House Secrets

by Mike Lawson

  “Who are you?” Brenda said to Emma.

  “She’s an associate of mine,” DeMarco said. Before Brenda could ask more questions, he added, “Brenda, you need to buy some clothes suitable for a Senate aide. Why don’t you go shopping now and meet me back here in about four hours.”

  Brenda’s eyes narrowed and she opened her mouth to tell DeMarco to quit being such a bossy SOB, but before she could, DeMarco said, “And don’t worry about the cost; you won’t be paying for the clothes.”

  A minute after Brenda left, and just as Emma began to lecture him on the inadvisability of screwing the help, the doorbell rang again. It was Bobby Prentis, Neil’s assistant. Bobby was a slightly-built young black man with rust-colored dreadlocks who rarely spoke. He communicated best, and most often, through keyboard and modem. From Bobby’s small hands dangled two objects: a thin black leather briefcase and a medium-sized metal suitcase.

  Emma and Bobby made a quick tour of the apartment, returning to the living room area where they started. The living room was adjacent to the kitchen, separated by a countertop used for informal dining.

  “We want it to happen in this area,” Emma said to DeMarco. “Make sure Goldilocks understands.”

  “Why—,” DeMarco started to say, but Emma ignored him.

  “Bobby, I want them no higher than this,” Emma said, placing a hand on the top of a window frame, “and no lower than this,” she said, touching the bottom of the window frame. “Understand?”

  Bobby nodded.

  “So put one here, one here, one over there, and one near the bedroom window, which I hope we won’t need.”

  Bobby nodded. He set the two cases on the kitchen countertop, opened the black leather briefcase, and took out four video cameras that were not much bigger than packs of cigarettes. He opened the metal suitcase next, which was actually a portable hardware store, crammed with tools, fasteners, and wire. DeMarco was surprised Bobby had been able to lift the suitcase by himself.

  As Bobby began to work, Emma said, “You have the cop lined up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And the photographer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Think they’ll be able to keep their mouths shut?”

  DeMarco shrugged. “I’m not too concerned about the cop; if he talks he’ll get in trouble. It’s the photographer who worries me.”

  “So have Murphy give him a tip,” Emma said.

  It took Bobby less than two hours to install the video equipment. When he was finished he nodded his head and left, having spoken no more than two sentences the entire time he was in the apartment.

  DeMarco examined the places where Bobby had hidden the cameras. You could see them if you stood close to them and knew where to look, but a person casually taking in the décor would never spot them. Bobby’s little spy shop in a box had even contained small vials of paint and he’d touched up the walls and molding wherever he’d made any marks.

  Yes, Bobby was a professional when it came to things like this, as was Emma. DeMarco was not. As he stood there looking at the nearly invisible cameras he could imagine a million things going wrong. The batteries in the cameras would die; sunspots would interfere with the equipment; an electrical storm . . .

  “Oh, yeah,” Emma said, looking at Bobby’s handiwork, a killer gleam in her eye, “we’re gonna nail this bastard.”

  Gary Parker, the cop, moved into the apartment building. He was delighted with his new digs.

  DeMarco toured Arnie Berg around the apartment building. Showed him exactly where to stand. “No sweat,” Arnie said.

  Bobby, Neil’s mute apprentice, gave DeMarco the keys to the surveillance van and showed him how to work the equipment. To make sure he understood, they did a dry run with Emma standing inside the apartment, talking for the microphones. The sound was crystal clear.

  DeMarco called Brenda at Morelli’s office to make sure that the senator’s schedule hadn’t changed.

  “I caught him staring at my boobs when I stretched today,” Brenda said. “I stretch a lot.”

  “Good. Keep him staring. But are you sure he’s still on for Thursday, that his schedule’s the same?”

  “Yep. And speaking of schedules, I seem to be free tonight. How ’bout it, honey bunch? Wanna roll in the hay with a future movie star?”

  He did.

  Wednesday night DeMarco met Sam Murphy in his suite at the Hyatt on Capitol Hill. Murphy was wearing the pants and vest from a black three-piece suit, the collar of his white shirt undone. He sat, relaxed, in an overstuffed armchair, his cowboy boots propped on the coffee table in front of him. His ugly dog lay on the bed, snoring. The critter smelled like a wet doormat.

  “Well, Joe Bob, I’m all set to see the man tomorrow as planned.”

  “Did he agree to meet you in his office?” DeMarco asked.

  “Yeah. Told him I didn’t wanna meet no place public.”

  “What reason did you give him for the meeting?”

  “Son, don’t try to teach your daddy to suck eggs. I gave him a reason that made him feel good, one that made him think he had the upper hand.”

  “You gotta get some booze into him, Sam.”

  “Quit frettin’, boy. I could get the Pope drunk and laid if I put my mind to it.”

  Sam Murphy looked over at DeMarco, his eyes flat and unsmiling and serious. “I’m gonna owe you one if you pull this off, Joe Bob. I want you to know I realize that.”

  “No, Sam, you will definitely not owe me one. If I had my way you wouldn’t be running for president either.”

  Chapter 55

  Brenda was to wait until Sam Murphy left, then catch the senator just as he was leaving the office. DeMarco had told her it was important she meet Morelli in the hallway, and not inside his office. She was to tell him that she had missed her ride and would ask him if he would mind taking her to the Metro stop at Union Station, which was only a couple of blocks from the Russell Building. DeMarco was positive Morelli would offer to drive her home. He didn’t like her being alone with Morelli in a car, but she was wired for sound and he would be directly behind her in the surveillance van.

  At seven-thirty DeMarco heard Brenda over the headset: “Oh, Senator, I didn’t know you were still here. I just came back to call a cab.”

  Goddamnit, Brenda, don’t improvise. DeMarco was afraid Morelli might let her into his office to use the phone. Even worse, he just might let her take a cab home.

  “What are you doing here so late, honey?” Morelli asked.

  Honey? It sounded as though Sam Murphy had done his job.

  “Well, you know,” Brenda said, “being new and everything, I have to stay late sometimes to keep up.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “By the Eastern Market Metro stop. I usually get a ride home from one of the other girls, but they all left early tonight. I was going to walk home—it’s not that far—but when I went outside, I got scared. I don’t like walking alone here at night, so I came back to call a cab.”

  DeMarco heard a long pause, then Morelli said, “Come on. I’ll give you a ride.”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t impose on you like that, Senator.”

  Don’t protest too much, Brenda.

  “Darlin’, it won’t be any trouble at all. Let’s go.”

  On the drive to Brenda’s apartment, Morelli was the perfect gentleman. In fact, other than asking for directions, he hardly spoke at all, which made DeMarco worry that Sam Murphy hadn’t gotten enough booze into the man.

  Arnie Berg, the photographer, and Gary Parker, the cop, were in the surveillance van with DeMarco. They weren’t able to hear Brenda and the senator talking because DeMarco was listening to the transmission through a headset. At this point, neither Arnie nor Gary knew who they were about to encounter.

  When they arrived at the apartment Brenda said, “Senator, would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee, or something? I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, but I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve
been drinking. I’d hate to see you get stopped by the police on the way home.”

  Morelli didn’t respond immediately and as the silence grew, DeMarco sat in his car, muttering to himself: Come on, you bastard, come on.

  “Yeah, a cup of coffee might be a good idea,” Morelli said at last.

  “Get in position,” DeMarco told his small team. “And Arnie, when Gary tells you to give him the camera, give it to him. And Gary, if Arnie doesn’t give you the camera when you ask for it, hit him with your stick.”

  “Hey!” Arnie said.

  “I’m serious, Arnie,” DeMarco said. “If you don’t give Gary the camera, if you take off with it, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

  DeMarco wouldn’t kill him, but he looked like a guy who might. Arnie swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I’ll do what I said; you don’t have to threaten me. But I wanna know who these people are.”

  “You’ll find out soon enough. Now get in position.”

  Arnie and the young cop left the van. Arnie snuck up to the front window of Brenda’s apartment, crawled behind some bushes, then pointed his camera at the interior of the apartment. The cop just stood on the sidewalk in front of the apartment building, fidgeting.

  Over the headset DeMarco heard Brenda say, “Would you like tea or coffee, Senator?”

  “You’re sure a pretty little girl, Brenda,” the senator said.

  The phrase “little girl” made DeMarco’s skin crawl.

  “Thank you, Senator, but what would you like to drink?” Brenda’s tone made it clear she was in no way encouraging Morelli.

  “You live alone?” Morelli asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have a boyfriend?”

  “No, I just moved here. Now I’ve got some nice Darjeeling tea. How would you like that?”

  “You must be lonely, a tiny thing like you, not having someone around to cuddle you. And I’ve seen you looking at me in the office.”

  The polished sophistication DeMarco had always heard in Paul Morelli’s voice had disappeared completely. Drunken sailors approach hookers with more subtlety than he was displaying. The change in his character resulting from a few drinks was astounding.

  “Yeah, I know what you want,” Morelli said and after that neither of them spoke for a couple of seconds until Brenda said, “Senator! What are you doing?”

  DeMarco checked to see where Arnie and Gary were. Arnie was still filming; the cop was still standing on the sidewalk.

  DeMarco heard Brenda say, “Senator, stop,” the words muffled, and the next thing he heard was a crash, as if a lamp had been knocked over, and then Brenda screamed, “Stop it, you bastard!” There was a panicky edge to her voice and DeMarco didn’t think she was acting any longer.

  DeMarco yelled to the cop, “Go, Gary, go.”

  As instructed, Gary yelled out to Arnie, “Hey! You with the camera! What the hell are you doing?”

  And on cue, Arnie responded, “There’s a girl being raped in there.”

  Gary ran down the walkway to Brenda’s apartment and flung open the door. Brenda had been told not to lock it. Arnie followed Gary inside, his camera still recording.

  Ten minutes later, Arnie and Gary reappeared with Morelli. DeMarco could hear sirens in the distance, coming in his direction. Gary had Morelli by the arm and Morelli’s hands were cuffed behind his back. Arnie no longer had the video camera; Gary had confiscated it as evidence. Arnie was now holding a still camera with a flash and he was taking pictures as fast as the camera would take them.

  Paul Morelli appeared to be in shock, his eyes glazed, his mouth slack-jawed. His hair was in disarray, a shirttail hung over his belt, and his belt was partially undone. The picture that would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country—a picture copyrighted to Arnie Berg—would be a classic. DeMarco watched the flash exploding on the camera like a strobe light, repeatedly freezing Morelli’s dazed features.

  At that moment a patrol car pulled up outside the apartment building and two uniformed cops got out. Gary escorted Morelli to the patrol car and placed him in the back seat. He then asked the two cops who had just arrived if they could go inside the apartment building, secure the scene, and get the victim. As the two cops walked into the apartment building, Gary walked over to the surveillance van and handed DeMarco the video camera that Arnie had been using.

  Five minutes later, one of the cops emerged from the apartment with Brenda. She was clutching the lapels of a raincoat, holding the coat closed, presumably covering her torn clothing. Arnie’s still camera captured the tears on her face. Brenda also managed a few words for her small audience: “It was terrible. He was like an animal.”

  And the Oscar goes to . . .

  Brenda and the officer stood outside the building for a few minutes, the officer comforting Brenda, until a second patrol car pulled up to the curb. Brenda was placed in the second car. Ten minutes later both police cars left the scene, Morelli in one, Brenda in the other. The blue and red lights on the cop cars were flashing but the sirens were muted.

  Emma exited the car in which she’d been sitting and walked up to Brenda’s apartment. She unlocked the door and ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape and entered the apartment. Ten minutes later she exited the apartment with the four cameras that Bobby Prentis had hidden and joined DeMarco in the surveillance van.

  They studied the video recorded by Arnie and compared it to the videos recorded by the other cameras. The reason they’d placed the hidden cameras in the apartment was that they needed to make sure that they had at least one clear video of Morelli attacking Brenda. This was a one-take operation—they couldn’t just hope that Arnie would be able to get an unobstructed view.

  Emma and DeMarco watched together as Morelli backed Brenda against a wall. This happened just after he had said, “Yeah, I know what you want.” Brenda responded by placing her hands against Morelli’s chest and attempting to push him away, the camera a stark witness to her resistance. DeMarco winced when Morelli clamped his hands like a vice on both sides of Brenda’s face and covered her lips with his mouth as she strained against him. She managed to say, “Senator, stop,” but Morelli ignored her, continuing to kiss her while at the same time tearing clumsily at her blouse. He eventually pushed a struggling Brenda to the floor, knocking over a lamp as he did so, and the scene recorded by one of the cameras was perfect: it not only showed Morelli pawing at Brenda like some sort of deranged, out-of-control satyr, but it also showed the look of revulsion on her face.

  Since DeMarco had told her what to expect, Brenda shouldn’t have been surprised by Morelli’s actions, but he was sure she was. She was like DeMarco had been in the beginning: incapable of believing, no matter what anyone said, that Paul Morelli could be anything other than a bright, shining knight.

  After he had pushed Brenda to the floor, Morelli straddled her and she grimaced in pain as his knees pinned her arms to the carpet. With her arms immobilized, he began pulling up her skirt with one hand while he struggled to undo his belt with his other hand. It was while he was pulling up her skirt that Brenda had screamed “Stop it, you bastard!”

  Brenda may have been acting up until that moment. She’d played the shy secretary in Morelli’s office for two weeks, and when she invited him in for coffee, she was still in character. But when Morelli had her on the floor, tugging at her underwear, DeMarco could see the fear in her eyes and knew it was real. Just before Gary reached Morelli to pull him off Brenda, Morelli was recorded saying: “Come on, you little bitch. I know this is what you want.”

  Emma and DeMarco finally selected the camera that had the best view of the assault and Emma took the video cartridge from that camera and put it into Arnie’s camera. Now all they had to do was get the camera back to Gary so it could be entered into evidence.

  Forty minutes had elapsed since the cops had hauled Paul Morelli to the police station. Gary had been instructed to take his time processing Morelli and not to mention the video camera h
e’d taken from Arnie. Emma went to the police station, posing as an attorney waiting for a client. Gary had been instructed to go to the station’s reception area periodically and when he saw Emma, she passed him Arnie’s camera, the camera now containing the recording that DeMarco and Emma had selected. Gary then admitted the video camera into evidence.

  While all this was occurring, DeMarco called his friend Reggie Harmon. He woke Reggie from his normal alcoholic stupor and told him to get down to the cop shop for the story of his career.

  Per Reggie’s story, which appeared on the front page of the Post the following morning, a tabloid photographer, Arnie Berg, just happened to see Senator Paul Morelli leaving the Russell Building with a good-looking blond. So, being the paparazzo sleaze that he was, Arnie followed the couple. No one was surprised by this. When the senator and the blond entered an apartment building, Arnie followed with his little camera and peered through the apartment windows, hoping to catch them doing something naughty. When Morelli assaulted Brenda, Arnie naturally kept filming but fortunately for Brenda, a young police officer, Gary Parker—who just happened to live in her building—was getting home from work. Officer Parker saw Arnie peeping through Brenda’s window, at which point Arnie informed the cop of what was occurring inside the apartment.

  And then Gary Parker just did his job.

  Chapter 56

  A week after his arrest, Paul Morelli met the old man at a card room, a windowless, concrete block structure near Newark, New Jersey. It was early, only nine a.m., and the card room wasn’t open for business.

  Morelli parked behind the building, near the rear exit. Another car, a big Lincoln, was already there when he arrived. He opened an unlocked door, walked down an unlit hallway, past the restrooms, and entered the main area of the card room. There was a small bar off to one side and eight green felt-covered tables filled the rest of the space. The tables had enough chairs for six players per table and on the tables were unopened decks of cards and stacks of poker chips locked up in Plexiglas cases.