Murder at the Library of Congress (3 page)

A laugh from Annabel. “You show me a humble senator and I’ll make you guest emperor.”

“And you, Annabel? Writing the lead article for the issue should be quite a challenge.”

“I love it. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that Las Casas might have written his own diaries about Columbus’s first three voyages.”

“If he did,” said Menendez, “and if those diaries are ever found, history will be enhanced—and someone will become very, very rich.”

“Or famous,” Annabel said, “or even infamous. Hopefully, whoever does uncover the diaries—and let’s not forget they say there’s the possibility Las Casas included a map where Columbus might have buried gold—ideally, that person will be altruistic enough to see that the materials end up in a place of public learning.”

“Like the Library of Congress.”

“Yes, like our library.”

The plane had been taxiing during their conversation. Now, the captain’s amplified voice said: “We’ve been cleared for takeoff, ladies and gentlemen. Flight attendants, prepare.”

Seconds later, thrust from the 727’s three powerful jet engines pressed Annabel and Menendez back in their
seats. The aircraft lifted off La Guardia’s main runway, made a gentle left turn, and headed south, for Washington, D.C., for home.

3

It was raining in Washington when Annabel walked from the terminal to where her husband, Mackensie Smith, stood next to their car. Rather than providing a cooling respite, the rain simply added to the August humidity, which, when combined with a ninety-degree day, gave credence to the old D.C. joke that the first-prize winner in a contest receives one free summer week in the nation’s capital, the runner-up two weeks. Like all such gags, it applied to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Miami, too.

They embraced fully despite the heat and the rain, got in the car, and Mac pulled away from the curb.

“So, tell me all about it,” he said.

“After you tell me about your knee.”

Mac smiled. “Sounds like the title of an art movie. ‘My Knee.’ Dr. Scuderi says I need arthroscopic surgery to solve the problem. It’s the meniscus, he says. It’s ragged and torn.”

“Sounds like you’re getting off easy. At least Giles didn’t suggest a knee replacement.”

Mac accelerated. He said without taking his eyes from the road, “It’s called planned obsolescence.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. Like car manufacturers. Make sure the product
will wear out so consumers have to keep buying new ones. God has the same plan. Make sure
we
wear out—”

“So that I have to buy a new Mac?”

He looked at her. “I’m getting old, Annie.”

“Nonsense. You’re young, or at least youthful, and vigorous. Your problem is you’ve never been sick a day in your life, never had an operation. Have the surgery. You’ll stop limping and be the terror of the tennis courts again.”

He grunted, turned onto the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, crossed the Potomac, and took local streets until driving down into the underground parking garage of the Watergate’s South Building. They’d purchased a three-bedroom apartment there a little over a year ago and loved it.

They were greeted upstairs by Rufus, their Great Blue Dane.

“I’ve only been away a day,” Annabel told the welcoming dog, almost as tall as she, rubbing behind his ears to keep from being devoured. “Both you guys know how to welcome a girl.”

Mac called from the kitchen, “Drink?”

“Maybe one and a half.”

The rain ruled out having their drinks on the terrace, so they settled in the living room, where they clinked glasses and took a first taste of Mac’s perfect Perfect Manhattans.

“Speaking of same, how was Manhattan—perfect?”

“On its best behavior. They say the crime rate’s down … but that hasn’t slowed them down.”

“The meeting,” Mac said. “It went smoothly?”

“Very. The issue is going to be devoted to Columbus, and not just the usual recounting of his voyages and discoveries, but to his personal side, too. You know, he came out of obscurity, Mac, the son of a shopkeeper and
weaver. He and one of his brothers went to sea at an early age.”

“But that’s not the specific thrust of your article.”

“Right, the article I’ve been commissioned to write will focus on Bartolomé de Las Casas, the real controversial figure in the story. He’s always been considered nothing more than Columbus’s friend and confidant who worked on Columbus’s daily logs and helped him write his Book of Privileges.”

“Which was? Refresh me.”

“It was the book Columbus presented to judges and notaries in Spain back in 1502. He wanted to convince Queen Isabel and King Fernando to grant titles, money, and other privileges to him and his descendants in return for having risked his life to discover new lands for the Crown.”

“The explorer was a pragmatist as well as an adventurer.”

“Can’t blame him. But Las Casas might have been more than just a pal and editor. If certain scholars are correct, Las Casas kept his own diaries. And never told Columbus he was doing it.”

“And your friend’s alleged diaries might be in conflict with Columbus’s version of things?”

“My
friend
?”

“Las Casas will be your friend when you’re done researching him. What’s your deadline?”

“Two months.”

“When do you start your research?”

“First thing in the morning. Consuela is setting me up with a cubbyhole in the Hispanic and Portuguese reading room. I’m scheduled to interview Michele Paul.”

“Who’s she?”

“He. Paul is probably the leading scholar in the world where Las Casas is concerned. There are plenty of others,
but he seems to be the most respected. He’s been researching the Las Casas diaries at LC for much of his career.”

“That sort of single-minded focus always amazes me,” Mac said. “Snack?”

“Thank you, no. Too close to dinner. Are we eating here?”

He nodded and stood. “I picked things up this afternoon at the French Market. Simple fare.” As Mac headed for the kitchen, he stopped for a moment and winced.

“Your knee?”

“Yeah. Comes and goes.”

“It woke you up last night.”

He smiled. “You were awake?”

“Uh huh. Sit. I’ll get dinner.” She got to her feet.

“Oh, no. I’m the chef in this house, torn meniscus or not. Enjoy your drink. Glad you’re home. So’s he.”

Rufus, who answered to many things, including
he
, wagged his tail. Annabel watched her husband enter the kitchen, followed by the dog. Mac wasn’t limping, but it was clear he was favoring his right leg.

As minor a procedure as arthroscopic surgery to repair a knee might be, that anything was wrong with her husband was anathema to Annabel. Since marrying seven years ago—he’d been a widower since losing his first wife and only son in a Beltway head-on car crash; it was Annabel’s first marriage—they’d been almost adolescent in their view of their mortality. They would live happily forever now that they’d found each other, no problems, no threats to their love, never aging, doctors to be seen only for routine checkups that showed them to be, of course, in the pink of health, remarkable physical specimens, the perfect couple in every way and destined to remain that way.

Need help? she almost asked, but didn’t. Instead, she picked up that day’s
Washington Post
and read of the latest scandals in the nation’s capital. She often told herself, sometimes aloud when no one was looking, that she was fortunate that neither she nor Mac was involved in politics. It had become a nasty business, the courtly debates and backroom maneuverings with the nation’s best interests in mind replaced by vituperative, blatantly partisan attacks, too many of them personal as far as she was concerned. Owning an art gallery and being married to a law professor were exactly her cup of tea, smooth Darjeeling with just enough lemon to make things interesting.

She was about to drop the paper and join Mac in the kitchen when an article about the Library of Congress caught her eye. A wealthy woman in Massachusetts had died and left her late husband’s collection of legal documents from eighteenth-century Cape Cod to the library. Upon opening the boxes and examining the contents, librarians discovered an urn with the husband’s ashes. She grinned. Happens. A year earlier, the article pointed out, another donation of rare books included two plastic bags of cocaine.

Annabel smiled. She’d loved libraries since childhood, their once dusty shelves filled with the thoughts and talents of the ages, the quietude of their reading rooms, and the intensity of persons using them to learn about something they hadn’t known before.

Two months at the Library of Congress, she thought, her smile broadening. She couldn’t wait to get started.

4

The Library of Congress is America’s oldest national cultural institution; the year 2000 will mark its two-hundredth anniversary. It is, quite simply, the largest repository of recorded knowledge in the world, as well as an active symbol of the symbiotic relationship between knowledge and democracy.

While continuing to serve as the primary reference source for Congress, the Library of Congress, known as LC by Washingtonians, houses more than 115 million “items” on 532 miles of bookshelves in three large buildings: more than 17 million books. And it is not all books. There are 2 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4 million maps, and 47 million manuscripts. Some national libraries in other countries confine themselves to their own languages. The LC has holdings in 460 languages. It has four thousand employees, some of whom serve in overseas offices in Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, New Delhi, Islamabad, Jakarta, and Nairobi, and in acquisitions offices in Moscow and Tokyo.

Each year, almost a million visitors pass through the metal detectors of the Jefferson, Adams, and Madison buildings for a weapons search and subject their handbags and briefcases to personal examination. Annabel Reed-Smith was among them, entering the newest of
LC’s buildings, the Madison, the morning after her return from New York.

She passed inspection, having nothing suspicious in her bag except the usual womanly too-much-of-everything, and went directly to where she’d been told to report, the Office of Public Affairs, on the ground floor.

“Good morning,” she said to the first person she met. “I’m Annabel Reed-Smith. I’m working on an article for
Civilization
and was told to check in here. I’ll be working in the Hispanic-Portuguese section.”

“Of course,” the attractive, middle-aged woman said, smiling, extending her hand, and introducing herself. “I’m Joanne Graves. I’ve been expecting you.
Civilization
is my baby, so to speak. I’m the library’s liaison. Coffee?”

“Thanks, no, I’ve had enough.” Annabel didn’t add that having married Mackensie Smith, an avowed coffee snob, had turned her into a caffeine parvenu in her own right. Office coffee? Either bring it from home or skip it.

The public affairs specialist fetched a fresh cup of coffee for herself from a small kitchen, sat behind her desk, and asked pleasantly, “Ready to settle in to the life of scholarly research?”

“More than ready,” Annabel said. “It was a bit of a scramble to cover the gallery. I have an art gallery in Georgetown. But it worked out.”

Annabel had once been a matrimonial attorney in Washington, one of the more respected ones, according to
Washingtonian
magazine’s annual issue on the city’s best lawyers. Having never married had nothing to do with a lack of suitors. Annabel simply was constitutionally not content with second best. She’d spend a year and a half shopping for just the right rug, never succumbing to those that were almost what she wanted. It was the
same with men. Better to remain single than to make a mistake.

Then she met Mackensie Smith, former top criminal attorney whose clients had included a number of inside-the-Beltway notables. With his wife and son gone so suddenly, Smith lost interest in his practice, eventually giving it up and becoming a law professor at George Washington University.

“I’m thinking of leaving the law,” Annabel told him one night after their relationship had been firmly established. “I’ve had this lifelong love of pre-Columbian art and history, and I’ve always wanted to open a specialized gallery. What do you think?”

“Do it!” he said without hesitation. “Change your life before life changes you.”

She found an attractive space in Georgetown and filled it with baked-clay Tlatilco statues, stucco death masks, beaded belts, and silver jewelry from that vastly rich and artistic era before Columbus and other Europeans set foot on the shores of Central and North America and transformed those places forever, not always for the better. Simultaneously, Annabel immersed herself in pre-Columbian history, eventually finding the study of Christopher Columbus and his four voyages to the New World to be of great interest. And she started writing articles on the subject, first for esoteric journals, then moved on to publications with wider circulation and enhanced influence. These activities helped to make the name she’d forged for herself in pre-Columbian art circles—the gallery was now twice its original size—and led to the offer to write the lead article for
Civilization
on the Las Casas connection to Columbus.

“I know your gallery, Mrs. Reed-Smith. I’ve been there but never bought anything. A little—no, a lot beyond my means.”

“Buying things for the gallery is often a lot beyond my means, too,” Annabel said modestly.

“Let’s head over to Hispanic,” Annabel’s host said, taking a final sip of coffee.

“Do you know whether I’ve been set up to speak with Michele Paul?” Annabel asked as they left the public affairs office and went to the main entrance, where Annabel’s briefcase and handbag were again searched—this time for books belonging to the LC—before exiting to Independence Avenue.

“Too nice a day to use the underground tunnel,” the pert, enthusiastic public affairs specialist said, striding briskly in the direction of the researcher’s entrance to the Jefferson Building on Second Street, SE. The main entrance was on the other side of the building, on First Street.