Margaret Truman's Undiplomatic Murder Read online

  “You can do that after we’ve had a chance to talk,” said the CIA agent.

  “No,” Brixton said, “I have to call my ex-wife. It’s her daughter, too, who was killed.”

  Looks between the others resulted in the Homeland Security official saying, “I think that Agent Brixton should make that call.” He looked at Brixton. “Of course, you won’t mind that we listen along with you.”

  “Yeah, I sure as hell do mind.”

  Kogan said firmly, “He’s entitled to speak privately with his ex-wife about the death of their daughter.” To Brixton: “Go in the bedroom, Robert, and make the call.”

  Kogan wasn’t challenged, and Brixton went to his bedroom, closed the door, and dialed Marylee’s number in Rockville, Maryland. His older daughter, Jill, answered.

  “Hi. It’s Dad.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Home. I’m home. How is Mom?”

  “Oh, my God,” she said and began to cry. “Janet’s dead.”

  “I know, I know. I was with her when—”

  His former wife, Marylee, was now on the line. “Robert? Janet is gone. You were with her.”

  “Yeah, I was. We were having a drink when it happened.”

  “‘When it happened’? Why did it happen?”

  “I can’t tell you why the girl did what she did, Marylee. It’s insane, nuts. She must have been brainwashed to blow herself up. There was this guy with her who—”

  “The one you shot.”

  “Right.”

  “Why didn’t you do something?” She was yelling now.

  “Do what, Marylee? I tried to get her out of the café and almost did, except she lingered for a few seconds, just enough time to get caught in the blast.”

  “You could have done something, for Christ’s sake, you and your guns and your badge and, oh, God—whatever. Something!”

  Brixton tried to come up with what to say next, words that would get through to her, lessen her pain, make her less angry at him. He’d been wrestling all night with his own questions of what he might have done to save his daughter, barraged with what-ifs—listening to his instincts about the young Arab girl a few minutes sooner and leaving quicker; choosing a different restaurant at which to meet; having spent more time with her following his divorce; being a better father—a kaleidoscope of self-recriminations and second-guesses.

  “She’s gone, Robert,” Marylee moaned, her voice soft and filled with final recognition of reality.

  “Look, Marylee,” he said, “we’ll have to get together soon and make final plans about—well, you know. It’ll be a while before the authorities will release bodies and—”

  “I hate you,” she screamed, before slamming down the phone.

  Brixton sat looking at the receiver in his hands for what seemed to him an eternity. He hated being hated by her, but he knew what was fueling her rage. It wasn’t him that she hated, it was the world and the warped people in it for whom other lives were irrelevant. He slowly replaced the phone in its cradle and rejoined the others in his living room.

  “You okay, Robert?” Kogan asked.

  “Yeah,” he replied. He took in the others. “All right, you have questions; let me hear them. Then get the hell out of my house.”

  The CIA agent took the lead and asked Brixton to recount his every move, from when and why he went to the café, his observations of the suicide bomber, and the blast itself. Brixton corrected him: “I observed two suicide bombers,” he said, “the young woman who actually detonated the bomb, and the guy she was with who I now know is Congressman Skaggs’s son.”

  “We’ll get to that aspect in a minute,” said the agent. “You say that you left the café moments before the explosion because you—what?—had a feeling, a premonition of some sort?”

  “That’s right.”

  Mike Kogan chimed in. “Robert Brixton has the best instincts about people that I’ve ever experienced,” he said. “His instincts in this case were obviously right.”

  The special agent ignored Kogan’s testimonial and pressed Brixton to describe the suicide bomber.

  “There’s not much to say about her. Young, looked to be of Middle Eastern origins, scared expression. The guy she was with, Skaggs’s kid, was talking to her, whispering in her ear, like he was telling her secrets. She never said anything. Maybe he was boosting her confidence, keeping her from calling it off. I don’t know. The guy ordered a lemonade, drank half, and scrammed. That’s when I told my daughter we were leaving.”

  “She didn’t want to go?”

  “No. I mean, she was confused why I was in a hurry to leave. I got to the edge of the café, turned around, and told her to hurry up. I was starting back into the café when the bomb went off.”

  Brixton’s patience, already strained, became more so as he was asked repeatedly to recount every second of his experience in the café. Eventually the CIA agent turned things over to one of the FBI special agents, who said, “Let’s get down to what happened, Agent Brixton.”

  “Sure.”

  Brixton was asked for a second-by-second recounting of his confrontation with the young man, the son of one of the House of Representatives’ most powerful lawmakers. He meticulously recalled his first visual encounter, when the young man and the girl passed by the café a few times before entering and taking a table close to where he and Janet sat. He repeated how the young man leaned across the table to talk to her, downed half the lemonade, and abruptly left. Brixton went on to detail how he spotted the man across the street, pursued him into the alley, and fired when it appeared that he was armed.

  “End of story,” Brixton said. “Look, I’m sorry the kid is dead, but I’m not losing sleep over it. He’s responsible for killing my younger daughter, who was with me in the café. Sixteen others died because of him, including little kids.”

  An awkward silence filled the room. Brixton looked from face to face in search of a response and was met with stony silence. Kogan broke the ice.

  “The problem, Robert,” he said, “is that you’re the only person who can place Skaggs’s son in the café with the bomber.”

  “I’m the only one? Can’t be. What about others who were there?”

  One of the FBI agents shook his head. “We’ve interviewed the people who survived the blast, including those taken to the hospital. No one recalls a young man as you describe him being with the girl. Anyone close to the table she sat at was killed in the explosion. The secondary explosion—a gas line inside the restaurant blew—wiped out the serving staff who waited on outdoor tables.”

  Brixton sat back and processed what was being said. It was patently obvious that the others in his living room were skeptical of his story about Congressman Skaggs’s son being in the café, and he felt his frustration level rise. Finally he said, “Look, I’m telling you the truth. Why shouldn’t I? Why would I make up something like this? What do you think, that I just decided to go shoot a young guy who was standing around because I didn’t like the way he looked? I’m telling you that he came into the café with the girl carrying the bomb, and he split a few minutes before she set it off. Blue-and-white-checked shirt, jeans, Yankees cap. I don’t give a damn whether anybody else saw him or not, and I resent the inference that I shot and killed somebody for no good reason.”

  Kogan, who knew Brixton better than anyone in the room, said, “I think every question that can be raised at this point has been asked. Agent Brixton has been through a traumatic ordeal. He’s lost a daughter in the bombing and was injured himself. I suggest we let him settle down here and get the rest the doctors told him he needs.”

  With some murmurs of dissension, the others took Kogan’s advice and prepared to leave. The Homeland Security representative said as he gathered his papers, “I’m sure you appreciate, Agent Brixton, that the government is pulling out every stop, utilizing every asset, to find out who was behind the bombing. The president will be addressing it at noon today, and Congressman Skaggs is calling for a congr
essional investigation of the killing of his son. It should go without saying that anything you might say to others outside the chain of command could jeopardize the investigation. In other words, Agent Brixton, you’re not to speak to anyone unless specifically authorized. Understood?”

  Brixton neither confirmed nor denied his understanding. He locked eyes with Homeland Security and with State’s Clint Halpern, who’d said nothing during the questioning but whose consistent expression of disdain for Brixton never left his face.

  “I’ll catch up with you in a minute,” Kogan told the others. When they were gone, he said to Brixton, “Look, Robert, the fallout from this has only just begun. The café bombing is one thing; you shooting the congressman’s son is another. I’m putting you on paid leave until things settle down. Avoid the press. They’ll be all over it—and you. The stakes are big, as you can imagine. Congressman Skaggs has already issued a statement about his son, and although he didn’t cite you by name, he did talk about a ‘rogue State Department security agent’ gunning down an innocent civilian.”

  “Maybe he ought to launch an investigation into why his son aided a suicide bomber. Skaggs is a blowhard, and you know it.”

  “And a damn powerful blowhard, Robert. Cut him a little slack. He’s lost a son.”

  “And I’ve lost a daughter.”

  “So you know how it feels. I’m sorry. Go take a nap. Read a book. Get some sleep. I’ll be back in touch.”

  Brixton walked his boss to the elevator and got in with him. “I’m going to find out why that kid did what he did,” he said grimly. “I’m going to find out who turned him into a mass killer. Count on it, Mike. I will find those answers.”

  “Just don’t make things difficult for me,” said Kogan as the elevator reached the lobby. “I’ve got your back and I’m with you all the way. But remember, you still work for me and SITQUAL. Don’t do anything to make my job tougher.”

  When the elevator doors opened, they were faced with half a dozen media hounds, shouting questions at Brixton, who immediately backed into the elevator and pushed the button for his floor. Kogan pushed his way through the reporters and got in the car in which State’s Halpern waited.

  “I don’t like him,” Halpern told Kogan. “He’s a loose cannon. We don’t need a loose cannon.”

  Kogan closed his eyes. Halpern was right; Brixton could be a loose cannon at times. But he was also a top-flight investigator, and Kogan had meant it when he said he had Brixton’s back. But he silently prayed to a god he didn’t believe in that Brixton wouldn’t go off the deep end—the way he did in New York City shortly after Kogan had hired him to work for SITQUAL.

  BEFORE THE BOMBING

  CHAPTER

  4

  MONTHS EARLIER

  Robert Brixton’s involvement with SITQUAL had begun months before the bombing that had taken the life of his daughter.

  He’d stood in the kitchen of his studio apartment in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, adding ingredients to his blender—apple juice, a banana, uncooked oatmeal, maple syrup, and multiple tablespoons of a granular substance that was said to contain every vitamin known to man, and some that weren’t. His face was set in a scowl. The thought of starting the morning with the concoction was anathema to him, but it had become a daily habit, thanks to Flo Combes, a habit he intended to break now that she was no longer in his life.

  * * *

  He’d met Flo in Savannah through a mutual friend. He liked the fact that she wasn’t of southern stock—originally from Staten Island, and Jewish to boot—which appealed to his Brooklyn sensibilities. Flo hadn’t always been a fitness nut or “health nazi,” the politically incorrect label of the type. When they’d first met, she pretty much ate anything put before her, which matched Brixton’s view of how to live your life. He was a firm believer in fate; a large bell would peal when it was your time to pack it in, no matter what you ate. He had no idea who would ring that bell; he didn’t believe in God or any other higher being. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bell. Maybe it would be a referee’s whistle—“You’re ejected from life!”—or a factory horn signaling the end of your shift. Or maybe it was silence. Probably just silence.

  Brixton had ended up a cop in Savannah after moving there from Washington, D.C., where he’d put in four years on that city’s police department. He’d met his wife, Marylee Greene, in D.C., and both their daughters were born in the nation’s capital. The marriage didn’t set a record for longevity. Once their hormones had settled down, the excitement of being married to a young, handsome uniformed cop waned, helped by Marylee’s mother’s open dislike of the man her only daughter had chosen to marry. Marylee was a gushy blond southern belle who’d been a cheerleader at the U. of Maryland. She came from money. Her mother, a widow, was the most pretentious, self-righteous woman—person—Brixton had ever known. The old lady supervised the packing when Marylee and the girls moved out of the small apartment in the District and settled in the family home in Maryland, which was okay with Brixton. He’d had it with Washington and its weak-kneed politicians whose only goal was to get reelected, the nation be damned. And so after four years, he resigned from the MPD, headed for Savannah, where its police department was hiring, put in his twenty years, the last ten as a detective, took the retirement package, and opened “Robert Brixton, Private Investigator.”

  That misguided fling at entrepreneurship didn’t even last as long as his abbreviated marriage. He’d taken on an old Savannah case that involved a dead former hooker and drug addict who’d done time for the stabbing of a druggie in the parking lot of a local bar where drugs were freely dispensed. The girl had been shot dead on the street after being released from prison—end of story. Except that her God-fearing mother was convinced that her daughter had taken the rap for the stabbing in order to shield the one who’d actually committed the crime, the daughter of one of Savannah’s leading and most powerful citizens. When Brixton took the case—his office rent was overdue, as were a pile of other bills—he never dreamed that following the leads in the case would take him back to D.C., resulting in almost bringing down the then occupant of the White House and his first lady, as well as her best friend, Washington’s leading social hostess. That made a lot of people unhappy, and powerful forces in Savannah and Washington turned loose a hired psychopath to ring his bell or blow the whistle signifying his demise. He narrowly escaped with his life.

  He packed up, left Savannah and its cloying southern charm, and hightailed it back to his native Brooklyn, New York. Flo followed, and they moved in together until his growing cynicism about anything and everything drove her away, leaving behind her parting comment—“You have become an insufferable, depressing bore!”—and her recipe for healthy breakfast smoothies.

  Not long after she’d left and flipped him the bird on her way out the door, Brixton got a call at his Red Hook apartment from Michael Kogan, a former boss at the Washington MPD.

  “Hope I’m not disturbing anything,” Kogan said.

  “Actually, you are, Michael. I was about to put in a call to my broker to sell my twenty thousand shares of Apple stock.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “You should be. How are things in my favorite city?”

  “Our nation’s capital? Business as usual: lots of self-serving speeches and no action. Aside from your vast stock holdings, things good with you?”

  “I got up this morning, drew a breath, it worked, so what could be bad? Why are you calling?”

  “Aside from wanting to hear your sunny voice, I have a job opportunity that you might be interested in.”

  “In D.C.? I hate D.C.”

  “In New York.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “On top of running this agency in D.C., the brain trust has decided to open an office in New York.”

  “Tell me again about that agency you head up. You told me the last time we talked, but I’ve had other things on my mind.”

  “It’s called SITQUAL.”


  “What’s that stand for?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I report to DSS at the State Department. That’s their security and intelligence division. State has a hiring freeze and outsourced some of its security functions. You’ve heard of outsourcing. It’s all the rage these days in government. We’re a private agency with a federal agenda. We help keep foreign dignitaries and embassies safe here in D.C. Now they want us to do the same in New York City. The NYPD has the primary responsibility, but they’re overloaded and asked State for help in making sure that UN types and consulate staffs live long, happy lives.”

  “I thought those people had diplomatic immunity.”

  “They do. That’s part of the reason the PD wants to back off. They’re tired of ticketing official cars and arresting embassy types who claim immunity and walk away. DSS is used to dealing with them. Interested? I’m hiring. It pays well, Robert.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Brixton said.

  Kogan laughed. He’d been one of the few superiors Brixton had worked for who wasn’t turned off by his downbeat view of life. “Hey, Robert, last I heard you weren’t exactly living the high life in Brooklyn.”

  Which was true. Since returning, he’d picked up a few security jobs that paid the rent on the apartment in Red Hook but not much else. Since Flo’s abrupt departure, he’d been living pretty much on frozen dinners, an occasional lunch or dinner out with what friends he had left, and breakfast drinks that deposited grit between his teeth. And there was always a martini to cap off lonely evenings.

  “What’s the job entail?” Brixton asked.

  “Mostly investigations when a consulate or UN official complains about something—an employee getting mugged or a pretty young thing being accosted on the street. Nothing heavy-duty. Think of it this way: You’ll be getting a decent paycheck and contributing to world peace at the same time.”

  “Sounds like another government bureaucracy to me,” Brixton said.

  “You have a hearing problem, Robert? I told you you’d be working for a private agency funded by the government. Besides, you’ll be working for me. Like old home week.”