by Mike Lawson
“Jesus Christ, Emma. Maybe you’d like a helicopter, too?”
“I’m serious, Bill. It really makes me nervous that he spends his time on board the ships.”
Smith sighed. Emma was a force of nature. “Look,” he said, “the research we can do. You just won’t get priority. The computer stuff, there’s an NSA guy we borrow sometimes when we’re overloaded. Maybe we can convince them to spare him for a conference call. But a team’s out of the question. I’d have to bring guys back from overseas to do what you want. You gotta believe me, Emma: communism was a piece of cake compared to this terrorism stuff.”
“Listen to me,” Emma said. “They’re inside a naval shipyard that overhauls nuclear-powered warships!”
“I hear you, Emma, but I can’t do it. Sorry.”
Emma sat back in her chair.
“Well in that case, Bill, I’d suggest that you kick this up the line so that when something bad happens, your ass will be covered.”
“Now that wasn’t called for, Emma.”
15
Emma reclined on the bed in her motel room, waiting for the phone to ring. She was feeling lonely and grumpy. After Christine went back to D.C. with the symphony, Emma had moved into the same motel where DeMarco was staying in Bremerton. It was clean and functional and conveniently located— and, in Emma’s opinion, only slightly better than a cardboard box. Emma was used to five-star accommodations.
Emma had worked for the DIA for almost thirty years. She never discussed with anyone what she did while working for the agency but in her time she had slept in mountain caves without even a blanket for warmth; she had survived by eating grubs and uncooked bitter roots; she had been bitten on the ear by a scorpion and had once acquired an exotic fungus between her toes. She had suffered these hardships without complaint or self-pity— yet here she was feeling extremely peeved because the water pressure in the motel’s shower was so low it took five minutes to rinse the shampoo from her short hair.
The phone next to the bed rang.
“Yes,” Emma said.
“It’s Peterson in research.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’ll start with Norton and Mulherin. They have a history of indebtedness. Their employment records are spotty— lots of supervisor comments about tardiness, insubordination, sloppy work, etc. Before they retired they filed grievances every other month about something: lack of promotion, age discrimination, unfair shift assignments. That sorta whiny crap. Both are divorced and both have kids they don’t support. Neither has a criminal record, unless you count the DUI Mulherin got six years ago. They’re just a couple of fuckups.”
Just a couple of fuckups. That seemed to be the consensus opinion as that was at least the third time that Emma had heard that phrase, or a variation of it, used to describe the pair. So why had Carmody hired them?
“Is that it?” Emma said.
“No. I checked their bank records. Six months ago both men came into some money, a hundred thousand dollars each. This was just before they retired from the yard and started working for Carmody.”
“What was the source of the hundred thousand?”
“Carmody’s company. I guess it was some kind of signing bonus.”
Emma snorted. “Would you pay these two a signing bonus?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And where did Carmody get the money from?”
“He bought a house in San Diego when he was stationed there back in the nineties. He rented the place out when he wasn’t there. Seven months ago he sold the house and used the profit from the sale to start up his consulting company and to pay Norton and Mulherin. But there’s something fishy about the sale. He was paid almost three times what the house was worth. A development company bought the house and I haven’t been able to trace where they get their money from. I could do it eventually, Emma, but they told me I couldn’t spend any more time on this.”
“Could someone be funneling money through the development company?”
“Sure. It’s big, it’s global, and it’s got income flows from a dozen different directions. It’d be perfect for funding foreign ops.”
“You need to find the source of Carmody’s money.”
“I’m sorry, Emma, I can’t. Not now, and not unless you get something solid.”
Emma was silent for a moment.
“What about Carmody?”
“He’s a totally different breed than Mulherin and Norton. He started off as a navy nuc, trained as a reactor operator in Idaho Falls, then served on both attack boats and boomers. His record was spotless. Good fit reps, commendations, fast track for promotion. He was being considered for officer candidate school when he decided to leave the nucs.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened. He was twenty-four years old— he enlisted at eighteen— and after six years he was tired of submarines and decided he wanted to be a SEAL. The nucs weren’t happy about him leaving but he said if they didn’t transfer him, he’d quit, and he was just too good for the navy to lose. And the SEALs really wanted him, a big young guy with a technical background. He was a dream candidate.”
“How’d he do in the SEALs?”
“Great, until right before he quit. He’s one of those guys that has his medals stored in a government lockbox because he can’t tell anyone why he got the medals. Kinda like you, Emma.”
Emma ignored the compliment. “What happened before he quit?”
“He was in…someplace, and…well…something went wrong. One SEAL was killed and Carmody got the blame.”
Emma could tell that Peterson was reading from a report and not telling her everything— or anything.
“Come on, Peterson,” she said. “What kind of op and what did Carmody do?”
“Sorry, Emma, I can’t say. The point is, Carmody had to make a decision in the middle of a firefight and he made the wrong decision. In hindsight, that is. You know how it is; you’ve been there before. Anyway, Carmody was the NCMFIC and he took the hit.”
NCMFIC was military-speak for noncommissioned motherfucker in charge.
“Did they bust him out of the SEALs?”
“No. This guy was a star. They put a letter in his file and were going to make him repeat some training— basically a slap on the wrist— but he quit before they could.”
“So when he left the navy, he was pissed.”
“The records don’t say. His stated reason for leaving was to pursue work in the private sector. He may have been bitter, but you don’t get that impression. I mean there’s no nasty letters to his CO in his file, no demands for hearings. It looks like he was just ready to move on after six years of putting his ass on the line for minimum wage.”
“Do you know what he did after he left the SEALs?”
“Sort of. I don’t have a lot of detail but he was in Hong Kong for almost seven years. He got out of the navy in ’96, bummed around Europe for a year, then he took a job at a utility company outside of Toledo that operates a nuclear power plant there. But in ’98 he quit the job at the utility company— it was probably too much like being back on a sub— and goes to Hong Kong where he lands a job with an outfit that provides security for big shots and their businesses and their families over there. I don’t know if Carmody was a bodyguard or some other kind of security consultant, but being an ex-SEAL he could have been either. Then the company he worked for in Hong Kong relocated to Thailand in 2003. This was six years after Hong Kong was returned to the Chinese so I imagine by then private enterprise in Hong Kong was starting to feel the heat from the old-timers in Beijing. The problem is, we have no record of what Carmody did after the security company relocated, but he stayed in Hong Kong until he came up with the shipyard training thing last year.”
“That’s quite a career change,” Emma said, “from hired muscle in Hong Kong to training consultant in the States. I wonder why he didn’t relocate to Thailand with his old company.”
“Beats me,” Peterson said.
>
Emma thanked Peterson and started to hang up, but before she did, the researcher said, “Emma, this guy Carmody is smart and if he’s gone bad, he’s dangerous. I’ve heard you’re kinda on your own out there. You be careful, ya hear?”
Emma put down the phone and stared for a minute at the picture on the wall across from her bed. It was an oil painting of Mount Rainier rising above magenta-colored clouds, and it was hideous. She wondered if there was a company somewhere called Ugly Art, and if every motel in the country purchased from them.
She thought for a moment, made another phone call, then called DeMarco’s room. There was no answer. Where the hell was he?
* * *
“SO TELL ME,” Diane Carlucci said, “how’d you land a job with Congress?”
DeMarco had asked a number of people for a nice place to take a lady to dinner and was directed to one in the little town of Winslow on Bainbridge Island. For a small-town restaurant it was pretty pricey, but DeMarco didn’t care. The view was good, the food was good, and Diane Carlucci was very comfortable to be with. There was no first-date awkwardness, no straining to find something to say— until now.
DeMarco hesitated. “I guess you know about my old man?”
Diane Carlucci nodded.
“Well,” DeMarco said, “he made it kind of hard to get a job after law school. Firms weren’t kicking down the door to hire the son of a guy who worked for a mobster and killed people for a living.”
“I can imagine,” Diane said. She hesitated and said, “You know I met your dad once. I liked him.”
“Yeah, he was a likable guy,” DeMarco said. “He was a good father, too. He just didn’t make the best career choice.”
“So how’d you get a job with Congress?” Diane asked again.
“I have a godmother, a friend of my mom’s I call Aunt Connie. She worked in D.C. when she was young and she had some pull with somebody. She talked to him and got me the job.”
What DeMarco had just said was the truth. It wasn’t the whole truth but it was the truth. “And you,” DeMarco said, “how do you like—”
“No, we’re not through with you yet,” Diane said. “I heard you were married, that you married—”
“Yeah, I did, and now I’m divorced.”
“I knew that. I heard that she left you for—”
“Yeah, my cousin.”
“The one who works for—”
“Right. Why haven’t you guys arrested him yet?”
Diane Carlucci laughed. She had a great laugh.
“So now can we talk about you?” DeMarco said.
* * *
DEMARCO WAS THE only customer in the motel bar.
He’d enjoyed dinner with Diane and had been sorry the evening had ended so early— seven thirty— but Diane was the dedicated type. She had told DeMarco that she needed to get back to her motel, review her case notes, and prepare for tomorrow. She and her partner had found out that Whitfield, who all agreed was a rather contentious fellow, was engaged in a property dispute with a neighbor, a man who had anger-management problems, which meant he tended to beat the hell out of people when he got upset. Although Diane’s partner still thought the homeless guy looked pretty good for Whitfield’s murder, Diane wanted to verify the neighbor’s alibi, which was a girlfriend with a drug habit.
DeMarco didn’t suggest that he accompany Diane back to her room for a nightcap. He wanted to, but he didn’t. He knew a nice Catholic girl from the old neighborhood wasn’t going to sleep with him on the first date. So now he sat, feeling horny and depressed, halfheartedly watching the Mariners get creamed by the Yankees. He glanced up at the television just as Jeter knocked the ball almost into the railroad yard behind Safeco Field and heard the bartender mutter, “Fuckin’Yankees.”
DeMarco realized at that moment that he was no longer alone, that he was in the company of a brother. He and the bartender— a man with a severely peeling, sunburned nose— belonged to the largest, unhappiest fraternity in America: the Benevolent Order of Jealous Yankee Bashers. For the next half hour they repeated the sad litany of the brotherhood: Steinbrenner bought the World Series every year; Joe Torre looked like a dour leprechaun and was just as lucky. And so on. Members of the Order could bitch about the Yankees for hours. The bartender had just begun to decry the immorality of the Yankees acquiring Alex Rodriguez from the Texas Rangers when he looked over DeMarco’s shoulder and muttered, “Oh, shit.”
DeMarco followed the bartender’s line of sight and saw that he was looking at Emma. She had stopped at the entrance to the bar and was looking into her purse. She rummaged in her purse a moment— even Emma had the female tendency to overstuff her handbag— then turned and walked away as if she had forgotten something.
“What’s the problem?” DeMarco said.
“That broad. She was in here last night and orders a martini to take back to her room. I had to make it three times before she was happy. Geez, what a ballbuster. Oh hell, here she comes.”
Emma walked over to the bar, nodded curtly to the bartender, and said to DeMarco, “I should have known this was where you’d be. Let’s go get some dinner.”
“I just ate,” DeMarco said.
“Then you can watch me eat. We need to talk. Settle up your bill and meet me at my car.” With that she turned and walked away, completely confident that DeMarco would follow. Emma could be a very irritating person.
“Sorry,” the bartender said to DeMarco after Emma left, “didn’t know she was your friend.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” DeMarco said. “She is a ballbuster. The biggest, baddest one you’ll ever meet. How much do I owe you?”
* * *
EMMA, LIKE DEMARCO, had questioned the locals for the name of a decent eatery and had been directed to a place on a scenic bay called Dyes Inlet. DeMarco said it was even nicer than the spot where he’d taken Diane, but as soon as Emma stepped through the entrance she sniffed the air and said, “I smell cigarette smoke. I thought they’d outlawed smoking in restaurants in this state.”
Outlawed? She made it sound as if smoking was a Class A felony. DeMarco himself couldn’t smell a thing but Emma’s sensitive nose had apparently detected a solitary, illicit nicotine molecule polluting the atmosphere near the door.
“Maybe they have a gas mask you can borrow,” DeMarco said.
This earned him an arched eyebrow for his impertinence, but he was fortunately spared a lecture on the lethal nature of secondhand smoke. Emma did ask the hostess for an outside table on the deck of the restaurant, where a slight breeze ensured the purity of her air supply. DeMarco liked the deckside view. He’d heard that orca whales occasionally swam into the inlets of Puget Sound, and that’s what he wanted to see: a great big orca flying out of the water.
Their waiter— a gangly kid whose name tag said NATHAN— asked what they wanted to drink. Emma described the perfect vodka martini, exactly how it should be made, the exact proportion of both ingredients. The kid nodded while she talked but the only thing he wrote down on his pad was “V. Martini.” Poor bastard, DeMarco thought; he was going to be schlepping martinis back and forth from the bar all night long.
“And for you, sir?” Nathan asked DeMarco.
“Uh, I’ll have a martini, too. Make it just like hers.”
“Very good, sir.”
The waiter turned to leave but DeMarco said, “Hey, do you ever see orcas over here?”
“Orcas?”
“Yeah, you know, killer whales. Those black ones with the white spots.”
“I know what an orca is, sir, but they rarely come in this far.” When Nathan saw the look of disappointment on DeMarco’s face he said, “But you might see salmon jumping, and over there,” Nathan pointed, “is an eagle’s nest. That big tree, just to the left of the house with the red roof? Do you see it?”
DeMarco looked over to where the waiter was pointing but couldn’t see anything but tree branches and sky in the fading daylight. Big deal, he thought, a bird’s ne
st, but all he said to the waiter was, “Yeah. Cool.”
After their drinks were served— to DeMarco’s amazement Emma declared hers to be just right— Emma told DeMarco what she had learned from the DIA researcher.
“So now what?” DeMarco asked her.
“Well,” Emma said, “if Bill Smith won’t help then I guess we have to help ourselves.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought you were going to say,” DeMarco said.
