by Mike Lawson
He turned on the barbecue and while it was getting hot, he made a vodka martini. As he was in a celebratory mood—although he had nothing in particular to celebrate—he made the martini with the Grey Goose he normally reserved for guests instead of the cheaper vodka he usually drank when he was by himself. When the thermometer on the barbecue said the temperature was five hundred degrees, he plopped his steak down on the grill and put a potato in the microwave. Experience had shown that four minutes on each side would result in the perfect steak, and about eight minutes in the microwave was about the right time for a big potato. While his dinner was cooking, he checked the TV schedule: the Yankees were playing the Red Sox. He hated the fucking Yankees; if they lost that would be the perfect dessert to complement his meal. He turned on the television in his den, saw it was only the second inning and that neither team had scored. For all practical purposes, the game was just starting.
What more could a man ask for? A steak, a baked potato slathered with butter and sour cream, a martini, and a baseball game.
And then the phone rang.
“Hi, cutie,” the caller said.
Cutie? No one called him cutie. His own mother didn’t call him cutie.
“Uh, who’s this?”
“It’s Sharon.”
“Sharon?”
“Sharon Palmer, silly.”
“Oh, Sharon,” he said. She sounded drunk. “Uh, what can I do for you?”
“Well, I was just sitting here having a Manhattan—that’s my drink, you know—and I got to thinking about that question you asked me.”
“What question was that?”
“When you came to my house the other day, you asked if I remembered anything more about Phil almost losing the Warwick account.”
“Well, did you?”
“Not so fast, big boy. You’ll need to buy me a drink to find out.”
Aw, shit. Shit, shit, shit.
“Uh, sure. Where are you?”
“Georgetown. Didn’t you tell me you lived in Georgetown?”
“Yeah,” DeMarco said.
“Well, I’m here at Clyde’s. You know Clyde’s?”
“Yeah. I can be there in ten minutes.”
Shit. He went outside and took his steak off the grill. It was cooked on one side, exactly half done. He shut off the microwave; his potato was half done. He put the steak and his martini in the refrigerator. Shit.
He considered the way he was dressed, in shorts and a T-shirt, and thought about changing before he met Sharon. Then he said to hell with it, and left the house and headed toward M Street. It would take him ten minutes to walk to Clyde’s. He could have driven there in two minutes and then spent fifteen minutes trying to find a place to park, so walking was the better choice.
As he walked, he cursed Sharon Palmer, Emma, and Brian Kincaid —in no particular order.
The tape recorder connected to DeMarco’s phone line waited for another call.
“Ooh, look at you,” Sharon said when DeMarco walked over to her table in Clyde’s. “I like you in shorts. You have strong thighs. And those shoulders … Well, you look just yummy.”
He wondered how many drinks she’d had.
“Uh,” he said, “you look nice yourself.”
And she did. She was wearing a short jean skirt that stopped at mid-thigh and a tank top, no bra. Once again he had the thought that whoever built her boobs was a superb craftsman.
He ordered her another Manhattan and a beer for himself. He noticed that the game was playing on the television behind the bar so he took a seat where he could see it while they talked. Just to make his agony complete, the fucking Yankees had managed to score three runs while he was walking to the bar.
“So,” he said after their drinks arrived, “what did you want to tell me about Downing?”
“Um, this is good,” she said, sipping her Manhattan.
“Sharon. What were you going to tell me about Downing?”
“Well, they were showing this soccer game on TV over at this other bar, Brazil playing somebody, and they showed that big Jesus statue on the hill in Rio.”
“Yeah?” DeMarco said. He had no idea what she was talking about.
“Anyway, the Jesus statue made me think about how it’d be fun to go there someday, and that’s when I remembered.”
“Remembered what?”
“The day after Phil told me Warwick was thinking about dumping him, he goes to see Hobson … You know who Hobson is, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said, wishing she’d just get to the point.
“Well, Phil goes to see Hobson, to beg for his job I guess, and when he comes back he locks himself in his office for a couple of hours and then has me book him a flight to Lima and another flight to someplace else I can’t remember.”
“Lima?”
“Right. Lima, Peru. Anyway, he leaves the next day and he comes back three or four days later, and when he comes back he’s in a good mood and not all grumpy like he was before he left. And two days later, he takes me out to dinner and tells me that Warwick has decided to keep him on.”
“Why’d he go to Peru?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why he went or what he did there. He wouldn’t tell me and when I asked, he just acted all smug. Phil could be kind of an asshole at times.”
“But was his reason for going there connected to the Warwick Foundation?”
“I told you, I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a vacation. Phil was a smoker and he’d just about go crazy every time he had to take a flight that lasted more than a couple of hours. Like I found this great package for Vegas one time—flight, hotel, everything super cheap—but the son of a bitch wouldn’t take me because he didn’t want to fly that far. Well, I wouldn’t give him any you-know-what for a week so he finally took me to Atlantic City. It cost twice as much to go there because I couldn’t find a good deal for hotel rooms on a weekend and we had to drive four hours to get there, but that was Phil. He’d rather drive to Atlantic City and pay twice as much than fly to Vegas and get stuck on a plane. What I’m telling you is, I can’t imagine he went to Peru for a vacation.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me this the last time we talked?” DeMarco asked.
“Hey! Don’t you get all pissy with me, buster. The other day when you stopped by my house, without calling first or anything, I was so hungover I thought I was going to die. I could barely remember my own name. Plus Phil was killed over two years ago. You try remembering shit that happened two years ago. The only reason I even remembered today was because of the Jesus statue and that’s when I called you—which I didn’t have to do, you know.”
It occurred to DeMarco, given how much the woman appeared to drink, her not being able to remember something probably wasn’t unusual. And, like she said, the event happened two years ago. “Did you mention this trip to Peru to the cops or to Brian’s lawyer before the trial?” he asked.
“No. The only thing the cops wanted to know was if Brian had some motive for killing Phil. They were already convinced he killed him and they just wanted to know why, and when I told them about Phil and Brian fighting all the time, they didn’t ask about anything else. And it was the same at the trial. I was just asked to testify about how they argued all the time and hated each other. And, like I told you before, this thing with Phil going to Peru happened a month before Brian killed him. I didn’t see how it was relevant then, and I don’t see how it’s relevant now.”
She raised her empty Manhattan glass to let DeMarco know she was ready for another.
“Uh, did you drive here?”
“Are you kidding? Do you know how hard it is to find parking in Georgetown? I had my bitchy daughter drop me off so I could do some shopping.”
All DeMarco wanted to do was go home and fini
sh his dinner, but he bought her another drink, as it seemed impolite not to. As she was drinking, she rambled on about how Georgetown wasn’t as classy as it used to be, but DeMarco noticed she wasn’t looking at him as she talked. She and a heavyset guy at the bar—a guy whose shirt was unbuttoned too far, revealing a nest of gray chest-hair—were making google-eyes at each other, and when DeMarco said he had to leave, she didn’t make any attempt to stop him. As he was leaving Clyde’s, he saw the guy get off his bar stool and begin talking to Sharon.
Somebody was going to get lucky tonight—and it wasn’t going to be DeMarco.
17
The phone on Bill Hobson’s desk rang, the short, single ring that meant the call was from his secretary.
“Yes?” he said.
“Bill, there’s a man here from Congress, a Mr. DeMarco, and he says he’d like to speak with you.”
Hobson was too shocked to respond.
“Bill,” the secretary said, “would you like to see him now or should I schedule an appointment for later? You have a meeting in forty-five minutes.”
It always irritated him that his secretary called him Bill instead of Mr. Hobson, but this was the kind of outfit that permitted crap like that.
“Uh, I’ll see him now,” he said.
The man who walked into his office was a broad-shouldered guy about five ten, maybe five eleven. A good-looking guy with a full head of dark hair, a prominent nose, blue eyes, and a cleft in his chin. Kind of hard-looking, too, Hobson thought, but from what he’d been told, DeMarco was just a lawyer who worked for Congress. Not too many hard cases in jobs like that.
“Mr. DeMarco, I’m Bill Hobson. What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking into Phil Downing’s murder, and I just wanted to ask a couple of questions.”
“Really!” Hobson said, pretending to be surprised. “Why would somebody who works for Congress be asking about that?”
“Brian Kincaid’s mother is a friend of a member of the House and—”
“Which member?”
“I can’t say. Anyway, when Kincaid’s last appeal was bounced by the judge, his mother asked this congressman to see if anything could be done to help him.”
“Help him how?”
DeMarco shrugged. “See if any errors were made with regard to his defense. See if the cops overlooked anything.”
“I see,” Hobson said. “Well, I feel sorry for Kincaid’s mother, but he did it, DeMarco. The evidence against him was rock solid. He’s not getting out of jail.”
“I think you’re right,” DeMarco said, “but I was asked to look into things, so I’m looking.”
“So how can I help you?”
“I was wondering what you could tell me about the conference call that took place—or was supposed to have taken place—the night Downing was killed. I’m talking about the call between you, Downing, and Congressman Talbot’s chief of staff.”
“What do you want to know about it?”
“I’m just curious why it was scheduled to begin so late at night, and at the same time that Brian Kincaid was in his office making a conference call himself.”
DeMarco had heard Gordon’s explanation for the conference call, but he wanted to see if Hobson would tell the same story.
“If I remember correctly, it was to suit Steve Linger’s schedule. He was in California at the time with Congressman Talbot, and the time difference complicated things. As for Kincaid being there, that was just a coincidence. Until the trial, I had no idea why Kincaid was in his office at that time of night. I never met Kincaid.”
“I see,” DeMarco said, and Hobson thought he looked skeptical. But maybe he was just being paranoid.
“The other thing I wanted to ask about was the night Downing was killed, you called the security guard at his building and asked him to check on Downing, and that’s why Downing’s body was found so soon after Kincaid left the building. How did you know the security guard’s phone number?”
“I called the Secret Service.”
“Secret Service? Why would you—”
“Downing told me one time that a couple of the floors in his building were occupied by the Treasury Department and he was bitching because after they moved in, they ramped up the building’s security. You know—metal detectors, badges, that sort of thing. Anyway, I worked in D.C. a long time before I retired and started volunteering for Lizzie Warwick, and I knew the Secret Service’s Uniform Division handles security for Treasury Department assets. So I just looked online and called the D.C. number for the Secret Service—somebody’s there twenty-four hours a day—and I told them that somebody in one of the buildings Treasury uses could be in trouble and they gave me the guard’s number.”
“I see,” DeMarco said again. He hadn’t known that Treasury had space in Downing’s building—he’d verify that—but he knew that Hobson was right about the Secret Service providing security for their buildings.
“Is there anything else?” Hobson asked.
“Yeah, just one more thing. Do you have any idea why Phil Downing went to Peru about a month before he was killed?”
When DeMarco asked the question, Hobson was just beginning to take a sip of coffee—and the question startled him so much that he almost spit it out, but then he swallowed, started coughing, and couldn’t seem to stop.
“Are you okay?” DeMarco asked.
“Yeah,” Hobson said. “Sorry. That just went down the wrong way. What were you saying?”
“I was asking if you had any idea why Phil Downing went to Peru. His secretary told me you were thinking about firing him as Warwick’s lobbyist, but then he went to Peru and afterward you decided to keep him on. So I was just wondering why he went. Was Lizzie Warwick in Peru at the time?”
There was no point lying about Lizzie’s work in Peru. All DeMarco would have to do was spend ten minutes on the Internet to find out about that.
“Four years ago,” Hobson said, “there was an earthquake in southern Peru. Three hundred people were killed and about five thousand were left homeless, so Lizzie decided to help out; that’s what she does. But she didn’t think about getting a new lobbyist until two years later. She met Doug Vale—that’s the guy we use now—at a party and was impressed with him. But I didn’t tell Phil I was going to fire him. What I did tell him was that Lizzie liked Vale and he seemed to be doing a lot of things that Phil wasn’t. Well, Phil, I think just to impress me and Lizzie, took a trip to Peru to do a follow-up on the work she did there. When he came back he showed me a film he’d made of people giving testimonials about how Lizzie had helped them, but the real point of the film was to show how much Lizzie could do with the money she’d been given. Downing was planning to use the film to impress folks on the Hill. Anyway, when I told Lizzie what he’d done, we decided to stick with him. But then, a month later, his partner kills him.”
“Do you have a copy of this film?”
“No. Downing had the only copy. I don’t know what he did with it, and it wasn’t with the rest of his files.”
DeMarco left a few minutes later, and Hobson thought he went away happy with what he’d been told. But son of a bitch! He knew about Downing going to Peru. He was going to have to call Kelly again. And Fiona.
He was never sure who scared him more—Fiona or the two killers. Fiona was the most cold-blooded bitch Hobson had ever known and was the driving force behind everything Kelly and Nelson did. Kelly and Nelson might kill him—but she would give the order.
He made the calls, and Fiona’s reaction was just what he expected—she went through the roof—and said she wanted to see him, Kelly, and Nelson tomorrow.
18
Fiona didn’t want Kelly and Nelson anywhere near Mulray Pharma, so she reserved a suite at a hotel near the Philadelphia airport. Kelly and Nelson were so damn big that it was uncom
fortable if the four of them met in a normal-sized room.
She didn’t offer the three men coffee or drinks, and immediately directed Hobson to summarize everything he knew about DeMarco and what DeMarco seemed to know about Peru. While Hobson was talking, Nelson went over to the minibar, plucked out two Heinekens, and tossed one to Kelly; he ignored Hobson. After Hobson finished speaking, Fiona just sat for a moment staring at him, and then said, “All this … this shit because of you and your big mouth.”
Before Hobson could say anything—not that there was anything he could say—Kelly said, “I don’t think we oughta panic here. It sounds like all DeMarco knows is that Downing went to Peru, and Hobson gave him a rational explanation for why he went there. DeMarco may quit digging at this point.”
“Maybe, but I wonder what Downing’s old girlfriend knows about Peru,” Fiona said.
“My guess is that she doesn’t know anything,” Kelly said. “If she knew something she would have told DeMarco. Or it would have come up during the trial or when DeMarco met with Hobson.”
“Yeah,” Fiona said, “but like you said, you’re guessing.”
Kelly shrugged.
No one said anything for a couple minutes, until Kelly finally said, “I recommend doing nothing at this point. There’s no way DeMarco can piece together enough information to figure out what’s going on.”
“Well, Phil Downing sure as hell did,” Fiona said.
“Yeah, but like you said, Downing had the benefit of Hobson’s big mouth.”
Hobson had never been able to figure out exactly what Downing heard that day.
During the time he’d been working for the Warwick Foundation, Hobson had never given a lot of thought to Phil Downing. Lizzie had hired Downing to keep her connected to the right people on the Hill, and as near as Hobson could tell, he did that—but it was hard for him to tell if Downing was really worth the money the foundation paid him. And since Downing didn’t have any connection to what Mulray Pharma was secretly doing with Warwick, he didn’t really give a shit whether Downing was worth the money or not. But then Lizzie goes to some party and meets Doug Vale, and Vale charms her—which wasn’t all that hard to do—and she asked Hobson to see if Vale would be a better man for the job than Downing, and Hobson concluded that he would be. So he called up Downing and said they were going to replace him.
