Dead on Arrival. Mike Lawson

younger, much younger. And he was small, maybe five-foot-two, less than a hundred pounds. But the boy’s size was irrelevant, as was his age. He had worked with martyrs who were as young as nine. All he hoped for was that the boy was ready. That his hatred had made him ready.

       14

      As DeMarco lay in bed he could hear the shower running – and the voice of a content woman singing in the shower.

      Could life possibly get any better than this?

      He’d been in Key West for five days, and for once his vacation had been exactly as advertised. The daytime temperature had been a balmy 80 degrees, the breezes had been mild, it hadn’t rained once, and the sea was as warm as tepid bath water. His second night in Key West he’d been sitting in a bar on Duval Street, looking out at the ocean. He’d had swordfish for dinner and the bartender had just cleared away his plate when a woman in her late thirties sat down one bar stool over from his.

      He had glanced at her and then, because she looked so good, he immediately did a ham actor’s double take. Oh, great, he’d thought, that was really suave. He sat there, staring down into his drink, desperately trying to think of something clever to say, something other than How do you like Key West? Isn’t the view great? Isn’t the weather wonderful? But his brain chose that moment to vapor-lock; he couldn’t produce even a passable, much less original, opening line. And then she said, ‘Hi, my name’s Ellie. Isn’t the weather wonderful here?’ It didn’t sound bad at all when she said it.

      Ellie Myers was cute and funny and bright. She had dark hair and bright blue eyes and a light-up-the-room smile that made little dimples in her cheeks. She also had legs that looked very good in shorts, though a bit on the pale side, as if she too resided somewhere far north of Florida. DeMarco soon found out that she was a teacher from Iowa, divorced, no kids, and, like DeMarco, had just decided to escape the grim midwestern winter to enjoy the sun. They wondered together if there was something wrong with them, going on vacation by themselves, and soon concluded that there wasn’t. They went to bed together that night and for the three nights that followed. And they still had one night left, thank you, Jesus.

      They had been snorkeling and had taken sunset walks on the beach. They had sat naked in a Jacuzzi, even though it had been too hot to do so. They drank too much and ate too much and made love – but not too much. And DeMarco never once thought about John Mahoney or Reza Zarif. He barely thought about his ex-wife and his asshole of a cousin.

      He did make one call to New York the day he arrived in Florida and found out that Danny’s case wouldn’t go to trial for six months. DeMarco wondered if Danny’s boss was hoping the witness would die during that time or lose her memory, or maybe he was thinking about forcing her to lose her memory. DeMarco wondered – but he didn’t care.

      Ellie came out of the bathroom. Her hair was uncombed – wet and tangled – but she was already dressed in shorts and a T-shirt that she’d bought in a tourist shop. They’d been living together for three days but she still didn’t feel comfortable dressing in front of him. The T-shirt had a grinning alligator and a pink palm tree on it, and there were glittery things on the palm tree’s fronds; it was okay to wear T-shirts like that when you were in Key West.

      She smiled at him and said good morning. He smiled back and said he’d already called room service, and coffee and croissants were on the way. She turned around to rummage in her purse for her comb, and DeMarco admired her backside and wondered if he could talk her into getting back into bed. He had concluded a long time ago that there should be some way to stop time and cause all relationships to stay forever at the four-day point.

      At that moment there was a knock on the door. Ellie opened it and took the tray from the room service guy and overtipped him because she was feeling so good. She placed the tray on the dresser and handed DeMarco his coffee. Then she glanced down at the paper that had been delivered with the coffee.

      ‘Oh, those bastards!’ she said when she saw the headline: TERRORIST SHOT ON D.C. SHUTTLE.

      Ellie went shopping, to buy Florida trinkets for her nephews and her sister and all the other poor souls she knew who were freezing back in Iowa. She asked DeMarco if he wanted to go with her but he’d begged off. He enjoyed shopping almost as much as having his teeth extracted. So instead of trailing behind Ellie, walking from store to store, bored out of his skull, he sat in a lounge chair and read the morning paper. It was the first time he’d looked at one since he’d been in Florida.

      He read the three articles on the hijacking attempt, skipped the editorials on Broderick’s bill, and then, because he hadn’t been keeping his ear to the ground as directed, he called Jerry Hansen at Homeland Security to see if there was anything new going on with Reza Zarif. Jerry wasn’t in. Too bad. He’d tried – and he wasn’t going to try anymore. Hassan Zarif was just going to have to accept that his brother had done what he did for the reasons given by the boys in the Bureau.

      So, beach umbrella shading his form, a drink in his hand, he picked up the novel he’d been trying to finish ever since coming to Florida. So far the novel had taken a backseat to sex, but maybe today he’d get past the sixth chapter. He’d just opened the book and started to flip through it to find the last page he’d read when his cell phone rang. He figured it was Ellie. She had said she would call him after she’d jump-started the island’s economy and tell him where to meet her for lunch.

      ‘Hel-lo,’ he said cheerfully into the phone.

      ‘Where the hell are you?’ Mahoney said.

       Aw, shit!

      ‘I’m in Florida. Don’t you remember?’ DeMarco said. He could hear the whiny desperation in his voice. ‘I told you I had this week off.’

      ‘I don’t remember that,’ Mahoney said, ‘but you need to get your ass back here. I want you to check out this guy that tried to hijack the shuttle. Broderick’s goddamn bill reported out of committee yesterday, and the Senate’s gonna vote on it in two friggin’ weeks.’

      ‘I don’t understand,’ DeMarco said. ‘Is there some connection between the hijacking and Reza Zarif?’

      ‘Goddammit!’ Mahoney screamed. ‘How the hell would I know? That’s what I want you to find out.’

      Rather than argue with Mahoney, DeMarco said, ‘I understand.’ I understand is a really good noncommittal reply.

      DeMarco had asked himself more than once why he still worked for Mahoney. He had graduated from law school the same year his mafia father had been killed, which made employment in any decent law firm on the eastern seaboard problematic. But then his godmother, his dear Aunt Connie, came to his rescue. She and Mahoney had had an affair when they were both fifty pounds lighter, and she pressed the speaker to give DeMarco a job, which he did, and which DeMarco gratefully accepted at the time. But why was he still with the bastard all these years later? The answer to that question, unfortunately, was because he had no marketable skills. When you’re a lawyer who’s never practiced law, a man who acts part time as a bagman for a politician, and when you can’t even put the politician’s name down on a résumé as your former boss, your career options become somewhat limited. And at this point, he was heavily invested in a federal pension, possibly the only good thing about working for Mahoney.

      But, pension and future career prospects aside, there was no way DeMarco was leaving Florida that day. He’d leave tomorrow, meaning he’d cut his vacation one day short, and the only reason he was doing that was because Ellie was returning to Iowa tomorrow. As far as he was concerned, there was no urgent need to look into this hijacking no matter what Mahoney said. There’d been nothing to indicate that the Bureau was wrong about Reza Zarif, and therefore no rational reason to think that there was any connection between Zarif and this nut who’d tried to hijack the shuttle. Or maybe a better reason for not rushing back to Washington was this: What in hell did Mahoney think DeMarco could do that ten thousand FBI agents weren’t already doing?

      If