House Secrets (21 page)

This was a lie too. Lydia had told Finley something, he didn’t know what, that had led him to the doctor. But with the doctor and Lydia both gone . . .

“And this investigator you wanted us to watch? You want me to get somebody else on him? And this time Eddie’ll make sure whoever it is won’t get spotted.”

“No, he’s not going to be a problem,” Morelli said. “He has no leads to follow.”

Not with Lydia dead—but he couldn’t say that.

It took DeMarco twice as long as it normally would have to reach the public-housing project in Alexandria where Isaiah Perry had lived. It took him that long because he didn’t know if he was being followed by either Charlie Eklund’s people or people who might be working for Paul Morelli. So he wasted time and gas and drove down quiet streets and took turns he didn’t need to take, and several times he waited until the light was almost red before driving through intersections. It occurred to him as he drove that if the CIA was involved they might have attached some tracking gizmo to his car, but if that was the case, there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

The buildings in the housing project were boxy, two-story quadplexes made of pale brick and were as appealing as army barracks. Patches of playground grass, optimistically planted between the buildings, had become scorched-earth battlefields littered with sharp-edged bits of debris. The hunter-green paint applied to doors and window frames hung in tattered strips and the only touches of vibrant color throughout the complex were fluorescent swirls of militant graffiti.

DeMarco knew that public housing was part of someone’s well-intentioned plan: a helpful hand held out to the needy, a cheap place to live until they could get back on their feet, until all those other obliging federal programs could boost them into the ranks of the middle class. But good intentions aside, the reality was that these
places were spawning beds for misery, lightning rods attracting grief. They tended to concentrate the poor’s problems, and like radioactive atoms, densely packed, the occupants too often reached a critical mass.

He found the address he wanted, shut off the motor, but remained seated in his car, not sure that he wasn’t wasting his time. The papers had said that Isaiah Perry had been convicted as a juvenile for armed robbery, but the cop, Drummond, had begrudgingly told him what the papers had failed to state: that Perry had been fourteen at the time of his arrest, convicted as an unarmed accomplice, and given a suspended sentence. The actual armed robber had been Isaiah Perry’s older brother, Marcus, the drug dealer that Drummond had mentioned.

But other than the one suspended sentence, there were no other blemishes on Isaiah’s record. There had been no drug busts, no car thefts, no series of small escapades leading inevitably to murder. Isaiah Perry had been no Jesse James, and considering the environment in which he had been raised, having just a single brush with the law seemed a remarkable achievement. It was so remarkable, in fact, that DeMarco couldn’t understand how he had gone from unarmed accomplice to cold-blooded killer with no record of crime in between.

He got out of his car and walked up the cracked sidewalk toward the door of Perry’s home. There were two young black men sitting on the porch of the adjacent apartment. One of the men wore farmer’s-bib overalls, a maroon turtleneck sweater, and a brimless leather cap. The other man was wearing a black Oakland Raiders hooded jacket that reached mid-thigh, black sweatpants, and black, high-top Adidas tennis shoes with the laces undone. The hood of the Raiders jacket was pulled up, obscuring the man’s face. He looked like Darth Vader dressed for a trip to the gym.

Leather Cap was talking intently but quietly to the man in the Raiders jacket, who sat looking down at the ground, saying nothing in return. Leather Cap noticed DeMarco at that moment and stood
up. He was at least six-two and very broad, and the dark scowl on his face looked like a storm cloud about to burst.

“You lost, Jack?” he said to DeMarco.

“No,” DeMarco said. “I’m here to see someone.”

Leather Cap glowered at him, but DeMarco ignored him—or tried to. The man was hard to ignore; his hostility was tangible.

DeMarco knocked on the door to the Perry residence and when he did, Leather Cap said, “Hey! What the fuck you doin’, beatin’ on Miz Perry’s door? You another reporter? You best get your ass on outta here before I kick it up through your neck.”

DeMarco suspected that Leather Cap was a friend of the Perry family, angered by the media’s coverage of Isaiah’s death. DeMarco could sympathize, but if he didn’t do something this situation was liable to escalate to ugly. It was time to bring Big Brother into play. He stared coldly at Leather Cap while he slowly took out the half wallet that held his Congressional ID. He flipped the wallet open, á la cop, and said: “Guys, I’m federal. If I have to get a squad of blues over here to do my business, I will.” He thought that sounded pretty good: it didn’t have the élan of “Make my day,” but it showed a certain streetwise grit.

The man in the Raiders jacket had not said anything to this point, but now he stood. He was even bigger than Leather Cap, at least six-five. Maybe the Raiders gave him the jacket as a bribe not to hurt their players.

“My mom ain’t home,” he said. “What do you want?”

DeMarco couldn’t see the man’s face clearly. The hood of the jacket created a shadow, effectively hiding his features, and his eyes were covered by wrap-around sunglasses with black lenses.

“Are you Marcus Perry?” DeMarco asked.

“Yeah. So what?”

“Mr. Perry, I’d like to talk to you and your mother.”

“Fuck for? I ain’t done nothin’.”

“I’d just like some information about your brother.”

“Got nothin’ to say to you. You cops don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground. And my mother’s over at her church, hidin’ from the press. You bother her, and we will kick your ass.”

DeMarco elected not to correct the man’s mistaken assumption that he was a cop.

“Mr. Perry, you might find this hard to believe, but I just might be on your brother’s side.”

DeMarco didn’t know what subconscious twinge had made him say that; the only side he was on was his own. Apparently Marcus Perry was of the same opinion.

“On his side! What the fuck’s
that
mean?”

“What can it hurt to talk to me?” DeMarco said quietly.

“You don’t have to talk to him, man,” Leather Cap said to Marcus. “Tell him to get his ass on outta here.”

Marcus didn’t say anything for a moment as he studied DeMarco through the opaque lenses of his sunglasses. Turning to his friend, he said, “It’s okay, bro. Let me see what this fool wants. If I don’t talk to him, he’ll just come back and bother Ma.” Leather Cap started to say something, but Marcus said, “Go on. It’s okay. I’ll catch up with you later, over at your place.”

Leather Cap nodded and reached up to put a hand on Marcus’s shoulder. “I’m here for you, man. Any way you want. You know that.”

Marcus simply nodded.

Leather Cap glowered at DeMarco as he walked away.

DeMarco said, “The reason I’m here is—”

“Let’s get out of here,” Marcus said. “I don’t want you here if my mom comes home.”

They got in DeMarco’s car and drove into the kinder, gentler part of Alexandria, down King Street toward the waterfront. They passed ice cream parlors and trendy boutiques and bars called “pubs.” The commercial quaintness of the area was a foreign landscape compared to the housing project only a few blocks behind them. While DeMarco drove, Marcus Perry sat silent and motionless in the car. His huge form
filled the interior of the vehicle, his head almost touching the roof, his broad shoulders extending beyond the boundary of the passenger seat. With the hood of his jacket obscuring his profile, he was a brooding, hostile presence—an alien predator cruising a boulevard of fluff.

Marcus directed DeMarco to a bar two blocks off King Street, a place more run-down than those on the main boulevard. It was only ten in the morning, but several black men sat at the bar drinking beer and bourbon, smoking, staring glassy-eyed at the television set above the bar. Playing on TV was a Martha Stewart rerun, Martha giving clever homemaker tips on Thanksgiving table settings. DeMarco didn’t know why the set was tuned to that particular channel but he suspected the television could have been showing Redskins cheerleaders, naked and mud wrestling, and the men at the bar would have had the same dull expressions on their faces.

Marcus and DeMarco took seats at a table as far away from the bar as they could get, and the bartender immediately walked over to take their order. The bartender was at least six-nine, and had the lanky, easy stride of an ex–basketball player.

“Sorry to hear about your brother, man,” he said to Marcus.

Marcus nodded and said, “Give me a black jack on the rocks, Tommy.”

The bartender arched an eyebrow in surprise. Apparently Marcus Perry wasn’t normally one of his booze-for-brunch clients.

“You got it,” he said. Looking down at DeMarco from his great height, the bartender said gruffly, “And what do you want?”

“Coffee, please,” DeMarco said.

“Don’t have no coffee.”

DeMarco looked pointedly over at the full pot in the Mr. Coffee behind the bar.

Marcus said, “It’s all right, Tommy. Bring him some coffee.”

Marcus pulled back the hood of his jacket and took off his sunglasses, giving DeMarco the first good look at his face. His hair was cut in a lopsided flattop, very close on the sides, and he had a small
diamond stud in his left earlobe. His skin was a dark chocolate-brown, his nose broad with flaring nostrils, his jaw strong and jutting. Heavy eyebrows and deep-set eyes made him look menacing.

The bartender returned with Marcus’s whiskey and DeMarco’s coffee. He slammed the coffee cup down on the table in front of DeMarco, spilling half the liquid from the cup.

DeMarco waited until the bartender left, then said, “Mr. Perry, my name’s Joseph DeMarco. And I’m not a cop. I’m a lawyer.”

“You said you was a fed.”

“I am. I work for the government, for Congress, but I’m a lawyer.”

“Aw, now I get it, you piece o’ shit, you think you can sue somebody and make yourself some money.”

DeMarco shook his head. “I’m not suing anybody. I’m not that kind of lawyer.”

“Then why do you give a shit what happened to my brother? This some kinda political thing? You trying to cause that senator some kind of problem.”

DeMarco hesitated. He couldn’t tell Marcus he was investigating his brother’s death because Mahoney had told him to, so instead he gave the most honest answer that he could think of: “This isn’t about politics. It’s about finding out what really happened and why. I’ve talked to the police about what your brother supposedly did, and there’re just some things that don’t make sense.”

His voice heavy with sarcasm, Marcus said, “What! You don’t believe my brother, armed robber, biggest bad-ass in town, didn’t shoot that old lady? Hell, everybody
knows
that wild nigger did it.”

DeMarco didn’t say anything. Words wouldn’t penetrate the shield of Marcus’s distrust.

Marcus eventually broke the silence, saying, “I don’t know what you’re playin’ at, Jack, but m’little bro didn’t kill nobody. I don’t give a shit what that senator says.”

Marcus Perry was a very tough young man with a shell around him as hard as armored plate, but it suddenly dawned on DeMarco that
he was grieving for his brother. He was ashamed to admit it, but he realized that if Marcus had been a white college kid instead of a black gangster, it would have occurred to him earlier that the man was feeling the same sorrow anyone would feel at the loss of a cherished younger brother. No wonder Marcus Perry and his friends didn’t trust people like him.

“Talk to me about your brother,” DeMarco said softly. “Please.”

Marcus just sat there giving DeMarco a flat, streetwise stare. He was convinced that there had to be some self-serving reason for DeMarco’s being there.

“You need to trust me,” DeMarco said. “I’m probably the only white man in Washington that doesn’t think your brother’s a cold-blooded killer. But if you don’t talk to me, no one’s ever going to know the truth.”

Marcus continued to stare at DeMarco for another minute, then said, “Okay. I think you’re bullshittin’ me, but I’ll tell you anyway.” He took a sip of his drink, then pulled a deep breath in through his nose and began to talk.

“Isaiah never did a damn thing wrong, his whole life. He worked at that dumb-ass janitor job, and he did it while he was still goin’ to school. He wasn’t no drop-out like me, and he was gettin’ goddamn straight A’s too. You think I’m lyin’, you ask the school. He was goin’ to college next year, said he was gonna be an engineer. And he woulda done it too.” Shaking his head, he added, “This thing’s killin’ my mother.”

Tears started to glaze Marcus’s angry dark eyes, but he quickly looked away and lit a cigarette to give himself time to regain his composure. DeMarco was thinking that Marcus Perry probably hadn’t cried since he wore diapers.

“What about the armed-robbery conviction?” DeMarco asked.

“Total bullshit. I’m the one who robbed that store. Isaiah and me comin’ home from school one day—he only fourteen, I’m sixteen, and I’m high—and we go in this damn bodega. Isaiah was just lookin’ at the comic books or some such shit, and I go up to the old spic
behind the counter and flash my nine. On the way out I tell Isaiah, come on. He didn’t even know I’d ripped the place off. I told the cops that when they arrested us, but they didn’t believe me. They know you got two niggers in a store, they both robbers.”

DeMarco was surprised to hear that Marcus was only two years older than his brother. But he was old beyond his years, no more a kid than DeMarco.

“Did Isaiah have any other scrapes with the law?”

“Are you fuckin’ deaf? I just told you, he was a good kid. He never did nothin’.”

Trying to keep his tone neutral, DeMarco said, “Mr. Perry, according to the police your brother tried to steal a calculator from the senator’s office, and the senator caught him. The police think your brother tried to kill the senator to keep him from reporting the attempted theft.”