by Mike Lawson
Mahoney was entitled to security and could have it any time he wanted. His security was normally provided by the U.S. Capitol Police but sometimes, because he was third in line for the presidency, the Secret Service insisted he take their protection. If the national threat level was high, or on those rare occasions a threat was made against him, or like last year when the vice president had his bypass operation, they didn’t give him a choice. But most times, Mahoney avoided bodyguards; they tended to cramp his style. And on this particular trip, he hadn’t wanted anybody with him. So as fate would have it, the one time he drives himself and doesn’t bring his security, he gets held up by a little Vietnamese punk in a parking garage. Fate obviously didn’t know his rank.
“You go to van,” the Vietnamese kid said again, jerking his head in the direction of a black van that was two parking spaces away.
“Son,” Mahoney said, “do you know who I am?”
“Don’t care,” the kid said. “You go to van or I put bullet in your…in your foot.”
“Come on,” Mahoney said. “Just take m’damn wallet. It’s in my back pocket, left-hand side. There’s probably three hundred bucks in there. Credit cards, too.”
“Look at me,” the kid said. Mahoney looked down, into the kid’s eyes, then nodded his head and walked slowly toward the van.
And it had been such a grand evening up until now.
69
DeMarco sprinkled the Parmesan cheese, making sure it was evenly spread. The sprinkling of the Parmesan— not too much, not too little— was the last step, the bow on the package, the signature on the painting.
The lasagna recipe had been passed down to him from his father who had inherited it from his mother who had inherited it from her mother. As DeMarco had no children, the possibility existed that the recipe would go with him to his grave. But DeMarco wouldn’t allow such a thing to happen. He could not be that selfish. If he never fathered a child, he would, in his final years, find a worthy recipient. He would search the globe to find this person. It would be the last, great quest of his twilight years.
This made him think: What if he collapsed from a sudden heart attack? He needed to have his will revised and a copy of the recipe placed in a vault. No, a mere recipe would not do. A list of ingredients and mixing instructions and cooking times could never capture the process of creation. He’d have to record himself on video as he made the dish. Yes, he would pass on his knowledge from beyond the grave. In fact, that’s the way he’d start the video: “If you’re watching this, I must be dead. But I bring to you from beyond the grave the taste of paradise.”
DeMarco covered his lasagna with aluminum foil and checked the oven temperature. The oven was ready, preheated to the exact, required degree. He placed the lasagna carefully inside the oven, precisely in the center of the cooking box, and set the timer. The lasagna would cook covered for forty-five minutes. When the timer sounded, he would remove the aluminum foil and it would bake another ten minutes, until the Parmesan was golden brown. Then the dish would be taken gently from the oven and allowed to rest for fifteen minutes. He hoped Diane Carlucci was punctual. He would be annoyed if she was late and he had to reheat his masterpiece in the microwave. Such an act could end their relationship before it was ever consummated.
Well, maybe not.
DeMarco was really looking forward to seeing Diane. She had called two nights ago and said she had been transferred back to D.C. and would be there for the next six months. DeMarco had dated a woman who worked at the Department of Interior for four months last year, but that relationship had gone the way all of his other recent relationships had gone— due south— and there had been no one since then who had really mattered. Maybe this time things would work out differently. That Diane looked and sounded like his ex-wife— a point that Emma had made the first time she saw her— was a fact which DeMarco chose not to dwell upon.
He checked his watch. While his lasagna cooked he’d have just enough time to shower and shave— and change the sheets on his bed in case he got lucky. And he was feeling lucky. He opened a bottle of wine, a strong red that two Italians could appreciate, and headed for the shower.
Thirty minutes later he was back in his kitchen, squeaky clean and perfectly groomed. He put on an apron— a plain blue, manly one— and poured himself a glass of wine. The wine was perfect. He was glad he had bought two bottles. He made a salad and was just starting to set the table when the doorbell rang.
She was early. This was good. They’d share a glass of wine before dinner. He started to take off the apron as he walked toward the door then changed his mind. Nothing wrong with a man in an apron. He opened the door, a smile on his face— a smile which collapsed when he saw Phil Carmody standing there pointing a gun at his chest.
“Move back,” Carmody said.
DeMarco did. Now it bothered him that he was wearing the apron. For some reason he felt that it gave Carmody an advantage— an absurd thought, considering that the man had a gun and had been trained by the U.S. Navy to kill in multiple ways.
“What’s cookin’?” Carmody said. “Smells good.”
“Lasagna,” DeMarco said.
Carmody looked at the set dining-room table. “You’re expecting company. When’s she arriving?”
“Any moment now.”
“That’s not good,” Carmody said.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to set up a meeting between Li Mei and Emma.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, I thought you might say that.” Carmody pulled a cell phone from his pocket and, while still pointing the gun at DeMarco, punched a single button. “It’s me,” he said after a moment. “Put the big guy on.”
Carmody handed the phone to DeMarco. “John Mahoney is on the other end of that phone. Ask him where he’s at right now.”
Oh, shit. DeMarco took the phone from Carmody. “Boss?” he said.
“Yeah, it’s me. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“No.”
“Ask him where he is,” Carmody said.
“Boss, where are you?”
“I’m in a van with three Vietnamese punks. We’re on 95 South heading toward D.C. But I don’t know what the hell’s going on.”
“Give me the phone,” Carmody said and DeMarco handed it back to him. “Mr. Speaker,” Carmody said into the phone, “this is Phil Carmody. As long as DeMarco does what I want, you’ll be in your office in the morning. I promise. Now will you tell him to obey me, sir?”
“Kiss my ass,” Mahoney said.
Carmody laughed and hung up.
“What are you doing, Carmody?” DeMarco said.
“I told you. I need you to set up a meeting between Emma and Li Mei. I had the Chinese embassy out here do a lot of research on you. They found out you worked for Mahoney, so I figured if I had him, you would be a lot more inclined to cooperate.”
“Are you insane, Carmody? He’s the Speaker of the House. Do you think you can kidnap him and walk away from this?”
“Yeah, I do. We’ve got about ten hours, DeMarco. That’s how long it’ll take Mahoney to make it back to D.C. If we’re done in ten hours, he’ll be set free, right on the steps of the Capitol. No one will even know he was kidnapped unless he tells them.”
“And if I don’t cooperate?” DeMarco said.
“Don’t go there, DeMarco. Like you said, he’s the Speaker. You don’t want to risk his life. You can’t risk his life.”
Before DeMarco could answer, the doorbell rang. Diane Carlucci. Right on time.
Goddamnit.
* * *
“JOE, I’M BUSY packing,” Emma said. “What do you want?”
Emma, always the charmer.
“Emma, Carmody’s here in my house. He’s pointing a gun at me and Diane Carlucci.”
“Who?”
“Diane Carlucci. The FBI agent I met in Vancouver.”
“What does Carmody want?”
“I’ll let him tell you.
But Emma, there’s something else you need to know. He had some guys kidnap Mahoney.”
DeMarco heard Emma suck in a breath. “Put him on, Joe.”
Carmody took the phone from DeMarco. “Ms.—” Carmody started to say.
“What do you want?” Emma said.
“I want you to meet with Li Mei.”
“So she can kill me.”
“No. So I can capture her.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I don’t want you dead and I don’t want Li Mei dead. But I can’t get close to her. So I want you to set up a meeting with her, and when you do, I’ll take her.”
Emma didn’t say anything for a moment. “You’re working for the Chinese government, aren’t you, Carmody? You’re the one who saved me at my club.”
“We don’t have time to get into that now,” Carmody said. “Now listen to me. There’s a lot at stake here. DeMarco, this young lady from the FBI, and the Speaker. Are you willing to sacrifice all of them?”
“What do I have to do?” Emma said.
* * *
DIANE CARLUCCI LOOKED mad enough to kill.
She was tied, hand and foot, to one of DeMarco’s kitchen chairs, and she was gagged. And the chair was tied to the refrigerator so she couldn’t move it.
“I’m sorry about this, Ms. Carlucci,” Carmody said. “I truly am. But this’ll all be over in a few hours, and then you and Mr. DeMarco can enjoy the dinner he made you.”
The sounds Diane made then were muffled by the gag, but DeMarco could guess what she was saying.
Carmody had been the complete gentleman. He’d let Diane get a drink of water and go to the bathroom before he tied her to the chair. And he’d allowed DeMarco to turn on the small television in the kitchen so she’d have something to watch while she sat there. He’d even allowed DeMarco to take his lasagna out of the oven and put it in the refrigerator.
You couldn’t ask for a nicer kidnapper.
DeMarco looked apologetically at Diane, which made that about the millionth apologetic look he’d given her.
“Okay,” Carmody said, “let’s get this show on the road.”
70
I gotta take a piss,” Mahoney said. He could see out of the front windshield of the van. They had been driving for two hours now and had just passed Hartford, Connecticut.
There were three young Vietnamese gangsters in the van. The driver, a guy in the passenger seat, and the little bastard with the hard eyes sitting in the back of the van with Mahoney. The kid in the back leaned against the back of the passenger seat looking at Mahoney through bored, hooded eyes. He held the Glock loosely in his right hand and didn’t seem particularly concerned that Mahoney would try anything.
The three kidnappers were all kids; Mahoney doubted that any of them was even twenty. The guy in the passenger seat— the passenger— was particularly young, maybe fourteen or fifteen. God-awful rap music was coming from the radio and the driver and passenger were bantering back and forth in Vietnamese. If they were worried that they had just kidnapped one of the most powerful politicians in America, they didn’t show it.
Mahoney could see how Carmody had set up the kidnapping. The lunchtime engagement with the Elks, or whoever that group was, had been written up in a couple papers and posted on Web sites. The Vietnamese guys probably picked him up at the luncheon then followed him until they found a good place to snatch him, the parking garage being ideal. Mahoney was also pretty certain that these immigrant kids had no idea who he was. He may have been a recognizable figure in his home state, but get more than ten miles outside the D.C. Beltway and most Americans couldn’t name, much less identify, the Speaker of the House. To these immigrant kids he was just some fat, old white guy they’d been told to kidnap.
“Hey! Did you hear me, you little prick?” Mahoney yelled. “I said I gotta take a piss.”
Mahoney wasn’t restrained in any way. He was sitting with his back against the double back doors of the van. The back doors were locked so even if he wanted to jump out of a vehicle going sixty miles an hour, he couldn’t. He held a bottle of bourbon in his hand. A full one. The kidnappers had given it to him. Carmody had obviously researched him enough to know some of his habits but not enough to know his preferred brand. Mahoney was guessing the three punks had been told to buy him a bottle and let him get drunk and pass out, figuring he’d be less trouble that way. It really pissed him off how little respect the bastards were showing him. Not respect for him as the Speaker— but respect for him as a man. They had no doubt that they could easily handle an unarmed, overweight guy with white hair— as if he were no more of a threat to them than a ten-year-old child— and that pissed him off more than the kidnapping itself.
“Hey!” Mahoney yelled. “I said—”
“You shut up,” the little Vietnamese gunman said. He turned and said something to the driver and the driver and the passenger began to laugh, the passenger pounding the dashboard as if he’d just heard the funniest joke of his young life.
“If I piss my pants, I’m gonna kill you all,” Mahoney said. And he wasn’t kidding.
“You shut up,” the gunman said. “We stop in a minute.” He paused then added, “We told not to hurt you, but you call me prick again, I pistol-whip you. You understand?”
Mahoney smiled.
Five minutes later the van took an exit off the highway. They drove five more minutes then stopped on a dark, isolated section of road near a fallow field. The driver pushed a button and Mahoney heard the back doors of the van unlock. The driver and the passenger exited the van and the driver opened the rear doors so Mahoney could get out.
The gunman said, “You piss fast.”
Mahoney started to say that with his prostate that wasn’t possible, but decided not to say anything. The gunman barely spoke English and he’d had no indication the other two kids spoke any at all. His prostate joke— not that it was a joke— wouldn’t be appreciated.
He stepped from the back of the van with some difficulty. His joints had stiffened while he was sitting and his shrapnel-damaged knee was aching like a bitch. He wandered over to the side of the road and unzipped his pants. The driver and gunman stood behind him. The third kid, the passenger, stood beside Mahoney and peed with him, as if they were old drinking buddies.
Mahoney looked up at the sky. There were a lot of stars in the sky, visible now that they were away from the smog of the city. That always amazed him, how many stars there were. He remembered looking up at the stars during the war and experiencing the same sense of wonderment. He’d been afraid back then, lying in a foxhole or near some rice paddy, waiting for guys that looked just like these kids to sneak up and kill him. He’d been a kid himself then.
But he wasn’t afraid now— and was surprised he wasn’t.
He just wished he knew what the hell was going on.
71
DeMarco had been told to take the Metro. He exited the subway at Gallery Place and passed under the great, colorful arch on H Street that marked the entry to Washington’s Chinatown. He could feel that he was being watched as he walked down the street.
He walked a block. As Carmody had told him, on one side of the street, the side he was on, was a Red Roof Inn. Across the street were four run-down row houses in a white brick structure. Three of the houses had red doors; the fourth house, the one closest to the corner, had a green door. He crossed the street, walked up to the green door, and turned the doorknob. It was unlocked. He started to open the door but before he did, he looked behind him.
There were three Chinese men and they were less than ten feet away, staring at him. Where in the hell had they come from? It was as if they had just materialized out of the steam coming from the grate in the sidewalk.
“I’m here to see Li Mei,” he said to the trio. “I’m not a cop,” he added.
The men didn’t answer; they just continued to stare.
Jesus, he thought— or maybe he was praying. He opened the door and saw a set of stairs
that ascended to the second story of the house. He started up the stairs. If they shot him in the back, he hoped they killed him. He didn’t want to end up a quadriplegic.
Carmody had told him that Li Mei had been using a Chinese gang to watch Emma. That’s why Emma and Rolf had never seen her near Emma’s place. The gang, there were about twenty of them, half of them teenage boys and girls, would take turns watching Emma, following her, and reporting back to Li Mei. Carmody suspected the gang didn’t know who Li Mei was, just a woman with lots of cash willing to pay them for easy work.