House Reckoning

by Mike Lawson

  A Senate confirmation hearing, however, was a whole different animal than a court of law. There was no judge to stop the senators from calling whomever they wanted to testify; no defense lawyer would be able to object to the inadmissibility of hearsay evidence proffered by witnesses with less than sterling characters. If DeMarco could persuade one of the senators on the committee to go after Quinn, and if he could persuade that senator to call Tony Benedetto and the others and force them to testify, that would definitely get the media interested.

  The media didn’t care about evidence anymore than the senators did; it seemed the media, these days, was more about entertainment than uncovering the truth. Ratings trumped serious journalism and a story about the top municipal cop in the country being a killer in cahoots with the mob—particularly if the story was delivered by a dying mobster like Tony Benedetto—would certainly be entertaining. Moreover, if the right senator was pushing for an in-depth investigation into Quinn’s past before he was confirmed, maybe some independent agency with clout—an agency like the FBI—might actually find something that could be used against Quinn in a courtroom.

  DeMarco decided to overlook the fact that if Quinn was confirmed by the Senate, the FBI would soon be working for him.

  So DeMarco didn’t know what might happen. All he knew was that a televised Senate confirmation hearing was a gift from God insofar as going after Quinn and shining a public spotlight on everything he had done.

  Karma.

  Eighteen United States senators sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee. DeMarco needed to know if one of those eighteen had an axe to grind against Brian Quinn, and the man who would know this was Perry Wallace, Mahoney’s chief of staff. Perry knew everything when it came to the body politic.

  Perry was on the phone when DeMarco entered his office; he spent 90 percent of his waking hours on the phone. As he listened to Perry scheme with whomever he was speaking to—it sounded like he was trying to convince someone in the supposedly independent Congressional Budget Office to doctor the numbers on an upcoming bill—DeMarco wondered who cut Perry’s hair. Whoever it was should have been drummed out of the profession because it appeared as if Edward Scissorhands—a movie character with gardening shears for appendages—had attacked Perry’s hair while wearing a blindfold. Perry Wallace was not a good-looking man to begin with—triple-chinned; small, cunning eyes; a porcine snout—but a decent barber could have improved the situation.

  “I thought Mahoney fired you,” Perry said after he hung up, and the way he said this, it was apparent he had not lost any sleep pondering the consequences of DeMarco being unemployed.

  “Not yet.” Before Perry could say anything else, he asked, “Do you know about Brian Quinn being nominated to be the next FBI director?”

  “Of course,” Perry said—but then Perry was the kind of guy who would say “of course” even if he hadn’t known about Quinn. Perry didn’t like to be thought of as not being completely in the loop.

  “Who’s the most likely person on the Senate Judiciary Committee to oppose his nomination?” DeMarco asked.

  “Why are you asking?” Perry asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” DeMarco said.

  “Then fuck you,” Perry said.

  “Perry, the boss doesn’t want me to tell you why I’m asking, at least not yet. Okay? So who on the committee hates Brian Quinn?”

  “Nobody. Everybody loves him. He’s Mr. Law and Order.”

  “Come on. Somebody must have some reason for opposing him. I mean, the Republicans hate the president so much, half of them wouldn’t confirm Lincoln if he came back from the dead.”

  “Sure they would. Lincoln was a Republican.”

  “Perry . . .”

  “Beecham,” Perry said.

  “Ah,” DeMarco said. That made sense. Hiram Beecham was the senior senator from Georgia and the last time he ran for office, the president had helicoptered into Atlanta and stumped for Beecham’s opponent. He accused Beecham of being misguided, out of touch, an enemy of the common man—and, most important, implied that Beecham was too damn old to be in the job. Hiram Beecham was eighty-four and sensitive about his age.

  Yes, if Beecham could humiliate the president via Quinn, he’d delight in doing so. And DeMarco couldn’t imagine a more embarrassing nominee for the job of top law enforcement official in the country than a man who’d committed three murders.

  “Thanks, Perry. By the way, who cuts your hair?”

  “My sister. Why?”

  DeMarco left Perry’s office and walked over to a place on Pennsylvania Avenue for lunch. When he opened the menu, he saw they offered a Philly cheesesteak with caramelized onions and green peppers, which brought back another memory of his father.

  There’d been a place on Queens Boulevard operated by two brothers who said they were from Philly but sounded like they were from someplace farther to the south—like Puerto Rico. At any rate, his dad always raved about their cheesesteaks, claiming they made the best ones in New York—and when DeMarco was a kid, he’d agreed. He’d been back in Queens visiting his mother one time, long after his father was dead, and he drove out of his way to stop by the place. It was still there and so were the brothers, now old men, but the cheesesteaks hadn’t been as good as he remembered them—and the guy now doing the cooking was Korean.

  As he waited for his sandwich, he tried to figure out if he should go see Beecham next or wait until after he’d talked to Mahoney. He was afraid that after he talked to Mahoney, Mahoney would order him to stop pursuing his vendetta against Quinn. Another possibility was that Mahoney might fire him if he refused to stop going after Quinn, which meant that he’d not only be out of a job, but his access to folks on Capitol Hill would be limited. So should he obey Mahoney or not?

  For DeMarco it was simple: he was going to do his best to destroy Brian Quinn, and nothing else much mattered. And while Mahoney might sympathize with his desire to avenge his father’s death, Mahoney was going to be more concerned about the political ramifications of DeMarco going after a man the president was appointing to run the nation’s police force. All this meant that since DeMarco planned do whatever he felt was necessary in regard to Quinn, and regardless of what Mahoney said, unemployment was a distinct possibility.

  The thought of being fired scared the hell out of DeMarco. The economy was supposedly recovering, but people were still having a hard time finding work—and he would have a harder time than most: he was a lawyer who’d never practiced law and who had had only one employer since he graduated from college. And although he’d worked on Capitol Hill for almost two decades, he’d never been involved—in a legitimate way—on a reelection campaign or doing the legwork needed to pass legislation. In other words, he’d never done the sort of work that would make him attractive to an honest politician. Instead, he’d been stuck down in a subbasement office doing the things Mahoney didn’t want his legitimate staff doing, and he couldn’t talk about half the things he’d done, not unless he wanted to be indicted or appear as a witness to testify against Mahoney. There were, however, as his first boss, Jake, had said, other guys like him in Washington, guys employed by lobbyists and special interest groups and politicians like Mahoney—guys who operated in the shadows of the political process. But the people who hired guys like that didn’t post ads on the help-wanted pages.

  The other thing that occurred to him at that moment was that in some ways, he wasn’t much different than his father: His father had been—or so Joe had always thought—a basically decent man who worked for a criminal and did things he couldn’t have been proud of. But somehow Gino had been able to rationalize what he did; if he hadn’t been able to, he would have quit. Joe now realized the same thing could be said about him: he’d always considered himself a good guy, yet he wasn’t always proud of the things he’d done for Mahoney and had never really made the effort to find a different job. It seemed the apple really didn’t fall far from the tree.

  By the time he finished his ch
eesesteak—which also wasn’t as good as the ones he’d eaten as a kid with his dad in Queens—he decided to talk to Mahoney before he talked to Senator Beecham. He’d give Mahoney a chance to do the right thing—knowing that Mahoney and the “right thing” didn’t necessarily go hand in hand. He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake.

  DeMarco arrived at Mahoney’s condo at exactly 9 P.M. and was surprised that Mahoney was there. Mahoney rarely let an appointment with DeMarco affect his schedule and he didn’t mind keeping DeMarco waiting for hours.

  Mahoney had been at some black-tie affair, the sort he attended once or twice a week. He was dressed in tuxedo pants; a clip-on bow tie that looked like a mangled black butterfly lay on the dining room table. Mahoney’s jacket was on the floor near one of the dining room chairs as if he had tried to drape it over the back of the chair and it had fallen, and he’d been too lazy to stoop down and pick it up. Also, as might be expected of a man who laced his morning coffee with bourbon, at 9 P.M. Mahoney was drunk. Being drunk, however, didn’t mean he was ready to stop drinking; a tumbler filled with bourbon and crushed ice was clenched in his big right fist.

  “Is Mary Pat here?” DeMarco asked. Mary Pat was Mahoney’s wife and DeMarco preferred not to talk about Quinn in front of her.

  “Nah. She flew up to Boston yesterday to see her mom. Some shit going on at the nursing home.”

  Mahoney flopped down on a couch, and DeMarco was betting that since Mary Pat wasn’t home, he’d eventually pass out on the couch. “So what’s going with Quinn?” Mahoney asked. He didn’t bother to ask DeMarco if he wanted a drink.

  DeMarco took a seat and told him the whole story. Unlike when he’d told Emma, Mahoney interrupted him frequently during the telling, saying “Jesus Christ” and “You gotta be shittin’ me” more than once. When DeMarco finished, however, Mahoney came to the same conclusion Emma had: “So all you got is an old mafia hood who says Quinn killed your dad and some other hood, but you have no evidence. And this schoolteacher who claimed Quinn got off for killing the paint store guy . . . Shit, who’s gonna believe her?”

  “Yeah, but they’re telling the truth,” DeMarco said.

  “How do you know that this mob boss . . . What’s his name again?”

  “Tony Benedetto.”

  “Yeah, Benedetto. How do you know he’s telling the truth? How do you know he’s not making the whole thing up?”

  “Why would he?” DeMarco said. “He has nothing to gain by telling me what Quinn did.”

  “Maybe he heard Quinn was going to become the FBI director and wants to fuck him over just for the fun of it.”

  “Come on, boss. You said maybe fifty people on the Hill knew about Quinn getting the nomination. How would some retired gangster in Queens know? He told me about Quinn and my dad because he’s dying and thought I should know.”

  Mahoney didn’t say anything for a moment and DeMarco knew he was trying to work his way through the political consequences of Quinn being exposed. The other thought that suddenly occurred to him was that maybe Mahoney didn’t want Quinn exposed, so he could later use the information DeMarco had provided to blackmail Quinn. Considering the sort of things Mahoney had pulled over the years, having something on the director of the FBI could be a real ace in the hole.

  Finally Mahoney said, “I think I better talk to the president about this. He needs to know that if any of this stuff about Quinn gets out, even if it can’t be proven, it could result in a shit storm.”

  “So what you’re saying is, you’re not concerned about a murderer becoming the next FBI director but you are concerned about the president getting embarrassed by his appointment.”

  “Don’t you go all holier-than-thou on me,” Mahoney snapped. “You know as well as I do that Quinn isn’t going to go to jail for what he did, and that’s assuming he even did what you said. The best you can do is sling mud at the guy. Now, I personally don’t give a shit about Quinn but—”

  “Well, I do,” DeMarco said. “He killed my father.”

  As if DeMarco hadn’t spoken, Mahoney continued. “What I do care about is him becoming a problem for the president and wasting a lot of time dealing with the media about a bunch of wild-eyed accusations that can’t be proven. The president needs to know about this so he can make a decision and maybe change his mind about nominating Quinn.”

  “I don’t want that to happen,” DeMarco said. “I want the Senate confirmation hearing to take place as scheduled.”

  “What?” Mahoney said. Then his brain caught up with where DeMarco was going. “You mean you intend to get somebody to spring this shit on Quinn during the hearing?”

  “That’s right,” DeMarco said.

  “Well, that ain’t gonna happen,” Mahoney said.

  DeMarco didn’t say anything for a moment because he was once again considering the question: How far was he willing to go to get Brian Quinn? Maybe he wasn’t willing to murder the man, but was he willing to lose his job? Yeah, he was.

  “If you tell the president about Quinn, and if the president withdraws his nomination or if the hearing gets postponed, I’m going to talk to the press and the Justice Department about you. You’ve pulled a lot of crap over the years and I know that because I’ve helped you. What you did last year for your daughter is enough all by itself to get you bounced out of Congress. So don’t cross me on this, boss.”

  “Why you son of a bitch,” Mahoney said, standing up, sloshing bourbon on the couch.

  DeMarco stood up, too. “I’m not screwing around here. I’m going to get Quinn for what he did to my dad. If you get in my way, I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

  “You actually got the balls to stand there and try to blackmail me?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Mahoney’s face turned so red that DeMarco thought for a minute he might have a stroke.

  “You’re fired,” Mahoney said. “Now get the fuck out of here before I throw you through a goddamn window.”

  DeMarco left Mahoney’s building in a state of shock. He was stunned by what had just happened and by what the consequences were likely to be. For the first time since graduating from law school, he didn’t have a job.

  Instead of returning to his car and going home, he walked down to the Potomac and took a seat on a bench. He could see the dark shape of Roosevelt Island from where he was sitting.

  DeMarco didn’t have a lot of debt, just the mortgage on his house and what he still owed on his car. On the other hand, he hadn’t saved much at all in the time he’d been working. The only real savings he had was the money he’d invested in his civil service pension fund, and if he spent that money, what would he retire on?

  DeMarco’s dream, as modest as it was, had been to retire before he was sixty-five—which was still a long way off—sell his house in Georgetown, and buy a cheaper place in a community on some golf course in North or South Carolina or maybe Florida. But if he started spending the money in his pension fund to live on, he could kiss that dream good-bye, and if he sold his house now, there would be very little left over after he paid off the mortgage.

  Once again he was also confronted with the fact that he’d spent almost two decades in a career that he wouldn’t be able to parlay into a better job or even another job that paid as well. The smart thing to do would be to march right back to Mahoney’s place, apologize, and beg for his job back.

  He thought about that for all of two seconds and thought: Fuck the smart thing to do. He wasn’t going to beg for anything and he was going to keep going after Quinn.

  22

  DeMarco showed his congressional ID as he passed through security at the Dirksen Senate Office Building. He knew he wouldn’t have the ID for much longer but figured that Mahoney hadn’t had time yet to get the word out that DeMarco was no longer employed by the legislative branch of the government. By the end of the day, however, he was willing to bet that somebody would track him down and take his credentials away from him.

  DeMarco needed to tal
k to Senator Hiram Beecham but knew that if he called Beecham’s office he wouldn’t get an appointment unless he wanted to tell whoever answered Beecham’s phone all about Brian Quinn. DeMarco wasn’t going to talk to some low-level aide about Quinn. He would, however, talk to Beecham’s chief of staff.

  Beecham’s chief was a tall, shapely brunette who was closing in on fifty but looked better than most thirty-year-olds. She was a former Miss Georgia, a former GU cheerleader, and a mostly absent mother of two. Like many educated southern women that DeMarco had met, her manners were flawless and she was always soft-spoken—the type who could rip you to shreds with her tongue without swearing or ever raising her voice. Her name was Amelia Sherman and according to Perry Wallace, Sherman was devious and tricky and you could trust her about as far as you could throw a Volkswagen. Since Perry Wallace was the same sort of person, DeMarco figured Perry would know.

  Also, according to Perry, at the age of eighty-four, Senator Beecham spent more time napping than working. (One of the things the president had done to embarrass Beecham when he was stumping for Beecham’s opponent in Georgia was mention a video that had gotten heavy play on the political talk shows. In the video, the old senator had been caught sleeping in the Senate chamber and someone had to wake him up to cast his vote.) While Beecham napped, Amelia Sherman stayed awake and did his work, and his political agenda was pretty much steered by her. DeMarco knew that Sherman was the one he had to convince.

  He had gained entrance to Sherman’s office by telling her assistant that he was a lawyer who worked in the House and knew something negative about Brian Quinn that was not known to the general public. “I’m intrigued, Mr. DeMarco,” Sherman said as soon as he took a seat in her office. “Tell me what you think you know about Commissioner Quinn.”

  One difference DeMarco noted between Amelia Sherman and Perry Wallace was that not only did Sherman have a better haircut than Wallace, but her office was also neat and orderly. Wallace was some sort of legislative hoarder and his office contained every bill proposed in the last decade; it looked like a landfill. The furniture in Sherman’s office was dust-free and smelled of Pledge, and her desk was bare except for an outbox holding a few slim manila file folders. You could actually sit on the chairs in her office since they weren’t covered with reams of paper.