Margaret Truman's Undiplomatic Murder

by Margaret Truman

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  For Robert Gleason,

  whose friendship and savvy editorial instincts

  I’ve benefited from and treasured for years

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prequel

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Before the Bombing

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  After the Bombing

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  By Margaret Truman

  About the Author

  Copyright

  History is a series of random events organized in a seemingly sensible order.

  —JAMES ATLAS, THE NEW YORK TIMES

  PREQUEL

  CHAPTER

  1

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  She was late, no surprise. Brixton’s younger daughter, Janet, was habitually late, pathologically late. Brixton, on the other hand, was a stickler for being on time, which only exacerbated his annoyance.

  He and Janet had been at odds for much of her teen and adult years about a variety of things, which Brixton sometimes found to be interesting in retrospect. Janet’s sister, Jill, and she were polar opposites in personality and perception of life, which was usually the case with siblings. Jill had been the proverbial straight arrow for most of her life, her teenage years uneventful, and she’d breezed through college and emerged with a degree in accounting. Her ease with numbers amazed her father. Balancing a checkbook for him was akin to dental visits and watching TV reality shows. She had married a solid sort of guy—at least that’s how Brixton perceived him; he shaved every day, enjoyed fruity alcoholic drinks with little umbrellas in them, and watched the History Channel—and they produced Brixton’s first and only grandchild, at least for the moment, an adorable little baby boy whose smile melted Brixton the few times he’d been charmed by him in person.

  Janet, on the other hand, defined for her father the term “flaky.” She’d used drugs during her teen years, run with a controversial crowd, dropped out of college after one semester, and decorated herself with a pair of garish tattoos. She not only had pierced her ears, she wore a tiny gold nugget in her upper lip. Brixton couldn’t even look at the lip when they were together, which hadn’t been often of late. He hated the tattoos and the pierced lip. They detracted from her natural beauty, and the thought of having someone stick a needle through her lip caused him to cringe.

  He wasn’t sure how his daughter made a living; he just knew that whatever it was didn’t always provide enough for her to pay her bills. He did know that she was involved in the city’s club and music scene in some capacity, managing some rock-and-roll musicians, promoting concerts, working in recording studios—never anything steady. Her calls to him usually involved a need for money to repair her car or to keep the lights on and the telephone in operation, calls that he sometimes responded to despite resenting it. “Grow up,” he told her on more than one occasion. “Get a real job and take the responsibility of supporting yourself.” She always agreed with him, a smart technique when dealing with an irate father, but never resulting in a change in lifestyle. Meeting today in the outdoor café a few blocks from the State Department in Foggy Bottom resulted from one of those telephone conversations.

  * * *

  “Hi, Daddy. It’s Janet.”

  “Hey, sweetheart. How are you?”

  “I—am—wonderful!”

  He smiled at her happy tone. At the same time her calling him “Daddy” set up his defenses. She seldom referred to him that way unless she needed something.

  “I’ve been going with this dynamite musician, Daddy, soooo talented, a real musical genius.”

  “Yeah? What’s he play?”

  “Guitar.”

  Brixton pictured this “genius” stalking the stage, leaping up and down, hair flying, amplifiers blaring, the air filled with colored lights and marijuana smoke. As far as Brixton was concerned, rock music shouldn’t be called music. An inveterate jazz lover, he remembered what the great saxophonist James Moody had once said to an interviewer when asked what he thought of rock and roll: “You really can’t play an instrument when you’re jumping up and down,” the gentle jazz giant responded. That summed it up for Brixton.

  “Well, that’s great, Janet,” he said. What else was there to say?

  “Daddy, Richard—that’s his name—Richard has come up with an idea for a music app that will make him millions, and he wants me, me, to work on it with him—but he needs start-up money and asked me to help raise some and…” She paused for breath. “And so I thought that maybe you would want to get in on the ground floor and…”

  “Whoa,” Brixton said. “Slow down. You’re talking to the wrong guy, sweetheart. I don’t have money to invest in anything. I’m a working stiff. Remember?”

  Her bubbly presentation instantly turned downbeat, as he’d expected it would.

  “Won’t you even hear me out?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “No, I mean really listen to me. I can’t do it justice over the phone. It’s too—well, it’s too complicated, and I have some stuff that he’s come up with, a business plan and things like that. Can’t we get together so I can show you everything and—?”

  “Sure,” he said. “When?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Okay. I have a meeting at State; should be free by five thirty. There’s a bar and restaurant with an outdoor café a block from State, on Twenty-third. Buy you a drink, an early dinner?”

  “That’d be great. I know the place. See you there.”

  * * *

  What struck Brixton as ironic about their strained relationship was that in many ways she more closely mirrored him than did his more conventional daughter. Despite his dedication to order and routine in his life, he could be as impetuous as she was. His suspicion of authority butted heads with his having been a cop, first in Washington, D.C., and later with the Savannah Police Department in Georgia, where he rose to the rank of detective before taking a bullet in the knee and holding down a desk job for the months leading up to retirement. Like him, she marched to her own drummer and always had.

  But what most closely linked them was their unwilling
ness to walk the straight and narrow and choose the safe route through life. Both their lives flirted with danger, his because of what he did for a living, hers because of a need to chase dreams and to spend her days with others for whom life was but a dream, chemically induced or not.

  He finished off his mug of Prohibition Porter, a locally produced Belgian-style dark ale, checked his watch, grunted, and considered ordering a martini. He’d opted for beer rather than his usual drink to ensure that he had all his senses while conversing about Janet’s “business proposition.” He didn’t feel deprived, because he’d had martinis at this place and rated them second-class.

  Her arrival distracted him from having to decide. She looked terrific as she approached the café, tight jeans on her long legs, a snug, bright orange T-shirt that showed off her firm, ample bosom, and orange sneakers that matched the shirt. Her dirty blond hair was worn loose and caught the sun. She spotted him at a table next to the door leading inside the restaurant, smiled broadly, slipped past other tables, leaned over, and kissed his forehead before taking her seat.

  “You look great,” he said.

  “So do you.”

  “For an old guy?”

  “Oh, you’re not old. How old are you?”

  “Fifty-one.”

  “See? That’s young.”

  “Drink?”

  “A cosmo.”

  Because of its close proximity to the State Department, the café was a favorite hangout for diplomatic personnel, at least lower-level employees. With the weather clear and balmy, it had filled up since Brixton had arrived and commandeered the table.

  “Nice spot,” Janet commented as a waiter took her order for a cosmopolitan and a second beer for Brixton.

  “You don’t drink martinis anymore?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sure I do. A beer appealed. Nice day for a beer. Besides, places with outdoor cafés usually make lousy martinis.”

  She laughed. “How can that be?” she asked. “Why would an outdoor café serve martinis that aren’t as good as inside places?”

  “Because martinis taste better indoors. I remember when I was in Paris. I really liked sitting in cafés and watching the parade go by, but they made lousy martinis.”

  “That’s because they’re French, not because you were outdoors. You should have had wine.”

  “I’ve had martinis in this place, too,” he said. “They’re not very good. Want another sage piece of advice? Never have a mixed drink in a Chinese restaurant. They haven’t a clue how to make a decent one.”

  “If you say so.”

  Anxious to change the subject, Brixton quickly surveyed the menu and suggested calamari and an order of boneless ribs to go with their drinks.

  They fell into an easy conversation about anything other than the reason she’d wanted to see him.

  “A fat day,” he commented, referring to the sunny, brilliant blue sky with a few puffy clouds to break the monotony, and a cooling breeze that caused their green market umbrella to flap.

  “Did you go to Paris with that woman from Savannah that you were seeing?” she asked.

  “Flo? Yeah. I met her in Savannah, but she was from New York.”

  “You still see her?”

  “No. We split up.”

  “Did it make you sad?”

  “Actually, I was kind of relieved.”

  Which was true immediately following the breakup. But he’d begun to miss her within a week and still did. Discussing his love life with his younger daughter made him uncomfortable, and he changed the players but not the subject.

  “How’s your mother?”

  “She’s okay.”

  “She happy with her new husband?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You like him?”

  “He’s okay.”

  Brixton didn’t like the guy who’d married his ex-wife, an attorney who looked like he spent all his time in a tanning salon and probably had a dental hygienist on a retainer to keep his teeth white.

  “So, tell me about your business proposition,” he said.

  Brixton half listened as Janet explained what the music app was all about. It sounded silly to him, although he didn’t do anything to transmit that reaction to her. She talked fast, her conversation filled with “like” and “you know” and “right?” He couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm, her conviction that what she was excited about would change the world and everyone in it. Her eyes opened wide, then narrowed, speaking a language of their own. She paused occasionally in her soliloquy to see whether he’d understood, and took his nod to indicate that he had.

  His attention drifted away from her words, captured by a couple who’d passed the café a few times. The woman appeared to be of Arabic origins. She wore a long, loose black dress and a scarf that covered her hair and neck. She looked young, a teenager, Brixton judged. Her companion wasn’t of Middle Eastern origins. He was dressed casually—jeans, a blue-and-white-checked shirt, and a New York Yankee’s baseball cap with longish blond curls sticking out beneath it. What attracted Brixton’s attention were the furtive glances they cast on the crowd in the café, and he wondered why they hesitated coming in. There were a few empty tables, one directly across the doorway leading inside the restaurant from where Brixton and his daughter sat. It was on their third pass that they stopped and made their way to that table. A waiter asked for their order; the young man said, “Lemonade.”

  “Two?” the waiter asked.

  “One,” the young man said. “Just one.”

  Brixton tried to eavesdrop but wasn’t able to hear because of the buzz of voices around him. He continued to glance at them. At one point the young man leaned across the table and spoke in low tones, his mouth almost touching the cloth that covered his friend’s ear. She said nothing in return. She turned once in Brixton’s direction, and he clearly saw her face—what he read on its unblemished youth was fear. Her companion also glanced at Brixton, who noticed the seawater green color of his eyes—eyes with no expression.

  The waiter returned with the lemonade and placed it on the table. The young man pulled coins from his pants pocket, deposited them on the table, picked up the glass, and downed half of its contents. Then, after uttering something else to the girl, he stood and walked from the café, leaving her alone with the partially consumed drink.

  “I’m sorry,” Janet said. “I’ve been yakking away and the food is getting cold.” She dipped a piece of calamari in the red sauce. “This is good,” she said. “Yummy. Aren’t you going to have some?”

  Brixton took a piece.

  “So, where was I? Oh, right. Richard’s idea is sooo smart, Daddy. It’s, like, it’s right on with the music scene that’s going on today, so with it. It’s like, you know, like when Steve Jobs invented the Apple and—”

  “Whoa,” Brixton. “You’re comparing this fellow Richard to Steve Jobs?”

  “Well, maybe not like him exactly, but apps are big these days and…” She noticed that Brixton wasn’t listening as closely as he had been. “Did you hear what I said?” she asked.

  “What?”

  She laughed. “What world are you in?” she asked.

  “Let’s get out of here” was his reply.

  “Why?”

  He slapped cash on the table and stood.

  “Daddy! I haven’t finished.” She pulled sheets of paper that she’d wedged into the top of her jeans and placed them on the table. “Richard has it all figured out. See? Here are the numbers and—”

  He grabbed her arm and tried to pull her to her feet. “Come on,” he said.

  She looked up at him questioningly. “Is something wrong?”

  “We’re leaving,” he said. “Come on, we’ll go somewhere else.”

  She stood. Assuming that she was following, Brixton moved to the sidewalk. He looked back for Janet, who stood tasting another curl of calamari.

  “Hey, come on,” he called.

  As he again turned in the direction of the sidewal
k, the young woman wearing the hijab suddenly stood and began screeching a chant in Arabic. Brixton spun around. Janet was looking at the woman as though she were a street performer entertaining passersby.

  “Janet!” he barked, and started back into the café, his hands outstretched toward her. He’d gotten only a few feet when the explosion occurred, an ear-splitting blast whose force hit him in the chest, sending him sprawling on his back on the sidewalk, his head making sharp contact with the concrete. Parts of a splintered table came flying in his direction, and he threw his arms over his face to shield it from the wooden shards and other debris that rained down—plates, glasses, skin, limbs, eyeglasses, knives and forks, carafes of wine and mugs of beer, clothing, pieces of chairs, calamari, boneless ribs, pizza slices, and a toy gorilla that had been held by a child at a table two removed from where they had sat.

  The lingering reverberation from the blast mingled with screams, final sounds from the maimed, expressions of horror from witnesses to the carnage. Brixton’s ears rang. He frantically discarded what had landed on him, twisted his torso, and used his hands to push himself up to a sitting position. He sat on the rubble-strewn sidewalk, blood dripping from the side of his face and back of his neck. He shook his head violently to try to clear the grayness from his mind, to make the incessant ringing stop, to make sense of what had just happened, of the legs and shoes of people rushing to the scene, of painful moans and wails of disbelief.

  Brixton stumbled to his feet to see what moments earlier had been a bustling café filled with happy people. That a slaughter had taken place was vibrantly and visually displayed. Bodies were everywhere, some piled on top of others, blood covering everything and everyone.

  He touched the side of his face and pulled bloody fingers away from the wound. He looked back into the café in search of his daughter but saw only a tangle of limbs and clothing where they had been sitting. “Oh, my God,” he whispered, then yelled, “Janet!” As he took a step in that direction, a second blast occurred, sending a ball of flame from somewhere inside the restaurant through the entrance to the outdoor area, its heat searing his face and eyelashes and causing him to stagger.