House Reckoning: A Joe DeMarco Thriller

by Mike Lawson

  “By the way,” Emma said, “I noticed you haven’t thanked me yet for saving your life.”

  “I’m still trying to decide if I’m grateful,” he said, which made Emma laugh—and him smile. Slightly.

  31

  The next morning, DeMarco could hear Emma showering in the only bathroom in the small beach house, so he made a pot of coffee and walked out onto a rocky beach. He noticed a battered-looking rowboat with flaking blue paint lying on the beach and a long rope attaching the boat to the house so the boat wouldn’t be swept away by a high tide. He didn’t think the boat looked particularly seaworthy, not that he had any intention of using it. He’d always thought: Rowboat versus the Atlantic Ocean—bet on the ocean. He walked up the beach about half a mile, and the whole time he was walking, seagulls flew over his head, screeching at him, as if they thought he was going to steal their eggs.

  He had to figure out what he was going to do next. He thought Emma was probably right that Quinn wouldn’t have him arrested for trying to kill him yesterday and that he’d wait until after the confirmation hearing before he did anything. In the meantime, he’d beef up his security so DeMarco wouldn’t have a chance of getting near him again.

  Emma was also right about Quinn having the power and the ability to ruin him. As she and Quinn had both said, Quinn might frame him for a crime but he wouldn’t even have to go to that extreme to destroy DeMarco. He was already unemployed, with few prospects for finding another job anytime soon, and by the time Quinn was finished with him, no one would hire him. He could just see Quinn keeping tabs on him—and as most job applications these days were submitted via the Internet, that wouldn’t be hard. Then he could imagine FBI agents visiting potential employers, asking questions about DeMarco without ever saying why they were asking the questions while at the same time revealing DeMarco’s past: his hit-man father, his connections to mobsters like Tony Benedetto, and how he’d been fired from his congressional job for reasons they couldn’t disclose, but which were serious issues related to integrity and politically skullduggery. So he was going to lose his house and blow through what little savings he had in a matter of months as he futilely searched for work. He could just see himself moving back in with his mother and becoming the night shift cook at a Mickey D’s in Queens.

  If he was going to prevent all this from happening he needed some sort of plan to neutralize Quinn. And half an hour later, when both his shoes were filled with sand—he had one. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He didn’t have a plan—but he had a question and the answer to the question might lead to a plan.

  He returned to the beach house and found Emma sitting on the steps, drinking a cup of coffee and looking out at the surf.

  “What a lovely morning,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind spending a couple more days here, but I think we should head back to Washington. There’s no point staying in Quinn’s backyard.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” DeMarco said. “Let me get a cup of coffee. I want to bounce something off you.”

  DeMarco took a seat on the steps next to Emma. He could see a guy with a black Labrador down the beach a ways, flinging a stick into the surf, and the dog would plunge into the waves and dutifully retrieve it. DeMarco thought the dog’s willingness to fetch a stick from freezing water was sufficient proof that it wasn’t a particularly intelligent critter.

  “When Quinn was young,” DeMarco said, “he killed an unarmed man and got the department to cover it up, but Carmine Taliaferro found out and got his hooks into Quinn. To get out from under Carmine, Quinn killed Jerry Kennedy and my dad. And I can buy all that because at the time Quinn was young, didn’t have a power base, and he was worried that Carmine might kill his career. The cover-up was also bad because high-ranking guys in the NYPD had to have been involved and they could have been hurt, too, which would have made things even worse for Quinn.

  “But time passes, years go by, and Carmine can’t use the killings against Quinn. There’s no evidence that Quinn killed Jerry Kennedy or my dad, and Carmine can’t say that he knows Quinn killed them without admitting that he ordered the killings. Carmine wasn’t going to admit that he was an accomplice to murder.”

  “What about the teacher knowing about the cover-up?” Emma said. “And Quinn’s old partner?”

  “The teacher was a problem at first because I imagine Quinn didn’t have her name. But he learned her name, years ago. She told me Quinn sent some guys over to lean on her when she started talking in bars about Quinn. And when Quinn learned that I knew who the teacher was and was going to use her to testify against him at the confirmation hearing, he disappeared her. Once he knew her name, Quinn could have dealt with her at any time, but he didn’t think she was a significant threat.”

  “I don’t see where you’re going with this,” Emma said.

  “Carmine told Tony before he died—and this was a long time after Quinn killed my dad—that Carmine owned Quinn. Those were Carmine’s exact words. He said, ‘I own that mick prick.’ How could that be, Emma? How could Carmine own Quinn when he couldn’t say that he ordered Quinn to do the killings, and after Quinn already had the teacher’s name? What I’m saying is, I think Carmine had something else on Quinn.

  “Which brings me to Carmine’s daughter. Tony told me she’s a big-time politician—who I’ve never heard of, by the way. But how does the daughter of a mob boss become a big-time politician?”

  “I don’t know but . . .”

  “I think it’s possible that whatever Carmine was holding over Quinn, he passed it on to his daughter.”

  “Huh,” Emma said. Huh meant she didn’t totally disagree with DeMarco’s logic. She sat there a moment, watching the waves hit the beach, then took her phone from a pocket and made a call. “Neil, I want you to get me everything you can find on the daughter of an old-time mafia guy named Carmine Taliaferro. Taliaferro is dead and his daughter is some sort of politician.”

  DeMarco had noted several times in the past that whenever Emma gave Neil an order he instantly complied—like a good Labrador fetching a stick from the water—and he didn’t give her a ration of shit as he usually did when DeMarco asked him to do something. However, since Emma was Emma, he had no idea what hold she had over Neil.

  Neil must have asked a question because Emma said, “No. For now just get me whatever’s available in public records. If I need you to go deeper than that, I’ll let you know.” She paused. “Yeah, he’s okay. I’m sitting right next to the fool.”

  She put the phone back in her pocket and said, “There’s a café a couple of miles from here. Let’s walk down there and get some breakfast.”

  “Two miles?” DeMarco said.

  They were back at the beach house—DeMarco admittedly feeling better after the walk and a good breakfast—when Neil called back. Emma put her phone in speaker mode so DeMarco could hear.

  “Carmine Taliaferro has one daughter named, Stephanie. She’s married to a guy named Roger Hernandez, and they have one daughter, Katherine, who’s a sophomore at Barnard. Stephanie met her husband when they both attended NYU. Stephanie and Roger now own a bunch of property in Queens, apartments and commercial buildings, a partnership in an auto body place, a partnership in a copy place, a partnership in a house painting outfit, a . . . Anyway, they’ve got money and are involved in a lot of small businesses. Roger, as near as I can tell from the Internet and public records, was as poor as a church mouse before he married Stephanie. He went to college on a scholarship, his dad was a bus driver, and his mother cleaned houses. He’s apparently a smart guy and manages all their businesses.”

  “What about Stephanie?” DeMarco asked.

  “I’m getting to her. She started to get involved in local politics in a big way after her father died and is currently the borough president of Queens. She’s made a couple of speeches recently about running for Congress against Chris Barlow, the current Democrat representing the Seventh District up there.”

  “Is she a Democrat or a Republican?” DeMar
co asked.

  “Democrat. She’s very big into women’s issues and at the same time she’s liked by the business community. And although she’s not Hispanic, being married to a Hispanic, and having a Hispanic last name, helps her. The thing that’s impressive about her is the people who have endorsed her. Almost from the get-go she’s had the backing of a lot of big New York names, including the mayor and a couple of governors. The Democrats up there love her for some reason, although I can’t tell how they feel about her going after the incumbent in her district.”

  “What about her father?” Emma asked. “How does she explain that her old man was a big-time mafia guy?”

  “The only thing I saw online about her relationship to her father, is her talking about him being a successful businessman. She said he started out with nothing, bought into some businesses, and invested wisely. The American Dream, and all that crap. She admitted in one speech that when her father was a young man he spent time in prison for a youthful mistake, not mentioning that the youthful mistake was almost beating a guy to death. Carmine did two years for assault but that was the only time he was convicted for anything, and he was nineteen years old when it happened. His daughter says he turned himself around and became a pillar of his community, gave to local charities, sponsored Little League teams, et cetera, et cetera, and when he died, she and Roger inherited everything he owned.”

  “And nobody mentioned that he was the mobster in Queens for most of his life?” DeMarco said.

  “I never saw the words mob or mafia once in the stuff I found online, but keep in mind I was looking at articles talking about Stephanie Hernandez and not her old man.”

  “It’s like Jack Kennedy,” DeMarco said to Emma. “All the rumors about Joe Kennedy being a bootlegger and having ties to the mob and getting rich on insider trading never really hurt Jack. It sounds like the same thing with Stephanie. By the time she jumped onto the political stage, her old man was dead, his money had been laundered clean, she had nothing to do with his past life.”

  “Yes, but don’t you find the endorsements intriguing?” Emma said. “Why would a bunch of big-shot New Yorkers support her? She was just a girl from Queens, had no political connections of her own, and certainly these people would have known who her father was.”

  “Quinn,” DeMarco said. “Or maybe not him directly, but his very wealthy, well-connected wife was probably the one who introduced Stephanie to the folks who later endorsed her. And Quinn could have endorsed her behind the scenes. He just never came out for her publicly.”

  “I think I’m going to hang up,” Neil said. “It doesn’t sound like you need anything else from me.” Which meant Neil didn’t want to know what Emma and DeMarco were plotting with regard to Quinn.

  “Thanks, Neil,” Emma said. “So, what do you want to do next?” she asked DeMarco.

  “Find out what Stephanie Taliaferro Hernandez has on Quinn.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  32

  Quinn strolled through Central Park, walking slowly, enjoying the brisk autumn air and the colors of the dying leaves. Hanley and Grimes were trailing a few paces behind him. Whenever he had a major decision to make, he usually went for a walk, and if he was in New York, he walked in the park. Central Park was a gift to every New Yorker and Quinn had done everything he could as a cop and as commissioner to make it safe.

  After Hanley failed to kill DeMarco, he’d thought about getting a warrant for DeMarco’s arrest. He’d say that DeMarco had tried to assassinate him. He’d claim, and Hanley would back him up, that DeMarco had a gun even though Quinn hadn’t actually seen one. He’d get every cop in the tri-state area looking for DeMarco, plaster his picture on the news, and also let the FBI and the cops in D.C. know that DeMarco was wanted. He figured that unless DeMarco left the country, he’d find him in a couple of days.

  He also didn’t know who the woman was who’d helped DeMarco. Unfortunately, there weren’t any surveillance cameras near Pam’s apartment and neither he nor Hanley had gotten a good look at her. He might have been able to identify her by her fingerprints—she’d thrown something at him—a jar or bottle, something made of glass—but in all the confusion following DeMarco’s escape, and while trying to disburse the crowd that had gathered, he’d forgotten to pick it up, and when he sent a cop back to retrieve it, it was gone.

  But what would happen after he arrested DeMarco? He doubted DeMarco would be dumb enough to still be carrying a gun—assuming he was even carrying one last night outside Pam’s place. So he could say that DeMarco had planned to assassinate him, but then what? Since DeMarco hadn’t taken a shot at him or shown a weapon, he doubted he could get a conviction for attempted murder. What he could do, however, was dump him into Rikers after he was arrested and make sure the judge didn’t turn him loose for a couple of days. A lot of bad things could happen to DeMarco in Rikers. In fact, Quinn could almost guarantee that DeMarco would die in Rikers.

  The problem was the confirmation hearing started in a few days. If DeMarco was arrested and given the chance to talk to the media, he’d tell the press that Quinn had killed his father even if he didn’t have any proof. He didn’t want to deal with that sort of nonsense while the confirmation hearing was occurring. For that matter, he didn’t want to deal with that issue after he was confirmed.

  DeMarco had to go. He simply couldn’t tolerate having the man out there looking for an opportunity to assassinate him again. He could ask Hanley to kill him but he wasn’t certain Hanley would do it. Hanley would have no problem killing DeMarco if DeMarco was trying to kill Quinn—or if Hanley even thought DeMarco was trying to kill Quinn—but Hanley wasn’t an assassin. Grimes, however, might be easier to convince. Grimes was more cold-blooded than Hanley and owed him just as much as Hanley.

  Grimes had been one of his detectives for a brief period when he ran a squad, before moving on to command a precinct. He wasn’t a particularly good detective because he couldn’t relate to people; he couldn’t schmooze and cajole them the way the good dicks did when they were trying to get information out of folks. What Hanley was good at was intimidating people, and sometimes that was better than schmoozing.

  On one case, Grimes forced a woman to lie on the stand to put away a scumbag who they knew was guilty but couldn’t get the evidence against him needed for a conviction—then Grimes committed perjury when he testified. Quinn knew what Grimes had done and wasn’t bothered by it at all; in fact, he’d been impressed with how far Grimes had been willing to go to put the shithead behind bars. Unfortunately, a cop who’d worked with Grimes on the case was caught taking a bribe, and he decided to rat out Grimes to keep from going to jail. But Quinn saved Grimes. He went to bat for him and completely discredited the cop who was planning to testify against Grimes. After it was all over, Grimes came to him and said, “You ever need anything, boss, and I mean anything, you let me know.”

  So. Would Grimes kill DeMarco if he asked? Maybe. But if Grimes was caught for killing DeMarco, would he give Quinn up? Probably not—but Quinn didn’t want to take the chance. He needed to find someone else to take care of DeMarco, someone who would kill the man without knowing who’d hired him. But how the hell could he arrange that? How could he hire an assassin without the assassin finding out his identity?

  As he walked past the pond, he noticed a panhandler on the walk ahead of him badgering an old lady, asking her for money. The bum was big, a foot and a half taller than the old woman, and Quinn could tell she was frightened. Quinn quickened his pace and caught up with the bum.

  “Leave that woman alone,” he said.

  The bum was taller than Quinn, too, and Quinn was six foot two. He was also filthy and Quinn could smell him from ten feet away, but he looked well fed for a man who wasn’t employed. He turned and snarled at Quinn, “Get the fuck away from me or I’ll give you a beat-down.”

  Quinn took out his badge case and by then Hanley and Grimes were standing
next to him. “Get out of the park or I’ll have these two officers beat the shit out of you, then throw you in jail.”

  “Hey, all right, fine,” the bum said. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

  “You were harassing this lady. Apologize to her,” Quinn said.

  “I’m, uh, sorry ma’am if I was bothering you,” the bum said and shuffled away.

  “Thank you, Officer,” the old woman said. She had no idea who Quinn was.

  Quinn walked beside the old woman, chatting with her about the weather, until they separated when they came to a fork in the path.

  Quinn suddenly knew how to get rid of DeMarco. It was funny the way the mind worked: when you concentrated on a problem, sometimes the answer would refuse to come, but if you stopped thinking about it completely and focused your mind on something else, then suddenly the solution would appear.

  He took out his cell phone and scrolled through the contacts list until he found the number he wanted. Dr. William Layman—the same doctor who had helped treat Hanley’s kid for cancer—wasn’t immediately available so Quinn asked his receptionist to have the doctor call him. Forty minutes later, when Quinn was back in his office, the doctor returned his call.

  “Bill,” Quinn said, “I was wondering if you could do me a favor? There’s a man named Anthony Benedetto in Flushing Hospital with lung cancer. Benedetto’s an old-time mafia guy and I need him to testify on something and I need to know how long he’s going to live. I could ask his doctor but I don’t know the man and he’d probably refuse to tell me because he might be concerned about patient confidentiality. The other thing is, I don’t know how competent his doctor is and I know you’re very competent. So I was wondering . . . Thanks, Bill, I appreciate it and give my best to Ellen.”

  Tony Benedetto had a private room at the Flushing Hospital Medical Center. DeMarco didn’t know if the old man needed to be there or if he’d just gotten himself admitted so he couldn’t be called to testify at Quinn’s hearing. Whatever the case, there was an IV tube running into a vein in his right arm, oxygen was being pumped into his big nose, and a machine was monitoring his vital signs. Tony’s eyes were closed but DeMarco could sense that he wasn’t sleeping; his face was the color of cigarette ash and it looked like every breath was a major effort, as if there were hundred-pound weights pressing down on his chest.