House Reckoning: A Joe DeMarco Thriller

by Mike Lawson

  “Tony,” DeMarco said, and Benedetto slowly opened his eyes.

  “Aw, shit. What are you doing here?” His voice was stronger than DeMarco had expected. Before DeMarco could answer Tony’s question, Tony made a sound that might have been a laugh. “You know, Joe, you’re the first person who’s visited me since I was admitted. My fuckin’ kid, after all I did for him, hasn’t been here once and I can’t even reach him. As for my so-called friends . . . well, fuck ’em.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” DeMarco said, although he wasn’t sorry. As far as he was concerned Tony deserved to die alone.

  “So what do you want? I told you I’m not going to testify against Quinn.”

  “I’m not here to ask you to testify or make another video. I want to know what Carmine had on Quinn. You told me that Carmine ‘owned’ Quinn. What did you mean? What else did Carmine have on him beside the shooting cover-up? I figure since your kid’s out of the can and since nobody’s forcing you to testify, it wouldn’t hurt you to tell me.” DeMarco had almost added: And since you’re dying.

  “I don’t know what Carmine had on him, and that’s the truth. All I know is what I told you the other day, that Carmine said he owned him, which had to mean that he had something he was using to control Quinn or blackmail him or something. But even when Carmine was dying, he never told me what it was.”

  “Do you think he gave whatever he knew about Quinn to his daughter?”

  “I don’t know. How would I know that? All I know is his daughter thinks she’s going to be a senator or a congresswoman or maybe the fuckin’ mayor of New York. I don’t know why she got into politics—she inherited a shitload from Carmine—but I guess she wants to make a name for herself. When I was young, women used to stay home and take care of their kids and their husbands. Now they all want to run the fuckin’ world.”

  Tony suddenly grimaced and his back arched with a spasm of pain, then he started coughing and DeMarco thought he might be choking, too. One of the machines above Tony’s bed started beeping at the same time. DeMarco thought about running down to the nurses’ station to get someone to help him—but he didn’t. “Rot in hell, you old bastard,” he said as he left the room.

  Tony felt someone poke him in the arm and he opened his eyes to see Brian Quinn, looking down at him dispassionately, not an ounce of concern or sympathy in his gray eyes.

  “Well, ain’t this my lucky fuckin’ day,” Tony said. “First DeMarco, now you. My two best friends.”

  “What?” Quinn said. “DeMarco was here?”

  “Yeah, a couple hours ago. I started coughing up a lung and instead of helping me, he just walked away.”

  “What did DeMarco want?”

  Tony said, “Give me some water. Put that straw up to my lips.” Quinn did, an expression of disgust on his face. Tony took a couple of sips, then put his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes.

  “Answer my question,” Quinn said. “What did DeMarco want?”

  “He wanted to know what Carmine had on you. He said he knew Carmine had something and whatever it was, he probably passed it on to his daughter.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him I didn’t know. And I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

  Quinn didn’t speak for a moment, trying to decide if the old man was telling the truth. He suspected he was. If Tony had known what Carmine had on him, he would have used that information to get his kid out of jail rather than go through the ruse of making the video for DeMarco.

  “I talked to a doctor,” Quinn said. “Not your doctor, another one, a guy who’s one of the best oncologists in New York. He figures you have less than two weeks to live.”

  “My doctor says I got a month.”

  “It doesn’t really matter, Tony. The important thing is that you’re going to be around long enough to do something for me, but not much longer after that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I want you to hire someone to kill DeMarco.”

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Tony said.

  “Listen to me,” Quinn said. “If you don’t do what I want, I’m going to find some reason to arrest your son again, then I’m going to throw him into Rikers and he’s going to get beaten to death.”

  “We had a deal.”

  “The deal we had was that the drug charges against your idiot kid would be dismissed, and they were. But we’re going to make a new deal. You’re going to hire someone to kill DeMarco and if you do what I want, I’ll leave your son alone. If you don’t, some psycho at Rikers is going to pound his face into mush. You’ll be attending your son’s funeral before your own.”

  “Why? Why do you want me to do this?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I know you have the connections to hire someone.”

  “Why don’t you hire someone?”

  “Because I don’t want there to be any link between DeMarco’s death and me. But if you hire someone and if that guy gets caught, he’ll point the finger at you. The good news is, since you’ll be dead in a couple of weeks, the trail ends with you. And if you were to point the finger at me, no one would believe you. I want you to set this up today.”

  “You want him dead before the confirmation hearing?”

  “That would be ideal but I don’t know if I can find DeMarco before the hearing. The fact that he visited you in the hospital today means he’s probably still in New York but I’m going to have to run him down. After I do, I’ll let you know where he is. So do you know somebody who can do the job, somebody you can get a hold of immediately?”

  “Yeah, I can think of a couple of guys. But they’re not cheap.”

  “Well, how much they cost is your problem. There isn’t going to be any money trail leading from me to you.”

  “You expect me to use my own money?” Tony said.

  “Hey, you can’t take it with you, Tony. And I’m getting tired of repeating myself. If you don’t do what I want, your kid dies. What’s more important to you: money you’ll never live to spend or your son’s life?”

  “Carmine always said you were the most cold-blooded son of a bitch he ever knew. He said you were worse than anybody he knew in the outfit.”

  “Carmine was right, Tony.”

  Tony could think of two guys he could use to kill DeMarco. Actually, he could think of two dozen guys, but only two who had any brains. One was a Creole named Hugo Lavolier, who lived in New Orleans, or at least he did before Katrina. Hugo had supposedly killed at least five people, and although Tony had never used him personally, he knew people who had, people he trusted who vouched for the guy.

  The other possibility was a guy in Brooklyn, a Russian named Oskar Pankov that Tony had used once before. The Russian and his wife owned a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, a place that only served breakfast and lunch; Oskar was the cook and his wife waited the tables. And Oskar looked like a short-order cook. He was mostly bald, tall but not so tall as to stand out in a crowd, and although he was a skinny guy, he had a paunch. Tony guessed he was probably in his early fifties by now.

  Tony didn’t know anything about Oskar’s background; no one in the Italian mob did. All he knew was that Oskar came over from Russia twenty-five years ago and it didn’t take him twenty years, like it took the Mexicans, to become a citizen. He worked for a guy in Brighton Beach for a while—a slimeball involved in the sex trade—but after five years Oskar wasn’t working for anybody but himself. And that was impressive. The Russian mob wasn’t an organization that normally let a guy go off on his own; once you were in, you were in for life. But not Oskar. He freelanced for anyone he wanted to, and the Brighton Beach boys left him alone.

  There were rumors that Oskar had been Russian military, one of those Russki special forces Spetsnaz guys, but that was just rumor. What wasn’t rumor was that Oskar could shoot the balls off a hummingbird with a sniper rifle. The one time Tony used him it had been to get to a snitch being protected by federal mar
shals—a guy who was going to be a problem to a lot of people if he appeared in a courtroom. Tony figured the only way to get the snitch was to snipe him from a long way off, but Tony and his cronies didn’t know anyone who could shoot a rifle. All the fuckin’ wops they knew, none had ever been in the military and they didn’t hunt, so Tony asked around and found the Russian. Oskar turned out to be really expensive, and three other guys had to chip in with Tony to pay Oskar’s fee, but he got the job done: he made a shot from six hundred yards away and hit the rat right in the heart.

  Tony thought for a bit about how to contact Oskar Pankov, then figured, what the hell, just call the guy up. If someone later traced a call from him to Oskar, what would he care? He’d probably be dead by then.

  He called Oskar’s restaurant in Brooklyn, and a woman answered, probably Oskar’s wife. For a couple of seconds, Tony listened to pots and pans being banged around and people talking in what sounded like Russian, before Oskar came on the line.

  “What do you want?” Oskar said, although it sounded like Vut do you vant?

  “Is that the way you answer the phone?” Tony said. “Vut do you vant? You don’t say hello?”

  “What do you want?” Oskar repeated.

  “This is Tony Benedetto. You remember me?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I need to see you.”

  “So come to the restaurant. I’ll make you a nice sandwich.”

  “I can’t. I’m in the hospital. Cancer.”

  “That’s too bad,” Oskar said, although he didn’t sound terribly sympathetic.

  “I’m at the Flushing Medical Center in Queens. I’ll make this worth your while.”

  “Okay. I’ll come see you after the guy brings the meat for the restaurant.”

  33

  After the futile visit to Tony Benedetto’s hospital room, Emma rented a car and they drove back to D.C. together. During the trip, neither of them spoke much, and DeMarco spent the time trying to figure out what to do next.

  He knew he wasn’t going to try to kill Quinn again. He’d had one chance and Emma had screwed that up. The fact that she’d also saved his life, or kept him from spending the rest of his life in prison, was beside the point. He also couldn’t figure out what Carmine Taliaferro had on Quinn—information that he’d most likely passed on to his daughter—and he couldn’t figure out a way to force Stephanie Hernandez (née Taliaferro) to tell him what she knew. Only one thing occurred to him and that was to get Neil to dig deeper into Stephanie Hernandez’s background, particularly her finances, and see if there was something there he could use to squeeze the woman. He was just about to say this to Emma, when she spoke first.

  “I think the best thing you can do at this point is act as bait,” Emma said.

  “Bait?”

  “Yeah. When we were at Susan’s beach house, I said that I didn’t think Quinn would have you arrested before his confirmation hearing because he wouldn’t want you talking to the press. And I still don’t think he’ll have you arrested. But I think there’s a possibility that he may try to do something to you before the hearing because he won’t want to risk the possibility of you doing anything to cause him a problem.”

  “Like what?” DeMarco said.

  “I don’t know for sure. I suppose he could try to kill you. Not him personally but someone working for him. Or maybe he’ll have a couple of his goons snatch you and stick you someplace until the hearing is over—which is essentially what he did with the teacher. Or I suppose he could send a couple of guys over to rough you up, like they did with Dombroski, to make sure you’ve gotten the message to leave him alone.”

  “I don’t know,” DeMarco said. “I kind of doubt—”

  “I was thinking that if he does try to do something, maybe we can catch his people and force them to testify against him. I realize that’s a long shot, but I can’t think of anything else to do; and in order to catch them, you need to be available. You can’t go into hiding.”

  “I wasn’t planning on going into hiding,” DeMarco said, offended she’d even think he would.

  “Good. So you’re bait. You stay at your place and hope we get lucky and Quinn tries something.” DeMarco thought that over for a moment. He didn’t like the idea of passively standing by, just hoping Quinn would do something. He wanted to play offense, not defense.

  “It’s too bad you dumped that gun I had into a sewer drain,” he said, thinking it would be nice if the bait were armed.

  “You won’t need a gun. I’ll get you some professional security—people who actually know how to shoot. And you need witnesses in case Quinn does do something.”

  “I can’t pay for security. I’m unemployed. Remember?”

  “Don’t worry about paying them. I’ll take care of that.”

  “I don’t know,” DeMarco said. He was already beholden enough to Emma.

  Thinking that he was objecting to her plan, Emma said, “Well, do you have a better idea?”

  “Only one. Get Neil to dig harder into Stephanie Hernandez’s past to see if there’s something there we can use to pressure her.”

  “I think that’s probably a waste of time, but I’ll do that. Neil’s more inclined to follow orders when they come from me.”

  “Or what we could do,” DeMarco said, “is kidnap Taliaferro’s daughter and some of your DIA friends can waterboard her and force her to tell what she knows about Quinn.”

  “I assume you’re joking,” Emma said.

  “Yeah. Sort of.”

  “And for your information, the DIA did not engage in waterboarding, at least not while I was there.”

  “Good for you. But if Quinn doesn’t act in the next couple of days, I’ll have to come up with a plan B. I can’t play bait forever and even as rich as you are, you can’t afford to pay people to protect me forever.”

  “Well, we’ll worry about that later.”

  They were passing over the Delaware Memorial Bridge and DeMarco saw a boat approaching the bridge, fishing rods stuck in holders at the stern of the boat. He remembered one time when he was sixteen and he and his dad had gone fishing with one of his uncles in a boat about the same size. They caught a few fish that day but the thing that had made the day memorable was his dad let him have a beer, saying, “Don’t tell your mother.” It was funny how his tough-guy father had been afraid of his wife.

  “I saw a movie one time,” DeMarco said to Emma. “I don’t remember the name of it, but I remember a guy in the movie was being used as bait so the cops could catch this bad guy. You know what the guy in the movie said?”

  “No,” Emma said.

  “He said, The bait always dies.”

  The morning after he returned from New York, DeMarco went out to breakfast in Georgetown—counter to Emma’s order to remain in his house until his bodyguards arrived. When he returned to his house, he found two thugs waiting for him, sitting on the top step of his front porch. Well, thugs may have been a bit harsh.

  Their names were Mike and Dave and they were both in their fifties, stocky guys about his size, and they looked tougher than horseshoe nails. They had big .45s in shoulder holsters.

  After the introductions were made, the one named Mike, the apparent thug in charge, told DeMarco the plan as devised by Emma, the plan being pretty simple: DeMarco was to hang around his house, every once in a while poking his head outside the door so folks would know he was home, and if anybody tried to break in and harm him, Mike and Dave would shoot them.

  DeMarco chose to occupy his time by filling out an online resume form, not sure how he could possibly spin being Mahoney’s fixer into something appealing to a future employer. Under the section on Special Skills he wondered if he should put down red fire axe. Mike and Dave spent the time playing cribbage, periodically glancing out the windows to see who might be lurking about. Mike also informed DeMarco that as neither he nor Dave cooked, DeMarco was the designated chef.

  Being the bait sucked.

  34

&nb
sp; The day after meeting with Tony Benedetto, Quinn was in his Manhattan apartment, packing for the trip to D.C. He needed to be in Washington several days before the hearing started because there were a number of people the White House wanted him to meet with, including half a dozen senators on the Judiciary Committee. He would have a long lunch tomorrow with the acting director of the FBI to receive an informal briefing on current issues facing the Bureau, followed by a meeting with the attorney general. Dinner was planned for one evening with the secretary of Homeland Security, a woman he expected to be working with closely. He wouldn’t be meeting with the president again until after the hearing.

  Unfortunately, his wife would be accompanying him. He wished he could have taken Pam with him but that obviously wouldn’t do. And, he had to admit, Barbara was good in social settings with the politically powerful. She also seemed excited about the idea of living in D.C. and had already been in contact with a real estate agent there. She clearly had no clue about his affair with Pam. Well, maybe that wasn’t true. She knew things weren’t right with their marriage, and she might even suspect that he was having an affair, but maybe she was thinking that he would be faithful to her since he was being appointed to such a highly visible position.

  During the confirmation hearing, he and Barbara would be staying at a friend’s house in Georgetown. The friend and his wife were currently on an extended African tour—some sort of world hunger thing—and Quinn preferred to stay in a private home rather than a hotel. Grimes and Hanley would accompany him for security purposes and they’d live in the house where he and Barbara would be staying. Barbara wasn’t happy about that, but with DeMarco on the loose, Quinn wanted his security people nearby.