House Secrets (12 page)

“Hey, Eddie,” he said as soon as Stacy was gone, “long time no see. What can I do for you?”

Please, please God, let him say he wants a hooker.

“You see that guy over there?” Eddie said. “At the twenty-five-dollar table, the guy in the green jacket?”

The pit boss turned his head slowly, like he was just casually taking in the room while they talked. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s the doc. He’s in here all the time. Loser.”

“Not tonight,” Eddie said. “I want him to win big.”

Aw, fuck.

“How much?”

“Ten, fifteen grand. That’ll be enough.”

“Okay.”
Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full
.

The pit boss went back to his station in the middle of the blackjack tables, picked up his phone, and made a call. Five minutes later Ray was there, a man in his fifties, white shirt, little black bow tie like all the dealers wore—and fingers like a concert pianist. Ray was the best mechanic they had. Maybe the best mechanic on the boardwalk.

“Take over Dave’s table,” the pit boss said. “I want the guy in the green jacket to win ten grand.”

“You got it,” Ray said, eyes lighting up like a slot machine that had just paid off. Ray lived for this.

The pit boss spent the next two hours wishing he was someplace else. Anyplace else. He was pretty sure that he had just become an accessory to something, he didn’t know what, but whatever it was, he was sure it wasn’t good.

The doc let out another victory yell. The fuckin’ guy, he thought he was magic tonight. If he only knew.

The pit boss looked over at Eddie. He was still sitting alone at Stacy’s table, still betting just five bucks a hand. His eyes were focused on the doc, watching as the doc’s stack of chips grew taller.

DeMarco had just returned from his trip to New York and was sitting in his den, a vein throbbing in his temple, reading an op-ed piece in the
Washington Post.
The evil bastard who’d written the editorial was urging Congress to raise the minimum retirement age for federal employees to sixty-five, spouting baseless nonsense as to how this would save the taxpayers big bucks. DeMarco concluded that if
he
were running things, the first thing to go would be the First Amendment. Before he could work himself into a state of quivering anxiety thinking about the possibility of working for Mahoney until he was sixty-five, the doorbell rang.

Opening the door, he discovered one of his neighbors. She had lived in the house on the right side of his for about six months but he couldn’t remember her name. Ellen, Helen, something like that. He said hello to her and her husband when he saw them outside but that was as far as he chose to carry the relationship. She was a plump woman in her early thirties, normally pleasant and cheerful, but today looking as if she had been given a preview of Armageddon. She had a baby in one arm screaming its head off, the baby’s face the color of a tomato. Her other hand had a firm grip on the upper arm of a truculent brat who appeared to be about ten.

“Thank
God
, you’re home,” she said to DeMarco. “I didn’t know what I was going to do if you weren’t.”

“What’s the problem?” he asked, knowing he didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Wesley’s really sick. He’s got a temperature of a hundred and four and I’ve got to get him to the emergency room. I called my normal sitter to take care of Stanford but she’s out of town and my sister can’t get here for an hour. So could you please,
please
watch Stanford until my sister gets here? I just have to get this baby to the hospital.”

DeMarco’s mind raced as he tried to think of an excuse even remotely sufficient for turning away a woman with a feverish infant. He considered telling her he was a paroled pedophile.

She saw his hesitation and said, “Just for an hour. Please. Until my sister gets here. I’d take Stanford with me but he catches colds really easily, and I’m afraid he’ll get the flu sitting in that waiting room with all those sick people.”

“Sure,” DeMarco said, “I’d be happy to take care of, uh, Stanford for an hour.”

“Oh, thank you so much, Mr. DeMarco. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

“It’s Joe, and it’s quite all right, uh . . .”

“Allison. Allison Webster.”

“Right. Allison.”

Thrusting Stanford at him, she said, “My sister’s name is Joyce. She’s on her way.”

After she left, he and Stanford stood inside his foyer, staring at each other. DeMarco wasn’t sure if Stanford was big or little for his age—he was short. He had reddish brown hair and distrustful-looking, tiny blue eyes. His fists were clenched.

DeMarco broke down first and said, “So what do they call you? Stan?”

“No. My name’s
Stanford
. Stan’s a guy that works at a garage.”

Great. An elitist midget.

When DeMarco didn’t say anything else, Stanford said, “So what do you wanna do?”

“Fly to Iowa and see my ex-girlfriend.”

“Huh?” Stanford said.

“Never mind. I don’t wanna do anything. What do you wanna do?”

“You gotta computer?”

“Yeah.”

“You got any games on it? You know, Spider-Man, Donkey Kong, something like that?”

Donkey Kong?

“No,” DeMarco said, “I don’t have anything on my computer except a tax program.”

“How ’bout Nintendo. You got Nintendo hooked up to your TV?”

“No, but I have cable.”

“Big deal. Everybody’s got cable.”

“Look, kid, this isn’t a day care center. I don’t have any toys; I don’t have any games. I have a TV, a punching bag, and a piano. Take your pick.”

“
You
have a piano?”

It irked him, the kid sounding so surprised.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Steinway?”

“Yamaha.”

Stanford snickered. He’d been there less than three minutes and he was already getting on DeMarco’s nerves.

“Well, since there’s nothing better to do, I guess I could practice for my recital.”

DeMarco looked skyward, Job incarnate. He could imagine the brat banging out a two-fisted version of “Beautiful Dreamer” for a solid hour.

“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” he said. “Make some productive use of your time. It’s up the stairs, second floor. And don’t touch anything else up there unless you ask first.” He didn’t know why he had said that; there wasn’t anything else up there to touch except his punching bag.

“My mom says you’re a grouch.”

“I am. Go play the piano.”

As Stanford started up the steps, DeMarco said, “By the way, did your piano teacher tell you what pianissimo means?”

Stanford smirked again and nodded.

“Good. Practice pianissimo.”

DeMarco poured a drink to get through the next hour and sat back down to finish reading the paper. He had just raised the glass to his lips when the music began. Brahms, Beethoven, one of those guys. And the kid was good—and playing from memory. DeMarco knew he wouldn’t be able to play like that if had three hands. He consoled himself with the possibility that Stanford was an idiot savant.

He spent the next hour listening to the music, dwelling on the many facets of Paul Morelli. According to Lydia, someone powerful was helping her husband’s political career and that person had possibly killed Terry Finley when he began to investigate the senator’s past. Furthermore, per Lydia, Paul Morelli was a sexual predator, a fact that neither woman on Finley’s list was willing to confirm. But then Harry had inadvertently told DeMarco that Morelli had done something to another woman, this Susan Medford. But what had he done? Tried to kiss her? Groped her? Or was it something worse?

DeMarco was skeptical of everything Lydia had told him. She had no facts, she drank too much, and she was obviously still distraught over her daughter’s death. And not only was he skeptical, but allegations that Paul Morelli had conspired to ruin the careers of the three men on Finley’s list had been investigated by people smarter than both DeMarco and Finley. DeMarco was convinced that that was a dead end.

The rational part of him—he couldn’t remember if that was the right or left side of his brain—said that Harry was probably right, that Morelli was a good man who may have strayed once or twice, and Lydia’s view of her husband was distorted by alcohol and a loveless marriage. But from somewhere deep inside his skull, from that atrophied little nodule that responded to intuition and emotional radiation, a voice was saying that Harry had it all wrong. DeMarco was still trying to figure out what to do when his phone rang.

“There’s a dark blue sedan parked fifty yards from your house,” Emma said. “The two men in it followed you this morning when you went to the Russell Building.”

“You’re kidding,” DeMarco said.

“Does it sound like I’m kidding? Leave by your back door and meet me at Paolo’s.” Paolo’s was a restaurant in Georgetown within walking distance of DeMarco’s house.

“I can’t leave just yet,” DeMarco said, and explained the situation with young Stanford.

“A woman asked
you
to babysit her child? She should be reported to social services.” Before DeMarco could pretend to be offended, Emma said, “Then as soon as the kid leaves, sneak out your back door. Leave the lights on and the TV blaring.”

Stanford’s aunt arrived a few minutes later, and as the boy was leaving, DeMarco said, “Stanford, you have a lot of talent. I enjoyed listening to you play.”

“Ah, any dope can play a piano. You oughta see me play Nintendo.”

“The kid’s leaving,” Jimmy said. “But the woman who picked him up ain’t the same one who dropped him off.”

He and Carl had seen the first woman knock on DeMarco’s door, a baby in her arms, the little redheaded shit at her side. DeMarco had talked to the woman, then the redhead went inside DeMarco’s place, and the woman and the baby took off in a cab. And now some other woman comes and picks up the kid. It looked like the neighbor had just asked DeMarco to watch her brat for a while. Jimmy wasn’t sure, but that’s what it looked like to him. The good news was they’d actually have something to report to Eddie. No way in hell was he going to tell Eddie that they’d lost this guy twice in two days.

“I wonder why that broad left her kid with him,” Carl said.

“I dunno,” Jimmy said.

“And where the hell was he all day?”

Here we go again, Jimmy thought. The questions. And if that wasn’t enough, his nose still hurt where that airbag had whacked it. Those airbags were dangerous.

“You know,” Jimmy said, “instead of asking stupid questions all the time why don’t you think about what we’re gonna do if Eddie says to take care of this guy. And open your goddamn window! How many times do I have to tell you? That fuckin’ smoke just kills my sinuses.”

Carl rolled his eyes, but he opened the window. “We could do a hit-and-run,” he said after a bit. “That’d work.”

“Nah, too risky these days. I mean if you do it out in the country, that’s okay. But in the city, forget it. They got cameras everywhere. Like that wreck yesterday. Who’d a thought there’d be a camera at that intersection?”

“Yeah. Good thing we got fake IDs. My insurance rates are already through the roof.”

“So you got any ideas,” Jimmy said, “other than a hit-and-run?”

“No, I guess not. You know, it’d sure be nice if once in awhile we could just
pop
these assholes. Always tryin’ to make these things look accidental is a pain in the butt. How ’bout you, you got any ideas or you just gonna run down my ideas?”

“Yeah, actually I do,” Jimmy said. “You know how his garage is attached to his house?”

“It’s under the house.”

“I know,” Jimmy said. “It’s
attached.
”

DeMarco’s garage was in the basement of his home. When he entered his driveway, he drove downward, under the first floor of the house. Adjacent to the garage, on the basement level, was a room that contained DeMarco’s washer and dryer, the furnace, and the water heater.

“Anyway, remember today,” Jimmy said, “when we went inside? Well, his bedroom is right over the garage.”

“So?”

“So we go in there and we drill a couple of holes in the garage ceiling, which is his bedroom floor. We drill the holes so they come out
under his bed. Say we do that tomorrow. Then whenever we get the call from Eddie, we wait until he falls asleep and we go in the garage and start his car. Maybe we leave the door between the garage and the rest of the house open for good measure.”

“You gotta be shittin’ me,” Carl said.

“No. The reason I thought of it was a couple months ago out in Idaho, Oregon, one of them places, this guy and his wife killed themselves that way. I mean an accident, not suicide. The guy left the car runnin’ in the garage, they went to bed, and they woke up dead. Carbon monoxide.”

“The guy left his car runnin’ all night?”

“Yeah. Motors on these new cars are so quiet you can’t even hear ’em.”

“But won’t he wake up when we start the car?”

“Maybe, but if we wait until he’s snorin’ away, he probably won’t hear it. And if he does . . . well, then I guess we’ll just smother him or something and stick him back in bed.”

“What if the car runs out of gas?”