House Justice (10 page)

DeMarco said, “Dr. Finemore, I was wondering if…”

“Do you know what this is?” Finemore said, pointing at the book.

“Uh, no, sir,” DeMarco said.

“It’s a diary written by an African American who worked as a steward in the Capitol about 1900. One of his descendants found it in a trunk in her attic and fortunately she brought it to me instead of trying to sell it on eBay.”

“Well, that’s, uh, really interesting,” DeMarco said, “but I was wondering…”

“It says here that Mr. Washington, the man who wrote this, caught David Henderson having sex with the daughter of a senator. Henderson was the Speaker of the House during McKinley’s administration.”

DeMarco almost said,
Well, I guess that proves the morals of House Speakers haven’t changed much in the last hundred years
, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Wow. That’s really something.” Finemore, unfortunately, thought he was being sincere.

“Not only that,” Finemore went on, so excited he was almost stammering, “it says that this woman, the senator’s daughter…”

Fifteen minutes passed before DeMarco was finally able to ask his question, after having learned more about the sexual escapades
of politicians during the McKinley years than he ever wanted to know.

“This guy Acosta,” DeMarco said, “worked for ___.”

And he told Finemore the ex-president’s name.

“Oh,” Finemore said, sounding disappointed, as if anything that had happened in the last fifty years was way too recent to be of any interest to him.

“Anyway,” DeMarco continued, “Acosta had some kind of job at the White House but not a bigwig position. He wasn’t the chief of staff or the press secretary or anything like that. So I was wondering if you had anything around here with a list of staff members from that administration. I need his first name, but what I really need is a picture of him.”

“Come with me,” Finemore said. He didn’t bother to ask why DeMarco wanted the information; he just wanted to get back to the steward’s diary to see who else Speaker Henderson might have screwed. He led DeMarco to a room a few feet down the hall from his office, picked three books off one shelf, two off another, and dumped them on a table. When he dropped the books, a small mushroom cloud of dust rose into the air and DeMarco sneezed.

“You might find what you need in one of those,” Finemore said. “If you don’t, contact the White House historian and she might be able to help you.”

It took DeMarco twenty minutes to find it: a thirty-year-old picture of
Dale
Acosta, not Dan or Dave as Mahoney had told him. Acosta was standing with the vice president and two other men at a charity golf event; Acosta’s name was mentioned only because he was with the VP. And the young Dale Acosta in the picture was pretty much as Sandra Whitmore had described him: tall, well built, with ginger-colored hair. Regarding what functions Acosta had performed at the White House, the book said nothing and DeMarco wasn’t surprised by this.

DeMarco thanked Finemore for his help and headed back to his office in the subbasement of the Capitol. From there he called Neil
and an hour later Neil e-mailed him Dale Acosta’s current DMV photo, one that was only two years old. Neil further informed him that Acosta lived in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and gave him an address. Per Acosta’s tax returns he was retired, living on social security and investments from his 401(k). He was now single after two failed marriages.

The florist was frustrated.

He had left New York that morning and driven to D.C. to find DeMarco. He didn’t know if DeMarco was still in New York or not, but he figured the man would have to return home to Washington eventually. His plan was to wait outside DeMarco’s house and question him when he came back.

The problem was, he couldn’t get DeMarco’s address.

He did the simple things first and checked the white pages directory on the Internet for the District of Columbia—but DeMarco didn’t have a listed phone number. He then did a reverse lookup using the cell phone number DeMarco had given the concierge but all that told him was the number was for a cell phone and also unlisted.

Before he came to this country, if he had wanted to know where someone lived it wouldn’t have mattered if the number was unlisted. He would have snapped his fingers—literally—and within an hour he would have had not only an address but a complete dossier on the man. But that sort of power was no longer his.

Finally, unable to think of anything else, the florist called the man who was making his new identity papers and asked him to see if he could get Mr. DeMarco’s address. The ID maker had a relative at the Virginia DMV who helped him obtain the materials he needed to make fake driver’s licenses, and this relative knew people who worked in the licensing departments in other states. So the florist knew the forger could get him the information he needed but he hated to let him know anything about his business. But in for a penny, in for a
pound, as the saying went. So he asked the forger to get whatever information he could on Derek Crosby as well.

All the florist could do now was wait. Wait for Whitmore to get out of jail. Wait to see if the forger could get him an address for DeMarco. Wait until nightfall to visit either DeMarco or Crosby.

What DeMarco needed to do next was show Dale Acosta’s picture to Sandra Whitmore to determine if Acosta really was her source—but that meant he’d have to make another trip to New York, which he wasn’t anxious to do. Flying was just too painful these days, so to postpone the trip he decided to go see Emma.

He wanted to talk to her about Mahoney’s comment about LaFountaine, that Mahoney suspected LaFountaine was up to something more than trying to figure out who was responsible for killing his agent. If there was anyone who would be able to guess what sort of games America’s head spy might be playing, Emma, being a retired spy herself, was the one.

He arrived at her place in McLean and, as always, was envious she owned such a magnificent home. The place wasn’t exactly a mansion but it was large and beautifully designed, both inside and out, and the grounds surrounding the house looked as if they could have been part of the national arboretum. DeMarco knew she paid professional gardeners a small fortune to care for her lawn and plants but he had no idea how a retired civil servant could afford to do this—and he knew Emma would never tell him. She was, without a doubt, the most enigmatic person he’d ever encountered.

The door was answered by Emma’s lover. Christine was in her thirties—blue-eyed, blonde, slim, and lovely.

“Emma’s not here,” she said before DeMarco could even ask.

Christine was holding a cello bow in her hand. She played in the National Symphony, and she must have been practicing when DeMarco rang the bell. She seemed irritated to see him but he didn’t know if that was because he’d interrupted her playing or if it was because he was the one standing there. The only thing they had in common was Emma, and Christine always acted as if DeMarco was an unwanted intrusion into their lives, which, if he was honest about it, he usually was.

“Shit,” DeMarco muttered. “When is she coming back?”

“In a couple days, maybe three. She wasn’t sure.”

“Where’d she go?”

Christine hesitated and DeMarco thought for a minute she wasn’t going to tell him. “New York,” she finally said. “She left this morning.”

Ah, this could be good, DeMarco thought. “Do you have any idea how I can get ahold of her?”

He knew Emma’s cell phone number but he also knew that she rarely turned on her phone. For Emma, a cell phone was primarily a one-way communication device.

“Yes,” Christine said—but that’s all she said, and it looked as if that was all she intended to say.

DeMarco, naturally, began to feel a wee bit irritated. He’d known Emma longer than Christine, and it wasn’t like he was some salesman who wanted to pitch her life insurance. On the other hand, he could understand why she wasn’t immediately forthcoming. One time, when Emma had helped him with one of his cases, she’d been kidnapped, tortured, and almost killed by a Chinese spy. Yeah, that could explain Christine’s reluctance. But still…

“Look,” DeMarco said, “all I’m gonna do is e-mail her a guy’s picture. I just want her to look at it.”

That was a lie, but who cared? Christine was being a brat.

As Christine continued to ponder his request, she looked into his eyes trying to measure his capacity for deceit, and DeMarco did his best to look open and honest. This wasn’t easy. As she stared, she
tapped the cello bow against the palm of her left hand—which made him instantly envision the bow as a riding crop and Christine dressed in a leather bustier and thigh-high leather boots.

Finally, she said, “She’s staying at Edith Baxter’s in Manhattan. Edith invited her up there for a dinner party.”

Edith Baxter was a prominent business woman whose son had been killed when terrorists bombed the trains in Madrid, and Emma had intervened when it appeared Edith was on the verge of suicide. If Edith was holding dinner parties it appeared that she was on the road to recovery, and that was good.

“The phone number’s in the kitchen,” Christine said. “I’ll go get it.”

She turned and walked down the hallway toward the kitchen, tapping the bow of the cello against her lower leg. As DeMarco watched her butt move beneath the lightweight cotton pants she was wearing, his S and M fantasy blossomed again.

He was sick. He needed help. Or maybe he just needed to get laid more often.

DeMarco got lucky: Emma was at Edith Baxter’s when he called. He quickly told her what had transpired with Sandra Whitmore since he had last spoken to her, concluding with, “So this guy Acosta might have been the one who impersonated Derek Crosby. It’s a long shot, but I want to send you his picture and since you’re up there already, maybe you could show it to Whitmore and see if Acosta’s the guy.”

Emma didn’t answer.

He could envision her sitting there as she pondered his request. She was tall and always slim because she ran marathons. Her short, silver-blonde hair was perfectly and expensively styled. She had a patrician profile, and because the topic was Sandra Whitmore, her thin lips were probably turned downward in disgust and her blue eyes would appear to be glazed with frost.

“Emma,” DeMarco said, “please. I really need to identify the person who leaked the story to her.”

“So give everything you have to the FBI right now and let
them
investigate.”

“Mahoney doesn’t want to do that. At least not yet. And anyway, until Whitmore confirms that Acosta’s her source, I really don’t have anything to give the FBI.”

Once again, Emma went silent and DeMarco could tell that she was really reluctant to get involved in this thing.

“Come on,” DeMarco whined. “You’re up there already. Save me a trip.”

“I despise that woman,” Emma said. “If I’m alone in a room with her, I just might snap her neck.”

And Emma could.

“Don’t snap her neck. Just show her the picture. If Whitmore confirms Acosta was the one who fed her the story, then I’ll pass that on to the CIA.”

He didn’t bother to add,
if Mahoney will let me
.

“All right,” Emma said. “How will you get the photo to me?”

“I’ll e-mail it. Neil e-mailed it to me, so I’ll forward it to you.”

“Okay,” Emma said. She paused, then added, “Joe, you better watch what you’re doing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean a CIA agent has been killed and Jake LaFountaine and all the people who work for him take that very seriously. More seriously than you could possibly imagine, since you’ve never been in the intelligence business. So I don’t know exactly what your devious boss is having you do, but I’d suggest you not get cross-wired with LaFountaine, not over something as important as this.”

The Metropolitan Correctional Center is in lower Manhattan, half a block from Foley Square, tucked in behind the U.S. Courthouse. It’s an unremarkable ten-story structure that looks like an apartment building whose architect had a penchant for long, narrow windows. A closer look at the windows reveals bars behind glass that has a somewhat yellowish tint. More obvious evidence of the building’s function is the concertina wire enclosing the balconies.

Emma took a slow walk around the facility noting the placement of security cameras. In the alley between the courthouse and the prison, she saw two television crews standing around smoking and drinking coffee. Also in the alley were two gleaming black limousines and standing next to the limos were four men in dark suits who had the attitude of bodyguards rather than chauffeurs. She wondered if some Madoff-like swindler was appearing in court that day.

She was dressed in casual clothes: jeans and a T-shirt. On her head was a long-billed baseball cap and covering her eyes and a good part of her face were oversized sunglasses. She didn’t want to be involved in this Sandra Whitmore mess and wished now that she had refused DeMarco’s request. One thing she was definitely not going to do was be identified as one of Whitmore’s visitors.

She approached the guard shack outside the facility. Keeping her head lowered so the camera behind the guard wouldn’t get a clear
view of her face, she informed the guard she was a messenger hired by Whitmore’s lawyer to deliver a legal document she was required to place directly into Whitmore’s hands. She showed the guard a New York state driver’s license that identified her as Maxine Turner; the license was one of several she possessed from her days at the DIA, where she had sometimes needed alternate identities. She also showed the guard a corporate identification card that identified her as an employee of Elite Courier Services, a legitimate Manhattan messenger service. She had manufactured the ID that morning on Edith Baxter’s computer and had laminated it at a local Kinko’s. When the guard asked to see inside the envelope, Emma pulled out a six-page document she had downloaded from a Web site containing information in dense legal language about New York’s press-shield law. She didn’t show the guard the photograph that was also in the envelope. The guard directed her to a waiting room where she was patted down for weapons and contraband, then directed her to go through a metal detector, after which she was told that she would have to wait approximately forty-five minutes before she’d be allowed to see Whitmore.