Murder on Embassy Row Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.
    Connie Lake was from Seattle. She, too, had come to Washington as an aide to a politician. Five feet five inches tall, fair skinned and with long hair the color of wheat, she was, as Morizio told a friend after first meeting her, “the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” It took him a year to tell her that. When he did, she replied, “Isn’t it nice that you think so.”
    Connie’s parents were Swedish. Her father, Jens Lake, had owned a succession of restaurants in the Seattle area, none of which made much money. Her mother, who was born in Malmö, Sweden, met Jens when he accompanied his parents on a vacation to visit relatives in “the old country.” Connie Lake’s grandmother still lived in Malmö, although Connie had never met her.
    When Morizio was named coordinator of intracity security, he was allowed to pick his own staff. Connie Lake pleaded with him to join the unit. Although he was against working that closely with his lover and held out for two months, she eventually prevailed and was now his assistant.
    She’d brought with her that morning a list of pending events in the city that required close coordination between MPD and the other security forces. They went over them and formulated the approach Morizio wanted to take at the weekly meeting, which was to begin in twenty minutes.
    “Let me lay something on you that I picked up this morning,” Morizio said. “Strictly between us.”
    Her eyes widened and she leaned forward.
    He told her of Pringle’s call without mentioning his name. When he was done relating what Pringle had reported, he asked, “What’s your reaction?”
    She sat back and raised her eyebrows. “Sounds like a gossipy gang in the embassy kitchen. Should be easy to corroborate.”
    “Why? We can’t get involved unless we’re invited. Section 167, the Vienna Convention, 1961. Remember?”
    “I know, Sal, but if this Iranian, Hafez, is loose in the city and the limo is stolen, how could we not be invited in?”
    Morizio grinned and stood, stretched his arms and twisted his neck against a pain that had suddenly developed. “Let’s forget about it until after the meeting and there’s more information from my contact.”
    “Why won’t you ever share your contacts with me?” she asked.
    “Because then they wouldn’t be mine anymore. Come on, let’s go.”
    As they went into the meeting, Morizio asked Jake Feinstein whether he’d heard anything about the possibility of Ambassador Geoffrey James being poisoned. Feinstein shook his head. Morizio didn’t know whether he was telling the truth. The MPD was powerless to intervene in any embassy affairs without specific invitation. Each embassy was a sovereign nation within Washington,its borders and internal affairs off-limits to anyone except embassy personnel and those designated by the embassy’s mother country.
    The major item on the meeting’s agenda was to beef up security in the Capitol Building. A recent pipe bombing in a coatroom and assaults on American personnel and property overseas had