House Reckoning

by Mike Lawson

  Now what? His entire half-assed plan for destroying Brian Quinn had just evaporated.

  24

  The next morning didn’t start off too well, either.

  DeMarco’s doorbell rang at 7 A.M., waking him up. Dressed in boxer shorts and a wash-faded Nationals T-shirt, he opened his front door to find two U.S. Capitol cops standing on his porch. He recognized one of them, a potbellied old timer named Leary, who could usually be found leaning against a wall on the side of the Capitol that faced the Library of Congress. Leary was holding a cardboard box in his hand. The other guy, DeMarco had never seen before. His nametag said P. Martin, and he was at least twenty years younger than Leary and looked about twenty times harder.

  “What’s going on?” DeMarco said. He doubted they were there because his house had been broken into last night. There was no reason for the Capitol Police to be involved in that.

  “We’re here to collect your security badge,” Martin said.

  Mahoney hadn’t wasted any time.

  The first response that occurred to DeMarco was Couldn’t this have waited until nine or ten? But he didn’t say that. “Hang on, I’ll go get it,” he said. He came back a moment later and handed Martin his badge.

  Leary, who looked a bit sheepish, held out the cardboard box to him. “What’s this?” DeMarco said.

  “The shit from your office,” Martin said. “Oh, I forgot. I need the key to your office, too.”

  DeMarco got his keys, pulled his office key off the key ring, and handed it to Martin. “Inside that box,” Martin said, “is an envelope with instructions telling you what you have to do when you separate from government service. There’s a phone number in there of a lady to call in personnel if you got any questions, and you’re supposed to be in her office at ten this morning to sign the stuff you have to sign. Have a good day.”

  Martin turned and walked away but before Leary left, he muttered, “Sorry, Joe.”

  DeMarco shut the door and headed back to bed. He had no intention of meeting with the lady from personnel today. He’d get to her when he had time—or when he was in the mood. What were they going to do if he missed the appointment? Fire him?

  DeMarco got out of bed again at nine and called his insurance company to start the process for replacing the things that had been damaged and stolen. He called Home Depot next and told a clerk he needed a new door and the frame that went around the door. Home Depot informed him a guy would be there in a couple of hours to take some measurements. Next he called Amelia Sherman and told her he needed to see her as soon as possible.

  “Did Benedetto let you video his testimony?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but I no longer have the video.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this on the phone.”

  After a brief pause, she said, “Be here at two.”

  Two was good. That would give him time to deal with the insurance guy and the door guy. He made one other phone call. This time Neil answered his phone.

  “Neil, I need Bobby to come over to my house and make sure my phones aren’t tapped?”

  “Who do you think tapped them?”

  “What difference does it make? Just send him over. Okay? Please?”

  “All right,” Neil said, not sounding enthused.

  Amelia Sherman was wearing a navy blue suit, a simple white blouse, small pearl earrings, and a matching pearl necklace. Simple, elegant, and stunning. The skirt hugged her form and stopped a modest one inch above her knees, but when she sat down and crossed her legs it was a show worth watching. DeMarco told her about his house being ransacked, and how the video he’d made of Tony had been stolen. He also told her about the conversation he’d had with Tony last night, and how Tony had admitted that he’d sold DeMarco out to Quinn to keep his son from going to jail.

  “Tony, that sly old bastard, knew while he was making the video that he was going to use it to get his son off the hook,” DeMarco said.

  “Why on earth didn’t you make a copy of the video?” Sherman asked him.

  “I didn’t know how. I tried to get a hold of the guy who lent me the camera but—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Sherman said. “Couldn’t you have asked somebody else to help you make a copy?”

  “Yeah, of course, but I didn’t think making a copy was urgent. It never occurred to me that Tony would do what he did.”

  “And you think it was Quinn’s people who broke into your house?”

  “Yeah. Who else could it have been?” DeMarco said.

  “Benedetto,” Sherman said. “After he made the deal with Quinn, he needed to get rid of the video, so he sent some of his people to get it.

  “No, it was Quinn,” DeMarco said. “They stole the video less than twenty-four hours after I talked to Tony. Tony couldn’t have gotten a team together that fast. He’s basically retired and he’s sick. Quinn, on the other hand, controls his own army.”

  “Ordering people to break into your home seems like a rather risky thing for Quinn to do.”

  “Hey, the stakes are high for Quinn,” DeMarco said. “We’re talking about information that could destroy his life. And who knows what he told the guys who did the job. At his rank, you don’t have to tell people much when you give them an order.”

  Neither of them said anything for a moment, and when Sherman shook her head—obviously disgusted by DeMarco’s incompetence—DeMarco rose to leave. “I really appreciate that you were willing to help me and I’m sorry, but without Tony, I don’t think there’s anything else that can be done.”

  “Sit down, DeMarco. I’m not ready to give up quite yet. I’m going to subpoena the teacher, her old boyfriend, and Quinn’s old partner. I want them all telling what they know about the cover-up that took place when Quinn killed Connors.”

  “They won’t testify,” DeMarco said. “Quinn’s old partner said he’d take the Fifth.”

  “It’s one thing for them to tell you they won’t testify. It’s a whole different story when they’re sitting in a hearing room, eighteen senators staring down at them, knowing they’ll go to jail for perjury if they lie.”

  “I don’t know,” DeMarco said. He was thinking that Dombroski wouldn’t have any problem at all telling eighteen senators to go shit in their hats.

  Sherman ignored DeMarco’s skepticism. “And one other thing. See if Quinn’s old partner knows who investigated the Connors shooting. We’ll subpoena those guys, too, and see if they’re willing to lie for Quinn.” Before DeMarco could say anything, she added, “I realize the teacher and these other people won’t have the same impact as the gangster saying that Quinn murdered two people, but if they testify, it’s going to raise a stink and cast some doubt on Quinn’s character. More important, I’m willing to bet that Quinn’s made a lot of enemies over the years. You don’t usually make it to the top unless you walk on a few people to get there. So maybe some of his enemies will come forward when they see us banging on Quinn.”

  “That’s kind of a long shot,” DeMarco said.

  “Long shots are all we have. And we do have one other thing working to our advantage. As you may know, Senator Beecham is a very wealthy and influential man, and . . .”

  “What? You want me to tell people he’ll pay them to testify?”

  “You know, when you say stupid things like that, DeMarco, it makes me nervous. What you say is that there are some people in Washington who don’t want to see Quinn appointed and these people could be quite grateful, in an indirect way. You can just never tell what good fortune might befall folks who are cooperative. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. I want you to go back to New York again and get me more names, as many people as you can find that were involved in the cover-up of that poor man’s death . . .”

  Sheesh. Connors had become “that poor man.”

  . . . and anyone you can find that can link Quinn to these mobsters, Taliaferro and Benedetto. I want a whole parade of peo
ple marching through that hearing room, telling stories about Brian Quinn.”

  DeMarco caught a late-afternoon shuttle to New York, rented a car, and by 7 P.M. was knocking on Janet Costello’s door. He was going to let Janet know it was in her best interest to cooperate at the confirmation hearing and tell the truth. He was also going to do what Sherman had said and get any names Janet could give him regarding who else in Taliaferro’s outfit, besides Sal Anselmo, might know about Quinn shooting Connors. It didn’t appear that Janet was home, however.

  He knocked again, and as he was doing so, a woman came out of the apartment across the hall, dressed in a bathrobe. She had some variety of long-haired canine on a leash, the dog smaller than most New York rats.

  “Janet’s gone,” she said when she saw DeMarco. “She’s on some sort of sabbatical. She left yesterday.”

  “A sabbatical?” He wasn’t aware fifth-grade school teachers could take sabbaticals.

  “That’s what she said. She looked really happy.”

  “Did she tell you where she was going?”

  “No. When I asked her she acted rather coy and just said it was someplace lovely this time of year. I was glad for her; she’s always struck me as such an unhappy person.”

  DeMarco knew what Quinn had done: After he learned from Tony that DeMarco was trying to derail his confirmation hearing, Quinn convinced somebody in the New York school system to reward Janet Costello for her many years of service educating the city’s children—and then got her out of town.

  DeMarco thanked Costello’s neighbor and left the apartment building. Standing out on the street, he looked at his watch. It was an hour-and-a-half drive from New York to Brick and it was the tail end of the rush hour. He’d get a room for the night and see Dombroski tomorrow.

  Normally, when DeMarco was in Manhattan, he enjoyed himself. He liked New York and he liked New Yorkers. He liked the restaurants and bars, where all the young waitresses and bartenders seemed better looking than normal, probably because they were all wannabe actors waiting for their big break. He liked looking at the fashionably dressed, exotic women on Fifth Avenue and eating the tamales and falafel and hot dogs you could get from street vendors. He just liked the atmosphere of the place.

  He didn’t like the atmosphere now, however; he felt like he was behind enemy lines. This was Brian Quinn’s town. He had an army at his disposal and he had DeMarco outmanned and outgunned—outgunned not just literally but in the sense that he had a lot more power than DeMarco had.

  DeMarco also wondered if he was being followed. That would be a logical thing for Quinn to do, put a tail on him and keep tabs on what he was doing. He didn’t have a sense that anyone was following him, and he hadn’t noticed anyone, but he figured that if Quinn had people tailing him they’d be too good for him to spot. He checked into a hotel in Manhattan that had a decent restaurant and a good bar, but he was thinking that as he no longer had a steady income, he’d better start looking for cheaper places to sleep in New York. He wasn’t going to stay with his mom, however, while he was going after Quinn; there was no way he was going to allow her to get caught up in what he was doing. To somewhat offset the cost of his room, he passed on the hotel’s gourmet restaurant and bought two slices of pizza from a place a block away.

  Like the last time DeMarco had seen him, Stan Dombroski was sitting in his backyard, drinking beer, enjoying his low-rent view. The fact that it was only 10 A.M. didn’t appear to matter to Dombroski when it came to ocean-watching and beer drinking. The New York Times was in a pile next to his lawn chair; Dombroski was reading the sports pages.

  When he saw DeMarco, he said, “Get the fuck out of here. I don’t need any more trouble.”

  “What are you talking about?” DeMarco asked.

  “Yesterday a couple guys showed up here. New York cops. They told me if I talked to you anymore, I was going to have a problem with my pension.”

  “Can they actually do that, mess with your pension?”

  “Yes and no. If they try to screw up my benefits, I’ll get the union involved and they’ll go to bat for me, and eventually I’ll win. But what they can do is stop my retirement check for a while and screw with me for about six months, making me and the union jump through every fuckin’ hoop they can find. I can’t last six months without a paycheck. I can’t last six weeks.”

  “I’m sorry,” DeMarco said.

  “You may be sorry, but you’re not the one pissing blood.”

  “What?”

  “Yesterday when these guys started leaning on me, I got mad and started yelling, and one of them hit me in the kidney so hard I couldn’t even move for about ten minutes. He said I’d tried to assault his partner and I was lucky they weren’t arresting me. I don’t know who they were. They showed me badges but I didn’t pay any attention to the names. All I know is, they were two hardnosed motherfuckers and I don’t ever want to see them again. And I don’t want to see you again, either.”

  DeMarco was about to tell him that Amelia Sherman was going to subpoena him when Dombroski said, “Do me a favor before you go. Go into the house and bring out the six-pack in the fridge. It just hurts too much when I try to get up.”

  “You want me to take you to a doctor?” DeMarco said.

  “No. Just get the beer.”

  DeMarco did as Dombroski asked and put a six-pack of Budweiser in the cooler next to Dombroski’s chair.

  “Stan, I’m sorry you got dragged into this but there’s a good chance you’re going to be subpoenaed to testify at Quinn’s confirmation hearing.”

  “Goddamnit, I’m not going to do it. I’ll take the Fifth.”

  “Well, you can try. And maybe you should get a lawyer, too.”

  “I can’t afford a fuckin’ lawyer, DeMarco! Why in the hell are you doing this to me?”

  “I’ll tell you what, Stan. If you can give me someone bigger than you to testify against Quinn, then maybe we can leave you out of this.”

  “Like who?

  “I don’t know. How ’bout the names of the people who investigated Quinn when he shot Connors? Maybe some of those guys got some rank after they helped cover up what Quinn did, and they’d be more impressive witnesses than you.”

  “I don’t remember who investigated the shooting. That was a long time ago. But there’s probably a file somewhere unless Quinn made it disappear.”

  DeMarco figured Sherman would have to subpoena the file. There was no way DeMarco would ever be allowed to see it.

  “What about Quinn’s enemies? There must be people in the department who don’t like him.” DeMarco told him what Sherman had said, about how people who made it to the top usually stepped on a few folks to get there.

  “DeMarco, you gotta remember I spent twenty-five years in uniform. I was a grunt. I wasn’t involved in all the political shit that Quinn pulled. If he made enemies, they would be people who were ten pay grades above me.”

  “Come on, Stan,” DeMarco said. “He sent two of his thugs over here to rough you up. Give me something.”

  When Dombroski just sat there scowling, DeMarco said, “Okay, Stan, have it your way. But if you do get called to testify, I’d suggest you cooperate.”

  DeMarco turned to leave.

  “Wait a minute,” Dombroski said. “There’s one thing but I don’t know if it will help you. Quinn’s got a girlfriend.”

  “A girlfriend? How do you know this?”

  “From a buddy of mine who’s still working. His patrol area is the East Village, Alphabet City, and one night he sees Quinn get out of a cab, all by himself, and he goes into this old brownstone. What struck my buddy was that Quinn was alone and his security guys weren’t with him. You never see Quinn when he doesn’t have security and Quinn doesn’t usually take cabs; he has someone drive him.”

  “A couple weeks later, my buddy sees him again. He takes his breaks at a Greek place right across from the brownstone that he saw Quinn go into; he’s got a thing for a waitress that works at the restauran
t. Anyway, Quinn shows up in a cab again and without his bodyguards. This time my buddy hangs around for a while, and pretty soon a kid shows up with food from a takeout place. My friend catches the delivery kid when he comes back down and asks who he delivered the food to, and he said it was a woman named Pamela Weinman. Weinman is a nice-looking lady in her thirties, who also happens to be an assistant DA in Manhattan.”

  “How many people know about this?” DeMarco asked.

  Dombroski laughed. “Knowing my pal, Bill, I’d say about half the fuckin’ department. He’s not the type who can keep a secret. I know he told guys who patrol the same area, and they kind of make a game out of it, seeing if they can spot Quinn visiting his girlfriend.”

  “How do you know she’s his girlfriend?”

  “Come on, DeMarco. Quinn sneaks out without his security, shows up at a lady’s apartment at night, and orders out so they’re not seen in a restaurant. What else could she be?”

  DeMarco knew from the research he’d done on Quinn that Quinn’s wife was the daughter of a federal judge and that from her mother’s side of the family she’d inherited a ton of money. A ton being like maybe a hundred million. He knew Quinn lived in a co-op near Central Park and the place was probably worth ten million bucks, just based on the address. He didn’t know how Quinn would feel about his extraordinarily rich wife divorcing him. He also didn’t know if Quinn’s infidelity could be used against him at the confirmation hearing. All he knew was that this was potentially good news.

  He left Dombroski’s place and drove around for a while to see if he could spot anyone tailing him. When he couldn’t, he decided to have fish and chips at a place called the Cove Bar and Grill, which overlooked some body of water that he assumed was a cove. He took a seat on an outdoor patio at a table covered by a white and blue umbrella, and while he was waiting for his food to arrive, he called Amelia Sherman and told her what he’d learned: that Quinn had disappeared Janet Costello and it would probably be impossible to find her before the hearing; that two of Quinn’s goons had threatened Stan Dombroski and roughed him up a little; and finally that Quinn had a girlfriend who worked in the Manhattan DA’s office.