House Reckoning: A Joe DeMarco Thriller

by Mike Lawson

  “You want to live in D.C.?” She said this like Washington was an Eskimo village near the North Pole.

  “Yeah. There’re a lot of opportunities there.” Then realizing that maybe his career opportunities weren’t at the top of her list, he added, “You’ve always had a good time when you’ve been there before. It’s an exciting place with all the politics, and there are a lot of great places to eat and drink.”

  Now she made this face like New York was the only place where they knew how to cook.

  “Anyway, I was thinking you could come down this summer, stay a week or two, get to know the city better. And by then, maybe I’ll have a place of my own.” He hoped.

  “What would I tell my mother?”

  Before he could tell her that her mother wasn’t all that bright and he’d come up with an acceptable lie, his damn cousin walked into the bar. What the hell was he doing here? Why wasn’t he working?

  His cousin, Danny DeMarco, was maybe the handsomest son of a bitch in Queens. Ask any girl in the borough. Joe also knew the bastard would screw anything in a skirt, and naturally he found Marie attractive. He didn’t think, however, that Danny would be such a rat as to ask his own cousin’s girlfriend out. He hoped.

  They spent the next hour drinking beer, Marie laughing her ass off at almost anything Danny said. Danny was, Joe had to admit, a funny guy. It also seemed like she had to touch his arm or grab his hand every time she wanted to make a point. Joe was almost glad when she said she had to go home.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” Joe said.

  He was going to be really pissed if Marie’s mom wasn’t out of the house tomorrow.

  He called Marie the next morning, and she told him to come over around two, that her mom was playing canasta that afternoon. He showered, shaved extra close, and splashed on some cologne he’d given his father five years ago, which his dad never used. But when he gets to Marie’s house, her damn mother’s there. She told Joe she had a headache and had decided to skip her canasta game but it was okay if Joe stayed for a little while and visited with Marie. Joe almost screamed at her: “So take a fucking aspirin!”

  At least dinner that night was fun, mainly because his Aunt Connie, his godmother, was there. She was a hoot. She even put his mother in a good mood. His dad, who usually didn’t say much anyway, was even more silent than usual, and Joe got the impression he had something on his mind.

  His mom mentioned at one point that he wanted to get a city job, working for a prosecutor’s office.

  “Really?” Connie said.

  “What’s wrong with that?” his father said, like he was coming to Joe’s defense.

  “Well, nothing, I guess,” Connie said. “That kind of job is a good way to launch a career.” But Joe noticed the look she gave his mother.

  “Anyway,” Joe said, “I’m hoping to get hired by some outfit near D.C. I like it there. I’m taking the bar exam in the fall.”

  “I know a lot of people down there,” Connie said. “I’ll see if I can do something to grease the skids for you, sweetie.”

  Then she started telling stories about this man she used to work for, this John Mahoney, a congressman from Boston who was now Speaker of the House. Connie said the guy drank like a fish, was probably getting money under the table from all kinds of people, and cheated on his wife every chance he got. The way she talked, though, Joe could tell she was actually fond of the guy and he couldn’t help but wonder, back then when his Aunt Connie had a waist, if she and Mahoney might have been an item. Whatever the case, Mahoney sounded like your typical D.C. politician, the kind of guy Joe didn’t ever want anything to do with.

  Connie left about eight and Joe was thinking he should spend at least a couple of hours studying before he went to bed. That was when his father said, “I gotta go out for a while.” His mother gave him a look that would blister paint off the wall but didn’t say anything.

  Joe was sitting at the dining room table when his father left the house. He was trying to make sense out of some case he was told would be on one of his finals, some convoluted, incomprehensible thing having to do with property law. Before his dad walked out the door, he gave Joe’s shoulder a little squeeze. “I’m proud of you, kid. You’re gonna be a great lawyer.”

  Gino DeMarco turned out to be really wrong about that.

  9

  The front of the warehouse in Red Hook faced the waterfront. It had big sliding doors, like an airplane hangar, and next to the sliding doors was a smaller, normal-sized door. Above the small door was the number one in faded red paint, about two feet high.

  At the pier was a Japanese ship carrying a bunch of big construction equipment that had to be offloaded a piece at a time and later reassembled where they were doing the job. Running parallel to the ship were railroad tracks that were used by the cranes and there were a dozen flatbed trucks in a queue waiting to be loaded.

  There were people everywhere—longshoremen on the ship and on the pier, truck drivers, customs agents, and members of the ship’s crew. Forklifts were zipping all over the place and it was a miracle they hadn’t run over somebody. It was noisy with men yelling and the engine noises produced by the forklifts and trucks, and lights on the ship and the pier had the whole pier lit up like Yankee Stadium for a night game.

  Gino walked past the warehouse sliding doors, which were locked with a padlock. He didn’t sneak by the warehouse but moved like a man with a purpose, a man who belonged where he was. He was dressed in a black denim jacket, blue jeans, and boots. On his head was a hard hat. In other words, he looked like most of the men on the pier. He turned when he reached the end of the warehouse and walked along the side of it, in the alleyway created by an adjacent warehouse.

  There were half a dozen doors on the side of the warehouse and he walked until he came to a door with the number five painted above it. Gino had a key for the door. He figured Carmine had obtained the key from somebody connected to the warehouse or the poker game. Carmine said that the guy who ran the game normally unlocked the number-five door at nine thirty so the players could get in. He told Gino that after he let himself in he was to leave the door unlocked so the cop could get in as he normally did when he played poker there Saturday nights.

  Gino had been to the warehouse the night before, at the same time, to check the place out. There was no way he was going to make the hit there, no matter what Carmine had said, without examining the place in advance. Last night, just like tonight, there had been men all over the pier and trucks and forklifts zooming around. Nobody had noticed him last night and they didn’t notice him tonight; he was just another longshoreman doing his job.

  He unlocked the number-five door, stepped into the warehouse, and pushed down a little button on the doorknob to make sure the door stayed unlocked. The first thing he noticed after he was inside was that the warehouse was fully illuminated from big overhead lights in the ceiling—and that wasn’t good. When he’d checked the place out the night before, the overhead lights hadn’t been on. He’d been able to see, however, because the warehouse had big windows set up high in the walls, and all the lights on the pier had provided enough illumination for him to see where he was going. He figured whoever was in charge of the game told the warehouse guys to leave the overhead lights on on Saturday night so the players could make their way back to the office where the game was played. Whatever the case, he was now worried about how well he’d be able to conceal himself with the place lit up like an operating room.

  The warehouse was about a hundred feet wide on the side that faced the waterfront, and almost two hundred feet deep. The office where the game was played was at the far end, away from the waterfront. Wooden crates and barrels filled the place, stacked on pallets, and the pallet loads were stacked on top of each other as high as a forklift could reach. Some of the crates looked like they’d been there for years. There were aisles between the crates wide enough for a forklift and the center aisle going back to the office was the widest aisle, wide enou
gh for a semi with a flatbed trailer.

  The warehouse had one other feature that Gino had considered when he was planning the job. There was a big steel I-beam that spanned the width of the warehouse and attached to the I-beam was a chain fall—a hand-operated, electric crane—that was used to pick up heavy items and load them onto trucks. The I-beam had wheels on it that ran in rails so the I-beam could be moved back and forth along the length of the warehouse and the chain fall could be moved back and forth across the I-beam. A catwalk ran around the perimeter of the warehouse at the same height as the I-beam. The catwalk was needed to be able to get at the chain fall—to grease it, and perform any other maintenance required—and the catwalk also had a lot of crap stored on it: coils of rope and tarps and cargo nets the warehouse guys didn’t use very often.

  Gino had thought about lying down on the catwalk, under a tarp, and when Quinn walked down the aisle, he’d shoot him from there, figuring Quinn would have no reason to look up. He finally rejected that idea since he’d be shooting downward at a moving target—a tough shot for any shooter—and he’d be at least thirty feet away from Quinn when he pulled the trigger.

  He finally decided to hide behind some black fifty-five-gallon drums. There were four drums per pallet, and three pallets stacked on top of each other. If Gino stood behind the barrels, Quinn wouldn’t be able to see him as he walked down the center aisle, and when Quinn passed him, Gino would step out and shoot him in the back.

  Shooting Quinn in the back didn’t bother Gino. This wasn’t a duel or some fast-draw gunfight in a western movie. This was a murder, plain and simple, and DeMarco wasn’t going to take any chances. He’d give Quinn as much of a chance as Quinn had given Jerry Kennedy.

  Now, with all the lights on in the warehouse, he needed to reevaluate his hiding place. He figured it would still be okay—that Quinn wouldn’t be able to see him standing behind the barrels until he walked past him, and by then it would be too late. If he felt too exposed with all the lights on, however, then he’d just forget about killing Quinn tonight and come up with a different plan.

  Gino started down the center aisle toward the office to evaluate his hiding place. He was about halfway there when he heard a noise behind him, a shoe scraping the concrete floor of the warehouse. He spun around, pulling his gun out of his holster as he did.

  There was a man standing there—he must have been crouched down behind a pallet stacked with bags of coffee. Gino had smelled the coffee as he walked past the pallet. The man was dressed just like Gino—work boots, jeans, and a hard hat so he, too, would blend in with the longshoremen on the pier. With all the lights on in the warehouse, DeMarco could see the man’s face. It was Quinn, the cop who had killed Jerry Kennedy.

  Everything that happened next happened in just a few seconds—but it was enough time for DeMarco to think: Carmine set me up.

  The cop had been planning to shoot him in the back, but when Gino spun around at the sound of a shoe scraping the floor, the cop’s first bullet missed him. The cop’s second shot didn’t. The second bullet hit Gino in the chest. Gino fired back immediately and saw the cop stagger.

  Gino was going to shoot the cop again—but he couldn’t.. The cop’s second shot had hit something vital, and Gino’s vision was already blurring and his finger didn’t have the strength to pull the trigger. He knew he was dying.

  The cop fired two more times as Gino stood there, both bullets again hitting him in the chest. Gino felt himself falling. He never felt himself hit the floor. As he was falling, he thought: Oh, God, Maureen, I’m sorry.

  Quinn looked down at DeMarco. He couldn’t believe how fast the son of a bitch had been.

  Quinn had hidden behind the coffee bags because they were near the number-five door and they provided good concealment, but in order to hide there he had to sit in a squatting position. He’d been waiting for DeMarco for almost an hour and when he rose to shoot him, his legs had cramped up and he stumbled slightly and his shoe scraped the concrete. He should have worn soft-soled shoes.

  When DeMarco heard him, he spun around so fast that Quinn’s first shot passed behind DeMarco’s back. What really amazed him was that DeMarco had his gun out by the time he completed the spin and he was just lucky that he was able to get off a second shot before DeMarco could fire. But he wasn’t that lucky: DeMarco managed to get off one shot before Quinn could fire again, and DeMarco’s bullet hit him high in the chest, near his left shoulder. Fortunately, Quinn’s next two shots finished the bastard off before he could shoot again.

  He was in trouble now, though. He was bleeding badly from the bullet wound and was also having trouble breathing. He wondered if DeMarco’s bullet had nicked a lung. He had planned to hide DeMarco’s body behind some of the crates in the warehouse to delay discovery of the body, but now he couldn’t do that. He didn’t have the strength to move DeMarco, nor did he have the time. He needed to get back to his car and get help before he bled to death.

  He walked to the door he’d used to enter the warehouse and opened it and peered outside. No one was in the alleyway between the warehouses. He walked slowly, pressing his hand against the wound, until he reached the pier. When he reached the pier, he forced himself to straighten up and dropped his hand to his side. Keeping his head down, he walked along the pier sticking close to the warehouse, staying out of the light as best he could. Fortunately, everyone on the pier was focused on the offloading—longshoremen knew if you didn’t pay attention you could get killed by a forklift or something falling from a crane—and no one was paying any attention to him. He wasn’t surprised that no one had heard the shots. He’d used a silencer and the one shot DeMarco fired wouldn’t have been noticed with all the noise on the pier.

  He’d been forced to park his car almost half a mile from the warehouse and had to stop a couple of times while he was walking to rest and catch his breath. Stopping wasn’t good, he knew, because he was losing a lot of blood.

  He finally reached his car. He unlocked the door and slipped in behind the steering wheel, then just sat there for a moment until he could find the strength to start the car. He drove slowly—and erratically. He was going all over the road and if a cop saw him, he’d get pulled over for sure.

  Just when he didn’t think he could drive any farther he finally spotted a pay phone. He lurched from this car and called Taliaferro. He didn’t know what he’d do if Taliaferro didn’t answer.

  “I’m hurt,” he told Taliaferro. “I got the guy but he hurt me bad.” He didn’t want to say DeMarco’s name on the phone and he didn’t want to say that he’d been shot. “I’m in a phone booth, five blocks east of the pier. I don’t know the address. I need a doctor and I can’t go to a hospital.”

  He didn’t hear what Taliaferro said because he passed out.

  Quinn woke up in a bedroom—not a hospital room—but had no idea where he was. He was still wearing his pants and socks but his shirt was gone. His left shoulder was covered with white bandages and it looked like a professional had applied the bandages. He noticed a glass filled with water sitting on a nightstand next to the bed and realized he was incredibly thirsty. He reached for the glass with his right hand but the pain in his left shoulder hit him when he did, and he knocked the glass off the nightstand and it shattered on the floor.

  The bedroom door opened and a man entered the room. He was in his forties, tall and skinny, and his dark hair was receding rapidly. His face was sallow and the whites of his eyes had a yellowish tinge, and Quinn’s first impression was: junkie.

  “Good,” the man said, “you’re awake.”

  “Where am I?” Quinn asked.

  “My house in Queens. You’re going to be all right. The bullet didn’t hit anything important but you’re going to need therapy to regain full use of your arm. Since I’m guessing you don’t want to go to your regular doctor, you’re going to have to come back here and see me a couple of times to make sure you’re healing properly. I’m not a therapist but I know enough to help you
and I’ll do what I can, but don’t be surprised if you lose some range of motion. I’ll put your arm in a sling and you can tell people you fucked up your shoulder doing something, a fall, whatever.”

  Quinn wasn’t worried about what he’d tell the people at work. He wouldn’t take off his shirt in front of them and he could explain the sling like the doctor had said, by claiming he’d done something at home that had dislocated his shoulder. His wife was the problem. The night he killed Jerry Kennedy he’d told her he was on an undercover assignment working directly for the chief of D’s, something really hush-hush that could be a big break for his career. He’d told her the same story tonight when he left the apartment to head down to Red Hook, that he was pulling a double shift because of the same undercover assignment. To explain the bandage on his shoulder, he could tell her that he had to sneak into an abandoned building to watch some criminals and he ran into a jagged piece of rebar or sheet metal. He’d say it wasn’t a serious injury and that he’d been treated by a doc at the emergency room, but that she couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Hmm. He’d give it some more thought, but that would probably work.

  “I’m going to call Carmine now,” the doctor said, “and you and he can decide how to get you home.”

  “Do you know who I am?” Quinn asked.

  “No, and I don’t want to know.”

  10

  Joe was in bed, asleep, and the doorbell ringing woke him up. Irritated, he wondered who could be calling so early; it wasn’t even seven. A moment later, he heard his mother scream.

  A man in a suit and a uniformed cop were standing in the doorway. His mother was sitting on the floor, her knees up against her chest, sobbing into her hands.

  “What did you do to my mother?” Joe said.

  The man in the suit said, “Son, my name’s Detective Lynch. I’m sorry to tell you this, but your father’s dead. He was shot and killed last night.”