House Secrets

by Mike Lawson

Feeling the need to respond, DeMarco said, “No, ma’am. I’m just a lawyer. I’m . . .” Then he stopped. He didn’t think he should be discussing the reason for his visit with the senator’s wife, and Paul Morelli, immediately sensing DeMarco’s discomfort, said, “Joe’s just looking into a matter concerning a reporter, Lydia. Nothing significant.”

  Lydia arched an eyebrow and said, “Well, it would have been much more interesting if he’d been a hardboiled private eye. He looks like one.”

  “Lydia,” Morelli said, his impatience evident, “we need to . . .”

  “Oh, all right. I’m out of here. I’ll let you boys get back to whatever you’re doing.” As she passed through the doorway, her right hip bumped the door frame slightly, and she muttered, “Oops.”

  Morelli stared at the open door for a moment, then looked at DeMarco and said, “I assume you know what happened to our daughter, our Kate. It’s had horrible impact on us, particularly on Lydia. We’re both still recovering.”

  Again, DeMarco couldn’t help but be impressed with Morelli’s diplomacy. Without saying anything derogatory, he’d just explained why his wife might have had a couple of drinks too many and had acted a bit silly in front of a complete stranger.

  “Yes, sir,” DeMarco said, “and I’m sorry for your loss.”

  DeMarco knew that Kate Morelli had actually been Paul Morelli’s stepdaughter—Lydia’s daughter from her first marriage—and that Paul had adopted her when she was less than two. She had been sixteen years old when she died in an automobile accident six months ago. DeMarco remembered a newspaper picture of the senator at his daughter’s funeral, supporting his wife, tears streaming down his handsome face. The photo had been a portrait of the perfect family with the center gouged out.

  Morelli shook his head, as if scattering memories he didn’t want to recall, and said, “Where were we, Joe?” Then answering his own question, he said, “Oh, yes. You were about to tell me what Terry Finley’s death has to do with me.”

  DeMarco started to tell him about the three men on Finley’s list—Bachaud, Frey, and Reams—and when he did, Abe Burrows erupted.

  “Not this bullshit again,” Burrows said. “You know, DeMarco, this stuff with those three guys happened anywhere from five to fourteen years ago. Fourteen years! But people still keep talking about it. These men, they all did something dumb, but just because their mistakes helped Paul’s career there’s always some asshole implying that Paul caused their problems. And the Republican Party . . . Those bastards have spent thousands, maybe millions, investigating these three incidents, coincidences, whatever the hell they are—and they spent the money because they were hoping to find something to pin on the senator. Like maybe he paid that little faggot to climb into bed with Reams.”

  “Abe,” Morelli said, apparently not happy with his aide’s choice of words.

  “Well, it’s such horseshit!” Burrows said. “And I’ll tell you something else. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Terry Finley . . . He was like one of those snappy little dogs you see. You know, those mutts about six inches high that are always straining against the leash, trying to get at you like they’re pit bulls. That was Finley. He was always searching for the next big scandal, the next Watergate, the next Lewinsky—and he never found it. He worked at the Post fifteen years, and like you just heard, people like the senator didn’t even know he existed.”

  “I can’t confirm Abe’s impression of Terry Finley,” Morelli said to DeMarco, “but I have to agree with him about one thing: these allegations that I engineered the tragedies that befell those men is a subject that’s not only baseless but one that’s been completely discredited.”

  DeMarco had the impression that this was the way the two men worked together: Burrows was the one who made the violent, emotional frontal attack while Morelli came across as being cool and reasonable. Or maybe he was cool and reasonable.

  “There were two other names on the list, Senator,” DeMarco said. “Two women. A Marcia Davenport and a Janet Tyler.”

  “Who?” Morelli said. “Do you recognize those names, Abe?”

  “No,” Burrows said.

  “Davenport is an interior decorator. You or your wife apparently consulted with her regarding this house when you first moved to Washington.”

  “Is that right?” Morelli said. Then he snapped his fingers, “Wait a minute. A small, blond woman?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Right. I remember her now. She came to the house a couple of times, but as I recall, she and Lydia weren’t able to work together. But that’s all I remember. I don’t think I even spoke to the woman.”

  That pretty much matched what Marcia Davenport had told DeMarco.

  “And the other woman?” Morelli said. “What was her name again?”

  “Janet Tyler. She worked on your staff when you were the mayor.”

  “Well, shit,” Burrows said. “The entire New York city government was part of the senator’s staff back then.”

  “So you don’t remember her either, Abe?” Morelli said.

  “No,” Burrows said.

  “Joe, I’ll tell you what,” Morelli said. “Why don’t you stop by my office tomorrow and Abe’ll see what we have in our files on the Tyler woman. I mean, I’m just as curious as you are as to why her name would be linked to mine.”

  “Aw, come on, Paul,” Burrows said. “This guy Finley, he’s got a bug up his ass about his kid’s death, but it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  “Richard Finley was a distinguished member of Congress, Abe,” Morelli said, “and his son died tragically. If we can do something to help make sense of what happened, I want to help.”

  DeMarco had to admit: he was pretty impressed with Paul Morelli.

  Chapter 7

  It took half an hour to set up the phone call.

  Paul Morelli couldn’t call the old man directly. He first had to call another man, and that man would tell the old man that they had to talk. He gave the middleman the number of a phone booth at the Guards restaurant on M Street in Georgetown. He had picked the Guards because it was close to his home and not usually frequented by the hordes of college kids who invaded every other drinking establishment on M Street. His other reason for selecting that particular place was that it had a phone booth—an actual booth where you could shut the door—and the booth wasn’t too close to either the dining room or the bar.

  He arrived at the restaurant wearing glasses with heavy black frames and clear lenses, a baseball hat, and a light jacket. The jacket wasn’t necessary for warmth; he wore it because he could turn up the collar to further obscure his face. He knew, however, that if anyone studied him closely he’d be recognized. He entered the restaurant and immediately proceeded to the phone booth. The bartender was engaged in a conversation with a good-looking brunette and barely noticed his arrival.

  Two minutes later the phone rang.

  “Your people may have screwed up with that reporter,” Morelli said. “The reporter’s father found a number of suspicious things about his son’s death, and now there’s a guy from Congress looking into it.”

  “What sort of things?” the old man said. His voice, as usual, was calm and completely devoid of emotion. Morelli had always admired this about him: he never allowed emotions to cloud his judgment. Emotions were counterproductive. Or maybe, he thought, the old man didn’t have any emotions.

  Morelli quickly told him about Dick Finley’s concerns.

  “None of that’s significant,” the old man said.

  “True,” Morelli said. “But your guys missed something. They didn’t check Finley’s wallet, and inside it were five names written on a cocktail napkin.” Morelli quickly discussed the three men on Finley’s list. The old man was familiar with the names so the discussion didn’t take long.

  “That’s old news,” the old man said. “You said five names. Who were the other two?”

  “A couple of women, a Marcia Davenport and a Janet Tyler.” Morelli hadn�
�t wanted to tell him about the women but finally decided that he had to. Dick Finley knew their names and now so did DeMarco and whoever DeMarco had talked to. Maybe even the police. The old man’s ability to acquire information was incredible—his tentacles spread in all directions—and it was always possible that he might learn about Finley’s list from some other source. But Morelli knew that he was on very dangerous ground here.

  “Who are they?” the old man asked.

  “Davenport’s a decorator who did some work on my house here in D.C. Tyler was on my staff in New York.”

  “What do these women know?” the old man said.

  “They don’t know anything,” Morelli said.

  This was the only time Paul Morelli could recall ever having lied to the old man.

  “I went through Finley’s laptop and his notebooks,” Morelli said. “According to what was there, Finley had contacted these women because I’d fired both of them. I guess he was hoping that they’d have something negative to say, something that he could use, but they didn’t, of course. Finley was grasping at straws.”

  “You sure?” the old man said.

  “Yes. The problem isn’t the list or the people on it,” Morelli said. “The problem is that this investigator may be plowing the same ground that Finley plowed.”

  “And you still don’t have any idea how Finley got the doctor’s name or connected him to . . .”

  “No. I don’t know how he made the connection.”

  “So what do you wanna do? Do you want this investigator taken care of?”

  For the old man it was that easy: You want somebody gone? No sweat.

  “Absolutely not,” Morelli said. “If something happened to him, that might get people really digging, people like the FBI. I just want him watched for a while. I think he’ll give up in a couple of days, conclude there was nothing strange about Finley’s death, but until he does I’d like him watched. What I don’t want him doing is talking to the doctor.”

  “You know,” the old man said, “the doc, he’s been useful lots of times. But since we can’t figure out how the reporter got on to him, well, I think maybe it’s time . . .”

  “Yeah, I think you’re right,” Morelli said. “But this investigator, let’s just watch him. Oh, and one other thing: have someone come by and get Finley’s laptop. I want it found someplace. Finley’s father is suspicious because it’s missing.”

  “You sure the computer’s safe?”

  “Yes. The important stuff was in a notebook, the one he had on him the night he died.”

  “Okay,” the old man. “So what’s this investigator’s name?”

  “DeMarco,” Paul Morelli said. “Joe DeMarco.” Morelli thought about mentioning that DeMarco was Harry Foster’s godson, but decided not to. He wanted to keep it simple for the old man.

  The old man was silent a moment then he said, “We’re so close, Paul. I never thought we’d get this far.”

  Morelli almost said: I did. But he didn’t. Instead he said, “I didn’t either, but we have, and we’re going to make it. Thanks to you.”

  Chapter 8

  DeMarco retrieved his mail from the box and the first thing he saw was a letter from Elle Myers. He hadn’t seen her in almost six months, and the last time he’d spoken to her had been three months ago. He opened the envelope, read the short letter, and then just sat there for a long time thinking. It was ten minutes before he trudged slowly up to the second floor of his house.

  DeMarco lived on P Street in Georgetown, in a small two-story townhouse made of white-painted brick. When DeMarco’s wife divorced him she had left him his heavily mortgaged home but she took almost everything else he owned, including all the furniture. For nearly two years after her departure his will to refurnish the place had been sapped by her infidelity: she’d had an affair with his cousin. He eventually replaced much of the furniture she’d taken, and the first floor of his home once again looked as if a normal person dwelled there. But the second floor of the house, which consisted of two small bedrooms and a half bath, was still barren except for two objects: a secondhand upright piano and a fifty-pound punching bag that hung from an exposed ceiling rafter.

  DeMarco had bought the piano on a whim at an estate sale. He had played when he was young and still remembered how to read music. He knew he’d never be able to play anything requiring real talent, but he figured if the music was slow enough, the grace notes rare enough, he might be able to entertain an audience of one. He also figured that he needed another hobby—something besides pounding the heavy bag. He and two friends had nearly broken their backs getting the instrument up the narrow stairway to the second floor of his house, and he decided, that day, that if he ever tired of playing it he would turn it into kindling before ever attempting to get it back down the stairs.

  He played for an hour, pecking away at “Black Coffee,” a blues song that Ella Fitzgerald used to sing. He mangled the song, his left hand even more ham-fisted than normal. As he played he thought of Ella singing—and of a time he’d danced with Elle.

  He’d met her on a vacation to Key West. She was a school teacher who lived in Iowa and he liked everything about her—her looks, her sense of humor, the fact that she cared about teaching kids—but it had been impossible to sustain the relationship, her living a thousand miles away. He could have relocated—or she could have—but neither was willing to make that sort of commitment, to give up good jobs and begin life over in an unfamiliar place. They inevitably drifted apart. The letter he’d received said that she had gotten engaged, to a nice guy, a local fireman—but the whole tone of the letter was oh, what might have been.

  So he played his piano and thought of Elle and felt sorry for himself. He imagined himself old and alone, feeding pigeons on a park bench on a bleak winter day. He could hear his mother bemoaning the fact that she had no grandchildren and never would. And he realized, being an only child, that the DeMarco line would end with him. Fortunately, before he could consider hunting down a knife to slash his wrists, the phone rang. It was Neil.

  “That phone number,” Neil said. “I have something for you, but I don’t know what it means.”

  That was a very unusual admission coming from Neil.

  Since Neil wouldn’t tell DeMarco what he had found unless DeMarco had a phone equipped with an NSA-approved scrambler, DeMarco had to go to Neil’s home to get the information. Thankfully, Neil lived less than two miles away.

  Neil’s wife was home with him, and unlike Neil, she was a sweet, normal person. After exchanging their vows, she’d set about, as women usually do, changing her husband in various and subtle ways—and Neil didn’t even know that he was being changed. At his office, Neil was pompous and condescending and liked to show off, but in his home, his wife in the kitchen and able to hear him, he tended to curb his more annoying habits.

  “As I told you,” he said to DeMarco, “I came up with every possible number combination associated with that partial phone number. I eliminated all the unassigned numbers, then identified who the remaining numbers belonged to. What I did was, I cross-referenced . . . Aw, never mind, I won’t bore you with the details, but let me tell you it was a lot of work. Anyway, I found four people who were interesting. One was extremely interesting.

  “The first is a woman named Tammy Johnson. She works at the Justice Department. I can imagine a number of reasons why a reporter might be talking to somebody at Justice about Paul Morelli, but the problem is that Ms. Johnson works in personnel. She handles things like health insurance and pensions, so I doubt that she was a hot source for Terry Finley, but I’ll leave that for you to confirm.

  “The second number,” Neil said, “belongs to a gentleman who lives in southeast D.C. and goes by the curious name of DeLeon White. Mr. White is an independent pharmaceutical retailer.”

  Fuckin’ Neil; his wife still had a lot of work to do. “You mean he sells dope,” DeMarco said.

  “Crack cocaine, to be precise. So maybe DeLeon sells crack
to Morelli.”

  “I kinda doubt that,” DeMarco said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Neil said. “It’s the last two names that were most intriguing. The third phone number is assigned to a Michelle Thomas, a lady who works for a very high-end escort service.”

  “A call girl?”

  “Oui. Now Terry Finley was single and I assume he had some sort of sexual outlet, but I doubt if he used Ms. Thomas’s services.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because she’s way out of his price range. Michelle Thomas is Neiman Marcus. Terry Finley was Kmart. But Paul Morelli, on the other hand, he could afford her.”

  “Yeah, that is interesting,” DeMarco said. “The problem is that Paul Morelli’s so damn-good looking that women would pay him to sleep with them. I doubt he’s using hookers.”

  “One never knows,” Neil said. “Now we come to the fourth number.” Neil waited a dramatic beat then said, “The fourth phone number is assigned to Lydia Morelli’s cell phone.”

  “What!”

  “Could just be a coincidence. Tomorrow I’ll pull the phone records for these four people and see if any of them called Terry Finley. According to Finley’s records, he never called them.”

  DeMarco returned to his place and immediately went to the kitchen and removed a bottle of vodka from the freezer compartment of his refrigerator. The vodka was made in Russia and there was a pretty green label on the bottle. It had cost fifteen bucks.

  DeMarco had been experimenting with vodkas of late. Emma had introduced him to Grey Goose and he liked it, but it cost about thirty bucks a bottle. And in a bar, you could pay twelve bucks for a Grey Goose martini; they should say “stick ’em up” when they served you. Then one night he’d been channel surfing, and he caught a show in progress that was essentially about the ignorance of vodka drinkers. On the show they gave five people—all pretentious bozos who claimed a preference for high-end brands—six different vodkas to taste in unlabeled shot glasses. The vodkas ranged in price from top-shelf to bargain-basement, and, as could have been predicted, the drinkers couldn’t identify their favorite brand and three of the five concluded that the cheapest booze was the best booze.