Murder on Embassy Row (18 page)

He lost to Rasputin, chalking it up to preoccupation with bigger challenges. He went to bed at midnight after calling Connie for the last time, took two aspirin and an Ornade and fell into a heavy sleep. When he awoke in the morning his nasal passages were clear and the scratchiness in his throat was almost gone.

He met Connie for breakfast at Booeymonger’s Georgetown branch.

“You’re feeling better, aren’t you?” she said. He looked better than he had in days, rested, less anxious. Dark circles under his eyes had almost vanished.

“Yeah, the cold is better. I slept good.”

“I’m glad.”

“I feel like a weight is off my back.”

She broke into a smile. “That’s great,” she said, “but why? What happened at lunch yesterday?”

He’d told her nothing about it. He was still afraid of talking on the phone. Besides, he didn’t want to use Donaldson’s name. All he’d said was that he’d had lunch with an old friend.

“Did your friend come up with anything helpful?” she asked.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact he did. He’s somebody I used to work with pretty closely.”

“Ken Donaldson?”

“Why do you assume it was him?”

“You mention him a lot. You used to work together at the CIA.”

“Yeah, well… It was an interesting lunch.” He picked up his spoon and looked closely at it. “I’m so goddamn paranoid I see microphones in everything.”

“I know exactly how you feel. You said you were going to call ‘your friend’ right after we found out about the synthetic caviar. Did he know anything about it?”

“Yes. He didn’t specify, but you learn over there to pick up on non-answers. Using phony roe for elimination didn’t shock him.”

“Elimination. N and E, neutralization and elimination. The first time you told me about that I laughed, remember, then broke into a cold sweat.”

Their cheese and bacon omelets were served, along with buttered toast and raspberry jam. Morizio slowly got ready to eat, arranging things, adjusting his napkin, pouring a little pepper on the eggs. He was a devout ritualist, which always amused her, as it did now. He never started cooking unless the table was set, never left on a car trip without toll coins counted and accessible, always cut pancakes neatly into small squares before adding syrup. There were hundreds of them.

He finished arranging and said, “Connie, the fact that phony fish eggs are around Langley means enough people have had access to have killed James with them.” The Central Intelligence Agency was headquartered in Langley, Virginia. “You said the other night that it ruled out a crime of passion. I agreed, but not anymore. Sure, it would take some planning, but not a hell of a lot.”

“Good,” she said after tasting her omelet. “They didn’t overcook it.”

“I’m glad.” He motioned for her to lean across the table and said softly, “Paul was an informer inside the embassy. He was on the Company payroll.”

“Jesus,” she said.

He waved his fingers toward himself again, this time to indicate he wanted something from her. “Come on, give it to me, instant on-the-spot reaction.”

“I may be a jaded female cop, Sal, but I’m still a lady.”

He looked around the small restaurant, leaned over again and said, “Maybe it was the Company who killed them. It doesn’t matter why because they don’t need reasons that would make sense to us. It could be Langley who’s keeping an eye on us, and if it is…”

“They could kill us, too,” she said.

“You never know.”

She leaned her elbows on the table and cradled her face in her hands. “Did you ask your friend about it?”

“Yes. He doesn’t know anything. He would have leveled with me if he had.”

“With all your smarts, Sal, you can be so damned trusting and naive.”

“Believe me, I know. I trust him. I taped it. I’ll play it for you.

Her eyes opened wide and she shook her head. “I don’t believe you, Sal. You’re furious that we’ve been bugged but you run around town taping everybody. Then you actually go out and record lunch with a Company spook.”

“That’s right,” he said, not joining in the laughter that followed her initial response. “If Nixon can do it, so can I. They’re just playing politics, I’m dealing with murder.”

“By choice, Sal, and it’s
we
, not I.
We’re
dealing with murder.”

“I know, I know.”

She ate some of her omelet, said, “It got cold.” She watched him across the table. He smeared jam on a piece of toast and idly chewed little pieces. No doubt about it, she told herself, she was terminally in love. She wondered whether the strain they’d been under lately was capable of ruining their personal relationship. She’d seen it before with friends, good, solid relationships warped by outside pressures to the extent that they could never be bent back to their original forms. She didn’t want that to happen to them. Being bugged, facing MPD ire over breaking the rules, even contemplating her own murder did not frighten her. Losing Sal Morizio did.

“Sal,” she said, “you said before that a weight had been lifted. Why did you say that? From what you’ve just told me, the weight should be heavier.”

He shook his head and reached in his jacket for a cough drop. His throat was scratchy again. He sucked on the mint tablet as he said, “I want to open this thing up, Connie. That’s where the weight has come from, from having to play in the dark. No more. You know what I thought about in the shower this morning?”

“No, I wasn’t there.” It was an unnecessary jab and she knew it.

He ignored it. “I was in the shower this morning and I said to myself, ‘Sal, you’re too old for this nonsense. Crusades are for kids.’ That’s what I told myself.”

The shock at what she was certain he would say next hit her physically, caused her stomach to do a sudden flip-flop and her heart to perform a paradiddle between beats. He was going to drop it, and that was okay with her.

But then he said, “Do you know what I told myself
after I got out of the shower and was brushing my teeth?”

“No. I still wasn’t there.”

“I told myself that that was the whole point, that I’m not a kid and never had a crusade. I did what I was told, I grew up, got educated, made a good living, became a productive, solid citizen, made my parents proud. That’s what it’s all about, Connie. I never had a crusade as a kid. Now, I do, and I want to bust it wide open.” He paused. “I’m going to see Trottier and Gibronski.”

She felt the weight now. Her eyes teared up and she bit her lip. He placed his hands on hers and asked, “What’s wrong?”

She avoided his look and said, “You’re going to lose, Sal.” She meant to say
we
but knew it didn’t matter. If he lost, so did she.

He said, “I don’t care if I lose. I just don’t want to take you with me.”

“And that’s all I want,” she said, fighting against erupting into a real, out-in-the-open cry.

He paid the check. When they were out on the street she said, “I didn’t tell you that I was followed the other night when I went to test the caviar with Jill.”

“Did you make the car, the driver?”

“No. I only noticed it on the way home and he kept his distance.”

“You knew it was a man?”

“No, man, woman, I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to compound your problems.”

He jammed his hands deep into his topcoat pockets and said, “That settles it. I became a cop because I believe in white hats and black hats. I don’t like bad people, want ’em off the streets, but I’ve been…
we’ve
been treated like bad guys by our own people. I’m going to tell Gibronski and Trottier everything I know and insist upon an open investigation.”

She looked at him through watery eyes and said, “Give me a kiss, Sal.”

It was tentative at first—the sidewalk was crowded; two kids giggled at them. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed hard. “I love you very much.”

He held her at arms’ length and said, “Trust me.”

“I do, Sal, you know that, but you’re up against something so big and powerful that it makes us ants. All they have to do is press down with their big toe and we’re crushed.”

“Nobody’s going to step on anybody. I’ll see you later.”

He drove off thinking about what she’d said. He was glad his final words had been positive. The problem was that he didn’t feel as positive as the words indicated. In fact, the weight was back bigger than ever, and he sensed that a giant calloused toe was about to cave in the roof of his car.

***

There was a pile of reports, publications, and memos on his desk when he arrived. He went through it quickly, tossing most of it in a wastebasket behind him. One piece of paper stopped him cold, however. It was from Communications, a UPI dispatch reporting that Nuri Hafez had been tried in Iran for the murder of Ambassador Geoffrey James, been found guilty, and had been executed by sword. There was a picture of Hafez that accompanied the dispatch. When Lake arrived a few minutes later, Morizio showed it to her. “Neat, huh?” he said.

“He looks so young.”

“He was, or is.”

“You don’t think it happened?”

“I don’t know what to believe.” He gave her three assignments that would take up the afternoon and made it plain that he would like her to get on them right away. In other words, leave.

When she was gone, he called Chief Trottier’s office. The chief was attending a conference in New York on organized crime and wouldn’t be back until morning.

He next called the White House office of Dr. Werner Gibronski, was passed from one woman to another until he reached Gibronski’s personal secretary. She was cordial, recalled who he was, and asked him to hold. She came back on the line and said, “Could you be here at two, Captain?”

“Yes, that’ll be fine. Thank you.” He gave her his birthdate and place of birth and hung up.

He debated taking Connie to lunch and rehearsing what he intended to say to Gibronski, but decided against it. The work he’d given her was important. More crucial was wanting to disengage her from what was about to happen. He needed her, but wanted to keep her away. Between the devil and the deep blue sea, which he found himself humming unenthusiastically on his way to a solo lunch at Clyde’s, in Georgetown. He sat in the sunny atrium, had a cheeseburger, and made notes on a three-by-five card of items to bring up with Gibronski.

He noticed a car behind him as he drove to the White House, a copper-colored older Buick Regal driven by a man whose face he couldn’t see through windshield glare. Morizio speeded up, then slammed on the brakes and pulled head-first into a parking spot. The Buick sped by, and Morizio got a fleeting look at the driver. He wore a tan down coat with a puffy collar bunched up around his neck and chin, and a dark cap pulled low
over his forehead. Morizio read the plate, jotted it on the back of his list of items for the meeting, and continued to the White House where he was asked to wait in the reception area.

He assumed he’d be taken to Gibronski’s office, where they’d last met. Instead, a perky young woman took him to a small room on Gibronski’s floor but at an opposite end of the corridor. She immediately left, and Morizio took in the room. It looked like a spare office used by visiting big shots. The thick carpet was the color of dusty rose. The walls were covered in a plain silk fuchsia wallpaper. The only art was a nineteenth-century large framed lithograph of an early Washington scene—the White House standing on a snowy rise while skaters on a frozen pond waltzed in the foreground.

There was a small desk polished to burnished perfection, and two Colonnette-back armchairs upholstered in a heavy fabric only slightly darker than the carpet. Morizio sat in one of them, crossed his legs and waited. It seemed hours, was actually only ten minutes before the door opened and George Thorpe entered. He said loudly, “Captain Morizio. Good to see you again.”

Morizio’s response was not nearly as cordial. He said without taking the hand Thorpe offered, “I have an appointment with Dr. Gibronski.”

“I know, he told me,” said Thorpe. “He was called away suddenly and asked me to meet with you.”

“I’m not interested in meeting with anyone except him.”

“Then you might as well go home, Captain. Dr. Gibronski is gone and I’m here.” He went to a single window and opened white vertical blinds. “It’s a good day, Captain. The sun is shining, what birds are left are probably singing and you and I are alive and breathing.” He turned, leaned against the windowsill and
nodded his head to reinforce his satisfaction. “What is it about you, Sal, that keeps you from enjoying what you have instead of chasing after what you don’t have?”

“I’m supposed to call you George now, right?”

“Call me what you wish. Call me Ishmael.” He laughed heartily.

Morizio observed that Thorpe’s eyes were heavy and bloodshot, and that there was a gravy stain on his shirt. He looked like he’d put on weight since the last time he saw him. There was a hint of stubble on his face and his hair needed combing.

Morizio got up, leaned on the back of the chair, and shook his head. “I don’t get it, Thorpe, I really don’t. I come here to see the president’s top adviser and see you instead. You’re not on the staff. You’re British. This is the White House, America. Do you stand in for Dr. Gibronski for official occasions, too, or just for me?”

Thorpe slapped the top of his thighs, straightened up, and went to the other chair, sat in it and looked up at Morizio. “Why don’t you sit down, Sal, and let’s talk. I remember seeing a very good movie once,
Cool Hand Luke
. Did you see it? Paul Newman was in it and that actor, Kennedy. I believe he won an Academy Award. What I remember so vividly was a line Mr. Kennedy spoke to Mr. Newman after he’d tried to escape from a chain gang yet another time. Kennedy, who was the warden, said, ‘What we got here is a failure to communicate.’” Thorpe said it in a southern accent. “I liked that line. I remembered it. That’s what we have here, a failure to communicate, nothing more than that. Let me communicate with you, Sal.”

Morizio was having trouble containing himself. He resented Thorpe being there instead of Gibronski, wanted nothing to do with the big Englishman, but wasn’t sure if he should take a walk or hear what he had to say. He
chose to stay. He sat, looked at Thorpe, and said, “Go ahead, communicate.”