“I don’t understand,” DeMarco said.
“What I’m saying is that LaFountaine telling the committee about Diller was completely out of character. So I think he’s up to something but I can’t figure out what.”
“But what do you want me to do about it?” DeMarco asked. “I mean, he’s the director of the CIA.”
“Yeah, I know.” Mahoney sat there brooding a moment, then said, “Ah, forget LaFountaine. You’re right, there’s probably nothing you can do. Maybe Emma could, but you …” Mahoney didn’t complete
the sentence but DeMarco knew what he meant. His friend Emma had once been a high-ranking member of Washington’s intelligence community and she could do things in that arena that he couldn’t even come close to doing—but even if that was the case, Mahoney’s comment still stung, implying that DeMarco was, and always would be, lacking in so many ways.
DeMarco was a lawyer who had never practiced law, and if he continued to work for John Mahoney he never would. Mahoney had hired him only as a favor to an old friend, but because of the notoriety of DeMarco’s father, Mahoney refused to give him a legitimate staff position. Instead, he buried DeMarco in a closet-sized office in the subbasement of the Capitol and made sure that no organizational chart connected him to the Speaker’s realm.
DeMarco liked to think of himself as a political troubleshooter but that was a face-saving illusion. In reality, he was the guy Mahoney used whenever he wanted something done that he didn’t want traced back to his office—like investigating congressmen taking mysterious weekend trips. He was Mahoney’s voice when he wanted messages delivered to people he couldn’t be seen talking to and, on more than one occasion, DeMarco had found himself in life-threatening circumstances when Mahoney had sent him down some dangerous political rat hole. He was also, to his great shame, Mahoney’s occasional bagman, the one rich constituents passed the cash to when they wanted Mahoney’s help navigating—or, more likely, circumventing—the legislative process. He should have quit working for the insensitive, conniving bastard years ago, but at this juncture of his life he couldn’t afford to. He was neck-deep in debt and it was going to be impossible to find a better-paying job, particularly when he couldn’t put down on his résumé most of the things that he had done for his last employer.
Mahoney drained the bourbon in his glass and said, “Just figure out how to get Sandy Whitmore out of jail before she turns me into a headline.”
DeMarco was the man walking behind the elephant: the guy with the high boots, a shovel, and a big bucket.
The bar was two blocks from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, almost the first drinking establishment you came to upon leaving the jail. It was a gloomy, depressing place, and its clientele—five men and one woman—uniformly ignored each other and the muted television behind the bar. These were people who were only interested in the glass in front of them as they sat there brooding about what life might have been.
The florist had gone to the jail that morning and asked to speak to someone about the procedure for visiting the prisoners. He was directed to a heavyset, red-faced guard with a small mustache who reminded him of an angry Oliver Hardy. When he spoke to the guard, he smelled tobacco, breath mints, and alcohol on his breath. It was no surprise that a bar was the guard’s first stop after leaving work.
The florist watched as the guard ordered a second drink. He had finished the first one in a single swallow. He was drinking straight vodka, having waved off the ice and lemon slice offered by the bartender. He wanted cheap, high-octane alcohol and nothing else.
The florist took a seat on the stool next to him. Signaling the bartender, he said, “Another one for my friend.”
“Who the hell are you?” the guard asked. Then he recognized the florist. “Hey, you were at the jail this morning. What do you want?”
“Wait until he brings your drink and I’ll tell you.”
The guard shrugged; he wasn’t going to turn down a free drink.
The bartender placed the vodka in front of the guard, and the guard placed both hands around the glass as if he was afraid the florist might snatch the drink away. “Okay, so now tell me why you’re buying me drinks.”
The florist took out his wallet and spread five one-hundred-dollar bills on the bar.
“Jesus!” the guard said, and his head spun around to see if anyone else had seen the money. “You shouldn’t go flashin’ money around in a place like this.”
“No one’s watching,” the florist said. “Pick it up. It’s yours.”
The guard didn’t reach for the money—but he did place his forearm over the bills so they were partially hidden.
“What do you want?” the guard asked again.
“I’m a journalist,” the florist said, “and I want you to call me every time Sandra Whitmore—”
“That reporter broad? The one who got that spy killed?”
“Yes, that one. Tomorrow, I want you to look at your records and tell me the names of everyone who’s visited her since she was jailed. And starting tomorrow, whenever she receives a visitor, I want you to call me immediately. If her visitors represent an organization, like a law firm or another paper, I want to know that as well.”
The guard looked down at the money peeking out from under his sleeve. “Naw, no way. I could get fired. I hate that fuckin’ job but it’s better than being unemployed.”
“How would anyone know if you called me?” the florist asked. “And you’re not doing anything illegal. Your visitors log is a matter of public record and I could obtain a copy by filing a FOIA request.” The florist actually had no idea if that was true.
“Foyya?” the guard said.
“Freedom of Information Act. But if I have to file a FOIA request it’ll take me weeks to get what I want—and you won’t make any money.”
The guard didn’t say anything. He did sneak another look at the five bills under his forearm. He finished his third drink and called out to the bartender, “Tommy, another one, but give me an Absolut and not that rotgut you’ve been pouring.”
Mahoney had said that when Sandy Whitmore was young she had a body that could stop traffic, and DeMarco concluded that her body could still perform that function: Whitmore was substantial enough to make a formidable barrier.
She was a stout five foot four and her once trim calves now resembled those of a small sumo wrestler’s. Her face was bloated, her nose was a porcine snout, and she had the complexion of a drinker— little broken blood vessels all over her cheeks that would have been more noticeable if her complexion wasn’t already an unhealthy, near-stroke shade of red. Her hair was also red, or had been at one time. It was now badly dyed, streaked with gray, and brittle-looking.
DeMarco was thinking that there were probably a lot of married men like John Mahoney walking around: men who had affairs when they were young and would now be embarrassed to be seen with some of the women they once found so desirable. Mahoney’s wife, Mary Pat, was, and probably always had been, ten times better looking than Sandra Whitmore.
“Who the hell are you?” Whitmore asked as soon as she entered the room.
“Mahoney sent me,” DeMarco said.
Whitmore smiled—or
gloated
, to be accurate. “So, he got my letter.”
“Yeah, he got your letter.”
Whitmore heard the disdain in DeMarco’s voice and said, “Hey, fuck him and fuck you. I need some help here. They’ve got me locked up in a windowless box and they’re keeping my pain medication from me until I’m practically coming out of my skin. They’re basically
torturing
me to get me to talk.”
“Mahoney can’t get you sprung from jail,” DeMarco said. “You must know that.”
“Bullshit. He’s the Speaker of the House. He has influence. I want him to use it.”
DeMarco just shook his head. “The only one that can get you out of here is the judge who put you here, and he’s not going to do that unless you give up your source. Your story got a spy killed, and right now nobody has a lot of sympathy for you.”
“Hey! It wasn’t my fault that woman died and I’m sick and tired of people saying it was. If the CIA had been straight with me that never would have happened. And I’m not giving up my source. This is the best story I’ve had in years and there’s no way I’m gonna ruin things by selling out.”
“So you wanna be a martyr but you’re not willing to burn at the stake.”
“I don’t like your damn attitude, buster, and I don’t have to stand for it. Now what’s Mahoney gonna do for me?”
DeMarco had told Mahoney that there wasn’t any way he could get Whitmore out of jail but he actually had thought of a way. “You can’t give up your source,” he said, “but someone else can.”
“What are you talking about?” Whitmore said.
“Let’s say that someone saw you and your source talking, and this person was to tell the CIA. LaFountaine wants your source so badly that he’d waterboard the guy to get him to admit that he leaked the story to you. So give me the guy’s name and where you met, and I’ll try to find some way to connect him to you so the CIA or the judge or somebody can drag the truth out of him, but no one will be able to accuse you of giving him up.”
Whitmore lit a cigarette and her eyes narrowed as the smoke drifted upward. She studied DeMarco for a minute, thinking about what he’d just said, then looked around the small room. “Couldn’t you have asked for a room with a damn window in it?” she muttered. “I can’t remember the last time I saw the sky.”
DeMarco didn’t respond; he’d been with her less than five minutes and was already tired of her company.
“Okay,” she said. “His name is Derek Crosby and he works for the CIA, just like I said in my story. And if you tell anyone I told you that, I’ll crucify Mahoney, I swear to Christ I will. I’ll make him sound like the biggest pervert since Hugh Hefner.”
DeMarco ignored the threat. “How do you know Crosby’s CIA?” he asked.
“Do I look stupid to you?” Whitmore said. “He showed me his credentials. And I called the CIA from a pay phone so there wouldn’t be any record of the call and asked to speak to him. When they rang me through to his desk, I hung up before he answered because I was worried they might monitor phone calls, but I know he works there.”
“What does he look like?”
“Big, tall guy. Late fifties, early sixties. Curly, ginger-colored hair. A bit of a potbelly but otherwise not in bad shape. And tan, like he spends a lot of time outdoors.”
“Any distinguishing characteristics? A scar, a tattoo, a limp, anything like that?”
“No. But he lisps.”
“Lisps?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you meet him?” DeMarco asked.
“The Hyatt by Grand Central Station.”
“Did you meet him in his room or the bar or did you leave the hotel?”
“The bar.”
“Did you sit at the bar or at a table?”
“At a table.”
“And do you know if Crosby registered under his own name?”
“Yeah. When I got there I used the house phone to let him know I was there. I had to give his name to the reservation desk so they could ring his room.”
“This is good,” DeMarco said. “I may be able to find someone on the hotel staff who saw you together.”
“Or,” Whitmore said with a smile DeMarco found obscene, “you could
pay
somebody to say they saw us together whether they did or not.”
It didn’t take long for ol’ Sandy to get into the spirit of things.
“Wouldn’t Crosby have known that your story would put this agent in jeopardy?” DeMarco asked.
“How would I know?” Whitmore said. “But from what I’ve read, LaFountaine’s polygraphed everyone at Langley that knew about the spy and it wasn’t very many people. So maybe Crosby was in the loop about Diller’s trip to Tehran but he didn’t know about the spy. Or maybe he never thought exposing Diller would hurt the spy. I don’t know. All I know is it wasn’t
my
fault that woman was killed.”
DeMarco wanted to say,
Yeah it was, you remorseless bitch
—but he didn’t.
Marty Taylor sat on a rock fifty yards from the Pacific Ocean.
He had just come from a board meeting and was wearing an Armani suit, a Dolce and Gabbana dress shirt, and black lace-up shoes that had cost eight hundred dollars. It was a gray, blustery day—so windy that when the surf crashed onto the beach he was drenched with spray—but he didn’t care. He didn’t care that the back of his pants was filthy from the sandy rock and his expensive clothes were soaked with saltwater.
Naturally, the board meeting had been devoted to what Conrad Diller was accused of doing, and trying to assess what impact his arrest would have on the company. The stock price had been headed toward the basement before this happened; tomorrow it was expected to reach an all-time low. And the Pentagon was threatening to send out a team to do a security review to make sure there weren’t any more Dillers in the company. Every board member was absolutely dumbfounded that Diller, a young professional who made a good salary, would do such a thing. Well, everyone wasn’t shocked—but Marty and the company’s CEO, Andy Bollinger, had pretended to be shocked.
So now he sat alone on that wet, sandy rock and pondered the train wreck that his life had become. He was thinking the smart thing to do would be to walk into the ocean—and just keep walking until he disappeared. And for what must have been the millionth time he asked
himself the question
How could this have possibly happened
? How could he have gone from the golden boy he’d once been to being the target of a federal espionage investigation?
Marty Taylor didn’t look like a computer geek. He looked like a surfer, a Viking surfer. He was thirty-five years old, had long blond hair, blue-green eyes, and a dimpled Kirk Douglas chin. His stomach was flat and his arms and chest were well muscled because these days he spent more time exercising than he did working. When he was twenty-two, there was a picture of him on the cover of
Rolling Stone
playing beach volleyball. At the time, he’d already been getting a hundred marriage proposals a week, but after
Rolling Stone
put him on the cover in nothing but swim trunks and sunglasses, the number tripled.