The Second Perimeter (29 page)

64

I
don’t appreciate what you did one damn bit, DeMarco,” Bill Smith said.
Ignoring Smith, DeMarco turned to the hot dog vendor and said, “Polish sausage. Just mustard and onions, no sauerkraut.”
The hot dog vendor said, “Yes, sah. One dog, onion, no kraut.” The vendor was one of those scrawny little guys who weighs about ninety pounds but has forearms corded with muscle. He wore a blue vest over his grease-stained white apron, and the vest was covered with political campaign buttons. McGovern, Humphrey, Carter were all given space. DeMarco figured the hot dog guy for a die-hard Democrat— kind of dangerous for business in a truly partisan town— until he turned around to get DeMarco’s hot dog. The back of the vest gave the Republicans their due.
“No sauerkraut!” Smith said. “That’s like eating peanut butter without jelly, like having lox without cream cheese, like—”
“I get it,” DeMarco said. “I just don’t like sauerkraut.”
They were standing by the Court of Neptune fountain in front of the Library of Congress. The fountain, directly across the street from the Capitol, depicted a muscular, naked Neptune holding his trident; two faintly sinister-looking guys, also naked, standing on either side of Neptune; and two nude, extremely well-endowed women riding on creatures that were half horse and half fish. DeMarco was surprised that some of the more conservative members of the legislature hadn’t demanded that a sheet be thrown over all the naked people.
Smith shook his head in disgust at DeMarco’s culinary barbarism then said, “So why’d you have Mahoney bust my chops over Emma? I mean, you coulda just called me.”
“Yeah,” DeMarco said. “And assuming you’d have returned my call, you would have given me some bullshit about manpower shortages.”
“It’s not bullshit,” Smith said, spitting bits of sauerkraut from his mouth as he talked. “You don’t have any idea what we’re up against right now. We’re trying to spy on the entire Muslim world, DeMarco! Don’t you get it?”
“You’re right, Bill, I don’t have any idea what you’re up against. Furthermore, I don’t care. All I care about is Emma. You remember Emma, don’t you? The lady who busted up a spy ring in Bremerton when you didn’t think one existed? The lady who was tortured and almost—”
“Enough,” Smith said, raising a hand in surrender. “But the fact that it’s Emma doesn’t change the fact that I can only spare so many agents to protect her.”
“You spared one, Bill! One! And he’s not even an American.”
“Rolf’s good, Joe. I’d tell you exactly how good but that’s classified.”
“I don’t care if he’s James fucking Bond. One guy isn’t enough. Now what are you going to do?”
“Well, after Mahoney badgered my boss’s boss’s boss…Who the hell did he talk to anyway, DeMarco? The Secretary of Defense?”
“Probably. He tends to start at the top.”
“Well, whoever he talked to rattled the whole chain of command. Anyway, we’re gonna provide a guy to relieve Rolf so that she has round-the-clock protection on the outside of her house or wherever she is. Right now Rolf’s only working a sixteen-hour shift because he’s gotta sleep sometime. We’re also putting a gal
in
her house and the gal will be with her 24-7. The gal we got looks like her…whatever you wanna call her, the cello player.”
“Now that’s good. I like that.”
“I’m glad you approve, DeMarco, being the expert at personal protection that you are. We don’t think Li Mei’s ever seen Emma’s, uh…”
“Her lover, Bill. You can say it.”
“Yeah. So we got a tall gal— had to fly her up from Panama, thanks to you— and we’ll jam a blond wig on her head and have her carry a cello case into Emma’s house. Maybe we’ll have Emma, uh, you know, smooch her a couple of times out in the open.”
“Is she any good?” DeMarco said.
“She came in fifth in the biathlon in the ’98 Olympics.”
“Great,” DeMarco said. “So if Li Mei shoots Emma and takes off on skis, this gal’ll get her.”

E
mma saw DeMarco standing outside her club, his gym bag near his feet. Without breaking stride, she pointed a finger at him and said, “You. I want to talk to you, you jackass.”
Accompanying Emma was a woman with a blond ponytail. She was wearing white shorts, a white polo shirt, and court shoes. She was in her thirties, as tall as Emma, and looked a bit like Christine except she was more muscular. Actually, DeMarco realized, she was much more muscular than Christine: she looked like she lifted big weights several days a week and she had thighs that would crack your ribs if she wrapped her legs around you. She wasn’t as pretty as Christine either— not by a long shot. She wasn’t ugly but her face was hard and unfeminine, like those East German swimmers before they started testing their urine. Come to think of it, she didn’t look at all like Christine.
Emma walked past DeMarco and into the health club without another word. The other woman stared at DeMarco as if memorizing his face for future reference and followed Emma through the double doors. DeMarco emitted a long-suffering sigh, picked up his gym bag, and followed the women.
Emma’s health club catered to the wealthy in the D.C. metro area and was appropriately pricey and ostentatious. There was an Olympic-size pool, two indoor tennis courts, four outdoor tennis courts, a half-court basketball court, steam and massage rooms, two racquetball courts, one squash court, and an exercise room with every machine designed by Precor. There were also two bars— one for the alcoholics and one for the carrot juicers— and a small cafeteria that looked out onto an emerald-green, nine-hole golf course. The cafeteria served egg-white omelets with shiitake mushrooms that were so light you felt as if you were eating air.
Emma approached the front desk and was greeted by a tanned young man with a body that could have posed for Michelangelo’s
David
. Emma signed in and walked about twenty feet down the hall in the direction of the women’s locker room before she stopped and spun around to face DeMarco.
“What are you doing here?” Emma said.
DeMarco hoisted his gym bag. “Just thought we could play a little racquetball.”
“Bullshit. You came to check out my security.”
“Okay, I did. And I’m not impressed. Where the hell’s Rolf?”
“Oh, so you didn’t see Rolf,” Emma said.
“That’s right. Where is he?”
“You didn’t see him, because you’re not supposed to see him! Jesus, Joe.” She started to say something else, then realized that the Christine double was standing there, glaring at DeMarco.
“Joe, this is Carla. Carla, this is…oh, never mind who he is but the next time you see him, shoot him.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Carla said, sounding completely serious.
“Carla, I’ve told you…” Emma took a breath to calm herself. “Carla, I need to talk to this fool for a minute alone.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Carla said. “I’ll check out the locker room.” As Carla walked away, DeMarco noticed that her back was almost as broad as his.
“Jesus, will you look at her,” Emma said. “Why doesn’t she just wear a damn sandwich board that says ‘Bodyguard’? And I’ve told her about fifty times to quit calling me ‘ma’am’ but she’s ex–Secret Service and just can’t seem to make the adjustment.”
“Well, she’s better than noth—”
“No! She’s not better than anything. I had this set up just the way I wanted it. The idea was to draw Li Mei
out
, to make her come after me. All I needed was Rolf. But now I’ve got Carla walking next to me every minute of the day. And Christ, she’s living with me! Can you imagine the kind of houseguest that woman makes?”
“Sorry,” DeMarco said. “I just thought—”
“Did you bring your racquet?”
“Sure. I told you I—”
“Good. I’m gonna whip your ass something horrible. Go get changed.”

* * *

DEMARCO DIDN’T LIKE
playing racquetball with Emma. Not only was it bad for his ego— the most points he’d ever scored against her were eleven— but it was also bad for his health. She ran him ragged, making him dive or jump for every point, and she delighted in hitting the ball as close to his head as possible. And that’s when she was in a good mood. He was going to get killed today.
DeMarco’s humiliation was also liable to be public. One of the racquetball courts was designed for tournament play. The top half of the back wall of the court was made of glass and there was a gallery with benches so spectators could look down onto the court. DeMarco was relieved that there was no one presently seated on the benches, but as Emma was the club’s reigning female racquetball champ, a small crowd could gather at any moment to watch her play.
DeMarco took his time warming up. The only reason he’d come to the club was to see if Smith had augmented Emma’s security— a subterfuge she’d immediately seen through— but now he was stuck. He thought of faking a pulled hamstring after a couple of points, but knew that wouldn’t work. Emma would just stand him up against the front wall of the court and use him for target practice.
She won the first game 21 to 7. His T-shirt and shorts were drenched with sweat and he had a bruise on his ass that was going to be the size of a grapefruit tomorrow morning. Emma had driven the ball into his butt with all the force she had, standing less than three feet from him. She apologized, acting as if the shot had been an accident, but he knew better.
The score in the second game was now 6 to 1, and the one point he scored had been a complete fluke, the ball going off the wood of his racquet instead of the strings and hitting the front wall about an inch from the bottom. DeMarco took his position to serve for the first time in the game. He stood at the back of the court bouncing the ball as if planning his shot. Actually he planned to bounce the ball until his heart stopped hammering.
Emma, of course, realized what he was doing and spun around to face him. “Are you ever gonna…” Then she stopped and looked up at the gallery, and her shoulders seemed to slump in…what? Resignation? DeMarco turned around to see what she was looking at, expecting to see Brunhilda, the bodyguard.
“Joe, don’t move,” Emma said.
DeMarco ignored her. He couldn’t see up into the gallery as close to the back wall as he was standing, so he moved a couple feet toward the center of the court. It wasn’t Brunhilda. It was Li Mei— and she was pointing a long-barreled pistol at Emma’s heart. There was a silencer attached to the barrel of the pistol.
“Get back against the wall,” Emma said to Joe, while still staring up at Li Mei. If DeMarco stayed flat against the back wall, Li Mei couldn’t shoot him from the gallery above. The glass prevented her from getting the right angle to make the shot.
But DeMarco didn’t move. He just stood and watched in horror as Li Mei smiled— then pulled the trigger.

66

M
ahoney hadn’t been back to Boston in almost two months. He loved Washington but he missed this place, the city where he’d been born and raised. He could still remember, with Technicolor vividness, the first time he returned home after being gone for two years. He’d stepped off a Greyhound bus, supported by crutches, medals covering his chest. His parents had stood there in the terminal waiting for him, both as stout as Mahoney was now. He could see the tears streaming down his mother’s plump cheeks, sobbing in relief that her boy had made it home from that horrible place. And his father, his face bursting with pride and his chin trembling as he willed himself not to cry. Men of Mahoney’s father’s generation didn’t cry; neither did Mahoney.
Mahoney sat now in one of his favorite bars. The bar hadn’t been there when he was a young man, and had it been, he couldn’t have afforded it. It was on the top floor of a building owned by an insurance company and it looked down onto the ballpark. He loved this angel’s view of the diamond. He loved it when the team was playing and the stands were filled with people, but he liked it better when the stadium was empty and there was nothing to see but the crosscut green grass and the worn-out bleachers.
They talked periodically of replacing the ballpark with something grander, something with skyboxes and fancy restaurants and seating for sixty thousand fans. But they never did. Everyone knew that to raze Fenway would be the same as destroying a holy place— which in many ways, to many people, it was.
“Mr. Speaker,” a baritone voice said from behind him.
Mahoney grimaced, irritated at the interruption even though he’d been the one who’d called the meeting. Before turning he fixed a grin on his face— not the friendly one, but the other one, the one that made you think he was going to eat you in a single bite.
“Ah, you’re here, Morgan,” Mahoney said. “And you only kept your betters waiting ten minutes.”
Hadley Morgan, minority leader of the state senate, was a grim, gray man: gray hair, gray suit, gray eyes, and a prim, disapproving mouth. Mahoney suspected that the Puritans who had hanged the witches at Salem had looked like Hadley Morgan. Now Mahoney, intermittent Catholic that he was, knew that had he been at Salem he would have been more inclined to have bedded the witches than to have hanged them.
“It was the traffic,” Morgan said, making no attempt to conceal the lie.
“Yeah, it’s terrible, the traffic,” Mahoney said. “And who’s this?” he said, gesturing with his big chin at the young man standing behind Morgan dressed in a blue suit and holding a briefcase.
“Robert Fairchild, Mr. Speaker. My aide,” Morgan said.
“Your aide,” Mahoney said and nodded as if he approved. “Well, Bobby,” Mahoney said to Robert Fairchild, “I want to talk to your boss in private. So haul your yuppie young ass on outta here. Walk over to the ballpark,” Mahoney added with a gesture toward the stadium below him, “and place your head up against the great wall and pray for God to forgive you for working for a man like Morgan.”
Fairchild opened his mouth to say something, but Morgan silenced him with a raised hand. “It’s okay, Robert. I’ll meet you in the car.” To Mahoney, he said, “Should we get a booth, Mr. Speaker? Or maybe a small, private room. I’m sure they’d find one for us if we asked.”
“Nah,” Mahoney said. “Let’s just sit here at the bar. Pull up a stool.” Mahoney ignored the look of distaste on Hadley Morgan’s face— Morgan wasn’t a stool-sitter— and waved to the bartender.
The bartender was a redhead in her early forties. When she was younger she had danced topless in drinking establishments with lower prices and lower pretensions. “Another bourbon, John?” she said with a smile. Mahoney loved that smile, both sexy and nostalgic. It was a smile that said:
Oh, the times we had
.
Mahoney could see that Morgan was shocked that the waitress would address Mahoney so familiarly, clearly troubled that a member of the working class would dare speak to a man of his position with so little respect. And this proved to Mahoney that Hadley Morgan had no understanding of what it took to earn respect.
“Of course, sweetheart,” Mahoney said. “And what’s your poison, Morgan?”
“I don’t drink, Mr. Speaker.”
“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“I can bring you a club soda, sir,” the bartender said to Morgan. “Or coffee or a soft drink, if you’d prefer.”
“Bottled water,” Morgan said, not meeting the woman’s eyes.
“Yes, sir,” she said— then she patted Mahoney’s thick paw, winked at him, and said, “I’ll be right back with that drink, sugar.”
As the bartender walked away Mahoney said, “That’s one goodlookin’ woman, Morgan. You should have seen her when she was twenty.”
“I’m sure,” Morgan said.
Mahoney waited until the bartender brought their drinks before saying, “You know, Morgan, puttin’ Denny Cochran’s nuts in a vise to get his vote, there was nothin’ wrong with that. That’s the way the game is played.”
“I don’t know what—”
“But usin’ his grandkids for leverage…Well I gotta tell you, that’s when you stepped over the line.”
“Mr. Speaker, I—”
“I’ve been giving Denny’s situation a lot of thought lately, bein’ fond of Denny as I am. I figured paying you back in kind wouldn’t be easy though, you bein’ the paragon of virtue that you are. I mean, Jesus, you’re boring, Morgan. You don’t drink, you don’t gamble, and you’re too rich to take kickbacks, at least the old-fashioned, stuffed-envelope kind. And, of course, you don’t chase women. Yeah, I figured you’d be a tough nut to crack, I did. Then it occurred to me. A man as…what’s the word…as
antiseptic
as you, what vice would you have?”
Mahoney drained his bourbon and pulled out a cigar. Morgan started to say something but Mahoney raised a hand to silence him while he completed the ritual of lighting his stogie. After blowing a cloud of noxious smoke over Morgan’s head, he said, “The other day, I was talking to a young associate of mine. I was telling the lad how he needed to be more careful with those e-mails he’s always sending, telling him how everything you do on a computer stays in there somehow, hiding in the wiring or something. Did you know that, Morgan? Did you know that you hit that little Delete button and those e-mails
pretend
to disappear, but they really don’t? They just hide in your machine, those wee sneaky electrons, but if you know where to look, you can find them. And that’s when it occurred to me, Morgan.”
It didn’t seem possible, but Hadley Morgan’s gray complexion grew even grayer.
“I have another young associate,” Mahoney said, “and he has an associate. One of those weird guys who hunts on the Internet the way I used to hunt ducks from a blind. Well I asked this fellow, this computer fellow, to look into
your
computer, Morgan, to see what you’ve been hiding. And can you guess what he found?”
Morgan didn’t say anything. Mahoney wasn’t sure that he could.
“The computer guy, he said something about being able to trace visits made to Internet sites from your computer, Morgan. And he made a record of your visits, something that proves that you were the one doing the visiting. I don’t know how he did it— maybe that young aide of yours can explain it to you— but it seems you’ve been visiting these sites in your spare time, sometimes for several hours at a time. Well, I had him print me out a copy of one of the pictures you see on those sites. I was gonna bring the picture with me but I was terrified I might get hit by a bus and that picture would be found on my dead body. But you don’t need to see a picture, do you, Morgan? You know exactly what sorts of pictures they have on those sites.”
“No,” Morgan said, “I don’t need to see a picture.”
“I thought not,” Mahoney said. Then he leaned forward so that his big face was an inch from Hadley Morgan’s, and said in a harsh whisper: “Now you listen to me, you sick fuck. If you take Denny Cochran’s grandkids away from him I’m gonna send every paper in the state a copy of your computer logs. And for what you’re doing on the Internet, Morgan…well, let me put it this way: if you
ever
decide to indulge your sick fuckin’ fantasies in the flesh, if you
ever
go near a child in person, I’ll send you to jail, as God is my witness, I will. Can you imagine jail for someone as gray and frail as you, Morgan? Can you imagine how you’d spend your nights?”
Mahoney turned away and called to the barmaid, “Sweetheart, could you be a darlin’ and bring me just one more?” To Morgan he said, “Get the hell outta here. But by the day after tomorrow, I better read in the papers that you’ve decided to retire.”
Morgan’s dry lips parted to say something but nothing came from his mouth. He slipped off the bar stool and moved slowly toward the exit, walking carefully, as though he wasn’t certain that his legs would support him.
The redheaded bartender brought Mahoney his drink, then leaned down, placing her forearms on the bar so Mahoney could enjoy her cleavage.
Mahoney smiled at her. She smiled back.
“I love it,” Mahoney said, gesturing with his head, “the way the lights shine down on the ballpark, on all that green grass. Can you remember, sweetheart, the first time you made love on the grass?”