House Justice (11 page)

Emma spent the time cursing DeMarco as she kept her face hidden by a magazine she found on one of the chairs in the room.

Sandra Whitmore sat across the table from Emma, sullen and suspicious. Her face was bloated, her eyes were puffy, and her hair was plastered to her skull as if it hadn’t been washed in days. She reeked of cigarette smoke. There was no reason for letting herself go like this, Emma thought. She wasn’t being held in a dungeon in Calcutta.

“Is that your source?” Emma asked, placing Dale Acosta’s photograph on the table.

Whitmore looked at the photo as if Emma had just turned over the river card in a game of Texas hold ’em: her face gave away nothing. “I want to know who you are,” she said to Emma for the second time.

“I told you who I am: I’m the person Joe DeMarco sent to show you that picture. That’s all you need to know.”

“But why should I believe you? How do I know this isn’t some kind of trick?”

“Listen to me,” Emma said. “I don’t
like
you. I don’t care if you sit in a jail cell until the day you die. The only reason I’m here is because I’m doing DeMarco a favor. Now if you don’t want to confirm that’s your source, I’ll leave and you can stay here until you rot.”

When Whitmore just stared at her, obviously trying to make up her mind, Emma rose to leave. She was halfway to the door before Whitmore said, “Yeah, that’s him. That’s Derek Crosby.”

Emma turned around, shook her head slowly, and then smiled. She smiled because she knew how Whitmore would react to what she was about to say. “No,” she said, “that’s not Derek Crosby.”

“What?” Whitmore said, confused by Emma’s response.

“Derek Crosby works for the CIA. The man in that photo does not. He assumed Crosby’s identity so he could feed you the story. In other words, he tricked you and he used you.”

“What!” This time Whitmore shrieked the word. “Well, who the hell is he?”

Emma started to tell her Acosta’s name but then decided not to. She didn’t want Whitmore to know anything else because she was likely to publish whatever she knew and she was too selfish to care if that would hurt the government’s case against Acosta. The other reason she didn’t tell her was because she despised Whitmore and knew that not telling her would drive her crazy.

“Well?” Whitmore said. “Who is he?”

“Ask DeMarco,” Emma said, and then turned away from Whit-more and rapped on the door to tell the guard waiting outside that she was ready to leave.

Whitmore stood up and screamed, “Goddamnit, tell me who he is! I have a right to know.”

“Mahata Javadi had the right to live,” Emma said. “You don’t have a right to anything.”

Whitmore’s cell mate was lying on her bunk, reading a magazine. She looked up as Whitmore entered the cell and gave her a nod but didn’t speak.

Whitmore’s first two days in jail, she had had the cell to herself. She figured the folks who ran the place didn’t want to put her in a cage with some violent psycho because if something happened to her, the
Daily News
would raise a front-page ruckus. But then they put another woman in with her, a petite black gal named LaTisha who wore her hair in cornrows. And it turned out that LaTisha was the perfect roommate: she didn’t talk much, she’d been in prison before, and she seemed to know how the system worked. Most important, she’d been able to keep Whitmore supplied with cigarettes—although she was charging her fifteen bucks a pack.

Whitmore had told LaTisha her story the first day they met, how she’d been unjustly jailed because she wouldn’t reveal a source. “Good for you, girl,” LaTisha had said. “Nobody likes a snitch.”

Whitmore didn’t bother to explain that there was a big difference between a reporter not revealing a source and someone testifying against a criminal, but she didn’t think LaTisha would appreciate the distinction. LaTisha seemed bright enough but she was pure ghetto.

LaTisha tossed the magazine she was reading onto the floor—one of those black fashion magazines where the models all looked like aliens to Whitmore with their flawless, metallic complexions, nonexistent waists, and arms and legs that were impossibly long and thin. “So how’s it goin’?” she asked.

“Not good,” Whitmore answered. “There’s this asshole that’s supposed to be helping me, but he’s jerking me around.”

“Oh, yeah,” LaTisha said.

Whitmore could tell that LaTisha was expecting her to say more but she didn’t. She liked LaTisha but that didn’t mean she trusted her.

Whitmore lit a cigarette and flopped down on her bunk. It was a no-smoking facility but everybody smoked. What were the guards
gonna do? Put ’em in jail? As she smoked, she thought that she didn’t really need to know the name of her source to get released. If she told the judge a man impersonating a CIA agent had duped her, that would probably be good enough—good enough to get out of jail, that is. It would not be good enough, however, to keep her from looking like a complete idiot.

No, she needed to know the guy’s name and why he had given her the story. Maybe if she had that information she’d be able to put the right spin on things. Maybe. With a grunt she got to her feet and went to the bars.

“Hey! Hey! I need to use the phone. Hey, is anybody out there?”

After a couple more minutes of yelling, a female guard waddled down the walkway and said, “What are you goin’ on about?”

“I need to use the phone.”

“Tough shit,” the guard said. “We’re busy right now. I’ll take you to a phone later, unless you piss me off.”

“Well, when will that be?” Whitmore asked.

“Now you’re starting to piss me off,” the guard said and walked away.

Whitmore cursed and slammed her right hand against the bars hard enough to bruise her palm.

“That’s one mean, ugly bitch,” LaTisha said.

Whitmore didn’t say anything; she just stood there with her head pressed against the bars.

“How bad do you need to use a phone?” LaTisha asked her.

“Bad. I need to call a guy. He’s got the info I need to get out of here.”

“Is that right?” LaTisha said. “Is it worth a hundred bucks to you if I can get you a cell phone to use?”

“You can do that?”

“Girl, I told you. I know how things work around here.”

“Fine. A hundred.”

“You sure you’re good for it? You owe me sixty already.”

Her lawyer, the jerk, had given her a hundred bucks in cash the day she was jailed for contempt, but she’d gone through that pretty
quickly at the rate she smoked. Since then she’d been borrowing from LaTisha and LaTisha had been keeping a running tab of every dime she owed her—and charging her 5 percent interest. LaTisha probably hadn’t graduated from high school but she could calculate the vig on a debt as well as any loan shark.

“I’m good for it,” Whitmore said.

LaTisha gave her a hard stare, but then said, “Okay. You’ll have to wait until we go to chow, then I’ll get one.”

“You can’t do it any sooner?”

“Hey, what do I look like? That T-Mobile lady?”

LaTisha winked at Whitmore, rose from the table where they were eating, and approached a guard standing near the entrance to the kitchen. She pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of her bra, made sure none of the other guards were paying any attention to her, and passed the bill to the guard.

“I need a little privacy,” she said.

When LaTisha spoke to the guard, all the ghetto was gone from her voice. She sounded like a Princeton graduate—which she was.

She entered the kitchen and walked into a pantry where they kept the potatoes and flour. It was the only place in the kitchen where she could hear above the din of pots and pans banging and the cooks yelling at each other. She tugged up the right pant leg of her jumpsuit, pulled a cell phone out of the top of one of her socks, and punched in a number.

“Foley,” she said, “this is Clark. Whitmore’s going to make a call from my cell phone in fifteen minutes. She’s going to talk to somebody who has information to get her out of jail. That’s all I know.”

Linda Clark listened for a moment and hung up—and became LaTisha again.

DeMarco called Mahoney and after being placed on hold for fifteen minutes—which was about the average wait time whenever he called his boss—Mahoney came on the line.

“You were right,” DeMarco said. “Acosta was the one who fed Whitmore the story. I had Emma show her his picture.”

“Aw, shit,” Mahoney said. “Why the hell did you involve her in this?”

DeMarco told Mahoney he had used Emma because she was already in New York and it had saved time, and without her help he never would have determined that Acosta was impersonating Derek Crosby.

“And you know she won’t talk to anybody about this,” DeMarco added.

“Yeah, but goddamnit,” Mahoney said, “you know how she is.”

What Mahoney meant was that Emma couldn’t be relied upon because she wouldn’t do what Mahoney told her and because she had morals and a conscience—two elements seemingly absent in Mahoney’s makeup.

“Did she tell Whitmore who Acosta was?” Mahoney asked.

“No. She just showed her the picture.”

“Well, that’s good at least. That’ll give you some time to find out who Acosta’s working for.”

“How do you know he’s working for somebody?”

“Because guys like him never have their own agenda. They always have a boss. Plus, I can’t imagine what motive he’d personally have for feeding the story to Whitmore.”

“Okay, but I’m eventually going to have to tell Whitmore his name,” DeMarco said. “I mean, I thought the purpose of this whole thing was to get her out of jail so she wouldn’t tell the press about you, and if I don’t give her his name…”

“Yeah, yeah, but hold off on telling her for now.” Mahoney was silent for a moment as he pondered something, then added, “Tell her tomorrow morning. Late tomorrow morning.”

“Okay.”

“What I want you to do next is talk to Acosta. See if you can make him tell you who put him up to this and why.”

“Aw, come on,” DeMarco said. “Why don’t I just give him to the CIA? I don’t have the clout to make him tell me anything, but LaFountaine will hook wires to his nuts to make him talk.”

“I don’t want to tell LaFountaine, either. Not yet. I need to confirm something first.”

“What do you have to confirm?”

“Never mind that.”

Goddamn Mahoney. There was always another game.

“You just go see Acosta. Go see him tonight.”

“Tonight! He lives in Myrtle Beach.”

“So what? If you can’t get a direct flight, there’s gotta be some flight you can catch that’ll get you close enough so you can drive there.”

“Okay,” DeMarco said and hung up.

He had no intention of flying to Myrtle Beach that night; he had a date and he was going to keep it. He’d fly down first thing in the morning and Mahoney would never know the difference. Plus, what Mahoney wanted him to do was stupid. There was no way in hell Acosta was going to talk to him. Eventually, Mahoney was going to have to tell LaFountaine that Acosta was the guy, and let the CIA or the Justice Department or whoever take it from there.

DeMarco’s plan was to go home, get an online airplane reservation, take a shower and shave, then pack a bag for Myrtle Beach. Then tomorrow, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and—hopefully—freshly laid, he’d go see Acosta.

Yep, that was his plan—and to hell with Mahoney.

After speaking with DeMarco, Mahoney returned three phone calls he couldn’t ignore. One of the calls was from the president’s chief of staff, a political hit man who would stab you in the back without hesitation if he thought stabbing you would advance his boss’s agenda. Mahoney recorded every conversation he had with the guy because he figured he was being recorded, too.

Once the important calls were out of the way, he poured three fingers of Wild Turkey over a single ice cube then plopped down on the couch in his office. It was hard to drink lying on his back but his big gut made a perfect platform upon which to rest the glass.

He ignited a cigar. He tried to blow a smoke ring—he always tried when he was alone—but he never succeeded, and this always irritated him. He figured the problem was his tongue. He had tried blowing smoke rings while looking in the mirror, and he could see that his lips formed the necessary, perfect
O
, so his tongue must be shaped wrong or too fat or something. But still, he tried.

He didn’t think DeMarco would get anything from Acosta but it didn’t cost him anything to let DeMarco try. What he needed to do, though, was give DeMarco some time to get to Acosta, which meant he needed to keep Whitmore in jail a little longer—but not long enough to piss her off and cause her to do something rash. And it would be best if any delay in releasing her couldn’t be attributed to him. He puffed on his cigar and thought about his problem, and when the atmosphere in his office resembled a fog bank off Nova Scotia, he got off the couch and called another guy at the White House, a guy that owed him.

“Tommy, me lad,” he said, “I need a wee favor. I want you to call a judge in New York named Bryer and… Yeah, that guy. Anyway, I want you to fly him down to D.C. early tomorrow and keep him overnight. Tell him his good work has come to the president’s attention, and since two of the guys on the Supreme Court are about a hundred years old and in failing health, the president’s decided it’s time to make up his short list.”

Mahoney listened for a moment.

“I don’t want you to promise him anything. Just butter him up. Get his opinion on a couple of recent decisions the Supremes have made and pretend you’ve never heard such fuckin’ wisdom. Then take him out and wine and dine him. I’ll pick up the tab. The main thing is, I want him out of New York early tomorrow morning.”

That task completed, Mahoney poured another glass of bourbon and resumed his position on the couch.

Glenda Petty, Democrat, Vermont. Raymond Rudman, Democrat, California.

Of the six House members who had been present when LaFountaine had told them about Conrad Diller’s visit to Iran, Petty and Rudman were at the top of Mahoney’s list for leaking the story to the
News
. And, of course, they just had to belong to his party.