House Rivals

by Mike Lawson

  “Like judges. Why the hell do we elect state judges? Judges shouldn’t be elected. If they’re elected then it’s easier for guys like Curtis to corrupt the legal system by contributing to their campaigns and running negative ads against them on television. State judges ought to be like the judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. You know, appointed for life.”

  DeMarco almost said: U.S. Supreme Court Justices are sort of elected, too. When you put a president in office, you’re basically electing the kind of guy that the president will appoint to the Supreme Court if he gets the chance. But he knew that would just start her on another rant.

  “Sarah, all I’m saying is that life is short. Enjoy it while you have the chance.”

  She just turned away from him and looked out at a field, a green sea of barley.

  They stopped at about eight p.m. in Glasgow—the one in ­Montana —and checked into a place called the Star Lodge. Sarah offered to pay for his room but DeMarco said he’d pay for it, not bothering to tell her that if she paid taxes, she was paying for it anyway.

  “I’m going to find out where to get a martini in Glasgow,” DeMarco said. “You want to come along?”

  “No, I’ve got things to do, people to call.”

  “Jesus, Sarah. Have you ever heard that expression about stopping to smell the roses?”

  “And vodka smells like roses?” she said.

  11

  Bill Logan arrived at the steam bath in Denver an hour early, hoping the steam would lessen the hangover he had. When he’d arrived in Denver the night before, he had dinner, then just sat in the hotel bar and started pouring scotch down his throat. This thing with Murdock and Sarah Johnson was turning him into a drunk.

  It was even affecting his sex life. He was a guy who usually got laid four or five nights a week. He knew so many women he could always get laid. But last night, sitting in the bar of the Hilton, there was a woman who looked like she might be a stewardess. She was close to forty, not a beauty queen, but not bad-looking, either. And she’d glanced his way a couple of times. Normally with a woman like her, Bill figured he’d have to buy her two drinks and then it would be off to her room to do the hokeypokey. But last night, he hadn’t been able to work up the energy for romancing her, and he just sat there drinking scotch, imagining what it would be like to be in prison. With his luck, his roommates would be two psychopaths who would take turns beating and raping him.

  Murdock walked into the steam room at ten, wearing a white towel around his waist. He made a motion for Bill to stand up and Bill did, knowing what he was supposed to do. He dropped his towel on the bench where he’d been sitting, and made a slow turn so Murdock could see he didn’t have anything taped to his back. Then Murdock did the same thing, after which he looked under the bench to make sure Bill hadn’t hidden a recorder there.

  Murdock looked exactly as he had the last time Bill saw him six years ago. It didn’t appear as if he’d aged a bit. Apparently killing people was good for his constitution. And like the first time Bill met with him, he couldn’t help but think the guy just didn’t look like a professional killer. He should’ve had barbed-wire tattoos circling his arms or those teardrop tattoos the gang guys had to show how many people they’d killed.

  Bill told him what they needed him to do: take care of Sarah Johnson. He said, “It doesn’t have to be an accident this time because we’re in a hurry. Make it look like a robbery gone bad or maybe a rape.”

  “I don’t rape people,” Murdock said—and he said this like he was offended. Apparently killing people didn’t bother him but he considered rape to be repulsive.

  “Sorry,” Bill said, not sure what else to say. “All I’m saying is, we don’t need something fancy. Just make it look like it’s part of some other crime, but not like she was singled out. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” Murdock said.

  Jesus, he couldn’t believe what he was doing and saying. His hangover was almost gone thanks to the steam, but when he left the gym he was going straight to the airport and start tossing back drinks until the plane landed in Bismarck. They were going to have to carry him off that plane.

  DeMarco was in a deep, dreamless sleep in his room at the Star Lodge in Glasgow, Montana, when someone began to pound on the door. He looked at the bedside clock: six a.m. He got out of bed dressed in boxer shorts and his favorite Nationals T-shirt and opened the door. Not surprised, he found Sarah standing there, looking impatient.

  “What are you doing, still sleeping?” she said. “We need to get going.”

  “Sarah, it’s six in the fu . . . It’s six. Are you insane?” Before she could say anything, he added, “Go away. I’ll see you at eight, then we’ll go have breakfast—or I’ll have breakfast—then we’ll take off.” He shut the door, trudged over to the bed, and fell on to it. What a nut!

  She spent the first hour of the drive to Great Falls sulking and he was in no mood to cajole her. Finally he asked, “Who are we going to see in Great Falls? Another judge?”

  “Do you really care?” she said.

  As he was trying to decide how he should answer that question, Sarah said, “I’m going to talk to a lawyer. She represented a group of ranchers suing Curtis for well water contamination caused by fracking. If she’d won, it would have been a huge blow to Curtis. Like this year, forty plaintiffs sued a natural gas company in New York and the gas company, after fighting the case for years, finally settled with them for millions and that’s what could have happened to Curtis. Anyway, the lawyer involved was a woman named Janet Tyler. She’s really good and it looked like she might have been able to beat Curtis. Then she backed out of the case and after she did, the whole case fell apart.

  “I went to see her because it was obvious that Curtis had done something to get to her. I didn’t think he’d bribed her because Tyler has money, and when I saw her speak on some local news program, I could tell she had a fire in her belly about the issue. I called her office and when she wouldn’t speak to me, I hung around outside her office until she went out to lunch and—”

  “Ah. So you stalked her.”

  “You’re not funny, DeMarco. Anyway, when I asked her why she dropped the lawsuit I could tell she felt bad about what she’d done, but she wouldn’t tell me what happened. I finally gave up but as I was leaving she said, “I didn’t have a choice.” When I asked her what she meant, she got into her car and drove away.

  “After I met with her, I did some more research on her, the kind of research I should have done before I met with her. I found out that she had a son, but she was divorced and her son used her ex-husband’s last name and she uses her maiden name. Well, her son had been busted by the cops. He was an oxycodone addict and he broke into an old lady’s home to steal shit. He thought the old lady was gone but she wasn’t and she tried to stop him, and he pushed her down and she smacked her head. But she was a tough old bird. She followed him out of the house after he ran, got his license plate, and called the cops. The cops went to his house to arrest him, and he punched one of the cops. So her kid was charged for breaking and entering, robbery, assaulting an old lady, assaulting the cops, and resisting arrest. They had like a dozen charges against him and he was going to do time, maybe four years. Well, voilà. After Tyler drops out of the well water contamination lawsuit, her son’s case is pled down to two years’ probation, drug counseling, anger management classes, mandatory community service, blah, blah, blah. Everything but jail time.”

  “Did you find anything resembling evidence that Curtis had anything to do with her son’s case?”

  “No. And fuck you for that resembling evidence crack. But the answer is no. I couldn’t find any evidence that the judge or the prosecutor in her son’s case had suddenly come into money or had some work done for free on their houses. But if you think it’s a coincidence that her son got off scot-free at the same time she dropped the suit, then you’re a complete idiot
.”

  DeMarco was thinking maybe they should send her to anger management classes. Or charm school. “What makes you think Tyler will talk to you now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know that she will, but her son’s dead. He got high, ran his car into a ditch, and broke his neck. I know she felt guilty about what she did, and since her son’s gone, maybe she’ll talk.”

  Sarah again decided to meet with Janet Tyler by herself.

  DeMarco said, “I thought the whole point of me coming with you was for me to lean on these people. You know, I say I’m from Washington and I’m here to crush you with the entire weight of the federal government if you don’t tell the truth.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve been thinking that’s not the right approach, not with these people. The four I picked are all people who I think have a conscience and might feel bad about what they did, so I don’t really want to scare them. I just want to convince them to do the right thing. And, frankly, you don’t exactly look like you’re from the government.”

  “What does that mean? What do I look like?”

  “Well, you look like a guy a loan shark might send to break the legs of somebody who owes him money.”

  “You gotta be kidding,” DeMarco said.

  Sarah spent twenty minutes with Tyler and when she came back to the car she said, “I can’t believe how bad that woman looks compared to the last time I saw her. She’s lost about thirty pounds and looks like she’s seventy years old. I know she’s in her fifties.”

  “Yeah, but did she tell you anything?”

  “No. She started crying and saying she was sorry about what she’d done and how I didn’t understand that she had to do it for her son, but she wouldn’t give me a name or tell me how they got to her.”

  “You sure you don’t want me to talk to her?” DeMarco said.

  “Yes. It won’t do any good.”

  They spent the night at a Holiday Inn Express in Great Falls. ­DeMarco was thinking about buying stock in the outfit.

  The next morning—the day after seeing Janet Tyler in Great Falls—Sarah and DeMarco were on the road again, off to see the next two people on Sarah’s list: a man in Billings, Montana, and a woman in Rapid City, South Dakota. Both people had served in their state legislatures but were no longer in office.

  Only one memorable thing happened on this leg of their journey—or at least it was something DeMarco would remember for a long time to come. They were traveling southeast on Highway 87, along the eastern perimeter of the Lewis and Clark National Forest. DeMarco was driving and enjoying the scenery while Sarah was looking at her iPad. DeMarco figured she was investigating something online related to natural gas or Leonard Curtis, when she suddenly let out what he could only describe as a peal of joyful, girlish laughter.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  She laughed again and said, “One of my girlfriends sent me this YouTube clip of this kitten swatting this big dog on the snout. The dog, it’s a huge St. Bernard, comes close to this little kitten and the kitten smacks it on the nose and the dog blinks a couple of times and backs up, then he comes close to the kitten again, and the kitten smacks him on the nose again. It’s hilarious!”

  DeMarco didn’t say anything for a moment, then said, “You need to do that more often.”

  “What?” Sarah said.

  “Laugh like that,” DeMarco said.

  But that was the only memorable thing that happened. The man who Sarah had planned to see in Billings wasn’t home; they learned from a neighbor that he’d left unexpectedly the night before to go see a brother who’d had a heart attack. The woman in Rapid City refused to talk with Sarah, slamming the door in her face the way Judge Parker in Minot had. By the time they reached the duplex where Sarah lived, she looked like someone had killed her puppy and ate it while she watched.

  “I gotta regroup,” she told DeMarco as they pulled up in front of her duplex. “I think you had a good idea about running down whoever’s acting as Curtis’s middleman and I have to think more about how to find him. And you need to call John Mahoney and convince him to get the FBI involved.”

  She’d said this—about getting the FBI involved—maybe sixty times as they’d been making a trip that covered three states and almost fifteen hundred miles. He liked the kid, but she was starting to drive him bonkers and he was relieved when she got out of the car.

  Marjorie was sitting in the family room, watching a stupid zombie movie with Dick and the boys. Dick was sulking as she’d just about ripped his head off when she got home because the kitchen was a disaster: unwashed dishes, food all over the counter, mustard spilled onto the floor, the milk just sitting there spoiling. So she had a right to get angry, but she probably shouldn’t have called him names. Maybe she’d make it up to him by giving him a blow job tonight, something she considered the ultimate sacrifice for marital harmony.

  She wasn’t really watching the movie, either. She was stewing about her partner. Bill Logan was turning into a drunk. The day after he returned from Denver, he went out to lunch and came back to the office two hours later, completely shit-faced. Maybe after Murdock dealt with Johnson he’d get back on track. She sure as hell hoped so because things couldn’t go on the way they were.

  As for Johnson, she still hadn’t gotten back from wherever she’d been. And because Heckler lost her when he ran out of gas, Marjorie still had no idea who’d she’d gone to see. All Gordy could tell from the spyware planted in her cell phone was that she made what appeared to be overnight stops in Glasgow and Great Falls, Montana. Marjorie needed to . . .”

  Her phone rang; it was Heckler. Into the phone, she said, “Hang on a minute.” To Dick and the boys she said, “Excuse me, I have to take this.” Then she patted Dick on the thigh and said, “I’m sorry I got so mad earlier.” But he ignored her and sat there pouting.

  She walked into the kitchen. “Yeah, what is it?”

  “She’s back,” Heckler said. “DeMarco just dropped her off at her place.”

  “Good. Now I want you to forget about her and get on DeMarco. I want to know what he’s up to.”

  Heckler said, “Shit, then I gotta go. I gotta catch up with him before he’s out of sight.”

  “Go,” she said and disconnected the call.

  She couldn’t tell Heckler that the real reason she wanted him following DeMarco was because she couldn’t afford to have him hanging around Sarah Johnson when Murdock made his move. Wouldn’t that be the icing on the cake: Heckler stopping Murdock from killing the brat. Plus, she really did want to know what DeMarco was doing. She figured that after Johnson was gone, he’d most likely go home, but since she didn’t really know why he was here in the first place, she couldn’t be sure.

  She called Bill next. “She’s back home. Text the guy. You know who I mean.”

  Bill said, “Yeah, geez, okay.” He sounded like he was drunk. Again.

  “You better get your act together, Bill,” she snapped. “This boozing shit can’t go on.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said and hung up.

  Men! If it wasn’t her husband, it was Bill Logan.

  She went back to the family room. The good guys were mowing down the zombies with machine guns. When she’d left the room to talk to Heckler, they’d been doing the same thing. That seemed to be the entire plot of the movie, but her sons didn’t seem to care. “Anybody want popcorn?” she said, trying to sound perky and cheerful. The boys said, “Yeah!” Dick, he just pouted. Okay, no blow job for you tonight, asshole.

  As she waited for the popcorn in the microwave to stop popping, her mind flipped back again to Johnson and DeMarco. What the hell had they been doing the last three days? Whatever it was, she sure as hell hoped it didn’t come back and bite her on the butt.

  DeMarco called Mahoney’s cell phone to tell him what was going on and was shocked when Mahoney answered. DeMarco was in
a bar in Bismarck when he made the call—not expecting Mahoney to answer—and it sounded like Mahoney was in a bar in D.C. when he took the call.

  DeMarco summarized what was happening as quickly as possible. He had to be quick because Mahoney wasn’t known for either patience or a long attention span. He told him that Sarah Johnson was obsessed with nailing a rich guy named Curtis who was bribing politicians and judges but she had no proof. On the other hand, she’d clearly pissed Curtis off because he was doing whatever he could to stop her.

  “Is he behind the death threats?” Mahoney asked.

  “I don’t know. She names a lot of people in her blog, so Curtis isn’t the only suspect.”

  “But is he really bribing folks?”

  “Probably. But Sarah can’t prove it. I just spent the last three days driving all over the American West with her. I was hoping to get a lead on Curtis’s fixer, but I struck out. So I don’t know what to do next, but I can’t spend the rest of my life out here in the sticks following her around.”

  “You think she’s in danger?”

  DeMarco hesitated. “She could be. She’s not going to stop investigating Curtis. She’s the type who won’t ever stop. And I don’t know what to do about that either unless you want me to become her full-time bodyguard.”

  “What am I supposed to tell Doug?” Mahoney asked.

  “Doug?”

  “Her grandfather, my buddy. Have you gone soft in the head?”

  “I guess you tell him you tried, but there really isn’t anything you can do. You can’t call up the attorney general and tell him to investigate Curtis just because Sarah thinks Curtis is doing something illegal. Then you tell him his crazy granddaughter needs to hire a bodyguard.”

  Now it was Mahoney’s turn to hesitate. “You go tell him.”

  “Aw, come on,” DeMarco said.

  DeMarco had called Mahoney from a restaurant called the Peacock Alley American Bar and Grill. It was located in a historic building that began as a hotel in 1911, served as a speakeasy during Prohibition, and back in those days hosted illegal gambling and a few women of ill repute. The bar of the restaurant was located in what had once been the lobby of the old hotel. It was a place where the patrons dressed casually, which suited DeMarco, and it had large windows, a redbrick-like floor, a long, dark bar with comfortable high-backed stools, and an impressive number of beers on tap. There was a brass rail separating the drinkers from the diners and the walls were covered with black-and-white photos of Bismarck in the early twentieth century.