The Second Perimeter (10 page)

* * *

DEMARCO FOUND NORTON
and Mulherin where Emma had said they’d be, drinking beer near the empty stage. He was about to approach their table, when he saw Norton stand. Norton said something to Mulherin— something DeMarco assumed wasn’t kind— because Mulherin gave Norton’s departing back the finger.
Mulherin sat drinking a few minutes by himself, a petulant expression on his long face, the expression of a man who had just received an ass chewing that he didn’t think he deserved. Mulherin finished his beer, ordered another one, then walked over to a craps table and started losing money.
Mulherin had just placed a red five-dollar chip in the section of the craps table called the “Field.” The Field was essentially a sucker’s bet, a one-roll, even-money bet on all the numbers on the dice that had the least chance of hitting. Only novices— and morons— played the Field.
DeMarco walked up next to Mulherin and placed a big hand on Mulherin’s shoulder. “Dumb bet, Ned,” DeMarco said. “You read any book on craps, it’ll tell you that.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Mulherin said. “Are you following me?” Mulherin tried to pull away from the hand on his shoulder, but DeMarco just squeezed and pulled Mulherin closer.
“Yep,” DeMarco said.
“You can’t—”
“That wasn’t smart, Ned, running to Carmody right after we talked. You’re gonna make him nervous. He’s gonna think you can’t hold your water. I don’t think you want a guy like Carmody thinking things like that, Ned.”
The craps table wasn’t busy, only three other players, and the pit boss had been watching the exchange between Mulherin and DeMarco. He couldn’t hear what DeMarco was saying, but he could see DeMarco’s hand on Mulherin’s shoulder and could tell that Mulherin was scared. The pit boss— a man intimately familiar with the problems of bad gamblers— wondered if DeMarco was a guy trying to collect a debt.
“Sir,” the pit boss said to Mulherin, “is this gentleman bothering you?”
Mulherin got an expression on his face similar to that of a drowning man who’d just been thrown a rope. “Yeah,” he said. “He’s, he’s…”
“Sir,” the pit boss said to DeMarco, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” The pit boss didn’t care if Mulherin owed some loan shark money. Mulherin was the player, and right now he was in the Indians’ casino losing his money.
“Sure,” DeMarco said to the pit boss. He took his hand off Mulherin’s shoulder and gave him a friendly slap on the back, a hard little thump that rocked Mulherin forward. “I can always talk to ol’ Ned here later. I know where he lives.”

* * *

AS EMMA DROVE
, she wiped the lipstick from her mouth with a Kleenex and took off the wig. She replaced the wig with a dark blue Calvin Klein baseball cap. Carmody drove less than five miles from the casino before he pulled off the highway and took the access road to a small state park, the Faye Bainbridge State Park.
Emma wasn’t certain but she figured the park had only one exit, and that Carmody would have to leave the park by the same road that he’d entered. Whatever the case, she knew it would be unwise to follow Carmody into the park in her car as he would be almost certain to see her. So she pulled off to the side of the access road and pushed the switch to start the emergency flashers. It would appear as if her car had broken down and she had gone to find a phone to call for aid. She locked the car and sprinted down the access road in the direction Carmody’s car had gone. She saw a flash of red ahead of her: Carmody’s Taurus. It wasn’t moving. She left the access road and veered off into the woods surrounding the parking area. She moved carefully through the woods until she found a small, thick stand of trees where she could hide and still see Carmody’s car.
Carmody was just sitting in his car, and as Emma watched, he rolled down the windows to let in some air and adjusted his seat to a partially reclining position as if he expected to be there for a while.
Emma was hoping Carmody had come to the park to meet his control. She knew
somebody
was controlling this operation— assuming there was an operation. Mulherin had done what she had expected him to do: he had reported to Carmody immediately after DeMarco had talked to him. Now she was hoping Carmody would take the next step and report to his control— and then Emma would follow that person.
Carmody appeared to be sleeping in his car. Emma wondered momentarily if he’d just decided to come to the park to take a nap, but that seemed unlikely. After he’d been there exactly one hour, she saw Carmody raise his arm and look at his wristwatch. Then he readjusted his seat and started his car.
Emma watched from her place in the trees as he drove out of the park, then she ran back to her car, cursing under her breath. She was going to lose him.

* * *

THE ASIAN WOMAN
had arrived at the rendezvous point fifteen minutes before Carmody. As she always did, she would wait for a while before approaching his car. She had waited half an hour, and had been about to come out of the woods when a movement in the bushes
behind
Carmody’s car caught her eye. She took a pair of binoculars out of her shoulder bag and focused on the spot. She didn’t see anything for almost ten minutes, then the bushes moved again, and a face appeared in the lenses of her binoculars. The woman inhaled sharply; she had to bite her lower lip to keep from crying out.
She just sat and watched for twenty minutes, doing nothing, remaining absolutely still. And it was hard for her to stay still because she was literally trembling with rage. If she had had a gun with her she might have shot the woman in the bushes right then. Finally, she saw Carmody start his car and drive away, and then she watched as the woman ran out of the bushes, most likely going back to her car to follow Carmody.
A moment later the Asian woman stepped from her hiding place. She knew that most people thought of her as cold and unemotional— and she was. Her emotions had been cauterized a long time ago. But if anyone had been there to see her at that moment they would have had no trouble at all reading the hatred burning in her eyes.

D
eMarco was still bird-dogging Mulherin.
He was sitting in his rental car, parked half a block from Mulherin’s house. He was pretty certain where Mulherin was going this evening. He had found out that Mulherin was a member of the Elks, and tonight was the Elks’ weekly Texas hold’em poker tournament, which Mulherin never missed. Sure enough, at six forty-five, the front door of Mulherin’s cluttered house swung open and he appeared wearing a sport jacket, a dress shirt sans tie, gray slacks, and loafers. The guy was dressed so nicely that DeMarco wondered if he might be meeting an Elkette at his club.
Mulherin climbed into a Ford Explorer and backed down his driveway. Because he was fiddling with his car radio, he didn’t notice DeMarco when he drove right past him. DeMarco made a U-turn and followed, letting Mulherin get a block ahead of him.
A mile from his house, Mulherin and DeMarco passed through an industrial area. There was a large warehouse on one side of the street and on the other side were buildings that advertised welding and auto body repair and marine diesel services. The businesses were closed for the day and there were no pedestrians on the street. DeMarco glanced over at a sign advertising used crab pots for sale and wondered what a crab pot was— something you caught ’em in or something you cooked ’em in? When he turned his head to face forward, he saw a black Honda sedan with tinted windows in his rearview mirror. The Honda was gaining on him, moving fast, and blew past DeMarco, then past Mulherin’s Explorer. The Honda was fifty yards in front of Mulherin’s vehicle when the driver hit his brakes and simultaneously turned the car sideways, blocking Mulherin’s path. Mulherin slammed on his brakes to avoid broadsiding the Honda, the rear of the Explorer fishtailing as he did so.
“Jesus!” DeMarco said and stopped his car. He was a half a block away from Mulherin’s vehicle.
Two men exited the Honda. Both were Asian, both over six feet tall, and they looked very fit. They wore jeans and white T-shirts that were tight to their bodies— and they were both holding pistols in their hands, and silencers were attached to the barrels of the pistols.
The men raised their weapons. Mulherin shrieked in fright, put his car into reverse, and started to back up, but before he had traveled ten yards one of the men fired bullets into the Explorer’s front tires. The other man fired at the same time, a single shot that went through Mulherin’s front windshield, missing Mulherin’s face by less than a foot. Before the men could fire again, and with a speed that surprised both DeMarco and the shooters, Mulherin flung open his door and began running down the road— toward DeMarco.
DeMarco immediately stepped on the gas pedal and closed the distance between him and the fleeing Mulherin. The Asians, instead of chasing after Mulherin, took up shooting positions— legs spread, a two-handed grip on their weapons— and fired at Mulherin. Two bullets struck the asphalt near Mulherin’s feet, another ricocheted off a garbage can sitting on the sidewalk. Mulherin screamed, “Help! Jesus Christ, help me!” Mulherin at this point was running so fast he was having a hard time maintaining his balance and he stumbled, almost falling— which was a good thing as this made him a harder target.
DeMarco, by this time, had reached Mulherin. He stopped his car, flung open the passenger-side door, and screamed, “Mulherin, get in!”
Mulherin leaped into DeMarco’s car and immediately put his head down so it was below the level of the windshield. DeMarco put his car in reverse and jammed down the gas pedal. As he was backing away, going at least forty miles an hour in reverse, the shooters fired their weapons. One bullet hit the mirror on the driver’s side door, and blew it completely off the car. The other bullet hit DeMarco’s front windshield, punched a neat hole through the windshield, then shattered the rear window into a thousand pieces.
“Son of a bitch!” DeMarco screamed.
DeMarco didn’t know how to do one of those fancy driving maneuvers where you spin a car going full speed in reverse so it ends up pointed in the opposite direction. So he did the only thing he could do. He stayed in reverse until he reached the next intersection, hit the brakes, jammed the transmission into drive, and turned the corner. As he was turning, he looked up the street: the Asians were running back toward their Honda. DeMarco pushed the car up to sixty and stayed at that speed until he reached a busy street with lots of vehicles and pedestrians around.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Mulherin said.
DeMarco didn’t answer; he was looking for the black Honda. He didn’t see it.
“We need to call the cops,” Mulherin said.
“Shut up,” DeMarco said. “And keep your head down where nobody can see it.”
“But who the hell were those guys?” Mulherin said.
“You know damn good and well who they were,” DeMarco said.
“What?” Mulherin said.
DeMarco ignored Mulherin and took out his cell phone and punched a speed-dial button. “Emma, it’s Joe,” he said into the phone. “They tried to pop Mulherin.”
DeMarco was silent for a moment then said, “Okay. It’ll take me ten or fifteen minutes to get there.”
“Where are we going?” Mulherin said.
“Someplace where your useless ass will be protected. Now keep your head down and your mouth shut.”
DeMarco drove around for a brief period to make sure the Honda wasn’t nearby, then got onto Highway 3. Four miles later he took the exit for the Naval Submarine Base. He drove up to the security gate and showed his ID to the guard. The guard must have known that he was coming because he didn’t ask to see Mulherin’s ID nor did he ask about the bullet hole in the front windshield. DeMarco drove half a mile until he came to a windowless, single-story building. There was no name on the outside of the building, just a three-digit number.
“What are we doing at the sub base?” Mulherin asked.
“Come on,” DeMarco said and exited his car and walked toward the building. Mulherin hesitated a moment, then followed. They entered the building, walked down a narrow, brightly lit hallway until they came to an open door. The room contained a small wooden table and two wooden chairs. The only thing on the cinder-block walls of the room was a government-issue clock. Emma was sitting alone at the table, and on the table was a pitcher of water, two glasses, and a tape recorder.
“Hello, Mr. Mulherin,” Emma said.
“Am I under arrest?” Mulherin asked.
“No,” Emma said, “you’re a material witness under protective custody.”
“I want a lawyer,” Mulherin said.
“What happened?” Emma said to DeMarco, ignoring Mulherin’s demand. He told her how the men, both Asians, had shot up Mulherin’s car, nearly killing him. “If I hadn’t been following him, they would have nailed his ass,” DeMarco said.
“I want a lawyer,” Mulherin said again.
“No,” Emma said. “A lawyer is not an option available to you. Either you tell me what you’ve been doing or we’ll take you back to your house where you’ll most likely be killed. What’s it going to be?”
Mulherin hesitated. He must have felt something on his face because he reached up at that moment and touched his cheek. There was a small cut on his cheek that was bleeding slightly; the cut had been caused by glass fragments from the bullet that had struck his front windshield. Mulherin looked in wonder at the blood on his fingertips then sat down at the table.
“Where’s the restroom?” DeMarco asked.
“Down the hall,” Emma said in an irritated tone.
Like
she
never had to pee, DeMarco was thinking.
DeMarco left the interrogation room and walked down a narrow hallway. As he passed one room, he heard people talking and pushed open the door. There were two men in the room, one seated behind a desk, one in a chair in front of the desk. Both men had their feet up on the desk and were drinking Cokes. It was the two men who had tried to kill Mulherin.
“You motherfuckers!” DeMarco said.
The two men started laughing.
“You wanna Coke?” one of the men said. “Come on, have a Coke.”
The two men had earlier identified themselves as Jim and Tom Wang, the Wang brothers. DeMarco assumed their names were not Wang and that they weren’t brothers. Fucking spies all had a weird sense of humor. Neither of the men sounded Asian; they spoke as if they had been raised in California or some other part of the United States that didn’t imprint an identifiable accent on its citizens.
“No, I don’t wanna damn Coke. I wanna know if you’re nuts!”
“Hey,” Jim Wang said, “Emma said to make it look good.”
“That one shot,” DeMarco said, “the one you put through the windshield? It missed my head by about two fuckin’ inches!”
“No it didn’t,” the other Wang said. “I missed you by a foot. It was an easy shot. I was nowhere close to hitting you.”
“My ass, you weren’t,” DeMarco said, which just made the Wangs laugh some more. These were two sadistic bastards, DeMarco thought.
“And you shot the
shit
out of my car,” DeMarco said. “It’s a rental, goddamnit, and I didn’t get the insurance.”
“You didn’t get the insurance?” Tom Wang said. “Oh, man, that’s gonna cost you. Maybe your own insurance will cover it.”
“Bullet holes! You think my insurance covers fuckin’ bullet holes in rental cars?”
This caused the Wangs to go into convulsions.
Emma was guessing that Carmody was most likely working for the Chinese. It could have been somebody else— Russians, maybe Iranians or North Koreans, or even the Indians— but Emma figured the best bet was the Chinese. The Russians, these days, were in the midst of such political and economic chaos that they were having a hard time just keeping their fleet afloat, whereas the Chinese were building up their fleet, determined to become a real naval power. And thus the Wang brothers, two Chinese Americans.
“Who are they?” DeMarco had asked when he had been introduced to the Wangs. “Military? FBI? Who?”
“Military. Guys from my old outfit,” Emma had said.
“I thought your old outfit wasn’t going to provide any manpower.”
“They weren’t, so I called somebody higher up the food chain than Bill Smith, somebody who owes me.”
DeMarco wondered if Emma had blackmailed one of her ex-bosses. Probably.
“But I was told,” Emma had said, “that if this didn’t pan out, we wouldn’t be getting any more help.”
After cursing the Wangs one last time, DeMarco visited the restroom and then returned to the room where Emma was questioning Mulherin. Mulherin was still seated at the table, looking down at it. DeMarco had heard the term “mulish” before, but had never seen an expression on a man’s face that so aptly met that description.
Emma, arms crossed over her chest, sat looking at Mulherin, her blue eyes chips of ice. She didn’t look any happier than Mulherin. She glanced up at DeMarco when he entered the room.
“Mr. Mulherin,” Emma said to DeMarco, “insists that he and his friends have been doing nothing illegal and that he has no idea why anyone would want to kill him. I’ve explained to Mr. Mulherin— repeatedly— that his control has decided to wrap up their little operation, and that includes getting rid of loose ends like him. Mr. Mulherin, however, lives in some sort of fantasy world. He thinks he’s going to go back home and this will all be over, like it never happened, like it was some sort of bad dream. Mr. Mulherin is dumber than a rock.”
Mulherin didn’t even look up when Emma insulted him.
“Mulherin,” DeMarco said, “who do you think those guys were? Carjackers with silenced weapons?”
“I wanna go,” Mulherin said.
“I give up,” Emma said. “Joe, take this fool back to his house. Drop him off right at his front door and leave him there.”
“Hey, wait a minute!” Mulherin said. “Maybe you could take me to…uh…how ’bout the ferry terminal?”
“No,” Emma said. “You are going home and you are on your own. Joe, after you get rid of him, meet me back at the motel.” Emma rose from her chair and walked from the room.
On the drive back to his house, Mulherin sat in the passenger seat staring down into his lap. DeMarco could guess what was going through his mind. Could he trust Carmody and Norton? What would he do when he got home? Where would he run to?
When they reached Mulherin’s house, Mulherin looked around, wild-eyed.
“What if they’re waiting for me in my house?” Mulherin said.
“Beat it,” DeMarco said.
“Why can’t you just take me to the ferry terminal?” Mulherin said.
“Because I want those guys to shoot your traitorous ass off,” DeMarco said. “Now either tell me what you’re up to or get the hell out of the car.”
Mulherin looked over at DeMarco for a moment, small eyes begging for mercy, then he opened the car door and sprinted for his house.
Emma’s plan had failed.