House Reckoning: A Joe DeMarco Thriller

by Mike Lawson

  “Drop whatever you’re doing and raise your fee accordingly.” DeMarco had no idea how he was going to pay Neil’s fee. He’d worry about that later.

  “That sounds fair,” Neil said, pretending he was a reasonable, agreeable fellow as opposed to the greedy shit he really was. “But can you give me just a little more information about Mr. Quinn. Like maybe an address or date of birth. You know, something to distinguish him from a few million other Irishmen who might bear the same name.”

  “Yeah,” DeMarco said. “He’s the commissioner of the NYPD.”

  “Oh,” Neil said.

  Neil put his half-eaten Reuben down on his desk and looked at DeMarco with a serious expression on his face. Serious wasn’t normally part of Neil’s smart-assed demeanor.

  “I can’t do it, Joe. I’m sorry.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  “Joe, there are a couple of organizations that I don’t mess with. One is the NSA. It’s the largest intelligence organization in this country and they employ people who are smarter than me and a few who are even smarter than Bobby. If I started messing with their computer systems they’d catch me and then they’d squash me like a bug, and they’d do so without even breaking into a sweat. Another organization I don’t screw with is the New York City Police Department.”

  Before DeMarco could object, Neil said, “The NYPD employs some of the brightest computer people in this country and if I tried to get information on Quinn that wasn’t in the public domain, there’s a very good chance I would stumble over some sort of security tripwire and the smart people Quinn employs would come after me. It’s like that old Jim Croce song: You don’t tug on Superman’s cape.”

  “Brian Quinn isn’t Superman,” DeMarco said.

  Neil extended his hands, a gesture meant to include his office. The gesture reminded DeMarco of the gesture Stanley Dombroski had made the day before regarding his backyard kingdom in Brick, New Jersey. “This is how I make my living, Joe, and as you know, a lot of what I do isn’t legal. I have no intention of spending any part of my life in prison, nor do I have any intention of actually working for a living.” Neil, a man who rarely swore, ended his diatribe with “Joe, I am not going to fuck with the commissioner of the NYPD for you. I wouldn’t even do it for Emma.”

  20

  Emma.

  Emma was a retired spy, or at least she said she was retired. She’d worked for the DIA—the Defense Intelligence Agency—for almost thirty years. DeMarco met her years ago when he saved her life, an act that had more to do with luck than valor. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time, sitting in his car at Reagan National waiting to pick up a friend, and she jumped into his car and ordered him to drive before some Iranians could kill her. And at the time, she was supposedly already retired.

  She’d helped him several times on his assignments in the past. The first time she helped him, it was because she appreciated what he had done for her. After that first time, however, she helped him most often, he suspected, because she was bored being a civilian. She was not only extremely bright but also had contacts in places like the Pentagon and the CIA, which often proved useful. She also knew people in several police departments, including the NYPD, because the military personnel she worked with during her career often became cops after they mustered out.

  The funny thing was, as long as he’d known her, he still didn’t really know all that much about her. She took an almost perverse delight in revealing as little about herself as she possibly could. Maybe there were secrets she couldn’t tell because of what she’d spent her career doing, but he knew that her need for secrecy—or privacy—went beyond the classified nature of her previous employment. In fact, he’d learned more about her from talking to other people than from her.

  She was very wealthy but wouldn’t reveal the source of her wealth; he knew she hadn’t made millions working for the government. He knew nothing about her background—her parents or where she came from—other than when she once slipped and admitted she’d gone to private schools when she was young. She was also gay; that was the one fact about herself that she didn’t hide the way she hid everything else. When they buried her, DeMarco would make sure her tombstone said: Here lies an enigma.

  When DeMarco called and said he needed to see her, she was just leaving her house.

  “I’m taking golfing lessons,” she said.

  Emma had always been athletic. She ran marathons. She periodically kicked DeMarco’s ass on the racquetball court. She’d never played golf, however; she’d often said that a game where you barely worked up a sweat didn’t really count as a sport. The thought occurred to DeMarco that she might have finally chosen a game where he could actually beat her, since he’d been playing golf for years.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “I just found out the identity of the man who killed my father,” DeMarco said.

  “Oh,” Emma said. She knew what DeMarco’s father had been. She didn’t say anything else for a moment, then said, “I’m taking a lesson over at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington; it’s my last lesson this year. Meet me at the clubhouse in two hours. I mean, unless whatever you have to say can’t wait two hours, in which case I’ll skip the lesson.”

  DeMarco didn’t feel like waiting—he wanted to move on this thing—he wanted to move against Quinn—but he knew he was being unreasonable. “My dad’s been dead for almost two decades. Two hours isn’t going to make any difference.”

  Emma was practicing with a pitching wedge when DeMarco arrived at the golf course—and whatever fantasy he had about beating her at golf instantly evaporated. She was shooting at a little blue flag that was about fifty yards from where she was standing, and every ball she hit landed about two feet from the flag.

  Emma was almost as tall as him—about five foot ten—and she wore her blond hair short so she wouldn’t have to fuss with it. She was slim because she was fanatical about exercising and eating the way you were supposed to eat. With a golf club in her hand, she reminded DeMarco of a picture he’d once seen of the legendary Babe Zaharias.

  When she noticed DeMarco, she said, “I want to hit a couple more drives and then we’ll go up to the clubhouse.”

  She teed the ball up, plucked her driver from her bag—and DeMarco noticed she’d bought a set of clubs that cost about three times what his had. She addressed the ball, pulled back the driver in an easy, fluid motion, and smacked the ball about two hundred yards—straight as an arrow. Sheesh.

  DeMarco and Emma had little in common. She enjoyed classical music, the ballet, and all the highbrow arts; he preferred Springsteen, baseball, and HBO. They did, however, share one pleasure: they both liked a good, dry, vodka martini—so that’s what they ordered.

  “You’ve got nothing,” she said when DeMarco told her everything that Tony Benedetto had told him. One thing about Emma was that she was a good listener; she paid attention to the details, and never forgot anything.

  “Brian Quinn,” Emma said, “is one of the most respected law enforcement people in this country. Maybe the most respected. The only witness to him killing Jerry Kennedy was your father, and he’s dead. The only witness to Quinn shooting the paint store guy in the alley is a schoolteacher who drinks and who’s been sitting on her story for years—a story, by the way, that conflicts with an official NYPD investigation into the shooting.

  “As for Quinn’s partner, based on what you’ve told me, he didn’t actually see Quinn do anything wrong. He just suspects that a cover-up occurred and then didn’t have the integrity to do anything about it. Lastly, you have a dying mobster who told you about Quinn killing your dad, a man who has zero credibility and not one bit of evidence to support his story.”

  “I realize all that,” DeMarco said, becoming irritated. She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know.

  As if he hadn’t spoken, Emma said, “I don’t have any idea who would have jurisdiction over all this. Kennedy was k
illed near Poughkeepsie, the paint store guy in Queens, and your father in Brooklyn. I imagine the Queens and Brooklyn DAs would laugh you out of their offices if you brought this mess to them.”

  “I know that,” DeMarco said again. “So what should I do? I’m looking for some ideas here.”

  “I don’t have a clue what you should do, Joe. The chance of Quinn being convicted for murder is less than zero. I also think, although I don’t know for sure, that even if you could get Neil to dig through Quinn’s life to find some dirty secret, he wouldn’t find one.”

  “Sure he would. Everybody has secrets.”

  Especially you.

  Emma shook her head. “Quinn didn’t rise to the top of the pyramid without making enemies—people in his position always make enemies—and if his enemies had any old information that could hurt him, it would have come out before he was appointed to the commissioner’s office.”

  DeMarco felt like lashing out at her for doing nothing more than telling him all the reasons why he’d never be able to get Brian Quinn. Instead of saying something he’d probably regret, he took a sip of his martini and watched a distinguished-looking white-haired guy try to pitch a shot up onto the green closest to the clubhouse. The guy missed the shot badly, his ball ended up in a sand trap, and he responded by smashing his club into the ground.

  Emma laughed. “You know who that guy is?” she asked.

  “No,” DeMarco said.

  “He’s a retired four-star general and former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was known for never losing his cool in the tensest of situations.”

  Normally, DeMarco would have found that funny. Not today. “If I wanted an unregistered weapon,” he asked, “where could I get one?”

  Emma looked away from the retired general and stopped smiling. “Are you insane?” she said. “Please tell me that you’re not thinking about trying to kill Quinn.”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t let him get away with what he did.”

  “Joe, your father may have been a killer, but you’re not one. I know you; you don’t have it in you to execute someone.”

  DeMarco didn’t respond. He didn’t bother to say that he’d had the same thought about himself when he first learned that Quinn had murdered his dad—but now he was beginning to believe that if killing Quinn was the only option he had, then he’d somehow find the courage or the coldness or whatever it took. If necessary, he would become the man his father had been.

  “And if you did try to kill Quinn,” Emma continued, “most likely he or his security people would kill you. They all have guns and, unlike you, they actually know how to use them. And if by some fluke you succeeded, you’d get caught and spend the rest of your life in jail. The NYPD would never stop looking for the man who killed its commissioner, particularly a man as popular as Quinn, and I can guarantee that they’d catch you.”

  Emma, who wasn’t normally the sympathetic sort, put a hand on his forearm and said, “Joe, I know you loved your father, but you need to stop thinking about getting a gun or killing Quinn or anything foolish like that. If there’s no way to get him legally, and I don’t think there is based on what you’ve told me, then you’re just going to have to . . . to trust to karma, as sappy as that sounds.”

  “Karma?” That had to be the dumbest thing Emma had ever said to him.

  “Yes,” Emma said. “One day, Brian Quinn will get what he deserves. You have to believe that. If you try to kill him, you’ll destroy your own life.”

  DeMarco nodded his head slowly, as if he was reluctantly agreeing with her, but he was thinking: Karma, my ass.

  Emma watched DeMarco walk toward his car.

  She had never seen him like this before. He was one of the most laid-back, easygoing people she’d ever met. In fact, he was too easygoing, as far as she was concerned, and she probably would have fired him if he’d ever worked for her. He didn’t really care about his job—he cared only that he got a paycheck—and although he didn’t particularly like working for an unethical bastard like Mahoney, he continued to work for him anyway.

  He just wasn’t invested in what he did. It wasn’t personal for him the way it had been personal for her when she’d worked for the DIA. She’d had a job that mattered and was vital to national security; DeMarco had a job that he did his best to avoid and tolerated when he couldn’t. He was basically a man marking time until he could retire and spend his days playing golf.

  But this thing with his father was as personal as it could get and DeMarco’s attitude was completely different. It appeared as if he might be willing to do whatever it took to avenge his father’s death, even if that meant doing something as self-destructive as trying to kill Quinn. Emma had never been close to her father—or her mother, for that matter—so she wasn’t able to fully appreciate the way Joe felt. All she knew for sure was that he wasn’t going to stop going after Quinn. And in spite of what she’d said about karma—she wished she hadn’t said that—she knew it was more likely that karma was on Quinn’s side.

  DeMarco was the one who was going to suffer, not Brian Quinn.

  21

  The next morning, after another bad night’s sleep, DeMarco was sitting at his kitchen table pondering his next move. Two cups of coffee later, he decided he didn’t have a next move.

  He did conclude that one thing he needed to do was go talk to Mahoney. He didn’t think Mahoney would help him; in fact, he was almost certain Mahoney wouldn’t. Mahoney acted almost totally out of his own self-interest, and he would immediately realize that siding with DeMarco against the commissioner of the NYPD would most likely not be to his advantage. Nonetheless, DeMarco needed to let his boss know that he was planning to devote his life, at least for a while, to the destruction of Brian Quinn. He didn’t know how things would eventually work out with Quinn—not well, he suspected—but if he was still alive and not in jail, he’d like to be employed when it was all over.

  He called Mahoney’s secretary and said he needed to speak to the man.

  “He’s not happy with you,” Mavis said.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Anyway, his schedule’s completely full but if you show up here at eleven forty-five maybe you can get in to see him for a couple of minutes before he heads off to lunch. He’s eating over at the White House today but I know he’s coming back here to change his shirt before he goes. He spilled something on it.”

  When DeMarco walked into Mahoney’s office, Mahoney was standing there in a sleeveless T-shirt, maroon suspenders dangling down beside his legs, ripping the dry-cleaner’s plastic off a crisp blue shirt. His first words to DeMarco were “You gonna tell me what the fuck’s going on with you?”

  Mahoney was pissed, of course, but not quite as pissed as DeMarco had thought he would be. One reason why was today’s Washington Post, which had a nice front-page story about the Pentagon veterans’ scam and prominently discussed Mahoney’s role in exposing the culprits.

  “You know about my father?” DeMarco said. “I mean, what he used to do for a living and how he was killed?”

  “Yeah,” Mahoney said, giving him a puzzled glance, not sure where DeMarco was going with this, then turned his attention to buttoning up his shirt.

  “The reason I had to go to New York the other day was I just found out who shot my dad. It was Brian Quinn.”

  “Brian Quinn?” Mahoney said. “Wait a minute. You don’t mean the NYPD guy, do you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus!” Mahoney said. “How did you find this out?”

  Before DeMarco could answer the question, Mahoney said, “Look, I have to get to the White House. Come on over to the house tonight . . .”

  Mahoney meant his condo in the Watergate.

  “. . . and you can tell me what the hell’s going on. But in the meantime, I don’t want you to do a damn thing about Quinn and I don’t want you talking to anybody about him, either. You understand?”

  DeMarco was about to tell him, as diplomat
ically as he could, that he was going to do whatever the hell he felt like doing when it came to Quinn. Before he could say anything, however, Mahoney said, “I mean, do you have any idea what’s going on with Quinn right now?”

  “No. What are you talking about?” DeMarco said.

  Mahoney ignored him as he tucked in his shirt, then muttered, “Where the hell did I put my tie?” He found the tie slung over the back of his chair and started tying it.

  “The president’s about to make Quinn the director of the FBI,” Mahoney said. “I guess he’s tired of all the shit he’s been catching for Simpson, and Quinn’s probably looking for a job with national exposure to move into politics.”

  DeMarco knew that Simpson, the current FBI director, had been in a lot of hot water in recent months for a couple of boneheaded things the Bureau had done.

  “The president hasn’t told Simpson he’s fired yet but he will tomorrow and then he’ll hold a press conference praising Simpson for all his fine work but saying it’s time for a change. The next day, because the president likes to keep his face in front of the cameras, he’ll hold another press conference to introduce his nominee, Brian Quinn. Because the White House is so good at keeping secrets, there’re probably fifty people up here on the Hill that know what’s going on, but for some strange reason no one’s leaked the story yet.

  “Anyway,” Mahoney said as he finished tying his tie with a large, clumsy, off-center knot, “it’s a done deal except for the Senate confirmation hearing and neither party is going to fight Quinn’s nomination. He’s a popular guy. So things are complicated and I don’t want you screwing around with Quinn until I have a chance to think about all this.”

  Mahoney pulled up the suspenders and shrugged into his suit jacket. On the way out of his office, he said, “Come by around nine tonight. I oughta be home by then.”

  “Okay,” DeMarco said, but he was thinking: Karma.