by Mike Lawson
“We don’t need to talk about anything,” Mulherin said. “Ever since Whitfield got killed, I’ve had nothing but people talking to me. FBI guys. NCIS guys. Bremerton cops. They’ve all been asking me questions. And I’ll tell you the same thing I told them: I don’t know anything about Whitfield’s murder and this job we’re doing for the navy’s legit. Now beat it. I’m workin’ here.”
DeMarco shook his head gravely, as if Mulherin was making a big mistake. “I don’t want to talk about Dave Whitfield, Mulherin.”
“Then what do you wanna talk about?”
“Money. I want to know how you managed a financial miracle.”
“Huh?”
“Six months ago you were sixty thousand dollars in debt. Today you are debt free and have a new fishing boat. We need to discuss how that happened.”
“How do you know about my finances?” Mulherin said. “You have to have a warrant to—”
“The FBI needs warrants, Mulherin. Me, I just call a few people.”
“You can’t—”
“Ned, you wouldn’t believe what I can do. When it comes to terrorism, the government has rather broad powers.”
“Terrorism! What the hell are you talking about?”
“Have you heard of the Patriot Act?”
“The Patriot Act? What—”
“Yeah, I love the Patriot Act,” DeMarco said. “Someplace there in the fine print it says a person suspected of terrorism—”
“What fucking terrorism!”
“— can be thrown in jail and detained indefinitely. And once in custody, that person is not allowed access to counsel and may sit in a cell for months while the government interrogates him. And who knows what happens during these interrogations. What’s your pain threshold, Ned?”
“You’re goddamn nuts!” Mulherin said. “I’m not—”
“Ned, I’m the only hope you have.”
“Hope? Hope for what?”
“Ned, we know you’re not the guy in charge. Who would ever put you in charge of anything? But we’ll catch your friends eventually, and when we do, you’ll go down with them. It’s only a matter of time. And the only one who’s not going to spend a long time in a federal prison is the one who helps us develop our case. When it comes to crime, Ned, the first rat’s the winner.”
Mulherin looked down at DeMarco from the deck of his boat, his lips trembling with both fear and anger. Finally, he said, “You stay the hell away from me. You got no right…” Mulherin spun around and passed through a sliding wooden door into the sleeping section of his boat, and shut and locked the door. It was hot inside the sleeping section of the boat. He hoped DeMarco wouldn’t hang around outside his boat for too long.
He didn’t.
* * *
AN HOUR AFTER talking to DeMarco, Mulherin drove his Ford Explorer into the parking lot of the Clearwater Casino, a tribal casino located forty minutes from Bremerton.
Emma and DeMarco had followed Mulherin to the casino in separate cars. Emma called DeMarco on his cell phone and told him to wait in the parking lot. She then sat a few minutes to give Mulherin time to get settled in the casino. Before leaving her car, she donned a black wig— glossy, synthetic hair touching her shoulders— and covered her lips with a thick layer of bright red lipstick. She glanced into the rearview mirror and winced at what she saw there, but with a cigarette dangling from her lips she’d fit right in with the slot-machine addicts in the casino.
The casino was much bigger and grander than Emma had imagined. The Indians were giving Las Vegas a run for their money. She made a slow tour of the place, walking down the aisles between card tables and crap tables and noisy slot machines, looking for Mulherin. She found him sitting alone in a dark bar that faced an empty stage. She picked a slot machine where she could watch him and fed a twenty-dollar ticket into the machine.
Ten minutes later, Norton entered the bar and joined Mulherin at the table. Five minutes after that Carmody walked in. Emma had been hoping a fourth person would join them, but that didn’t happen.
Mulherin and Norton ordered beers while Carmody declined the waitress’s offer. The men began to talk and at one point Carmody jabbed a big finger at Mulherin’s face to make a point and Emma saw Mulherin sit back in his chair, a chastised expression on his face.
Moments later, Carmody rose from his chair and began to walk toward the casino exit. Emma noticed she’d won fifty dollars from the slot machine— she’d always been lucky— but she didn’t have time to cash out. The next slot-playing grandma who sat in the chair was going to think she’d died and gone to gambler’s heaven.
As Emma followed Carmody from the casino, she made a quick call to DeMarco. Carmody turned and looked behind him once as he crossed the casino parking lot to his car, but all he saw was a woman with long dark hair, her head down, digging into her purse for her keys. Emma was behind Carmody as his car left the casino parking lot. As she was driving away, she saw DeMarco enter the casino.
* * *
DEMARCO FOUND NORTON and Mulherin where Emma had said they’d be, drinking beer near the empty stage. He was about to approach their table, when he saw Norton stand. Norton said something to Mulherin— something DeMarco assumed wasn’t kind— because Mulherin gave Norton’s departing back the finger.
Mulherin sat drinking a few minutes by himself, a petulant expression on his long face, the expression of a man who had just received an ass chewing that he didn’t think he deserved. Mulherin finished his beer, ordered another one, then walked over to a craps table and started losing money.
Mulherin had just placed a red five-dollar chip in the section of the craps table called the “Field.” The Field was essentially a sucker’s bet, a one-roll, even-money bet on all the numbers on the dice that had the least chance of hitting. Only novices— and morons— played the Field.
DeMarco walked up next to Mulherin and placed a big hand on Mulherin’s shoulder. “Dumb bet, Ned,” DeMarco said. “You read any book on craps, it’ll tell you that.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Mulherin said. “Are you following me?” Mulherin tried to pull away from the hand on his shoulder, but DeMarco just squeezed and pulled Mulherin closer.
“Yep,” DeMarco said.
“You can’t—”
“That wasn’t smart, Ned, running to Carmody right after we talked. You’re gonna make him nervous. He’s gonna think you can’t hold your water. I don’t think you want a guy like Carmody thinking things like that, Ned.”
The craps table wasn’t busy, only three other players, and the pit boss had been watching the exchange between Mulherin and DeMarco. He couldn’t hear what DeMarco was saying, but he could see DeMarco’s hand on Mulherin’s shoulder and could tell that Mulherin was scared. The pit boss— a man intimately familiar with the problems of bad gamblers— wondered if DeMarco was a guy trying to collect a debt.
“Sir,” the pit boss said to Mulherin, “is this gentleman bothering you?”
Mulherin got an expression on his face similar to that of a drowning man who’d just been thrown a rope. “Yeah,” he said. “He’s, he’s…”
“Sir,” the pit boss said to DeMarco, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” The pit boss didn’t care if Mulherin owed some loan shark money. Mulherin was the player, and right now he was in the Indians’ casino losing his money.
“Sure,” DeMarco said to the pit boss. He took his hand off Mulherin’s shoulder and gave him a friendly slap on the back, a hard little thump that rocked Mulherin forward. “I can always talk to ol’ Ned here later. I know where he lives.”
* * *
AS EMMA DROVE, she wiped the lipstick from her mouth with a Kleenex and took off the wig. She replaced the wig with a dark blue Calvin Klein baseball cap. Carmody drove less than five miles from the casino before he pulled off the highway and took the access road to a small state park, the Faye Bainbridge State Park.
Emma wasn’t certain but she figured the park had only one exit,
and that Carmody would have to leave the park by the same road that he’d entered. Whatever the case, she knew it would be unwise to follow Carmody into the park in her car as he would be almost certain to see her. So she pulled off to the side of the access road and pushed the switch to start the emergency flashers. It would appear as if her car had broken down and she had gone to find a phone to call for aid. She locked the car and sprinted down the access road in the direction Carmody’s car had gone. She saw a flash of red ahead of her: Carmody’s Taurus. It wasn’t moving. She left the access road and veered off into the woods surrounding the parking area. She moved carefully through the woods until she found a small, thick stand of trees where she could hide and still see Carmody’s car.
Carmody was just sitting in his car, and as Emma watched, he rolled down the windows to let in some air and adjusted his seat to a partially reclining position as if he expected to be there for a while.
Emma was hoping Carmody had come to the park to meet his control. She knew somebody was controlling this operation— assuming there was an operation. Mulherin had done what she had expected him to do: he had reported to Carmody immediately after DeMarco had talked to him. Now she was hoping Carmody would take the next step and report to his control— and then Emma would follow that person.
Carmody appeared to be sleeping in his car. Emma wondered momentarily if he’d just decided to come to the park to take a nap, but that seemed unlikely. After he’d been there exactly one hour, she saw Carmody raise his arm and look at his wristwatch. Then he readjusted his seat and started his car.
Emma watched from her place in the trees as he drove out of the park, then she ran back to her car, cursing under her breath. She was going to lose him.
* * *
THE ASIAN WOMAN had arrived at the rendezvous point fifteen minutes before Carmody. As she always did, she would wait for a while before approaching his car. She had waited half an hour, and had been about to come out of the woods when a movement in the bushes behind Carmody’s car caught her eye. She took a pair of binoculars out of her shoulder bag and focused on the spot. She didn’t see anything for almost ten minutes, then the bushes moved again, and a face appeared in the lenses of her binoculars. The woman inhaled sharply; she had to bite her lower lip to keep from crying out.
She just sat and watched for twenty minutes, doing nothing, remaining absolutely still. And it was hard for her to stay still because she was literally trembling with rage. If she had had a gun with her she might have shot the woman in the bushes right then. Finally, she saw Carmody start his car and drive away, and then she watched as the woman ran out of the bushes, most likely going back to her car to follow Carmody.
A moment later the Asian woman stepped from her hiding place. She knew that most people thought of her as cold and unemotional— and she was. Her emotions had been cauterized a long time ago. But if anyone had been there to see her at that moment they would have had no trouble at all reading the hatred burning in her eyes.
20
DeMarco was still bird-dogging Mulherin.
He was sitting in his rental car, parked half a block from Mulherin’s house. He was pretty certain where Mulherin was going this evening. He had found out that Mulherin was a member of the Elks, and tonight was the Elks’ weekly Texas hold’em poker tournament, which Mulherin never missed. Sure enough, at six forty-five, the front door of Mulherin’s cluttered house swung open and he appeared wearing a sport jacket, a dress shirt sans tie, gray slacks, and loafers. The guy was dressed so nicely that DeMarco wondered if he might be meeting an Elkette at his club.
Mulherin climbed into a Ford Explorer and backed down his driveway. Because he was fiddling with his car radio, he didn’t notice DeMarco when he drove right past him. DeMarco made a U-turn and followed, letting Mulherin get a block ahead of him.
A mile from his house, Mulherin and DeMarco passed through an industrial area. There was a large warehouse on one side of the street and on the other side were buildings that advertised welding and auto body repair and marine diesel services. The businesses were closed for the day and there were no pedestrians on the street. DeMarco glanced over at a sign advertising used crab pots for sale and wondered what a crab pot was— something you caught ’em in or something you cooked ’em in? When he turned his head to face forward, he saw a black Honda sedan with tinted windows in his rearview mirror. The Honda was gaining on him, moving fast, and blew past DeMarco, then past Mulherin’s Explorer. The Honda was fifty yards in front of Mulherin’s vehicle when the driver hit his brakes and simultaneously turned the car sideways, blocking Mulherin’s path. Mulherin slammed on his brakes to avoid broadsiding the Honda, the rear of the Explorer fishtailing as he did so.
“Jesus!” DeMarco said and stopped his car. He was a half a block away from Mulherin’s vehicle.
Two men exited the Honda. Both were Asian, both over six feet tall, and they looked very fit. They wore jeans and white T-shirts that were tight to their bodies— and they were both holding pistols in their hands, and silencers were attached to the barrels of the pistols.
The men raised their weapons. Mulherin shrieked in fright, put his car into reverse, and started to back up, but before he had traveled ten yards one of the men fired bullets into the Explorer’s front tires. The other man fired at the same time, a single shot that went through Mulherin’s front windshield, missing Mulherin’s face by less than a foot. Before the men could fire again, and with a speed that surprised both DeMarco and the shooters, Mulherin flung open his door and began running down the road— toward DeMarco.
DeMarco immediately stepped on the gas pedal and closed the distance between him and the fleeing Mulherin. The Asians, instead of chasing after Mulherin, took up shooting positions— legs spread, a two-handed grip on their weapons— and fired at Mulherin. Two bullets struck the asphalt near Mulherin’s feet, another ricocheted off a garbage can sitting on the sidewalk. Mulherin screamed, “Help! Jesus Christ, help me!” Mulherin at this point was running so fast he was having a hard time maintaining his balance and he stumbled, almost falling— which was a good thing as this made him a harder target.
DeMarco, by this time, had reached Mulherin. He stopped his car, flung open the passenger-side door, and screamed, “Mulherin, get in!”
Mulherin leaped into DeMarco’s car and immediately put his head down so it was below the level of the windshield. DeMarco put his car in reverse and jammed down the gas pedal. As he was backing away, going at least forty miles an hour in reverse, the shooters fired their weapons. One bullet hit the mirror on the driver’s side door, and blew it completely off the car. The other bullet hit DeMarco’s front windshield, punched a neat hole through the windshield, then shattered the rear window into a thousand pieces.
“Son of a bitch!” DeMarco screamed.
DeMarco didn’t know how to do one of those fancy driving maneuvers where you spin a car going full speed in reverse so it ends up pointed in the opposite direction. So he did the only thing he could do. He stayed in reverse until he reached the next intersection, hit the brakes, jammed the transmission into drive, and turned the corner. As he was turning, he looked up the street: the Asians were running back toward their Honda. DeMarco pushed the car up to sixty and stayed at that speed until he reached a busy street with lots of vehicles and pedestrians around.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Mulherin said.
DeMarco didn’t answer; he was looking for the black Honda. He didn’t see it.
“We need to call the cops,” Mulherin said.
“Shut up,” DeMarco said. “And keep your head down where nobody can see it.”
“But who the hell were those guys?” Mulherin said.
“You know damn good and well who they were,” DeMarco said.
“What?” Mulherin said.
DeMarco ignored Mulherin and took out his cell phone and punched a speed-dial button. “Emma, it’s Joe,” he said into the phone. “They tried to pop Mulherin.”
DeMarco was silent for a moment then said, “Okay. It’ll take me ten or fifteen minutes to get there.”
“Where are we going?” Mulherin said.
“Someplace where your useless ass will be protected. Now keep your head down and your mouth shut.”
DeMarco drove around for a brief period to make sure the Honda wasn’t nearby, then got onto Highway 3. Four miles later he took the exit for the Naval Submarine Base. He drove up to the security gate and showed his ID to the guard. The guard must have known that he was coming because he didn’t ask to see Mulherin’s ID nor did he ask about the bullet hole in the front windshield. DeMarco drove half a mile until he came to a windowless, single-story building. There was no name on the outside of the building, just a three-digit number.