House Secrets (31 page)

Momentarily he heard the sound of the television and Mahoney saying “Jesus Christ” several times. Then Mahoney said into the phone, “Hey, that’s you. What the hell are you doing there?”

“The cops ratted me out to Morelli,” DeMarco said. “I went to see them yesterday, to try to convince them that they needed to reopen the investigation into Lydia’s death, and they told the senator. This morning he called me to his office and said he was going to litigate me into the poorhouse if I continued to pursue this thing. Then he told me to leave town.”

“That dumb son of a bitch,” Mahoney said.

“Morelli?” DeMarco said.

“No, that black kid,” Mahoney said, apparently still watching the television. “What the hell was he thinking?”

“Did you hear what I said?” DeMarco said. “Morelli told me to leave Washington.”

“Yeah,” Mahoney said.

Yeah, what?
DeMarco waited for Mahoney to say something else, and when he didn’t, DeMarco said, “But the real reason Morelli called me to his office was to find out who I was working for.”

“Son of a bitch,” the Speaker muttered.
Now
DeMarco had his attention. “So what did you tell him?”

“I told him I didn’t work for anyone.”

“Did he believe you?”

“No,” DeMarco said. “And I’ll tell you something else: with Burrows and Marcus Perry both dead, Morelli’s untouchable.”

The Speaker was silent for several seconds. DeMarco could hear the television set in the background. Finally Mahoney spoke.

“Goddamn, son,” he said, “you’ve sure fucked this up.”

DeMarco entered the Capitol and descended the steps to his subbasement office. He bolted the door, took the phone on his desk off the hook, and shut off his cell phone. He needed to think; he needed to figure out what to do next.

He ultimately concluded that the answer was: do nothing.

Like he’d told Mahoney, the likelihood of ever convicting Paul Morelli for murdering his wife was now zero with Marcus Perry and Abe Burrows both dead. In addition to the lack of witnesses, there was the fact that the cops were unwilling to even consider that a man of Morelli’s reputation and stature could be a murderer. And with Lydia dead, it seemed equally unlikely that he’d ever be able to connect Morelli to this powerful man who had been committing crimes for years to advance Morelli’s political career. Finally, it was also obvious from talking to the women that Morelli had raped—he now
had no doubt that Lydia had told him the truth about what Morelli had done—that neither Davenport nor Tyler was likely to ever testify against their attacker.

Paul Morelli, it appeared, was bulletproof.

DeMarco also knew that he was worrying about the wrong problem. Forget Morelli. What was going to happen to
him
? Oddly enough, he realized that he wasn’t afraid that Morelli would have him killed. Morelli wasn’t a crazed serial killer—he was a pragmatic man. He’d only killed his wife because he could think of no other way to silence her. But he didn’t need to kill lowly Joe DeMarco, a man with no clout or authority and not one speck of evidence that could harm him. So Morelli probably wouldn’t kill him but he might make good on his promise to ruin DeMarco professionally and financially and run him out of town. And would John Mahoney be there to save him from Morelli? Yeah, right. DeMarco laughed out loud at that idea. Mahoney’s only concern was that
he
not get into the crosshairs of the future president of the United States.

DeMarco considered what would happen if he lost his job. He may have had a law degree but he’d never practiced law. He could just see himself, at his age, applying for a position at some law firm and the firm asking what he’d been doing since college. Uh, well, he’d say, I bring envelopes stuffed with cash to a politician that I can’t name. Thank you very much, the law firm would say. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

He did a quick calculation. If he got a good price for his Georgetown house, and paid off what he owed on the mortgage, and considering what he had in savings, how long could he survive before he’d have to accept a job at McDonald’s burning French fries? The answer to that question, as near as he could tell, was about two weeks.

So he would do nothing. He wouldn’t investigate Paul Morelli any further and he’d just have to wait and see what Morelli was going to do to him.

DeMarco got back to his house about five-thirty, went into the kitchen, and scrambled a couple of eggs. His lucky streak continued: most of the eggs stuck to the bottom of the frying pan. He took the eggs and toast he’d made—he could make flawless toast—and carried the plate into his den and turned on the television set. The evening news was just starting.

The lead story, naturally, was the assassination attempt. They showed the film clip of the shoot-out on Capitol Hill, the anchorman describing Marcus Perry’s and Abe Burrows’s deaths like an NFL play-by-play announcer. When the tape ended, the anchorman informed his viewers that they were now going live to a reporter who had the latest developments on the attempted assassination of the senator.

Monica Bradshaw, the attractive, leggy reporter who had been at the Russell Building that morning, came on the screen. “We are here in the home of Eloise May Perry,” she said, “the mother of Isaiah and Marcus Perry. Mrs. Perry and her minister, the Reverend Jackson Knoll, met with Senator Morelli earlier in the day, and the senator has agreed to let us record an historic announcement this evening.”

The reporter’s face glowed with the adoration of a disciple; the only thing objective about her broadcast would be the pictures captured by the camera’s inhuman eye.

Paul Morelli, Eloise Perry, and a man DeMarco assumed was the Reverend Knoll came into focus. Seated in Mrs. Perry’s lap was Marcus Perry’s son, sucking his pacifier. Mrs. Perry looked even more world-weary than the last time DeMarco had seen her, but he thought he saw something in her eyes, something he hadn’t seen before: hope.

Morelli glanced affectionately at the baby, then faced the camera. “As you all know, my wife was killed by a young man named Isaiah Perry, and I killed Isaiah in self-defense. Then Isaiah’s older brother, Marcus, died while trying to avenge his brother’s death. As you can imagine, Mrs. Perry and I are both numb with grief and bewildered as to why our lives were destined to intersect in such a horrible way.
I decided, however, that there
had
to be a way to make something good come out of so much tragedy.

“This afternoon I met with Mrs. Perry and the pastor of her church, Reverend Knoll. We joined our hands and hearts in prayer, searching for answers, searching for something that could be done.”

The reverend nodded solemnly at the camera in agreement. Knoll was a slim man in his late sixties, with a high forehead, his head covered with tight white curls. His eyes shone as if he had just shaken hands with God.

“With Mrs. Perry tonight is this beautiful child.” Morelli looked sadly over at the baby squirming in Mrs. Perry’s lap and gave one of his tiny feet an affectionate squeeze.

“This is James, Marcus’s son. James is an orphan. His mother died of lymphoma. I don’t believe that Marcus and Isaiah Perry ever had much of a chance in life in spite of everything their good mother tried to do for them. They were raised without a father and Mrs. Perry had to work two jobs to support them. She admits that it was difficult for her to keep her sons, particularly Marcus, away from the bad influences that prey upon the underprivileged children of this country. And now Mrs. Perry is the sole source of support for her grandson.

“But it will be different for James—and for Mrs. Perry. I am establishing a trust fund in the name of my late wife, Lydia Grace Morelli, to provide for all James’s educational needs, including college at the university of his choice. To allow his grandmother the time and resources to care for him, the trust will augment her income and Reverend Knoll has found her employment with an institution that will allow her to adjust her work hours to suit her grandson’s schedule. This baby will have the opportunity that his father and uncle never had.”

The camera swung to Mrs. Perry. The reporter, Monica Bradshaw, asked her, “Mrs. Perry, do you have anything to say?”

Tears shining in her eyes and streaming down her broad face, Eloise Perry said, “I’m just so sorry . . . so sorry, for what my sons did to the senator. I just thank Jesus that he has the goodness in his heart to forgive.”

DeMarco swore. Had he been rich enough to have afforded it, he would have thrown something through the screen of his television set. Since he wasn’t, he simply turned off the television, stretched out on the couch in his den, closed his eyes—and tried not to think about anything at all. He must have fallen asleep because when the phone rang and he looked at his watch, he saw it was ten p.m. He croaked a hello into the phone.

“The Mayflower. Room 1016,” the caller said and hung up.

Aw, shit.

The caller had been Mahoney.

Room 1016 was a two-room suite.

DeMarco was seated in an uncomfortable, straight-backed antique chair. The Speaker’s broad ass was flying solo in a love seat, and his large lumpy feet and thick hairless legs protruded from the bottom of a white bathrobe. The robe had the hotel’s name embroidered on the chest.

Mahoney’s mane of white hair was tousled and his cheeks were flushed. In his right hand he held a glass of bourbon, and on the table next to him was a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey. That could explain the flush. A subtle scent hung in the air—the scent of perfume, the scent of a woman. That could also explain the flush. The door leading to the bedroom was closed.

“Did you see him on television,” Mahoney said, “that grandstand fuckin’ play he made with the Perry kid?”

DeMarco nodded.

“He doesn’t miss a trick. How’d the son of a bitch set that up so fast?”

DeMarco shrugged. He didn’t care that Paul Morelli could devise self-serving schemes at the speed of light.

The Speaker sat sipping his bourbon, a frown wrinkling his forehead. He looked angry—and his anger appeared to be directed at DeMarco.

“So what are you going to do next?” Mahoney asked.

“Do next?” DeMarco said, shocked that Mahoney would interrupt his carnal pleasures to ask this question.

“Well?” Mahoney persisted.

“I hadn’t planned on doing anything next. The only chance I had was to get the police to reopen the case, which they’re not going to do. And now even if they did, with Marcus Perry and Burrows both dead, they won’t be able to pin anything on Morelli. I’m sorry, but I’ve reached a dead end.”

The Speaker swallowed the remaining bourbon in his glass and put the glass down hard on the end table next to his chair.

“Sorry! Sorry don’t cut it, goddamnit! You have to do something.”

“Like
what
?” DeMarco said, not even trying to keep the frustration out of his voice.

“I don’t know ‘like what,’ but something. I have an obligation here, Joe. A moral obligation to the American people.”

This was pure bullshit. Mahoney wouldn’t know a moral obligation if one bit him on the ass. But now DeMarco knew why he had been summoned to the hotel room: his boss had been fretting all day that Morelli would eventually figure out that DeMarco worked for him, and Mahoney knew that even he might not survive if Morelli decided to go after him. So DeMarco could imagine Mahoney—anxiety having interfered with the temperamental erectile function—leaving his bed, angry and unfulfilled, to summon his henchman. DeMarco was apparently the only pawn he had left on the board.

DeMarco opened his mouth to protest but when he saw the look on Mahoney’s face, he stopped. Instead, he said, “Could I have a drink?”

Mahoney hesitated. DeMarco knew that Mahoney didn’t want to share his booze; he probably had just enough left to last until it was time to go home to his wife. But Mahoney finally, reluctantly, nodded his head. DeMarco poured an especially large shot just to annoy him.

“Sir,” DeMarco said, after the bourbon had warmed his gullet, “exactly what is it that you want me to do? I mean—”

At that moment the door to the bedroom opened.
Oh, boy!
DeMarco thought. At least he’d get to see who Mahoney was screwing. He expected Mahoney to call out, to tell the woman to stay where she was, but he didn’t. DeMarco turned his head and looked over his shoulder. The woman who stepped from the room was wearing a white hotel bathrobe just like Mahoney.