Murder on Embassy Row Read online

  Morizio, now under control, slowly turned and grinned. “You’re an interesting guy, Thorpe, a great case study. I also think you’re a psychopath. Drinking buddies? Never drink with a psychopath. Rule One, basic street smarts. Say hello to Dr. Gibronski.”

  “I shall. The communication has failed, hasn’t it?”

  “Yup.”

  “I tried.”

  “You did.”

  “I regret the failure.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, and so will you.”

  “You know what you’ve been doing here, Thorpe? You’ve been threatening a police officer. I could arrest you for that.”

  It started as a low rumble deep inside his large belly, then slowly bubbled to the throat and out the mouth. It was the cruelest, most anger-provoking laugh Morizio had ever experienced. He was mad, frustrated and, most important, felt total impotence. He slammed the door behind him and went directly home.

  ***

  It was midnight when the phone rang in Morizio’s apartment. He reached over Connie Lake and fumbled for the phone in the darkness. “Hello,” he said.

  “Captain Morizio?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Chief Trottier. I want you in my office within the hour.”

  “I thought you were out of town until tomorrow.”

  “I returned on urgent business. Officer Lake. I tried her home number but no one answered. Do you know her whereabouts?”

  “I, ah… Yes, I do.”

  “Please bring her with you.”

  “What is this about, Chief?”

  “Within the hour, at my office.”

  Trottier’s message to them was simple and direct when they arrived. “I am suspending both of you from active duty for insubordination, for failure to follow direct orders from your superior, for conduct unbecoming officers in the Metropolitan Police Department, and for gross negligence in your duties. Suspension will be with pay until a board of inquiry is convened and the charges can be formally investigated. You are to turn in your weapons and badges and vacate your offices by eight A.M. Further, you are to remain away from this building until the board resolves this matter, and are to have no contacts with the press. Are there any questions?”

  “I’ll fight this, sir,” Morizio said.

  Trottier relaxed the rigid posture he’d maintained during his speech. He said, “I don’t like this, Captain, but you force my hand. I don’t understand it but evidently you do. You’ve been given every opportunity to avoid this but you’ve chosen to go in your own direction. I wish you hadn’t, and I say the same thing to you, Officer Lake.”

  She said nothing.

  Trottier slumped in a swivel chair behind his desk and rubbed his eyes with both hands. “Can I make a suggestion?”

  “What’s that?” Morizio asked.

  “Take a vacation, a long one. Get out of Washington. Your relationship is well known around here. Go away together, far away. I promise you the suspension with pay will hold for as long as you want to stay away. You’ve done good jobs up until now, and I’d hate to lose you permanently, but be smart. The pressure’s been on you, and maybe that’s why you’ve gotten into this mess. Go away, on MPD. When you come back the pressure will be off and we can all get on with business as usual.”

  Morizio started to ask a question but Trottier stood and waved him off. “Just listen to someone else for a change,” he said. “I know your father was a good police officer, and you’ve been, too. Don’t toss it all away. I’m very tired. Good night.”

  Connie cried on the way home. Morizio asked why. She said, “It’s embarrassing. I’ve never been fired from anything, never even spent two minutes in the classroom corner.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “There’s nothing for you to be sorry about,” she said. “I’m sorry that it happened, not about anything you’ve done.”

  “Pigheaded Morizio,” he grumbled as he parked the car and came around to open the door for her.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Terrific.”

  They sat in silence in his living room. He’d put on a tape of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and the heavy, sad music softly embraced the still, dark room.

  “That’s too sad,” Connie said, referring to the music.

  “Fitting,” he said.

  “Let’s put on something lively, something positive.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to be dragged down, Sal.”

  He laughed. “How much more dragged down can you be?”

  She twisted on the couch and grabbed his face between her hands. “Let’s fight it, Sal. We have nothing to lose now. We’ve been raped and I’ll be damned if I’ll just lay back and enjoy it. I’ll be damned if I’ll have my reputation smeared this way.” She jumped up and kicked a throw pillow that had fallen to the floor. “Let’s go after it.”

  He hadn’t touched his drink. He placed the glass on the table, stood and looked toward the bedroom. “I’m tired, Connie. I just want to sleep.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do, and tomorrow we’ll turn everything upside down until we find out what it is you’ve been after all along.”

  “Ants,” he said wearily.

  “Ants?”

  “You said we were ants. We are.”

  “And ants are hard working, Sal. ‘Take a vacation,’ Trottier said. He’s gutless, Sal, they all are. We’ll make it work. I promise we will.”

  They clung to each other in bed, then made love with an urgency that had been recently lacking. She fell asleep as he stroked her long blonde hair.

  “The most beautiful girl in the world,” he thought. “I’m sorry.”

  19

  Lake slept late the next morning: “I might as well take advantage of this,” she said sleepily. Morizio was out of the apartment by seven. He grabbed a bowl of corn flakes and coffee at a local diner and swung by MPD. There he pulled from his desk any papers he felt he needed, shoving them into a cardboard transfer file box, including a dispatch from Traffic Control on which was written “Federal—Official,” identifying the owner of the car that had followed Morizio to the White House. “Big help,” he muttered as he packed his telephone book, personal photographs and memorabilia and office Dopp kit into a large leather briefcase. He took a last look over his shoulder as he stood at the door, and went to the homicide detective’s lounge. A friend, Detective Fred Scheiner, was asleep in a battered leather chair. “Hey Fred, wake up,” Morizio said.

  Scheiner opened one eye and growled, “What?” They didn’t call him Jolly Fred around MPD for nothing.

  “The Pringle murder,” Morizio said. “Let me see the file.”

  “Why?”

  “I have some leads to check against what you have.”

  Scheiner pulled himself out of the chair and walked into a large room where one wall was lined with scratched and stained gray file cabinets. Morizio followed. Scheiner opened a drawer and withdrew a manila folder. Typed on it was Hom. Pringle. D.C. #2746. He handed it to Morizio.

  Scheiner left the room and Morizio sat at a long table. He pulled a pad and pen from his pocket and made notes. When he was finished, he put the file in its drawer and returned to the lounge where Scheiner and two other detectives were seated at a table and eating bagels.

  “Thanks, Fred,” Morizio said.

  “Sure. What’ve you got?”

  “Not much, I guess. Anything new from your end?”

  “Why?”

  “No leads, unless Narcotics comes up with something. What’s the word from up top?”

  “To let it sit,” said Scheiner. “It’ll stay active but there’s other fish to fry.”

  Morizio picked up the file transfer box and started out the door.

  “Moving?” asked Scheiner.

  “Rearranging.”

  Scheiner laughed. “How’s Connie?”

  “Good. Quiet night?”

  Another detective, Nick Vasile, yawned
and stretched. “Just another pleasant evening in the nation’s capital, Sal. A bustling metropolis by day but when the sun goes down, all the good, solid, decent dogooders run home and out come the night folk. A couple rapes, three homicides involving two citizens nobody’ll miss, and a gay Supreme Court clerk busted for soliciting. Piece of cake. Getting paid for this job is criminal.”

  Morizio remembered that he’d promised Lake to empty her desk of certain items and went to the bullpen outside his office. It had been empty when he arrived, but now there was a scattering of people starting their day at MPD. Morizio’s secretary, Ginnie, was one of them. “What are you doing in so early?” he asked.

  “You wanted that report typed by noon,” she said. “It’s long.”

  “Oh, right. Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  “I’ll try to get it to you before lunch.”

  “Good. If I’m not here, leave it on my desk.”

  “Sure. What’s in the box?”

  “Junk. See you later.”

  He sat at Lake’s desk and tried to remove what she wanted without arousing attention. The few times he glanced over his shoulder, Ginnie was watching him. Who was he kidding? In an hour the word of their suspension would be all over MPD. Some would laugh, some would be saddened, some would rejoice and chalk it up to being stupid enough to allow romance into the office, others would immediately calculate what it meant to their chances for advancement. “The hell with them,” Morizio mumbled as he left the bullpen and went to his car. “You, I’ll miss,” he said to his parking space as he backed out and headed for his apartment.

  Lake was up when he arrived. “Look at this,” he said, showing her the notes he’d taken from Pringle’s Homicide file, pointing specifically to a word he’d written—“Sami.”

  “So?” she asked.

  “How many guys named Sami do you know?”

  “A few.”

  “Sammy, maybe, with a Y, but not Sami with an I. Sami Abdu, the Iranian journalist. It was written on the same piece of paper that had my name. Paul must have intended to see Abdu when he was here. Why?”

  “Did you mention Paul to Abdu at the luncheon?”

  “No. Paul just wrote ‘Sami,’ not Sami Abdu. When you just write a first name, you know the person pretty well. Am I right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Abdu knew the Hafez family in Iran. Hafez skipped the night of James’s murder with the limo and holed up in the Iranian Embassy. Maybe Abdu knows all about that.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “I’ll find out.”

  “Good. Want breakfast?”

  “I had some.”

  “Have some more.”

  It was over a second cup of coffee that Lake announced, “Let’s go to Copenhagen over Thanksgiving.”

  “To visit your grandmother?”

  “Sure, but that’s not the only reason. I don’t think we’ll ever piece this thing together unless we find out about Inga Lindstrom. Do you agree?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “We could try and see her.”

  “I want to talk to Paul’s widow, Ethel, too. We could go to London.”

  “We could do it all in one shot.”

  “Yeah, I guess we could. You know, maybe we could get some help from that Danish cop I got friendly with when he was here. Leif Mikkelsen. Remember him?”

  “Sure I do. Good idea.”

  Connie took a deep, satisfied breath and bit her lower lip. Sunlight through the kitchen window sent dancing patterns of light across her face. She wore no makeup, seldom did. There was a natural healthy glow to her face that rendered the use of anything artificial overkill. Her wheat-colored hair hung loose and long over the shoulders of a teal robe that was loosely sashed about her. She always looked good to Morizio, but there were moments like this that especially captured his mental, emotional, and anatomical attention.

  “It’s strange being here at this hour of a weekday morning,” he said. “I’m not used to it.”

  “It’s kind of nice,” she said.

  “You’re handling this better than I am.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You look relaxed, contented. Why are you smiling?”

  “I’m applying the glass half-full theory to what’s happened instead of half empty. I wanted time for us over Thanksgiving and now we’ll have it. I know it’s not the ideal way to have it come about, but as long as it did, we might as well take advantage of it. It could be a nice trip, Sal, productive and relaxed. We could use it.”

  He sat back and frowned. “I promised my mother I’d see her over the holiday. Maybe I should go up now, spend a day or two with her in lieu of Thanksgiving.”

  “Will she be terribly disappointed?”

  “No, she’s a glass half-full person, too. Besides, there’s plenty of family for her to cook for, at least a dozen.”

  Lake smiled, leaned forward, and took his hands. “I’ll go with you. We could go up tonight. I haven’t seen your mother in awhile.”

  “Good. Let’s do it. She loves surprises. In the meantime.”

  She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head.

  “I’m suddenly in need of a nap and some serious cuddling.”

  She let loose with a throaty, wicked laugh and said, “Beneath that conservative, businesslike façade is an inveterate lecher.”

  “Just trying to get with the half-full philosophy,” he said, taking her hand and leading her from the kitchen.

  ***

  “Well?” his mother said after she’d registered shock at finding them at the front door, and after they’d settled down in the living room of her house on K Street, “You have news, don’t you?”

  Morizio looked at Lake, laughed and said, “Lots of it, Mom, but nothing you’d be interested in.” He told her that they were working closely together on a case that he couldn’t discuss, and were taking a vacation over Thanksgiving to London and Copenhagen. “That’s why we came up now,” he said, “because I won’t be here.”

  His mother, who had gracefully aged into a stunning older woman with coal-black hair pulled back into a tight chignon, appeared to be saddened by the news. “I hope you understand, Mom. I’d love to be here… we both would… but…”

  “I thought you were here to say you were getting married.”

  Morizio coughed, Connie laughed. “It’s okay by me,” she said.

  “We’ll surprise you one day,” Morizio said.

  “You’re not a kid anymore, Sal,” said Mrs. Morizio.

  “I’d love a drink,” Morizio said. He went to the kitchen where he made drinks for himself and Connie, poured a glass of red wine for his mother. He could hear his mother talking about how she worried about his growing older without a good wife.

  “Here’s to good health to everyone,” he said as he returned from the kitchen. They toasted. “And don’t you worry about your son, Mrs. Morizio, he’s doing just fine.”

  “Is he?” she asked Connie.

  She nodded.

  “Good,” said his mother. “I’ll whip up some spaghetti with shrimp sauce. It’s his favorite, Connie. Did he tell you that?”

  “Yes, he did.” Lake got up, put her arm around the older woman’s shoulder, and said, “I’ll help. I’m a good second woman in the kitchen. I know how to stay out of the way. Besides, you’re working with one arm.” They disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Morizio alone with his drink. He wished he had some good news to bring his mother, a promotion, plans for marriage, a pending grandchild. In fact, he realized, he had nothing to report but trouble, and he was glad he’d decided to mention nothing of what had happened. Hand-in-hand with that was a strengthened resolve to clear his and Lake’s name. If it meant a lot to them, it would mean the world to his mother.

  ***

  The return flight to Washington a day and a half later was uneventful, except for an Associated Press item Lake discovered in the Boston Globe she’d been handed by the flight attendant. It was a small story
buried deep inside the paper. The headline read: D.C. CATERER IN DRUG BUST.

  One of Washington, D.C.’s most successful and respected caterers was arrested late last night at his Georgetown offices and has been charged with possession of, and conspiracy to sell cocaine. Officials confiscated an estimated $2 million worth of the controlled substance from his office.

  The accused, Berge Nordkild, is a fixture in Washington’s social scene, catering some of its poshest events for political and industrial leaders and organizations. In addition, he is a leading wholesaler of imported gourmet foods to retail outlets throughout the northeast.

  A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency, Fred Mayer, whose agency worked closely with Washington Metropolitan Police Department in the investigation leading to the arrest, said, “Mr. Nordkild has been under investigation for some time. We consider his illegal operation to be a major one in the eastern United States, and are confident that a significant pipeline of illegal drugs has been disrupted.”

  There was, of course, a larger story in the Washington Post, and Nordkild’s arrest was reported on local television. Nordkild’s attorney, Joseph Turner, one of Washington’s best, issued a flat denial of the charges against his client and had asked the court to reduce the original bail of $750,000 to $50,000.

  They unpacked, made coffee, and discussed the news about Nordkild. Morizio wanted to call the caterer’s office but Lake dissuaded him. “He won’t talk to you or anyone, Sal,” she said, “not with something like this pending. Maybe in a couple of days. Besides, we’ve got other things to do today. I want to call Georgia Watson at the American Petroleum Institute.” Connie and Georgia had been classmates at Washington State University, and although they saw little of each other in Washington, D.C., Connie was hopeful that Georgia, who worked in the institute’s research department, could dig up something on Geoffrey James’s Scottish oil interests.

  “I also want to book our trip,” Connie said.

  Morizio called the Piccadilly Pub, asked when Johnny would be tending bar and was told Johnny was on days that week. Morizio decided to have lunch there. Johnny wouldn’t know about the suspension, which would allow Morizio to mix a personal approach with an official one.