He walked slowly to his office. The bat phone was still ringing. There was no answering machine connected to it so it would ring until either the caller hung up or Benny answered.
“Hel-lo,” Benny said cheerfully. The caller started talking immediately. Rude bastard. He didn’t even ask how Benny and Betty Ann were doing, even though he’d known them both for years.
“Hang on a sec,” Benny said. “Lemme get a pen.” He opened the center drawer of his desk and looked into the little tray where the pens were supposed to be, but there weren’t any. Goldang it, where were all the pens? It was like something ate them for snacks. He pulled the drawer all the way out. Ah, there was one, hiding all the way in the back.
“Okay, shoot,” Benny said. He listened for about five minutes and took notes. He asked a couple of questions and concluded with, “Allrighty. I’ll head out there tonight.”
Benny got on the Internet, bought an airline ticket, made a reservation at a motel, and then walked into the kitchen to tell his wife he was going out of town. She was standing at the sink, washing the breakfast dishes, watching one of them dumb-ass morning talk shows, the one with the four broads all sitting around a table yapping.
He looked at his wife’s ass and shook his head in dismay: she looked like a hay wagon from the rear. During their marriage the two of them had gained weight at about the same rate but fortunately Betty Ann still had her hair: a short perm she dyed dark red. And her face…he swore as they got older they had even started to look alike, both of them with broad noses, jowly cheeks, and double chins. The next thing you knew they’d be one of them dipshit couples walking along the street wearing identical hats and jackets, looking like fat ancient twins.
But she was a good ol’ gal. No way would he trade her in for some young bimbo, not at his age, he wouldn’t. She had a sense of humor, she didn’t complain all that much, and when she was younger … oh, the jugs that woman had. He almost fainted the first time he touched them.
“That was Jimmy,” Benny said.
“How’s he doing?” Betty Ann asked.
“Who knows? The bastard, he’s all business. He didn’t even ask how we were. Anyway, I gotta leave tonight.”
“Oh, no! Are you going to miss Dave’s party?”
“When is it?”
“Friday.”
“Yeah, I doubt I’ll be back that soon. Make up some excuse.”
“He’ll be so disappointed. A sixtieth birthday’s a big deal, you know.”
“Yeah, it means you’re one year closer to being dead,” Benny said and cackled.
“Oh, you. Where are you going this time?”
“Myrtle Beach. I made a reservation at the Best Western on Ocean Boulevard. FedEx me a .32 there. And don’t pack the gun in that Styrofoam bubble shit this time. That stuff gets all over the place. Just use newspaper or something.”
“I want everyone who attended that meeting polygraphed by one of my technicians,” LaFountaine said.
He was speaking to John Mahoney and Clyde Rackman, and they were in Rackman’s office. Rackman was the majority leader of the Senate, a tall, rail-thin man in his seventies with mournful eyes and wispy gray hair, and it seemed as if a strong wind might blow him away. His apparent frailty, however, was misleading. He worked fourteen-hour days, was as tough as any politician on Capitol Hill, and he could be downright vicious to any Democrat who didn’t toe the party line.
“I don’t think—” Rackman started to say but Mahoney interrupted.
“In your dreams. You’re not hooking up wires to anybody here on the Hill, and you know it.”
LaFountaine glared at Mahoney, and Mahoney glared back. Mahoney was older than LaFountaine by several years but both were big, bulky men and, except for their hair color, were actually quite similar in appearance. Glowering at each other across the conference table, they looked like two bulldogs ready to lunge at each other’s throat.
“Somebody gave the story to that reporter, Mahoney,” LaFountaine said, “and it wasn’t one of my people. That means somebody that works in this building got my agent killed.”
“Director LaFountaine,” Rackman said, “I’d suggest that you be very careful about making accusations you can’t prove.”
“Fuck being careful, Senator. There are no cameras in this room. I want to know what you guys are going to do to get to the bottom of this.”
“I’ll speak to all the senators who attended your briefing,” Rackman said. “And I’m sure John will talk to folks in the House.”
“The staff weenies, too,” LaFountaine said. “And there was some damn kid serving coffee, although I’m sure she wasn’t in the room when I was talking.”
“We’ll talk to everybody,” Rackman said, “but you made it clear the day you were over here that if anybody talked about Diller, one of your operations could be affected. I just can’t believe that …”
“It wasn’t just Mahata who was killed,” LaFountaine said. “She had a network over there, four people who helped her. They’re all missing and we’re pretty sure they’re dead, too. And we think they were all tortured before they were killed because one of them gave up Mahata’s escape route.”
Mahoney grimaced.
“I’m sorry,” Rackman said, “but…”
“You guys have no idea how valuable that woman was to this country. We developed a perfect background for her, placed her in Iran, and basically told her to fuck her way into a position where she could obtain information. She was a beautiful woman, and as repulsive as it must have been for her, she did what we asked. It took her three years but she eventually became the mistress of a high-level guy in their defense department and landed a job as a translator. You can’t even
imagine
the information she provided.”
“Has the reporter said anything since they put her in jail?” Rackman asked.
Neither Rackman nor LaFountaine noticed but Mahoney glanced away when the reporter was mentioned.
“No,” LaFountaine said. “That bitch hasn’t had a story like this in twenty years. I heard they almost dumped her when the paper
downsized last year, but they didn’t want to get caught up in some feminist, EEO, lawsuit bullshit. And now she’s a fucking star, sitting in that cell, playing the intrepid reporter.”
LaFountaine smiled. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
“But I found some things out about her. She’s borderline claustrophobic so I got her put in the smallest cell they had. She’s also addicted to painkillers, and I’m making sure she doesn’t get her pills until she’s almost out of her mind. I’m thinking about replacing the pills with placebos.”
“Jesus,” Rackman said. “Why in the hell would you tell me something like that? I can’t know that you’re…”
“Tough shit,” LaFountaine said.
LaFountaine stood up. “I’m not screwing around here. One of your people leaked that story and if you don’t find out who it was, I will. And when I find out, I’m not going to give a good goddamn about whatever political problems it’ll cause you.”
Rackman stood up, too. “I won’t be spoken to in that manner and I don’t like being threatened. I may have a talk with your boss.” Rackman meant the president.
LaFountaine snorted. “Go ahead. If Whitmore doesn’t give up her source pretty soon, I’m going to ask him to assign a special prosecutor and he’ll question your folks under oath. And then I’ll get whoever did this for perjury as well because I know the son of a bitch will lie.”
After LaFountaine left, Rackman asked Mahoney, “Do you think he’s right, John? Do you think somebody in Congress could have been Whitmore’s source?”
“I dunno,” Mahoney said.
Mahoney wasn’t
exactly
lying. He wasn’t positive that he knew who had leaked the story—but he had a pretty good idea who it might have been.
DeMarco was playing hooky.
What he was supposed to be doing was figuring out why a Republican congressman from Arkansas kept flying to Minnesota every weekend. Mahoney knew the guy was up to something, and he wanted to know what. If all the young congressman was doing was having an affair, then Mahoney—a man who had had many affairs—probably wouldn’t do anything. But if the guy was up to something else, something illegal, well … DeMarco still had no idea what Mahoney might do. Turn the guy in? Maybe. Take him to the woodshed and make him see the error of his ways? Possibly. But more likely, unless the guy was a serial killer, Mahoney would just use the information to control his vote. With Mahoney, nothing was ever simple or certain.
But instead of rooting out mischief in politics, DeMarco was watching a baseball game. Curtis Jackson, the man who supervised the Capitol’s janitors, had given DeMarco the ticket. A lobbyist had originally given the ticket to a congressman, and the congressman had passed it to Jackson, but because Jackson didn’t want to burn up his vacation time, he had asked if DeMarco wanted to go to the game.
“On a Wednesday?” DeMarco had said. “Right in the middle of the workday? Hell, yeah, I wanna go.”
And so there he sat, his seat right behind the Nationals’ dugout. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a seat this good. And he
liked day games a lot better than night games, particularly when the weather was like it was today: a beautiful seventy degrees, not a cloud in the sky, the flags in the outfield barely moving. He took a sip of his beer and snuck another glance at the good-looking mommy sitting with the two little boys one row away. He noticed she didn’t wear a wedding ring. Hmmm. Maybe he’d…
Shit! He could tell just by the sound the ball made coming off the bat that that baby was gone, outta the park, bye-bye baseball. The Mets now led four to zip, and it was only the second inning. But who cared? He had a beer, he had the sun on his face, there was a pretty woman to look at and hot dogs to eat—and he wasn’t working.
The Nationals pitching coach and the catcher were out on the mound now. The shortstop was with them and DeMarco guessed he was there to translate, the pitcher being a Cuban defector who spoke only Spanish. DeMarco could imagine the conversation, the pitching coach saying to the shortstop, “Ask him why the fuck he keeps throwing fastballs belt-high, right over the plate?” The shortstop would then repeat the question in machine-gun-rapid Spanish, the translation probably beginning with, “This asshole wants to know why …”
Two minutes later the home-plate umpire broke up the bilingual conference, and just as the pitcher was fondling the rosin bag to delay his next pitch, DeMarco’s cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. Crap. It was Mahoney.
“Where the hell are you?” Mahoney asked.
“Uh…”
Fortunately, before DeMarco had to invent a plausible lie, Mahoney said, “I don’t care. Get over to Old Ebbitt’s. I gotta meeting over at Treasury that begins in ten minutes. When it ends, I’ll come over to the restaurant. I need you to…”
Crack
! DeMarco looked up and saw the ball heading toward the right-field fence—and at the same time thirty-two thousand people at Nationals Park let out a massive groan.
“Where the hell are you?” Mahoney asked again.
The Old Ebbitt Grill was directly across the street from the massive structure that housed the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It had a mahogany-colored bar that seemed about a hundred yards long, a shiny brass foot rail that ran along the bottom of the bar, and behind the bar were about a thousand bottles of booze. He was served by a dignified bartender dressed in a white shirt and a black bow tie who spoke with an Irish brogue.
DeMarco approved of Old Ebbitt’s bar.
He’d been relieved that he’d been able to get to the restaurant before his boss and he’d just taken a sip of his martini when Mahoney walked through the door. He stood on the landing in front of the hostess’s lectern, his big white-haired head swiveling about as he looked for DeMarco. He finally saw him standing at the bar and made an irritated get-over-here gesture with his right arm.
DeMarco followed Mahoney to a table where Mahoney ignored him until his drink arrived—a double bourbon on the rocks. He opened his mouth to speak but then stopped and looked away, as if he was embarrassed about whatever it was that he was going to say. And this surprised DeMarco. Mahoney was a man who was rarely embarrassed by anything he did or said.
“Sometimes,” Mahoney finally said, “a guy’s dick can lead him into real trouble.”
For a minute DeMarco wondered if Mahoney was talking about the congressman from Arkansas but swiftly concluded he wasn’t. Mahoney was talking about himself.
“There’s a reporter named Sandra Whitmore…”
“You mean the one…”
“Yeah. That one. When she was younger, she had a body that could stop traffic and I tossed her a story that almost won her a Pulitzer. She’s never had a story as big as that since. Anyway, I got a letter from her yesterday saying that she’s going to talk to her pals in the media about her love life if I don’t help her.”
“She’s blackmailing you?”
Mahoney shrugged. “Go see her. See if something can be done to get her out of jail.”
“From what I’ve read there’s no way she’s going to get out unless she gives up her source. I mean, what she did…”
“Yeah, well, go see if there’s another option. She doesn’t have the temperament to sit in a cell for very long.”
“Okay,” DeMarco said. He knew from past experience that arguing with Mahoney over the feasibility of an assignment was a waste of time.
“There’s something else,” Mahoney said. “LaFountaine’s up to something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. He came up to the Hill that day to give us an update on intelligence stuff, just like he told the press. But the thing is, he’s always hated talking to us about what his guys are doing. We usually have to force his stubborn ass to brief us and then he’ll tell us as little as he possibly can, and he’ll make us just
drag
the information out of him. Well, that day he acted the way he always did, not saying shit about anything important, but right there at the end he tossed out that bit about Diller. He was casual about it, letting us know Marty Taylor was up to something illegal but that he wanted to hold off on arresting Diller and Taylor so it didn’t screw up whatever operation he was running. And when he brought up the thing about Diller, the meeting was behind schedule, as usual, and so nobody even asked any questions.”