Murder at the Watergate Read Free Page A

senior advisor type, who caught plenty of sleep in airplanes while traveling the world giving advice to leaders who didn’t want it, and cozying up to those to whom you wouldn’t give the time of day if your job, and the nation’s well-being, didn’t demand it.
    He tossed his blue terry-cloth robe onto a stool and was about to step into the shower when there was a knock on the bathroom door.
    “In a minute,” he said loudly.
    The door opened and a fine, aquiline nose led a pretty face through the gap.
    “I’m leaving.”
    “Yeah,” Hedras said, not attempting to shield his nudity from her. Why bother? They’d been naked in bed for the past three hours, one of which he was awake for and remembered.
    “You’ll call me?”
    “Yeah, only not soon. Craziness for the next couple of weeks. I’ll call you at the office.”
    She formed a kiss on her lips and made a loud smacking sound.
    “Take care, Cindy. And tell that guy from Agriculture to stop hitting on you or I’ll punch him out. Stay away from farmers—they’re always looking for more support.”
    She groaned and closed the bathroom door. A moment later he heard the door to his apartment open, and shut.
    Cindy was a junior partner at a DC law firm. She and Chris had met only a week ago, but it hadn’t taken even that long for them to fall into bed. Hedras appreciated women like Cindy. She was as caught up in the whirl of the nation’s capital as he was, didn’t make demands, and was willing to engage in a relationship dictated by respective schedules and needs. No time for developing a relationship even approaching meaningful. You caught your intimacy in short bursts and when you could, like grabbing a catnap between meetings.
    A half hour later, he stood at his living room window and looked down at Virginia Avenue. Across the street was the Howard Johnson’s Premier Hotel, where lookouts for the Watergate burglars had hunkered down in Room 723 to peer out at the 2600 office building. Located adjacent to Hedras’s apartment building, it had been home to the Democratic National Committee and target of the Liddy-Hunt-McCord break-in team thatbroke in, bungled, and was discovered, providing reason after the cover-up for President Nixon to resign.
    It had been over twenty-five years since that fiasco took place, but it still resonated. Room 723 had been turned into a mini break-in museum, with a brass plaque, newspaper stories framed on the walls, and bookings at premium prices to voyeurs wanting to see what the lookouts had seen. The Watergate Hotel had celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the break-in by offering “Break-In” packages, replete with a complimentary copy of
All the President’s Men
, the Woodward and Bernstein version of the event. Tourists still stood outside the 2600 building and gaped, took pictures, asked, “Is this where the break-in happened?”
    One thing was certain. President Richard Nixon and his Watergate “plumbers” had put the Watergate complex on the map. Interest was so intense that the hotel’s management had its name and logo removed for a period of time from everything that couldn’t be nailed down. And as one longtime employee was fond of saying, “We thank Mr. Nixon every day!”
    Hedras surveyed clothing in his closet. Suit, or sport jacket and tie? The former, he decided. People would be dressed to the nines if they intended to go from the fund-raiser to the eight-thirty Placido Domingo concert at the Kennedy Center, a few minutes’ walk from the hotel. The party for Aprile had been scheduled so as not to conflict with the great tenor’s performance.
    Hedras chose a dark blue suit with muted stripes, pristine white shirt, blue tie with tiny red birds on it, and highly polished black loafers. He left the apartment and rode the elevator down to the lobby.
    “Evening, Mr. Hedras,” Bob, the desk clerk, said.
    “Hi, Bob. Anything for me?”
    Bob turned and checked the wall of boxes in which mail for the