House Justice (22 page)

When DeMarco came back to the table and she saw the look on his face, she said, “Okay. I’m glad we got that settled.”

They ordered dinner—steak and a baked potato for DeMarco, a Cobb salad for her—then she said, “So, let’s start by talking about what you know about Sandra Whitmore and Dale Acosta.”

“How ’bout we get acquainted first,” DeMarco said.

Angela shrugged. “I’m already acquainted with you. I know where you went to grade school, who your mother is, who your father was— which, by the way, blew me away when I found
that
out. I know you were married and your wife left you to marry your cousin, a guy who’s a fence for Tony Benedetto up in New York. And I know, no matter what the goddamn paperwork says, that you work for John Mahoney. So, like I said, I’m pretty well acquainted with you.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know you,” DeMarco said.

“What’s to know? I was raised in an ugly little town in Pennsylvania. My granddad worked at a steel mill and my dad worked there, too, until we started buying all our steel from China. Now my dad’s a drunk who works at Wal-Mart. My mother’s a saint and my sister is Goody Two-shoes, married to an accountant, and she has two kids that are cuter than kittens and I love ’em both.”

“How’d you end up with the CIA?”

“I wanted to be a cop. I got a degree in criminal justice, became a cop, and about the time I got tired of being treated like a meter maid, 9/11 happened and the CIA was hiring. End of story.”

“You married?”

Angela hesitated and for the first time DeMarco saw some of her glibness disappear.

“Yeah, I’m married.”

“You’re not wearing a wedding ring.”

“I don’t wear a ring, Sherlock, because I’m left-handed and the ring screws me up if I have to shoot my gun.”

“Is DeCapria your husband’s name?”

“My maiden name.”

“What’s your husband think about you—”

“Hey, enough. Now we’re acquainted. Let’s get to work.”

During dinner, DeMarco told her everything he knew and everything he had done, with one exception: he didn’t tell her why Mahoney had sent him to help Sandra Whitmore in the first place. Angela nodded her head while he talked, as if he was confirming things she already knew. He concluded by saying, “But I don’t know who started this whole thing. I mean, I know someone leaked the information about Diller’s trip to Iran, and after that Dale Acosta was hired to tell Whitmore, and Whitmore published the story, but I don’t know who the original leaker was.”

“We think it was Congressman Ray Rudman,” Angela said.

“Why?”

“Because Rudman’s biggest supporter is Rulon Tully and Tully hates Martin Taylor, and leaking the story hurts Taylor.”

“But that doesn’t prove…”

“And because your boss agrees with us that Rudman was the original source.”

It would have been nice if Mahoney had told him about Rudman, but now DeMarco could understand why Mahoney was going along with this thing: he wanted Rudman out of Congress but he didn’t want to deal with the political fallout of publicly exposing him.

“Is that it, DeMarco? You’re not holding anything back?”

“No,” DeMarco lied.

“Okay. So this is what we have. We suspect Rudman told Rulon Tully about Diller’s meeting in Tehran. Tully, probably through a middle man, hires Dale Acosta. Acosta impersonates a CIA analyst named Derek Crosby and feeds the story to Whitmore. Then it gets interesting. Somebody kills Acosta. But who, and why? The logical answer is that Tully had Acosta killed because when Mahata died Tully realized it was a whole new ball game and he couldn’t take the chance that Acosta might give him up. Does that sound right to you?”

“That sounds logical but we don’t have any proof.”

“We don’t need no stinking proof,” she said, making DeMarco smile. “And then we’ve got the mystery man.”

“What mystery man?”

“The guy in the ski mask who tortured Derek Crosby.”

“Tortured Crosby? What are you talking about?” DeMarco asked and she proceeded to tell him how a man had broken into Crosby’s house and smothered him with a plastic bag to get Crosby to confess to meeting with Whitmore, which Crosby never did. While DeMarco was still trying to digest this latest piece of information, Angela continued.

“And the guy who tortured Crosby may be the same guy that saved your life in Myrtle Beach.”

“I’m not sure the other shooter was trying to save my life. I couldn’t tell if he was shooting at me or at Norm.”

“Norm?”

“Sorry,” DeMarco said, and he explained how the fat guy who killed Dale Acosta looked like the actor who played Norm on
Cheers
.

“I
loved
that guy,” Angela said. “But to get back to the issue of who was shooting at whom, we took a peek at the crime-scene report and, based on statements you gave them about the relative position of the shooters and damage done to cars in the parking lot, it looks like the mystery man was shooting at Norm. Or at least most of his shots were aimed at Norm. So we think the mystery man saved your life.”

“But do you know for sure that the shooter in the parking lot was the same one who questioned Crosby?”

“Not for sure, but it makes sense that it was him. We think he’s been following you.”

“Nobody’s been following me.”

Angela snorted. So far that was the least attractive thing that DeMarco had seen her do. “Like you’d ever know,” she said. “I followed you from your house to this restaurant. Did you see me?”

“No.”

“So, as I was saying, we think the mystery man started following you when you went to see Whitmore in New York. You get a lead on Crosby and this guy breaks into Crosby’s house and questions him. You get a lead on Acosta and you go to see Acosta, and he’s with you
again. And maybe that’s why he saved your life—because you keep leading him to all the people involved in this.”

DeMarco, because his pride was wounded, still wanted to deny being followed but didn’t see the point.

“But how did he know that I visited Whitmore in the first place?” he asked.

“We’re not sure,” Angela said. “But maybe he did the same thing we did and bribed someone at the jail to keep him informed of Whit-more’s visitors.”

“Huh. So, now what?”

“Now it’s time for you to do some homework. In my car, I have all the information we have on Ray Rudman and Rulon Tully. We’re still researching Marty Taylor. And, being the CIA, we have a
lot
of information. You need to study it tonight and see if anything in the files gives you any bright ideas for how we can get these guys.”

“And if I don’t get any bright ideas?”

“Then I guess we’ll have to go with one of
my
bright ideas,” she said. “But right now what we have to do is check into a hotel.”

“A hotel?”

And a fantasy erupted full-blown in DeMarco’s head: Angela DeCapria found him so handsome, so irresistible, that she had to take him someplace and…

“Since we don’t know who the mystery man is but we think he’s following you, we need to make sure you’re someplace where he can’t get to you. When we leave here, we’re gonna go back to your place— I already have people watching your house—and you’re going to pack a bag, and then we’re going to drive around for a bit. While we’re driving, some of my friends will be looking for anybody following us, and if somebody is we’ll get the guy. If nobody is, we’ll check into a hotel.”

So much for fantasies.

The florist wasn’t following DeMarco.

He was standing in an unlit doorway near the Patterson Houses, a massive public housing project in the Bronx. For the last hour he had been watching a small crew of teenagers selling drugs to other teenagers and people of indeterminate age who looked barely human, their bodies so wasted from the substances they took.

The florist wanted a gun but because he’d flown to New York, he hadn’t been able to take any of his weapons with him. He was certain, however, that some of the young drug dealers he was watching were armed and that one of them would provide what he needed.

A new man joined the crew. He was taller and older than the teenagers, in his midtwenties. He spoke to the group for a moment, struck one of the teenagers in the face, knocking him to the ground, then jabbed his index finger sharply into the chest of another young man. The florist assumed he was the boss and was unhappy about some issue related to either security or profitability.

The florist smiled slightly. All these young men probably thought they were very tough and he was sure they frightened the law-abiding citizens in the neighborhood, but the florist, with his background, was unimpressed and certainly unafraid.

The boss finished berating his crew and walked away in long, confident strides—directly toward the doorway where the florist was
standing. When the man passed the doorway, the florist stepped out of the shadows, startling him, and the man reached behind his back. The florist figured this was where he carried his weapon—in the back waistband of his jeans—and this theory was pretty much confirmed when the man said, “You could get your ass blown away, you old fool, jumpin’ out at a man like that.”

The florist apologized and pretended to be appropriately cowed, and the man turned and continued walking. The florist followed. As they walked, the man turned his head a couple of times and scowled, not liking the florist behind him. The florist waited until they turned a corner and were no longer visible to the man’s crew, then rapidly closed the distance between them.

The man turned and said, “What the fuck do you think you’re doin’?”

The florist punched him in the face, spun him around, pulled a 9 mm Glock from the waistband of the guy’s pants, and hit him in the head with it.

Now he had a gun.

The first day the florist had arrived in New York, while Sandra Whit-more was still in jail, he had identified that she lived in an apartment building in Tribeca. All he had to do was call directory assistance to get her phone number and address.

The building didn’t have a doorman—it was not an upscale residence—but all the exterior doors were kept locked. He punched the buzzer corresponding to Whitmore’s apartment number; no one answered. He then punched several more buzzers and finally a woman who sounded very old responded. “UPS,” he said. “What?” the old lady said, and he said, “Delivery. UPS.” She buzzed him into the building.

He took the stairs up to Whitmore’s fourth-floor apartment and knocked on her door. No one answered. He looked at his watch— nine p.m. Where could she be? One of the newspapers he had read
said she was appearing on several radio and television talk shows; another said she was talking with two publishing companies about writing a book. It appeared that Whitmore had become a minor celebrity and was cashing in on Mahata’s death—which made him even angrier—and he wondered if that was the reason why she wasn’t home, because she was off promoting herself. Whatever the case, all he could do was wait for her to return.

He knew he couldn’t remain standing in the hallway; some other tenant might see him and call the police. From the stairwell, however, he could see her apartment door, so he took up a position there, leaving the stairwell door cracked open so he could look down the hallway.

At ten thirty he heard the elevator ding. He peeked down the hall and saw Whitmore staggering toward her door. She appeared to be drunk. Very drunk. Making no attempt to be stealthy, he left the stairwell and walked down the hall directly toward her. Whitmore reached her apartment, took her keys from her purse, and, with some difficulty, inserted a key into the keyhole. She saw the florist walking toward her and she scowled at him but didn’t say anything. The florist paced himself perfectly and just as Whitmore unlocked her door he was standing next to her, and as the door swung open he grabbed her by the nape of the neck and shoved her into her apartment.

Whitmore let out a shriek as he propelled her through the door, and she stumbled and landed hard on the floor. The florist shut the door, stepped over to her, and pressed the drug dealer’s Glock against her forehead. “Be quiet,” he said.

The woman was repulsive. She reeked of alcohol and tobacco. Her jowly face was red and bloated and particularly hideous contorted as it was with fear and anger.

“Get up,” the florist said. “Sit on the couch.”

The apartment was a mess. Overflowing ashtrays and lipstick-smeared glasses sat on every flat surface; clothes, fast-food cartons, and newspapers were scattered about on chairs and on the floor. The aroma of old cigarette butts and something rotting in the kitchen was overpowering.

“Who are you?” Whitmore asked.

The florist kicked her wide ass. “Get up. If I have to tell you again, I’ll drag you by your hair.”

The woman heaved herself to her feet and staggered toward the couch. Her words slurred by alcohol, she mumbled, “I don’t have any money.”

The florist walked over to another chair, tilted it so that the pizza carton sitting on it fell to the floor, then sat down and pointed the Glock at her face.

“Why did you print the story?” he asked.

That was really the only question he had for her. He knew Acosta had given the story to her. He didn’t know why Acosta had done so— maybe he’d find out after he talked to the man in Los Angeles—but all he wanted to know from this woman was why.

“What?” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“Your story on Conrad Diller, the story that got Mahata Javadi killed. Why did you publish it? I know, from everything I’ve read and heard on television, that the CIA told you that publishing the story would compromise their operations, but you published anyway. I want to know why.”

“Who are you? CIA?”

“No. I’m not from the government and I’m not a policeman. But I am a man that will hurt you very badly if you don’t answer my questions.”

The woman appeared to grow more confident now that she’d overcome her initial fear. Or maybe she was so drunk she didn’t understand that she should be afraid. He imagined she’d always been an aggressive woman, used to getting her way, and she confirmed this when she said, “You’re not going to use that gun. Somebody will hear it.”