Murder at the Watergate Read Online Free Page B

Laura Flores, an attractive young Mexican woman working in Washington. Valle knew Laura’s family back in Mexico City, particularly her father, a wealthy businessman. He knew the family well enough to be aware of Senor Flores’s disappointment in his daughter, a headstrong young woman always, it seemed, leading a protest while a student in Mexico, and now stridently proclaiming her views—decidedly socialist, Valle was convinced—in Washington.
    “I am going home,” Valle said. “You will let me know the minute you hear. The car phone. My private number. You can always reach me.”
    “Of course.”
    Valle returned to his office, packed his briefcase, put on his suit jacket, raincoat and hat, and stopped at the reception desk to say good night to Rosa, who browsed the lavish photographs in the latest copy of
Artes de Mexico
.
    “I am sorry if I was short before,” he said, smiling. “The pressure. Sometimes it sets us on edge.”
    “No need to apologize. I know how things are these days.”
    “You hear from your family?”
    “
Sí
. They are fine. My brother starts the university.”
    “UNAM?”
    “
Sí
. He wanted a private university but the fees—”
    “Yes, that would be expensive.”
    UNAM, the acronym for Mexico’s state-run university, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, had been for years a hotbed of Marxist learning, particularly in its department of economics. But as the nation began to embrace free market theories—and practices—in the 1990s, enrollment at private universities, which taught more pragmatic, marketable economic theories and skills—and despite their high tuition and fees—increased by almost 200 percent, while UNAM’s student population went up only a small fraction of that. Mexico’s fledgling leaders sensed the direction their country was taking and were preparing for it. They’d seen too many help-wanted ads carrying the tag line: “UNAM Graduates, Please Abstain.”
    “If I can do anything,” Valle said.
    Send money, Rosa thought.
“Gracias,”
she said.
    “Good night.”
    “Good night.”
    Valle retrieved his car from the parking garage beneath the office building and drove in the direction of his house in the vibrant, multicultural section of Washington called Adams-Morgan.
    He and his family had moved there a year ago, after he’d been tapped to replace the previous managing director of the Mexican-American Trade Alliance, who’d died of cancer. Although the position represented an expression of trust by his Mexico City superiors, he was reluctant to leave what had been a comfortable existence. He’d been in the right political position in 1982 to enjoy the fruits of the government takeover of the Mexican Central Bank, as disastrous as it might have been for the economy. His demonstrated loyalty to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, Mexico’s “rotating dictatorship,” had been rewarded through a succession of lucrative jobs at the bank, affording Valle and his family an upper-middle-class lifestyle. He’d tried to dissuade his bosses from sending him to Washington, but they’d prevailed; Mexico’s economic stake in the next U.S. presidential election was enormous. A man of Venustiano Valle’s knowledge and experience was needed to guide the fortunes of the trade alliance. Valle was aware it was calculated flattery, but he also knew that to refuse the post could mean a diminution of his authority at home.
    “Give it two years,” he was told. “Successfully carry out the alliance’s mission and you will be rewarded.”
    One relatively uneventful year had now passed.
    The second year was shaping up to be considerably less quiescent.

5
The Ballroom—the Watergate Hotel
    The Watergate Hotel’s catering and sales manager seemed to some to be surprisingly young to hold such an important position, dealing day and night with Washington’s most powerful personalities, many of them excessively demanding and rude. But in the