House Reckoning (17 page)

“Why you son of a bitch,” Mahoney said, standing up, sloshing bourbon on the couch.

DeMarco stood up, too. “I’m not screwing around here. I’m going to get Quinn for what he did to my dad. If you get in my way, I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

“You actually got the balls to stand there and try to blackmail me?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Mahoney’s face turned so red that DeMarco thought for a minute he might have a stroke.

“You’re fired,” Mahoney said. “Now get the fuck out of here before I throw you through a goddamn window.”

DeMarco left Mahoney’s building in a state of shock. He was stunned by what had just happened and by what the consequences were likely to be. For the first time since graduating from law school, he didn’t have a job.

Instead of returning to his car and going home, he walked down to the Potomac and took a seat on a bench. He could see the dark shape of Roosevelt Island from where he was sitting.

DeMarco didn’t have a lot of debt, just the mortgage on his house and what he still owed on his car. On the other hand, he hadn’t saved much at all in the time he’d been working. The only real savings he had was the money he’d invested in his civil service pension fund, and if he spent that money, what would he retire on?

DeMarco’s dream, as modest as it was, had been to retire before he was sixty-five—which was still a long way off—sell his house in Georgetown, and buy a cheaper place in a community on some golf course in North or South Carolina or maybe Florida. But if he started spending the money in his pension fund to live on, he could kiss that dream good-bye, and if he sold his house now, there would be very little left over after he paid off the mortgage.

Once again he was also confronted with the fact that he’d spent almost two decades in a career that he wouldn’t be able to parlay into a better job or even another job that paid as well. The smart thing to do would be to march right back to Mahoney’s place, apologize, and beg for his job back.

He thought about that for all of two seconds and thought:
Fuck the smart thing to do.
He wasn’t going to beg for anything and he was going to keep going after Quinn.

22

DeMarco showed his congressional ID as he passed through security at the Dirksen Senate Office Building. He knew he wouldn’t have the ID for much longer but figured that Mahoney hadn’t had time yet to get the word out that DeMarco was no longer employed by the legislative branch of the government. By the end of the day, however, he was willing to bet that somebody would track him down and take his credentials away from him.

DeMarco needed to talk to Senator Hiram Beecham but knew that if he called Beecham’s office he wouldn’t get an appointment unless he wanted to tell whoever answered Beecham’s phone all about Brian Quinn. DeMarco wasn’t going to talk to some low-level aide about Quinn. He would, however, talk to Beecham’s chief of staff.

Beecham’s chief was a tall, shapely brunette who was closing in on fifty but looked better than most thirty-year-olds. She was a former Miss Georgia, a former GU cheerleader, and a mostly absent mother of two. Like many educated southern women that DeMarco had met, her manners were flawless and she was always soft-spoken—the type who could rip you to shreds with her tongue without swearing or ever raising her voice. Her name was Amelia Sherman and according to Perry Wallace, Sherman was devious and tricky and you could trust her about as far as you could throw a Volkswagen. Since Perry Wallace was the same sort of person, DeMarco figured Perry would know.

Also, according to Perry, at the age of eighty-four, Senator Beecham spent more time napping than working. (One of the things the president had done to embarrass Beecham when he was stumping for Beecham’s opponent in Georgia was mention a video that had gotten heavy play on the political talk shows. In the video, the old senator had been caught sleeping in the Senate chamber and someone had to wake him up to cast his vote.) While Beecham napped, Amelia Sherman stayed awake and did his work, and his political agenda was pretty much steered by her. DeMarco knew that Sherman was the one he had to convince.

He had gained entrance to Sherman’s office by telling her assistant that he was a lawyer who worked in the House and knew something negative about Brian Quinn that was not known to the general public. “I’m intrigued, Mr. DeMarco,” Sherman said as soon as he took a seat in her office. “Tell me what you think you know about Commissioner Quinn.”

One difference DeMarco noted between Amelia Sherman and Perry Wallace was that not only did Sherman have a better haircut than Wallace, but her office was also neat and orderly. Wallace was some sort of legislative hoarder and his office contained every bill proposed in the last decade; it looked like a landfill. The furniture in Sherman’s office was dust-free and smelled of Pledge, and her desk was bare except for an outbox holding a few slim manila file folders. You could actually sit on the chairs in her office since they weren’t covered with reams of paper.

“I have information related to Brian Quinn that Senator Beecham could possibly use to embarrass the president,” DeMarco said, leading with his best foot forward.

Sherman frowned as if DeMarco had just said something crude and uncouth. “What makes you think the senator wishes to embarrass the president?” she said.

DeMarco just smiled at her.

“Okay. What do you have?” she said, smiling back.

“I have a witness who can testify that Quinn murdered two people and was being controlled by the New York mob for years. I have another witness who will testify that Quinn shot an unarmed man when he was a patrolman, and he and the NYPD covered up the killing.”

Except for a brief widening of her eyes, Sherman didn’t react. No
oh-my-God
expression crossed her face. She was probably an excellent Texas hold ’em player.

“Why are you doing this?” she finally asked.

“Because one of the people Quinn killed was my father.”

She punched a button on her phone and said, “Brad, cancel my next appointment.”

Sherman grilled him for almost an hour. By the time she was finished, she’d come to the same conclusion DeMarco had: dragging Quinn through the mud in the confirmation hearing might not be enough to convict Quinn of any crimes, but it could possibly spoil his chances of being confirmed and would be phenomenal in terms of embarrassing the president.

One thing Sherman decided she wanted was a videotaped statement from Tony. She desired this for two reasons: First, she wanted to be able to assess before the hearing what sort of witness Tony would make. Second, she wanted Tony on record before he died. The confirmation hearing didn’t start for a couple of weeks and Sherman didn’t want to take the chance that Tony’s health might further deteriorate, so she told DeMarco to head back to New York immediately and get the video made. Amelia Sherman seemed quite comfortable giving DeMarco orders.

Before he left her office, DeMarco told Sherman he was no longer employed so the next time he needed to see her, he wouldn’t be able to show a badge and waltz into the Dirksen Building. For years, DeMarco had denied working directly for John Mahoney and no organizational chart connected him to Mahoney. Mahoney liked things this way just in case DeMarco ever did something that could come back and bite him on the ass. Now, however, since Mahoney had fired him, he told Sherman the truth: that although he was listed as an independent lawyer employed by the House, his real boss had always been Mahoney. He also told her that when he’d told Mahoney about Brian Quinn, Mahoney’s initial reaction had been to run to the president and advise him to consider dropping Quinn—and when he threatened to blackmail Mahoney, Mahoney fired him.

“John Mahoney is not a man I’d want for an enemy,” Sherman said.

“Me either,” DeMarco admitted. “But that’s the way it goes.”

Sherman picked up her phone. “Brad, when Mr. DeMarco leaves my office I want you to get him a temporary ID so he can get into this building and the Capitol for a week.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Brad said.

Tony looked a little better than the last time DeMarco had seen him. There was more color in his face and he wasn’t struggling quite so hard to breathe. He still looked like a dying man. When DeMarco said he wanted to videotape Tony’s statement, Tony initial response was “There’s a bottle of scotch in that cabinet over there. Actually, there’re a couple bottles. The Dewar’s is what I used to drink. The one with the long name that says it’s been aged for eighteen years is what I drink now. I figure at this point, why not indulge myself.”

DeMarco poured him the drink and said, “So. You gonna let me make the video or you want to stall some more?”

“I haven’t decided yet. Maybe. Tell me what’s going on.”

DeMarco did. He told him that he’d never be able to get Quinn for killing his father and Jerry Kennedy, but what he could do was derail the sweet, upward trajectory of Brian Quinn’s life. He explained to Tony about the upcoming Senate confirmation hearing and that if Tony would testify, and if the Senate could force Janet Costello to testify, then what Quinn had done would be out in the open. Tony’s testimony might not be enough to put Quinn in jail, but it would be enough to get the media interested and demanding some answers, and might even prevent him from being confirmed as the FBI director.

“So will you make the video?” DeMarco asked again.

Tony took a while to mull this over, sipping his scotch slowly, and DeMarco grew impatient.

“Tony, what the hell’s the problem? It’s not like anyone’s going to throw you in jail if you testify. I mean, and I’m sorry to say this, but no one’s going to bother with you because you’re going to be dead pretty soon.”

“Okay,” Tony finally said.

An hour later, using a video camera he’d borrowed from Neil, DeMarco had what he wanted: Tony Benedetto telling everything he knew about Brian Quinn, his relationship to Carmine Taliaferro, and the deaths of Connors, Jerry Kennedy, and Gino DeMarco. Tony, just like the last time DeMarco had spoken to him, was exhausted by the time he finished giving his statement.

DeMarco turned off the camera and said, “I want you to say a couple more things. I want you to say that you’re dying of cancer and you have no reason to lie. And I want you to say that you’re willing to take a lie detector test.”

“Yeah, okay,” Tony gasped. “Let’s just get this over with.”

23

The day after returning from New York, the first thing DeMarco did was call Neil, but Neil wasn’t at home or at his office or answering his cell phone. DeMarco couldn’t help but wonder if Neil was ducking him.

DeMarco had never been a camera guy, much less a video guy. He’d never seen the point in taking a million pictures of relatives and vacation scenes and then throwing all the pictures into a box and never looking at them again. Or these days, instead of throwing them into a box, you downloaded them to your computer and never looked at them again. DeMarco owned a cheap digital camera he’d used a few times on assignments Mahoney had given him but had never owned a video camera and didn’t know anything about the camera other than what Neil had shown him. Which meant, he basically knew how to turn it on and off.

The camera Neil had given him fit easily into the palm of his hand and had a little screen that flipped out, and while DeMarco was taping Tony’s statement, he’d watched Tony on the screen. Neil had told him that inside the video camera was a little chip or smart card or whatever the hell it was called, and the video of Tony actually resided on that card and DeMarco could later transfer it to a CD or a flash drive or a computer. The problem was, DeMarco was afraid to mess with the video camera because he might screw up the video; the last thing he wanted to do was accidently delete it. Which was why he’d called Neil, because he wanted Neil to help him make copies of the video—but Neil was avoiding him.

He called Amelia Sherman next to tell her he’d completed the assignment he’d been given, but was informed that Sherman and her boss were in Atlanta, and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. Since he couldn’t reach Neil or Sherman, DeMarco puttered around the house doing the sort of chores that required just enough mental activity to keep him from thinking about Brian Quinn. He washed a load of clothes, vacuumed a couple of rooms in his house—he didn’t see the point of vacuuming the rooms he rarely used—and emptied things out of his refrigerator that were starting to look like science experiments.

The last job he tackled was the back door, which wasn’t shutting quite right. He took the door down and planed the edge a bit and adjusted the lock plate so the dead bolt would go in without him having to yank back on the door so hard. He remembered helping his dad one time do a similar job on their house in Queens, his dad saying doors got used so much you had to fuss with them periodically. Just one of the joys of owning a home, his dad would say.

Unlike his son, Gino DeMarco had genuinely enjoyed working on his house and there wasn’t any job he was afraid to tackle. He reroofed the place himself and did all the plumbing work. He totally remodeled the kitchen once, putting in new cabinets and countertops. His mom wasn’t happy it took him so long—almost three months—but his father couldn’t have been happier. Gino DeMarco would have liked being a carpenter and Joe and his mom always tried to buy him some kind of tool for his birthday. It didn’t matter what kind of tool; his dad just liked tools. DeMarco never would have guessed at the time that the tool his father used best was a gun.