House Secrets

by Mike Lawson

  DeMarco had just returned from his trip to New York and was sitting in his den, a vein throbbing in his temple, reading an op-ed piece in the Washington Post. The evil bastard who’d written the editorial was urging Congress to raise the minimum retirement age for federal employees to sixty-five, spouting baseless nonsense as to how this would save the taxpayers big bucks. DeMarco concluded that if he were running things, the first thing to go would be the First Amendment. Before he could work himself into a state of quivering anxiety thinking about the possibility of working for Mahoney until he was sixty-five, the doorbell rang.

  Opening the door, he discovered one of his neighbors. She had lived in the house on the right side of his for about six months but he couldn’t remember her name. Ellen, Helen, something like that. He said hello to her and her husband when he saw them outside but that was as far as he chose to carry the relationship. She was a plump woman in her early thirties, normally pleasant and cheerful, but today looking as if she had been given a preview of Armageddon. She had a baby in one arm screaming its head off, the baby’s face the color of a tomato. Her other hand had a firm grip on the upper arm of a truculent brat who appeared to be about ten.

  “Thank God, you’re home,” she said to DeMarco. “I didn’t know what I was going to do if you weren’t.”

  “What’s the problem?” he asked, knowing he didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “Wesley’s really sick. He’s got a temperature of a hundred and four and I’ve got to get him to the emergency room. I called my normal sitter to take care of Stanford but she’s out of town and my sister can’t get here for an hour. So could you please, please watch Stanford until my sister gets here? I just have to get this baby to the hospital.”

  DeMarco’s mind raced as he tried to think of an excuse even remotely sufficient for turning away a woman with a feverish infant. He considered telling her he was a paroled pedophile.

  She saw his hesitation and said, “Just for an hour. Please. Until my sister gets here. I’d take Stanford with me but he catches colds really easily, and I’m afraid he’ll get the flu sitting in that waiting room with all those sick people.”

  “Sure,” DeMarco said, “I’d be happy to take care of, uh, Stanford for an hour.”

  “Oh, thank you so much, Mr. DeMarco. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

  “It’s Joe, and it’s quite all right, uh . . .”

  “Allison. Allison Webster.”

  “Right. Allison.”

  Thrusting Stanford at him, she said, “My sister’s name is Joyce. She’s on her way.”

  After she left, he and Stanford stood inside his foyer, staring at each other. DeMarco wasn’t sure if Stanford was big or little for his age—he was short. He had reddish brown hair and distrustful-looking, tiny blue eyes. His fists were clenched.

  DeMarco broke down first and said, “So what do they call you? Stan?”

  “No. My name’s Stanford. Stan’s a guy that works at a garage.”

  Great. An elitist midget.

  When DeMarco didn’t say anything else, Stanford said, “So what do you wanna do?”

  “Fly to Iowa and see my ex-girlfriend.”

  “Huh?” Stanford said.

  “Never mind. I don’t wanna do anything. What do you wanna do?”

  “You gotta computer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You got any games on it? You know, Spider-Man, Donkey Kong, something like that?”

  Donkey Kong?

  “No,” DeMarco said, “I don’t have anything on my computer except a tax program.”

  “How ’bout Nintendo. You got Nintendo hooked up to your TV?”

  “No, but I have cable.”

  “Big deal. Everybody’s got cable.”

  “Look, kid, this isn’t a day care center. I don’t have any toys; I don’t have any games. I have a TV, a punching bag, and a piano. Take your pick.”

  “You have a piano?”

  It irked him, the kid sounding so surprised.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Steinway?”

  “Yamaha.”

  Stanford snickered. He’d been there less than three minutes and he was already getting on DeMarco’s nerves.

  “Well, since there’s nothing better to do, I guess I could practice for my recital.”

  DeMarco looked skyward, Job incarnate. He could imagine the brat banging out a two-fisted version of “Beautiful Dreamer” for a solid hour.

  “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” he said. “Make some productive use of your time. It’s up the stairs, second floor. And don’t touch anything else up there unless you ask first.” He didn’t know why he had said that; there wasn’t anything else up there to touch except his punching bag.

  “My mom says you’re a grouch.”

  “I am. Go play the piano.”

  As Stanford started up the steps, DeMarco said, “By the way, did your piano teacher tell you what pianissimo means?”

  Stanford smirked again and nodded.

  “Good. Practice pianissimo.”

  DeMarco poured a drink to get through the next hour and sat back down to finish reading the paper. He had just raised the glass to his lips when the music began. Brahms, Beethoven, one of those guys. And the kid was good—and playing from memory. DeMarco knew he wouldn’t be able to play like that if had three hands. He consoled himself with the possibility that Stanford was an idiot savant.

  He spent the next hour listening to the music, dwelling on the many facets of Paul Morelli. According to Lydia, someone powerful was helping her husband’s political career and that person had possibly killed Terry Finley when he began to investigate the senator’s past. Furthermore, per Lydia, Paul Morelli was a sexual predator, a fact that neither woman on Finley’s list was willing to confirm. But then Harry had inadvertently told DeMarco that Morelli had done something to another woman, this Susan Medford. But what had he done? Tried to kiss her? Groped her? Or was it something worse?

  DeMarco was skeptical of everything Lydia had told him. She had no facts, she drank too much, and she was obviously still distraught over her daughter’s death. And not only was he skeptical, but allegations that Paul Morelli had conspired to ruin the careers of the three men on Finley’s list had been investigated by people smarter than both DeMarco and Finley. DeMarco was convinced that that was a dead end.

  The rational part of him—he couldn’t remember if that was the right or left side of his brain—said that Harry was probably right, that Morelli was a good man who may have strayed once or twice, and Lydia’s view of her husband was distorted by alcohol and a loveless marriage. But from somewhere deep inside his skull, from that atrophied little nodule that responded to intuition and emotional radiation, a voice was saying that Harry had it all wrong. DeMarco was still trying to figure out what to do when his phone rang.

  “There’s a dark blue sedan parked fifty yards from your house,” Emma said. “The two men in it followed you this morning when you went to the Russell Building.”

  “You’re kidding,” DeMarco said.

  “Does it sound like I’m kidding? Leave by your back door and meet me at Paolo’s.” Paolo’s was a restaurant in Georgetown within walking distance of DeMarco’s house.

  “I can’t leave just yet,” DeMarco said, and explained the situation with young Stanford.

  “A woman asked you to babysit her child? She should be reported to social services.” Before DeMarco could pretend to be offended, Emma said, “Then as soon as the kid leaves, sneak out your back door. Leave the lights on and the TV blaring.”

  Stanford’s aunt arrived a few minutes later, and as the boy was leaving, DeMarco said, “Stanford, you have a lot of talent. I enjoyed listening to you play.”

  “Ah, any dope can play a piano. You oughta see me play Nintendo.”

  “The kid’s leaving,” Jimmy said. “But the woman who picked him up ain’t the same one who dropped him off.”

  He and Carl had seen th
e first woman knock on DeMarco’s door, a baby in her arms, the little redheaded shit at her side. DeMarco had talked to the woman, then the redhead went inside DeMarco’s place, and the woman and the baby took off in a cab. And now some other woman comes and picks up the kid. It looked like the neighbor had just asked DeMarco to watch her brat for a while. Jimmy wasn’t sure, but that’s what it looked like to him. The good news was they’d actually have something to report to Eddie. No way in hell was he going to tell Eddie that they’d lost this guy twice in two days.

  “I wonder why that broad left her kid with him,” Carl said.

  “I dunno,” Jimmy said.

  “And where the hell was he all day?”

  Here we go again, Jimmy thought. The questions. And if that wasn’t enough, his nose still hurt where that airbag had whacked it. Those airbags were dangerous.

  “You know,” Jimmy said, “instead of asking stupid questions all the time why don’t you think about what we’re gonna do if Eddie says to take care of this guy. And open your goddamn window! How many times do I have to tell you? That fuckin’ smoke just kills my sinuses.”

  Carl rolled his eyes, but he opened the window. “We could do a hit-and-run,” he said after a bit. “That’d work.”

  “Nah, too risky these days. I mean if you do it out in the country, that’s okay. But in the city, forget it. They got cameras everywhere. Like that wreck yesterday. Who’d a thought there’d be a camera at that intersection?”

  “Yeah. Good thing we got fake IDs. My insurance rates are already through the roof.”

  “So you got any ideas,” Jimmy said, “other than a hit-and-run?”

  “No, I guess not. You know, it’d sure be nice if once in awhile we could just pop these assholes. Always tryin’ to make these things look accidental is a pain in the butt. How ’bout you, you got any ideas or you just gonna run down my ideas?”

  “Yeah, actually I do,” Jimmy said. “You know how his garage is attached to his house?”

  “It’s under the house.”

  “I know,” Jimmy said. “It’s attached.”

  DeMarco’s garage was in the basement of his home. When he entered his driveway, he drove downward, under the first floor of the house. Adjacent to the garage, on the basement level, was a room that contained DeMarco’s washer and dryer, the furnace, and the water heater.

  “Anyway, remember today,” Jimmy said, “when we went inside? Well, his bedroom is right over the garage.”

  “So?”

  “So we go in there and we drill a couple of holes in the garage ceiling, which is his bedroom floor. We drill the holes so they come out under his bed. Say we do that tomorrow. Then whenever we get the call from Eddie, we wait until he falls asleep and we go in the garage and start his car. Maybe we leave the door between the garage and the rest of the house open for good measure.”

  “You gotta be shittin’ me,” Carl said.

  “No. The reason I thought of it was a couple months ago out in Idaho, Oregon, one of them places, this guy and his wife killed themselves that way. I mean an accident, not suicide. The guy left the car runnin’ in the garage, they went to bed, and they woke up dead. Carbon monoxide.”

  “The guy left his car runnin’ all night?”

  “Yeah. Motors on these new cars are so quiet you can’t even hear ’em.”

  “But won’t he wake up when we start the car?”

  “Maybe, but if we wait until he’s snorin’ away, he probably won’t hear it. And if he does . . . well, then I guess we’ll just smother him or something and stick him back in bed.”

  “What if the car runs out of gas?”

  “Now that’s a good point. We bring along a couple cans of gas and top off the tank before we start the car.”

  Carl sat there a minute, thinking about Jimmy’s idea. He started to light another cigarette, but stopped. He didn’t want to have to listen to Jimmy bitch anymore about his sinuses.

  “I don’t know,” Carl said. “You really think they’ll buy he left his car on?”

  “Hey, I told ya. They did with that couple in Montana.”

  “I thought you said it was Idaho.”

  “Montana, Idaho, what’s the fuckin’ difference!”

  DeMarco saw Emma inside Paolo’s, seated at the bar. She was talking to a beautiful woman with long, chestnut-colored hair in a lowcut formal dress, the lady looking as if she’d just escaped some black-tie affair. The woman—it was probably because of the way her hair was styled—reminded him of those fifties movie stars, someone like Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner. When Emma saw him and excused herself, DeMarco could see that the woman was disappointed.

  He and Emma took seats at a table near the front of the restaurant that had just been vacated by another couple. DeMarco thought of making a crack about women hitting on Emma in bars, but decided that wouldn’t be smart. Instead he said, “So who do you think is following me?”

  “I know who’s following you,” Emma said. “They have IDs with the names Jerry Fallon and Tim Reed, but their real names are Carl van Horn and James Suttel. They’re bottom feeders who freelance for the CIA.”

  “The CIA!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Holy shit. So maybe Lydia was referring to some big shot at Langley when she said someone powerful was helping her husband.”

  “Maybe. There are people at the CIA capable of doing anything.”

  “You think Colin Murphy might be involved?”

  Murphy was the current director of the CIA.

  “No,” Emma said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because these incidents that helped Morelli’s career began back in 1992. Since that time, there have been seven or eight directors of the CIA and Murphy wasn’t at the agency until two years ago.”

  “So if it’s not Murphy then it’s gotta be one of the old guard over there, one of the career civil servants who’s been there forever and is high up the food chain.”

  “That’s possible. But it’s also possible these two men aren’t working for the CIA at all. Like I said, they freelance. Anyone could have hired them. What did you learn in New York?”

  DeMarco told her.

  “So the man’s a rapist.”

  “Wait a minute. My godfather just said—”

  “Nonsense. You know what Lydia told you and it sounds like her husband’s blackmailing Janet Tyler using her fiancé, and he probably silenced Marcia Davenport in some similar way. And now this godfather of yours . . .”

  Emma said “godfather” like Harry Foster was Vito Corleone.

  “. . . confirms that Paul Morelli can’t keep his hands to himself.” DeMarco shook his head. “It’s not that cut and dried, Emma, and you know it. All the evidence against Morelli can’t even be called circumstantial. It’s too unsubstantial to be called circumstantial.”

  DeMarco thought that was pretty clever; Emma didn’t.

  “You need to talk to Lydia again. You need to find out who’s helping the senator and why she’s coming forward right now.”

  “Emma, can you even imagine Mahoney’s reaction if he knew I was running around trying to prove Morelli’s a criminal?”

  “I don’t care about Mahoney’s reaction.”

  “Of course you don’t. You’re rich, you’re retired, and you have a pension.”

  “That’s irrelevant,” Emma said.

  “For you it’s irrelevant,” DeMarco said.

  When DeMarco just sat there, Emma poked his leg under the table with her foot. “Well, what are you waiting for? Call Lydia. Set up a meeting.”

  “Are you nuts?” DeMarco said. “What if her husband’s there?”

  “Her husband’s in Miami. He’s the keynote speaker at the National Hispanic Business Association convention. And he’s delivering his speech in Spanish, I might add.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Because I read more than just the sports section of the Washington Post,” Emma said. “So go on. Set up another meeting with L
ydia.”

  DeMarco didn’t move. He did not want to get cross-wired with Mahoney over this.

  “Joe, we’re talking about a man who may become the next president of the United States.”

  Goddamnit, she was right. As usual. DeMarco pulled out his cell phone and started to punch in Lydia’s number, but Emma said, “No, use the pay phone.”

  Lydia’s phone rang a long time before she answered, and then it took DeMarco quite a while to set up a meeting for the next day because she was drunk. In fact, it had sounded to him as if she was on the verge of passing out.

  He returned to the table. “She was wasted,” he said to Emma. “She could barely talk.”

  “Maybe alcohol is the only way she can find peace,” Emma said.

  “Yeah, and maybe she’s a delusional lush.”

  “But she agreed to meet you?”

  “Yeah, tomorrow morning. She said her husband wouldn’t be back until four so at least I don’t have to worry about running into him. Which reminds me: I do not want those two CIA guys, or whoever the hell they are, to see me talking to her.”

  “Oh, I think I can help there,” Emma said.

  Chapter 17

  They watched DeMarco exit his house and then stand on the sidewalk until a cab arrived.

  “Here we go,” Carl said, starting the car.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said, “and do not lose this cluck today. We’ve lost him twice in two days, and there’s no way in hell I’m telling Eddie we lost him a third time.”

  “You got that right,” Carl said. He turned the wheel to the left, to pull away from the curb, but before he could a FedEx truck parked next to him and prevented him from leaving.

  “What the fuck!” Carl screamed. He looked over at the FedEx driver, a big black son of a bitch. The guy was reading the address on a package. Carl rolled down his window, waved his arms at the driver, and when the guy didn’t see him, he pressed down on the horn. The driver glanced over at him and made a just-a-minute gesture, then went back to reading the address.

  “You motherfucker!” Carl screamed.

  “Son of a bitch!” Jimmy yelled and he yanked open his door. “I’m gonna get the number on that cab,” he said, and took off running down the street.