Dead Man’s List

Hey, what the hell, it was an easy gig. When he’d enlisted in the marines, before he’d started working for the boss—a million years ago it seemed like now—he and some guys had been bitching about sitting around doing nothing, waiting all the time. An old gunnie heard them griping and said: “Boys, you get paid the same for marching as you do for fighting.”

And he was getting paid. He thought when he retired that he and Sharon wouldn’t have any problem at all living off his government pension, but money ran through Sharon’s hands like water. They’d whittled their savings account down to nothing. So quit bitching, he told himself. You get paid the same for marching as you do for fighting, and a dull job was better than no job, and it was definitely better than being in the middle of a shit storm like Kosovo.

Chapter 12 (#ulink_8bfed951-5b67-5645-9b17-bd5ea727dd1b)

DeMarco turned in to Emma’s driveway and parked his car.

Emma lived in McLean, Virginia, in a beautiful redbrick home, one that seemed much more expensive than she should have been able to afford on a retired civil servant’s salary. But would Emma ever reveal the source of her wealth? Of course not. The Sphinx was more likely to sing to a camel.

He heard music coming from the house. Emma’s lover, Christine, played a cello in the National Symphony and she often practiced at home, but DeMarco could hear sounds—or in this case noises—being made by more than one musician. DeMarco was not a classical music fan to begin with—give him that ol’ time rock and roll—but this music…Well, it wasn’t your typical, monotonous Beethoven / Mozart elevator music. It sounded like cats screaming in agony.

He rang the doorbell. The awful composition continued. He rang again and Emma answered the door, looking wild-eyed, like maybe she was the one torturing the cats.

“Thank God you’re here!” she said. Not usually the reaction she had when she saw him. Turning her head, she yelled over her shoulder, “Christine, I have to go. Joe’s here and he has a…an emergency.” She didn’t wait for Christine’s answer and immediately closed the door.

“Take me someplace that has liquor and is soundproof,” Emma said.

“What’s going on?” DeMarco asked.

“Christine’s quartet.”

DeMarco had forgotten that Christine moonlighted with a small quartet. He’d heard them play once, an experience he’d repeat only if heavily medicated.

“They’re working on a piece by some avant-garde Swedish composer. Or maybe he’s Danish. Who cares? They’ve been playing this one passage for over an hour and I was thinking of shooting them all before you arrived.”

They didn’t find a soundproof bar but they found one that was quiet enough, not even a CD playing on the sound system. Emma ordered a blue martini, curaçao liqueur mixed with lime and gin, the color of the drink almost matching her eyes. DeMarco spent a long time selecting a brand of vodka, discussing his options with the bartender, before finally settling on one made in Ireland called Boru. Who would have guessed that the Irish made vodka? And it was good, certainly better than the antifreeze he had in his refrigerator at home, but not cheap. Emma pointed out that cheap and good rarely went together, an axiom DeMarco was determined to disprove.

“So what do you think?” DeMarco said after he finished telling Emma about his conversation with Lydia Morelli at the cathedral.

“The first thing I think is that you had better take the part where she said you’re in danger seriously. There are some strange things about Terry Finley’s death, and the fact that Senator Morelli claimed not to know Finley bothers me.”

“It bothers me too, but you have to remember that the person who told me that Paul Morelli knew Terry had booze on her breath at nine-thirty in the morning.”

“Still, take it seriously. Has anybody been following you?”

“How would I know?” DeMarco said. Then he remembered the yahoos who had been broadsided by the cab. “Well, maybe,” he said and he told Emma about the wreck. “But if those guys were tailing me, they were pretty inept.”

“Oh that’s right,” Emma said, “all thugs belong to Mensa.”

Ignoring the sarcasm, DeMarco said, “What’s really bugging me is that I can’t tell if Lydia is telling the truth, and if she is, why now? Why didn’t she tell somebody all this stuff years ago?”

“You know,” Emma said, “political wives are different from other women. Take Jackie Kennedy or Hillary Clinton, or hell, even Eleanor Roosevelt. They were all publicly humiliated by their womanizing husbands, but they stuck by them anyway. One reason could be love. There’s nothing unusual about a good woman loving a bad man, and these men were charming, charismatic people. So maybe a politician’s wife stands by her cheating husband simply because she loves him. But then there are other factors. Maybe these women, after all the sacrifices they’ve made, don’t want to give up their positions. They want to be the first lady. Or it could even be that their motives are actually noble. They know that it would be bad for the country if they were to initiate a messy, public divorce.”

“Okay, so political wives are different,” DeMarco said. “And maybe up until now, Lydia’s stood by this wonderful guy that she says is a murderer and a rapist because she loves him or wants to be the first lady or whatever. But if that’s the case, what’s changed? Why’d she contact Terry Finley and why’s she telling me about her husband now?”

“I don’t know,” Emma said, “but her daughter died just a few months ago. That could have been the catalyst. The woman is obviously in pain, she starts drinking heavily, so maybe she’s…”

“Nuts?”

“No, not nuts. Traumatized. So even though she’s remained loyal to her husband for years, when her daughter died things changed, her priorities changed.”

“In other words, she got religion,” DeMarco said.

“Maybe not literally, but yes. At any rate, you need to pursue this. You need to find out if she’s telling the truth.”

“Emma, Mahoney thinks Paul Morelli’s the second coming of JFK. If he knew I was running around trying to prove he was some kinda sexual predator, he’d…”

As usual, Emma wasn’t listening. She said, “And who’s this powerful person that’s helping him?”

“I don’t even know if there is a powerful person,” DeMarco said. “And if there is, why not tell me who he is?”

“Maybe she’s afraid of him,” Emma said. “Telling you his name could put her in danger.”

“But not telling puts me in danger,” DeMarco said.

Emma sat there thinking, holding her martini glass by the stem, twirling it, making the blue liquid swirl in the glass. “That one guy, what’s-his-name, Reams, the guy who claimed he was drugged? Neil said his blood was tested for drugs and came back negative. What if he really had been drugged? Who would have the influence to change the results of a police drug test?”

“Jesus, Emma, that’s a hell of a leap.”

“Maybe. At any rate, you need to go to New York and meet this woman, this Janet Tyler. And you need to find out what Terry was doing in New Jersey. Neil may be able to pin down a location using Finley’s credit card or cell phone records.”

“And what do you suggest I tell my boss?” DeMarco said.

“Don’t tell him anything. Didn’t you say he was in San Francisco with his latest mistress?”

“I was just kidding about that. I don’t know if she’s his mistress.”

“She is,” Emma said.

“And you would know this how?” It always bugged DeMarco that Emma never allowed a lack of data to prevent her from being absolutely certain of her opinion.

“Because John Mahoney’s a scoundrel,” Emma said. “I feel so sorry for his wife.”

Chapter 13 (#ulink_22db5615-1b93-5b0d-8a4c-7445f127c9ae)

Paul Morelli’s office was located in the Russell Senate Office Building on the northeast side of the Capitol. The interior walls of the building are polished slabs of white and gray marble, and the doors to the senators’ chambers are all brass and mahogany and an impressive eight and a half feet in height. The taxpayers house their senators in style, and Morelli’s suite had a fireplace, rich antique furnishings, and a reception area filled with plaques and awards that the state of New York had bestowed upon its favorite son. A photograph of Morelli and the president was prominently displayed. The president appeared uncomfortable in the photo—he had the look of a man who knew he was posing with his replacement.

Morelli’s receptionist was a woman in her fifties with a horsey face and watery eyes. When DeMarco asked to see Abe Burrows, she pointed wordlessly at an open door while blowing her nose loudly into a tissue.

Judging by his office, Burrows was a typical harried, overworked chief of staff. His small, messy room was overflowing with documents half-read or never-to-be read; his in-box was a Tower of Babel about to collapse; yellow call slips formed a large, untidy pyramid next to his phone.

DeMarco had known dozens of men like Burrows. They didn’t have enough charisma to be elected as dog catchers but they were smart, hardworking, and fanatically dedicated. While their bosses were cutting ribbons and smooching babies, they stayed in the office until midnight, reading the fine print on the bills and making the deals that passed the laws. Politicians were often the hood ornament on the government’s machine—people like Abe Burrows were the engine.

Burrows was on the phone when DeMarco entered his office, and DeMarco heard him say: “You tell your guy that Morelli won’t give a shit about bridges in Mississippi until someone over there starts caring about Northeast interstates. Call me back when you got your head outta your ass.”

He was short and overweight, had frizzy hair, and wore wrinkled clothes that fit him badly—yet DeMarco knew it would be a mistake to assume Burrows’s appearance was an indicator of his character. Senators didn’t select their chiefs of staff for charm and good looks; they picked them because they were harder than diamond-coated drill bits and usually just as sharp.

Slamming down the phone, Burrows looked at it and said, “Dipshit.” Looking up at DeMarco, he raised his eyebrows in curiosity.