Dead Man’s List. Mike Lawson

and Sharon wouldn’t have any problem at all living off his government pension, but money ran through Sharon’s hands like water. They’d whittled their savings account down to nothing. So quit bitching, he told himself. You get paid the same for marching as you do for fighting, and a dull job was better than no job, and it was definitely better than being in the middle of a shit storm like Kosovo.

       Chapter 12

      DeMarco turned in to Emma’s driveway and parked his car.

      Emma lived in McLean, Virginia, in a beautiful redbrick home, one that seemed much more expensive than she should have been able to afford on a retired civil servant’s salary. But would Emma ever reveal the source of her wealth? Of course not. The Sphinx was more likely to sing to a camel.

      He heard music coming from the house. Emma’s lover, Christine, played a cello in the National Symphony and she often practiced at home, but DeMarco could hear sounds—or in this case noises—being made by more than one musician. DeMarco was not a classical music fan to begin with—give him that ol’ time rock and roll—but this music…Well, it wasn’t your typical, monotonous Beethoven / Mozart elevator music. It sounded like cats screaming in agony.

      He rang the doorbell. The awful composition continued. He rang again and Emma answered the door, looking wild-eyed, like maybe she was the one torturing the cats.

      “Thank God you’re here!” she said. Not usually the reaction she had when she saw him. Turning her head, she yelled over her shoulder, “Christine, I have to go. Joe’s here and he has a…an emergency.” She didn’t wait for Christine’s answer and immediately closed the door.

      “Take me someplace that has liquor and is soundproof,” Emma said.

      “What’s going on?” DeMarco asked.

      “Christine’s quartet.”

      DeMarco had forgotten that Christine moonlighted with a small quartet. He’d heard them play once, an experience he’d repeat only if heavily medicated.

      “They’re working on a piece by some avant-garde Swedish composer. Or maybe he’s Danish. Who cares? They’ve been playing this one passage for over an hour and I was thinking of shooting them all before you arrived.”

      

      They didn’t find a soundproof bar but they found one that was quiet enough, not even a CD playing on the sound system. Emma ordered a blue martini, curaçao liqueur mixed with lime and gin, the color of the drink almost matching her eyes. DeMarco spent a long time selecting a brand of vodka, discussing his options with the bartender, before finally settling on one made in Ireland called Boru. Who would have guessed that the Irish made vodka? And it was good, certainly better than the antifreeze he had in his refrigerator at home, but not cheap. Emma pointed out that cheap and good rarely went together, an axiom DeMarco was determined to disprove.

      “So what do you think?” DeMarco said after he finished telling Emma about his conversation with Lydia Morelli at the cathedral.

      “The first thing I think is that you had better take the part where she said you’re in danger seriously. There are some strange things about Terry Finley’s death, and the fact that Senator Morelli claimed not to know Finley bothers me.”

      “It bothers me too, but you have to remember that the person who told me that Paul Morelli knew Terry had booze on her breath at nine-thirty in the morning.”

      “Still, take it seriously. Has anybody been following you?”

      “How would I know?” DeMarco said. Then he remembered the yahoos who had been broadsided by the cab. “Well, maybe,” he said and he told Emma about the wreck. “But if those guys were tailing me, they were pretty inept.”

      “Oh that’s right,” Emma said, “all thugs belong to Mensa.”

      Ignoring the sarcasm, DeMarco said, “What’s really bugging me is that I can’t tell if Lydia is telling the truth, and if she is, why now? Why didn’t she tell somebody all this stuff years ago?”

      “You know,” Emma said, “political wives are different from other women. Take Jackie Kennedy or Hillary Clinton, or hell, even Eleanor Roosevelt. They were all publicly humiliated by their womanizing husbands, but they stuck by them anyway. One reason could be love. There’s nothing unusual about a good woman loving a bad man, and these men were charming, charismatic people. So maybe a politician’s wife stands by her cheating husband simply because she loves him. But then there are other factors. Maybe these women, after all the sacrifices they’ve made, don’t want to give up their positions. They want to be the first lady. Or it could even be that their motives are actually noble. They know that it would be bad for the country if they were to initiate a messy, public divorce.”

      “Okay, so political wives are different,” DeMarco said. “And maybe up until now, Lydia’s stood by this wonderful guy that she says is a murderer and a rapist because she loves him or wants to be the first lady or whatever. But if that’s the case, what’s changed? Why’d she contact Terry Finley and why’s she telling me about her husband now?”

      “I don’t know,” Emma said, “but her daughter died just a few months ago. That could have been the catalyst. The woman is obviously in pain, she starts drinking heavily, so maybe she’s…”

      “Nuts?”

      “No, not nuts. Traumatized. So even though she’s remained loyal to her husband for years, when her daughter died things changed, her priorities changed.”

      “In other words, she got religion,” DeMarco said.

      “Maybe not literally, but yes. At any rate, you need to pursue this. You need to find out if she’s telling the truth.”

      “Emma, Mahoney thinks Paul Morelli’s the second coming of JFK. If he knew I was running around trying to prove he was some kinda sexual predator, he’d…”

      As usual, Emma wasn’t listening. She said, “And who’s this powerful person that’s helping him?”

      “I don’t even know if there is a powerful person,” DeMarco said. “And if there is, why not tell me who he is?”

      “Maybe she’s afraid of him,” Emma said. “Telling you his name could put her in danger.”

      “But not telling puts me in danger,” DeMarco said.

      Emma sat there thinking, holding her martini glass by the stem, twirling it, making the blue liquid swirl in the glass. “That one guy, what’s-his-name, Reams, the guy who claimed he was drugged? Neil said his blood was tested for drugs and came back negative. What if he really had been drugged? Who would have the influence to change the results of a police drug test?”

      “Jesus, Emma, that’s a hell of a leap.”

      “Maybe. At any rate, you need to go to New York and meet this woman, this Janet Tyler. And you need to find out what Terry was doing in New Jersey. Neil may be able to pin down a location using Finley’s credit card or cell phone records.”

      “And what do you suggest I tell my boss?” DeMarco said.

      “Don’t tell him anything. Didn’t you say he was in San Francisco with his latest mistress?”

      “I was just kidding about that. I don’t know if she’s his mistress.”

      “She is,” Emma said.

      “And you would know this how?” It always bugged DeMarco that Emma never allowed a lack of data to prevent her from being absolutely certain of her opinion.

      “Because John Mahoney’s a scoundrel,” Emma said. “I feel so sorry for his wife.”