House Justice (7 page)

Marty thought about witness protection and if it had just been him he might have done it. But since Yuri had threatened his entire family that meant his parents, his sister, her husband, and his niece would all have to go into witness protection as well and he couldn’t imagine destroying their lives that way. He even thought about hiring someone to kill Yuri but he had no idea how to procure that sort of service.

In his dreams, he killed Yuri himself. He killed him every night.

As bad as everything was, though, this thing with Iran was so much worse. It was one thing to sell ripped-off Mercedes parts to some guy in Latvia; it was a whole different ball game to start selling missile technology to the Iranians. But Yuri, because of an association he had with a Russian ex-patriot who now worked with the Iranian government, had seen an opportunity and forced Marty to send Conrad Diller to Iran. It had never occurred to them that a CIA spy would attend the meeting.

So now Marty was in even bigger trouble than he had been in before, if that was possible. If Conrad Diller admitted that Marty had
sent him to Iran… well, hello Lompoc—unless, of course, Yuri killed him first. For the time being, Diller was sticking to the story that he’d been on vacation in Tehran and had done nothing wrong, and the old lawyer, Porter Henry, continued to think he might beat the government in court. Additionally, per Yuri’s instructions, Marty had offered Diller five million dollars to be a stand-up guy, although Marty suspected Diller would never see the money.

But then Porter Henry called and said Diller wasn’t a stand-up guy.

Not a problem, Yuri said.

The florist was eating a late breakfast when he received a call from the guard at the Metropolitan Correctional Center he had bribed to keep him informed of Sandra Whitmore’s visitors.

“She’s being visited by a man named Joseph, uh, DeMarco,” the guard informed him. “He went in to see her about five minutes ago.”

“Spell the name,” the florist said, and the guard did. “So who is he? And why is he visiting her?”

“I don’t know why he’s visiting her, but he said he was a lawyer. He showed me a District of Columbia driver’s license for ID.”

The florist hesitated a moment, then said, “Describe him.”

“About six foot, dark hair. He’s wearing a black suit, white shirt, and a red tie, or maybe it’s maroon.”

“I want you to call me when he’s leaving.”

The florist rushed out of the diner and caught a cab to the prison. His primary reason for coming to New York had been to wait until Whitmore was released from prison and when she was he would deal with her. And, just like the government, he wanted to know the name of her source. He had bribed the guard to keep him informed of her visitors hoping that maybe one of them would lead him to her source, although he doubted he would get that lucky.

But this DeMarco intrigued him. He knew from reading the papers that Whitmore had a New York lawyer, a man who also represented
the
Daily News
. And until today, all the people who had visited her were local: her lawyer, her editor at the
News
, another female reporter from the
News
, and one woman who lived in her apartment building. So why was she being visited by this lawyer from Washington? He didn’t know, but he doubted that DeMarco was her source. He couldn’t imagine her source taking the risk of visiting her. Whatever the case, he wanted to know more about Mr. DeMarco.

The guard called back twenty minutes later and said DeMarco was just leaving the prison. When DeMarco caught a cab, the florist told his cabdriver to follow.

DeMarco entered the lobby of the Hyatt and looked for the concierge’s desk.

In any prison movie—
The Great Escape, The Longest Yard, The Shawshank Redemption
—there’s always an inmate known as “the scrounger.” The scrounger was the guy who could get you anything, and DeMarco figured all the good prison scroungers had been New York hotel concierges before they got sent up the river.

You want tickets to a show, no sweat. Seats behind home plate at Yankee Stadium, piece of cake. A girl, well…
I don’t know nothin’ about no girls, pal, but for fifty bucks I’ll bet a blonde named Tiffany comes knockin’ on your door at ten
.

The concierge’s name tag said he was Tony, and he looked like a lot of the Tonys that DeMarco had known: curly black hair, longish nose, hirsute as a small ape. DeMarco put five one-hundred-dollar bills on the countertop that served as Tony’s desk. The concierge looked down at the money, then smiled at DeMarco. Tony had never worn braces.

“Yes,
sir
,” he said. “And what can I do for you?”

DeMarco gave Tony the date Derek Crosby had met with Sandy Whitmore, and said he wanted all the information on Crosby stored in the hotel’s computers: Crosby’s address, phone number, the license plate number for his car if he had parked at the hotel, and his credit card number. He particularly wanted the credit card number because
Crosby’s credit card statement would prove that Crosby had stayed at the hotel, and DeMarco knew a way to get Crosby’s statement. He was afraid Tony might balk when he asked for the credit card number —but he didn’t. Apparently, five hundred bucks was more than sufficient to purchase Tony’s conscience.

DeMarco then showed Tony a picture of Sandra Whitmore, not the picture in the papers the day she was jailed for contempt, but one taken off the
Daily News
’s Web site in which she looked a little less like the unkept creature she currently was. “The main thing I want,” DeMarco said, “is the name of a person who can testify that this woman, Sandra Whitmore, was in the hotel the same day Crosby was here. Even better would be someone who can say they saw Crosby and the woman together. I know they had a drink in the bar, so start there.”

“You got a picture of this guy Crosby?” Tony asked.

“Not yet,” DeMarco said. He gave Tony the description of Crosby that Whitmore had given him.

“And if you can find somebody who can positively say Whitmore was in the hotel while Crosby stayed here,” DeMarco said, “that’s worth five hundred more to you and five hundred to whoever saw her.”

Tony studied Whitmore’s picture. “She looks familiar.”

“Familiar’s not good enough,” DeMarco said. “I need a witness— a go-to-court, swear-on-a-Bible witness. But what I don’t want is somebody willing to commit perjury.”

“Okay,” Tony said.

DeMarco could have simply placed an anonymous call to Langley and told the CIA that Crosby was Whitmore’s source and that Crosby had been in New York shortly before the story was published. But he figured it would be better if he could find someone who had actually seen Whitmore with Crosby because that way Crosby couldn’t deny having met the woman. But just placing Whitmore in the hotel on the same day Crosby was there might be good enough; that would at least give the CIA a starting point for breaking down whatever lies Crosby might tell his employer.

DeMarco looked down and saw a Manhattan magic trick had been performed: the five bills he had placed on the concierge’s lectern had disappeared and he had never seen Tony’s hands move.

“Give me until five,” Tony whispered out the side of his mouth. “That way, I’ll be able to talk to people on both this shift and the next one.”

The florist wondered why DeMarco had given the concierge money. DeMarco could be a guest at the hotel and he might be trying to get tickets for a show or reservations at a restaurant, but since he had gone directly from the jail to the hotel, it was possible that his business with the concierge had to do with Whitmore. While DeMarco was talking to the concierge, the florist used one of the hotel’s house phones, called the front desk, and asked if a Mr. DeMarco was registered at the hotel. The lady said no.

When DeMarco left the Hyatt, the florist followed. When DeMarco caught a cab, the florist caught one, too.

DeMarco ended up at a house in Queens that he entered without knocking. As the florist didn’t know how long DeMarco would remain at the house, he paid the cabdriver an outrageous amount of money to sit there as long as necessary. While he waited, he called the man who was making his new identity. The man wasn’t a hacker but he and the people that worked for him—all of them relatives— could use the Internet in the normal way to get information. He gave the ID maker the address in Queens and DeMarco’s name and twenty minutes later the man called him back. The house belonged to a Gino and Maureen DeMarco. Gino was deceased. The DeMarcos had one son named Joseph.

So DeMarco was visiting his mother.

“One other thing,” the forger said. “This man Gino DeMarco worked for the Italian mafia. He’s dead because they killed him.”

Now that was interesting: DeMarco had a blood link to a criminal, but he couldn’t imagine a connection between Whitmore’s story
and organized crime. The more he learned about DeMarco, the more the man intrigued him.

As the florist sat there, he reflected again on what he was doing. Unlike his late brother, he wasn’t an intellectual or a philosophical man; he couldn’t articulate the correctness of the course of action he had chosen. All he knew was that his values—the values of his culture, the values of his family—demanded he act no matter the cost. It was the way it had always been and the way it always would be. They had selfishly and uncaringly destroyed someone he loved and he was the only one left to provide justice. And vengeance was justice.

He could have waited to see if the American legal system would punish the guilty but he had no faith in the courts, particularly not in a matter as complicated as this, one involving the press, the government, and wealthy people like Martin Taylor. He came to the United States twenty years ago because he figured the land of his country’s greatest enemy was the safest place for him to hide. At the time of his arrival, he’d been prepared to hate America but over time he began to love his adopted home: its freedoms, its opportunities, even its people. But what he never grew to appreciate was the American legal system. It operated too slowly and it bent over backward to favor the guilty. He had witnessed too often—although it was no different in other countries—the way rich, powerful people evaded punishment for their crimes.

So he would provide the punishment—and he would leave it to people smarter than him to debate the morality of his actions.

At four thirty, DeMarco left the house in Queens and took a cab back to the Hyatt. The florist watched as he spoke to the concierge again, and saw the concierge hand him a piece of paper. DeMarco then looked at his watch, rushed from the hotel, and caught the next passing cab. The florist had driven his own car to New York so he could bring his weapons with him but it was parked in a garage several blocks away. He looked frantically for another cab and saw half a dozen coming down Forty-second Street toward him but they all
had passengers. It was rush hour and every cab he could see was occupied, and he realized that DeMarco had been very lucky to get one. He watched helplessly as DeMarco’s taxi disappeared from view.

He stood on the street for a moment pondering his next move, then looked back into the Hyatt.

The concierge was still at his post.

DeMarco told the cabbie to take him to JFK. There wasn’t anything else for him to do in New York and if the traffic wasn’t too bad, he might be able to catch the next shuttle to D.C.

Tony had struck out finding anyone who remembered seeing Sandra Whitmore at the Hyatt. He did, however, give DeMarco all the information the hotel had on Crosby. Tony said he’d keep looking for somebody who had seen Whitmore, but told DeMarco not to get his hopes up.

DeMarco’s parting words to the concierge had been, “No witness, no five-hundred-buck bonus. Keep looking.” Tony assured him he would, but DeMarco had a feeling that he just might have to make that anonymous phone call to the CIA and inform them that one of their employees had been in New York just before Whitmore’s article appeared—and let the boys from Langley take it from there.

He cursed when he saw the traffic jammed up in the Midtown Tunnel; he wasn’t going to make the next shuttle. He wondered how many poor slobs had died in this city because they had the misfortune to have a heart attack during rush hour—which these days lasted from two until seven. Having nothing better to do, he pulled out his cell phone and called a sly fellow he knew named Neil.

Neil called himself an “information broker.” What this meant was that he had a vast array of contacts in places that warehoused information on American citizens: Google, credit card companies, the IRS, et cetera—and if his paid informants couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know, Neil had a small staff with the talent to hack into computers or simply spy on people if that’s what a paying client required.
The most terrifying thing about Neil was that while half his clients were people in the private sector—often lobbyists—the other half were folk in the American government, people who were disinclined to get the necessary warrants or just wanted a leg up on the competition. Washington was a very scary place, and Neil was one of its dark denizens.

DeMarco gave Neil the information he had on Derek Crosby, told Neil what he wanted to know, and an hour later—just as DeMarco was trying to get his shoes back on after passing through security at the airport—Neil called him back. Neil confirmed that Mr. Crosby of Fairfax, Virginia, per his tax returns, was indeed an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, a lowly GS-12, meaning that he was not a power player. He had used his Visa card to pay for a round-trip flight from D.C. to New York and for a one-night stay at the Hyatt. He had also charged a staggering bar bill to his card on the date Whitmore said she met with Crosby, and his beverages were purchased in the Hyatt’s bar. Great. That was all DeMarco needed to know.

He thanked Neil and promised he would mail his fee to him tomorrow.

Mail cash
, Neil said.

DeMarco checked his watch; his plane didn’t board for half an hour. He decided he wanted to know one more thing about Mr. Crosby: he wanted to know exactly what he did at the CIA. Since LaFountaine had polygraphed everyone at Langley who knew about Diller’s trip to Iran, how did he miss Crosby? He could have asked Neil to find out Crosby’s job at the agency but he knew another person who could get what he needed to know and do so without hacking into a classified computer network.