The second perimeter

by Mike Lawson

  * * *

  COCHRAN SLAMMED BACK the shot of bourbon, then banged the shot glass down on the table in front of him. “Give me another, Tommy,” he called to the bartender.

  “Sure, Denny,” the bartender said.

  “It’s my daughter,” Cochran said, taking a sip of his beer. “She was in an accident two months ago. She hit this old lady’s car and then she fled the scene.”

  “Was the old lady hurt?”

  “Not too bad. A couple of bruises. But I’m sure if somebody slipped her a few bucks she’d put on a neck brace in a New York minute. Anyway, my daughter isn’t two blocks from the scene when a cop pulls her over. There was a witness and he called 911.”

  “A witness, too,” DeMarco said.

  “Yeah. Next thing that happens— and this is within fifteen minutes of the time the cop pulls her over, Mary Ann’s still sittin’ in the backseat of the damn squad car— I get a call from Morgan.”

  Hadley Morgan was the minority leader in the state senate.

  “He tells me that if I don’t start playing ball the cops are gonna book her. DUI, hit-and-run, resisting arrest, the whole fuckin’ nine yards.”

  “She was drunk, too?”

  “Oh, yeah. When my daughter fucks up, she does it right.”

  “Jesus. So why didn’t you tell Morgan to go to hell, Denny? We’d have gotten her a lawyer, she’d promise to go to counseling, and life would go on. She’s got two kids, doesn’t she? She wouldn’t have done jail time, not if the old lady wasn’t hurt that bad.”

  Cochran shook his head. “It’s not about my daughter. It’s about her kids, my grandkids. Mary Ann’s divorced and the asshole she was married to has been looking for an excuse to take the kids from her. Not that he wants the kids; he just wants to put the screws to her. And he lives in California to boot. Plus this isn’t the first time Mary Ann’s been caught drivin’ drunk, either. Don’t get me wrong. She’s a good mother and she works her ass off in this job that doesn’t pay for shit, and every moment she’s not workin’, she spends with her boys. But she’s human, so every once in a blue moon she gets together with her girlfriends to let off some steam. The problem is she’s unlucky. She’s got to be the unluckiest woman I’ve ever known.”

  The bartender brought Cochran his second bourbon. “Your eggs’ll be up in just a minute, Denny,” he said.

  “Ah forget the eggs today, Tommy. Just bring me another beer.”

  “So that’s it,” DeMarco said. “You’re worried that if the case goes to court, your daughter will lose her kids?”

  “Yeah. Morgan told me that’s what would happen. No doubt about it.”

  “How the hell can they charge her this long after the accident?”

  “Easy. The witness will say his conscience has been bothering him, and he just decided to come forward. He won’t mention that he got paid two months ago not to come forward. And the bartender at the place where she was drinking’ll say, yeah, I remember her like it was yesterday because she looks just like my sister, and when she left the bar she had about six daiquiris in her and could hardly walk. And the cop’ll say how he had to chase her for six blocks with his siren blarin’ and he gave her a DUI— funny how that got lost in the system for months— but he didn’t know she’d just hit the old broad. Then they’ll drag out her record.”

  DeMarco shook his head. “How’d they get to Morgan so fast?”

  Cochran coughed a bitter laugh.

  “I told you Mary Ann was unlucky. The cop was Morgan’s brother-in-law.”

  62

  DeMarco glanced nervously at the two Doberman pinschers. They in turn stood there, side by side, still as statues, eyes as lifeless as marbles—staring at him.

  “Will you quit worrying about the dogs, Joe,” Emma said. “They’re not going to do anything.”

  “Then why are they staring at me?”

  “Because that’s what dogs do. Just ignore them.”

  They were outside, on Emma’s patio, drinking coffee. Emma had been home for a week but this was the first time DeMarco had seen her since Vancouver. She looked completely recovered. She’d regained the weight she’d lost, her eyes were clear, and her muscles were, if anything, more toned than usual.

  DeMarco noticed her English garden had lost some of its luster since the last time he’d visited. The flowers were still in bloom but they were now a bit faded, somewhat forlorn, like a prom queen after the dance. Other changes had occurred at Emma’s house as well. Security cameras were mounted on the eaves and all her windows and doors were alarmed. And there were the dogs, of course, borrowed from some Armageddon-ready nut she knew.

  “Where do you think she is, Emma?”

  Emma’s right arm swept a large semicircle in the air. “Out there. Somewhere. Waiting.”

  The trap Emma had set in Vancouver for Li Mei had failed. She’d been too smart to be drawn in.

  “And you think she’s on her own, not being supported by the Chinese?”

  “Yeah. She’s on her own.”

  “So how’s she existing? Does she have access to funds?”

  Emma laughed. “You could say that,” she said. “Ten days ago a woman robbed a bank in Bismarck. The bank’s cameras showed a blurry picture of a woman wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses. Witnesses, those not scared into complete amnesia by the gun she pointed at them, think the robber was Asian.”

  “She’s robbing banks!”

  “Joe, there are probably fifty bank robberies a day in this country, most of them committed by morons. How hard do you think it would be for a government-trained agent to rob a bank?”

  “So if she robbed a bank in Bismarck, she got out of Canada and is here in this country.”

  “Yeah. Which isn’t surprising, considering her skills.”

  “And all this stuff— the cameras, the killer puppies— you think that’ll make her give up and go away?”

  Emma smiled. Arctic ice was warmer than that smile. “The security here isn’t intended to make her go away, Joe. It’s designed to make her try for me at a spot of our own choosing.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I beefed up the security around my house not to make it impregnable— there’s no such thing as impregnable— but to make this place a harder target. Now I’m establishing a routine. I’ll get groceries the same day every week. I’ll go to my club at ten a.m. every other day: I’ll visit my hairdresser each Thursday. And I’m already jogging every day. The bottom line is, we’re making sure that the most attractive location for an attack is while I’m jogging.”

  “How?” DeMarco said.

  “When I go to my club or the hairdresser, I’m not exposed for any length of time and there are always people in the vicinity. Here, I’m alone, but there are neighbors— and the puppies. But when I’m jogging, I jog on busy streets until I reach the two-mile point, then I cut through a section of woods on a trail that hardly anyone uses. It’s a perfect spot for an ambush.”

  “And while you’re jogging, you’re armed?”

  Emma lifted the bottom of the blouse she was wearing, exposing an ugly, short-barreled automatic tucked into the waistband of her shorts.

  “What if she gets a rifle and shoots you from two hundred yards away while you’re sitting here on your patio?” DeMarco said. Just saying this made him look around nervously for places where snipers might hide.

  “Then I’m dead. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. She—”

  “You don’t think!”

  “She needs to confront me, Joe, to see the fear in my eyes. She needs to tell me one last time how much she hates me. And I still think she might try to kidnap me again.”

  “You hope.”

  Emma shrugged.

  “How’s Christine taking all this?”

  “Not well. She’s living in a condo in Falls Church with a friend. I haven’t seen her since I got back because I’m afraid Li Mei might follow me and use her against me. I can’t allow that.” S
he smiled sadly. “I guess if a relationship can’t endure a long separation, it probably wasn’t much of a relationship to begin with.”

  DeMarco wasn’t the right guy to give advice on relationships.

  “So when you go jogging,” he said, “does Smith have agents all over the place?”

  “No. His manpower is limited.”

  “That’s crap, Emma. He must have pulled thirty people into Vancouver after Li Mei snatched you.”

  “He did that because he had to, because he was afraid ongoing operations had been compromised. Vancouver involved national security; my death doesn’t.”

  “Then what about the FBI? She killed one of their agents and made them look like clowns in Vancouver. And they’re the ones responsible for catching her. Are they protecting you?”

  “No.”

  Emma explained. The FBI, meaning the agent in charge, Glen Harris, wasn’t convinced that Li Mei was still in the country. He figured that, after blowing both the shipyard operation and Emma’s kidnapping, Li Mei would have fled the country and the Chinese government would have helped her. Harris’s logic was based heavily on the assumption that Li Mei still had in her possession Carmody’s and Washburn’s files. He believed the Chinese would have helped her escape just to get their hands on those files.

  “Harris doesn’t believe it’s me that Li Mei wants,” Emma said. “He says she’d be insane to come after me. What he doesn’t understand is that she is insane.”

  “Smith says the Chinese government wouldn’t have sanctioned what she did in Vancouver,” DeMarco said. “Doesn’t Harris understand that?”

  “Harris,” Emma said, “is a thickheaded ass. And there’s a, ah, bureaucratic issue, if you will, when it comes to protecting me.”

  “What’s that? Are they arguing over who should pay?”

  DeMarco had been kidding when he said that and was therefore surprised when Emma said, “Well good for you, Joe. You’re finally beginning to understand the inner workings of your government. The FBI thinks protecting me is a DIA responsibility and they’re not going to spend their budget or their manpower on it, at least not until they have some evidence that Li Mei is actually in the area. They are looking into the bank robbery in Bismarck though, and—”

  “Well that’s big of them.”

  “— and trying to track her down here and overseas, but my protection isn’t a priority for them.”

  “Shit,” DeMarco said. “So in other words, the Bureau and Smith, that four-eyed little bastard, just hung you out to dry.”

  “Not exactly. Come with me. I want to show you my new Weedwacker.”

  “What?”

  DeMarco followed Emma to a large tool shed at the back of her yard. The shed was partially and artfully hidden by tall, thin stalks of bamboo. She opened the door and there, sitting in a lawn chair, was Clint Eastwood— or at least a guy who looked like Clint did when he was playing Rowdy Yates in Rawhide fifty years ago.

  The man was a lean six foot four. He was dressed in tight-fitting jeans, a sleeveless T-shirt, and cowboy boots made from a reptile’s hide. His dirty-blond hair was long and elaborately combed, and when he saw DeMarco, he flashed him a killer smile. All he was lacking was an unlit cheroot in his mouth, a thin, twisted one like the real Clint chewed in those spaghetti westerns.

  Then DeMarco noticed other details. There was a small periscope penetrating the roof of the shed so the man could observe Emma and her home without being seen. On a sack of fertilizer was a pair of night-vision goggles, and leaning against the wall, within easy reach, was a rifle with a banana clip. In a shoulder holster, the man carried a revolver that looked like it weighed ten pounds and had an eight-inch barrel.

  “Joe, this is Rolf,” Emma said.

  Rolf rose to his feet, having to duck because of the low ceiling in the shed. He extended his right hand and said, “I am very pleased to meet you, Yo.”

  Rolf even had a Western accent— western Russia.

  DeMarco shook Rolf’s hand. There were a lot of calluses on the hand.

  “Rolf freelances for Bill at times,” Emma said. “You’ve heard the expression about being able to shoot the eye out of a june bug?”

  “Yeah,” DeMarco said.

  “Well, Rolf can.”

  Rolf smiled again when Emma said this, but this time when he smiled he didn’t look like a movie-star wannabe. He looked like a guy who had climbed over the Iron Curtain using the bodies of his enemies for stepping-stones.

  “I don’t know, Emma,” DeMarco said. “I’m sure Rolf here’s as good as you say…”

  Rolf nodded.

  “…but I think Smith oughta be doin’ more than this.”

  “Like I said, Joe,” Emma said, “Bill’s got manpower problems.”

  Before DeMarco could protest, she explained that Rolf was always nearby when she went somewhere, staying out of sight as he was doing now, but if Emma was approached by anyone he’d be there. Or close enough to shoot someone— and he didn’t have to be all that close.

  “And when I go jogging,” Emma said, “Rolf’s at the ambush spot ahead of me.”

  “Yeah,” DeMarco said, “sounds like a pretty good plan.”

  But he was thinking he might have a word with Mahoney about all this, see if he couldn’t get him to land like a ton of bricks on the tightfisted shit who ran the DIA.

  63

  His grandkids?” Mahoney said. “They’re usin’ his grandkids against him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What the fuck’s wrong with those guys? You never go after family.”

  To DeMarco that sounded like something the people his father used to work for would have said. Then again, maybe there really wasn’t all that much difference between politics and organized crime.

  DeMarco hadn’t seen Mahoney in a week, and this was the first opportunity he’d had to tell him how Denny Cochran was being blackmailed by Hadley Morgan. The president had decided to take a diplomatic swing through South and Central America and Mahoney had accompanied him. Mahoney didn’t particularly like to travel, and he really didn’t like to travel with the president, but he’d made the trip so he could have some one-on-one time with the Man and tell him how to run all the Americas, North and South.

  “And how long did they think they could keep this up?” Mahoney said. “I mean, hell, at some point what Denny was doing would become news and he’d lose his job.” Mahoney paused a minute. “I guess, when you think about it, that’s not a bad result either. While he’s there he votes their way for a while, and with his clout gets a few other guys to vote with him. Then, come election time, they plaster his record all over TV and the best thing that happens is one of their guys replaces him, and the worst thing that happens is he gets voted out and somebody new with no influence gets the job. Christ, what a mess. If Denny wasn’t such a good guy I’d just let ’em sink him.”

  “Replacing him with Farleigh wouldn’t be all that bad,” DeMarco said.

  “Aw,” Mahoney said, “Farleigh would never take a job like that. He wants Ted’s seat.”

  “Ted” was Senator Edward Kennedy.

  Mahoney chewed on the stub of an unlit cigar for a moment, turning the tip of the stogie all wet and brown and nasty. “You think the daughter’s ex-husband would really take the kids?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” DeMarco said. “He’s a lowlife who sells cars out in Oakland. He’s got a girlfriend who’s younger than him and the last thing he probably wants is two kids running around their apartment— but he’ll take his ex to court to get the kids because Morgan’ll pay him to. At least that’s what Denny thinks.”

  “Shit,” Mahoney said.

  “Maybe the best thing to do is play it straight,” DeMarco said. “Get the daughter a good lawyer and take the initiative. Have her turn herself in and throw herself on the mercy of the court.”

  Mahoney didn’t say anything. He just gnawed on his cigar as he looked out the window of his office. For some reason a large fl
ock of seagulls was circling the Washington Monument like it was a five-hundred-and-fifty-foot bird feeder.

  “Nah,” Mahoney said at last. “First of all that’s a crapshoot, and second, that doesn’t pay Morgan back for pullin’ this shit. Let me think on this a bit. You go think, too. I wanna spank Morgan hard for this.”

  DeMarco got up to leave Mahoney’s office.

  “Hey, what’s goin’ on with Emma?” Mahoney said.

  DeMarco had been hoping he’d ask.