House Secrets (9 page)

“Okay, so political wives are different,” DeMarco said. “And maybe up until now, Lydia’s stood by this wonderful guy that she says is a murderer and a rapist because she loves him or wants to be the first lady or whatever. But if that’s the case, what’s changed? Why’d she contact Terry Finley and why’s she telling me about her husband now?”

“I don’t know,” Emma said, “but her daughter died just a few months ago. That could have been the catalyst. The woman is obviously in pain, she starts drinking heavily, so maybe she’s . . .”

“Nuts?”

“No, not nuts. Traumatized. So even though she’s remained loyal to her husband for years, when her daughter died things changed, her priorities changed.”

“In other words, she got religion,” DeMarco said.

“Maybe not literally, but yes. At any rate, you need to pursue this. You need to find out if she’s telling the truth.”

“Emma, Mahoney thinks Paul Morelli’s the second coming of JFK. If he knew I was running around trying to prove he was some kinda sexual predator, he’d . . .”

As usual, Emma wasn’t listening. She said, “And who’s this powerful person that’s helping him?”

“I don’t even know if there
is
a powerful person,” DeMarco said. “And if there is, why not tell me who he is?”

“Maybe she’s afraid of him,” Emma said. “Telling you his name could put her in danger.”

“But not telling puts
me
in danger,” DeMarco said.

Emma sat there thinking, holding her martini glass by the stem, twirling it, making the blue liquid swirl in the glass. “That one guy, what’s-his-name, Reams, the guy who claimed he was drugged? Neil said his blood was tested for drugs and came back negative. What if he really had been drugged? Who would have the influence to change the results of a police drug test?”

“Jesus, Emma, that’s a hell of a leap.”

“Maybe. At any rate, you need to go to New York and meet this woman, this Janet Tyler. And you need to find out what Terry was doing in New Jersey. Neil may be able to pin down a location using Finley’s credit card or cell phone records.”

“And what do you suggest I tell my boss?” DeMarco said.

“Don’t tell him anything. Didn’t you say he was in San Francisco with his latest mistress?”

“I was just kidding about that. I don’t know if she’s his mistress.”

“She is,” Emma said.

“And you would know this how?” It always bugged DeMarco that Emma never allowed a lack of data to prevent her from being absolutely certain of her opinion.

“Because John Mahoney’s a scoundrel,” Emma said. “I feel so sorry for
his
wife.”

Paul Morelli’s office was located in the Russell Senate Office Building on the northeast side of the Capitol. The interior walls of the building are polished slabs of white and gray marble, and the doors to the senators’ chambers are all brass and mahogany and an impressive eight and a half feet in height. The taxpayers house their senators in style, and Morelli’s suite had a fireplace, rich antique furnishings, and a reception area filled with plaques and awards that the state of New York had bestowed upon its favorite son. A photograph of Morelli and the president was prominently displayed. The president appeared uncomfortable in the photo—he had the look of a man who knew he was posing with his replacement.

Morelli’s receptionist was a woman in her fifties with a horsey face and watery eyes. When DeMarco asked to see Abe Burrows, she pointed wordlessly at an open door while blowing her nose loudly into a tissue.

Judging by his office, Burrows was a typical harried, overworked chief of staff. His small, messy room was overflowing with documents half-read or never-to-be read; his in-box was a Tower of Babel about to collapse; yellow call slips formed a large, untidy pyramid next to his phone.

DeMarco had known dozens of men like Burrows. They didn’t have enough charisma to be elected as dog catchers but they were smart, hardworking,
and fanatically dedicated. While their bosses were cutting ribbons and smooching babies, they stayed in the office until midnight, reading the fine print on the bills and making the deals that passed the laws. Politicians were often the hood ornament on the government’s machine—people like Abe Burrows were the engine.

Burrows was on the phone when DeMarco entered his office, and DeMarco heard him say: “You tell your guy that Morelli won’t give a shit about bridges in Mississippi until someone over there starts caring about Northeast interstates. Call me back when you got your head outta your ass.”

He was short and overweight, had frizzy hair, and wore wrinkled clothes that fit him badly—yet DeMarco knew it would be a mistake to assume Burrows’s appearance was an indicator of his character. Senators didn’t select their chiefs of staff for charm and good looks; they picked them because they were harder than diamond-coated drill bits and usually just as sharp.

Slamming down the phone, Burrows looked at it and said, “Dipshit.” Looking up at DeMarco, he raised his eyebrows in curiosity.

“Joe DeMarco, Abe,” DeMarco said.

“Yeah, I know. What do you—”

“The other night, when you and the senator couldn’t remember Janet Tyler, he told me to stop by here. He said you’d check your files.”

“Oh, yeah. But I’m kinda busy right now. I’m . . . Aw, never mind. Hang on.” Burrows hit a button on his desk and said into the speaker box, “Call George Burak. Tell him to pull the personnel file on a gal named Janet Tyler. She worked for the senator when he was mayor. Tell him to do it right away and call me back.” Burrows disconnected the phone call without waiting for a response, then said to DeMarco, “Why are you wasting your time on this?”

DeMarco obviously couldn’t tell Burrows what Lydia Morelli had told him. So he just shrugged and said, “Just being thorough. I told Dick Finley that I’d check out the names on that list, and Tyler’s the last one.”

“Good,” Burrows said, then he ran his hands over his face, like he was trying to scrub away his fatigue. “You know, we’re gonna start our run for the White House sometime next year. And Paul will get the nomination, no doubt about it. But as soon as we declare, the Republicans are going to do everything they can to smear him. They already took a pretty good shot at him when he ran for the Senate, and they didn’t find bupkus, but when he gets the nomination they’ll pull out all the stops. They’ll use anything to discredit him.”

“I’m not trying to hurt the senator,” DeMarco said.

“I didn’t say you were. What I’m saying is that Terry Finley was bush-league. There was no way in hell a guy like him was going to find something wrong about Paul when the entire Republican Party and every conservative journalist in America can’t do it.”

Maybe they could if Paul Morelli’s wife was helping them.

“I’ve been in politics all my life,” Burrows said, “and Paul’s the best I’ve ever seen. And I’m not saying that just because I work for him. He’s the real thing, DeMarco. He’s going to change this country.”

Burrows’s phone rang. He hit the speaker button and said, “Yeah.”

“George is on line three, Abe,” a disembodied voice said.

Burrows punched another button. “George?” he said.

“Yeah,” George said. “What do you want to know about this Janet Tyler?”

“Who is she?” Burrows said. “Apparently she worked for Paul when he was mayor, but I don’t remember her.”

“You don’t remember her because she was only with us two months. We hired her to help with some zoning study, but I guess she quit.”

“You guess?”

“Well, we didn’t fire her. The file only says secretary, Brooklyn zoning study, separated in ’99. That’s it. If we’d fired her ass, the file would have said so.”

“And that’s all you got?”

“Yeah. I even asked a couple of my guys about her, but they don’t remember her either.”

“Thanks, George,” Burrows said and hung up. Looking at DeMarco, he said, “Okay, you happy now? You now know everything I know about Janet Tyler.”

The phone call between Burrows and this Burak character hadn’t sounded the least bit rehearsed. And the conversation that Lydia Morelli claimed to have heard between Burrows and Paul Morelli regarding Janet Tyler had happened eight years ago. It was possible that Burrows didn’t remember the discussion—assuming Lydia was telling the truth, which was a big assumption. So who should DeMarco believe: the alcoholic or the politician? Now that was a tough choice.

“Yeah, I’m happy, Abe,” DeMarco said. “Thanks for your time.”

Emma watched DeMarco exit the Russell Building, and smiled when his head swiveled to stare at the well-formed derriere of a young woman who was just entering the building. She had to find DeMarco a girlfriend, or even better, a wife. DeMarco was the kind of man who needed a wife.

Emma knew that he had fallen head over heels for a spunky FBI agent a couple of years ago, but then the woman had been transferred to L.A. And then he’d hooked up with some school teacher, and although Emma had never met the woman, she’d sounded nice. But the teacher lived in Iowa and she and DeMarco had drifted apart, and now she was marrying somebody else. Emma needed to find him someone local so he couldn’t use distance as an excuse for not making a commitment.

The term “commitment shy” may have been a cliché, but in DeMarco’s case it was valid. And the reason, Emma knew, was his ex-wife. His ex had been an adulterous airhead but for some reason he just couldn’t get over her or get beyond what she had done. But DeMarco’s love life—or rather his lack of one—would have to wait.

DeMarco had descended the steps of the Russell Building and was now standing on the corner of Constitution and Delaware. When a
cab came into view, he waved it down and jumped in, and Emma, watching from half a block away, saw a dark blue Buick fall into place behind the cab.

DeMarco hadn’t known it, but Emma had been parked near his house at five-thirty that morning. At seven, she noticed a car with two men in it pull up and park, and when DeMarco caught a taxi to the Russell Building, the car had tailed the cab—and Emma had tailed the car. Emma pulled out her cell phone. It was time to find out who was in the Buick.

The men following DeMarco were a block from the Russell Building when they were pulled over by the U.S. Capitol police. Emma knew that the female officer driving the patrol car would tell them that they had been seen “lurking” near the Senate Office Buildings and, times being what they were, the Capitol cops wanted to know what they were up to.

The officer made the men exit their car. They were big, beefy white guys in their late forties or early fifties and both had short dark hair, though one guy’s hairline was receding. The one with the retreating hairline also wore glasses with heavy, black frames, the glasses being the main thing that distinguished him from his companion. For some reason, Emma could imagine these two at a hockey game, their faces painted, screaming in delight whenever a player was body-checked into the glass.

The policewoman patted them down one-handed, her other hand on her sidearm while she did, then looked inside the car but didn’t search it. While she was inspecting the interior of their vehicle, the men slouched against the hood of their car, arms crossed over their chests, disgusted looks on their faces. After a brief discussion—and a lot of pissed-off body language—the men handed the officer their driver’s licenses. She ordered them back into their car and returned to her vehicle. Emma saw the man with the glasses slam his hand down on the steering wheel in frustration. Ten minutes later, a long time to do a simple check on outstanding warrants, the officer left her patrol car and returned the men’s driver’s licenses. As the Buick
departed, the driver stuck his arm out the window and gave the cop the finger.

The officer remained standing outside her patrol car until Emma drove up next to her. Emma powered down the passenger-side window of her car, exchanged a few words with the other woman, and the officer handed Emma the memory card from a digital camera.

Emma wasn’t a particularly sociable person but she had friends everywhere.

The shuttle from Reagan National to LaGuardia arrived at ten-thirty, and by eleven-thirty DeMarco was standing in the hallway outside Janet Tyler’s apartment. He rang the doorbell, and from inside the apartment, he could hear the commotion caused by a couple of kids responding to the bell and their mother telling them to settle down. He saw the peephole darken and then the door opened.