Sweat (20 page)

“Overseas labor is not a popular topic these days. Your assumptions merely confirmed my suspicion on your position.”

“No, overseas labor is not a popular drum to beat in the current political environment. But I don't let public opinion interfere with business either. Constituents just aren't privy to all the information that we as senators have at our disposal. I believe I was elected to make educated decisions for my constituents. Whether they realize it or not.”

“Thank you for your honesty, Senator.”

“You invest in real estate?”

“Dabble a bit.”

“You ever heard of Wellfleet Bay?”

Senator Day perked up. “Of course. It's a wildlife sanctuary on Cape Cod. Some of the most pristine land in my home state. A thousand acres of marsh and woodland, surrounded by spotless beaches. When I was a child, my grandfather took me clamming and fishing off the banks of Wellfleet Bay. Who knows, if God blesses me with a healthy son, maybe I can take him there someday.”

“Yes, Senator Day. It is beautiful land. Pristine, as you say.”

“Do you fish, Senator Wooten?”

“No, I don't even like the taste. But I do like real estate, Senator Day. I do like real estate. They just aren't making any more earth, and the law of supply and demand is being driven by an ever-increasing population and a finite supply of land.”

“Never have truer words been spoken.”

“Just north of Eastman on the Cape's west coast is a ten acre plot of land I have interest in. Only problem is that the land lies adjacent to a remote corner of the Wellfleet Bay sanctuary. No sense in buying the land if I can't develop it…”

Senator Day cringed as Senator Wooten described the plot of land with surveyor-like detail—information gleaned from online photos. Senator Wooten did love real estate. And he had spent the previous afternoon searching Massachusetts for a prime investment opportunity stalled by politics.

The two politicians drank coffee as Senator Wooten showed that he did indeed know the value of a vote. And if Senator Day could clear an inside tract to ten acres of idyllic real estate, he figured he could make a few million just divvying up the land and re-selling it.

“I'll be watching how you vote,” Senator Day said, leaving the office.

“And I will be checking your progress on my land,” Senator Wooten responded.

As Senator Day stepped into the afternoon air, the ulcer in his stomach bubbled. The combination of coffee on an empty stomach, and days of heavy liquor on a belly of coffee, burned a hole through the senator's stomach lining like hot grease poured into a plastic cup. He doubled over, eyes watering, and dug in his pocket for some ibuprofen, the finishing touch on the toxic waste in his gut.

One more vote and he could go home and say hi to his wife. Dana had the evening off, and his wife would be asleep by nine. He could drink himself silly in the privacy of his own home.

The last vote came at the hands of Andrew Thomas, senator from Montana, and virtual no name on The Hill. Senator Thomas was the youngest senator by three years, and Senator Day thought he still had enough seniority and slick-Willie, over-the-top charm to impress the new kid on the block. Especially a kid from Montana, home to a population of ten people per square mile.

Senator Day danced and kicked, sang and spun. For thirty minutes he felt up the young senator, fondled his beliefs, trying to manipulate the boy from Montana without giving any ground himself. He had done enough damage for one day. He had already written a check for a vote, an impeachable offense, and agreed to soil his childhood fishing ground with construction run-off and human waste. His charity was running thin.

Senator Thomas put on his innocent face, cherub cheeks fleshy under a mop of brown hair. He smiled the same smile that had won him the election and waited for Senator Day to run out of hot air.

“I'll give you the vote,” Senator Thomas said flatly.

“That is a good decision, son,” Senator Day responded with visible relief. The senior senator stood and stuck out his hand for a deal-sealing shake.

As Andrew Thomas rose from his seat to stick out his hand, he stopped. “And in return I'm just going to slip you right into my pocket. I'm going to save you for a rainy day, Senator Day. And when the day comes and I say ‘jump,' I fully expect your answer to be ‘how high?'”

Senator Day flinched and then nodded silently as Senator Thomas withdrew his hand without a shake. The boy knew his way around the political minefield. Senator Day took note to keep an eye on this kid. Someday, he might need a young man with his politically savvy, self-promotion, and survival techniques.

Senator Day left the office, promising to make good on his promise, and thinking about DiMarco. He was waiting for the word that the job had been done. Then life would be back to normal. Back to his wife, his new child, his undeniable political right to act like a senator without any distraction or repercussions.

The line to the entrance of the Spy Museum snaked down Eighth Street toward Chinatown and the Verizon Center. Chow Ying stood near the front of the triple-wide crowd sucking the sweet coating off the Advil pills in his mouth before swallowing the remains. The Mountain of Shanghai, his foot bandaged and throbbing, mixed with the tourists, rubbing shoulders with a smattering of intelligence buffs and ex-spook types waiting for a chance to admire the best display human ingenuity had to offer.

It was his third day off from surveillance. Hobbling on one leg was no way to try to kill a man. He had no idea if his ankle was broken or not, and he wasn't going to the doctor to find out. Ice, compression, and elevation were the self-prescribed treatment for the dark blue bruises on the oversized appendage. As soon as he could get his foot back in his shoe, he would be back in business.

Besides, Peter Winthrop had proven to be a hard target. He didn't come to the office with the same strict regularity as the rest of the building. Chow Ying had come to recognize dozens of faces coming and going, but in a week of stakeouts he had seen Peter get out of his black sedan-for-hire, enter the building, and move quickly into the lobby exactly one time. He had waited until midnight for him to exit the building, but the man he had met in Saipan over a month ago never showed his face. There were reasons. There was a private parking garage under the building and another exit facing the street around the corner. It was a lot of ground for one person to cover. It was impossible on one leg.

But Chow Ying had notched one hit under his belt in just over a week in the capital. And it had been a thing of beauty. No gun, no knife. No piano wire around the neck, no pillow over the face. And no suspicion. There was nothing on the news about a killer loose on the street, and there was nothing in the paper beyond a brief mention of an accident and the normal obituary. He now needed a plan to get both father and son, and when they joined their secretary underground, he could work on executing his long-term survival strategy.

He still carried the gun Mr. Wu had given him in New York in the back of his pants, his shirt pulled over it. But as a tool of an assassin, the gun had its drawbacks. He had never test fired the .38 caliber weapon, and with a loose pistol grip he couldn't be sure of its accuracy. He had wondered why Mr. Wu hadn't at least provided a new gun, perhaps one with a silencer, but deep down he knew the answer. Mr. Wu didn't expect Chow Ying to live that long. When C.F. Chang sends you on a mission to the U.S. and threatens to take your passport, contributing to a retirement account is a waste of good money.

As easy as it sounded, walking up behind Peter Winthrop and his son, if he could get them together, and blowing their brains out on the K Street sidewalk, would bring an immediate and intense police response. He knew from experience that you could stab someone on a crowded street and keep walking before anyone noticed. It was done everyday in prison by inmates with shivs. But fire a gun and mayhem would follow. Guns are noisy, and a prominent businessman murdered in the midst of gunfire on the sidewalk would draw attention. Without a major distraction to give him a chance for escape, opening fire on a public street was his last option.

Chow Ying stood behind the crowd control barrier on the sidewalk and thought about other concerns. Men are more difficult to kill. They fight more, cause a bigger scene, take longer to die. He didn't take any particular pleasure in killing women, but he had to admit they were easier to hunt, easier to kill. Taking out two men, one of who could identify him on sight, was going to be difficult. If he killed just one, the other would be suspicious. Two deaths in the same office over the span of a week would have everyone jumpy. Including the D.C. Police. Chow Ying needed to get them together. He was working through several scenarios in his head, all of them ending with a dash to the airport for the next plane out. With ten thousand in cash, he had enough money to run. Not far or long, but enough to get a head start.

The Spy Museum was a field day. He laid his fifteen bucks on the counter, got his ticket, and entered the new museum as giddy as a schoolboy. He breezed by the cryptology section and the biographies and busts of the most infamous names in the history of espionage. Agents, double agents, and triple agents. Heroes and traitors. He absorbed every word of the Israeli, Chinese, and Russian espionage sections. When Chow Ying entered the room named “Assassins and Tools of the Trade,” he slowed to a snail's pace. He didn't want to miss a thing.

Kate curled up on the canopy bed and took turns outlining the flowers on the wallpaper with her finger and staring out the window of her old bedroom in the Sorrentino mansion. It had been four days since Jake had walked out of a known topless joint with a stripper in each arm. For Kate, the image was still as fresh as the wound. But love, passion, and the loss of both made four days seem like four months. Her cell phone now rang every hour on the hour, down from the fifteen-minute intervals Jake called at the first day after his untimely exit. She kept the black Motorola within reach, and at one o'clock she checked the incoming call number on the small display screen. Jake had stopped leaving messages when her voice-mail became full, but he knew she was checking the phone display. All he needed was one chance to explain himself, to lay on a little charm. He had the truth on his side. He had apologized to the answering machine for acts not done, for causing images of dastardly deeds. In his heart, Jake didn't believe he was wrong, but he knew if he wanted to see Kate again, he would at least have to admit that he wasn't entirely right. It was a compromise, the key to relationships. Or so he heard. More flowers, chocolate, and a little poetry were all on deck as backup.

Kate was planning to mope around for a week and participate in a little shopping therapy with her mother on her father's credit. Staying at her parents's didn't affect her daily routine—riding ambulances out of the McLean Gardens station as an EMT four days a week, studying her medical books over coffee in the morning just to keep sharp. Three months was a long time for the soon-to-be-fourth-year medical student to retain the name and disposition of every muscle, bone, tendon, symptom, and illness she had memorized over the last three years. Her drive was remarkable, given the need not to have one at all. Riding ambulances, reviewing old medical books, and hanging out with Jake had been her plan for the summer. There was just something about him that she liked. It was everything.

James “Jimmy” Sorrentino was in the business of breaking impasses. The go-between, mediator, arbiter, and problem-solver. Real estate, construction, and waste removal were still his bread and butter, measurable businesses that kept him legitimate. They certainly looked better on the tax forms to the IRS than “self-employed problem-solver.”

Jimmy Sorrentino had been around the block and had the mental and physical scars to prove it. But like Sampson and Superman, he did have a weakness. And for the tough guy from Providence, Rhode Island, the chink in his armor came in the form of a five-foot-five beautiful brunette named Katherine Elizabeth, his only child, and more importantly, his only daughter. Seventy hours ago Kate had once again taken up residence at the Sorrentino house, spending most of the day moping and shedding the occasional tear. Neither of these bothered Jimmy. But the combination of mother and daughter was like a flame and an open gas valve. His daughter's presence emboldened his wife, turning her from upper-crust housewife into professional nag. He couldn't reach for a drink, or smoke his thirty-dollar cigars without someone telling him that he was killing himself.

Mr. Sorrentino gave Kate until the weekend to straighten herself out. She was twenty-six, not a teenager, and he had bought her a condo two years ago in the name of peace and quiet. He would be damned if Kate was going to live at his house again, energizing his wife to run her nails down his psychological chalkboard,
and
pay thirty-five hundred dollars a month for a condo to boot.

It wasn't the money, it was the principle. A man of principle up against two women.

With his daughter and wife at the kitchen table, Jimmy Sorrentino gave them the rules for living under his roof.

“Kate, you have until the weekend to mope around this house. Then you are going back to your apartment.”

“Don't listen to him honey, you are welcome to stay as long as you like,” Mrs. Sorrentino added with daggers in her eyes.

“Ignore your mother. This is my house and these are my rules. You come down with an illness, you can stay. You are in an accident, you can stay. You let me sell your condo in the city, you can move back in. But I will be goddamned if I paid a half a million dollars for a condo so you can sit around my house, tag-teaming me.”

“This is your flesh and blood here,” Mrs. Sorrentino said. “Don't listen to him, sweetie. He's full of hot air.”

“Cynthia, don't test me,” Jimmy Sorrentino said to his wife with authority.

“Blowhard,” his wife responded over her shoulder.

Cynthia Sorrentino grabbed her keys off the kitchen counter and turned toward Kate. “Let's go shopping, sweetheart. Let him calm down a bit.”

Jimmy Sorrentino had the last word. “Kate, I told you that kid was no good. Just because he's Catholic doesn't mean he's Italian.”

James Sorrentino continued talking to himself and cursing for five minutes after the ladies left. He felt better. A man has to posture once in a while. Beat the chest. Show them he was still the boss.

God, he hoped his daughter would get out of the house soon.

Vincent DiMarco had blown the first professional hit of his life and lived to tell about it. It had been a decade and a half since he stepped off the plane in Miami with nothing but a name, an address, and an order. It would have taken ten minutes to confirm the address, to make sure he was whacking the right guy, but it was ten minutes he didn't feel like wasting. The hit went down within an hour of his plane touching down, and DiMarco was back in Boston before dinner, treating himself to lobster tail.

The hit was easy and as an extra bonus, he was able to follow an old DiMarco credo that stated the better you were, the closer you could get to your victim. A young Vincent DiMarco had done just that. He had walked across the back yard to the dark-haired Italian man tending to his garden and had used the cord from the clothesline to finish the job. His wife of forty years found him three hours later, discolored, dangling, and dead.

The following morning Vincent grabbed a
Miami Herald
newspaper from a newsstand on the corner of Harvard Square that carried every major paper in the country. Paper under his arm, he headed for a diner down the street, away from the rich kids. He sipped his black coffee and flipped to the metro news section to read the details of his handiwork with pride. The death of a mistaken, innocent man didn't haunt him as persistently as those who hired him for the failed hit did. On Mother's Day in 1995, the payback came as he sat down to have dinner with his mom at a posh restaurant in Back Bay. The blood had spurted from his neck with enough force to cover two walls, the ceiling, and his mother. When he arrived at the hospital, he had lost sixty percent of his blood. But he lived, and he had learned a valuable lesson. A little patience and a little planning could make life simple.

Vincent DiMarco blended in with the Saipan locals like a white accountant in a rural Louisiana soul-food restaurant. What his harsh Boston accent didn't give away, his natural brash attitude did. Things were slow on Saipan, and the ruffian-for-hire was anything but. With beach attire, the scar on his neck was less noticeable than the tattoo on his left arm. The skin art had been a spur of the moment impulse, a Christmas day decision that would last the rest of his life. In a dingy tattoo parlor, he had narrowed down the selection to two choices—a detailed picture of St. Nick, or a ghoulish rendition of the Grim Reaper. The sickle that now crowned the top of his arm, just above the red hat with a white ball hanging on the end, showed he wasn't above compromise.

The son of an Italian father and South African mother, DiMarco traveled extensively before he could walk. Since his fifth birthday, when his Dad had taken him to see the family in the old country, he hadn't set foot outside of the continental United States. Until his meeting with the senator, he had never heard of Saipan. Three days after arriving on the sunny island, he found himself not wanting to leave.

He kept a low profile, eating at the cheap restaurants with tourist crowds and high customer turnover. He tried to avoid going to the same place more than once, but the pretty waitress at the Limbo, a dive with character and the largest shrimp he had ever seen, changed all that.

Unlike his Chinese counterpart on the other side of the world, DiMarco didn't have a face to go with his mark. He didn't have the benefit of a close-up encounter with the people he was coming to kill. No picture, no useful description.

When the cobwebs of jetlag finally cleared his mind, he drove down to the front of Chang Industries and played the lost tourist routine for all it was worth. A beach hat, sunglasses, a crazy Hawaiian shirt, and an unfolded map hid the scars, the tattoos, the camera, and the knives. He drove past Chang Industries twice in an unsuccessful attempt to circle the property and realized the map that came with the rental car was worthless. The single road leading to Chang Industries, and the guard booth at the gate, meant Vincent DiMarco was going to need an alternate entrance.

Still in tourist disguise, he pulled into the gravel parking lot of Saipan's official visitor's center and studied their wall of pamphlets and tourist attraction discounts. Whale watching and deep-sea fishing excursions. Go-cart racing. Scuba schools. He grabbed a newly published map of the island and smuggled out as many brochures as he could hold, the one-man staff too busy discussing local news and gossip on the phone to offer assistance. DiMarco pushed the door open with his butt and walked out of the wood-shingled building with enough material to teach a college course on the island. He spent the afternoon on the bed in his dingy hotel room, sucking down Marlboros and checking out the maps and brochures through the smoke until his head hurt from reading.

He couldn't help but think he should have charged more money for the job. The senator had failed to mention that the targets were locked away behind a fence with razor wire, with at least one guard covering the only entrance. He needed a back way into Chang Industries. The two hundred fifty thousand dollars that was sitting in a safe in an old car garage in Southie bolstered his patience, a virtue he had learned to appreciate. It was as critical to survival as never sitting with your back to the door, not even when you're having lunch with your own mother.