House Reckoning (14 page)

Dombroski looked over at him. “Yeah. Who are you?”

“My name’s DeMarco and I want to talk to you about Brian Quinn.”

Dombroski turned off the radio and said, “Is that right. Are you from the Vatican? Are they thinking about canonizing the bastard now?”

Maybe the thin blue line had a few gaps in it.

“Not exactly,” DeMarco said.

DeMarco decided to tell Dombroski an abbreviated version of the truth: he said he worked for Congress and was investigating Quinn.

“Why?” Dombroski asked.

“He’s being considered for a federal position. I can’t say which one as an official announcement hasn’t been made.” DeMarco had no idea when he told this lie how prophetic that statement would turn out to be. “Anyway, I’ve been asked to do a background check and I’ve learned something disturbing I need to ask you about.”

“So ask,” Dombroski said. “There’s another chair over there by the door. And help yourself to a beer if you want one.”

DeMarco placed his chair next to Dombroski’s so he, too, could enjoy the view. He popped the top on a Budweiser, took a sip, and said that during the course of his investigation he’d come to believe that when Quinn was a rookie, he shot a man named Connors, lied about Connors being armed, and then the department covered up what had really occurred.

“Ya think?” Dombroski said and laughed—and DeMarco wondered how drunk Dombroski was. He was also wondering if everything he told Dombroski would get back to Quinn. Nonetheless, he told Dombroski that the night Quinn shot the so-called cat burglar a woman had seen him put a gun in the man’s hand.

“You’re shittin’ me!” Dombroski said. “Why didn’t this broad come forward when it happened?”

“She was afraid to,” DeMarco said. “She figured the department would protect one of its own and maybe come after her.”

Dombroski made an expression that DeMarco interpreted as
She was right about that.

“So what are you looking for, bud?” Dombroski asked.

“I want to know if a cover-up occurred.”

“You bet one did. I knew Quinn had planted a gun on that guy and so did everyone involved in the shooting investigation. But Quinn had people pulling for him even back then.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Because, for one thing, Quinn was my partner and rattin’ out your partner is usually frowned upon in police circles. The other thing was, I was dumb enough to think that helping Quinn might be good for my career. I’d been on the force for ten years before I was partnered with him and I was still driving around in a patrol car and working nights. But I knew Quinn was going places—everyone who knew him could tell he was going to rise to the top—and I knew he didn’t shoot the guy on purpose. I figured if I kept my mouth shut, Quinn would give me a hand up the ladder one day. Well, he didn’t. As soon as he was cleared by the shooting board, he asked for a new partner and never had anything to do with me again. I approached him a couple of times and sort of gently reminded him that he owed me, but the bastard just looked at me like I was lower than rat shit. He knew it was too late for me to change my story.”

“Did you actually see him put the gun in Connors’s hand?”

“No. By the time I reached Connors’s body, he was already holding a gun. The thing was, the gun looked exactly like Quinn’s backup piece, this little .32. I thought for a minute about asking Quinn to show me his backup gun but decided not to. I just decided to go along. So what do you want, DeMarco?”

“I want you to testify that you thought it was a bad shooting and improperly investigated.” Before Dombroski could object, DeMarco added, “I realize the shooting board cleared him and that you don’t have any evidence, but if I can get this other witness to testify—the woman who saw Quinn put the gun in Connors’s hand—whatever you have to say will add weight to her testimony.”

“Testify to who?” Dombroski asked. “If you think the department is going to reopen an investigation into a shooting that involved the current police commissioner, you’re fuckin’ nuts.”

“I’m talking about testifying in front of a congressional committee.”

DeMarco had absolutely no idea how he could get Congress to investigate a man who drank with the president’s chief of staff—not when his star witnesses were people like Tony Benedetto, Sal Anselmo, Janet Costello, and Stan Dombroski. He’d worry about that small detail later.

Dombroski looked at DeMarco for a moment, then spread his arms in a gesture meant to take in his small domain. “Look around, my friend. This is as good as it’s ever going to get for me. I never even made sergeant when I was on the force—I don’t test too well—and that means I don’t have a king-sized pension. Then there’s the fact that my wife divorced me five years ago. She said I was
stifling
her, whatever the fuck that means, and she now gets half of my pension. Lucky for me, my mom died a couple years ago and . . . That came out wrong. My mom was a good woman. Anyway, when my mom died I got her house and I was able to sell it and get this place. It ain’t much, but it’s what I got. I sit here and I enjoy the view and I drink. I take walks on the beach; I go surf fishing when I’m in the mood. I bowl with some other fat retired guys once a week. That’s my life and it sucks but I’m not going to jeopardize what I have by making an enemy out of Brian Quinn. But good luck to you, and I wish you the best.”

“You can be compelled to testify, Mr. Dombroski.”

“So compel me,” Dombroski said.

“And if you commit perjury you’ll go to jail.”

“Why would I perjure myself? You never heard of the Fifth Amendment?” Lowering the pitch of his voice, pretending he was speaking from the witness chair, Dombroski said, “I decline to answer that question, Your Honor, as answering it might incriminate my fat ass.”

DeMarco caught a shuttle back to D.C. that evening having no idea how he was going to deal with Quinn—short of simply killing the man.

19

DeMarco parked across from a narrow four-story building perched on the banks of the Potomac. Across the river, he could see the Pentagon. He also wasn’t that far away from the Washington Harbour, where, only a short time ago, he’d sat a contented man.

He took the elevator to the fourth floor of the building—the only floor in the building where the names of the occupants weren’t identified on the reader board in the lobby. The fourth floor was the domain of a man named Neil, the same Neil he’d called when he was trying to find Stan Dombroski.

Neil called himself an information broker and DeMarco had used his services many times in the past. Neil’s rates were dear but if you could afford his fees—and the U.S. Treasury could—Neil would happily tell you anything you wanted to know about your fellow citizens. Most often Neil was able to get what his clients wanted by bribing people who work in places that warehouse information on American citizens: the IRS, Google, banks, telephone, and credit card companies. If necessary, however, Neil and one of his associates—a young black man named Bobby Prentiss, who rarely spoke—had the skills to slip through firewalls as if they didn’t exist and pull information out of whichever computer system might contain whatever you wished to know.

Neil was sitting behind his desk, partially hidden by three computer monitors. He was dressed as he was almost every time DeMarco had seen him: a bright Hawaiian shirt, baggy shorts, and sandals. He was tapping with one hand on a keyboard while his other hand was stuffing a Reuben into his face, sauerkraut dropping unnoticed onto the surface of his desk.

“Ah, DeMarco,” he said with his mouth full. “What favor does my government ask of me today?”

DeMarco didn’t bother to point out that Neil didn’t do
favors
—unless you called charging people an exorbitant amount of money for an illegal service a favor. He also didn’t point out that the U.S. government was rarely involved in any legitimate capacity when DeMarco called upon Neil. DeMarco wasn’t in the mood for banter.

“I want everything you can get me on a man named Brian Quinn. And I mean everything.”

What DeMarco was hoping was that if Neil burrowed into Quinn’s life he’d find something tying Quinn to Carmine Taliaferro. He particularly wanted Neil to look at Quinn’s finances. As rich as Carmine Taliaferro had been, maybe some of the mobster’s money could be traced to Quinn. DeMarco firmly believed that everyone has secrets—no exceptions—and Neil was the man to find Brian Quinn’s.

“Okay,” Neil said. “It might take me a couple of days before I can get to it as I’m in the middle of something right now, but . . .”

“Drop whatever you’re doing and raise your fee accordingly.” DeMarco had no idea how he was going to pay Neil’s fee. He’d worry about that later.

“That sounds fair,” Neil said, pretending he was a reasonable, agreeable fellow as opposed to the greedy shit he really was. “But can you give me just a little more information about Mr. Quinn. Like maybe an address or date of birth. You know, something to distinguish him from a few million other Irishmen who might bear the same name.”

“Yeah,” DeMarco said. “He’s the commissioner of the NYPD.”

“Oh,” Neil said.

Neil put his half-eaten Reuben down on his desk and looked at DeMarco with a serious expression on his face. Serious wasn’t normally part of Neil’s smart-assed demeanor.

“I can’t do it, Joe. I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“Joe, there are a couple of organizations that I don’t mess with. One is the NSA. It’s the largest intelligence organization in this country and they employ people who are smarter than me and a few who are even smarter than Bobby. If I started messing with their computer systems they’d catch me and then they’d squash me like a bug, and they’d do so without even breaking into a sweat. Another organization I don’t screw with is the New York City Police Department.”

Before DeMarco could object, Neil said, “The NYPD employs some of the brightest computer people in this country and if I tried to get information on Quinn that wasn’t in the public domain, there’s a very good chance I would stumble over some sort of security tripwire and the smart people Quinn employs would come after me. It’s like that old Jim Croce song: You don’t tug on Superman’s cape.”

“Brian Quinn isn’t Superman,” DeMarco said.

Neil extended his hands, a gesture meant to include his office. The gesture reminded DeMarco of the gesture Stanley Dombroski had made the day before regarding his backyard kingdom in Brick, New Jersey. “This is how I make my living, Joe, and as you know, a lot of what I do isn’t legal. I have no intention of spending any part of my life in prison, nor do I have any intention of actually working for a living.” Neil, a man who rarely swore, ended his diatribe with “Joe, I am not going to fuck with the commissioner of the NYPD for you. I wouldn’t even do it for Emma.”

20

Emma.

Emma was a retired spy, or at least she said she was retired. She’d worked for the DIA—the Defense Intelligence Agency—for almost thirty years. DeMarco met her years ago when he saved her life, an act that had more to do with luck than valor. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time, sitting in his car at Reagan National waiting to pick up a friend, and she jumped into his car and ordered him to drive before some Iranians could kill her. And at the time, she was supposedly already retired.

She’d helped him several times on his assignments in the past. The first time she helped him, it was because she appreciated what he had done for her. After that first time, however, she helped him most often, he suspected, because she was bored being a civilian. She was not only extremely bright but also had contacts in places like the Pentagon and the CIA, which often proved useful. She also knew people in several police departments, including the NYPD, because the military personnel she worked with during her career often became cops after they mustered out.

The funny thing was, as long as he’d known her, he still didn’t really know all that much about her. She took an almost perverse delight in revealing as little about herself as she possibly could. Maybe there were secrets she couldn’t tell because of what she’d spent her career doing, but he knew that her need for secrecy—or privacy—went beyond the classified nature of her previous employment. In fact, he’d learned more about her from talking to other people than from her.

She was very wealthy but wouldn’t reveal the source of her wealth; he knew she hadn’t made millions working for the government. He knew nothing about her background—her parents or where she came from—other than when she once slipped and admitted she’d gone to private schools when she was young. She was also gay; that was the one fact about herself that she didn’t hide the way she hid everything else. When they buried her, DeMarco would make sure her tombstone said:
Here lies an enigma.

When DeMarco called and said he needed to see her, she was just leaving her house.

“I’m taking golfing lessons,” she said.

Emma had always been athletic. She ran marathons. She periodically kicked DeMarco’s ass on the racquetball court. She’d never played golf, however; she’d often said that a game where you barely worked up a sweat didn’t really count as a sport. The thought occurred to DeMarco that she might have finally chosen a game where he could actually beat her, since he’d been playing golf for years.