House Rivals (6 page)

8

DeMarco stopped at a liquor store after his meeting with Sarah, bought a bottle of Grey Goose, and went back to his room at the Holiday Inn Express. The ice machine on his floor wasn't working and he had to go up two floors before he found one that was. He dropped ice into a plastic glass, added two ounces of vodka, and plopped onto the bed with his laptop.

For the next hour he read Sarah Johnson's blog. He stopped when it felt like his brain cells were turning to mush and starting to dissolve. The girl may have been smart but she couldn't tell a story. She wrote in convoluted sentences that went on forever and sometimes a single paragraph would fill an entire page. She was repetitive—making the same argument over and over again in case the reader didn't understand it the first time—and her stories were filled with trivial details that she apparently thought were necessary to prove she'd done her research or to validate whatever she was saying. She used capital letters to emphasize her points, and every other sentence had some phrase or word capitalized and, as if that wasn't enough, sometimes double exclamation points served for periods.

But the gist of the blog was basically what she'd told him in Minervas: Leonard Curtis, and the many companies he owned, had incredible luck when it came to state laws and rulings handed down in various courtrooms. However, there was nothing even close to proof that Curtis had done anything illegal. In one case, Sarah concluded a state legislator in Montana—who was also a wheat farmer—had changed his vote based solely on the fact that the man got a good deal on a farm implement called a seed drill.

DeMarco had no idea what a seed drill was, but the story about the legislator and the seed drill illustrated the depths Sarah went to in order to get information and, at the same time, how tentative her conclusions could be. In this case, Sarah learned a Democrat named Reynolds had strayed from the party line and changed his vote on a bill proposing to increase taxes on natural gas to aid school funding. She went to see Reynolds and asked him why—and he refused to talk to her.

So Sarah started talking to other Democrats who had a stake in the bill to see if they could explain Reynolds's treachery. One of the legislators, a man named Franklin, who was also a farmer, was quoted in Sarah's blog saying: “I actually wonder if it had anything to do with that seed drill he got at Colson's for ten grand. I mean, I've never heard of a guy getting a deal like that, and he was bragging about it, so it wasn't like he was trying to keep it secret, but it was right after that he started arguing against the bill.”

When Sarah asked Franklin if he was saying that he thought Reynolds had been bribed, Franklin started backpedaling, saying he wasn't about to accuse a fellow Democrat of doing anything illegal.

It took Sarah a week to learn that Colson's was a farm that had gone into foreclosure, and that Curtis had bought the land and then hired a broker to sell off the farm equipment. One of the items being sold was a practically new White 8186 seed drill that would normally sell for about twenty-five thousand. Based solely on this information—the fact that Reynolds changed his vote on a bill Curtis didn't want passed and was given an extraordinary deal on a piece of equipment that Curtis owned—she concluded the seed drill was a bribe.

The problem, DeMarco immediately realized, as would any other lawyer, was that no one could prove that Reynolds had done anything illegal. Reynolds would argue that he was just a shrewd negotiator and Curtis's broker didn't understand the value of the item he was selling but, whatever the case, the price he got for the used seed drill had nothing to do with his vote.

In another section of her rambling blog, Sarah listed by name every politician and law enforcement person she'd contacted in an attempt to get these individuals to investigate Curtis. She called them obtuse, lazy, and blatantly corrupt. The girl did not know how to make friends and influence people, and DeMarco had another image of Sarah as Joan of Arc on a big white stallion, dressed in chain mail, wielding a broadsword, whacking the heads off English horsemen. And a few French horsemen, too, if they got in her way.

Which reminded him: he needed to tell Sarah not to mention him or Mahoney in her blog. He'd tell her if she did, that he'd walk and she'd be on her own again. The last thing DeMarco needed was to have his presence in Bismarck advertised, and Mahoney would go ballistic if his name appeared in her blog without his permission. The problem was, DeMarco wasn't sure he could control Sarah; he wasn't sure anyone could.

Tall, pretty, blond Sarah reminded him in some ways of dark, dour Ralph Nader. Nader was old now, around eighty, but he came to national prominence at the young age of thirty-one when he wrote
Unsafe at Any Speed
. Like Sarah, Nader was passionate, fearless, insensitive, and didn't care whose feet he stepped on. But in spite of a tendency toward bluntness that bordered on rudeness, DeMarco liked the girl. When he was her age, he was still in college and spent more time chasing coeds and drinking than he did studying, while here was Sarah, trying to make the world a better place. However, he had no idea how to help her. Nor did he have any idea how to keep her from getting killed if somebody really wanted to kill her. And after spending only one hour with Sarah Johnson, he knew she wasn't going to give up until either she was dead or Curtis was in jail.

Then one thought finally occurred to him. He grabbed his cell phone and called Sarah.

Marjorie got up the next morning at five thirty as she usually did, took a quick shower, and blow-dried her hair. She stepped on the scale in the bathroom, made a face, then went and got dressed. As the coffee was brewing, she looked at the calendar on the refrigerator door. Bobby had a baseball game tonight. She'd try to make that. Tommy was going over to Henry Grove's house to play video games after school. Hmm.

Marjorie didn't trust Henry Grove—he was a sneaky little shit—and she was convinced that he was a bad influence on Tommy. The last time Tommy had been to Henry's house, Marjorie thought she got a whiff of pot off Tommy's hair but it was hard to be sure, the odor mixed in with sweat and all the other pungent teenage boy smells. She mentioned this to Henry's mom, suggesting she might want to poke around in her son's room and see if she could find a bag of dope. Naturally, Henry's mother had been offended and things were still a bit cool between her and Marjorie.

Marjorie left a note for Dick, giving him his marching orders for the day: drop off the dry cleaning; take the three boxes of crap that have been sitting in the garage for a month to Goodwill; call a plumber, like she'd told him two days ago, to come fix the leaky faucet in the master bath; pick up the boys after school, drop off Tommy at Henry's house, then take Bobby to the baseball field where she'd meet him. She'd pick up Tommy from Henry's place after the game so she could sniff his hair again. She signed the note
Love and kisses, M
, grabbed her purse, her keys, and headed out the door.

She didn't look at her cell phone until she got to work. Her plan that morning was to get on the phone and start calling people in Washington to figure out who this guy DeMarco was. When she pulled out her phone, she saw a text message from Heckler. He'd sent it at eleven last night. It said: Call me first thing in the morning. It's a big deal.

She called Heckler.

“Jesus, what time is it?” he said.

“Six thirty,” Marjorie said. “Your message said to call you first thing in the morning.”

“I didn't mean six thirty.”

“Wake up, Heckler, and tell me what's going on.”

“Hang on. I want to play you a call Johnson got last night from that guy DeMarco.”

She heard Heckler getting out of bed, coughing, a cigarette lighter clicking, and then he said, “Okay. I'm going to play it back.”

“Sarah, it's Joe DeMarco. I've been reading your blog and I wanted to ask you something.”

“So now do you see what I mean about the shit that Curtis has been pulling?”

“Uh, yeah. Anyway, what I wanted to ask is this. Who paid these people you think were bribed?”

“What do you mean? Curtis paid them.”

“I kind of doubt that Curtis paid them directly. I mean, I can't imagine him personally arranging for some legislator to get a good deal on a seed drill, whatever the hell that is.”

“Well, of course he didn't do it personally. Curtis probably has twenty thousand people who work for him, with all the companies he owns. He retains a law firm that employs over eighty lawyers. Those are the people who are making the payoffs.”

“I don't think so, Sarah. I think . . . I think Curtis has a guy like me.”

“A guy like you? What do you mean?”

“I mean he's probably got a guy he uses for this sort of thing. A guy who fixes things for him. He wouldn't have two dozen people buying off politicians and judges. He'd want somebody he could trust, somebody he knew was competent, probably somebody who's worked for him for a long time.”

And Marjorie thought: Oh, shit.

“So, Sarah, I wanted to know if you've ever come across somebody like that? A single person, an operator, who might have met with all these people you say have been bribed or blackmailed or whatever?”

“No.”

“What I'm saying is, if you can find that person and if pressure can be brought to bear on him, maybe he can be forced to testify against Curtis because he's the guy who's really committed a crime.”

“How would you pressure him?”

“I don't know. But the first thing we need to do is find him.”

“If he exists.”

“Yeah, if he exists. I'll talk to you tomorrow, Sarah.”

And Marjorie again thought: Oh, shit.

“That's it,” Heckler said. “But I thought you ought to hear that.”

“You thought right. Now get out of bed and get back on her.”

Marjorie sat for a minute, then reached into her purse for the pack of Marlboros and went outside. Bill would give her a ration of shit if she smoked in the office.

This was bad. Sarah Johnson had never mentioned Bill or Marjorie in her stupid blog. They had no documented connection to Curtis—at least none that Johnson would be able to find. Their consulting firm wasn't owned by Curtis—it wasn't one of Curtis's many companies—and Curtis was not identified in any public forum as being their client.

But if Johnson talked to the right people, it was possible—although highly unlikely—that some of those people might say that she and Bill had approached them on Curtis's behalf. Ninety-nine percent of them wouldn't talk, of course, because then they'd be admitting that they'd been bribed or influenced in some way. But maybe one of them would. Maybe one of them was no longer in politics and had grown a conscience. Maybe one of them felt that he or she had been screwed by Curtis in some way. All Marjorie knew for sure was that DeMarco had pointed Johnson in their direction—and that wasn't good.

She needed to find out who this damn guy was.

Bill rolled into the office about ten. He wasn't his normal, cheerful self. He looked grim. He'd probably been thinking about the fact that he might have to go to Denver to see Murdock again.

“We have a problem,” Marjorie said as soon as he walked through the door.

“I thought we might have. I saw the cigarette butts out by the door.”

Marjorie told Bill about the conversation Heckler had recorded between DeMarco and Sarah Johnson. Bill's reaction was:
Oh, shit.

“Who is this fuckin' guy?” Bill said.

“I've been on the phone for the last three hours trying to figure that out. He's a lawyer and he works for the House of Representatives but it's not clear what he does. He's not listed as being on anyone's staff. And get this. His father was an honest-to-God mafia hit man up in New York.”

“Mafia? You think DeMarco's mafia?”

“No. Shut up. I said his
father
was mafia. He's not mafia, at least it doesn't sound like it. Anyway, I finally got to Peach.”

Jeremiah Peach was an aide to Congressman Sam Erhart, Montana's sole representative in the House. It seemed as if Peach had been in D.C. since the British burned down the White House and whenever Montana elected a new representative—Democrat or Republican—the new congressman kept Peach on his staff because the new guys the new congressman brought with him didn't really know how things worked on the Hill.

“Peach told me that DeMarco is a shady character who works down in the subbasement of the Capitol. He's a lawyer, but as far as Peach knows, he doesn't practice law. When I Googled DeMarco, I found out he made the news about a year ago. You remember Bob Fairchild, that congressman from Arizona who paid an ex-cop to kill a woman in Tucson?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, DeMarco was the one who caught the killer but none of the articles made it clear as to why he was involved at all. But the main thing Peach told me is that DeMarco might work for John Mahoney.”

“Mahoney? You mean the guy who used to be the Speaker?”

“Yeah. Peach said DeMarco's not on Mahoney's staff but it seems like whenever Mahoney has some sticky problem to solve, DeMarco shows up. Peach said it's like DeMarco's this dog Mahoney keeps in a cage, and he only lets him out when he wants someone bit. Peach also said that since John Mahoney is as corrupt as any African dictator, this means that DeMarco isn't some Boy Scout lawyer who plays by the rules.”

“Why the hell would John Mahoney care about Sarah Johnson?” Bill said.

“I have no idea. But this is bad, Bill. The last thing we need is someone with a connection to Mahoney. Johnson can't get anybody in law enforcement to give her the time of day, but Mahoney can probably get the FBI involved with one phone call.”