House Secrets (26 page)

Sammy Wix, the jockey-sized detective whom Emma had assigned to follow Charlie Eklund, said, “Every morning on his way to Langley, he stops at this Starbucks about six blocks from his house. He likes mochas. He gets out of his car—him and that big square-headed bodyguard of his—and they go inside and he gets his mocha. He’s usually there at about seven, give or take five minutes.”

“Thank you, Sammy,” Emma said.

Reggie didn’t know what the hell was going on, but his source at the CIA hadn’t steered him wrong yet. In fact, the bastard, whoever he was, was turning Reggie into a star. He’d even slowed down his drinking a bit, with all that had been going on lately.

His source had told him to go to this Starbucks in Falls Church. At about seven a.m., a black Lexus would arrive and a little white-haired guy and a big tough-looking guy would get out of the Lexus and go into the Starbucks. Reggie was to wait until they came out of the Starbucks, which they did about five minutes later.

As the white-haired guy was descending the steps, Reggie stepped in front of him, and when he did, the tough-looking guy reached into his coat and Reggie saw the automatic in the shoulder holster. Holy shit.

“Excuse me,” Reggie said, “are you Charles Eklund?”

The white-haired guy made a little it’s-okay gesture to the other man and said, “Yes.”

“My name’s Reggie Harmon, Mr. Eklund. I’m a reporter for the
Washington Post.
I was wondering if you had any comment on the recent articles I’ve written discussing major CIA blunders in West Africa and Indonesia. I don’t know if you saw the articles, but—”

“No, I have no comment,” Eklund said. “Now if you’ll please excuse me.” And Eklund stepped around Reggie.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Reggie said, and he started to follow Eklund but the galoot with the gun placed a hand in the center of Reggie’s chest and shook his head.

Reggie just stood there as the Lexus drove away, rubbing his chest where the man had touched him.

“Reggie,” DeMarco said into the phone, “do you think you could get a copy of Paul Morelli’s schedule for the week before his wife died?” DeMarco could have obtained the schedule himself, but at this point he thought it prudent to keep his interest in Morelli hidden.

The reporter said, “Morelli? What the hell are you into, Joe?”

“I can’t tell you, Reg.”

“Yeah, well, I’m kinda busy these days. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve tagged the CIA twice in two days.”

Great, DeMarco thought, now Reggie had an ego.

“Look, Reg,” DeMarco said, “you do this for me, and if what I’m working on pans out, I’ll give you the whole thing on exclusive. I swear.”

This was a blatant manipulation. It was highly unlikely that anything DeMarco was doing would come to a publishable conclusion.

“But what are you working on?” Reggie asked.

“Reggie, just trust me,” DeMarco said, glad Reggie couldn’t see him rolling his eyes. “What I’m into is a whole lot bigger than the CIA’s not being able to tell the difference between terrorists and soccer players.”

The phone went silent for long time. Reggie was either pondering DeMarco’s offer or he had slipped into an alcoholic coma.

“Okay, Joe,” he said, at last. “I’ll give it a shot.”

“What you could do is pretend you’re writing a—”

“DeMarco, I don’t need you to tell me how to get information. I’m an old drunk, not a young imbecile.”

They hung up after agreeing to meet at a bar in Union Station at five.

The bar was on the main floor of Union Station. It was a nice open place with a subtle Southwestern theme—subtle if you overlooked the four ten-foot red-plastic chili peppers hanging from the ceiling. Sunlight streamed in through tall windows, and in case the windows didn’t provide enough illumination, there were small lamps placed along the bar for those patrons who wanted to see what they were drinking. Reggie instantly despised the place.

“What the hell are we doing in this yuppie spawning bed?” he said to DeMarco. “The lights in here are so goddamn bright you can see every broken vein in my nose.”

“It was convenient, Reg.”

“Its liquor license should be shredded. Bars should be dark and smoky. Brass and mahogany. Faded photos of old boxers on the walls.”

Before Reggie could offer further insights on the décor, DeMarco asked, “Did you get the senator’s schedule?”

“Child’s play.”

Reggie reached into a pocket and removed a sheet of paper. DeMarco snatched it from him and began to study it.

“If you tell me what you’re looking for, maybe I can help,” Reggie said.

DeMarco ignored him. The newspapers had said that the night Lydia Morelli was killed she had been temporarily released from her rehabilitation at Father Martin’s to attend a function with her husband. The paper hadn’t said what the function was, and DeMarco was curious as to how she had behaved with her spouse the last night of her life. On the date of the murder, the senator’s schedule said: “7:30 p.m., Jasco Dinner.”

DeMarco borrowed Reggie’s cell phone—the battery on his was dead—and called Madeline Moss, a socialite he’d had a brief fling with following his divorce. Madeline attended formal affairs six nights out of seven, and even if she hadn’t been invited to the event on Morelli’s schedule, she’d still be able to find out what DeMarco wanted to know. After chatting briefly with her—yes, it had been a long time; yes, he did remember the good times—he sicced her like a society bloodhound onto the trail of “Jasco Dinner.”

While waiting for her to call back, DeMarco perused the rest of Morelli’s schedule, and while he did, Reggie swilled booze at an alarming rate and badgered DeMarco to find out what he was working on. If he hadn’t given Reggie’s cell phone number to Madeline, DeMarco would have ditched him, leaving him to pick up a bar tab that was rapidly approaching three figures.

Nothing on the schedule caught his eye. Morelli had had speaking engagements almost every night that week, addressing such diverse groups as the AMA, a construction company convention, and the Air Line Pilots Association. He spent his days on Capitol Hill in a series of normal committee meetings, except for one day when he took the shuttle to New York to meet with some constituents up there. He returned from New York that same day in time to dazzle the docs at the AMA dinner. He also attended a luncheon for a new exhibit at the Smithsonian, visited the emergency ward and pediatrics section of a D.C. hospital, and had his hair trimmed. Every other morning he played squash at a club that would have refused DeMarco membership. Morelli was a busy man—just looking at his schedule made DeMarco tired.

The one thing he did learn was that Morelli had apparently not been terribly concerned about his wife because he hadn’t bothered to visit her at the clinic, except for the day he had picked her up to attend the Jasco function. He had simply packed her off for a week to keep her from talking to the press, then ignored her until the night she died.

Madeline finally called back and told DeMarco that the event in question had been an affair honoring Ellen Jascovitch, a do-gooder
of Mother Teresa proportions who had devoted her life to battered women, homeless kids, and other charitable endeavors. Certainly a worthy event, DeMarco concluded, but nothing that sounded so important that it was necessary for Morelli to interrupt his wife’s treatment. Speaking in her catty, gossip-spreading hiss, Madeline informed him that Lydia Morelli had not attended the function. The senator had called the hostess personally and said his wife was “indisposed.” Madeline interpreted this to mean that Lydia had somehow managed to fall off the wagon in the short time between leaving the clinic in Maryland and the time of the dinner.

After DeMarco thanked Madeline for her help and swore her to secrecy—a promise he knew she was genetically incapable of keeping—he looked over at Reggie and saw that the reporter’s gaze was fastened onto a woman at the other end of the room. The woman was in her fifties, slightly plump, the skin under her jaw sagging a bit. Her hair was henna-colored and she wore too much green eyeshadow. She looked like a feminine version of Reggie—a once good-looking woman who had seen too much of life from the viewpoint of a bar stool.

Reggie felt DeMarco looking at him, and without taking his eyes off the woman, he said, “I know that gal over there. We were in Chicago covering the same story, can’t even remember what it was now, and she was there for some Texas paper. We started out trying to see who could suck the worm out of the tequila bottle, and by the time the evening was over we were back in her room tearing up the sheets. Goddamn, she was something then, Joe. Hotter than Houston burning.”

Reggie shook his head and said, “I never saw her again after that one night.”

DeMarco could tell the sight of the woman brought back bittersweet memories for Reggie, and he didn’t think the memories were all of high-voltage sex. Reggie was thinking back to those days when he had a fire in his belly that wasn’t caused by heartburn.

“Why don’t you go over and say hello to her,” DeMarco said.

Still looking at the woman, Reggie said, “Ah, hell, she’d never remember me. And the way I look now, I doubt she’d want to be reminded that we once danced the nasty.”

“Time didn’t stand still for her either, Reg. What have you got to lose?”

Reggie was silent a moment, then he said, “Hell, you’re right.” Rising from the bar stool, he checked his reflection in the mirror, straightened his tie, and patted down his thinning hair. Flashing his stained teeth at DeMarco, he said, “There’s a reason the ladies call me Charmin’ Harmon, DeMarco. Watch closely, lad, and learn.”

DeMarco crossed his fingers as Reggie approached the woman. She looked up, startled when Reggie said her name, then put her head close to his as he talked to her. Suddenly the woman gave a Texas whoop and threw her arms around Reggie’s skinny neck. They talked a few minutes, then the woman gathered up her things and they left the bar, going, DeMarco imagined, to some place where the lighting was softer and kinder to them both.

It pained him to admit it, but DeMarco was jealous of Reggie—the old lush was with someone and he was not. He looked around and saw there were couples everywhere. Couples walking hand-in-hand. Couples gazing into each other’s eyes. Couples doing everything but coupling. The only unattached woman he could see was a bag lady pushing a shopping cart overflowing with treasured trash; there clearly wasn’t room for him in her life.

Not ready to go home to an empty house, DeMarco ordered another drink from a passing waitress and forced himself to look at Morelli’s schedule again. In reviewing the schedule a second time, his eyes locked onto the visit Morelli had paid to D.C. General Hospital, his goodwill tour of the pediatric and emergency wards.

Emma watched as Charlie Eklund, followed by his bodyguard, came toward the picnic table where she was seated. Eklund took mincing steps, raising his feet high, as if trying to keep the wet grass from damaging his expensive shoes.

Emma had picked Tuckahoe Park in Falls Church for the meeting, the park being halfway between her house and his. The reason she’d chosen the park, though, hadn’t been for Eklund’s convenience. It was instead because it was partially surrounded by thick woods and hiding in the woods were her friends Mike Koharski and Sammy Wix, each armed with a rifle. Emma doubted that Eklund—or more specifically, his armed bodyguard—would try to harm her, but as Clausewitz had said: you plan for your enemy’s capabilities, not his intentions.