House Secrets

by Mike Lawson

  “In 1996,” Neil continued, “Morelli became the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City. His opponent was a popular fellow with a good record named Walter Frey. Frey was the New York State attorney general at the time, and four months prior to the election he was accused of throwing a major case involving a company in Albany. Emails between Frey and the company were discovered, the emails indicating that Frey had been providing helpful information to the defendant’s attorneys. Then, and although unrelated to the case, it was also discovered that Frey was having an affair with a young lady who worked for him. Frey eventually admitted to the affair but he claimed, and looked quite stupid doing so, that the young lady had been hired by someone to seduce him. And if you look at photos of Walter Frey, it is hard to imagine why the woman would have succumbed to his charms. Ironically, the affair damaged him more politically than the case-fixing accusations because Frey had always been such a big family values guy.”

  “Was he ever convicted of a crime?” DeMarco asked.

  “No,” Neil said. “The evidence was circumstantial at best, but it didn’t matter because his reputation was destroyed by the press. And Paul Morelli became mayor.”

  Neil licked a fat finger and flipped to a new page in the file. “Now to Mr. Reams. In 2001, while still mayor, Paul Morelli decided to run for the Senate. Polls showed that he was the people’s choice but the Democratic old guard in New York wanted David Reams. Reams was well-connected, came from money, and had served in the House. The thinking was that Morelli was young and his time would come, and that Reams had more experience and connections in D.C.”

  “Oh, I remember this,” Emma said.

  “Yes,” Neil said. “One fine day, the police burst into a motel room on Staten Island and find Reams in bed with a sixteen-year-old boy. Reams claimed that he had no idea who the boy was or how he had ended up in the motel room. He said he must have been drugged and demanded that his blood be tested, which it was, and the results came back negative for narcotics. Reams was convicted because of the boy’s age and served ten months. And Paul Morelli was elected to the Senate.”

  “What about Tyler and Davenport,” DeMarco said. “What happened to those guys?”

  “Those guys are women,” Neil said.

  Chapter 5

  According to Neil, J. Tyler was Janet Tyler. Tyler had worked briefly for Paul Morelli when he was mayor of New York, which Neil discovered by searching W-2 forms provided by the city to its employees in 1999. M. Davenport was Marcia Davenport, an interior decorator who had apparently helped the Morellis decorate their Georgetown home when Morelli moved to Washington to begin his first term in the Senate. Neil’s file on Davenport contained a copy of a check signed by Paul Morelli’s wife and a billing statement pilfered from Davenport’s home computer showing that she’d charged the Morellis $365 for her services.

  But that was it. There were no news articles or police reports or any other public documentation on either woman to explain why they were on Terry Finley’s list.

  Since Davenport lived in Washington, D.C., and Tyler lived in New York, DeMarco decided to begin with Davenport. She was thirty-six years old, had been married briefly, but was now divorced. She had no children and lived in a condo on Connecticut Avenue not too far from the National Zoo. Riggs National Bank held the mortgage on her condo, her credit rating was excellent, and according to her tax return, she made seventy-two thousand dollars last year.

  The concept of privacy evaporated when people like Neil booted up their computers.

  The woman who came to the door was quite attractive in DeMarco’s opinion. Blond hair; large, warm brown eyes; and a slight overbite that DeMarco thought was sexy as hell. She was small, no more than five foot four, but had a lush figure: relatively large breasts, a small waist, and a nicely rounded backside. She was wearing a white blouse and jeans, and she was barefoot—one of the advantages of working out of one’s own home. A pair of reading glasses was stuck on top of her head and she was holding a piece of cloth in one hand, some sort of fabric sample, DeMarco guessed.

  “Ms. Davenport, my name’s Joe DeMarco. I work for Congress and I was wondering if I could speak to you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’m really busy right now. So if you’re conducting a poll or something . . .”

  “I’m not a pollster. I need to talk to you about Senator Morelli.”

  At the mention of Morelli’s name, Davenport inhaled sharply, her lips closed in a tight line, and the sexy overbite disappeared. DeMarco couldn’t immediately categorize the look on the woman’s face. Fear? Anxiety? Maybe anger. Whatever emotions she was feeling, fond memories of Paul Morelli were not included.

  “What’s this about?” Davenport said. She was crushing the fabric sample, but might not have realized it.

  “May I come inside?” DeMarco asked.

  “No. And I want to know why you’re here.”

  That was a hard question for DeMarco to answer. He didn’t want to tell her that he was there because her name had been found on a napkin in a dead man’s wallet.

  “I just want to know about your experience working for Senator Morelli,” DeMarco said.

  “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you that. It’s a government matter relating to an investigation in progress.”

  For a minute, DeMarco thought that Davenport was going to refuse to say anything but then she said, “I never worked for the senator. I worked for his wife, and I only consulted with her twice.” She hesitated a second, then added, “Things just didn’t work out.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means she didn’t like my design ideas. Now I have to go,” Davenport said and closed the door.

  DeMarco arrived at the Starbucks on Pennsylvania Avenue at exactly 2 p.m. and was relieved when the Speaker’s limo arrived only five minutes later. It wasn’t unusual for Mahoney to keep him waiting forty minutes—or to forget their meetings altogether.

  He had called Mahoney right after meeting with Marcia Davenport and convinced his boss to meet with him before he left town. Mahoney was on his way to San Francisco to give a lecture at some convention, meaning that he’d adlib a twenty-minute speech, pocket ten thousand dollars, then spend the rest of his time in California touring Napa Valley wineries. And it didn’t appear that he would be touring alone. When the Speaker’s driver opened the rear door of the limo, DeMarco caught a brief glimpse of a shapely leg encased in black hose.

  DeMarco had decided it was time to get Mahoney’s advice. The connection between Terry Finley and Paul Morelli made him nervous. Morelli was not only a man in the political stratosphere, he was also a member of Mahoney’s party. DeMarco, therefore, thought it prudent to let Mahoney know what he had learned before proceeding any further.

  Mahoney ambled from the limo to the outside table where DeMarco waited. DeMarco was sitting outside because he knew that Mahoney would want to smoke, and would whine if he couldn’t. He sat down heavily and reached across the table to take one of the two paper cups of coffee that DeMarco had purchased. He took a sip of the coffee, winced at the taste, and then dipped into his pocket for his flask, the small silver one embossed with the Marine Corps seal. The seal on the flask matched a tattoo on his right forearm, and when he spoke to veterans’ groups his sleeves were always rolled up. He smacked his lips in satisfaction at his laced coffee and looked a question at DeMarco.

  “Dick Finley thinks his son may have been killed,” DeMarco said. If you didn’t start out with a headline, you lost Mahoney’s attention rapidly. DeMarco then told Mahoney about the napkin that had been found in Terry Finley’s wallet and all the other suspicions Dick Finley had about his son’s death.

  When he told Mahoney what Neil had learned about the three men on Finley’s list, Mahoney looked at his watch, then over at the limo, and then he said something that surprised DeMarco. “Shit, everybody knows about that stuff. Before Morelli was elected to the Senate, there was an article in the Times, or m
aybe it was in one of them tight-assed New York magazines. Anyway, the article said how Morelli was so fuckin’ lucky that he oughta be buyin’ lotto tickets instead of workin’.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t luck,” DeMarco said.

  Mahoney snorted; not an attractive sound. “A guy gets in a wreck; another guy gets caught dippin’ his wick into a secretary; and a third guy is nabbed for porkin’ teenage boys. There’s an old saying, son: Never attribute to malice something that can be explained by stupidity.”

  “Good point,” DeMarco said, but he was also rather annoyed that Neil hadn’t told him that everything he’d learned had been written up in a magazine.

  “So you think I should drop this?” DeMarco said. “I can take it further, talk to some of these men, go up to New York and see this lady, but . . .”

  “No, I’ll tell you what I want you to do. I want you to go see Paul Morelli.”

  “You’re kidding,” DeMarco said.

  “No. I may owe Dick Finley—he was a big help to me when I first came to this town—but I owe it to the country to let Paul know what’s going on.” Mahoney finished his coffee and said, “Morelli’s the best thing to happen to the party since FDR—or me—and he’s gonna be the next president of the United States. He’s a good guy—maybe a great guy—so he needs to know that some reporter was trying to dig up dirt on him. And if Terry Finley really was killed, which I doubt, he needs to know that too. So I want you to go talk to him and tell him what you’ve learned. I’ll call him and get you in. Now I got a plane to catch.”

  Chapter 6

  DeMarco’s illusions had been mangled so often by politicians that he thought he should qualify for handicapped parking—but he had to admit that he was pretty impressed with Paul Morelli.

  Morelli hailed from a blue-collar family, the youngest of five children. He attended college on a poor-boy scholarship and according to legend, obtained his law degree studying twelve hours a day and doing charitable work in the time remaining. He apparently never slept. Ambitious, brilliant, and charismatic, he took to politics as baby eagles take to the air and became one of the youngest occupants of Gracie Mansion. And as mayor of New York, he was a grand success: crime dipped; no ugly scandals marred his term; labor unions refrained from untimely, crippling strikes. Then off to the Senate he flew, and the Senate, all the commentators concurred, was but a pit stop on his race to the Oval Office.

  Certainly the way he looked wasn’t a hindrance. He was a youthful forty-seven, his hair was a curly black crown streaked with just the right amount of gray, and he had a profile that plastic surgeons could use for a template. He was also tall and perfectly proportioned, and if he tired of politics he could model swimwear. But even his critics had to admit that he was more than a pretty face. He was a dazzling strategist, the consummate negotiator, and one of the most eloquent speakers to ever choke a microphone. And the things he spoke of, the causes he championed, the battles he fought were always so . . . right. The last Democrat with such magnetism had been a man named Kennedy.

  When DeMarco rang his doorbell that evening, Morelli answered the door himself. He was dressed casually: an NYU sweatshirt, soft-looking beige slacks, and loafers. The sleeves of the sweatshirt were pulled up on his forearms, exposing strong wrists matted with coarse, dark hair. DeMarco felt stiff and overdressed in his suit and tie.

  Morelli led DeMarco to a comfortable den, commenting on the warm autumn weather as they walked. Already in the den was a man that Morelli introduced as his chief of staff, Abe Burrows. Burrows sat in one of the two chairs in front of Morelli’s desk and had a stack of paper in his lap that was six inches high. He nodded at DeMarco but didn’t rise to shake his hand.

  Unlike Paul Morelli, Burrows wasn’t physically impressive. He was short and overweight, his gut spilling softly over his belt. He had fleshy lips, a lumpy potato of a nose, and thin sandy hair that was styled in a curly Afro in a vain attempt to disguise the fact that he was going bald.

  “Abe and I were just going over a few things,” Morelli said with a tired smile. “There just isn’t enough time during the day and I’m going out of town tomorrow.”

  Morelli pointed DeMarco to the chair next to Burrows then took a seat in the high-backed chair behind his desk. Even dressed in a sweatshirt, Morelli looked like a man who belonged behind a big desk, giving orders, and DeMarco couldn’t help but feel inadequate. Here was a guy just a few years older than him, yet while Joe DeMarco was a GS-13 in a dead-end job, Paul Morelli was going to be running for president.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee, Joe?” Morelli said, and when DeMarco said yes, Morelli glanced over at Burrows. Burrows frowned at being drafted as DeMarco’s waiter, but put the stack of papers aside and left to get the coffee.

  “John Mahoney asked me to see you tonight, Joe, but he wasn’t too clear on why. Do you work for John?”

  “No, sir, not directly,” DeMarco lied. “I’m just a lawyer who does odd jobs for Congress.” To deflect Morelli from asking more questions about who employed him and what he did, DeMarco said, “By the way, sir, my godfather’s done some work for you.”

  “Your godfather?”

  “Yes, sir. Harry Foster.”

  “Well, I’ll be darned,” Morelli said. “Harry’s a good man; I’ve known him for years.” Then Morelli asked DeMarco a question that he thought was odd: “Are you and Harry close, Joe?”

  “Uh, no, sir, not anymore. We were when I was a kid, but since I live here now and Harry lives in New York . . .”

  “I understand,” Morelli said. At that moment Burrows returned with coffee for DeMarco and the senator. Morelli thanked Burrows, took a sip from his cup, then said, “So, Joe, what can I do for you?”

  “Mr. Mahoney got a call from an old friend, an ex-congressman named Dick Finley who retired about ten years ago. Finley’s son just died and the police ruled the death as accidental, but Finley thinks his son may have been killed because of something he was working on.”

  “What did his son do?” Morelli asked.

  “He was a reporter. He worked for the Washington Post.”

  “Oh, that guy,” Burrows said.

  “You knew him, Abe?” Morelli said.

  “Yeah, I knew him,” Burrows said, then made a face that led DeMarco to conclude that Burrows wasn’t a Terry Finley fan.

  “What makes Mr. Finley think his son was killed?” Morelli said. DeMarco told him.

  “Hmm. Sounds rather speculative. But then, I imagine Mr. Finley is quite distraught by his son’s death. I assume he’s also a rather elderly gentleman.”

  “Yes, sir,” DeMarco said, but he was thinking that Morelli was very good. Without having said anything negative, he’d just implied that Dick Finley was not only out of his mind with grief but possibly senile.

  “At any rate,” Morelli said, “what does this have to do with me, Joe?” Before DeMarco could answer the question, the door to the den swung open and the senator’s wife entered the room.

  DeMarco had seen newspaper photos of Lydia Morelli posing at the senator’s side at various Washington galas, but the photos hadn’t captured her frailty. She was petite, no more than five-two, and painfully thin. DeMarco had read that she was five or six years older than her husband, but in the same room with him, their age difference appeared closer to a decade. Nonetheless, she was still an attractive woman with large, blue-gray eyes and blond hair cut in a style that framed good cheekbones. Unlike the senator, she wasn’t dressed casually. She was wearing a beige-colored pantsuit, a pink blouse with a wide collar, and high-heeled shoes.

  Lydia’s eyes widened momentarily in surprise when she saw DeMarco sitting in the den but she recovered quickly, smiled at him, and said to her husband, “I’m sorry, Paul. I didn’t know you had company.”

  “Hi,” Morelli said to his wife. “Where’ve you been?”

  Morelli had asked the question casually but DeMarco noticed a slight edge to his tone, as if he was annoyed that his wife had gone out or tha
t she hadn’t told him where she was going.

  “Oh, I had dinner with an old sorority sister,” Lydia said. She then raised her right fist into the air in a halfhearted manner, muttered “Go Alpha Pi,” and walked over to an armoire on the far side of the room. When she opened the armoire, DeMarco could see that it was actually a liquor cabinet filled with bottles of booze, glasses, and decanters. “I’ll be out of your way in just a shake,” Lydia said, her back to the men as she looked into the cabinet. “I just want to make myself a drink to take into the tub.”

  DeMarco could see that the senator was somewhat embarrassed by his wife’s behavior. When she had said “sister,” she’d slurred the word slightly, and he noticed that as she walked toward the liquor cabinet she’d moved carefully, as if she was making an effort to maintain her balance. She’d obviously had several drinks with her sorority pal and was a bit tipsy.

  Bottles in the cabinet clanked together loudly as Lydia searched for the one she wanted. A bottle of scotch clutched firmly by the neck, she turned and smiled at DeMarco again. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to this handsome gentleman, Paul?” she said.

  “Oh, of course,” Morelli said. “Joe, this is my wife Lydia. Lydia, this is Joe DeMarco. Joe’s an investigator for the House.”

  “Really,” Lydia said. “Like a private eye?”

  Burrows laughed, probably thinking that Lydia was making a joke, and she immediately shot him a look that wiped the smile off his face. DeMarco had noticed that she’d ignored Burrows when she entered the room, and judging by her reaction to his comment, it was apparent she didn’t like the man.