The Second Perimeter (9 page)

* * *

MAHONEY WAS AT
the Old Ebbitt Grill having dinner with four union leaders. Autoworkers union, DeMarco thought, but it could have been steelworkers or Teamsters. It didn’t really matter.
DeMarco looked at the five men sitting at the table, stuffing rare steak into their mouths, sipping bourbon between bites. Mahoney fit right in with the union guys: they were all big, beefy men with red faces; they were all loud and crude; and they all had eyes that hinted at intellects out of proportion to their years of schooling and the grades they had acquired while in school. DeMarco suspected that if Mahoney hadn’t been a member of Congress he would have been a labor leader.
The Speaker saw DeMarco standing at the entrance to the dining room. He stood, picked up his tumbler of bourbon, swallowed whatever remained in the glass, then said something that made his companions roar with laughter. He slapped one man on the back and made his way toward DeMarco. Despite the amount of alcohol he had consumed, Mahoney moved between the tables gracefully, never bumping into a chair, never jostling the elbow of another diner. Mahoney, the dancing bear, a wide-bodied Fred Astaire.
Mahoney led DeMarco outside the restaurant so he could light up the half-smoked cigar he pulled from the right-hand pocket of his suit coat. He lit the cigar, blew smoke at the moon, and looked across the street at the massive structure that housed the U.S. Treasury Department. Floodlights lit up the white walls of the building, making it look like a monument— or a very large tomb.
It was almost nine but DeMarco could see lights burning in two windows on the third floor of the building. He could imagine a small group of people in the lighted room, staring bleary-eyed at each other as they tried to balance the nation’s checkbook.
“Those guys are scared, Joe,” Mahoney said. He was talking about the union leaders, not the people in the Treasury Department. “There was a time when a kid with a high-school diploma, a kid whose hands worked better than his mouth, could have a good future in this country. He could get a job at GM or Ford or Boeing, become a machinist or a welder or a toolmaker, and in thirty years he’d have a house and two cars and maybe a boat and be able to put his kids through college. Those days are gone, and those guys are scared. And I’m scared, too, because I can’t figure out what the hell to do about it.”
Mahoney had many faults; DeMarco knew this all too well. He drank too much, he cheated on his wife, and he bent the rules with abandon. He was selfish and self-centered and vain and inconsiderate. But he cared about the people of this country, and the ones he cared about the most wore steel-toed boots and hard hats.
“Shit,” Mahoney said, still thinking about the union leaders. He took in a breath and trained his drinker’s eyes on DeMarco. “So whaddya got?”
DeMarco told him.
“Goddamnit, Joe,” he said, sounding tired, “why can’t it be just the way it seems? Why can’t this bum have killed Hathaway’s nephew? Why can’t this slug Berry have had a few drinks and drove himself into a tree? Why does it have to be spies, for Christ’s fuckin’ sake?”
“Maybe it’s not,” DeMarco said, “but right now too many things don’t add up. The money in Berry’s bank account. Whitfield’s last phone call saying these two clucks were up to something. The timing of Whitfield’s death. And this guy Carmody— he just doesn’t fit the mold of a training consultant.”
“So why would they— whoever the hell
they
is— kill Berry? Whitfield I can understand, maybe. He saw something he shouldn’t have so they killed him. But why Berry?”
“I called Emma and asked her the same question. She thinks that whoever’s running this thing may be wrapping up loose ends, trying to protect Carmody and his men.”
“Emma,” Mahoney said, shaking his big head. “Because she’s an ex-spook she sees spooks under every rock.” Mahoney shook his head again, and a white lock fell down onto his forehead, almost into his eyes. He looked like a big angry sheepdog. “So what do you want me to do?” he asked DeMarco.
“Nothing. I just thought I’d better let you know what was happening. And I have to go back out to Bremerton.”
“Great. I don’t have enough problems, I got you giving me mysteries to worry about, and then you’re not going to be here in case I need you.”
“We have to get to the bottom of this thing, boss. If Emma’s right—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Mahoney said. “Go back to Bremerton.”
Mahoney tossed his cigar stub toward the gutter and a passing woman gave him a dirty look for littering— or maybe just for being a large, sloppy drunk. Mahoney smiled at the woman, a smile that said: Go screw yourself, honey.
“I gotta get back inside,” Mahoney said. “If I can’t help those guys, I can at least buy ’em enough booze to make ’em forget their problems for one night.”
DeMarco would have bet his pension that the union guys were picking up the tab— but he could have been wrong. With Mahoney you just never knew.

W
e’re at a dead end here,” DeMarco said.
He and Emma were sitting in a car, parked half a block away from Carmody’s office in Bremerton. They’d been parked in the spot for more than an hour. Emma sat behind the steering wheel, sunglasses masking her eyes and her thoughts.
“I know,” Emma said.
But that didn’t keep DeMarco from telling her what she knew. “We have nothing to show that these guys are doing anything illegal. We can’t pin Whitfield’s murder on them. We didn’t find anything in their houses.
You
didn’t find anything in Carmody’s office. And this Berry, back in D.C., he’s dead so even if he was involved in something, he’s not going to tell us.”
“I was thinking some more about Berry,” Emma said. “I’m inclined to think his death really was an accident.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“It occurred to me that if they—”
“Who’s they?”
“— that if they wanted to keep Carmody and his guys in place out here for any length of time, they would need Berry to maintain their contract. With him dead they might have a hard time continuing to work here.”
“Who’s they?” DeMarco asked again.
“I don’t know, but somebody is running this operation. We know Mulherin, Norton, and Carmody didn’t kill Whitfield. We know Whitfield saw or heard something because he called you, and after he called you somebody killed him. This means that Carmody contacted somebody, somebody close by, and told that person that they’d been busted by Whitfield. And the person Carmody contacted acted very quickly to eliminate Whitfield. Which means there’s
somebody
on the ground out here running things.”
“Okay, fine,” DeMarco said. “Let’s assume that Carmody and the pirates really are—”
“The pirates?”
“Mulherin and Norton.”
Emma laughed. “That fits,” she said.
“Anyway, let’s say you’re right and these guys are spies or terrorists or whatever. Do you think they’re going to do something stupid now, so soon after Whitfield’s death?”
“No. They might not do anything for weeks, maybe months. I wouldn’t, if I was running this.”
“That’s what I was afraid you were gonna say.” DeMarco wasn’t a patient man; nothing drove him nuttier than just sitting and waiting. “So let’s give ’em a shove,” he said.
Emma sat there a minute, tapping a manicured nail on the steering wheel. “Of the three of them,” she said, “who do you think is the weakest link?”
“Weakest link how?” DeMarco said.
“The one likely to crack first. The one most likely to panic if we squeeze him.”
“Mulherin,” DeMarco said without hesitation.
“Why?”
“Carmody just seems like a tough bastard, ex-SEAL and all that. Norton, he’s got— I don’t know—
discipline
. Like the way his apartment’s so neat. And he might be smart. You know, all the computer stuff.”
“Yes,” Emma said, “and the first time we met them, I noticed Mulherin got all bug-eyed on us when we stepped into Carmody’s office and looked over at Norton for support. So I agree, Mulherin’s the one.”
“So how do you wanna squeeze his skinny ass?” DeMarco said.

N
ed Mulherin was sitting in the back of his boat drinking a beer, listening to a Mariners game on the radio. The boat was a twenty-one-foot Trophy and was moored at the marina in Brownsville, a town a few miles from Bremerton. For the last two hours he’d been installing new electric downriggers on his boat— no more hand cranking up a ten-pound ball of lead when he went salmon fishing, no sirree. Except for the fact that the Mariners were behind three runs in the second inning, he was feeling pretty good. Then he saw the guy walking down the pier, the hard case who’d come to Carmody’s office, and he stopped feeling so good.
“You remember me, Mulherin?” DeMarco said.
“Yeah. You’re that guy from Congress, the one that Whitfield sicced on us.”
“That’s right,” DeMarco said, “and we need to have a little talk.”
Emma had decided to let DeMarco brace Mulherin. She had something else to do, but even if she hadn’t been otherwise engaged, she thought DeMarco would be more effective with Mulherin. The reason for this was something she called the “Godfather factor.”
DeMarco’s late father had been an enforcer for a New York mob boss— and DeMarco looked just like his father. He had thick shoulders and heavy arms and big hands. He had a big, square, dimpled chin. And when his mouth took a certain set, and if he let his eyes go cold and flat…Well, the end result was a hard-looking guy but one who was polite and well educated, a guy who spoke in a soft, rational tone of voice, and all the time he’s talking you’re thinking that if you don’t do exactly what he says, you’re gonna wake up with a horse’s head in your bed. The Godfather factor would start moving Mulherin in the direction Emma desired.
“We don’t need to talk about anything,” Mulherin said. “Ever since Whitfield got killed, I’ve had nothing but people talking to me. FBI guys. NCIS guys. Bremerton cops. They’ve all been asking me questions. And I’ll tell you the same thing I told them: I don’t know anything about Whitfield’s murder and this job we’re doing for the navy’s legit. Now beat it. I’m workin’ here.”
DeMarco shook his head gravely, as if Mulherin was making a big mistake. “I don’t want to talk about Dave Whitfield, Mulherin.”
“Then what do you wanna talk about?”
“Money. I want to know how you managed a financial miracle.”
“Huh?”
“Six months ago you were sixty thousand dollars in debt. Today you are debt free and have a new fishing boat. We need to discuss how that happened.”
“How do you know about my finances?” Mulherin said. “You have to have a warrant to—”
“The FBI needs warrants, Mulherin. Me, I just call a few people.”
“You can’t—”
“Ned, you wouldn’t
believe
what I can do. When it comes to terrorism, the government has rather broad powers.”
“Terrorism! What the hell are you talking about?”
“Have you heard of the Patriot Act?”
“The Patriot Act? What—”
“Yeah, I love the Patriot Act,” DeMarco said. “Someplace there in the fine print it says a person suspected of terrorism—”
“What fucking terrorism!”
“— can be thrown in jail and detained indefinitely. And once in custody, that person is not allowed access to counsel and may sit in a cell for months while the government interrogates him. And who knows what happens during these interrogations. What’s your pain threshold, Ned?”
“You’re goddamn nuts!” Mulherin said. “I’m not—”
“Ned, I’m the only hope you have.”
“Hope? Hope for what?”
“Ned, we know you’re not the guy in charge. Who would ever put you in charge of anything? But we’ll catch your friends eventually, and when we do, you’ll go down with them. It’s only a matter of time. And the only one who’s
not
going to spend a long time in a federal prison is the one who helps us develop our case. When it comes to crime, Ned, the first rat’s the winner.”
Mulherin looked down at DeMarco from the deck of his boat, his lips trembling with both fear and anger. Finally, he said, “You stay the hell away from me. You got no right…” Mulherin spun around and passed through a sliding wooden door into the sleeping section of his boat, and shut and locked the door. It was hot inside the sleeping section of the boat. He hoped DeMarco wouldn’t hang around outside his boat for too long.
He didn’t.

* * *

AN HOUR AFTER
talking to DeMarco, Mulherin drove his Ford Explorer into the parking lot of the Clearwater Casino, a tribal casino located forty minutes from Bremerton.
Emma and DeMarco had followed Mulherin to the casino in separate cars. Emma called DeMarco on his cell phone and told him to wait in the parking lot. She then sat a few minutes to give Mulherin time to get settled in the casino. Before leaving her car, she donned a black wig— glossy, synthetic hair touching her shoulders— and covered her lips with a thick layer of bright red lipstick. She glanced into the rearview mirror and winced at what she saw there, but with a cigarette dangling from her lips she’d fit right in with the slot-machine addicts in the casino.
The casino was much bigger and grander than Emma had imagined. The Indians were giving Las Vegas a run for their money. She made a slow tour of the place, walking down the aisles between card tables and crap tables and noisy slot machines, looking for Mulherin. She found him sitting alone in a dark bar that faced an empty stage. She picked a slot machine where she could watch him and fed a twenty-dollar ticket into the machine.
Ten minutes later, Norton entered the bar and joined Mulherin at the table. Five minutes after that Carmody walked in. Emma had been hoping a fourth person would join them, but that didn’t happen.
Mulherin and Norton ordered beers while Carmody declined the waitress’s offer. The men began to talk and at one point Carmody jabbed a big finger at Mulherin’s face to make a point and Emma saw Mulherin sit back in his chair, a chastised expression on his face.
Moments later, Carmody rose from his chair and began to walk toward the casino exit. Emma noticed she’d won fifty dollars from the slot machine— she’d always been lucky— but she didn’t have time to cash out. The next slot-playing grandma who sat in the chair was going to think she’d died and gone to gambler’s heaven.
As Emma followed Carmody from the casino, she made a quick call to DeMarco. Carmody turned and looked behind him once as he crossed the casino parking lot to his car, but all he saw was a woman with long dark hair, her head down, digging into her purse for her keys. Emma was behind Carmody as his car left the casino parking lot. As she was driving away, she saw DeMarco enter the casino.