by Mike Lawson
“It will take me a few days, however. This is a complicated matter.”
“I understand,” DeMarco said.
“And I would like you to return to Boston.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not sure how I intend to proceed, and I may need your assistance there. I also may need the assistance of your employer. I just don’t know yet.”
DeMarco immediately said, “I don’t see how I can be of any help to you. And there’s no way in hell my boss is going to help you. From here on in, it’s all between you and Callahan.”
“Mr. DeMarco, you’re the one who came to me, and I’m willing to do what you want. The least you can do is assist me if I feel that’s necessary.”
“I’ll think about it,” DeMarco said, and hung up.
He couldn’t believe the man had just hung up on him.
Using the same phone, he sent an encrypted text message to his cousin: “I have a small problem and would appreciate it if you would allow la Leona to assist me. Thank you.” It irritated him that he had to ask his cousin for help; there was a time when he would have simply issued an order.
DeMarco had still been sitting in the lobby bar at the Marriott when Castro called. He’d been thinking about going to the terrace bistro for a late dinner as Castro’s goons had prevented him from eating earlier. But after he spoke to Castro, he didn’t feel much like eating.
DeMarco didn’t like the idea of going back to Boston, and Castro asking him to go there felt completely wrong. His instincts were screaming at him to run for home. He couldn’t imagine any way that Castro would need his help with Callahan. Castro would either tell the Cayman company to call in Callahan’s loans or he’d tell Callahan to back out of Delaney Square. There was nothing DeMarco could do—or would do—to assist Castro. He wanted to tell Castro to go screw himself. On the other hand, since it had been his idea to force Castro to deal with Callahan, and since both he and Mahoney wanted Callahan to pay for what he’d done . . .
Tomorrow he’d call Mahoney and talk it over with him. It was too late back in D.C. to call him now. And he’d call Mahoney from the airport. He was getting the hell out of Mexico.
The following morning, sitting in the departure lounge at the airport, DeMarco phoned Mahoney.
“I met with . . . the Mexican.”
DeMarco needed to be careful speaking on a cell phone. “Things went well, I think.”
“You think?” Mahoney said.
“He’s agreed to do what I want with regard to the man in Boston. The thing is, the Mexican wants me to go back to Boston in case he needs me there to help him, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Well, in for a penny, in for a pound,” Mahoney said, and hung up.
Fuckin’ Mahoney. He’d been hoping Mahoney would tell him to return to Washington, and instead he gets: In for a penny, in for a pound.
He called Castro back, calling the number that had called him the night before, but his call went to voice mail. He left a message saying, “I’m returning to Boston today and I’ll assist you in whatever way I can.” Then he added, in case the call was being monitored, “As long as it’s legal.”
26
Castro dispatched four men—and one woman—to Boston. The person in charge was the woman: Maria Vasquez, la Leona.
Castro suspected that Maria Vasquez had a genius-level IQ. She’d been born dirt poor in a barrio in Mexico City, the fifth of six children, and by the time she was sixteen she was the mistress to a Mexico City politician. With her looks, and lacking a decent education and family connections, that should have been her fate: to either be a prostitute or a mistress to some wealthy man, and by the time she was fifty she would be discarded and forced to do whatever cast-off mistresses without money did.
But Maria Vasquez was much too bright to allow that to happen to her. She dumped the politician when she was eighteen and deliberately set her sights on José Luis Guerrero—the man who ran the drug cartel that employed Javier Castro, and who Castro later killed to assume command. She became Guerrero’s mistress but Guerrero—and Castro had always admired him for this—was a man who recognized talent when he saw it. He’d recognized Javier Castro’s talent and he recognized Maria Vasquez’s. She soon became one of Guerrero’s principal advisers and when Guerrero tired of her sexually, he began to use her to plan and execute operations for him. After Castro took control, he used her too, and now his cousin, Paulo, was using her. After one particularly complex operation where Maria dispatched a heavily protected federal police captain who’d become an annoyance, Paulo—one of the least poetic men that Castro knew—said, “She was like a lioness taking down a gazelle.” From that point forward she became la Leona—the Lioness. The woman was brilliant—and Castro couldn’t help but wonder where her talents would take her in the future.
Three of Maria’s men were now watching Sean Callahan, and Maria and the fourth man were watching DeMarco. Callahan’s movements were unpredictable. He had an office on Exeter Street, not far from Copley Plaza, and he spent some time there but he also attended meetings at the offices of lawyers and architects and bankers; he visited the Delaney Street project and another project that was nearing completion in Quincy; he played golf one afternoon with three other men. Each day he returned to his mansion on Beacon Hill around seven p.m., and three out of the four nights Castro’s people were watching him, he and his lovely young wife went out to dinner or attended some social function. One important and salient fact was that the people who worked for Callahan in the office on Exeter Street always left the office before seven p.m.
DeMarco’s movements were, in some ways, more predicable than Callahan’s. He appeared to have nothing to do in Boston so he spent his days entertaining himself: walking around the city, sitting by the hotel pool reading novels, going to a theater to watch a show. One day he went to Fenway to watch the Red Sox play in a day game. But every evening he would stop in some bar, either the one at the Park Plaza or one within walking distance of his hotel, and have several drinks and eat dinner before he returned to his room.
To make sure DeMarco stayed in Boston, Castro called him once and told him that things were moving forward but that he needed a little more time.
“It’s obviously complicated,” Castro said. “My lawyers have drawn up papers for Callahan to sign with regard to his withdrawal as an active participant in Delaney Square. He won’t want to sign the documents, of course, but he will. Nonetheless, the documents need to be bulletproof, as you Americans say, and they can’t allow him any wiggle room to sue or renege on the agreement or take any other sort of legal action at a later date.”
“Yeah, I understand,” DeMarco said. “But why do I have to be here?”
“I’m not sure you do at this point,” Castro said, “but I think I’ll have this wrapped up in the next two days, and until then I’d appreciate it if you would stand by. Let me remind you again that you’re the one who’s asked for my assistance in this matter, so I would think that you’d want to stay until our business is concluded.”
“Yeah, okay, but just a couple more days. Then I’m out of here.”
DeMarco was going out of his mind with boredom. If he was in Boston of his own choosing, he might have viewed his time there as a vacation and enjoyed himself. But he wasn’t in Boston by choice and the ongoing heat wave was brutal and he’d seen enough of Boston over the years that he didn’t have any great desire to explore the city. He attended another Red Sox game—once again paying an exorbitant amount for a shitty ticket in the cheap seats—but other than that, he just milled around, reading, taking walks, and watching whatever was on television.
He thought about driving up to Portsmouth to see Elinore. Portsmouth was only about two hours away—but he was afraid to leave Boston in case Castro actually needed him for something. The other thing, if he was really being honest about it, was that he didn’t rea
lly want to see Elinore if she hadn’t improved since the last time he saw her; that was just too depressing. He did call Elinore’s daughter to inquire how her mother was doing, but she told him it was none of his business and not to call again. How in the world did such a lovely person as Elinore Dobbs end up with such a bitch for a daughter?
It occurred to him that he’d forgotten all about the other thing that he was supposed to be handling for Mahoney: Congressman Sims and his possibly bogus Purple Heart. So he called Emma to see if she’d made any progress. The first thing she said to him was: “Are you okay?”
The last time he’d spoken to her, he’d just had the tar whaled out of him by the McNultys.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“What’s happening with those guys who attacked you?”
“They had an unfortunate run-in with the law. They were caught with a boxful of assault rifles and are now sitting in a jail cell.” He decided to leave out the part where he put the McNultys in the hospital.
“I see,” Emma said. She knew DeMarco well enough to know that it wasn’t simple bad luck that had befallen the McNultys.
“I just called,” DeMarco said, “to see if you’d made any headway regarding Sims.”
“Yeah, I did and it’s not good. I won’t bore you with all the details but I got Neil involved,” Emma said.
Neil was an incredibly annoying fellow who was nimble and dangerous when his pudgy fingers were on the keyboard of a computer. If the details of your personal life were stored inside some server, Neil could gain access to them.
“To make a long story short,” Emma said, “Neil located an ex-marine named Pat Howard. Howard was one of the few marines sleeping inside the barracks in Lebanon that morning who survived when the bombs went off. According to a couple of sources that Neil found, Sims saved Howard’s life.
“When I talked to Howard, I pretended to be a reporter doing a story on congressmen who’d served in the corps. I told him that I’d learned that Congressman Sims had saved his life, and Howard said that was true. He said Sims slithered through a narrow tunnel in the debris, pushed concrete off Howard, and pulled him free even though Sims knew the building was unstable and he could be killed himself.”
“That sounds pretty damn valorous to me,” DeMarco said.
“I’m not finished,” Emma said. “When I asked Howard if he could remember if Sims’s right leg was injured, he said yes it was. Even though this happened over thirty years ago, Howard could remember everything that happened that day. In fact, Howard said Sims cut both his legs badly on jagged pieces of rebar dragging him out from under the rubble. But he said Sims cut his legs dragging him out; his legs weren’t cut before he went in to save Howard.”
“Then maybe Sims isn’t lying about the Purple Heart,” DeMarco said. “He may have been lying about getting stabbed by a piece of flying glass but—”
“I think he’s lying,” Emma said. “Like I told you before, there’s no record of him getting a Heart, and the marines do a better job than the other services with regard to medal record keeping. The other thing is, in order to qualify for a Purple Heart the injury has to be as a direct result of enemy action. If Sims had been injured by flying glass when the barracks was bombed, he would have qualified. But injuring himself saving Howard’s life means he wasn’t, at least technically, injured by the enemy. Although I have to admit it’s sort of a gray area, and if he’d been given the Heart I doubt anyone would have questioned the decision.
“Anyway, I asked Howard if he knew if Sims had received a Purple Heart and he said, ‘I know he’s got one, and he sure as hell deserves it.’ But Howard wasn’t aware of a formal citation or an award ceremony. So I don’t know what else to tell you, Joe. I suspect Sims is lying but I can’t prove it.”
“Well, shit.”
“Yeah, it’s a shame. I think what happened is Sims figured he deserved a medal for saving Howard’s life and being injured while doing so, but all he got was the general unit citation for serving in Lebanon. So I think when he ran for Congress, he punched up his service record to impress the voters.”
DeMarco didn’t say anything for a moment, then said, “Okay. I’ll tell Mahoney.” He wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.
“Why don’t I talk to Mahoney, Joe? I’ve got the details on Sims. Plus, this is one time where Mahoney’s actually trying to do the right thing.”
Mahoney knew that Emma helped DeMarco occasionally—although he didn’t usually like it when she did because she was impossible to control. In this case, however, Mahoney and Emma shouldn’t be at odds with each other. At least DeMarco hoped not.
“Thanks,” DeMarco said. “I appreciate it.” And he did; he wasn’t anxious to give Mahoney any more bad news.
Now all he had to do was wait for Castro to deal with Callahan so he could get the hell out of Boston.
27
Maria Vasquez called Javier Castro.
“I think we should act tomorrow,” she said. “DeMarco’s a sure thing, but when it comes to Callahan, I’m going to have to improvise. What I’m saying is I’ll have to look for some opportunity after noon when he’s alone, and then we’ll take him. Then we’ll have to hold him until DeMarco is where I want him to be. If an opportunity doesn’t present itself tomorrow, then we’ll try again the next day.”
“What if Callahan’s reported missing?” Castro asked. “I’m sure he has things scheduled in the afternoon, and someone will begin looking for him.”
“That won’t be a problem. We’ll make him call whoever he’s supposed to be with and give some excuse for why he can’t make his appointments.”
“Okay,” Castro finally said.
He didn’t like improvising—but in the end, Callahan made it easy for them.
Sean Callahan was sitting in his office, glad that fucking phone call was over with. It was seven thirty p.m. and he was tired and wanted to go home. Thank God Rachel didn’t have anything planned for tonight, so he could just kick back and relax. That was one problem with having such a young wife: sometimes she just wore his old ass out.
He was still in his office because he’d had to talk to a man in Japan, where it was eight a.m. The man was thinking about investing in a project that was still in the pie-in-the-sky stage, and he had money to burn. The problem was the guy thought he could speak English, so instead of using an interpreter, he insisted on speaking himself, which just about drove Sean crazy. He couldn’t understand about every other word the guy said, and kept having to ask him to repeat himself.
But other than the irritation of having to talk to the Japanese investor, things were going well and he had no complaints. He’d stopped by Delaney Square earlier in the day, and now that Elinore Dobbs was out of his hair, things were moving forward and the project was almost back on schedule. The only thing he felt bad about was the McNultys. What on earth had possessed those dumb shits to get involved with selling machine guns? Their lawyer had called him about a week ago, saying the brothers wanted to see him, and he’d told the lawyer that he would but wasn’t sure when he’d have time to drive up to the Essex County jail. He really didn’t want to talk to them but he thought it might be a good idea; they were such maniacs he didn’t want to get on their bad side.
He heard the phone ring in the outer office and thought maybe it was Rachel calling to ask where he was, although Rachel usually sent him text messages when she wanted to bug him. He hit the lighted button on his phone and said, “Hello.”
“Oh, Mr. Callahan, I didn’t mean to disturb you. I was calling to speak to your secretary about scheduling a meeting for next week.”
“She’s not here,” Callahan said. “I’m here by myself and you really need to talk to her about scheduling anything. My calendar’s on her computer.” Actually, his calendar was in his phone but he didn’t feel like dealing with this right now.
“I’ll call b
ack tomorrow,” the man said.
Callahan wondered where the guy was from—he had an accent—and what meeting he was talking about. Whatever. It was time to go.
He turned out the lights and walked out the door, checking to make sure it was locked. As he was walking down the hall, he noticed three young guys standing by the elevator. They looked Hispanic and were hard-looking SOBs but they were all wearing suits and ties. They didn’t look like gangbangers, or anything like that. He wondered who they’d been meeting with in the building. There were a couple lawyers on this floor; maybe they were here to see one of them.
He reached the elevator, nodded at the three men, then noticed the DOWN button wasn’t pushed. Why hadn’t they pushed the button? Then he found out.
One of the men took out a silenced automatic pistol and pointed it at his chest. “Mr. Callahan, we’re going to return to your office. If you do anything foolish, I’ll kill you.”
He realized then that the guy speaking was the same guy who’d just called asking to speak to his secretary. Who the hell were these people?
They walked back to his office and the man with the gun told him to unlock the door. As he was doing so, Sean said, “I don’t keep any money here in my office. But I have about five hundred in my wallet, and credit cards, of course.”
The man just prodded him in the back with the gun and said, “Go to your office.”
He was told to sit in the chair behind his desk, then the man with the gun said, “Now call your wife and tell her you’re going to be very late. Put the phone in speaker mode. If you say anything to alarm your wife, we’ll kill you, then go to your house on Beacon Street and rape your wife before we kill her.”
“Jesus. What do you guys want?”
“Make the call.”
He hit the SPEAKER button on the phone and punched in Rachel’s cell phone number. When she answered, he said, “Uh, hi, it’s me. I’m going to be pretty late tonight.”
