The Second Perimeter (16 page)

* * *

CARMODY WAS LYING
on the bunk in his cell, staring at the ceiling. He seemed pensive to DeMarco, displaying none of the smart-ass demeanor he’d exhibited during his interrogation. No, pensive wasn’t quite it. Sad, that was it. He seemed sad. He had the eyes of a man staring into his past, remembering better times and brighter days. Then it occurred to DeMarco that he was reading too much into Carmody’s expression. The guy was in jail; of course he looked sad.
Just then Carmody realized DeMarco and Diane Carlucci were standing outside his cell. He rose effortlessly to a sitting position and stood up. “Can I help you?” he said, the let’s-play twinkle back in his eyes.
“Yeah,” DeMarco said. “I just want to know one thing. Who killed Dave Whitfield?”
The expression in Carmody’s eyes changed. “It was too bad about him, and I mean that. That should never have happened.” DeMarco sensed Carmody was being sincere.
“So why did it?”
“Whitfield was fixated on Mulherin and Norton; he was always watching them. The morning he was killed, he overheard Norton talking to Mulherin about burning a CD.”
“So who killed him?”
“My control. Norton called me and told me they’d been busted by Whitfield, and I called my control.”
DeMarco believed him. “And the witness, the guy who saw Conran walking down the alley? Was he telling the truth?”
“No, I paid him. Go back and squeeze him and he’ll tell you.” Carmody paused. “On second thought, he might not tell you. My control may have taken care of him, too, by now.”
There was that flicker again in Carmody’s eyes. The possible death of the lying witness bothered him, DeMarco could tell.
“Okay,” DeMarco said, “that’s all I wanted to know. Wait a minute, that guy Berry back in D.C., the guy who awarded you the training contract? Did you have him killed too?”
“No,” Carmody said. “He was a drunk. He just ran his car off the road.”
“But you did bribe him to give you the contract,” DeMarco said.
“Yeah,” Carmody said.
DeMarco couldn’t think of anything else to ask him. “You want to ask anything, Diane?” he said.
Diane shook her head no.
DeMarco turned to leave then stopped and turned back to face Carmody.
“Who were the bottle rockets for?” he asked.
“What?” Carmody said, confused by the question.
“When we searched your place we found a box in your basement containing some toys and bottle rockets. Who were they for?”
“Oh, that,” Carmody said. “They were for my nephew. I forgot to mail the package.”
Diane Carlucci looked at DeMarco then over at Carmody. She pulled out a small notebook and wrote something down.

D
eMarco stopped by Emma’s room to tell her good-bye before he left Vancouver.
After he had met with Carmody at the jail, DeMarco had called Mahoney to fill him in on what was happening.
“Yeah, you might as well come on home,” Mahoney had said. “The FBI will get this North Korean spy, controller, whatever the fuck he is, and then they’ll spend the next six or seven months questioning him and Carmody. I got stuff for you to do back here.”
DeMarco was relieved. Even though he wanted to spend more time with Diane, he was tired of living out of a suitcase. But Emma apparently wasn’t.
“You really should come with me,” DeMarco said to her. “It’s an FBI show from here on in. There’s nothing else for you to do.”
The day after tomorrow, Carmody was to meet his control and hand over a package of classified information. At that point the FBI, with the assistance of the Canadians, would swoop in and grab the North Korean agent. The FBI had wanted the meeting to take place on U.S. soil to avoid complications with the Canadians, but Carmody said the time and place of the meeting were already set and he wasn’t able to contact his control to change it.
“I’m not leaving until this is finished,” Emma said. Before DeMarco could argue further, she added, “What time does your plane leave for D.C.?”
“Midnight,” DeMarco said. Since Diane wouldn’t have dinner with him he saw no reason to stick around until tomorrow.
“You’re going to have to hustle to make it.”
DeMarco’s rental car was still in Bremerton. He had to get from Vancouver to Bremerton to pick up the car, and then get to SeaTac airport for his flight to D.C. He had tried to get Smith to send him back to Bremerton in a helicopter, but Smith had laughed in his face. So he was flying commercial from Vancouver to SeaTac, taking a shuttle bus to Bremerton where’d he pick up the rental car and then drive back to SeaTac. Which reminded him…
“Is there any way you can get Smith to pick up the tab for the damage the Wang brothers did to my rental car?”
Emma laughed.
Great, DeMarco thought. He bet the damn Wangs had done a thousand bucks’ worth of damage to the car. If his insurance didn’t cover it, he was going to pad the hell out of his expense account.
“Is the FBI going to let you in on the bust?” DeMarco asked.
“Nope,” Emma said. “I’ll be observing from a safe distance. That’s all Harris will let me do, and he’s not too happy about that.”
“Emma, Harris may be a horse’s ass but I think he can handle this.”
“Maybe so,” Emma said, “but there’s something wrong here and I’m not leaving until I find out what it is.”
“Well, I gotta get goin’,” DeMarco said, and turned to leave the room. His hand was on the doorknob when Emma’s phone rang. She answered the phone and made a gesture for DeMarco to wait. He heard her say, “Oh, my God. How could that have happened?” She listened a few more minutes and hung up.
“That was Bill Smith,” she said. “John Washburn committed suicide.”
“Shit,” DeMarco said. “Did he talk first?”
“No.”
“How did he kill himself?”
“A ballpoint pen. He got the damn pen from his lawyer, and after the lights were out, he gouged his wrists with the tip of the thing until he opened up his veins.”
DeMarco winced at the image.
“Goddamnit!” Emma said. “Now we don’t know what the son of a bitch took or who’s running him. Whoever’s running this— and it’s
not
the Koreans— is one lucky SOB.”
She didn’t tell DeMarco that she’d had the sensation that someone had been following her for the last two days.

M
ahoney’s secretary was not at her desk. In fact the only one in the office was a kid, probably an intern, who looked about sixteen years old. She was busy flipping pages in a bill that was twice the size of a D.C. phone book and she didn’t even look up as DeMarco entered the room. Every phone in the office was ringing.
There was clearly a legislative scramble in progress, and Mahoney, the general, had dispersed his troops. DeMarco walked down the corridor to the Speaker’s office. When he stuck his head in the door and saw Mahoney had a visitor, he turned to leave, to wait until Mahoney’s guest was gone, but Mahoney said, “Come on in, Joe. We’re almost done here.”
DeMarco stepped into the office and remained standing. Mahoney’s visitor glanced over his shoulder to see who was behind him, clearly irritated at the interruption. Or maybe, since he was with Mahoney, he was irritated before DeMarco got there.
The man with Mahoney was James Whitlock. He was a frail-looking six-footer with thin arms, a thin neck, and a concave chest. He wore a poorly fitting gray suit, glasses with bifocal lenses, and a bow tie. The expression on his face could best be described as fussy. He had “nitpicker” written all over him.
If you placed James Whitlock’s photograph on a table with five other photographs, and then asked ten strangers to pick out the man who was most likely the House parliamentarian, all ten people would point at Whitlock’s picture without hesitating. And they would be right.
The operating rules for Congress are complex. They are so complex that few people other than James Whitlock understood them all. One time DeMarco, for reasons he couldn’t remember, looked up the definition of a quorum. Sounds pretty simple: you gotta have X number of politicians to make a decision. Right? Wrong. The rules for what constituted a quorum went on for sixty pages and, judging by the footnotes and references, sixty pages of regulations barely scratched the surface.
So like in any other game— be it baseball or politics— an understanding of the regulations gives a player an advantage. The Speaker knew most of the rules— he’d been around so long that he’d absorbed them by osmosis as opposed to study— but there were occasions, and apparently this was one of them, where Mahoney was attempting to use some obscure parliamentary convention to gain an advantage.
“So you think this’ll work, Jimmy?” Mahoney said.
DeMarco saw Whitlock wince at the “Jimmy.” He was a James not a Jimmy.
“It’s not a matter of it
working
, Mr. Speaker,” Whitlock said. “Rules are rules. Procedures are procedures. I’ve merely given you the correct interpretation of this particular rule.”
“If the rules weren’t so fuckin’ convoluted they wouldn’t need to be interpreted,” Mahoney grumbled.
“Sir, we’ve discussed this before. The procedures are perfectly logical, based on history and precedent and the Constitution. You just need to—”
“Yeah, right,” Mahoney said. “But this’ll work, right? Bradshaw won’t be able to amend the bill unless—”
“Yes, sir. It will
work
,” Whitlock said, “if you insist on putting it that way.”
“Well, okay,” Mahoney said. “Thanks for coming, Jimmy. As always, I appreciate it. By the way, do you still drink that god-awful Spanish sherry?”
Whitfield smiled, his lips pursing as if he’d just sucked a lemon. “I do, Mr. Speaker,” he said. “A small glass every night after dinner.”
Mahoney picked up a pen and made a note to send Whitlock a case of his favorite sherry.
After Whitlock left, Mahoney said to DeMarco, “That guy’s indispensable. He’s bailed me out more times than you can believe. Even Perry doesn’t understand the rules like him.”
Perry was Perry Wallace, Mahoney’s chief of staff.
“And that Whitlock, he’s something else. I’ll bet you’re thinkin’, with his bow tie and that priggish expression that’s always on his face, that he’s some sort of old maid, a bird-watcher, a stamp collector, something like that. Don’t you?”
“I suppose,” DeMarco said, “but I’ve never talked to the man.”
“Well, ol’ Jimmy has a wife who’s twenty years younger than him and she’s got more curves than a bad mountain road. And from everything I’ve heard…”
And Mahoney heard everything.
“…they’re a happy couple. And he’s got a bigger gun collection than the head of the IRA.”
DeMarco wondered if Mahoney meant the NRA.
Mahoney lit a cigar and poured from the Stanley thermos he kept on his desk. The aroma of rich coffee, old bourbon, and expensive tobacco filled the room.
“So the FBI’s busting up this spy ring today,” Mahoney said.
“Yeah,” DeMarco said. He looked at his watch. “It might be over by now. It’s already twelve thirty in Vancouver.”
“I talked to Frank Hathaway. He’s still pretty upset with you, about his nephew, but at least now he knows why it happened. He’s gonna arrange for some kinda medal to be given to Whitfield’s wife when this is all over.”
“That’s good,” DeMarco said.
“No it’s not, but it’s the best he can do.” Mahoney sipped his bourbon-laced coffee and reflected on life’s inequities— for about two seconds. “And your pal, Emma,” he said, “she still thinks something funny’s goin’ on out there?”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t know what. She’s just hanging around until they wrap it up.”
“If I was those FBI guys, I’d listen to Emma.”
“Me, too,” DeMarco said. “So why’d you want to see me?”
“Aw, there’s this guy, a state house guy, back home. I’ve known him forever and he’s been acting squirrelly lately. There’ve been three times in the last couple of months where he’s voted the wrong way. The last time he did it, I called his ass up and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing, and he gives me some bullshit about voting his conscience. He doesn’t have a conscience. I want you to find out what’s going on.”
“Okay,” DeMarco said.
“He probably put his hand— or his dick— in the wrong cookie jar and somebody from the other side caught him and now they’re telling him how to vote. So you need to get up there and straighten his ass out.”
“What’s his name?” DeMarco said. He’d been hoping to spend a few days in D.C. before heading out again, but at least this trip he’d know what he was dealing with: a stupid politician, not a bunch of spies.

* * *

DEMARCO DESCENDED THE
stairway from Mahoney’s office to the great rotunda, then pushed his way through groups of tourists to reach another set of stairs. He heard a tour guide, for the zillionth time, say that it was the Italian Brumidi who had painted the ceiling one hundred and eighty feet above their heads, a painting in which Washington looked more like Zeus than the Virginia farmer that he’d been. DeMarco finally reached
his
staircase— the one leading to the subbasement, to his office near the emergency diesel generator room.
There was a reason DeMarco dwelled beneath ground: he was not an official member of Mahoney’s staff. His father’s notoriety had prevented DeMarco from being hired by a reputable law firm when he graduated from college, and as he’d told Diane Carlucci, his godmother, dear Aunt Connie, had used her influence to help him get his civil service job. What he had not told Diane was the reason his godmother had influence: she had once had an affair with Mahoney. And the Speaker, though willing to provide DeMarco employment to appease an old lover, did not, however, want an official connection to the son of a Mafia hood. So DeMarco was given a small drab space in the subbasement, a meaningless title (
Counsel Pro Tem for Liaison Affairs
), and a position in the legislative branch of government that showed up on no organizational chart associated with the Speaker of the House.
DeMarco passed his office door and walked twenty feet farther down the corridor to another office. Sitting at a desk, his broad brow furrowed in concentration, was a large black man with a glistening bald head studying a spreadsheet about two feet square. The man was Curtis Jackson; he supervised the Capitol’s often maligned janitors.
Jackson looked up at DeMarco, then back down at the spreadsheet, and said, “I gotta give these guys all these different shifts these days. Some of ’em come to work at six, some at seven, some at nine. They’re takin’ night classes, or they gotta get their brats to day care, or they gotta drop off their damn wives at work. And
I
gotta plan around
their
damn schedules. When I started out, the boss said, ‘Boy, you’re workin’ swing shift,’ and that was
it
. There wasn’t any of this odd-shift, flextime bullshit. In those days you were just damn glad to have a job.”
“Nobody knows da troubles I seen,” DeMarco half sang.
“Yeah, and fuck you, too. What do you want?”
“You know a good mechanic, one that won’t charge me a hundred bucks an hour?”
“Why? That piece of crap you drive break down again?”
“No. I’m thinkin’ about buying this used car, a BMW Z3, and—”
“You? A sports car?”
“Yeah. What’s so strange about that?” DeMarco asked.
Jackson shrugged. “I don’t know. I just have a hard time seeing you in a little convertible, the wind blowing through your hair. Or better yet, you wearin’ one of them little flat caps. No, you’re more a sedan kinda guy.”
“Am not.”
“Huh,” Jackson said.
DeMarco didn’t know what that meant.
“Anyway,” DeMarco said, “the car, the Z, has sixty-four thousand miles on it, and I want somebody to look it over, somebody who knows what he’s doing.”
“Yeah, I know a guy,” Jackson said. “He works nights here.”
“You sure he knows his way around new cars, you know, the ones with all these electronic ignitions and catalytic converters and stuff?”
“He used to steal cars before he found Jesus, Joe. He knows what to look for.”
Nothing like having friends in low places.