House Rivals

by Mike Lawson

  “Well, get the guns. But take the bullets out. Leave the bullets in your truck.”

  “What?” Thorpe said.

  “I’m not going to take the chance of accidentally killing someone. For that matter, I’m not going to take the chance that you might intentionally kill someone.”

  Thorpe just looked at DeMarco for a moment than said, “Okay.” It was impossible to read the guy. He was obviously angry. Angry at whoever had killed his granddaughter. Angry with DeMarco, who he probably blamed for Sarah’s death. Angry at the whole damn world. But aside from anger, DeMarco couldn’t detect any other emotion. Thorpe certainly wasn’t nervous about what DeMarco was planning.

  “The first thing we have to do is see if we’re being followed,” DeMarco said. “Look for a gray Honda.”

  “Followed?” Thorpe said.

  “Yeah. I think someone’s been following me from the day I met with Sarah.”

  He then told Thorpe what he knew about Logan and Dawkins, and how he’d come to the conclusion that they’d been having him followed. “So start looking behind me to see if you can spot a tail. I’m going to start making a bunch of random turns.”

  Four random turns later, Thorpe said, “The blue Camry. The guy must have changed cars.”

  “Yeah, I see him,” DeMarco said. He’d spotted the Camry also.

  DeMarco stomped on the gas, committed a few minor traffic infractions, made a couple of high-speed turns, and five minutes later said, “I think I lost him,” feeling proud of himself.

  Thorpe said, “I’m not so sure you lost him, as he just gave up. He figured out that you knew you were being followed, and he didn’t see much point in trying to stick with you.”

  “Hmpf,” DeMarco said. He liked his version better.

  They arrived at the trailer park where Roy Patterson lived and DeMarco found Patterson’s trailer. The once-white siding was covered with grime and mildew, there was a blue tarp on the roof to keep the rain out, and one of the windows was patched with plywood. There was a trash can in front of the trailer—a rusty fifty-five-gallon drum—that appeared to serve no purpose as the ground around the trailer was littered with beer cans. A battered blue Ford pickup squatted in front of Patterson’s trailer.

  As they were sitting there, the sun went down and the lights came on in Patterson’s trailer, as did the lights in the trailers adjacent to his. The mobile homes in the park were less than ten yards apart, and DeMarco could see an overweight woman in the trailer on the right side of Patterson’s. She was sitting at a table, shoveling food into her mouth, as she watched television.

  “We need to wait for him to leave or for his neighbors to go to bed,” DeMarco said.

  Thorpe just nodded.

  About nine p.m., Patterson—or at least DeMarco thought it was Patterson—emerged from his trailer. According to the information DeMarco had been given Patterson didn’t have a wife, but DeMarco didn’t know if he lived alone or not. The man he assumed was Patterson was wearing a dark-colored baseball cap and a green letterman’s jacket with white sleeves. He got into the blue pickup.

  DeMarco followed the pickup to a bar that had a silhouette of a big-busted, long-maned woman on a sign over the door. The bar featured exotic dancers, who turned out to be not so exotic. After Patterson went into the place, DeMarco said, “I’m going to go in for a quick beer to make sure we’re following the right guy.”

  Thorpe grunted. A man of few words—or no words.

  The bar was dimly lit and very warm, both conditions necessary to accommodate the dancers: the high temperature kept them from getting chilly as they were almost nude and the dim lighting made it less easy to see what they looked like nude. There was a short, six-stool bar along one wall and behind the bar was a bald-headed behemoth who was probably the establishment’s bouncer as well as its bartender. In the center of the room was a small stage with a pole in the middle and a U-shaped bar that ran along the perimeter of the stage, close enough that the most nearsighted customer could get an eyeful. On the stage was a woman in her forties wearing nothing but a G-string and high heels, and her movements seemed to have no connection whatsoever to the music playing. There were seven men seated near the stage, one of them wearing a blue ball cap and a letterman’s jacket. The guy was also wearing cowboy boots and the boots had silver toe caps.

  DeMarco took a seat to the left of the man he assumed was Patterson so he wouldn’t be directly in the guy’s line of sight. A moment later, the man stripped off his jacket and placed it on the stool beside him. A sleeveless T-shirt displayed two thick arms—more fat than muscle—covered with red, green, and blue ink. DeMarco took a sip of his beer, used the restroom, and left the bar. When one is on a stakeout, it’s always smart to use a restroom when one is available.

  “It’s him,” he said to Thorpe as he got back into the car. “And I’ll bet you he sits in that place until it closes or he runs out of money.”

  For the next three hours, DeMarco and Thorpe sat in DeMarco’s car, mostly in silence. In an attempt to make conversation, DeMarco asked Thorpe what John Mahoney had been like as a young man in Vietnam.

  “Like most everybody else. He was scared when we were out in the boondocks, but he did his job. He wasn’t a coward. He looked out for his buddies. He was a city boy so he didn’t really know how to shoot or move through the jungle, but he learned fast. If he hadn’t, he would have died right after he got there. When we were back at the base, he drank a lot, smoked dope, and chased what few women there were to chase. He probably got the clap half-a-dozen times. Thank God this was before all the AIDS shit. Anyway, he was a good guy. We got along.”

  An hour later, DeMarco asked, “What was Sarah like when she was little. Was she always so driven?”

  Thorpe smiled slightly. “Sarah was hell on wheels when she was a kid. Hardheaded, mouthy, thought she had all the answers by the time she was twelve. She didn’t do all that well in school but it wasn’t because she didn’t have the brains. If she liked a subject or a teacher, she’d get straight As. But if she didn’t like it, she just didn’t bother.

  “I’ll tell you one thing, though: Sarah could cast a fly. I started taking her fishing with me when she was about five, and by the time she was sixteen, she was better than me—and I’m pretty darn good. I remember once—” Then his voice broke and he looked away from DeMarco and out the car window so DeMarco couldn’t see the tears welling up in his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about Sarah,” he said.

  DeMarco had a sudden image of Sarah as a little girl of five—­butterscotch curls, skinny legs, jabbering nonstop as she stood beside her tall grandfather fishing—and he could almost understand how miserable Doug Thorpe felt.

  Patterson left the bar a little after midnight. DeMarco had parked his car next to Patterson’s pickup and he was hoping they’d be able to take Patterson before he got into his vehicle. But Patterson was followed out of the bar by another guy, and they bullshitted with each other as Patterson walked over to his truck and got inside. Patterson didn’t notice—or was too drunk to notice—the two men sitting in the car next to his.

  “Shit,” DeMarco said.

  They followed Patterson back to the trailer park and DeMarco was glad that a cop wasn’t nearby. Patterson drove like a man who would blow two thousand on the Breathalyzer. Patterson pulled into the trailer park and DeMarco was relieved to see that the lights were out in all the trailers except for one at the far end of the park.

  “Let’s do this,” DeMarco said. As Patterson was trying to extract himself from his vehicle, DeMarco pulled the ski mask down over his face and Thorpe did the same, then DeMarco gunned the engine and pulled his car in right behind Patterson’s truck. DeMarco and Thorpe got out of DeMarco’s car quickly and ran toward Patterson: two masked men pointing guns.

  Patterson said, “Whoa, whoa,” backing up rapidly as DeMarco and Thorpe came at him, then he s
tumbled and landed on his back. “Don’t hurt me,” he said. “Tell Monty I’ll get him the money next week.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” DeMarco said. “Now get up. We’re going inside your trailer.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “You don’t move in the next two seconds, I’m going to shoot you in the head,” DeMarco said.

  Patterson got to his feet, pulled keys from his jacket, and struggled to unlock the trailer door. As drunk as he was, he took an inordinate amount of time to get the key into the lock. “Hurry up,” DeMarco said. If one of Patterson’s neighbors happened to look out a window at one in the morning, the Bismarck cops would be there in the next ten minutes.

  Patterson finally got his door open and DeMarco shoved him hard in the back to get him inside. The trailer was a pigsty with unwashed dishes, fast-food cartons, and empty beer cans on every flat surface. There was a galley-like kitchen with a two-burner stove and half-size refrigerator. A frying pan encrusted with burnt eggs was on the stove. Along one wall was a small dining room table that had a bench seat on one side and a single, freestanding folding chair on the other.

  “Sit down,” DeMarco said, pointing at the folding chair, then he reached into a pocket and turned on the tape recorder he’d purchased at RadioShack.

  “What do you guys want?” Patterson said.

  “I want to know who was with you the night you roughed up Sarah Johnson.”

  “Who?” Patterson said—and Doug Thorpe smashed a fist into Patterson’s face, knocking him off the chair. Thorpe may have been in his seventies but he could still throw a punch.

  “That’s enough,” DeMarco said to Thorpe.

  DeMarco helped Patterson back into the chair. His mouth was bleeding and his eyes were glassy.

  “Sarah Johnson was the young woman you and two of your friends assaulted a couple weeks ago in a parking lot. You threatened to rape her.”

  “Oh, I know who you mean now. We didn’t hurt her. We just scared her.”

  “Who was with you?”

  “Who are you guys?”

  DeMarco placed the muzzle of the .45 against Patterson’s forehead, right over the bridge of his nose. “If you don’t answer my question in the next two seconds, I’m going to put a bullet into your brain. I think one of the assholes with you was a guy named Mark Jenkins, the guy who alibied you when the cops came to see you. So I don’t really need you and after I kill you, I’ll go talk to Jenkins. One. Two.”

  “Okay! It was Tim Sloan! It was me and Mark and Tim.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Because Tim gave me and Mark a hundred bucks. He said he just wanted to scare the girl.”

  “Why?”

  “Tim said she was a big-mouth reporter and was writing shit that was going to cost people their jobs.”

  “What does Sloan do? Is he involved in natural gas?”

  “Tim? He doesn’t do anything. He gets a disability check for his back.”

  “Did someone tell Sloan to assault Sarah?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say. Mark and me, we was just having a drink down at Shorty’s and Tim comes up to us and says he wants some help making this chick back off. But he didn’t say anything about anyone telling him to do it.”

  “Then where’d he get the two hundred bucks he paid you and your buddy?”

  “I don’t know. We’ve both known Tim since high school and he just said it would be fun.”

  “Fun?” Thorpe said. “Did you say fun?”—and he hit Patterson on the right side of his head with the .38 he was holding and knocked Patterson off the chair again. A trickle of blood was now running down the side of Patterson’s neck.

  “Goddamnit,” DeMarco said to Thorpe. “Knock it off. Once was enough.”

  Patterson was on the floor moaning, holding a hand over the place where Thorpe had hit him.

  “Where does Sloan live?” DeMarco asked.

  “Jesus Christ, that hurt,” Patterson said.

  “Tell me where Sloan lives or I’m going to let him beat you to death.”

  “Over on the east side of town. He lives with his girlfriend.”

  “What’s the address?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  DeMarco again pressed the muzzle of the .45 against the top of Patterson’s head.

  “What’s Sloan’s address?” DeMarco said.

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know. I swear to God.”

  DeMarco believed him. “What’s his girlfriend’s name?”

  “Debbie something. I don’t know her last name. I’ve only met her a couple of times.”

  “Okay, Roy,” DeMarco said, “we’re leaving now. But if you call Sloan and he isn’t home when I get to his place then I’m going to come back here and kill you. Do you understand? You call Sloan, you better get in that piece of shit you drive and just keep driving until you fall off the edge of the earth, because I’ll find you.”

  “Let’s go,” DeMarco said to Thorpe.

  As they were leaving, Patterson said. “Who are you guys?”

  “CAA,” DeMarco said.

  “CIA?” Patterson said.

  “CAA. Citizens Against Assholes.”

  Back in DeMarco’s rental car, DeMarco said, “It’s too late now, but tomorrow I’ll call Mahoney and have him get Sloan’s address.”

  “Okay,” Thorpe said.

  “You got a place to stay tonight?”

  “I’ll find something.”

  “You don’t need to do that. There are two beds in my motel room. Stay with me.”

  DeMarco actually wanted Thorpe to stay with him because he was afraid Thorpe might go back to Patterson’s trailer and beat him to death.

  20

  DeMarco had set the alarm for six a.m. and that’s when he woke up—even though getting up at that time of day almost killed him. ­Nobody —not farmers, fishermen, or even roosters—should be required to rise at such an ungodly hour. He used the bathroom, then noticed that Thorpe’s bed was empty. “Goddamnit,” he muttered.

  He woke up so early because he wanted to get Tim Sloan’s address as soon as possible and again decided to let Mahoney use his connections in D.C. to get what he needed. He knew Mahoney wouldn’t answer his phone at seven a.m. EST—Mahoney might not take a call from the president at seven a.m.—but Mahoney’s secretary would already be at her desk.

  “Mavis, tell the boss I need an address for a guy named Tim Sloan who lives on the east side of Bismarck, North Dakota. He gets some kind of disability check for his back so maybe he’s got a file with Social Security or the VA. He’s got a girlfriend named Debbie. The only other thing I know about him is he went to high school with a full-blown asshole named Roy Patterson. Tell Mahoney I also need to know if Sloan has any sort of connection to a man named Leonard Curtis, another man named Leslie William Logan, and a woman named Marjorie Dawkins. Did you get all that? Tell him I need the information right away.”

  DeMarco took a shower wondering the whole time where Thorpe could be. He didn’t have a cell phone number for Thorpe; he didn’t know if Thorpe even owned a cell phone. All he could do was pray that Thorpe hadn’t killed Patterson. He dressed and thought briefly about shaving, then said screw it. As long as he was acting like a thug he might as well look like one.

  DeMarco stepped outside the motel room and was relieved to see Thorpe’s pickup parked where it had been the night before. He went back into the motel room and scratched out a note for Thorpe to call him and placed the note under a windshield wiper on Thorpe’s truck. A block from the motel was a diner that was open twenty-four hours a day and DeMarco decided to go there and get a cup of coffee. He desperately needed coffee; his heart was barely pumping blood because of the hour.

  When he walked into the diner, he saw Thorpe sitting alone in a booth. DeMarco sat across from him, and said,
“Couldn’t you sleep?”

  “No. Did you call John?”

  “No, but I talked to his secretary and she’ll get to him. I don’t know who Mahoney’s using to get information from, but last time I got what I needed in a couple of hours.”

  DeMarco had breakfast—a cholesterol-laden plate of eggs, hash browns, and link sausages—and felt almost human by the time he was finished. Thorpe hardly spoke while DeMarco was eating. He just stared out the window at the parking lot. At one point he did say, “I can’t imagine how people can live in a place like this.”

  “A place like what?” DeMarco said.

  “An ugly city. I’ve lived next to a Montana river my whole life. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.”

  DeMarco and Thorpe walked back to the motel. They couldn’t really do anything until Mahoney’s guy called him back. DeMarco thought briefly about calling Agent Westerberg to see if she’d learned anything more, then decided not to. He certainly had no intention of telling her what he’d been doing. Not at this point.

  At eight a.m., DeMarco’s phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID, just saw that it was a 202 area code.

  “Hello,” DeMarco said.

  “I have Tim Sloan’s address for you,” a soft-spoken man said. DeMarco wondered what organization employed the man: FBI, IRS, Justice? Hell, he could be CIA or NSA.

  “Hang on,” DeMarco said. “Let me get a pen and paper.”

  The guy rattled off Sloan’s address and DeMarco wrote it down.

  “Did you find out if Sloan had any connection to—”

  “He was married to Leslie William Logan’s sister for four years. She divorced him three years ago. Sloan’s not married now. I couldn’t find any connection between Sloan and Dawkins or Curtis.”

  “You gave me what I needed, masked man. I thank you.”

  Marjorie was not happy. Last night Heckler had informed her that Doug Thorpe, Sarah’s grandfather, came to DeMarco’s motel. Then ­DeMarco and Thorpe got into DeMarco’s car and DeMarco deliberately shook Heckler. This meant three things: One, DeMarco now knew he was being followed. Two, he most likely knew that whoever was following him worked for her and Bill Logan. And three, since DeMarco shook the tail, he was probably up to something sneaky.