His boss was inconsiderate and selfish and never gave a moment’s thought as to how his decisions adversely impacted DeMarco’s life. He was also cunning, conniving, corrupt, and unscrupulous-and, if all that wasn’t bad enough, he was an alcoholic and a womanizer. Now had his boss been a used car salesman, all those negative character traits might not have been so surprising-or maybe even expected. But his boss wasn’t a used car salesman. His boss was John Fitzpatrick Mahoney, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
DeMarco was, for lack of a better term, Mahoney’s fixer. He was the guy the Speaker assigned when he had some shady job he didn’t want to give to a legitimate member of his staff, jobs that were often morally questionable if not downright illegal. Jobs such as collecting undocumented contributions from Mahoney’s constituents or finding things out about other politicians that Mahoney could use to control their vote. There was very little DeMarco liked about his job, but when Mahoney was not in D.C. DeMarco was often left to his own devices, and right now his employer was lying in a hospital having his gallbladder removed-and no doubt complaining mightily to anyone forced to care for him.
DeMarco had no idea what function the gallbladder performed, but he presumed it wasn’t anything too important if they were simply plucking it out of Mahoney’s corpulent corpus. He wouldn’t have been surprised, however, if the surgeon removed several other organs as well. Mahoney not only drank too much, he also smoked half a dozen cigars a day, and DeMarco figured a heart-liver-lung transplant was overdue.
The second person currently absent from his life was Angela DeCapria, his lover-who also happened to be an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. They met last year when DeMarco was trying to figure out which member of Congress had leaked a story to a reporter that resulted in a CIA agent being killed. When they met, Angela had been married; she was now divorced and living part-time with him.
Unfortunately-and unlike DeMarco-Angela was serious about her career, and when her boss told her she had to go to Afghanistan for a while, she packed her bags without hesitation and flew away. And because she worked for the CIA, she couldn’t tell DeMarco exactly what she would be doing, how long she’d be gone, or how to reach her-all of which annoyed him. He was sure his annoyance would be replaced by loneliness-and horniness-within a few days.
So for at least a week he was on his own, and he intended to take advantage of the situation by doing only things he liked to do-one of those things being golf. He took his place on a square of green Astroturf, placed a ball on the rubber tee inserted into the carpet, pulled his driver from his bag, and made a couple of practice swings to loosen up. Wham! The heavy-set grandma on his right hit a ball-smacked it about a hundred and fifty yards. Using a three iron. Jesus! He wished he’d found someplace else to stand. He stepped up to take his first shot of the year- and his cell phone rang. Shit!
“Is this Joseph DeMarco?” the caller asked.
“Yeah,” DeMarco said, relieved it wasn’t Mahoney calling from his hospital bed to make his life miserable.
“This is Detective Jack Glazer, Arlington County Police. I’d like to talk to you.”
“Police? Why?” DeMarco said.
“Hasn’t the FBI called you or been to see you?” Glazer asked.
“No, why would they?” DeMarco said.
“Huh,” Glazer said. To DeMarco it sounded as if Glazer was surprised the FBI hadn’t already contacted him.
“What’s this about?” DeMarco asked.
Glazer hesitated. “Mr. DeMarco, I’m sorry to have to tell you this over the phone, but Paul Russo was killed last night. You were listed as an emergency contact on a card he had in his wallet.”
“Paul Russo?” DeMarco said-and then he remembered who that was. Geez, he hadn’t talked to the guy in three, maybe four years.
“Are you saying you don’t know him?’ Glazer said.
“No. I know him. He’s like a second cousin or something. His mother was my mother’s cousin. How was he killed?”
“I think it would be better if we talked about this face-to-face. Would you mind coming to my office?”
Glazer’s office turned out to be a desk in a room filled with half a dozen other desks-and the room was bedlam. Guys in shirtsleeves that DeMarco assumed were detectives were sitting at some of the desks, shouting into phones, and four uniformed cops were also in the room. Two of the uniformed cops were holding on to a guy who had a shaved head and tats all over his arms. The guy’s hands were cuffed behind his back and he was screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs.
DeMarco told one of the detectives that he was there to see Glazer, and the detective pointed to a man sitting at a cluttered desk at the back of the room. When DeMarco introduced himself, Glazer stood up, said, “Let’s go someplace where we can hear each other talk,” and led DeMarco to a small, windowless space equipped with a table and four metal chairs. DeMarco noticed a surveillance camera mounted high on one wall, pointed down at the table, and assumed he was in an interrogation room, which, for some reason, made him feel uncomfortable.
Glazer was a stocky, serious-looking guy in his fifties. He was wearing a wrinkled white shirt, his tie was undone, and he appeared harried and tired. After he thanked DeMarco for coming and asked if he wanted a cup of coffee, which DeMarco declined, Glazer told him that Paul Russo had been found dead last night at the Iwo Jima Memorial, killed by a single gunshot wound to the head.
“He was shot?” DeMarco said, unable to believe what he was hearing.
“Yeah. What can you tell me about him?” Glazer asked.
Still stunned by what he’d been told, DeMarco said, “I barely knew him. He moved to Washington about five years ago. He said he wanted to get out of New York and try someplace else, that he needed a change of scenery. When he got here, he looked me up, probably because my mother told him to, but, like I said, I hardly knew him. When we were kids, I didn’t have much to do with him because he was younger than me, and the only times I ever saw him were at family things-weddings, funerals, things like that.”
“So why would he have your name in his wallet as an emergency contact?”
“I don’t know, but I’m the only relative he had that lives around here. He wasn’t married, both his parents are dead, and he didn’t have any brothers or sisters, so maybe he couldn’t think of anyone else to write down. When he first moved here, we had lunch one day and I showed him a few areas where he might want to rent an apartment, but that was about it. I spoke to him a couple times on the phone afterward, but I never saw him again.”
“Huh,” Glazer said.
DeMarco wasn’t sure what that meant. “Huh” seemed to be something Glazer said whenever he heard something that didn’t match what he was thinking.
“Was your cousin wealthy or famous or connected to someone important?”
“Famous? No, he wasn’t famous. He was just a nurse, as far as I know. Look, I appreciate you calling me, but if you’re thinking I can help you figure out who killed him, I’m afraid I’m not going to be much help.”
“And you said the FBI didn’t contact you?”
“Yeah, I already told you that. Why would they? Are they involved in this?”
“Yeah,” Glazer said. “Actually, it’s their case.”
“Then why are you-”
“Like I said, Russo was shot at the memorial, which is in Arlington County, and when the body was discovered the Arlington P.D. responded. But the thing is, the park’s federal property and it was sort of a toss-up as to who had jurisdiction, us or the feds. Well, I had just gotten to the scene-this was about two A.M. -when an FBI agent shows up and takes the case away from me. And that’s what I don’t get, Mr. DeMarco. I mean, if your cousin had been some kinda big shot I could understand it, but based on what you’re telling me, he wasn’t. So why’s the FBI so interested in him?”
“I have no idea,” DeMarco said, but what he was really thinking was: since there wasn’t anyone else to do it, he was going to have to get Paul’s body and arrange for a funeral. Shit.
“One thing I didn’t tell you,” Glazer said. “When we found your cousin he had cash in his wallet and his credit cards hadn’t been taken, so he wasn’t killed in a robbery. So there’s a possibility-no offense intended-that he might have been pedaling meds. I mean, since he was a nurse he probably had access to all kinds of medications and maybe he was dealing painkillers, tranks, things like that. But-”
“Narcotics? Paul? I kinda doubt that. Like I said, I didn’t know him too well, but he always struck me as being pretty straitlaced.”
