Dolores arrived.

“Hi,” Annabel said.

“Hi,” Dolores said, slipping into the chair Sue had just vacated. “Where do I start?”

Sue filled her in on where she’d left off, then said, “Got to change into my fancy librarian duds.”

Annabel couldn’t help but smile as she watched the intern run off to change wardrobes, tripping over a chair because her eyes were on a clock on the wall.

“Great kid,” Annabel said, peering over Dolores’s shoulder as the next file to be copied appeared on the
screen. The words, of course, were familiar to Annabel, who had read them at home the night before. “If you get bored, give a yell and I’ll do some.”

Dolores sat up straight and looked up at Annabel, as though her presence was startling. “What? Oh, sure, thanks, Annabel. I appreciate it.”

Sue bounded out of the room she used as her dressing room and came to Annabel and Dolores.

“How do I look?” she asked, pirouetting.

“Like the next Librarian of Congress,” Annabel said.

“I wonder who the youngest one ever was,” Sue said.

“A lot older than you,” Dolores said, never taking her eyes from the screen as she scrolled through the text. Annabel was tempted to suggest that if Dolores kept reading what she was supposed to be copying and printing, she’d be there forever. But she held her tongue. It wasn’t her concern how or when the discs were duplicated and their material printed. That was up to Consuela. Sue left for her other LC life, and Annabel went to her space on the upper gallery to resume work on her article.

Dr. Cale Broadhurst had a last-minute, unscheduled lunch that day, too, with Mary Beth Mullin. After his meeting with Consuela Martinez and Annabel Reed-Smith, the Librarian canceled the date he had on his calendar with a former George Washington University colleague and asked Mary Beth to break her own previous engagement.

Seated at an isolated table at the University Club, where Broadhurst had been a member for years, they explored the legal ramifications of the Driscoll–Michele Paul connection.

“Are you sure Mrs. Reed-Smith is correct in what she
says is on the discs?” Mullin asked the Librarian. “It sounds like speculation to me.”

“I don’t think so,” Broadhurst said. “We’ll know precisely what’s on those discs after they’ve been duplicated, and we have a hard copy to read. But it seems prudent to me that we
assume
the material on them bears on Michele Paul’s murder. I suppose that’s a decision the police will have to make. I’m glad we’re having copies made. At least anything of value to the library will still be in our hands.”

She nodded.

“But I’m not as concerned about that as I am about the public relations ramifications for the library. If David Driscoll, one of its leading benefactors, has been corrupting its professional staff for years,
and,
if that same David Driscoll was involved in some way with Michele’s murder,
and,
if the murder was linked to John Bitteman’s disappearance—we’ll be further smeared, this time on every tabloid TV show and in every supermarket rag. The World’s Great Unsolved Mysteries, direct to you from your nation’s library. By releasing the discs to the police, Mary Beth, we might as well hold a press conference to announce to the world that you don’t have to check out murder mysteries from our librarians, all you have to do is hang around and see the real thing.” He said it through tight lips, small muscles in each cheek contracting in anger.

“When will you have the hard copy, Cale?”

“Consuela promised them to me this evening.”

“Good. May I make a suggestion?”

“I welcome all the suggestions I can get.”

“Don’t worry about what handing over the discs to the police will mean, Cale. There’s really nothing else that can be done until you speak with Driscoll.”

A rare smile creased Broadhurst’s face. “The timing is dreadful, Mary Beth. Senator Menendez was in the process of seeking funds to buy the Las Casas diaries, but now this Driscoll matter has surfaced, he’s backed off. Can’t say I blame him. I assume the trustees will, too.”

“I’m not sure I agree,” she said, her tone soothing. “No matter what the source of the Las Casas diaries, and no matter how flawed the individuals involved, people will turn a blind eye on how they’re obtained. No one will stand on principle and let something as important as those diaries slip away.”

“I hope you’re right,” Broadhurst said grimly, signing the bill.

“Know what I’m thinking, Mary Beth?” he said as they parted on the sidewalk in front of the club.

“What?”

“If David Driscoll did anything to sully the reputation of the Library of Congress, I just may commit the next murder.”

Mullin watched him walk away, seeming even smaller than he actually was. Two things crossed her mind as she hailed a passing cab: She ached for her boss, and what she’d said inside represented unfortunate reality. Events would steamroll ahead with the force of an avalanche, and those standing in the way couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.

“Dr. Broadhurst, a number of people called while you were gone,” his secretary told him upon his return, “but I think you’ll want to see this one first. He says it’s urgent that he speak with you this afternoon.” The slip she handed him said
David Driscoll—2:15—Urgent—Call at 555-9100
.

“A local number?”

“The Willard. He said he’ll be there all afternoon awaiting your call.”

It was the same suite Driscoll had occupied when he and Broadhurst last met at the venerable landmark hotel. Driscoll had been brusque on the phone: “I’ll only be in Washington until early this evening,” he’d said. “It’s important we talk before I leave.”

“David, do you mind telling me why—?”

“When you get here, Cale.”

Broadhurst was left with a loud click in his ear.

The Librarian arrived at four-fifteen. A tray of hors d’oeuvres and a bar setup had been delivered from room service just prior to Broadhurst’s arrival. Judging from Driscoll’s demeanor on the phone, the Librarian of Congress expected a tense, confrontational atmosphere. Instead, Driscoll greeted him with an outstretched hand and broad smile. “Come in, Cale, make yourself at home. Single-barrel bourbon, if I remember correctly. Blanton’s. The best. Help yourself. The scallops are excellent. They do something special with them. It’s the lime juice, I suppose.”

A drink was the last thing on Broadhurst’s mind, but he poured some bourbon over ice and tasted a scallop. “Yes, quite good, David. To be honest, your call this afternoon took me by surprise. I’ve been trying to reach you since—”

“… since that whore of a reporter, Lucianne Huston, started with her trash on TV about me. Is that what you were about to say?”