The Second Perimeter (27 page)

D
eMarco took a seat at his usual table in the restaurant on Capitol Hill where he had breakfast almost every day. Still a young man, but he’d become a creature of habit, a fact he found both troublesome and comforting. There were two things that were different this particular weekday morning though. The first was that he had the
Washington Post
open to the classified ads instead of the sports section. The second was that he was dressed in jeans and a golf shirt instead of one of his dark suits.
After breakfast he’d go over to the Capitol and find out what the procedure was for getting fired from a government job. There had to be a bunch of forms to fill out. There were always forms to fill out. And he had to find out about the money he’d paid in to his pension. The problem was that he didn’t know who to ask and he didn’t want to go to Mahoney’s office to find out.
He did notice that his paycheck had been deposited in his bank account, like it always was, during the time he’d been in Vancouver. Maybe that was his severance pay. If it was, his golden parachute was the size of a doily.
He saw one ad for a job as a process server. Oh, yeah. He could just see himself creeping up the stairs of a roach-infested apartment building that did double duty as a bordello and crack house. He’d knock on a door which would be answered by a guy wearing no shirt, his torso covered with jailhouse tattoos, and the guy would be the size of a defensive end. A pit bull would be standing at the guy’s side, its tiny, mean eyes fixed on DeMarco’s crotch. Then the guy would smile and say, “Get him, JoJo.”
Jesus, there had to be some office job he was qualified for, something that paid more than thirteen bucks an hour. What he really needed was a government job; he did
not
want to lose his pension. The post office hired crazy people. He’d go see them first.
His usual waitress came to his table and noticed he was out of uniform.
“Joe, honey, what is it? Casual Tuesday over at the Capitol?”
“Hey, Betty,” he said, ignoring the question.
“So what’s with the jeans?” persistent Betty said again, but before DeMarco could answer, Betty— a dyed blonde in her early fifties— said, “You know, you look kinda hunky in them jeans. You oughta wear ’em more often, give all us girls a thrill. So what are you havin’ this mornin’, sweetie? Your usual?”
“Just give him coffee,” a gruff voice said. “He’s got things to do. And bring me a cup, too.”
“Oh, Mr. Speaker,” Betty said, and she unconsciously reached a hand up to fluff her hair. For reasons DeMarco could never understand, Mahoney had that effect on any woman over fifty— and many under fifty. “I’ll get your coffee right away, gentlemen,” Betty said, bustling away.
Mahoney sat down heavily at DeMarco’s table. He started to say something then glanced at the newspaper lying on the table. He pushed the classified section aside with a thick finger and looked at the headlines on the front page of the sports section.
“Fuckin’ Red Sox,” he said. “They finally win a series, but here they go again. Nine goddamn games behind the Yankees and it’s August already. And can you believe they traded Mendoza? I’m tellin’ you, Joe, if I ever get tired of this job, I’m gonna apply for general manager of that team.”
Betty arrived with their coffees. “Here you go, Mr. Speaker,” she said.
“You’re a darlin’, m’love,” he said as he placed a thick paw lightly on one of Betty’s motherly hips. He pretended to look around as if afraid of being overheard and added, “Do you think, sweetheart, just maybe you could sneak back there into the bar and add a little jolt of Bushmills to that cup?”
“Of course, Mr. Speaker. I’m sure, for you, Jimmy wouldn’t mind at all.”
Mahoney gave her hip a little squeeze, then his eyes widened in mock surprise. “What’s this? Betty, are you wearing that thong underwear again?”
“Oh, Mr. Speaker!” Betty squealed, slapping him on the shoulder and blushing fire-engine red. “I’ll be right back with your coffee, you devil.”
Mahoney squared himself to the table and looked down at the sports page again, scanning the box scores. While he read— or pretended to read— he said to DeMarco, “You remember that state house guy Cochran, the one I told you was acting up?”
“Yeah,” DeMarco said.
“I sent Perry up to see him, you bein’ busy. He handed Perry his head. I swear, Joe, I think he made him cry. That’s one tough old son of a bitch up there. So anyway, I still need you to take care of that.”
“I’ll leave this morning,” DeMarco said. “I’ll be on his ass before noon.”
Thank you, Jesus, thank you.
“And another thing…”
“Here’s your coffee, Mr. Speaker,” Betty said.
Mahoney took a sip. “Ah, Betty, there’s only one thing better than a good morning toddy.” He paused dramatically, pumped his eyebrows in nasty Groucho fashion, and added, “And we both know what that is, don’t we?”
“Oh, Mr. Speaker!” Betty said for about the third time and ran away to relay Mahoney’s bawdy comment to her coworkers.
“You were saying?” DeMarco said. “There’s something else you need.”
“Oh, yeah. While you’re up there, go talk to Hanreddy. I haven’t heard from him in some time. You might tell him that the asphalt business can get pretty fuckin’ tough with some of these air admission things they’re talking about.”
“Got it,” DeMarco said. He knew Mahoney meant air emissions and that not having heard from Hanreddy meant his contributions to his favorite politician had not been forthcoming.
“Can you believe this?” Mahoney said, looking down at the paper again. “Some Russian gal just pole-vaulted over sixteen feet. Sixteen two. I think a woman who could pole-vault sixteen feet would scare me.”
DeMarco didn’t say anything.
“I hear you got Emma,” Mahoney said, still pretending to read the paper.
“She mostly saved herself,” DeMarco said, speaking to the top of Mahoney’s big head. DeMarco then told him what was going on with Emma, the primary point of this discussion being to convey that he had dutifully come back to D.C., leaving Emma on her own to catch Li Mei.
“We’ll probably read in tomorrow’s paper,” Mahoney said, “that that Chinese broad went to that great rice paddy in the sky.” Mahoney paused and added, “I wonder how high Emma can pole-vault?”
Mahoney finished his coffee. “I gotta get goin’,” he said. He rose from the table, glanced down at the sports page again, and said, “Fuckin’ Red Sox. Some things never change.”
No, they don’t. Thank God they don’t.

60

Z
hi Chan, the man in charge of Chinese intelligence operations in Vancouver, walked slowly away from his mistress’s house. There was a content, peaceful look on his broad face. The situation with Li Mei had been very stressful, and he had needed these few hours with his Canadian friend, not so much for sex but simply to relax, to laugh, to talk about trivial things.
He stepped into his Mercedes, the car sagging to one side under his weight. He had been working so late the last two weeks that he didn’t even need to think of an excuse to give his wife. He hit the control for the CD player and the sound of Nat King Cole’s voice filled the car. He particularly enjoyed the song “Unforgettable,” the duet the dead Mr. Cole sang with his daughter. He liked the idea of ghosts singing with the living. Zhi Chan believed in ghosts.
He had just had that thought when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He jerked in alarm, making the Mercedes swerve dangerously to one side.
“Relax,” said a voice from the backseat. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Chan looked into the rearview mirror and saw the man who had been lying on the seat sit up. And then he did relax.
“Ah, Mr. Carmody,” Chan said, smiling broadly, his teeth square and white in the rearview mirror. “I was wondering when we would hear from you. I’d have preferred something less dramatic, but…well, you’re here.”
“I want to help,” Carmody said. “With Li Mei.”
Chan nodded. “Exactly the right answer, my friend. You are a wise man.”
“Do you have any idea where she is?” Carmody said.
“No. She mailed us a tape from her interrogation of the female American agent, but after the woman escaped—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Carmody said. “The last time I saw Li Mei she was trying to kill me.”
“Yes, so I heard. You’re lucky to be alive.”
“So what has she done? For me to help, you need to fill me in.”
Chan did. As he talked, he drove his car into Stanley Park; there would be few people driving through the park at this time of night and he would be better able to tell if he was being tailed. In ten minutes, he gave Carmody Emma’s history with Li Mei. He also told him about John Washburn, the other operation Li Mei had been running in Bremerton, and how Li Mei had kidnapped Emma and interrogated her and then how Emma had managed to escape.
“Did you know that she intended to kidnap the American woman, Carmody?” Chan said.
“Yes, but she didn’t tell me everything. She told me to come to Vancouver, allow myself to be captured, and blame the Bremerton operation on the North Koreans. And she told me to tell the Americans that I was meeting my control in a certain restaurant in Chinatown. She said she planned to capture this woman, Emma, while I was in the restaurant, but she said that afterward, she would demand the Americans exchange me for her. Instead she tried to kill me.”
“Hmm,” Chan said. He decided that he believed Carmody. Carmody had no reason to lie and many reasons to tell him the truth. “As I was saying earlier,” Chan said, “Li Mei sent us a single videotape from her interrogation of the American woman. It contained some things of interest. Unfortunately, Li Mei’s plan failed. Just as she failed to deliver John Washburn, she failed to deliver the American woman— not that we would necessarily have taken her. And now Li Mei is out there, somewhere. We have no idea what she plans to do next, but she has Washburn’s files and the files you gave her and she has broken off contact with us.”
“So what do you want me to do?” Carmody said.
“We want you to find Li Mei and retrieve the files she has in her possession, of course. I’m glad you came to me tonight because we would really prefer to use you rather than our own people; we don’t need another embarrassing incident on North American soil.”
“Is that all?”
Chan laughed. “I’m sure you know that’s not all, Mr. Carmody.”
“And if I succeed?” Carmody said.
“No, no, Mr. Carmody, this is not the time to begin a negotiation. You may have been simply following Li Mei’s orders, but at this point you are part of the problem. You want to become part of the solution. So just do as we ask, and if you’re successful…well, let’s just say that then we may be more amenable to whatever you might propose.”
And the voice of a ghost filled the silence in the car.

D
eMarco waited patiently outside the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Street. Denny Cochran should be coming through the building’s doors any moment now. Like Mahoney, Cochran was an alcoholic, and every morning at ten thirty he went to a bar and had breakfast: two eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns, toast— and a boilermaker.
A moment later a man in his sixties wearing a rumpled brown suit exited the building. He wasn’t that short but he seemed shorter than he was because his legs were stumpy and he weighed more than two hundred pounds. His hair was reddish gray and cut short on the sides, and he had the mug of an Irish brawler: a nose smashed flat by more than one fist, fleshy jowls, and a pugnacious, in-your-face chin. His eyes were small and mean and blue.
DeMarco waited until Cochran reached the bottom of the steps before he yelled, “Hey, Denny, c’mere a minute.”
Cochran smiled automatically when he heard his name called— a political facial tic that exposed his teeth. The smile disappeared when he saw the speaker was DeMarco.
“What do you want, DeMarco? Mahoney already sent Perry Wallace up here to talk to me, and I’ll tell you the same thing I told him: kiss my fat Irish ass. I’ll vote any fuckin’ way I want to.”
DeMarco nodded his head as if agreeing with Cochran. “Yeah,” he said, “I heard you were real mean to Perry. That wasn’t nice.”
“Fuck you, tough guy. What do you think you’re gonna do? Put a bullet in me?”
It always bothered DeMarco when people said things like that to him.
“No, Denny, I’m not gonna do that. What I am gonna do is ask you why you’ve been doin’ what you’ve been doin’, and you’re gonna tell me. You voted against a school lunch program last week, you piece of shit! You know how Mahoney feels about things like that. So tell me who has their hooks into you, Denny, and don’t try to feed me that bullshit you fed Perry.”
“And if I don’t?” Cochran said, looking up at DeMarco, tilting his fleshy chin defiantly.
“Denny, you’re up for reelection next year.”
“You think I don’t know that.”
“You’ve been in this job, what, eighteen years? It’s the only thing you know how to do.”
“I’ll win. I’ve explained to my constituents—”
“Oh, shut up, Denny, just shut up. You know Michael Farleigh?”
“Farleigh, that kid at the DA’s office?”
“Yeah, Denny, that kid. The one who looks like Robert Redford and who’s won every case he’s ever tried.”
“He’d lose money if he took my job,” Denny said.
“Yeah, but he’s rich, Denny. And next week the party’s going to back him for your job. Very strongly. Half a million dollars will be earmarked for his campaign. People all over town are going to start talking about the need for change.”
“I’ll beat him. I got friends everywhere.”
“Yeah, you do, Denny, and they love you because you get them jobs and loan them money and listen to their complaints. And your friends don’t read the paper, except for the sports page, so they don’t know how you’ve been voting lately. But they watch TV, Denny. And half a million can pay for a lot of TV ads, ads that’ll tell all your friends how you’ve gone over to the dark side. And the ads will show pictures of Farleigh with his movie-star smile and his knockout of a wife, and next to him will be a picture of you exiting a bar, looking like the fucking dinosaur that you are.”
“He won’t run,” Cochran said.
“Yes, he will, Denny. He’ll run because Mahoney will ask him to and because Mahoney will promise to make him a congressman in a couple of years— or governor, if he doesn’t want to move to D.C.”
“How come Mahoney never backed me for governor?”
“Get serious, Denny. Now tell me who has their hooks in you, and I’m not going to ask you again.”
Cochran stood there a minute, his stubborn Irish face not giving an inch— then his features crumbled into surrender.
“Let’s go get some breakfast,” he said.