Margaret Truman's Undiplomatic Murder

by Margaret Truman

  “They may be right.”

  “Or they may be wrong. Will, I asked you the last time we talked whether you knew anything about a man named Zafar Alvi.”

  “I did some checking after that conversation. Alvi is a shadowy character, well-connected, with pipelines into Middle Eastern countries and into certain members of Congress. You might say that he’s a lobbyist for Middle Eastern interests.”

  “And a conduit for Samuel Prisler’s illegal arms sales?”

  “That’s one of many rumors about him.”

  “He’s rich, right, lives in a fancy house, has young muscle-boys working for him? Where does he get his money?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I’d like to.”

  Sayers fished something from his jacket pocket and handed it to Brixton. It was an invitation to a dinner honoring Zafar Alvi for his philanthropic work on behalf of the Arab-American charity hosting the event the following night at the Hay-Adams Hotel.

  “How’d you get this?” Brixton asked.

  “The power of the press. I get invited everywhere, only I turn down most invitations. These dinners honoring someone are all the same, dried-out chicken and long-winded, self-serving speeches.”

  “You going?”

  “No, but I figured you might want to.”

  “Interesting idea. What other goodies do you have?”

  “Your turn to give me something, Robert. The interview. I’ve filed stories back to Savannah about what happened at the café and your involvement, nothing insightful, just what’s already known and published. But I need something more personal from you, how you’ve been handling the pressure you’re under, what you’ve been doing to try and clear your name and avenge what happened to your daughter.”

  “I don’t feel up to doing an archaeological dig into my inner feelings.”

  “It might be therapeutic,” Sayers said.

  “Like talking to a shrink?”

  “It’d be cheaper talking to me.”

  Brixton nodded. “Okay,” he said. “When?”

  “No time like the present, but not here. Let’s go back to my apartment. I’ll just need an hour with you.”

  The waiter brought the check, which prompted Brixton to say, “Actually, a shrink would have been cheaper. I feel like I’m paying off the national debt.”

  Sayers’s apartment mirrored his casual approach to almost everything in life, including his wardrobe. Wrinkled clothes were piled everywhere; the sink contained a week’s worth of soiled dishes. One corner of the living room had been turned into an office of sorts, with desktop and laptop computers, two phones, and stacks of paper covering every surface of the hollow door on legs that served as the desk. Sayers broke out bottles of gin and bourbon, loaded a pitcher with ice cubes, and plopped two glasses on the edge of the desk. He wedged himself in behind the desktop computer and said to Brixton, who sat in a red director’s chair with black arms, “Shoot, Robert. Just talk. I type fast. Just let it come out—your feelings, your thoughts about what’s happened to you and your daughter, and how you’ve been trying to clear yourself since being suspended from the State Department’s security apparatus. No holds barred; just spill it.”

  Brixton talked for an hour and a half while Sayers’s stubby fingers flew over his keyboard.

  “Enough,” Brixton announced, downing what was left in his glass. “That’s it—my life story. Think it’ll sell newspapers?”

  “I don’t care whether it does or not,” Sayers said. “I appreciate it.”

  “What are friends for? Time for me to go; past my bedtime.”

  “It’s only ten.”

  “That’s late enough.”

  Sayers walked him to where he’d parked his car. As Brixton was about to get in, he looked across the street at a white minivan parked there. He narrowed his eyes to better see who was behind the wheel. The driver started the car and leaned back against his seat, allowing light from a lamppost to play across his features.

  “Excuse me,” Brixton said to Sayers, and started toward the parked car. The driver shifted into gear and pulled away, leaving Brixton standing in the middle of the road. He returned to where Sayers stood.

  “Who was that?” the editor asked.

  “A guy I’ve seen before, at Janet’s funeral.”

  “So?”

  “Charlie McQuaid’s neighbor—name’s Wally—says that he saw two guys cuddled up to McQuaid’s boat the day he was killed. One of the men he described looks like the guy at the funeral and the guy driving that car.”

  “You think this guy is following you?”

  “Probably not. I enjoyed the evening, Will. You were right. You’re a good shrink. Catch up with you tomorrow.”

  Brixton considered calling Asal when he returned home but thought it might be too late. He took half a snifter of brandy to the balcony and looked out into the night. The woman across the street appeared in her window, followed by a man. They embraced, and she lowered the blinds.

  The loneliness that he’d suffered on occasion and that had been held at abeyance all day returned with force.

  CHAPTER

  25

  Brixton was groggy when he awoke the following morning. He’d tossed and turned all night and had considered a few times getting up and watching TV. But he’d stayed in bed figuring that even if he wasn’t sleeping, he was resting. Sleeping? Resting? It didn’t matter. He felt like hell as he made coffee and scrambled two eggs.

  He’d just come out of the shower when Mackensie Smith called.

  “Didn’t wake you, did I?” Smith asked.

  “No, I’ve been up.”

  “Anything new on the case?”

  “No, but I had dinner last night with Will Sayers.”

  “Has he come up with anything to help your cause?”

  “He’s always got a few interesting tidbits. He gave me an invitation to a dinner tonight honoring Zafar Alvi.”

  “Are you going?”

  “I was thinking I would.”

  “Annabel and I were offered tickets by a colleague at the law school. He had a family emergency and couldn’t use them. We declined. Robert, I need time with you.”

  “About McQuaid’s papers?”

  “Right. Are you free anytime today?”

  “How about this afternoon? Say three?”

  “See you then.”

  Brixton spent the rest of the morning on the phone.

  “Hi, Daddy, it’s Jill.”

  “Hi, sweetheart. I was about to call you.”

  “I beat you to it. How are you?”

  “I’m doing okay. How’s the little guy?”

  “He’s fine. I envy him. He’s so innocent.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Mom and I were going through Janet’s things. We had no idea how many songs she’d written—dozens of them.”

  “She had talent, that’s for sure.”

  “Miles wants to pay to have a CD made of them.”

  “That’s … that’s very nice.”

  “She would have loved that.”

  They chatted for another five minutes before the baby started crying in the background.

  “Say hello to Frank for me,” Brixton said, and the conversation ended.

  He made a few calls regarding his car insurance and to protest a phone bill before calling Detective Quintin Halliday at MPD.

  “I was going to call you later,” Halliday said. “Nothing definitive on the forensics has come back, but we’re reopening the case, ‘means of death unknown.’”

  “Can’t ask for more than that. Mind if I stay in touch?”

  “I hope you will. Take care, Brixton.”

  After paying some bills, Brixton called Asal at her office.

  “I was hoping to hear from you,” she said.

  “I’ve been busy. I was going to suggest that we have dinner tonight, but something’s come up.”

  “It wouldn’t work anyway. I’m busy, too.”
<
br />   “How about tomorrow night?”

  “That sounds fine.”

  He had lunch alone in a neighborhood pub before heading for his meeting with Mac Smith. They settled in his study, where the law professor had laid out McQuaid’s files in a series of piles, with yellow Post-its on each to indicate the subject.

  “You make any sense out of them?” Brixton asked, taking a sip of the coffee Mac had provided.

  “The more I go over them, the more sense they make. I’ll level with you, Robert. I believe that there’s enough here to initiate a probe of Samuel Prisler’s arms dealings and the role that Zafar Alvi might play in it.”

  “You said you were going to run it past a few friends.”

  “I did, with one. She’s a member of a task force at Justice that’s picked up where McQuaid left off. They’re looking into illegal arms trafficking involving American citizens.”

  “Including Samuel Prisler?”

  “Yes.”

  “McQuaid told me that certain members of Congress keep thwarting those efforts.”

  “These things are always complicated. Sometimes our own laws prevent us from doing the right thing. But the new attorney general has more of a backbone than the previous one. I’m told that he’s given the task force his full support.”

  “That’s good to know. I heard this morning that MPD is reopening the McQuaid case, Mac. They’re calling his death ‘undetermined origins.’”

  “Good. Here’s what I suggest we do as a next step.”

  Fifteen minutes later Smith had outlined for Brixton a course of action that he intended to take, using McQuaid’s papers as a basis for spurring additional interest in Prisler and his ilk.

  Annabel arrived as they were wrapping up their meeting. She was speaking with another woman, the two female voices floating down the hall.

  “Annabel must have brought someone home from her gallery,” Mac said as he reassembled the papers and piled them neatly on a credenza behind the desk. “Come say hello.”

  Mac opened the door and preceded Brixton from the study.

  “This is a surprise,” Mac said.

  Brixton stepped through the doorway to see what the surprise was.

  “Hi,” Flo Combes said.

  “Flo!” Brixton said.

  “I met her in the lobby,” Annabel said.

  “What are you doing here?” Brixton asked.

  “I came to see you,” Flo said.

  “It’s really not a surprise,” Annabel explained. “Flo called earlier to say she was coming to Washington and would stop by. I should have mentioned it to you, Mac, but you were on the phone and I was running late for an appointment at the gallery.”

  There was an awkward moment as Brixton and Flo looked at each other. Then she stepped forward and kissed his cheek. He hugged her and said, “It’s good to see you.”

  “I missed you,” she said.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “I didn’t pick up anything for dinner,” Annabel said, “so why don’t we go out? I’ve had this yearning all day for Italian food.”

  “Wish I could,” Brixton said, “but I have this dinner to go to.”

  “But you’ll join us, won’t you?” Mac asked Flo.

  “I’d love to,” she said.

  “Where are you staying?” Brixton asked.

  “I was hoping that—”

  “Stay here,” Annabel interjected quickly. “We’d love to have you.”

  Flo looked at Brixton, who said, “That sounds like a good idea.”

  “But only for a night or two. I’ll find a hotel afterward.”

  “Maybe you can…”

  “Yes, Robert?”

  “Nothing. Look, I have to go to get ready for this dinner.”

  Mac read the disappointed expression on Flo’s face and said, “It’s one of those dinners honoring someone, you know, rubber chicken and lots of speeches.”

  “Yeah,” Brixton said to Flo, “I have to go. It’s, ah … it’s business.”

  “Sure,” Flo said.

  As Brixton prepared to leave, he said to Flo, “I’m really glad to see you. Maybe we can have dinner tomorrow night and catch up and…”

  “Okay,” she said. “What time?”

  Brixton slapped the side of his head with the heel of his hand. “No, tomorrow’s no good,” he said. “But we’ll do it soon. Got to run.” He kissed her again and left.

  “There’s someone else, isn’t there?” Flo said to Mac and Annabel after Brixton was gone.

  “No one special,” Mac said. “I’m in the mood for Italian food, too. I’ll call and make a reservation for three at Notti Bianche.” It was a small Italian bistro in the George Washington University Inn a few blocks away, which had become a favorite spot for the Smiths when good Italian food was on the agenda.

  Flo excused herself to freshen up after her drive from New York, leaving Mac and Annabel alone in the kitchen.

  “That was awkward,” Mac commented.

  “And promises to become more so,” said Annabel.

  “Robert doesn’t need this complication,” Mac said.

  “Whether he needs it or not, he has it,” Annabel said. “But it could be worse. Having two lovely ladies is a lot better than dealing with suicide bombers. I’m glad we’re going to Notti Bianche. I’m suddenly in the mood for linguini with shrimp—and lots of sauce.”

  CHAPTER

  26

  Flo Combes’s unexpected arrival had surprised as well as confused Brixton. He was flummoxed enough without this complication. As he headed home to dress for the dinner, he wondered why she’d called the Smiths and not him. Although their breakup had been what some would label “volatile,” their recent phone conversations hadn’t been testy. To the contrary, she’d been loving and caring on those calls. Maybe she wanted the Smiths to be a buffer between them. That was as good a reason as he could muster at the moment.

  Before leaving the Watergate he’d almost suggested that she stay with him that night, but Asal entered into his thinking and he thought better of it. He was juggling enough loose ends and baffling scenarios without adding Flo to the mix.

  As he showered and changed into a suit, he wondered what the Smiths and Flo would talk about over dinner. He would undoubtedly be the subject of much of the discussion, and he wished he could be there to counter anything she might say about their estrangement with which he would disagree.

  He took a cab to the Hay-Adams to avoid having to find a parking space. He’d been to the luxury hotel across from Lafayette Park and the White House for a drink once before and had enjoyed the experience. The building had been created from the merging of the nineteenth-century homes of John Hay and Henry Adams, and was considered one of Washington’s best hotels—the second most prestigious address in the District after the White House. Brixton wasn’t sure that he’d go that far, but he had to admit that it did possess a certain cachet. During his one cocktail-lounge visit, the bartender had told him that the hotel was haunted by Henry Adams’s wife, Marian Hooper Adams, affectionately known as “Clover,” who’d committed suicide in the place before it was a hotel. “She walks around the floors at night,” the barkeep said, “smelling like mimosa.”

  That anecdote came back to Brixton as he crossed the lobby—he wondered whether the smell he detected was mimosa from Clover or perfume from an elegantly clad woman who’d just passed him—and asked where the dinner for Zafar Alvi was being held. He checked the written invitation again to be certain that Sayers’s name wasn’t on it. It wasn’t. The press invitation simply indicated that it had been issued to the Savannah Morning News. He hoped he wouldn’t be asked to produce credentials.

  He approached the private room and was greeted by a young woman who smiled widely as she checked his invitation. “I have never been to Savannah,” she said.

  “You’ll have to visit sometime,” Brixton said. “I’m sure you’ll love it.”

  She handed him a place card with the newspaper’s name on
it, and a table number. Brixton thanked her as she turned her attention to the next person in line, and he walked into the room where service bars had been stationed at opposite ends. Tables set with white tablecloths and sparkling silverware and glassware would accommodate a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty diners.

  He navigated his way to one of the bars and waited his turn, until the bartender poured gin over ice and added a lemon twist, which he took to a solitary corner from where he could survey his surroundings.

  A dais and speaker’s podium had been set up at the far end of the room, presumably where Alvi and those close to him would sit. Two tables directly in front of the dais were already half-occupied; Brixton recognized one of the young men who’d approached his car when he sat in front of Alvi’s impressive home. Brixton took note that he’d be seated at the numbered table farthest away from the dais. He went to the nearest empty table, picked up one of the programs that was at each place setting, and looked down at the photo of Alvi on the front cover. “So that’s who you are,” he muttered as he quickly perused the program’s pages before replacing it on the table and returning to his chosen corner spot.

  The room began filling up, and a few minutes later Alvi arrived, escorted by an entourage that included the second muscular young man who’d questioned Brixton. A woman came to the podium and asked that everyone take their seats.

  Brixton’s table accommodated eight, and he found himself seated between two men, neither of whom introduced themselves. Two women and three other men completed the octet. The older of them greeted everyone and introduced himself as a reporter from The Washington Times. That prompted others to do the same. When it came to Brixton, he simply gave his name.

  “Who do you work for?” the young man to his left asked.

  “I’m … ah … I’m a freelancer,” Brixton mumbled.

  “What’d you say your name was?”

  “Brixton.”

  The man screwed up his face in thought. “Are you the Robert Brixton who was involved in that bombing in the café?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t like to talk about it. Who do you write for?”