House Reckoning (33 page)

“I’ve always hated that woman,” Quinn muttered. In a louder voice, he said. “So now what, DeMarco?”

“Right now Stephanie is talking to the acting director of the FBI, showing him all the photos. Then I imagine the Bureau, being the cautious folks they are, will mull all this over for a few days, have their experts confirm the photos are real, then they’ll talk to a bunch of lawyers to see what kind of case they can make against you. Then they’ll arrest your ass.”

“I’ll fight this, you know,” Quinn said. “I don’t know how, yet, but I will. I was a cop and your father was a criminal. I killed him during the course of my duties.”

“You tried to shoot him in the back. The photos show that.”

“Those photos don’t show what transpired before I shot him. I’ll say I chased him into that warehouse and he fired at me before I shot him.”

DeMarco barked out a humorless laugh. “Come on, Quinn. How are you going to explain why you didn’t report killing my dad if you killed him trying to make a legitimate arrest?”

“I don’t know. Yet. But I’ll come up with something. I’ll beat this.”

For just a moment, DeMarco almost believed that Quinn might be able to save himself—and he almost lost it. He started around the desk, intending to knock the smirk off Quinn’s face, and maybe just keep beating on him until he was dead. But he didn’t.

“You’re through,” DeMarco said. “And I’m the guy who brought you down.” He didn’t bother to add: with a whole bunch of help from Emma and Mahoney.

DeMarco had said what he’d come to say, and he’d gotten the satisfaction of seeing the look of defeat on Quinn’s face when he initially saw the photo. He picked up the photo and turned to leave the office, but before he reached the door, Quinn stood and shouted, “Your father was a hit man! He was a killer! I don’t deserve to go to jail for killing him. I’ve spent my entire life putting criminals like him in jail and protecting New York from terrorists. I don’t deserve this,” Quinn said again.

DeMarco thought for a minute about telling Quinn everything his father had meant to him and how Quinn was no better than the criminals he bragged about incarcerating. But what would be the point? All he said was “He was my dad. And fuck what you deserve.”

41

Quinn walked out of the Dirksen Building, still stunned by what had happened. Hanley and Grimes were waiting for him on the steps, bullshitting with one of the Capitol cops. As soon as they saw Quinn, they walked over to him. Quinn figured that DeMarco must have left by a different exit; if Hanley and Grimes had seen him, they would have detained him.

“Where to, boss?” Hanley said.

“I don’t know,” Quinn said.

“Are you all right, boss?”

Quinn didn’t answer. He was wondering if he should call Tony Benedetto and tell him that he’d changed his mind about killing DeMarco. Now there was no point in killing DeMarco. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Killing DeMarco would be very satisfying, but if DeMarco was killed now—and considering the photos Stephanie Hernandez was supposedly showing the FBI—he would be considered a suspect. Yes, it would probably be best to tell Tony to call off whomever he’d hired. He didn’t, however, want to call Tony from his cell phone.

“Have you seen a pay phone around here?” he asked Hanley.

“A pay phone? Do you want to use my cell phone, boss?”

“No, I want . . . Never mind.”

Quinn started walking, with Grimes and Hanley trailing behind. He didn’t have any idea where he was going; he just needed to walk. He needed to think. He’d find a pay phone someplace along the way and call Tony.

Goddamn Tony. He hadn’t told Tony to kill DeMarco before the confirmation hearing, but he thought he’d made it clear that he wanted the job done quickly. He couldn’t help but think that if DeMarco had died a couple of days ago he wouldn’t be in the situation he was in now because it would have taken some time for DeMarco to force Stephanie Hernandez to turn against him. Maybe he should tell Tony to kill Stephanie instead of DeMarco.

The person he really wished he’d killed, however, was Carmine Taliaferro. He should have killed that conniving old fuck right after he killed Gino DeMarco.

Quinn could see Carmine, clear as a bell, when he met with him years ago, a few days after he’d killed Gino. He had gone back to see the doctor who had treated his gunshot wound, to make sure everything was healing okay, and Carmine had been sitting in the junkie doctor’s living room wearing a baggy brown suit and those big black glasses he wore.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Quinn had said.

“How’s the shoulder? You gonna be able to play tennis or whatever it is you play?”

“What are you doing here?” Quinn said again. “I told you I didn’t ever want to see you again.”

As if he hadn’t heard him, Carmine said, “Anyway, I hope you’re mending okay. Your health’s important to me. You’re important to me.”

“Carmine, you’ve got nothing you can use to control me anymore. You can’t tell people I killed DeMarco and Jerry Kennedy. Well, I suppose you could tell, but who’d believe you? I mean, they might believe you if you said you’d ordered me to kill them, but then you’d go to jail as an accomplice. And as for me accidentally shooting Connors, since you gave me the name of the witness, I can always take care of the teacher if she ever becomes a problem. So you have nothing, Carmine. From this point forward, you stay the hell away from me and just pray that all my friends in the department don’t come after you.”

And that’s when Carmine had said, “I got something I want to show you, young Officer Quinn.”

Quinn almost threw up when he saw the photos.

He remembered the night he killed DeMarco, how brightly lit the warehouse had been, but he hadn’t thought too much about it. The story Carmine had given Gino DeMarco was that the warehouse was used for a high-stakes Saturday night poker game, and Quinn was one of the players. The warehouse was lit up, Quinn figured, to match the story—so the poker players wouldn’t have to stumble around the warehouse in the dark to make their way back to the office where the game was played. When he saw the photos, however, he understood why every light in the warehouse had been turned on.

Quinn figured out later that the photographer must have been hiding up on the catwalk, partially hidden by the warehouse overhead crane or under the tarps stored on the catwalk. He positioned himself so he could look directly down at the main aisle of the warehouse—the aisle he knew Gino DeMarco would walk down. The photographer hadn’t used a flash—Quinn would have seen a flash going off—and Quinn didn’t hear the clicking noise a camera makes as the film is advanced because of all the noise on the pier.

He never did find out who took the photos—the photos that could prove he was a murderer—the photos that Carmine had used to squeeze him for years. Whoever it was, the guy had to have been a pro.

He did everything he could to find the photographs and the negatives after Carmine died—but he never could. Then Carmine’s pushy bitch of a daughter shows up after he executed a search warrant on her house and tells Quinn that he and his wife are going to become her political guardian angels. The fact was, supporting Stephanie Taliaferro Hernandez hadn’t been all that painful and from everything he could see, she was actually a fairly decent politician.

And maybe that’s why she sold him out—because she was a politician.

Quinn walked over to the National Mall and started walking in the direction of the Lincoln Memorial. He noticed that the Washington Monument appeared to be fully restored after the earthquake that had occurred in 2011. It had taken them forever to repair it.

One thing he was going to have to do was stop seeing Pam. He hated to do it—he really did love her—but in order to save himself, he needed Barbara’s influence. And he really needed her money. Whichever lawyer he hired to defend him would have to be one of the best in New York, and it was going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend himself against a murder charge. He was somewhat worried that Barbara might not stand by his side—but not too worried. Barbara had always been an extraordinarily loyal person and her reputation would be damaged almost as much as his if he were found guilty.

As for his defense, the obvious tactic was to impugn the photos. If experts could demonstrate how the photos could have been manufactured, it wouldn’t be hard to make a case that his enemies—like people in the mafia—had tried to engineer his downfall. Yes, with his reputation, any decent attorney should be able to get him acquitted if it could be shown that the photos might not be real. And he was going to have more than a decent attorney and he’d buy all the experts he needed.

Another possibility was the one he’d mentioned to Joe DeMarco: admit that he’d indeed shot Gino, but he did so only in self-defense and while trying to arrest Gino. That was going to be tougher to sell to a jury. Like DeMarco had said, how would he explain why he didn’t come forward immediately and admit to killing Gino that night if the shooting was in the line of duty? Maybe what he could do was . . .

Ah, a pay phone. Over there, by the Hirshhorn. He’d always liked the sculpture garden in front of the Hirshhorn Museum, particularly the famous
Burghers of Calais
by Rodin. Rodin’s human figures were so real he could imagine them coming to life and talking to the tourists in the garden.

“Boss!” Hanley called out.

He’d actually forgotten Hanley and Grimes were trailing along after him.

“I’m just going over to use that phone, Hanley.”

“Boss, aren’t you supposed to be over at the Hoover Building for lunch?”

Quinn laughed. “Not today, Hanley, not today.”

“Boss, are you sure you’re all right?”

Quinn just waved a hand—a mild quit-bugging-me gesture. He picked up the phone, then realized he didn’t have any change and he’d probably need three or four dollars to call New York. He called Hanley and Grimes over—they didn’t have any change, either—so he had to wait until Hanley could get change from a street vendor.

“Tony, do you know who this is?” Quinn said when Benedetto answered the phone.

Tony didn’t answer, but Quinn could hear him breathing.

“Tony! Goddamnit, can you hear me? Do you know who this is?”

“Yeah,” Tony finally said. He sounded really weak, like he might die any moment.

“I want you to call off the hit on . . . on you-know-who. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.”

“Tony, are you sure you understand?”

“Yeah.”

Shit
, Quinn thought after he hung up. Tony had sounded so out of it that he couldn’t be sure that Tony had understood a thing he’d said. From this point forward, he needed to make sure that he had people around him constantly in case DeMarco was killed. He needed credible alibis.

Tony hung up the phone, wondering who had just called. He’d been hitting the morphine pretty heavily; he was having a hell of a bad day.

Quinn walked for almost two hours on the Mall, and while he walked he came up with a plausible way to explain why he’d killed Gino DeMarco in that warehouse and never reported the shooting. In order to make it work, he would need the cooperation of one man, his first mentor in the department, the man who’d been the chief of D’s when he was still a rookie. Leo Boyle was eighty now but still sharp, and he loved Quinn like a son—not to mention that Quinn had done a lot for Leo’s grandson when he joined the force. Yeah, he might have to sweeten the pot in some way, but Leo would most likely be willing to commit perjury to save him; Leo wouldn’t care that he’d killed a thug like Gino DeMarco. He’d still prefer to impugn the photos, but if he couldn’t . . .

It was time to go see Barbara. He would tell her how he was being framed, and then they’d fly back to New York the next morning. Before they left D.C., he’d call Adam Morse and ask Morse to represent him. It was almost funny. He’d always despised Adam Morse for his ability to convince juries to acquit the criminals he represented; tonight he’d ask Morse to meet him for lunch tomorrow to discuss strategy.

He turned and said to Hanley, “Get the car. I want to head back to the town house.”

“Boss, the car’s all the way back at the parking lot near the Russell Building. Remember?”

“Oh, that’s right,” Quinn said. It would take Hanley at least half an hour to retrieve the car. “Well, see if you can get me a cab, then you go get the car and Grimes will go with me.” At this point, he preferred Grimes to Hanley because Hanley kept asking what was bothering him.

Barbara wasn’t at the town house when he arrived. She must still be out looking at real estate. Quinn drank only sparingly and hardly ever had a drink before six in the evening—but now seemed like a good time for one. He prowled the town house until he found the liquor cabinet and filled a tumbler full of scotch. Excellent scotch.

Barbara finally arrived and he was a bit drunk by the time she got there. As soon as she saw him, she said, “Have you seen the news? Brian, what’s going on?” She wasn’t talking—she was
screeching
—and she looked wild-eyed. Barbara, with all her money and her pampered upbringing, was a woman who rarely lost her composure.

“What did they say on the news?” Quinn asked.

“They said, he said . . .”