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'Horny Envoy, President's Pal, Offed by Pimps'?"
    Innes's haggard face broke into a smile, the first since he left D.C.
    "Tell me this. Here you worked closely with Mortimer for a year. You must've known about his private life. Just the bits and pieces we heard in Washington, sounded like he was the Flying Walenda of the boudoir."
    Colleen bit her lip, shifted her eyes as she contemplated. She gripped her left elbow with her right hand as she leaned against a low cabinet piled high with back issues of La Stampa, Corriere della Sera , and International Herald Tribune . She was clad in a smooth pink skirt ending just above the knee and a simple white blouse. At all of 24 years of age, Colleen McCoy, lost in thought, looked vulnerable and scrumptious.
    "I don't know," she began uncertainly. "It's not like he was around all that much when you come down to it."
    "You mean he played hooky from the office?" Innes tried to shift nonchalantly in his chair in such a way as to conceal his hard-on. Colleen caught it and stifled a knowing smile. She folded her arms and took three paces in the direction of the ambassador's office which lay across a circular foyer. She stared at the office across the way.
    PERMANENT INTERESTS
    31
    "You know, this has not been an ideal first tour. I've been in for a year and a half, I come to this huge embassy and end up working for a wild non-career ambassador who was a virtual stranger at the office and a public embarrassment." She swung around, arms still folded in front of her.
    "I don't know. We really never knew where he would go off to after hours. Even during work hours we didn't know his whereabouts half the time. Joe has kept things on an even keel. Everybody went to Joe -- embassy folks, the prime minister, foreign minister, you name it. This place has been like a ship with a ghost captain. But somehow, we kept it on course."
    Innes leaned forward at his desk and shot back the remainder of the stale Coke. He was now limp.
    "In the Department we kept hearing rumors of wild parties at the residence and the ambassador carousing at all hours in town."
    "He had friends -- outside friends. The drivers apparently know a little bit. They've whispered around that Ambassador Mortimer frequented several bars and other establishments in the red light areas. But it's strange. Since his son died in a car accident last summer, he was spouting off about repentance, 'Jesus loves us.' Religious stuff like that."
    "So, the man was full of contradictions. What's his driver's name?" Innes asked.
    Colleen looked into his eyes. "Pietro. Pietro Molinaro."
    Catching on to Innes's thinking, she quickly added, "He's still here, I think. If we run, we might catch him before his quitting time." She took his hand and pulled him out of his chair with a forceful tug. The two raced through the foyer, down the gray marble staircase and out of the chancery toward the motor pool.
    32 JAMES
    BRUNO
    They caught Pietro Molinaro just before he headed out of the embassy front gate.
    "Signore, Signorina, I have worked for eight ambassadors. Some were good men. Some, not so good.
    Most okay. Ambassador Mortimer, he was kind to me, always making the jokes. I don't think his heart was into this work, I will tell you frankly. He was not comfortable being America's ambassador. I think, after a while, he longed for people like he knew in America before coming here. His son's death, very bad. I drove him to church in the last few weeks. A Protestant church. He went there to pray." Molinaro, 55, gray, but still slim, obviously gave careful forethought to his statements.
    "Pietro, can you tell us where he hung out when he slipped away at night?" Innes queried.
    "Eh, you know, I did not drive him normally to unofficial things. Sometimes, he take a taxi, sometimes, friends pick him up. Even he drove himself at times."
    Molinaro wiped his brow with his chauffeur's cap. "But two, three times, I drove him to a bar in the east of the city.
    It is