House Rivals

by Mike Lawson

  “I’m still not sure we should use Murdock. There has to be some other—”

  “You know, I think it would be best if it looked like a home invasion or robbery or a rape.”

  “What?”

  “I mean if she’s just shot or something,” Marjorie said, “the cops might think she was killed for some reason connected to all her political bullshit, and they might think that Curtis was involved. So you see what I mean? We shouldn’t make it look like she was, you know, assassinated.”

  Bill was speechless. You look at Marjorie—cute, bubbly, bouncy little Marjorie—and you think: Soccer Mom of the Year. You’d never imagine that a woman who looked like her could be so cold-blooded. But there’d been plenty of times in the years they’d worked together when Bill had seen how she reacted to anyone trying to stop her from doing what she wanted—and although she didn’t resort to murder—she could be downright brutal. Sometimes, she just scared the shit out of him.

  “You know if DeMarco comes up with our names,” Bill said, “we could end up being suspects.”

  “Which means we need to move fast, before he gets our names. You need to contact Murdock today.”

  “Why don’t you contact him? I contacted him last time.”

  “And then what, Bill? I’m supposed to sit in a steam room naked with Murdock?”

  “Maybe he has some other procedure for when he meets with female clients.”

  “Quit being childish. You’re the one he knows. And what about my kids? I can’t just go taking off for Denver.”

  “Yeah, well . . .”

  “Hey, we’re in this together, no matter who talks to him.”

  “Not exactly. I’m the guy who Murdock will give up if he’s caught.”

  “And then you’d give me up,” Marjorie said. “And don’t tell me you wouldn’t. We’re in this together.”

  Bill didn’t normally drink at eleven in the morning, but today was different. After Marjorie nagged him for half an hour—God, the woman could nag; he felt sorry for her husband—he finally agreed to call Murdock and that’s what he was going to do. But he needed a drink first.

  He didn’t want to call Murdock. At the same time, he didn’t want to lose everything he had. He liked his life the way it was, and he knew Curtis would fire him and Marjorie if they didn’t solve the Johnson problem. Or maybe, knowing Marjorie, she’d blame their failure all on him and only he’d get fired—and no one was going to pay him what Curtis paid him. He didn’t want to lose his job.

  When Murdock had taken care of Wainwright, the swing judge in South Dakota six years ago, that hadn’t really weighed on Bill’s conscience all that much. He’d been scared, of course—he’d been scared for three months—that he might be arrested as an accomplice to murder and end up in prison for the rest of his life, but he hadn’t really felt all that guilty. For one thing, the judge had been a disagreeable old fart. But Johnson . . . She was different. She was a young woman, practically a girl.

  He knocked back a shot of Wild Turkey, then ordered another. Finally, he called Murdock from a pay phone in the bar. Murdock didn’t answer the call and no way in hell was Bill going to leave a message.

  He called again one hour—and two more shots—later. Murdock still didn’t answer. Bill finally decided he needed to leave a message and stopped at a Best Buy and bought a prepaid phone using cash and giving a phony name. He called Murdock a third time and when Murdock still didn’t answer, he left a message: “We met before, six years ago. You did some work for me. Please call me at 701-220-1048. It’s urgent and I’ll, uh, compensate you accordingly.”

  While he was eating some lunch to soak up the booze, Murdock called him. “This is the guy you called,” Murdock said.

  “Thanks for calling back. I need you to—”

  “Stop. I don’t do business over the phone. You remember where we met last time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Meet me there again.”

  Bill tried to figure out how long it would take him to get to Denver. “I’ll be there some time late tonight,” he said.

  “Make it tomorrow morning. Ten a.m.,” Murdock said. “And bring the down payment with you.” Before Bill could tell him again that the matter was urgent, Murdock hung up.

  DeMarco was on the eighth hole at a golf course called Hawktree, five miles north of Bismarck. Hawktree was an unexpected jewel, like an oasis in the desert: lush, emerald-green fairways and black sand bunkers surrounded by rugged, rolling hills covered with rust-colored, long-stemmed native grasses. He’d never played on a course in the middle of a prairie and he could imagine a million buffalo traveling over the fairways before they became fairways.

  He’d just landed about fifty yards from the pin after making one of the best six iron shots he’d ever made. It was a shame there’d been no one with him to see it. He was just coming forward with his pitching iron when his cell phone went off like a burglar alarm and the ball went skittering off the end of his club and landed smack-dab in the middle of a sand trap.

  “Fuck!” he cried. He took the phone out of his pocket. As he might have guessed, it was Sarah Johnson—a woman perfectly suited to screwing up what he was sure would have been a perfect shot.

  “Yeah, Sarah, what can I do for you?”

  “I’ve got four names. They’re located in—”

  “Just tell me when I get there. I can be at your place in a couple hours. Your grandfather gave me the address.”

  “Two hours!” she shrieked. “Where are you? What are you doing?”

  “I’m just busy. I’ll see you in two hours.” He hung up before she could tell him to make it sooner.

  It seemed only reasonable that he should take the shot over from where he was standing. It wasn’t fair he should have to hack his way out of a sand trap because of a badly timed phone call.

  10

  “She just called DeMarco,” Heckler said.

  “Yeah?” Marjorie said.

  “She said, I got four names.”

  “So what were the names?”

  “No, you don’t understand. All she said was I got four names and before she could say who they were, DeMarco said he’d meet her at her place and hung up. So I don’t know who she was talking about. I’m just telling you she sounded excited and said . . . Well, I already told you what she said.”

  “You stay glued to that girl like, like . . . you stay glued to her.”

  “I will.”

  She called Bill to tell him that taking care of Johnson was even more urgent than she’d originally thought, but the call went to voice mail. She’d wondered if Bill was already on the plane to Denver. He’d better be on the plane; he’d better not be ignoring her phone calls.

  But four names. What four names? Who was that crazy bitch talking about? What did these people know?

  DeMarco pulled up in front of Sarah’s place. He saw that she lived in a duplex—an old two-story white clapboard house with a big front porch and two brick chimneys—and not an apartment complex as he’d expected. He knocked on the left-hand door—the one with the letter B following the address—and she answered a moment later. Instead of inviting him in, she came through the door pulling a roll-on bag.

  “Uh, what’s with the suitcase?” DeMarco asked.

  “I told you, I got four names. We’re going to go see them.”

  “And you need a suitcase?”

  “Yeah. We’ll go to your motel first and you can check out.”

  “Wait a minute. Where are these people located?”

  “The first one’s in Minot. The next one—”

  “Where’s Minot?”

  “In North Dakota,” she said, looking at him like he’d asked where Paris was. “It’s about a hundred miles from Bismarck. The next one’s in Great Falls.” Then she added, “That’s in Montana. It’s about eight hours from
Minot.”

  “Eight hours!” DeMarco said. Then, because he couldn’t help it, he said it again. “Eight hours!”

  “Yeah. I figured we’d go in a loop. Minot to Great Falls, then Great Falls to Billings, then Billings to Rapid City.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Can’t we fly?”

  “We could but it will be faster to drive. You can’t get direct flights to most of these places.”

  He tried to think of a way to get out of this. Maybe he should tell her that he’d wait for her in Bismarck, and when she learned something, to give him a call. But he didn’t. Instead he followed her down the sidewalk like a man walking to the gallows and opened the trunk of his rental car so she could toss her suitcase in. Thirty minutes later, he’d checked out of the Holiday Inn and gassed up his car. He wondered where they’d be staying that night.

  She directed him turn by turn out of Bismarck until they reached US 83. Minot was due north of Bismarck.

  “So who are we seeing in Minot?” DeMarco asked.

  “A retired judge.”

  “And what did he do wrong?”

  “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Then why—”

  “This guy, his name is Parker, had a case before him involving forced pooling.”

  “Forced pooling? What’s—”

  “Curtis was suing landowners in Ward County for blocking surveys on their land to determine where to drill for gas. The lawsuit said Curtis’s company had been negotiating in good faith with the landowners but the landowners weren’t playing ball as required to do by the law.”

  “I still don’t understand. What’s forced pooling?”

  Sarah gave an exasperated sigh to indicate what she thought of ­DeMarco’s abysmal ignorance. “I’ll keep this simple. Gas companies don’t drill straight down to get the gas. What they do is get a lease to drill on one parcel of land that has gas under it, then they basically drill sideways or horizontally to get at the gas in adjacent parcels. The gas under all these parcels combined is called a pool. And you can look this up if you don’t believe me, but thirty-nine states in this country have laws that essentially mandate that the owners of these adjacent parcels have to allow the companies to drill under their property if the company can get leases from a certain percentage of the landowners over the pool. That’s what they mean by forced pooling.”

  This was just like Sarah’s blog—totally confusing—but he imagined she was right about the law.

  Sarah continued. “Both Republicans and Democrats in the areas affected are against these forced-pooling laws. Some people object for safety and environmental reasons, like they’re afraid their well water will become contaminated. Others object on principal, feeling that they’re being forced to give up their property rights, which they are. But somehow the gas and oil companies always prevail, no matter how many people object. Anyway, to get back to Judge Parker.

  “Like I said, Curtis filed a suit in this one county against a bunch of landowners because they were doing everything they could to block him from drilling. Curtis’s suit said they weren’t acting in the spirit of the law. Well, Parker stands up in court one day and makes a raving speech about how he can’t be bought but then recuses himself from the case to avoid the appearance of impropriety. It was obvious that Curtis had tried to buy Parker off, but . . .”

  Once again, what was obvious to Sarah wasn’t a matter of what could be proven; it was just her opinion.

  “. . . but when I asked Parker what happened he refused to tell me. He was a prick. He said that if he wouldn’t discuss his reason for recusing himself with the legitimate media he sure as hell wasn’t going to talk to some wet-behind-the ears blogger.”

  “What makes you think he’ll talk to you now?”

  “Because he’s retired, so maybe he’ll feel differently. The other thing is, Parker isn’t really a bad guy. I researched him a little more after I started to think about who might help me, and he works at a homeless shelter on weekends, volunteers at polling booths, that sort of thing. I called him a prick, but he’s more of a curmudgeon. I’m hoping now that he’s no longer on the bench he’ll change his mind about talking to me.”

  They arrived at Parker’s home in Minot about four in the afternoon. The house was a nice-looking place with a well-tended front yard but not ostentatious. In other words, the kind of house an honest judge might own.

  “You want me with you while you talk to him?” DeMarco asked.

  “I don’t think so. You look kind of intimidating.”

  “I thought that was the reason for me coming with you. To be intimidating.”

  “Intimidation isn’t going to work on this guy.”

  DeMarco watched her walk up the sidewalk to Parker’s house, sulking about the intimidating comment. He could act intimidating but he didn’t think he looked intimidating, like he had a face that would scare little kids or something. He had dark hair he combed straight back, a prominent nose, blue eyes, and a cleft in his chin. He’d been told he looked just like his father, and he had to admit that his dad could look intimidating, particularly if he was angry, but he didn’t think he looked that way, at least not when he smiled.

  DeMarco saw Sarah ring the judge’s doorbell and a moment later a balding guy in his seventies wearing an apron answered the door. Sarah talked to him for no more than a minute before he shut the door. She came back to the car and said, “What a prick.”

  “Where are we going next?” DeMarco asked.

  “I told you. Great Falls. We can drive at least halfway there today, maybe stay in Glasgow tonight, and get up early tomorrow. We can be in Great Falls by midmorning tomorrow.”

  “Glasgow, Montana?”

  “Yeah. Did you think I meant Scotland?”

  Marjorie’s cell phone rang just as she was getting ready to leave the office to go to Bobby’s baseball game. It was Heckler.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  “She went to see a guy named Raymond Parker in Minot. He used to be a—”

  “Yeah, I know who Parker is. So what happened?”

  “As near as I can tell, he slammed the door in her face. She talked to him for about two seconds and that was it.”

  “Good. Was DeMarco with her?”

  “Yeah, but he just sat in the car when she talked to Parker. He’s driving her.”

  “So where is she now?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Heckler,” Marjorie repeated, “where is she now?”

  “I, uh, I ran out of gas.”

  “You ran out of gas?”

  “Yeah, they left Minot and started driving west. I didn’t think they’d drive too far and . . . I mean, they just kept going and going and going and gas stations aren’t all that close together on US 2 and—”

  Marjorie just lost it. “Goddamn, son of a—”

  “Jesus, I’m sorry, Marjorie.”

  “So what in the hell are you going to do?”

  “I guess I’ll head back to Bismarck and wait for her. By the time I get somebody way out here to gas me up, she’ll have a three-hour lead on me.”

  “But can’t you track her with the GPS in her phone?”

  “She’s out of range already,” Heckler said.

  Marjorie wondered if he was lying about the tracking software having some sort of limited range. She suspected that Heckler, the lazy shit, didn’t want to drive any farther and try to catch up with Johnson. But she didn’t know for sure and she didn’t see any point in continuing to swear at him—but she felt like killing him. She wanted to know who that crazy girl was going to see next. The good news was that if Murdock did his job right they wouldn’t need Heckler anymore because in the future Marjorie would always know where Sarah Johnson was. She’d be in a grave.

  The problem with taking a long road trip with Sara
h was that she only cared about one thing in life: crucifying Leonard Curtis. When she spoke about what Curtis was doing—undermining Mom, apple pie, and the American way—she became animated, waving her arms, talking so fast she sometimes sputtered. But there didn’t seem to be much else that interested her.

  At one point DeMarco asked, “Have you got a boyfriend?” Then he added, “Or a girlfriend.”

  She’d been looking at something on her smart phone when he asked the question and she sighed—as if she didn’t appreciate the ­interruption —and said, “Not anymore. I was going with a guy in Billings for about six months. I met him at a Sierra Club rally. Then I found out he wasn’t really passionate about anything. I mean he cared, but he wasn’t really committed. When I told him this, he said I was too intense for him . . .”

  No shit, DeMarco thought.

  “. . . and we broke up. I don’t really have time for a boyfriend right now, anyway.”

  She sounded regretful, however, and DeMarco imagined she must get lonely. He almost said that Joan of Arc didn’t have a boyfriend either—but decided it wasn’t the time to be a smart-ass.

  “Sarah, I admire what you’re trying to do. Honest. I really do. But you’re a young woman and there’s more to life than chasing after Leonard Curtis. I mean at your age and with your money, you ought to be traveling through Europe, snorkeling in Tahiti. It’s not healthy to be so obsessed with Curtis.”

  “Yeah, people are always telling me that. One of my friends said I should see a psychiatrist.”

  “Well, maybe . . .”

  “The thing is, nobody else cares about what people like Curtis are doing. If somebody doesn’t try to stop him . . .”

  “That’s not true, Sarah. Lots of people care. There are all kinds of folks out there trying to reform campaign financing and reduce the influence of lobbyists. But these people also have lives. They have families. They have hobbies. They have fun.”

  “Don’t you understand?” Sarah said. “There’s a crisis in this country! People like Curtis are buying politicians to get their way. Things have to change.”

  “Yeah, I know but—”