Murder on Embassy Row Page 15

  “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 h
im.”

  “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.”

  “I’ll do my best. I’ll try to be concise and clear so that when you leave here there is no confusion, no questioning what was meant.”

  “That’ll be refreshing,” Morizio said.

  “Yes, it will, clarity is priceless. Directness.”

  “Highways instead of winding country roads.”

  Thorpe laughed again. “I’m flattered that you remembered, the way that screenwriter must feel for having written a line that at least one person remembered.”

  “Jesus,” Morizio muttered under his breath. He said aloud, “I remember a line from a movie, too. Ever see Network, Thorpe?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more.”

  “I recall that. The character Howard Beale said it, played by Peter Finch.”

  “You watch a lot of movies, huh?”

  “Those that I know I’ll like. What are you mad about, Sal?”

  “Lots of things, Thorpe. Who’s been following me and bugging my phones?”

  He adopted an expression on his wide face of exaggerated shock. “How terrible,” he said.

  Morizio sensed a laugh being stifled and wanted to take a swing. He took a few breaths instead, said, “You know nothing about it?”

  “God, no. I don’t believe in electronic surveillance.”

  “Does Dr. Gibronski? Somebody does because it’s been happening.”

  “I’m sorry, I really am. Miss Lake, too?”

  “Leave her out of it.”

  “Certainly. You really are angry, aren’t you? At whom?”

  “Whoever tapped into my phone and does a lousy job tailing me in a car, whoever’s been playing games and covering up.”

  “That sounds serious. Covering up what, Sal?”

  “Goddamn it,” Morizio said. He got up and went to the window, played with the wand that controlled the blinds, turned, and said, “Is this room bugged, Thorpe?”

  “I rather doubt it.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You know anything about Paul Pringle?”

  Thorpe pressed his cheeks together with his fingers and grunted. “I’m not familiar with the name.”

  “You should read the papers instead of watching movies. He worked security at the British Embassy and was…”

  “Oh, yes, I did hear about that. Dreadful thing that happened to him. Drugs, I heard.”

  “No drugs. He didn’t use them.”

  “I only know what I read.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Think what you will. Was he a friend of yours?”

  “I knew him. He was killed because he knew something about Ambassador James’s death that somebody didn’t want spread around.”

  “You know that for certain?”

  “I’d bet on it.”

  “Interesting theory. I’d love to know what you base it upon.”

  “I’m sure you would. Tell me something, Thorpe, what’s the connection between James’s and Pringle’s murders? I figure that’s a pretty safe question.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I figure you know the answer.”

  It was the same change of expression Morizio had witnessed on Thorpe’s face the night he visited Morizio’s apartment, the wide, forced pleasant grin suddenly running into a face of granite, like one of those plastic boxes filled with colored liquid that creates shapes when you turn it upside down. His eyes were hard—Lake had said it was those eyes that caused her to think he’d do in his own mother—and they pierced Morizio. “Sit down, Captain,” he said.

  “Look, I…”

  “Sit down!”

  “I don’t take orders from you.”

  “You take orders from your chief and from your president and from anyone else in a position of authority, Captain Morizio, and I am telling you to sit down.”

  There were many things that almost came out of Morizio. He stifled them all and sat.

  “Now, you called for an appointment with Dr. Gibronski. He has asked me to represent him. What was it you wished to ask, to say?”

  “It’s for him, not you.”

  “You’re being absurdly difficult. Are you always like that?”

  Morizio smiled. “Difficult but adorable.”

  “Miss Lake.”

  “Don’t push, Thorpe. I came here to tell Dr. Gibronski and anybody else involved in this thing that I don’t like being jerked around. I don’t like funny little gadgets in my telephones or goons making a right whenever I do. I know more about James’s murder and Pringle’s than you think.”

  “Perhaps you do. I’d love to hear.”

  “You will. I’ll make another appointment with Dr. Gibronski.”

  “Suit yourself. Do you know what bothers me most about all of this, Sal?”

  “Captain Morizio.”

  “Childish temper, certainly not befitting a man of your rank. I like you, Captain, yes, I really do, and that’s what makes this so difficult. I like your Miss Lake, too…” Morizio started to respond but Thorpe held up a hand. “But you don’t seem to understand where you fit in. Perhaps it’s explainable. Until now you’ve functioned in rather restricted parameters, doing your job, keeping things moving, going by the book. But there is no book for this project. The book is written as the story unfolds. There is no index to consult for guidance when a new aspect of it arises. This is very big, Captain Morizio, very very big, which is why it is being handled in ways outside of your area of understanding. I sympathize with you. I would act and feel the same way were I in your shoes. But lacking understanding really shouldn’t be an impediment to proper behavior.”

  “Proper behavior?” Morizio guffawed.

  Thorpe’s voice was the hardest it’d been since he entered the room. “Taking orders. Does that register with you?”

  “Who do I take them from?”

  “Your boss. Unless I
am gravely mistaken, Chief Trottier has been explicit in his orders to you regarding the death of Ambassador James. You were told to do nothing unless instructed. You were ordered to ignore it, forget it and get on with your own area of knowledge and interest.”

  “What about my friend, Paul Pringle? Do I ignore that?”

  Thorpe blinked and rubbed his chin. He was obviously exasperated and wanted Morizio to know it. He said, “There are times when my patience amazes me. It’s so simple, but you insist on confusing it. If you keep doing that, Sal, you’ll regret it.”

  “Now threats.”

  “Warnings from someone who likes you and your Miss Lake.”

  “Damn it, Thorpe, I told you…”

  “Listen to me, Morizio, and listen carefully. I no longer have patience. I have a job to do, too, one I take seriously. I receive orders just as you do. The difference is that I follow them. If your own chief of police does not command enough respect from you to have his orders followed, let me invoke a higher authority.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like me.” He said it slowly and deliberately, and turned his index finger from pointing at Morizio to pointing at himself. You are dealing with matters that impact upon two major world nations. Your precious little pique at the death of a friend, your ridiculous curiosity about a death that doesn’t concern you within an embassy is leading you into very deep and dangerous waters, for you and for…”

  “Thorpe…”

  “…and for your Miss Connie Lake.” He boomed it out, and the force of his voice caused Morizio to pull away.

  “Take a vacation, Captain Morizio. Get away, relax, play golf, swim, make love—but get away. Forget an ambassador and a second-line security agent ever existed.” He spoke softly. “Do it for me, Sal, for your friend. Take the highway. There are so many unexpected rewards. Winding country roads can be slippery and treacherous. Small covered bridges collapse at unexpected times, animals cross the road, drunk drivers fail to navigate the turns.”

  Morizio got up and went to the door. He stood facing it and took a series of deep, frustrated breaths.

  “I’m sincerely grieved it comes to this,” said Thorpe from his chair. “I truly do like you, thought we might become drinking friends at Timberlakes, or Piccadilly or wherever you felt comfortable. Chums. I thought we might become chums.”