The Payback. Mike Lawson

      ‘They’re manuals that tell you how navy reactor plants work. You understand?’

      By now DeMarco thought he had a pretty good sense of Whitfield. He was the type who was always outraged by something; he probably called up the mayor’s office and wrote passionate letters to the editor every time something got his goat.

      ‘So,’ DeMarco said, ‘let me see if I got all this straight. You got a couple of guys you don’t think are very good, who have come into some money recently that you can’t explain, and they’re going about this study all wrong. Is that it?’

      ‘Yeah,’ Whitfield said. ‘Something stinks.’

      

      ‘Can you believe that guy?’ DeMarco said to Emma after Whitfield had left. ‘No wonder Hathaway didn’t want NCIS talking to him. I mean, did you hear one damn thing that sounded like fraud to you? Anything?’

      ‘Take it easy, Joe,’ Emma said. ‘You’re in a beautiful part of the country. Take a walk. Go for a drive. Tomorrow we’ll meet these two people, talk to the company they work for, and get their side of the story. And we’ll talk to somebody in shipyard management who’s more objective than Whitfield.’

      Christine was going to be in Seattle for another day with the symphony and DeMarco could tell that Emma – the new, laid-back, take-it-easy Emma – had decided that torturing consultants and shipyard managers would be more fun than sitting around doing nothing.

      Emma rose from her chair and said, ‘I have to get going. I need to catch the next ferry to Seattle to meet Christine in time for dinner.’

      ‘And after we question these guys tomorrow and don’t find anything illegal going on, then what?’ DeMarco said.

      ‘Then you tell Hathaway to tell his sister to tell her son to quit being such a damn crybaby.’

      

      After Emma left, DeMarco sat sipping his beer, thinking a little more about Whitfield. He still thought the guy was a whiny flake but Emma was right: he’d worry about Whitfield tomorrow. He looked around the bar. Other than the bartender, he was the only one there. On the television set, a baseball game was playing: the Seattle Mariners versus the Toronto Blue Jays, both teams at the bottom of their respective divisions. Professional bowling was more exciting.

      He walked to a supermarket two blocks from the motel, bought half a dozen car magazines, and returned to the motel bar. He’d research the auto market, become an informed consumer. He’d probably still get screwed if he bought the Beemer convertible but he could console himself with the thought that he’d done his homework. He ordered another beer – it must have been his fourth and he was starting to feel like a bloated sumo wrestler – and began to read his magazines.

      He concluded that the smart thing to do – the practical thing – would be to buy a Honda or a Toyota. Last year’s model. These cars were rated top of the line in terms of quality and gas mileage and resale value, and if he could find last year’s model with less than thirty thousand miles on it, he’d be getting a practically brand-new car and shave four or five thousand off the price of a really brand-new car. Yeah, that made sense. That would be smart.

      The problem was he couldn’t tell the difference between a Honda and a Toyota. They looked like they’d been designed by a computer based solely on data from wind-tunnel tests. They were about as sexy as an old lady’s bloomers. Beemer Z3. Jaguar. Mercedes coupe. Porsche. Those cars had va-voom. They had sex appeal. They were created by artists, not some pencil-necked engineer trying to squeeze one more mile per gallon out of a friggin’ four-cylinder engine.

      ‘Well, hello there,’ a very sultry voice said.

      Thank you, Jesus, DeMarco thought, and looked up from his magazine. The lady who had spoken looked hard. The expression ‘forty miles of bad road’ came immediately to mind. She had crammed a size fourteen body into a size eight dress, wore a blond wig that didn’t match the dark mustache over her upper lip, and her makeup looked as if it had been applied with a trowel.

      DeMarco mumbled something inarticulate, scooped up his magazines, and headed back to his room. Why did he always have such bad luck with women? Why couldn’t the old hooker have been a Swedish stewardess or foxy young businesswoman looking for some fun? Why didn’t those sorts of fantasies ever come true for him?

      Because he drove a Volvo, that’s why.

       6

      The offices of Carmody and Associates were in Bremerton on the corner of Pacific and Burwell, on the ground floor of a building that housed three other small enterprises: an independent insurance agent, a tax consultant, and a beauty shop with no customers. Emma knocked once on the door, then immediately opened it without waiting for an answer. Two men – sitting at a card table, drinking beer and playing gin – looked up in surprise.

      Both men were in their early fifties, and both wore blue jeans and short-sleeved shirts. Pretty casual attire for consultants, DeMarco thought. One of the men was tall, had gray-brown hair in need of a trim, a scraggly mustache, skinny arms, skinny legs, and a small potbelly. The other man was short, almost bald, and had a much larger potbelly. The bald guy also had an anchor tattoo on his right forearm.

      Maybe it was the tattoo, but DeMarco had the immediate impression that if these two had been born two hundred years earlier they would have been pirates.

      ‘You need something?’ the tall one said.

      ‘Yes,’ Emma said. ‘We’re doing a review for Congress. We called earlier to set up an appointment but no one returned our phone call. I guess you were just too busy,’ she said, looking down at the card table.

      The tall man looked over at the short man. The short man made eye contact with Emma, a touch of insolence in his eyes, then turned his head toward a partially open door behind him and yelled, ‘Hey, boss!’

      The man who came through the door was big and good-looking: six three, broad shouldered, maybe two hundred and twenty pounds. He wore gray slacks and a blue polo shirt, and his chest and biceps strained against the material of the shirt. The guy worked out. His dark hair was cut short and he had a small scar on his chin. He struck DeMarco as being tough and competent, but more like a cop or a soldier than someone you’d hire to study a navy training program.

      ‘It’s that lady who called this morning,’ the bald man said.

      The big guy was silent for a moment as he sized up DeMarco and Emma, then he relaxed and smiled. He had an engaging smile. ‘I’m Phil Carmody,’ he said, and shook hands with them. ‘I’m in charge of this little zoo. That’s Bill Norton,’ he said pointing at the short, bald guy. ‘And that’s Ned Mulherin.’ Mulherin nodded like a friendly puppy; Norton glared.

      Carmody didn’t invite DeMarco and Emma into his office, which DeMarco found odd. Instead he told Norton to grab a couple of chairs from the office and directed Mulherin to clear the cards and bottles off the card table. DeMarco noticed the way he spoke to his employees, giving curt orders, not bothering to say ‘please’ or ‘thank you,’ having no doubt he’d be obeyed immediately. DeMarco had the impression that if Carmody had told his two guys to eat their playing cards, they’d start chewing.

      ‘And in case you’re wondering,’ Carmody said as Mulherin removed the beer bottles from the table, ‘we only bill the government for the hours we work, and these two were not on the clock.’

      ‘Right,’ Emma said, not bothering to hide her disbelief. DeMarco expected Carmody to protest but he didn’t. He just shrugged, obviously not overly concerned about her perception of his billing practices.

      When the extra chairs were in place, Carmody said, ‘You want anything to drink? Coke? Bottled water? Coffee?’

      ‘No,’ Emma said.

      ‘Okay,