House Secrets (24 page)

She slammed the door in DeMarco’s face before he could answer.

Rap music, soothing as a jackhammer, assaulted DeMarco’s ears when he entered the dance club. His eyes adjusted to the dim light, and he saw he was the only white person in the room and that every head was turned in his direction. He instantly felt the vulnerability of being different.

He peered through the smoky darkness until he found Marcus Perry seated with a young woman at a table in the farthest corner of the room.
He was dressed in more formal attire than when DeMarco had last seen him. Gone was the hooded Raiders jacket and unlaced tennis shoes. He was wearing a double-breasted black suit over a white silk turtleneck sweater. There were gold chains around his neck and the scant light in the room was captured momentarily, then scattered, by the diamond stud in his ear. Tonight he would fit right in at the best clubs in town—unless they noticed the gun in the shoulder holster.

The young black woman with him was a long-necked beauty with the profile of a Nubian queen. She was wearing a tight red dress cut low enough to show a magnificent cleavage, and short enough to expose flawless legs. Marcus’s lovely companion didn’t appear very happy, though; she was looking out at the room, a bored expression on her beautiful face, tapping long-nailed fingers impatiently on the table top.

“Mr. Perry, I need to talk to you again,” DeMarco said.

Marcus ignored DeMarco, not even bothering to look at him. He raised a glass slowly to his lips, took a sip, then set the glass down carefully next to a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He had the slow-motion movements and glassy-eyed look of the very drunk.

Before DeMarco could repeat himself, the young woman said to Marcus, “Honey, I’m gonna go on over and sit with Regina while you talk to this man. I’m sorry about your brother—you know that, sugar—but I don’t know why you asked me out tonight. You ain’t said two words since we been here. Come over and get me later, if you want. Okay?”

Marcus didn’t respond. He continued to sit, facing straight ahead, eyes focused on an invisible horizon. The young woman gave a small, disgusted shake of her head and rose from her chair. She stood next to DeMarco, and looked down at him; in high heels she was well over six feet tall. DeMarco could feel heat coming from her body as if there was a small furnace burning inside her loins.

“I’d be real careful if I was you, mister,” she said to DeMarco. “This thing with his brother has made him mad-dog crazy. He already beat on one man tonight who didn’t do hardly nothin’.”

Great. DeMarco took the woman’s seat across the small table from Marcus.

“How’d you find me here?” Marcus asked, still not looking at DeMarco. His words were slurred and spoken so softly that DeMarco barely heard him.

“Your mother told me you’d be here.”

Marcus barked a humorless laugh.

“Bet she was damn happy about that too.”

“She wasn’t.”

DeMarco told Marcus what his mother had said about the babysitter.

“Gonna break that little bitch’s head,” Marcus muttered darkly.

“The reason I wanted to see you tonight was—”

For the first time, Marcus looked directly into DeMarco’s eyes. “You think I don’t give a shit about my son, don’t you?” he said. “You think he’s just another crack baby, got a dead hooker for a mother, a drug dealer for a father. Ain’t that right?”

That was exactly what he thought, but DeMarco didn’t say anything.

“Well, you’re wrong. I married that boy’s mama. And she wasn’t no doper and she wasn’t no hooker. She didn’t OD or die from AIDS, or any o’ that shit. She got cancer, this lymph thing. I love my son.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Perry. But it’s your brother I want to talk about.”

“I already told you everything I know.”

“No you didn’t,” DeMarco said.

Marcus’s eyes narrowed ominously, and remembering the young woman’s warning, DeMarco wished he had thought of a more diplomatic way to call Marcus a liar. He was dangerous enough sober; when he was drunk and ravaged with grief, antagonizing him could be fatal.

“Did your brother have a car?” DeMarco asked.

Marcus paused before speaking, his face suspicious. Knowing DeMarco could verify his answer, he finally said, “No. Why you askin’?”

“I think you know why. You drove your brother to the senator’s house the night he was killed. Didn’t you? Earlier, when you talked about delivering the gun at midnight, you said, ‘
I
didn’t think nothing about that.’ You drove him, didn’t you?” DeMarco repeated.

Marcus shifted in his seat, sitting up straight, growing larger before DeMarco’s eyes.

“You trying to make me an
accomplice
, is that what you’re doin’?”

“No. I don’t think you’re an accomplice. I think you’re a witness.” Marcus nodded his head slowly, unconscious of the gesture, but he didn’t say anything.

“Tell me what happened. Please.”

Marcus still didn’t respond.

“Mr. Perry . . .”

“Yeah, I drove him. I sat in the car when he went in the house. He said he’d only be a minute. Anyway, he goes in the house—I couldn’t see who let him in—and about five minutes later I hear two shots. About two minutes after that, I hear another shot. I didn’t know what to do. I knew something had gone wrong, but I didn’t want to go chargin’ into that house, not in that white neighborhood. So I sat there waitin’ for Isaiah to come out, prayin’ he’d come out, but this white guy comes out of the house instead. I seen him clear. Short, dumpy dude with kinky hair. I was about to get out of the car and grab the little fucker—ask what happened to my brother—but then I hear all these sirens screamin’ up the block and I got the hell outta there.”

DeMarco could see now that it wasn’t just grief that was tearing Marcus Perry apart—it was guilt. He felt personally responsible for what had happened to his younger brother, and was questioning his own courage for not having done something when he heard the shots.

“So now what?” Marcus asked defiantly. “You gonna run to the cops and tell ’em I helped my brother shoot that lady? You can’t prove shit.”

“I’m not going to do anything, Mr. Perry. But
you
need to do something. You need to tell the police what really happened.”

Marcus shook his head slowly. He’d started to speak when his eyes focused sharply on something behind DeMarco. DeMarco turned to see what he was looking at, and saw the young woman in the red dress dancing with a man. Every move the woman made was an act of seduction. With her body, she couldn’t help it; she would have looked seductive cleaning fish.

DeMarco turned back to face Marcus and saw he was still focused on the woman and her dance partner. There was a small, cruel smile on his face.

“You need to talk to the police,” DeMarco said again.

“What do you think would happen if I went to the cops?” Marcus said, still looking at the woman. He faced DeMarco then. “Well, lemme tell you. They’d think I was there helpin’ Isaiah, that I was his driver, but like
getaway
driver. No way in hell they’d believe he was deliverin’ that man a gun.”

DeMarco argued with him briefly, urging him to go to the police, but he knew Marcus was right. With his record, no one would believe that he wasn’t involved in the killing.

“No, I’m not gonna talk to the police,” Marcus said softly, “but I am gonna set things right. Yeah, I’m gonna set things right.”

He wasn’t talking to DeMarco; he was making a promise to himself.

“Don’t be a fool,” DeMarco said. “Paul Morelli’s a United States senator, not some drug runner over in Southeast. If you want to do something, go to the police.”

Marcus stood up, rising slowly to his six-foot-five-inch height. DeMarco stood to face him.

Marcus glanced over at the woman on the dance floor again, then looked down at DeMarco. There was a sheen of tears glazing his eyes. He reached out with his long arms, placed his hands on DeMarco’s shoulders, then leaned down so their faces were almost touching. He grinned at DeMarco, the grin incongruous with the bright tears in his eyes.

“You’re really full of shit. You know that?”

Marcus stepped around DeMarco and began to walk slowly toward the dance floor, toward the woman in the red dress—and the man dancing with her. DeMarco left the club quickly. He didn’t want to witness the mayhem that was about to occur.

Blake Hanover was wearing the same yellow pajamas that he had on the last time Emma had seen him. He sat in his Barcalounger and the green oxygen tank on the floor next to his chair hissed like Eve’s serpent as it helped him breathe. He looked so much worse than he had on Emma’s previous visit that she wondered if he was wearing the same clothes because he didn’t have the strength to change them.

The apartment smelled of an old man dying.

“I need your help with Charlie Eklund,” Emma said.

Hanover smiled, and Emma could see that even that took an effort. And she knew why he was smiling: she knew how ironic it was that she was coming to him for help. But Hanover didn’t have the strength to make a sarcastic comment. All he said was, “Why?”

“It’s a long story, Blake,” she said. She realized immediately that she had never called him by his first name before. “But the bottom line is that Eklund’s helping a man become president, and the man he’s helping is a murderer.”

“They don’t usually become murderers until
after
they become president,” Hanover said.

Maybe he wasn’t as weak as Emma thought.

“But how can I help?” Hanover said.

“I need a way to control Eklund. I need leverage,” Emma said.

“Good luck with that,” Hanover said. “You’re not going to find anything funny with his finances. Charlie’s rich. He was born into money. And if he decided to steal money . . . Well, a guy who’s able to hide the CIA’s money trail from Congress and the GAO wouldn’t have any problem at all hiding his own money.

“And if you’re thinking of sex as a hook, you can forget that too. I truly believe Charlie’s asexual. He’s never married, and as far as anyone knows, he’s never had a bunch of girlfriends. For years folks thought he might be gay, but there’s no evidence of that either. What I’m saying is that even when Charlie was young, sex didn’t seem to be a priority, and at the age he is now, I’m sure it’s not one. So if you were thinking of getting him using sex or money, you’re going to have to go a different way.”

“Any suggestions?”

Hanover just sat there for a minute saying nothing, seeming to focus all his energy on getting his next breath. He finally said, “All I know is that the only thing that Charlie Eklund cares about is the CIA. The Company’s his whole life. If you want to get him off your back you need to go after what he cares about.”

Hanover opened his mouth, to say something else, but then started coughing—a raspy, wet, horrible sound. Emma went to his kitchen and filled a glass with tap water. She held the glass to Hanover’s parched lips and he took a few small sips then motioned for her to remove the glass.

“Blake,” Emma said, “do you have anyone to help you?”

Hanover shook his head.

“Do you want me to call someone? I can arrange for a nurse to take care of you. I’ll pay.”

Hanover shook his head again. “Hospice is coming in the morning,” he said, “but I’m thinking, what’s the point of dragging this out? There’s an old .45 in the night table next to my bed. Do you think you could get it for me?”

“I can’t do that, Blake. I’m sorry.”

Hanover laughed. “I didn’t think so. I just thought it’d be fun to ask.”

As Emma drove, she thought about what Blake Hanover had said, that the only things Charlie Eklund cared about were his job and the CIA.

And then something occurred to her—something she could do to put Eklund back in his box.

She pulled her cell phone off her belt, then changed her mind. She doubted Eklund was monitoring her calls, but why take the chance? She turned in to a gas station that had a functioning pay phone and made a call. An hour later, positive that no one was tailing her, she was having coffee with two men at a bowling alley in Arlington.

Mike Koharski was in his sixties, gray-haired and stocky. He was an ex–navy chief who had spent twenty years on nuclear subs, and usually wore long-sleeved shirts to cover the tattoos he’d gotten during a shore leave he couldn’t remember. The second man was Sammy Wix. Sammy looked like a cross between a troll and a jockey, so short and homely that little kids were delighted by the sight of him. Mike and Sammy were partners in a detective agency, one that rarely made a profit because they were notoriously picky about their clients.