House Reckoning (18 page)

That evening, he called Neil again, and again Neil didn’t answer. Neil was starting to piss him off.

It was time for dinner, but he didn’t feel like cooking and then having to clean up the mess after he cooked, so he strolled down to Georgetown, to a Vietnamese place on M Street. The restaurant was the only one he’d ever eaten at that made trout—normally a tasteless fish—taste good. After dinner, he stopped in a bookstore, thinking maybe a good book would get his mind, at least for a while, off Quinn and his father. He left the bookstore twenty minutes later with a couple of paperback mysteries, and was thinking when he got home he’d crack open a bottle of wine and read until he drifted off to sleep.

When DeMarco unlocked his front door, he didn’t immediately notice that the alarm system wasn’t making the little beeping sound it makes until you punch in the code. He didn’t notice the absence of the beeps because it looked like a tornado had cut a path directly through his living room.

His home had been thoroughly and completely searched. The contents of every drawer in the house had been dumped onto the floor and seat cushions had been cut open to see if there was anything hidden inside them. The contents of cereal, rice, and pasta boxes had been emptied onto his kitchen counters and every item in his freezer had been removed and tossed into the sink.

He didn’t bother going to his bedroom. He expected that the bedroom would be in the same condition as his living room and kitchen: clothes on the floor, drawers removed and emptied, the mattresses slashed. Instead, he immediately headed for the basement. The basement contained his furnace, a washer and dryer, a worktable, and a bunch of tools. It also contained a fireproof lockbox. In the lockbox he kept important papers: his will, the deed to the house, his birth certificate, passport, and five grand in cash for the day all the ATMs failed to work. Yesterday he’d put the video camera in the lockbox as well.

He hid the lockbox by placing it on the basement floor behind a pile of obvious junk—pieces of scrap wood, old paint cans, and rusted gardening tools—then chained the box to a cast iron drainpipe. He figured that if anybody robbed his house, they’d recognize the junk pile for what it was—junk—and leave it alone and if by some chance they found the lockbox, they couldn’t just walk away with it unless they had something to cut the chain.

Whoever had searched his house wasn’t fooled, however, and they brought the tools they needed: the chain had been cut and the lockbox was sitting open on the worktable. All his important documents were still in the box, but his five grand in cash and the video camera were missing.

DeMarco went to his den next. He used to own a desktop computer but when it died, as all computers eventually do, he’d replaced the desktop with a laptop. The laptop was gone. The contents of everything that had been in his desk were on the floor and he noticed that all his CDs were missing. The CDs were mostly backup programs for his computer and copies of old tax returns.

DeMarco figured it had taken a team to search his house in the two hours he’d been gone—three, maybe four guys. They must have been watching him and they waited until he went to the restaurant before they broke into the house. They pried open the back door using a simple crowbar but they must have had some sort of high-tech gadget that could figure out his security code before the alarm sounded. He bet they also had someone watching him while he was eating dinner, and that person was ready to call whoever was in the house to tell them when he was on his way back home.

Whatever the case, this was a well-planned operation, not simple burglary—and DeMarco had no doubt whatsoever as to who was responsible: it was Brian Quinn. He’d sent a team to look for the Tony Benedetto video and any copies of it, which was why they’d taken his laptop and all of DeMarco’s compact discs. He figured they’d taken the cash in the lockbox to make the break-in look like a robbery—or maybe they took the cash because they were greedy bastards. He had no idea what Quinn told his men regarding the video or who DeMarco was. At Quinn’s rank, you didn’t have to explain a whole lot to the people who worked for you.

DeMarco also knew who had told Quinn about the video.

Only three people knew he was going to video Tony Benedetto’s statement—himself, Amelia Sherman, and Tony. He knew he hadn’t told anybody, and he was about a hundred percent certain that Sherman hadn’t, either—which left only Tony Benedetto.

Tony had betrayed him.

DeMarco called the cops not because he figured they could do anything useful but because calling them was a necessary step for filing an insurance claim. When the cops got there he told them the thieves had taken cash, a laptop, and a video camera. He didn’t tell them anything regarding who he suspected had sent the thieves or why they had stolen the camera.

“Mostly, what they did was just trash the place and they only took small stuff they could carry easily or put in their pockets,” DeMarco said. “I guess that’s why they didn’t take the TVs.”

“Didn’t you have your alarm set?” one cop asked.

“I must have forgot,” DeMarco said. He wanted the cop to think that those responsible were just ordinary thieves and not the type of people who would have access to high-tech gadgets that could disable alarms.

“It was probably junkies,” the cop said.

“Yeah, probably,” DeMarco said.

“Well, we’ll talk to your neighbors to see if they saw anything.” The cop’s tone of voice said:
Don’t get your hopes up.

DeMarco spent the next two hours restoring some sort of order to his home, documenting all the stuff that was going to have to be replaced, like his laptop, two couches, his back door, and the mattresses on two beds. Tomorrow morning, he’d call his insurance agent and somebody to replace his back door—the same door he’d just spent hours working on earlier in the day. While he cleaned things up, he tried to figure out why Tony had betrayed him. When he couldn’t figure it out, he finally just called the old bastard and asked him. He didn’t care that it was after midnight.

“Why did you tell Quinn about the video?” he asked as soon as Tony answered the phone.

DeMarco could see Tony there in his living room, in the dim light, gasping for his next breath, the oxygen line running to his big nose. But instead of the image of a frail old man on the verge of death, DeMarco envisioned an ancient cobra coiled in the dark, smiling.

“Sorry, Joe, I had to do it.”

“But why?”

“My kid.”

“Your kid? What the fuck does your kid have to do with this?”

“He got himself arrested. He ain’t the brightest kid in the world, and he ain’t the toughest, either, and this was his third bust for dope-related shit. Him and a couple other morons got hooked up with some doctor selling OxyContin to junkies and the DA told him he wouldn’t make any kind of deal with him. My boy was going to go away for at least five years.

“Anyway, when you told me how you were planning to go after Quinn in that Senate hearing, and made me make that video—”

“
Made
you?”

“Yeah. I’m a sick old man. You took advantage of me. You scared me. Anyway, I called Quinn but I didn’t give him your name right away. I said you were a heavy hitter down there in D.C. and you’d been involved in some heavy shit in the past. I told him you were digging stuff up to use against him at his hearing and you knew about his connection to Carmine.”

“Then you cut a deal with him.”

“Yeah. I had to. For my kid. I told Quinn if he got the charges dismissed against Anthony, I’d give him your name and he could take it from there. I also said I wouldn’t testify at his hearing—that I’d go into a hospital so you couldn’t drag me down there—and I wouldn’t be starring in any more videos.”

“And Quinn agreed to this?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t he? My kid’s small potatoes. Nobody gives a shit about him, and Quinn knows it. He knew if the charges against my boy were dismissed, that wouldn’t even cause a ripple in the legal system. I also told Quinn if he didn’t do what I wanted then I was going to testify at the hearing. That is, I’d testify unless Quinn killed me, in which case the video you made would have to do.”

“So you were actually planning to do this when you made the video.”

“That’s right, and Quinn took the deal. I gave him your name and he squeezed whoever he had to squeeze in the DA’s office, and they dropped the charges in return for Anthony testifying against the other idiots he was arrested with. My kid’s lawyer says there’s no way they can come back at him and he’s free until he fucks up again, which, knowing him, he probably will.”

DeMarco didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, he said, “You old son of a bitch. I feel like—”

“Yeah, fuck what you feel like. You’re not gonna do shit. If you really wanted to get back at Quinn for your dad, you’d have killed the guy instead of coming up with some bullshit political thing to screw him over. You take care, Joe. Tell your mom hi for me next time you see her.”

There was no point throwing the handset of the phone across his living room but he did anyway, knocking a picture off the wall.

Now what? His entire half-assed plan for destroying Brian Quinn had just evaporated.

24

The next morning didn’t start off too well, either.

DeMarco’s doorbell rang at 7
A.M.
, waking him up. Dressed in boxer shorts and a wash-faded Nationals T-shirt, he opened his front door to find two U.S. Capitol cops standing on his porch. He recognized one of them, a potbellied old timer named Leary, who could usually be found leaning against a wall on the side of the Capitol that faced the Library of Congress. Leary was holding a cardboard box in his hand. The other guy, DeMarco had never seen before. His nametag said P. Martin, and he was at least twenty years younger than Leary and looked about twenty times harder.

“What’s going on?” DeMarco said. He doubted they were there because his house had been broken into last night. There was no reason for the Capitol Police to be involved in that.

“We’re here to collect your security badge,” Martin said.

Mahoney hadn’t wasted any time.

The first response that occurred to DeMarco was
Couldn’t this have waited until nine or ten?
But he didn’t say that. “Hang on, I’ll go get it,” he said. He came back a moment later and handed Martin his badge.

Leary, who looked a bit sheepish, held out the cardboard box to him. “What’s this?” DeMarco said.

“The shit from your office,” Martin said. “Oh, I forgot. I need the key to your office, too.”

DeMarco got his keys, pulled his office key off the key ring, and handed it to Martin. “Inside that box,” Martin said, “is an envelope with instructions telling you what you have to do when you separate from government service. There’s a phone number in there of a lady to call in personnel if you got any questions, and you’re supposed to be in her office at ten this morning to sign the stuff you have to sign. Have a good day.”

Martin turned and walked away but before Leary left, he muttered, “Sorry, Joe.”

DeMarco shut the door and headed back to bed. He had no intention of meeting with the lady from personnel today. He’d get to her when he had time—or when he was in the mood. What were they going to do if he missed the appointment? Fire him?

DeMarco got out of bed again at nine and called his insurance company to start the process for replacing the things that had been damaged and stolen. He called Home Depot next and told a clerk he needed a new door and the frame that went around the door. Home Depot informed him a guy would be there in a couple of hours to take some measurements. Next he called Amelia Sherman and told her he needed to see her as soon as possible.

“Did Benedetto let you video his testimony?” she asked.

“Yeah, but I no longer have the video.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to talk about this on the phone.”

After a brief pause, she said, “Be here at two.”

Two was good. That would give him time to deal with the insurance guy and the door guy. He made one other phone call. This time Neil answered his phone.

“Neil, I need Bobby to come over to my house and make sure my phones aren’t tapped?”

“Who do you think tapped them?”

“What difference does it make? Just send him over. Okay? Please?”

“All right,” Neil said, not sounding enthused.

Amelia Sherman was wearing a navy blue suit, a simple white blouse, small pearl earrings, and a matching pearl necklace. Simple, elegant, and stunning. The skirt hugged her form and stopped a modest one inch above her knees, but when she sat down and crossed her legs it was a show worth watching. DeMarco told her about his house being ransacked, and how the video he’d made of Tony had been stolen. He also told her about the conversation he’d had with Tony last night, and how Tony had admitted that he’d sold DeMarco out to Quinn to keep his son from going to jail.

“Tony, that sly old bastard, knew while he was making the video that he was going to use it to get his son off the hook,” DeMarco said.

“Why on earth didn’t you make a copy of the video?” Sherman asked him.

“I didn’t know how. I tried to get a hold of the guy who lent me the camera but—”