"IT'S A GOOD ONE...Former first daughter Truman probably knows Washington as well as anyone and offers it to readers with equal dollops of affection and cynicism."--The Cleveland Plain Dealer
It was the site of one of the most infamous assassinations in American history. Now the body of Nadia Zarinski, an attractive young woman who worked for-Senator Bruce Lerner, is discovered in the alley behind Ford's Theatre.Soon a pair of mismatched cops--young, studious Rick Klayman and gregarious veteran Moses "Mo" Johnson--start digging into the victim's life, and find themselves confronting an increasing cast of suspects. From Virginia Senator Lerner himself, rumored to have had a sexual relationship with Nadia, to his ex-wife Clarise, whose nomination to head the NEA is now threatened by the scandal--no one escapes the footlights of suspicion.
Travel guides claim that the average high temperature in Washington, D.C., in September is seventy-nine degrees Fahrenheit. But on this particular Tuesday, the day after a long Labor Day weekend, the thermometer read eighty-one at seven in the morning, which meant ninety was a possibility by noon, a hell of a time for Johnny Wales"s air conditioner to decide to crash. It had ground to a halt sometime during the night; it had to have been between two in the morning when Wales returned from a night of drinking with his buddies, and five A.M. when he was awakened by the sound of the vintage window unit seizing up.
He rolled his sticky body out of bed at seven and stood in front of an oscillating table fan, raising his arms to allow the moving air to wash over his naked ness. Understandably, his mood was palpably foul; his mutterings were mostly four-lettered as he poured orange juice, washed down a handful of vitamins, and entered the shower. The weather was bad enough, and you couldn"t do anything about that. But Bancroft"s early crew call at Ford"s was arbitrary. What was the big deal? he wondered as he readjusted the faucets to add cooler water to the mix. It was only a teenage drama workshop production.