Murder on Embassy Row (3 page)

The ambassador had removed his shoes, suit jacket and tie, and had slipped into a red cashmere robe and slippers. “A fire,” he mumbled as Hafez placed the tray on a crotchwood lyre card table decorated with brass rosettes. Hafez quickly arranged newspaper, cedar kindling, and four slender logs in the fireplace, ignited them, and stood.

“That’s all,” said James. “I won’t be going out tonight. Drive them to the show and pick them up. Please don’t disturb me.”

As Hafez was about to open the door, James said, “You know, Nuri, there is an old saying about not biting the hand that feeds you.” Hafez half-turned and cocked his head. “Don’t give me that confused expression you’re so bloody fond of adopting, Nuri. Just think about what I said. Good night.”

***

Marsha James returned to the embassy at midnight. She was driven by two plainclothes members of the internal security staff who’d escorted her and the Palingtons to the Robyn Archer show. Mrs. James and her guests had been driven in the ambassador’s limousine by Nuri Hafez, with the security men following in an unmarked sedan. When Hafez didn’t show up at the end of the evening and a call to the embassy failed to locate him, Mrs. James had the guards drop the Palingtons at the Madison Hotel, then bring her home.

She was furious as she entered the front door. “Where is Nuri?” she asked the household staff, who were still cleaning up after the party.

“We don’t know, ma’am.”

She went to the ballroom, picked up a telephone, and dialed Hafez’s room. There was no answer. She dialed the main garage. No answer there, either. She returned to the foyer and told a security guard, “Go around back and see if the limousine is there.” He returned a few minutes later and reported it was missing.

“Thank you,” she said. “That will be all.”

Marsha James hated Nuri Hafez and the staff was aware of her feelings. No one was quite sure why she felt as she did, although they did speculate. With few exceptions, Mrs. James ran the residence, including the hiring and firing of house staff. But Hafez was out of her reach, above her control. He “belonged” to her husband.

Marsha knew her husband’s sexual tastes too well to suspect any taint of “the English vice”; it was as though Hafez was a pet dog who not only preferred her husband, but who disliked, no, tolerated her.

There may have been a time when she envied the close relationship James and Hafez shared; lately she only resented it, and freely let it trigger and fuel the arguments the embassy household overheard too often.

She went upstairs and stood in the hallway. To her left was the door to his private study. Her own study was next to it, and she often took tea there before retiring, usually with her social secretary, who would brief her on the following day’s activities.

She went to her study, picked up a phone, and called the kitchen. “I shan’t have anything this evening,” she said. She returned to the hall and paused in front of their bedroom. A maid, on her way to her own bedroom on the floor above, asked, “Can I get you something, ma’am?”

Mrs. James was startled by the maid’s appearance. “Oh, no, I think not,” she said.

“Good night, ma’am.”

“Yes. Good night.”

She went to her husband’s study, where dim light squeezed through a narrow space at the bottom of the door. There was the smell of burnt cedar. She placed her hand on the doorknob and slowly turned it. The door slid open. She peered into a room rendered chiaroscuro by the light diffused by the green glass shade of a brass study lamp, and the waning orange glow from the embers of the fireplace.

Silhouetted against this light, she saw her husband, Geoffrey James, the soft folds of his robe draped around him. He was slumped over the card table.

She entered the room, closing the door behind her, and approached him.

His right hand held a stemmed glass that was tipped over, its contents having whitened the table’s smooth finish. Toothpaste and cigarette ash; she thought automatically of one of her mother’s home-repair remedies. Geoffrey’s head had fallen sideways onto a silver bowl now half filled with melted ice water, a lemon wedge floating on the top.

The cut-glass caviar cup was partially submerged, and the caviar still remaining formed a black crust over his nose.

“Geoffrey,” she said softly, not touching him. Then she reached, hesitated, and felt the exposed side of his face. It was cold, with the flat, gray look of modeling clay. The eye she could see was open and distended and his mouth gaped in a rictus that was half smile, half scream.

Marsha left the room, involuntarily wiping her hands on her skirt and went downstairs to the kitchen, where Eleanor was having tea with her husband. Marsha saw
the plate of dainty sandwiches between them, the uneaten remains of that evening’s party.

“Something wrong, ma’am?” Eleanor asked.

Marsha heard her voice answer. “Yes, I would say there is.”

Salvatore Morizio, a detective captain in Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, sat hunched over a chessboard in the living room of his Arlington, Virginia, condominium. “Why the hell did you make
that
move?” he mumbled as he tried to devise a strategy to counter the unexpected placement of his opponent’s knight.

The phone rang. He ignored six rings before getting up and answering it. “Yeah?” he said, still thinking about his next move.

“Sal, Jake. I wake you?”

“No. What time is it?”

“One.”

“Is it? It got late. What’s up?”

Jacob Feinstein, chief of the State Department’s 1,000-officer police force, whose mission it was to protect the lives of the vast foreign diplomatic community in the District of Columbia, said, “The British Embassy. We’ve got a possible death of the ambassador, but I don’t have confirmation yet.”

“Geoffrey James? What happened?”

“Sounds like a heart attack. Nobody’s saying for sure over there.”

“They had a party for him tonight.”

“I know. We covered it. Want me to call when we firm it up?”

“No, no need. I think I’ll… Sure, call me.”

Morizio hung up and looked out the window. The view of the nation’s capital across the Potomac River always pleased him, especially at night. It was the view that had tipped the scales in favor of his purchasing this condo instead of others he’d seen. It wasn’t as spacious as he’d wanted and the sales agent had been a surly ignoramus, but there was the view, especially at night.

He returned to the couch and looked down at the chessboard. The timer had run out. He reset it, thought for a moment, then made his move. Almost instantly the computer countered with a move that would put Morizio’s king in check down the road. “You bastard,” Morizio said. “It was the phone. I lost my concentration.” He often beat the computer, which he’d named Rasputin, in the first six levels of play, but had never been a winner at level seven.

Jake Feinstein called again. He’d confirmed that Geoffrey James, British ambassador to the United States, was dead, the apparent victim of a coronary.

“Too bad,” Morizio said.

“Yeah. He wasn’t the warmest guy we deal with, but he was okay. His wife’s nice. Know her?”

“I’ve met her.”

“Well, just wanted to let you know.”

“No question of cause?”

“Evidently not. What are you doing up so late? You’re an early-to-bed type.”

“I was playing chess.”

“Really? Who is she?”

“It’s a he, Jake. His name is Rasputin.”

Feinstein laughed. “Whatever you say, Sal. See you at the meeting.”

Morizio slept soundly, was up at seven, and watched “The CBS Morning News” while eating a breakfast of melon, eggs, and an English muffin. Ambassador James’s death was mentioned only in passing. He was sixty-one, Diane Sawyer said. Funeral arrangements had not been announced.

Morizio dressed in gray slacks, a gray Harris tweed jacket, white button-down shirt, and black knit tie, used a shoehorn to slip into penny loafers, and went to the living room and checked himself in a mirror. Five feet eleven inches tall, thick, close-cropped black hair with gray at the temples, dark skin and fine features. He was slender, no thanks to his life-style. He seldom exercised and ate what he wanted. Metabolism, he’d been told, insides always churning that kept him thin and gave him an ulcer at thirty, now in remission. He looked out the window. It was a sunny, clear November day and the forecast promised that the fair-weather pattern would hold for at least another two days.

He picked up the phone and dialed. “Good morning, sunshine,” he said.

“Hi, Sal,” Constance Lake said through a yawn.

“Up and at ’em, kid,” he said. “It’s a fat morning out there.”

“I am up. I just finished working out.”

“I’m jealous.

“Of what?”

“Of Richard Simmons. You spend every morning naked with him.”

Lake laughed. “He inspires me.”

“And I don’t.”

“Different inspiration. You’re on your way out?”

“Yeah. Don’t forget the meeting at eleven.”

“I have it down. See you there.”

“Right. Just remember, Richard Simmons doesn’t love you. I do.”

“I’ll keep it in mind, Sal.”

He checked his pockets to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything and went to a basement garage where he kept his car, a Chevy Cavalier he’d taken delivery on two weeks earlier. He pressed a button on the wall that opened the overhead doors and headed for the Rochambeau Memorial Bridge. Twenty minutes later he pulled into a reserved parking spot behind MPD Headquarters at Third and C streets. Having his name on a parking slot was his most prized perk since being named coordinator of intracity security, which involved liaison between MPD’s 4,000 cops, the 1,200 members of the U.S. Capitol Police, and Jake Feinstein’s 1,000 uniformed personnel.

“Captain Morizio,” a sergeant said the minute he walked through the office door. “Urgent message.” He handed Morizio a slip of paper. Written on it was the name “Paul Pringle” and a phone number. Pringle was a security officer at the British Embassy. Morizio had done him a couple of favors, including a personal one that involved Pringle’s teenage daughter, Harriet, and they’d stayed in touch. Although it breached embassy rules, Pringle often filled Morizio in on embassy events that might be of interest to him.

Morizio dialed the number which, he knew, was not an embassy extension. Pringle answered on the first ring. “Hello, Sal,” he said quickly. “Just arrive?”

“Yeah. Where are you?”

“A friend’s. Listen to me, Sal. You’ve heard about the ambassador?”

“Sure. Sorry to hear it.
Was
it a heart attack?”

“That’s what’s being put out, but some things have occurred that make me wonder, which is why I called.”

“I appreciate it. Go ahead.” Morizio waved people away who started to enter his office, cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, and poised a pen over a blank yellow legal pad.

“First, Sal, the ambassador’s personal valet, a young Iranian named Nuri Hafez, has disappeared.”

“When?”

“Last night. He evidently drove off in the ambassador’s limo and hasn’t been heard from since.”

“And?”

Pringle told him about Hafez’s failure to show up to drive Marsha James and her guests home after the show.

“You say he’s Iranian. Did the ambassador meet him over there?”

“Yes, he arranged for him to leave Iran and to work for him as a valet and chauffeur in London. Then he brought him here.”

“Any idea where he might be or why he took off?”

“None whatsoever, unless it has to do with the other thing that prompted me to call.”

“Which is?”

“Kitchen scuttlebutt that the ambassador was poisoned.”

“Who’s saying it?”

“The chef’s wife. She claims somebody told somebody else that the embassy physician, Dr. Hardin, mumbled after he’d examined the corpse that it looked like cyanide to him, not a bloody coronary. It’s all seventh-hand, but I thought you’d want to know.”

Morizio made a few notes, then said, “It sounds like the folks in the kitchen ought to be writing murder
mysteries instead of peeling potatoes. Who did it, the butler?” He laughed.

Pringle didn’t laugh. “The butler, Sal, or the valet.”

“The Iranian?”

“Yes. Why would he run?”

“No idea. Want me to put out an APB on him?”

“No. You’re not supposed to know any of this.”

“I could do it unofficially, look for the limo.”

“All right. That might clear the water a little. Thanks. I’ll get back to you later in the day.” He gave Morizio information about the limousine and hung up.

There was a knock on his door. Before he could respond, it opened and Constance Lake poked her head in. “Good morning,” she said brightly.

“Hi. Come in.”

She tossed a large wine-colored leather shoulder bag on the desk and pulled up a chair. “Kiss?” she said, with lots of play in her voice.

Morizio picked up the yellow legal pad from the desk and frowned.

“Come on, Sal, just a peck. No one’s looking.”

He peered over the pad and said, “We go through this act every morning. Not in the office.
Never
in the office.”

Connie laughed, crossed one shapely stockinged leg over the other, and dangled a black pump from her foot. It was a morning ritual and she loved it. They’d started dating three years ago, two years after she joined MPD. Because she was a woman and because she had a master’s degree in psychology, she was assigned to the rape unit, where she dealt with victims of sexual assault. At that time, Morizio was second-in-command of a tactical street-crime unit. They met on a case, liked each other, and launched the relationship with occasional dinners.

They were as different as they were similar. Morizio was a thesis away from a Ph.D. in sociology, which he’d grimly pursued at night at Catholic University. His master’s degree was from Harvard in the same field, although his undergraduate work at Boston University had been in political science. He’d put in a stint with the Army, interrogating returning Korean POWs, ended up in Washington on the staff of a one-term Massachusetts congressman, spent two quiet, unsettling years with the Central Intelligence Agency, then decided to join the MPD. Sal Morizio was a cop’s son. His father had been Sergeant Carlo Morizio, 12th Precinct, Boston, who’d walked a beat in the North End until his retirement and who died exactly one year after his farewell dinner.