by Mike Lawson
Marcus’s eyes narrowed ominously, and remembering the young woman’s warning, DeMarco wished he had thought of a more diplomatic way to call Marcus a liar. He was dangerous enough sober; when he was drunk and ravaged with grief, antagonizing him could be fatal.
“Did your brother have a car?” DeMarco asked.
Marcus paused before speaking, his face suspicious. Knowing DeMarco could verify his answer, he finally said, “No. Why you askin’?”
“I think you know why. You drove your brother to the senator’s house the night he was killed. Didn’t you? Earlier, when you talked about delivering the gun at midnight, you said, ‘I didn’t think nothing about that.’ You drove him, didn’t you?” DeMarco repeated.
Marcus shifted in his seat, sitting up straight, growing larger before DeMarco’s eyes.
“You trying to make me an accomplice, is that what you’re doin’?”
“No. I don’t think you’re an accomplice. I think you’re a witness.” Marcus nodded his head slowly, unconscious of the gesture, but he didn’t say anything.
“Tell me what happened. Please.”
Marcus still didn’t respond.
“Mr. Perry . . .”
“Yeah, I drove him. I sat in the car when he went in the house. He said he’d only be a minute. Anyway, he goes in the house—I couldn’t see who let him in—and about five minutes later I hear two shots. About two minutes after that, I hear another shot. I didn’t know what to do. I knew something had gone wrong, but I didn’t want to go chargin’ into that house, not in that white neighborhood. So I sat there waitin’ for Isaiah to come out, prayin’ he’d come out, but this white guy comes out of the house instead. I seen him clear. Short, dumpy dude with kinky hair. I was about to get out of the car and grab the little fucker—ask what happened to my brother—but then I hear all these sirens screamin’ up the block and I got the hell outta there.”
DeMarco could see now that it wasn’t just grief that was tearing Marcus Perry apart—it was guilt. He felt personally responsible for what had happened to his younger brother, and was questioning his own courage for not having done something when he heard the shots.
“So now what?” Marcus asked defiantly. “You gonna run to the cops and tell ’em I helped my brother shoot that lady? You can’t prove shit.”
“I’m not going to do anything, Mr. Perry. But you need to do something. You need to tell the police what really happened.”
Marcus shook his head slowly. He’d started to speak when his eyes focused sharply on something behind DeMarco. DeMarco turned to see what he was looking at, and saw the young woman in the red dress dancing with a man. Every move the woman made was an act of seduction. With her body, she couldn’t help it; she would have looked seductive cleaning fish.
DeMarco turned back to face Marcus and saw he was still focused on the woman and her dance partner. There was a small, cruel smile on his face.
“You need to talk to the police,” DeMarco said again.
“What do you think would happen if I went to the cops?” Marcus said, still looking at the woman. He faced DeMarco then. “Well, lemme tell you. They’d think I was there helpin’ Isaiah, that I was his driver, but like getaway driver. No way in hell they’d believe he was deliverin’ that man a gun.”
DeMarco argued with him briefly, urging him to go to the police, but he knew Marcus was right. With his record, no one would believe that he wasn’t involved in the killing.
“No, I’m not gonna talk to the police,” Marcus said softly, “but I am gonna set things right. Yeah, I’m gonna set things right.”
He wasn’t talking to DeMarco; he was making a promise to himself.
“Don’t be a fool,” DeMarco said. “Paul Morelli’s a United States senator, not some drug runner over in Southeast. If you want to do something, go to the police.”
Marcus stood up, rising slowly to his six-foot-five-inch height. DeMarco stood to face him.
Marcus glanced over at the woman on the dance floor again, then looked down at DeMarco. There was a sheen of tears glazing his eyes. He reached out with his long arms, placed his hands on DeMarco’s shoulders, then leaned down so their faces were almost touching. He grinned at DeMarco, the grin incongruous with the bright tears in his eyes.
“You’re really full of shit. You know that?”
Marcus stepped around DeMarco and began to walk slowly toward the dance floor, toward the woman in the red dress—and the man dancing with her. DeMarco left the club quickly. He didn’t want to witness the mayhem that was about to occur.
Chapter 35
Blake Hanover was wearing the same yellow pajamas that he had on the last time Emma had seen him. He sat in his Barcalounger and the green oxygen tank on the floor next to his chair hissed like Eve’s serpent as it helped him breathe. He looked so much worse than he had on Emma’s previous visit that she wondered if he was wearing the same clothes because he didn’t have the strength to change them.
The apartment smelled of an old man dying.
“I need your help with Charlie Eklund,” Emma said.
Hanover smiled, and Emma could see that even that took an effort. And she knew why he was smiling: she knew how ironic it was that she was coming to him for help. But Hanover didn’t have the strength to make a sarcastic comment. All he said was, “Why?”
“It’s a long story, Blake,” she said. She realized immediately that she had never called him by his first name before. “But the bottom line is that Eklund’s helping a man become president, and the man he’s helping is a murderer.”
“They don’t usually become murderers until after they become president,” Hanover said.
Maybe he wasn’t as weak as Emma thought.
“But how can I help?” Hanover said.
“I need a way to control Eklund. I need leverage,” Emma said.
“Good luck with that,” Hanover said. “You’re not going to find anything funny with his finances. Charlie’s rich. He was born into money. And if he decided to steal money . . . Well, a guy who’s able to hide the CIA’s money trail from Congress and the GAO wouldn’t have any problem at all hiding his own money.
“And if you’re thinking of sex as a hook, you can forget that too. I truly believe Charlie’s asexual. He’s never married, and as far as anyone knows, he’s never had a bunch of girlfriends. For years folks thought he might be gay, but there’s no evidence of that either. What I’m saying is that even when Charlie was young, sex didn’t seem to be a priority, and at the age he is now, I’m sure it’s not one. So if you were thinking of getting him using sex or money, you’re going to have to go a different way.”
“Any suggestions?”
Hanover just sat there for a minute saying nothing, seeming to focus all his energy on getting his next breath. He finally said, “All I know is that the only thing that Charlie Eklund cares about is the CIA. The Company’s his whole life. If you want to get him off your back you need to go after what he cares about.”
Hanover opened his mouth, to say something else, but then started coughing—a raspy, wet, horrible sound. Emma went to his kitchen and filled a glass with tap water. She held the glass to Hanover’s parched lips and he took a few small sips then motioned for her to remove the glass.
“Blake,” Emma said, “do you have anyone to help you?”
Hanover shook his head.
“Do you want me to call someone? I can arrange for a nurse to take care of you. I’ll pay.”
Hanover shook his head again. “Hospice is coming in the morning,” he said, “but I’m thinking, what’s the point of dragging this out? There’s an old .45 in the night table next to my bed. Do you think you could get it for me?”
“I can’t do that, Blake. I’m sorry.”
Hanover laughed. “I didn’t think so. I just thought it’d be fun to ask.”
As Emma drove, she thought about what Blake Hanover had said, that the only things Charlie Eklund cared about were his job and the CIA.
And then something occurred to her—something she could do to put Eklund back in his box.
She pulled her cell phone off her belt, then changed her mind. She doubted Eklund was monitoring her calls, but why take the chance? She turned in to a gas station that had a functioning pay phone and made a call. An hour later, positive that no one was tailing her, she was having coffee with two men at a bowling alley in Arlington.
Mike Koharski was in his sixties, gray-haired and stocky. He was an ex–navy chief who had spent twenty years on nuclear subs, and usually wore long-sleeved shirts to cover the tattoos he’d gotten during a shore leave he couldn’t remember. The second man was Sammy Wix. Sammy looked like a cross between a troll and a jockey, so short and homely that little kids were delighted by the sight of him. Mike and Sammy were partners in a detective agency, one that rarely made a profit because they were notoriously picky about their clients.
“I need a man tailed,” she told them. “And you need to be careful,” she added. “He has a very nervous bodyguard.”
Tit for tat, Charlie, she said to herself after she finished giving Mike and Sammy their instructions.
Emma’s next call was to DeMarco. “What’s the name of your reporter friend, the one who works at the Post?”
“Reggie Harmon,” DeMarco said.
“Is he a good reporter?” Emma had asked.
“He drinks,” DeMarco said.
“Good,” Emma said.
Then Emma called four people she knew, four people who were not only friends but people who owed her in ways both personal and professional. What she asked of these four people she would never have asked had the stakes not been so high. One was a woman who worked for the president’s national security adviser. Another was a man who worked as a high-level analyst at the National Security Agency. Another was a senior FBI agent who attended daily joint-intelligence meetings with the CIA and Homeland Security. The fourth person was a CIA section head, a married woman with whom Emma had once had an affair when they were both young. The last phone call bothered Emma the most, and she suspected that after this the woman would probably never speak to her again. But she had to ask.
What she asked of these four people was this: she wanted a current item that, if made known to the public, would be embarrassing to the CIA but would not in any way compromise national security or any vital ongoing CIA operation. That’s all.
Reggie Harmon entered the church and looked around. He wasn’t a Catholic and he didn’t know what confessionals looked like or where they were located in the church. Then he saw the three small doors on the east side of the church. The doors were about halfway down the rows of pews and one of the doors had an unlit, amber-colored light bulb above it. He entered the door closest to the altar as he’d been told.
It was dark inside the confessional, dark enough that it made him nervous. He reached for the flask in his pocket and took a drink, the vodka a burning comfort as he swallowed. He’d just returned the flask to his pocket when a small panel slid open. There was a wire-mesh screen where the panel had been, and he could see the shape of a face on the other side of the screen but he couldn’t make out the person’s features.
If he’d been a Catholic, Reggie didn’t think he’d have liked the idea of confessing his sins in such a place.
“Mr. Harmon?” the person on the other side of the screen said.
“Yeah,” Reggie said.
“I have some information for you.”
“Who are you?” Reggie said. He couldn’t tell if he was speaking to a man or a woman. The person was using some sort of device to disguise his or her voice, and sounded the way people did who’d had their voice boxes removed. Reggie, a smoker as well as a drinker, didn’t like the sound at all.
“All you need to know is that I work for the CIA. In your story you can call me a highly placed official at the agency.”
“But how do I know you are?” Reggie said.
“Because of what I’m about to tell you,” the person said.
The following day, on page A3 of the Washington Post, was a one-paragraph article. According to the Post, “a highly placed source at the CIA” had informed Washington Post reporter Reginald Harmon that a CIA agent had been deported from Jakarta, Indonesia, the previous day for attempting to bribe a member of the Indonesian cabinet. When Mr. Harmon contacted the Indonesian ambassador in Washington, D.C., Mr. Yussef Kalla confirmed the story and stated that the Indonesian government was “extremely disturbed” that an American intelligence operative would do such a thing. Mr. Kalla said he would be meeting with the secretary of state to discuss the incident. White House press secretary Gerald Hoffman said that he was not aware of the incident until contacted by the Post but was certain the president would be discussing the situation with CIA director Colin Murphy.
Chapter 36
Packy Morris was the chief of staff for the junior senator from Maryland. Unlike Abe Burrows and most other senior Senate aides DeMarco knew, Packy didn’t have a perpetually harried look about him. His casual air may have stemmed from a what-me-worry attitude toward life in general, but in all likelihood it was because his daddy owned half of downtown Baltimore. Packy Morris did not consider unemployment a significant threat.
Packy was six-seven and weighed over three hundred pounds, and the pounds were soft and flowing: if muscle was there, it was far, far below the surface. He had short dark hair that he combed forward and a fleshy, hooked nose. He always made DeMarco think of a jaded Roman emperor wrapped in an enormous white toga, thumb pointed downward, delightedly condemning a bleeding gladiator to death. Of late, Packy had taken to wearing red suspenders and bow ties, the suspenders looking like racing stripes on an eighteen-wheeler, the tie almost hidden by his many chins.
When DeMarco entered his office, Packy’s size-fourteen feet were resting on his desk and he was leaning back in his chair reading the sports section of the Baltimore Sun. He looked over the top of the paper at DeMarco and said, “I think the Ravens should invest their money in science. With the millions they’ve squandered on players, some egghead could have built them a bionic man by now. Like that movie Robocop. They could make Roboguard or Roboend. Something that wouldn’t be on the disabled list half the fucking season.”
“Are you still betting on the Ravens, Packy?”
“I’m not betting; I’m donating. I’m declaring my bookie a charitable institution on my taxes this year.”
“Tell me about Abe Burrows, Packy.”
“Brother Abe, my colleague in legislative servitude?”
Packy was a magnet for gossip; he gathered it to his bosom like a miser collected gold.
“Yeah. What’s your take on him?”
“Why are you asking?
“Just curious.”
“Just curious?” Packy repeated, his shrewd eyes narrowing. When Packy’s eyes narrowed, they disappeared into creases of fat.
“Yeah,” DeMarco said.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re curious?”
“No.”
“Gee, what a sweet deal. I help you—you tell me shit. How can I refuse?”
DeMarco didn’t say anything.
Several years ago, an unscrupulous lobbyist—an oxymoron, to be sure—had been hired to prevent Congress from passing a particular law. The lobbyist decided that one way to better ensure that he met his client’s objective was to blackmail certain legislators who were undecided on how to cast their vote. He hired several young women who were much better-looking than your average curbside hooker to lure the chosen lawmakers to their beds, and then used a hidden camera to photograph them in positions they wouldn’t want their wives to see.
DeMarco had been assigned by Mahoney to extricate one congressman who had been trapped in the lobbyist’s snare, and in the course of doing so, he came across photographs of Packy Morris. In the photos Packy was naked—a sight that still gave him nightmares—and he was sandwiched between two nude women whose faces had been made up to look like t
he actors’ in the musical Cats. DeMarco didn’t know why the lobbyist had compromising photos of Packy but he suspected it had to do with the fact Packy’s father was absurdly rich. He gave the negatives to Packy—and made no comments on sexual fantasies involving felines—but Packy had never been quite sure that DeMarco hadn’t kept a set of the pictures for himself.
“Okay,” Packy said, “but let me ask one thing: Whatever you’re working on, does it have anything to do with my favorite senator from Maryland?”
DeMarco raised his right hand—a gesture made by perjurer and truthsayer alike—and said, “I swear, Packy, I am doing nothing that will touch your boss.”
Packy’s eyes narrowed again as he attempted to measure DeMarco’s capacity for deceit. Skeptical, but apparently satisfied, he said, “The Cisco Kid and Pancho. Morelli’s the hero, of course, but he needs his Pancho, and Abe Burrows plays a very nasty Pancho.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve seen Morelli—all sweetness and reason, nary a harsh word for anyone. Well, before Morelli ever gets to the bargaining table, Abe runs around town stabbing people in the back and banging them over the head. We all play hardball up here, Joe, but Abe’s a pitcher that doesn’t just brush back the batters—he throws right at their heads and likes it when he beans ’em.”
“What’s their personal relationship? Are they close, are they friends? Is Burrows loyal to Morelli—I mean in more than an employer-employee sort of way?”
Packy thought for a moment, his lips moving as he speculated, as if he were chewing something very small with his large front teeth.
“Are they friends? No. But Burrows loves Morelli.”
“Loves him? You mean he’s gay?”
“No. Abe loves him platonically. He worships the ground Morelli walks on, and Morelli doesn’t even know Abe’s alive.”
“Do you have some basis for this insight, Packy?”
“Nothing empirical. Just a feeling I get when I see them together. You don’t think of senator and aide—you think of husband and subservient, adoring wife. And there’re stories,” Packy added, eyes twinkling, now enjoying his role as gossip spreader.