Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

A man on paper… a paper man… two-dimensional… black-and-white.

He put Gentry out of his mind and, half drowsing, took in the trees and the river. He liked the GW Parkway. An endangered species in an age of interstate takeovers. Built in the 1930s, it had become a commuter freeway, but it still kept its original character as an extended park along the Potomac, from Great Falls in the north to Mount Vernon in the south.

“What you thinking about?” Jose asked.

It took him a moment to realize Jose was talking to him.

“Why you think I’m thinking?”

Jose took his eyes off the road long enough to shoot Frank a look that said, “Come on.”

Frank sorted through the jumbled thoughts and images.

“We got us a first-class fur ball, Hoser. One day, everybody’s got the same picture down cold. Then somebody pops Skeeter. All of a sudden, it’s like somebody took the picture apart like a jigsaw puzzle and tossed all the pieces up in the air. We don’t know who did Gentry… or why. We don’t know how Gentry fits. Hell, we don’t really know Gentry. And we don’t know why Pencil’s dead along with his woman.”

“And,” Jose added, “we don’t know about the cartels.”

Frank motioned toward the roadside sign indicating Chain Bridge Road.

“And to finish out our day, Congressman Richie Rich demands our presence.”

Jose slowed and stopped at the top of the ramp, then turned east on Chain Bridge Road.

Less than a mile down the road, Frank pointed to a “Private Road” marker beside a drive that disappeared into a thick stand of trees.

“I think that’s it.”

The winding drive led through the trees to a low hilltop and a massive gate between two stone columns. A chain-link fence Frank estimated to be at least nine feet high ran from the columns into the dense woods on either side.

“Welcome to Fort Knox,” Jose grunted. He stopped the car, lowered his window, and reached out to punch a button on a pedestal-mounted squawk box.

A short static burst, and a disembodied voice followed, asking for name and identification. Jose held his badge case out to the camera lens set in beside the loudspeaker. A moment’s pause and the gate slid silently open.

For fifty or so yards through more trees, the drive dipped, then rose again. The trees dropped away with a final turn.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Frank breathed.

The house crested the highest ground of Arlington Ridge, the basalt granite promontory channeling the Potomac into the rapids below. Three stories of pristine white wide-plank siding, a mantle of greened copper roof with ornamental cupolas and weathervanes. A rolling lawn impeccably trimmed, magnolias towering over the two-story columned portico, a raked gravel drive. The scene echoed with the sounds of horse’s hoofs and carriage wheels.

Jose laughed. “Reckon Miz Scarlett’s home, Massa Rhett?”

A large-boned blonde woman in a severe black dress answered the door. She wore no makeup, and her hair was pulled back to a tight bun. She took Frank’s and Jose’s cards, muttered a “Please wait” that sounded like a command, and closed and locked the door.

Jose made an exhaling sound over his lips. “Wouldn’t want to mess with that,” he whispered.

Frank nodded. “Woman looks like she might have a collection of tattooed lampshades at home.”

A moment later came the sound of a bolt being drawn back, and the door opened.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen, I’m Cornell, the house manager.”

Cornell spoke with an English accent and carried himself with the muscular poise of a gymnast. His dark brown hair had been meticulously bleached at the tips, and he wore gray slacks and a dark blue Lacoste knit shirt. On first glance, Frank judged him to be in his late twenties or early thirties, but another look revealed lines etched around the eyes and mouth; lines that came with an understanding of the capriciousness of life.

“We’re here to see-” Frank began.

“Yes,” Cornell said with a professionally pleasant modulated voice, “this way.” He turned and led them inside.

Large black-and-white square tiles paved a foyer Frank imagined he could fit his row house in and still have room for a basketball court. The curving ebony arms of a dual marble staircase swept down from a mezzanine encrusted with crystal chandeliers.

Frank realized that he and Jose had stopped to gawk, when Cornell turned around.

“It is, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is,” Frank said, recovering.

“Mrs. Rhinelander found it in Alabama,” Cornell said in a passive tone.

Puzzled, Frank asked, “The staircase?”

“No.” Cornell smiled with the mischievous delight of an amateur magician enjoying his audience’s mystification. “The house. She had it disassembled and brought here.”

Cornell led them toward a door between the two staircases.

Frank felt a whispering gust of air in his face as Cornell swung the heavy door open. Muted lighting and dove-gray walls blurred the dimensions of the gallery, drawing the eye to paintings that seemed to float magically in a mist.

A critic might have called the collection eclectic. Frank found it jarring. A Madonna and Child icon gave way to an oil of two wrestlers, their side-lit bodies twisted and straining against a dark background.

“George Bellows.” Cornell gazed thoughtfully at the wrestlers. “Magnificent muscular definition, don’t you think?” he asked, without expecting an answer.

Halfway down the gallery, a low bench along the left wall faced a still life hung on the wall opposite. The painting looked familiar. Frank stopped to examine it more closely.

Cornell put on a tiny condescending smile, almost a smirk.

“It looks like a Cezanne,” Frank ventured.

“It is a Cezanne. Still Life with Apples and Peaches, circa 1905.”

“Unh-hunh,” Frank said, now more certain. “I’ve seen it before.” He turned to Cornell. “The National Gallery?”

Cornell grudgingly awarded Frank a passing grade. “Mrs. Rhinelander lent it to them. We’ve just gotten it back.”

As they continued down the gallery, Frank thought he recognized a Chagall and something that looked authentically old Dutch-certainly not a Vermeer?-but by now he wouldn’t have been surprised to see Guernica or the Mona Lisa.

They reached the end of the gallery, and Frank looked back, taking it all in.

“Very nice.”

“The same contractor who built the Pompidou Center,” Cornell said with a burble of proprietary pride in his voice. “Separate climate control keeps the humidity and temperature constant. The light is concentrated in three spectral bands. Brings out the color and depth but doesn’t damage the paintings.”

Without knocking, he opened the door into the library.

Directly ahead, a waist-to-ceiling window stretched across the room, framing sky, forest, and the boiling, churning falls of the river below. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined the walls on right and left. An oak Victorian partner’s desk at least seven feet wide sat angled so its occupant could see the river as well as a semicircle of leather-upholstered chairs.

Cornell gestured to the chairs.

“Please sit. I shall fetch him.”

Jose watched the door close. He leaned close to Frank “ ‘Fetch him?’ ” he repeated in a mock English accent.

Several minutes passed. Finding himself drifting off, Frank got up, stretched, and walked over to the bookcases behind the desk. One shelf contained a matched set of large, folio-size volumes, gold-edged pages bound in burgundy leather. Using his restaurant French to translate the titles, Frank guessed them to be something about-or by-Voltaire. Elsewhere on the shelves, Melville’s Billy Budd led to Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Balzac’s Old Goriot, Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle-all, to judge from the bindings, first editions in what John McDonnell at Olsson’s would describe as “fine/fine” condition.