Murder on Embassy Row Page 8

  “The method? Surely your forensic experts would know that.”

  “I haven’t heard. Could it have been the food?”

  “That I provided?” He laughed and pulled his napkin from beneath his chin. “Caviar laced with ricin. A rich murderer’s weapon. A gun would have been cheaper.”

  “I guess it would have been. What do you get these days for caviar?”

  “Supermarket jars are about five dollars. The real thing costs a few hundred dollars for a fourteen-ounce pound.”

  “That’s a lot of money for fish eggs.”

  “Fortunately, there are still people with educated palates and the resources to indulge them. Would you like a doggie bag, Captain?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “A tin of caviar as a gift?”

  “Wasted. This palate never got beyond the fourth grade.”

  “You’re too modest. You will have coffee.”

  “Sure.”

  “And dessert. I assumed from your name that you are of Italian parentage. Cappuccino pie?”

  “Remember the cockroach.”

  “Yes, I shall never forget it.”

  The pie was so rich and good that Morizio wondered whether it warranted a trip to the confessional. “Excellent,” he told his host. “By the way, do you happen to know someone named Inga Lindstrom?”

  “Should I?”

  “I made the assumption from her name that she was Scandinavian, and I assume you are, too.”

  Nordkild’s laugh was hearty and genuine. “The cockroach, Captain.”

  “Swedish?”

  “Originally, but I spent most of my years in Copenhagen.”

  “Inga Lindstrom?”

  “Oh, yes. Of course I know her. She has what is undoubtedly the finest wholesale food business in Denmark. I buy a great deal from her.”

  “Was she involved with the ambassador?”

  Nordkild’s eyebrows went up and he puckered his lips. “Are you suggesting hanky-panky?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. I just wondered whether there was a connection between James and her.”

  “What causes you to raise her name?”

  “Somebody mentioned it to me along the way, that’s all.” In fact, the name appeared on the materials Paul Pringle had left for Morizio at Piccadilly. According to Pringle’s notes, the central switchboard had noted an incoming call from Lindstrom during the party, and that James had called the Madison Hotel later that evening and asked to be connected with her room. Pringle had concluded the note with: “The outgoing call was on the ambassador’s ‘private line,’ but there is no such thing when it goes through a switchboard and the operator on duty is a devoted soap opera fan.”

  “Have you seen Ms. Lindstrom recently?” Morizio asked Nordkild.

  “Yes. She was here only a few days ago.”

  “Where is she now?”

  Nordkild shrugged. “She was on a selling tour of the country. I believe she said she was next going to Los Angeles.”

  “Well, Mr. Nordkild, this was terrific. The food was excellent.”

  As they waited for the elevator, Morizio said, “Ambassador James was quite a gourmet, wasn’t he?”

  “He appreciated fine food, including caviar without poison. He belonged to a rather exclusive diplomatic fraternity which meets twice a year to sample the best available.”

  “Every interest has a fraternity.”

  “I suppose so. Have a pleasant day, Captain.”

  10

  “At least you got a good meal out of it,” Connie Lake said to Morizio. They were in bed at her apartment. It was nine at night, and a made-for-TV movie about cops had just started. Lake had one foot out of the covers as she applied polish to her toes. Morizio leaned against the headboard and read Esquire’s massive 50th-Anniversary issue.

  “I didn’t like the food,” he said.

  “Sounded good to me.”

  “Lots of fanciness and little substance.”

  “Do you want to hear about Richard Washburn?”

  “Yeah. Just let me finish this piece on Abraham Maslow. The guy was smart. He studied healthy people instead of sick ones.”

  “I did my master’s thesis on Maslow.”

  “That’s right, I forgot. Go ahead and tell me about Washburn.”

  “I had Bobbie Orben at the Post pull some clips on Washburn from the morgue.” She reached over her side of the bed and took papers from a briefcase. “Here,” she said.

  “Who’s Bobbie Orben?”

  “The researcher who’s always helping us over there. Speaking of morgues, I talked to Jill in forensics today.”

  “Strange girl.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Would you want your daughter to spend her life playing with the ‘living impaired’?”

  “I asked her about that once.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “She said it paid the bills.”

  “I still wouldn’t want my daughter doing it.”

  “She’s not your daughter.”

  “What did she have to say about James?”

  “She said they’ve analyzed every scrap of food from the party and haven’t come up with a trace of poison.”

  “Maybe somebody gave it to him directly.”

  “Shoved it down his throat?”

  “Wrapped it in a piece of bread, or chocolate.”

  “I suppose. What do you think of the Washburn material?”

  “You haven’t given me a chance to read it.”

  Lake worked on her toes while Morizio flipped through the clippings, which basically supported what he already knew: that Richard Washburn was the hostage most vocal and critical of diplomatic efforts to free them. He leveled charges at his own government for failing to foresee the Ayatollah’s take-over and eventual siege of the embassy in Teheran. He also said that he viewed the entire diplomatic process to free them as a “pathetic sham perpetrated by people whose only motive is their own political gain.” Washburn’s statements were largely ignored by the press, buried deep inside long articles about the release of the hostages and their appreciation for efforts expended on their behalf. One paper, a weekly tabloid distributed free in Georgetown, devoted considerable space to Washburn’s charges, including one aimed at then British ambassador to Iran, Geoffrey James. Washburn quoted Iranian friends (but never by name—he said it would endanger their lives in Iran) who claimed to have knowledge of business deals between James and the Ayatollah’s government that would add to James’s wealth and, according to Washburn, actually prolonged the release of the hostages. He was never more specific than that. Attempts to contact James in London had failed, according to the journalist who wrote the piece.

  “What kind of business deal could James have cut with the Ayatollah?” Morizio asked Lake.

  “I can’t imagine. What does Iran have to offer a British business tycoon and diplomat?”

  “Oil?”

  “Maybe. Maybe caviar.”

  Lake laughed.

  “Don’t laugh,” said Morizio. “According to Nordkild, there’s only two sources of good caviar, Iran and the Soviet Union. He said it’s selling for more than two hundred bucks a pound, and a fourteen-ounce pound at that. At those prices you could get rich if you had the right supply line.”

  “Could be drugs, Sal.”

  “Yeah, I was thinking that. I read that the DEA is focusing on Iran as a pipeline.”

  “I read that, too, but a wealthy British aristocrat like Geoffrey James doesn’t become a drug pusher.”

  “I told Nordkild the cockroach story at lunch.”

  “Did he laugh?”

  “He smiled.”

  “No sense of humor.”

  “He got the point, though. By the way, I mentioned Inga Lindstrom to him.”

  “Does he know her?”

  “Yeah. They do business together, and she was here in Washington the night James died. I wonder what their relationship was, why she called him at
the embassy and he called her back.”

  “An affair?”

  “Could be. Speaking of that, you wanna fool around?”

  “The polish is still wet.”

  “Blow on it.”

  She giggled. “Sal, can I ask you a serious question? Why are we even bothering with the James murder? You’ve been told by heavies like Werner Gibronski, MPD Chief Donald J. Trottier and that mysterious servant of Her Majesty’s government, George Thorpe, to butt out, mind your own business and forget there ever was a Geoffrey James.”

  “Maybe that’s why, Connie. Maybe if those so-called heavies didn’t make such a goddamn big deal about dropping it I wouldn’t have this need to know.”

  “It happened in the British Embassy, Sal. That’s sacred ground, and you know it. If the British government wants to handle it within its own borders, that’s its prerogative.”

  “What about Paul Pringle getting shipped off in the middle of the night, or Nuri Hafez hiding out in the abandoned Iranian embassy and assaulting one of Jake Feinstein’s men? No, Connie, I just can’t forget about it. I take orders and I’m good at it, always have been, but I think I’ll…”

  “Sal, you’re the worst order-taker I’ve ever met. You’re always questioning authority.”

  “But I never cross the line, do I? I always stop short of hanging myself.”

  Lake sighed deeply and leaned back against the headboard. She wanted to suggest that he might be about to cross that line in the James case but, instead, turned on her side, ran her fingertips over his bare chest, and said, “It’s dry.”

  “Huh?”

  “The polish, Sal. It’s dry.”

  11

  Morizio spent the next two days attending planning sessions about beefing up security on the Hill, and at the White House. He shuttled between federal agencies, including the Pentagon where he was secretly briefed on a plan to install surface-to-air missiles on the White House grounds in case of a surprise attack from National Airport. “Jesus, we’ll end up shooting down the Eastern shuttle,” he thought as he left the pentagonal-shaped building.

  Connie Lake was busy, too, covering what meetings Morizio couldn’t get to and holding down the office. It seemed to her that the amount of paperwork doubled each week, and there was always a journalist on one of the phones wanting to talk about Ambassador Geoffrey James’s poisoning. Those calls were referred to Public Affairs, although a few did manage to get through to her. One particularly aggressive reporter from a radio station told her, “I can make it worth your while.” “Mink?” she asked. “A Rolls?” She didn’t bother transferring him.

  Morizio called at six. He was at a meeting of police chiefs from twelve surrounding counties and towns who’d been asked to develop lists of possible terrorists in their jurisdiction. “My wife,” one had told Morizio, which summed up his view of the project.

  “I don’t see getting out of here until eight,” Morizio told Lake.

  “I’ll just eat alone again,” she said with exaggerated sorrow.

  “I’ll call you when I get back.”

  “Want to stay at your place?”

  “Not tonight. I need a little time alone. Call you later.”

  She worked in the office until eight-thirty, wading through reports and analyzing a computer program that was being developed to better coordinate MPD’s projects with Capitol and State Department forces. Her stomach suddenly reminded her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She considered having something delivered, decided instead to run across the street for a fast sandwich at Jaybird’s, a local hangout at Fifth and D.

  Jaybird’s was filled with off-duty cops. Lake was about to take the only empty stool at the bar when a female voice said, “Hey Connie.” Lake turned. It was Jill Dougherty from Forensics. “Drinking on the job?” Jill asked.

  “Looking for anything to fill a hole in the belly,” Connie said. “You?”

  “The same. I thought I’d bring something back with me. I have reports to get out.”

  “Join the crowd, only I think I’ll eat here. Eating at my desk depresses me.”

  Jill laughed, her round, radiant face glowing beneath short, black, shiny hair. “That’s the advantage of working in forensics,” she said. “Squeaky-clean stainless steel tables, big refrigerators, and the sharpest knives and forks in town. Why don’t you come back with me? The car’s right outside.”

  “Well, I… sure, why not?”

  They ordered chef’s salads and Tabs to go. “I’ll run you back,” Jill said as they climbed into her car and headed for D.C. General. “It’s good to see you, Connie. Nobody beats down the door to visit me at the morgue.”

  The autopsy room was empty. It was a large cold room made to feel colder by multiple fluorescent fixtures that bathed everything in a harsh, flat white light. There were four stainless steel examining tables with metal rims around them. A puddle of clear liquid (water, Connie hoped) had formed in the corner of one. Along a wall was a light box in which color photographs of recent autopsies were displayed. It reminded Lake of the giant Kodak display in New York’s Grand Central Station. A TV camera was mounted high in one corner; the days of next-of-kin looking down into the face of a loved one were over. They viewed bodies upstairs, on a TV monitor.

  There were white freezer doors along a wall. At the other end was a door leading to a room reserved for badly decomposed bodies. Microphones used by forensic doctors for their play-by-play of autopsies dangled from the ceiling. Lake was aware of three sounds in the room: the gentle whoosh of an oscillating fan, a hum from the fluorescent lights, and disco music from a small radio that sat on the floor in the corner. The only odor came from the salad dressing.

  “It ain’t much, but I call it home,” Jill said as she pulled two stools up to the middle table, and found two small, white hand towels in a drawer. Cups for the Tab came from a water cooler at the far side of the room.

  “I’m starved,” said Jill.

  “Me, too,” Connie said. “Who was your last dinner guest?”

  “On this table?” Jill grinned. “Oh, who rested here last? I have no idea. Probably an inept rapist or a junkie who held out on the boys.”

  “Pass the dressing.”

  They talked about many things as they ate—the Redskins, fashions, political gossip, new TV shows. Eventually, it came around to the men in their lives. “How’s the Italian stallion?” Jill asked.

  “Morizio? A stallion he’s not. He’s busy, preoccupied, obsessed, as usual.”

  “Obsessed with what?”

  Connie hesitated, then said, “With the James case.”

  “So’s everybody else in D.C. It’d make a great novel, wouldn’t it, British Ambassador to the United States poisoned in his own embassy by his Iranian manservant. Juicy.”

  “And hard to swallow, you should pardon the expression. Too pat, Jill, too many unanswered questions. For instance, you told me that none of the food you tested contained poison. How did James get it?”

  Jill shrugged and filled her mouth with lettuce, saying through it, “Maybe sexually.”

  “Huh?”

  “Like AIDS, or herpes.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I have no idea how it got into his body, Connie. Somebody must have fed it to him, maybe in a brownie. Maybe it wasn’t ricin that killed him.”

  “Huh?”

  “Maybe it was borax.”

  “Borax?”

  “That caviar James was eating at the time of his death contained borax. The rest of the caviar from the party didn’t.”

  “So?”

  “So, borax was outlawed in this country by the FDA forty years ago because it left a poisonous film on baby bottles after they were cleaned with it.”

  “Then why would it be in James’s caviar?”

  “Got me. More dressing, please.”

  Lake handed it to her. “Could borax really have killed him?” she asked.

  “Not unless he ingested a ton of it. No, it was ricin, but the
borax thing interested me, that’s all.”

  “I’d better get back,” Connie said.

  “And I’d better get cracking on the reports. Connie, let’s just forget any conversations about the James mess, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “We had the riot act read to us. This thing is under a big lock and key, and I get the feeling heads will roll if anybody tries to open it.”

  “I know, we’re under the same restrictions. That’s what worries me about Sal’s interest in it.”

  “Tell him to drop it.”

  “I have.”

  “Good. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

  “No plans yet. I’m trying to convince Mr. Morizio to come away with me, but I’m not brimming with confidence. You?”

  “Working. I swapped last Christmas for this Thanksgiving.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Could be worse. Ross promised to have a turkey delivered for the slaves.”

  “That’s nice of him.”

  “Purely selfish, Connie. Gets his conscience off the hook, but we eat, so I suppose everyone wins.”

  “That’s the way Ayn Rand would have viewed it. Drive me back. I’m bushed.”

  Morizio called Lake at eleven. She’d taken a warm bath and had dozed off in a large leather recliner he’d given her last Christmas. It took her a few moments to come awake and to sound intelligent. “Are you home?” she managed.

  “Uh huh. What’s new with you?”

  She told him of her conversation with Jill Dougherty and about the borax in James’s caviar.

  “What does it mean?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, probably nothing, maybe something. I’m sleepy. I wish you were here.”

  “Yeah, I do…” His intercom buzzer sounded. “Hold on,” he said. He went to the kitchen and answered the doorman’s call, then returned to the living room. “George Thorpe’s downstairs,” he told Connie.

  “Were you expecting him?”

  “No.”

  “Why would he stop in unannounced at this hour?”

  “I’ll find out soon enough. Call you after he leaves.”

  Thorpe’s large body filled the doorway. He wore a faded brown tan corduroy suit jacket, baggy tan pants and a green turtleneck whose collar had been stretched into limpness by his huge neck. “Good evening, Captain,” he said. “You were about to leave?”