House Rivals

by Mike Lawson

  Then one thought finally occurred to him. He grabbed his cell phone and called Sarah.

  Marjorie got up the next morning at five thirty as she usually did, took a quick shower, and blow-dried her hair. She stepped on the scale in the bathroom, made a face, then went and got dressed. As the coffee was brewing, she looked at the calendar on the refrigerator door. Bobby had a baseball game tonight. She’d try to make that. Tommy was going over to Henry Grove’s house to play video games after school. Hmm.

  Marjorie didn’t trust Henry Grove—he was a sneaky little shit—and she was convinced that he was a bad influence on Tommy. The last time Tommy had been to Henry’s house, Marjorie thought she got a whiff of pot off Tommy’s hair but it was hard to be sure, the odor mixed in with sweat and all the other pungent teenage boy smells. She mentioned this to Henry’s mom, suggesting she might want to poke around in her son’s room and see if she could find a bag of dope. Naturally, Henry’s mother had been offended and things were still a bit cool between her and Marjorie.

  Marjorie left a note for Dick, giving him his marching orders for the day: drop off the dry cleaning; take the three boxes of crap that have been sitting in the garage for a month to Goodwill; call a plumber, like she’d told him two days ago, to come fix the leaky faucet in the master bath; pick up the boys after school, drop off Tommy at Henry’s house, then take Bobby to the baseball field where she’d meet him. She’d pick up Tommy from Henry’s place after the game so she could sniff his hair again. She signed the note Love and kisses, M, grabbed her purse, her keys, and headed out the door.

  She didn’t look at her cell phone until she got to work. Her plan that morning was to get on the phone and start calling people in Washington to figure out who this guy DeMarco was. When she pulled out her phone, she saw a text message from Heckler. He’d sent it at eleven last night. It said: Call me first thing in the morning. It’s a big deal.

  She called Heckler.

  “Jesus, what time is it?” he said.

  “Six thirty,” Marjorie said. “Your message said to call you first thing in the morning.”

  “I didn’t mean six thirty.”

  “Wake up, Heckler, and tell me what’s going on.”

  “Hang on. I want to play you a call Johnson got last night from that guy DeMarco.”

  She heard Heckler getting out of bed, coughing, a cigarette lighter clicking, and then he said, “Okay. I’m going to play it back.”

  “Sarah, it’s Joe DeMarco. I’ve been reading your blog and I wanted to ask you something.”

  “So now do you see what I mean about the shit that Curtis has been pulling?”

  “Uh, yeah. Anyway, what I wanted to ask is this. Who paid these people you think were bribed?”

  “What do you mean? Curtis paid them.”

  “I kind of doubt that Curtis paid them directly. I mean, I can’t imagine him personally arranging for some legislator to get a good deal on a seed drill, whatever the hell that is.”

  “Well, of course he didn’t do it personally. Curtis probably has twenty thousand people who work for him, with all the companies he owns. He retains a law firm that employs over eighty lawyers. Those are the people who are making the payoffs.”

  “I don’t think so, Sarah. I think . . . I think Curtis has a guy like me.”

  “A guy like you? What do you mean?”

  “I mean he’s probably got a guy he uses for this sort of thing. A guy who fixes things for him. He wouldn’t have two dozen people buying off politicians and judges. He’d want somebody he could trust, somebody he knew was competent, probably somebody who’s worked for him for a long time.”

  And Marjorie thought: Oh, shit.

  “So, Sarah, I wanted to know if you’ve ever come across somebody like that? A single person, an operator, who might have met with all these people you say have been bribed or blackmailed or whatever?”

  “No.”

  “What I’m saying is, if you can find that person and if pressure can be brought to bear on him, maybe he can be forced to testify against Curtis because he’s the guy who’s really committed a crime.”

  “How would you pressure him?”

  “I don’t know. But the first thing we need to do is find him.”

  “If he exists.”

  “Yeah, if he exists. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Sarah.”

  And Marjorie again thought: Oh, shit.

  “That’s it,” Heckler said. “But I thought you ought to hear that.”

  “You thought right. Now get out of bed and get back on her.”

  Marjorie sat for a minute, then reached into her purse for the pack of Marlboros and went outside. Bill would give her a ration of shit if she smoked in the office.

  This was bad. Sarah Johnson had never mentioned Bill or Marjorie in her stupid blog. They had no documented connection to Curtis—at least none that Johnson would be able to find. Their consulting firm wasn’t owned by Curtis—it wasn’t one of Curtis’s many companies—and Curtis was not identified in any public forum as being their client.

  But if Johnson talked to the right people, it was possible—although highly unlikely—that some of those people might say that she and Bill had approached them on Curtis’s behalf. Ninety-nine percent of them wouldn’t talk, of course, because then they’d be admitting that they’d been bribed or influenced in some way. But maybe one of them would. Maybe one of them was no longer in politics and had grown a conscience. Maybe one of them felt that he or she had been screwed by Curtis in some way. All Marjorie knew for sure was that DeMarco had pointed Johnson in their direction—and that wasn’t good.

  She needed to find out who this damn guy was.

  Bill rolled into the office about ten. He wasn’t his normal, cheerful self. He looked grim. He’d probably been thinking about the fact that he might have to go to Denver to see Murdock again.

  “We have a problem,” Marjorie said as soon as he walked through the door.

  “I thought we might have. I saw the cigarette butts out by the door.”

  Marjorie told Bill about the conversation Heckler had recorded between DeMarco and Sarah Johnson. Bill’s reaction was: Oh, shit.

  “Who is this fuckin’ guy?” Bill said.

  “I’ve been on the phone for the last three hours trying to figure that out. He’s a lawyer and he works for the House of Representatives but it’s not clear what he does. He’s not listed as being on anyone’s staff. And get this. His father was an honest-to-God mafia hit man up in New York.”

  “Mafia? You think DeMarco’s mafia?”

  “No. Shut up. I said his father was mafia. He’s not mafia, at least it doesn’t sound like it. Anyway, I finally got to Peach.”

  Jeremiah Peach was an aide to Congressman Sam Erhart, Montana’s sole representative in the House. It seemed as if Peach had been in D.C. since the British burned down the White House and whenever Montana elected a new representative—Democrat or Republican—the new congressman kept Peach on his staff because the new guys the new congressman brought with him didn’t really know how things worked on the Hill.

  “Peach told me that DeMarco is a shady character who works down in the subbasement of the Capitol. He’s a lawyer, but as far as Peach knows, he doesn’t practice law. When I Googled DeMarco, I found out he made the news about a year ago. You remember Bob Fairchild, that congressman from Arizona who paid an ex-cop to kill a woman in Tucson?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, DeMarco was the one who caught the killer but none of the articles made it clear as to why he was involved at all. But the main thing Peach told me is that DeMarco might work for John Mahoney.”

  “Mahoney? You mean the guy who used to be the Speaker?”

  “Yeah. Peach said DeMarco’s not on Mahoney’s staff but it seems like whenever Mahoney has some sticky problem to solve, DeMarco shows up. Peach
said it’s like DeMarco’s this dog Mahoney keeps in a cage, and he only lets him out when he wants someone bit. Peach also said that since John Mahoney is as corrupt as any African dictator, this means that DeMarco isn’t some Boy Scout lawyer who plays by the rules.”

  “Why the hell would John Mahoney care about Sarah Johnson?” Bill said.

  “I have no idea. But this is bad, Bill. The last thing we need is someone with a connection to Mahoney. Johnson can’t get anybody in law enforcement to give her the time of day, but Mahoney can probably get the FBI involved with one phone call.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I’m still thinking Murdock may be our best option. In fact, I think he’s our only option.”

  “You want Murdock to . . .” Bill wasn’t even going to say the word kill out loud. “You want him to take care of both Johnson and DeMarco?”

  “Hell, no. If Johnson has an accident that’s one thing. If something happens to both her and DeMarco . . . I don’t even want to go down that path.”

  “But if something happens to her, even if it’s ruled an accident, then DeMarco might keep digging anyway.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Should we tell Curtis about DeMarco?”

  “Not yet. He’d go ape shit if he knew a guy working for Mahoney was out here talking to Johnson. We need to come up with an answer before we talk to Curtis.”

  9

  DeMarco called Sarah and suggested they meet for breakfast.

  “I don’t usually eat breakfast,” she said.

  “Well, I do. And pick a place that makes a real breakfast, not some coffee shop or a McDonald’s.”

  He met her at a Denny’s on Seventh Street and ordered French toast, sausage links, and eggs over easy. She had a coffee.

  “Like I told you last night,” DeMarco said, “Curtis probably has somebody working for him that’s his go-to guy for payoffs. I mean, if you’re right about Curtis.”

  “What do you mean, if I’m right?” she said, her eyes bugging out of her head. “I thought you read my blog.”

  “I read enough to know that you don’t have any evidence that Curtis did anything illegal. On top of that, your blog’s so damn convoluted and wordy, nobody can read it without going into a coma. Your granddad said you have money. Maybe you should hire a writer to turn your research into a book or a magazine article.”

  Then he immediately wished he hadn’t said that. He could tell he’d hurt her feelings.

  “I mean you have a lot of data and a lot of good arguments,” DeMarco said, trying to sound soothing. “I’m just saying a pro could make it more . . . more accessible. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Can you think of anyone who’s taken a bribe that might be feeling some remorse, some guilt. Or maybe somebody who’s now pissed at Curtis for whatever reason.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that ever since you called last night. I need to go back through parts of my blog again and look at my raw notes.”

  “Okay, do that. In the meantime, I think you should hire some security. A couple big guys licensed to carry.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Sarah, people have threatened to kill you twice. You’ve been assaulted. You need to take the threats seriously.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said—but DeMarco could tell she wasn’t going to do anything. Like most twenty-two-year-olds, she thought she was immortal and invincible.

  “How did you get into all this stuff with Curtis in the first place?” he asked.

  “It started out when I got interested in fracking and all the damage that it was doing to the environment. I went to a couple of rallies, met some activists, and joined up with a group in Billings for a while. Then one night, my group went to a public hearing in Bismarck and . . . You remember what I told you last night about Stevens?”

  “The farmer with the easement?”

  “Yeah. We figured that Stevens was going to speak out in favor of the bill to increase inspections on blowout preventers, but instead he talked about how the existing requirements were good enough. But you could tell he didn’t really believe what he was saying—I mean, the guy just looked ashamed—and one of the people I was with said it was obvious that Curtis had gotten to Stevens—bribed him or blackmailed him or something—but that we’d never be able to prove it. But I decided to see if I could.

  “I knew if Curtis had given Stevens cash or transferred money to an offshore account I wouldn’t be able to find out, but in Stevens’s case it was easy because everything was a matter of public record. What I mean is, Stevens filed a lawsuit against the farmer who withdrew the easement and later, Stevens dropped the lawsuit, so it was easy to connect the dots.”

  DeMarco almost said: Well, you found some dots, but I’m not sure you really connected anything—but decided to keep his mouth shut.

  “The next thing that happened,” Sarah said, “was a circuit court judge named Hardy ruled in favor of something that benefited Curtis in a big way. You don’t need to know all the details, and since you don’t know anything about how they process natural gas you wouldn’t understand anyway, but this judge’s ruling didn’t make sense. It was just absurd. Well, I found out that Hardy was running for reelection that year and about eighty percent of his campaign contributions were coming from Curtis and guys who worked for Curtis and companies Curtis owns.”

  DeMarco shrugged. “Yeah, well. You know.”

  “What the hell does that mean? That yeah, well, you know?”

  DeMarco always told people that the United States of America has the best government that money can buy—and he was serious. And that’s what he told Sarah. “Sarah, that’s politics in this country. People and companies contribute to guys who see things their way. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s not illegal. It’s just the way things are.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just saying that Curtis didn’t do anything illegal by supporting this judge for reelection.”

  It looked for a minute like Sarah was going to erupt like Vesuvius, then she took a breath. “Anyway, you asked how I got started. That was the beginning. After that, I just started digging into anything that favored Curtis. Bills in the legislature, court cases, lawsuits. I filed FOIA requests. I looked at key people to see if they benefited in some way. I looked at property records to see if they bought a second home and at building permits to see if they were remodeling their houses. I talked to their neighbors and their political opponents.” She took a breath and said, “I’m a hell of a researcher, Mr. DeMarco. I may not be a writer but I work hard and I know how to dig to find things out.”

  And DeMarco believed that: that Sarah Johnson was a hell of a researcher. But she didn’t seem to be able to grasp the fact that just because a politician benefited at the same time Curtis benefited that that wasn’t prima facie evidence of bribery. Rather than argue with her, he said, “Okay. So go back over your blog and your notes and think about who might give us a lead on the person Curtis is using to fix things around here.”

  “I will,” she said and stood up. “But then what? What do I do when I’ve got some names?”

  “Then we go lean on these people and try to convince them to talk to you. I’m not much of a researcher but I’m pretty good at leaning on folks.”

  “You’ll go with me? Seriously?”

  “Yeah. For a while. I mean, I have a job in D.C. I need to get back to, but I’ll give this a few more days.”

  Sarah marched out of the restaurant like a woman on a mission from God.

  Actually, the only job DeMarco had back in Washington was doing whatever Mahoney told him to do and, for the present, Mahoney wanted him right where he was. DeMarco just wanted to get back home to see if Ralph had annihilated the rodents.

  DeMarco finished his breakfast, then decided to call Ral
ph and ask how things were progressing.

  “Things are going good,” Ralph said cheerfully. He was a cheerful killer. “They already ate two boxes of the d-CON, so when I drop by your place tomorrow, I should find some bodies inside the house.”

  “You mean outside the house,” DeMarco said.

  “Uh, yeah, that’s what I mean,” Ralph said.

  As he walked to his car, DeMarco thought about calling Mahoney to let him know what was going on, but then he couldn’t help but notice that it was a lovely spring morning. There had to be a public golf course somewhere in Bismarck. He’d go rent some clubs and play a round—then call Mahoney. Nothing was going to change in four or five hours—except maybe the weather, which might preclude playing golf. He wished he’d brought his golf shoes with him.

  “Maybe we’re overthinking this thing,” Marjorie said to Bill. She’d just come back into the office after another cigarette. Bill couldn’t recall her ever smoking this much before; she must have gone through a pack since she’d arrived at the office.

  “If something happens to Johnson,” Marjorie said, “it’ll end with her. Like we’ve tried to tell Curtis a million times, she doesn’t have any proof that we or Curtis or anybody else has done anything illegal. She’s just got a lot of conjecture and coincidence.”

  “Conjecture that’s dead spot-on,” Bill said.

  “But it’s conjecture, Bill. It isn’t proof. If she’s gone, this DeMarco character will go home. He doesn’t have contacts here. He doesn’t know how things work out here. But the main thing is, he can’t be as screwy as Sarah Johnson. He won’t spend the rest of his life investigating all the crap she’s written about.”