House Justice (16 page)

How could she spin this? How could she come out of this thing without looking like a fool?

The first thing she had to make clear was that even though Acosta may have lied about being a CIA agent, he didn’t lie about the fact that the CIA was covering up Diller’s trip to Iran. Yeah, that was important. Her source may have lied about his identity but her story, every damn word of it, was still accurate. The next question would be: But
why
did he feed you the story? And to that she’d say: Because he obviously wanted the public to know that Marty Taylor’s company was doing something illegal and the CIA wasn’t doing anything
about it. And he posed as a CIA agent because if he hadn’t he wouldn’t have been a credible source.

But then someone would ask the tough question: If your source didn’t work for the CIA then how did he know about Diller’s meeting in Iran? To that she’d have to say she didn’t know but it was clear that Acosta is connected either to someone in Congress who had attended LaFountaine’s briefing or to someone in the CIA. How else could he have gotten his hands on CIA credentials and borrowed the identity of an actual CIA employee? Yeah, that was good. She’d point at all the reporters and say, As good as these guys are—Acosta and whoever he works for—they would have conned you just as easily as they did me. So what we have here is an elaborate conspiracy most likely engineered by someone inside the federal government. They used me to expose a real CIA cover-up and, unfortunately, because the CIA wouldn’t come clean with me when I asked them to comment on my story, that poor girl got killed. So when I found out that my source lied to me about working for the CIA, I no longer had an obligation to protect his identity and I gave the judge his name because I had to get out of jail to get to the bottom of this mess. But what would she say when someone asked her how she had found out that Acosta was a phony? That was easy. She’d give ’em a big wink and say, Now, boys, you know that I
never
give up a source, a legitimate one, that is.

Hmm. Not bad, but not great—but it was the best she could do. She was still going to look incompetent for not having figured out that Acosta wasn’t really CIA, but being the victim of a government conspiracy would make her look a little less stupid and would put the blame on the government instead of her. And whether she looked stupid or not, she had to get out of this cell. If she had to stay here another day she was going to slash her wrists.

“Can I use your cell phone again?” she asked LaTisha.

LaTisha ignored her.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Whitmore said, trying to sound contrite. “That call I got just rattled me. But now I can get out of here, which means I can get you your money.”

“So you’re gonna snitch out your source.”

“I’m not snitching. I’m … look, never mind. Can I use your phone? Please.”

“Two hundred bucks.”

“Two! Last time it was one.”

“That was before you got snippy.”

LaTisha handed her the phone and added Whitmore’s most recent charge to the running tab she was keeping. At this point, Whit-more had no idea how much money she owed LaTisha; she’d stopped keeping track days ago. And it really didn’t matter. She had no intention of paying her, anyway.

Whitmore punched in the number and said, “This is Sandra Whit-more. Is my so-called lawyer there?” A moment later, the lawyer picked up and she said, “Tell the judge I’m ready to talk.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “Ms. Whitmore,” her lawyer said, “I need to know who your source is before you talk to the judge and I need to know why you’ve suddenly decided to reveal his name. And then I need to discuss all this with management at the paper, to make sure what you’re doing is in the paper’s best interest.”

“Listen to me,” Whitmore said. “If your bony ass isn’t down here in half an hour to get me out, I’ll get a public defender. I don’t need you at this point.”

It felt good saying that but she wondered if she’d have a job when this was all over. Probably not, considering how she’d been duped by her source. She definitely needed a book deal.

Her pompous lawyer met her in a private interview room forty-five minutes later. The first thing he told her was that the judge was out of town, visiting someone in Washington, D.C., and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.

Sandra Whitmore screamed so loudly one of the guards burst into the interview room to see if she was okay.

Benny couldn’t believe it: Acosta was finally home.

His car was in the parking lot, the windshield and bumper all bugsplattered like the man had driven a fair distance. Benny had no idea where Acosta had been, but he must have gotten back late last night after Benny had returned to his motel.

Benny was thinking he should wait until nightfall to take care of Acosta but then he noticed that there wasn’t anybody playing on the fairway. The weather was good and it was midday, the middle of the week; there should be a foursome of old farts out on the course slicing their balls into the rough. He got out of his car and looked up and down the fairway: nobody as far as he could see. Huh? He wondered if they were doing some work on the course or if a water main had broken or something.

He looked down the block of town houses. None of Acosta’s neighbors were outside. The town houses didn’t have front yards—the fairway was their front yard—but behind each town house was a small, fenced-in backyard. If one of Acosta’s neighbors decided to go outside to barbecue his lunch or plant petunias, they’d be in the backyard and wouldn’t see Benny unless they looked out their front windows. And if they did look out the window, the only thing they’d be able to tell the cops was that they saw a fat guy wearing a ball cap and sunglasses walking by.

Yeah, it was time to get this thing done.

He walked down the cart path to Acosta’s town house, knocked, and a tall guy opened the door. Benny had looked at Acosta’s photo before he left his car and the guy standing in front of him was definitely Acosta.

“Yes?” he asked when he saw Benny.

Benny smiled. He knew how he looked when he smiled: short, fat, friendly—and harmless.

DeMarco knew Acosta lived someplace on the Glendon Hills Golf Course, but the address system was totally confusing. He went to the pro shop to get directions and the guy there told him that Acosta’s place was on the sixth fairway, and showed him how to find the street on a little map. As he was walking out of the shop he saw they had some clubs on sale and he picked up a pitching wedge. He couldn’t pitch for shit and he liked to think it was because he didn’t have the right club. The one he picked up had a nice feel to it: the weight was good, the length was right, and he liked the grip. Then he looked at the price tag.

“Hey, sorry to bother you,” Benny said, “but I’m the guy who broke your window.”

“My window?” Acosta said. Then he looked at the floor near the picture window and saw the glass. “Shit,” he said, but he didn’t sound too upset. “I was in Atlanta visiting my sister and I didn’t even look at that window when I got home last night.”

“I just moved in here, over on the third fairway,” Benny said, jerking his head in that direction. “I didn’t think it would be good to start off busting a neighbor’s window and not making things right.”

Now Benny figured if Acosta was an honest man, he’d say his insurance would cover the window. He couldn’t imagine someone living on a golf course and not having insurance for this sort of thing.
But Benny was guessing that Acosta was like most people: he’d try to make an extra buck whether he needed it or not, and if he could screw the insurance company while he was at it, that’d just be the icing on the cake. And sure enough…

“Hey, that’s decent of you,” Acosta said. “Most people would never have said anything. Come on in.”

Benny followed Acosta into the town house, and since Acosta’s back was to him, he pulled the little .32 out of one pocket and a towel he’d taken from his motel out of another pocket.

Acosta was saying, “The last time I had to replace that window, it cost five fifty. I know that sounds high but that’s double-pane glass and …”

Benny placed the towel over the barrel of the .32 and shot Acosta in the back of the head. He barely heard the shot himself; no way anyone outside the town house would have heard it. He looked down at Acosta. He wasn’t moving—not even a twitch—and Benny didn’t see any blood pumping out of his head, so he figured the guy was probably dead. He knew he should check Acosta’s pulse but that would mean kneeling down, which wasn’t easy for a guy his size. So because the towel he’d used now had a bullet hole in it, he tossed it aside, picked up one of those stupid little throw pillows from Acosta’s couch, placed the pillow over the .32, and shot Acosta in the head again.

“That oughta do it,” he said to the dead man.

He stood there for a minute, thinking. He hadn’t touched anything but the pillow, and it was made from some nappy corduroy stuff, and they wouldn’t be able to get prints off that. The towel he’d used was a plain white one, didn’t have the motel’s name on it, and they couldn’t get prints off that, either.

Everything looked copacetic. Time to go.

DeMarco found the block where Acosta’s house should be and pulled into a parking lot at the east end of the street as the guy in the pro shop had told him. There were about ten cars in the lot, but it was
only half full. He didn’t see names or numbers on any of the parking spaces so he figured it was okay to park there and his rental car wouldn’t get towed.

He saw all the houses on the block were these cute, narrow, two-story town houses, and he wondered how much they cost. The cart path for the golf course served as a sidewalk for the town houses, and the address on the first door he passed led him to conclude that Acosta’s place was at the far end of the block. He started down the cart path, expecting at any moment to get beaned by a golf ball, and then noticed no one was playing on the course, which was odd considering the time of day.

As he walked, he admired the fairway. The grass was a lush, well-tended green, and across the way was a good-sized pond with a big weeping willow on one bank, its branches dipping down into the water. Ducks were skimming across the pond and it was a cloudless, windless, perfect day.

DeMarco could imagine himself living someplace like this when he retired. Each morning he’d rise at nine or ten, play eighteen holes, then spend his afternoons in the clubhouse drinking vodka and playing gin. DeMarco realized his dreams had shrunken over time. He’d gladly settle for the life Dale Acosta appeared to be living.

Looking back down the cart path, he noticed a chubby guy coming out of a town house about where he figured Acosta’s place would be. Probably one of Acosta’s neighbors. The man was dressed like a golfer—blue Windbreaker, a loose-fitting bright yellow polo shirt, Bermuda shorts that came past his chunky knees, a ball cap, and sunglasses. DeMarco figured the guy was off to play his daily game. As he passed DeMarco, the guy smiled and nodded to him, and he reminded DeMarco of that actor on
Cheers
, the one who played Norm, which made DeMarco wonder whatever had happened to Norm. He probably owned his own golf course with all the money he was making from reruns.

Benny wondered if the guy coming down the cart path had seen him leave Acosta’s place. Maybe—and that wasn’t good.

As Benny got closer to him, he recalled a job he had done for some Italians in Kansas City, a little turf war where the wops didn’t want to use one of their own shooters, so they had called Jimmy, and Jimmy had sent Benny. The guy that had been the target in KC looked a lot like the guy walking toward him right now: he had goombah leg-breaker written all over him.

As Benny passed the goombah, he smiled, wanting to see how the guy would react, if he acted suspicious in any way. If he acted the least bit funny, Benny was going to walk past him then spin around and shoot him in the back. But he just nodded at Benny; he didn’t seem worried about a thing. Maybe the guy hadn’t seen him leave Acosta’s place after all.

DeMarco knocked on Acosta’s door. No one answered. He knocked again. Shit. He hoped he wouldn’t have to sit around for hours until Acosta finally showed up. He turned to go back to his car and noticed a hole in Acosta’s front window, the picture window that faced the fairway. That would be one drawback to living on a golf course: having to replace your windows a couple times a year or else having to cover them with wire mesh. Then he saw the man lying on the floor.

DeMarco went back to the door and turned the doorknob, expecting it to be locked, but it wasn’t.

Benny walked past the last town house on the block and turned the corner, but then stuck his head out and looked back down the cart path. Aw, shit. The goombah was knocking on Acosta’s door; he had been going to see Acosta. Of all the rotten, doggone luck. He thought the guy might leave when Acosta didn’t answer, and it looked like he was about to, but he stopped and looked in through the window—and then he entered Acosta’s town house. Son of a gun.

DeMarco could see that it was Dale Acosta on the floor. He could also see the man had been shot in the back of the head two or three times. Being careful not to step in the blood, he bent down and felt for a pulse in Acosta’s right wrist. There wasn’t one.

He reached for his cell phone to call the cops but the phone wasn’t on his belt where it was supposed to be. Then he remembered: the seat-belt buckle in the rental car had been digging into his side, right where his phone was clipped to his belt, and he’d taken the phone off and put it in one of the cup holders. He could use the phone in Acosta’s house, but he didn’t want to screw up the crime scene. Plus, he wanted to get out of the house.

He left Acosta’s place and started jogging back to his car. As he jogged, he thought about the guy he had passed on the cart path. He thought he had been one of Acosta’s neighbors, but maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he’d been coming out of Acosta’s town house like he’d originally thought.