House Secrets (15 page)

“The man from the cathedral, he’s meeting with Ladybird again.” They didn’t have a code name for DeMarco yet but the boss knew who he meant. “They met down by the C&O Canal and now they’re sitting in a joint called Nathan’s in Georgetown. She’s drinking, as usual. The guy, he’s just sitting there, mostly listening, not saying much. You want me to follow him this time or stick with her?”

The boss hesitated, apparently thinking things over. Darcy had the impression that he was pissed because he didn’t have the assets to follow them both. This operation was definitely low-budget. “Yes, follow him,” he finally said.

“You know,” Darcy said, “if I had a parabolic mike I could have heard what they were talking about when they were at the canal.”

“I know that!” he snapped, and hung up.

Now that was unusual, the boss losing his cool. The stakes had to be pretty goddamn high for that to happen.

DeMarco called Mahoney’s office. He was informed that the Speaker wouldn’t be returning from San Francisco until that evening and then would proceed directly to the Greek Embassy to celebrate some sort of United States–Greek trade agreement. DeMarco assumed that a trade agreement meant that the two countries had agreed to lower tariffs on each other’s products, but the only Greek imports he knew of were olive oil and ouzo. It was probably because of the ouzo that Mahoney had supported the agreement.

Since he had the time, DeMarco returned to his office and turned on his computer. He wanted to know more about Lydia Morelli. And the remark she’d made about monsters eating their young particularly puzzled him. When she’d made the comment, he thought she was referring to the powerful man who had been helping Paul Morelli but her words made it sound as if the man was in some way related to her. Could she have been talking about her father?

He didn’t know, so he started Googling. He knew that Neil could have done the research better and faster, and would have been able to access databases that DeMarco couldn’t, but Neil was expensive—and annoying—so DeMarco ventured into cyberspace on his own, pecking at his keyboard with two blunt, unskilled fingers.

Paul and Lydia Morelli’s families had been covered extensively in the media. Morelli’s father had been a diesel mechanic, his mother a
homemaker. All his siblings were alive and all had middle-class jobs. Morelli appeared to have no blood connections to powerful people in either politics or the business world, and, being a politician with an Italian surname, he had been thoroughly investigated for connections to organized crime. Obviously none had been found.

Lydia’s parents were higher up the social ladder than Morelli’s. Her father had been a federal judge and her mother, who had inherited old money, could best be described as a socialite though she had worked off and on at various art galleries. Lydia had no siblings, nor did her father. Her mother had a sister who edited children’s books.

Lydia’s father’s career had ended in disgrace when he was accused of fixing a case involving a rich man’s son. He was never convicted of a crime but he resigned from the bench, and most assumed his resignation was the result of a plea bargain with the prosecution. In other words, the prosecutor had a case that could drive the judge into bankruptcy with legal costs, and the publicity would certainly ruin his reputation, but they didn’t have strong enough evidence to assure a conviction. Five years after retiring, the judge died of cirrhosis and his wife died a few years later of ovarian cancer.

Paul Morelli was Lydia’s second husband. Her first husband had been a man named Peter Brent, a white-bread corporate accountant who collapsed at the age of thirty while jogging. He and Lydia had been married barely long enough for him to sire a child, and Paul Morelli had married Lydia when her daughter Kate was less than two. Speculation by one of the cattier New York gossip columnists was that Morelli had married Lydia because of her father’s connections—connections that evaporated when the judge resigned in disgrace. This was what Lydia had meant when she said her father had gone down in flames.

Lydia’s family history was mildly interesting and somewhat tragic, but DeMarco saw no evidence of anyone in the picture so powerful that he could have helped Paul Morelli’s political career, particularly in the way Lydia had described. He couldn’t find a monster.

Most of the one hundred guests at the Greek Embassy understood that embassy affairs were but an extension of their workday, another opportunity to politic or lobby or spy. Not Mahoney. To him a party was a party, and he was one of only ten people dancing, his partner a thirty-something blond displaying an eye-popping amount of cleavage. As DeMarco watched his boss dance, he was surprised, as always, at how light Mahoney was on his feet when wooing a potential conquest.

The waltz ended and DeMarco caught the Speaker’s eye. Mahoney did not look pleased at the interruption. He bowed to his dance partner, kissed her hand, and then made an irritated motion for DeMarco to meet him on an outdoor balcony. The young lady he had been waltzing with stood for a moment on the dance floor after Mahoney departed, seemingly stunned motionless by his charm. DeMarco couldn’t fathom it.

Mahoney was firing up his cigar as DeMarco stepped onto the balcony.

“Can’t smoke inside anyplace anymore,” Mahoney groused. The cigar finally burning, giving off its expected stench, he said, “So now what’s so fuckin’ urgent it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”

“Lydia Morelli was Terry Finley’s source. She’s trying to destroy her husband because she believes he molested her daughter and drove her to suicide.”

“What the hell,” Mahoney said, and his eyes stopped tracking the women in the room and focused on DeMarco.

“And I’m being tailed by two goons who may or may not work for the CIA.”

Mahoney stared at DeMarco a moment then said exactly what DeMarco had expected him to say: “I’ll be right back. I need a drink for this. Here, hold this,” he added, handing DeMarco his cigar, the tip all nasty and gooey.

After Mahoney had returned with his drink, DeMarco told him everything that Lydia Morelli had said. Mahoney didn’t say anything
at first. He just stood there puffing on his stogy, frowning, looking out from the balcony. DeMarco followed Mahoney’s line of sight and could see he was staring at the steeple of the National Cathedral, the place where DeMarco had first met with Lydia.

“I’m not buying any of it,” Mahoney said at last. “I think Lydia went off the deep end after her kid died, started hitting the sauce, and decided everything was her husband’s fault. All this stuff about some powerful guy helping Morelli and him assaulting women . . . I mean, come on! And the rape thing is the dumbest part of the whole story. You’ve seen Paul. Do you think a guy that looks like him would have to force anybody?”

“Yeah, but these women . . . They acted strange,” DeMarco said. “They were afraid of Morelli, I could tell when I was talking to them.”

Mahoney shrugged. “Who knows what happened between him and those gals. Maybe he did screw ’em. And you said the one had a boyfriend. She probably doesn’t want him to find out that she slept with Morelli.”

Mahoney clearly saw no relationship between infidelity and a man’s ability to govern, and DeMarco could understand why.

“What about the guys following me?” DeMarco said.

“I dunno,” Mahoney said, “but I tell you one thing for sure: they ain’t workin’ for the CIA. After 9-11 and Iraq, those clowns over at Langley are doing everything they can to stay under the radar. No way they’d get involved in any of this stuff: Terry Finley, Morelli, following you. Uh-uh, no way.”

“So who hired the guys following me?”

“I told you, I don’t know. And for all you know, they could be following you for some reason
not
connected to Terry Finley.”

That was possible, but DeMarco didn’t think so. No, his being followed was in some way connected to his investigation into Finley’s death. Which reminded him. “And what do I tell Dick Finley?” he said.

“Nothing. You don’t say anything to him yet. If you were to tell Dick that you thought his kid was killed and his death was in some
way related to Paul . . . Well, Dick’s not in office anymore but that doesn’t mean he still doesn’t have connections. You tell him any of the stuff you’ve told me and his next phone call will be to the fuckin’ crew at
60 Minutes
. So you tell Dick nothin’, and if he asks, you say you’re still lookin’ into things.”

“So what
do
you want me to do? Somebody probably killed Terry and they probably killed him because he was investigating Morelli.”

Mahoney shook his big, white-haired head. “Joe, Terry Finley is not the priority at this point. Morelli is.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“I’m gonna give Paul a call tomorrow and tell him what his wife told you.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Hell yeah, I’m serious. Lydia Morelli’s a drunk that’s come unglued. I’m sorry about what happened to her daughter but it’s affected her judgment. I mean, Jesus, Joe. None of this crap makes sense. Paul having people killed, molesting his stepdaughter. No, the woman’s sick, poor thing, and her husband needs to know.”

DeMarco realized something significant then. John Mahoney had never struck him as a man given to hero worship, particularly if the hero was a politician. Mahoney had been in politics forever and had seen his brethren commit every crime and perversion imaginable. But for some reason—and DeMarco could understand this because he too had initially been awed by Morelli—Mahoney had placed the senator on a pedestal. DeMarco had been half-joking when he told Emma that Mahoney considered Morelli the reincarnation of JFK, but now he was beginning to believe that this was really the case.

There could also be another reason why Mahoney was such a strong Morelli supporter: maybe Morelli had promised Mahoney the vice presidency, or a cushy ambassadorship to someplace like Ireland where he could attend parties and drink Guinness and play golf into his twilight years. Whatever the case, when it came to Paul Morelli, John Mahoney had a blind spot big enough to obscure an elephant.

Mahoney finished his drink and set the glass on the rail of the balcony—and the glass fell two stories into the bushes below. Mahoney didn’t notice.

“I’m glad you came to me with this when you did,” Mahoney said, and thumped DeMarco on the back. “You did the right thing. Now go home; I’ll take care of it.”

And with that pronouncement, Mahoney flipped his burning cigar into the same bush where his glass had landed. Then DeMarco watched as the Speaker arranged his face into its best devil-may-care Irish smile and plowed his way through the ballroom crowd, directly toward the Greek ambassador’s buxom wife.

Emma wore faded jeans, a down vest over a long-sleeved shirt, and to protect her knees, she had on pads, the sort skateboarders wear. On her head was a large-brimmed straw hat and on her hands were thick, cloth gloves. In her right hand was a machete.

When DeMarco had arrived at her home, she’d been on her knees in her backyard, tugging and hacking at some aggressive, quick-growing vine. The vine appeared to have tunneled beneath a neighbor’s fence and was now strangling one of Emma’s fragile plants. DeMarco knew that Emma employed gardeners—with the size of her yard, she needed professional help—but she was not above personally defending her territory when leafy predators invaded.

She stopped attacking the vine long enough to hear what Lydia Morelli had told DeMarco, and then listened in dismay to Mahoney’s reaction to Lydia’s story. Now she stood, the machete hanging from her hand, glaring at DeMarco. The knee pads and vest, combined with the straw hat, made her look like some sort of bloodthirsty Asian warrior.

“Damn it all, Joe,” she said. “Lydia tells you that her husband molested her child and instead of helping her, you tell Mahoney. Jesus! I just feel like, like . . .”

DeMarco thought for a moment—probably his imagination—that she was beginning to raise the machete.

“Emma,” he said, “I work for Mahoney. He’s my boss.”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” she said. DeMarco knew she was serious; he was convinced that Emma had never compromised a principle in her life.

“So why are you here?” she said. “Are you looking for advice? Asking for absolution? What?”

“No, I’m not asking for absolution, goddamnit,” DeMarco said. She was starting to piss him off.

“Then what?”

“I don’t know,” DeMarco said. And he didn’t. He didn’t feel right about dropping the investigation but at the same time he couldn’t really be sure that Lydia’s accusations were true. The way she drank, the lack of evidence, her bitterness toward her husband . . . it was impossible to be certain. And if she
was
telling the truth, she was holding things back, not telling him enough so that he could help her or protect himself. So maybe he wasn’t looking for absolution as Emma had put it, but maybe he was looking for someone to say that it was just possible that Mahoney was right and that Lydia’s story was the product of a disturbed and addicted mind.

He had obviously come to the wrong person.

“Aw, forget it. I’ll see you later,” he said.

She didn’t answer. She turned her back to him, dropped to her knees, and began to hack again at the offending creeper.

DeMarco thought he could hear the vine scream as he walked away.