Dead on Arrival (23 page)

So she’d wait until the right opportunity presented itself. It always did.

It didn’t take DeMarco long to strike up a conversation with a Dobbler employee. He recognized the people in the bar who worked for Dobbler because they all had company ID badges on lanyards around their necks. When one man wearing a Dobbler badge started talking to the bartender about the Redskins’ chances of beating the Eagles on Sunday, he surprised DeMarco by saying that the Redskins were going to kick the Eagles’ green-clad butts. This surprised DeMarco for two reasons: the Skins’ chances of beating the Eagles were practically nil the way Washington was currently performing, and most folks in Philly were rabid Eagles fans. In fact, the word
rabid
didn’t come close to describing their fanaticism. For a man to stand in a Philadelphia bar and admit out loud that he wanted to see the Eagles lose was tantamount to a death wish.

But it gave DeMarco the opening he needed. He told the man that he was from D.C. and ‘Go Skins,’ and a bond was formed. They became two cowboys surrounded by heathens, standing shoulder to shoulder, waiting to be scalped, as they wished for the downfall of Philadelphia’s favorite team. Before too long, DeMarco got around to asking about Dobbler. DeMarco told the guy – his name was Chuck – that he’d had an appointment with Dobbler and that Dobbler had blown him off after he’d driven all the way from the capital. Chuck’s response to this complaint was that he wasn’t surprised because Dobbler was a prick. Yep, Chuck was his guy.

Chuck confirmed what DeMarco already suspected: Dobbler was ruthless, mean-spirited, tight-fisted, and cared more about his company than the people in it. Dobbler, Chuck said, would fire you if you looked cross-eyed at him. Chuck did mention one interesting thing. When Dobbler started up his company, there were four other security firms he was competing against. Three of these outfits went out of business because the buildings they were supposed to be protecting began to experience an unusually high number of successful break-ins. Dobbler went to the people who owned the buildings and said if they wanted to stop having their offices robbed and trashed, maybe they should hire somebody who knew what he was doing, so the companies did. The rumor was that Dobbler had hired the thugs who did the break-ins, but that was never proven.

When DeMarco asked Chuck if Broderick’s bill was going to be good for business, Chuck said, ‘Beat’s the shit out of me. I’m on the security systems side. But,’ he added, ‘I like what Broderick’s saying.’

Edith Baxter had three homes: an oceanfront mansion in Carmel, a four-thousand-square-foot ‘cabin’ at Lake Tahoe, and a penthouse apartment in Manhattan. Fortunately for Emma, Edith was currently in New York. The other two places sounded more fun to visit, but Manhattan was closer.

Emma didn’t call ahead. She showed up at Edith’s building and gave the doorman her name. Edith at first refused to see her. She spoke to Emma over the doorman’s phone, said she remembered her fondly but wasn’t feeling well enough for company. Emma hated to do it, but she told Edith the reason she wanted to see her had to do with her son, which in a way it did, but the half-truth bothered her.

The elevator doors opened into Edith’s home – her apartment occupied the entire floor – and she was standing in the foyer waiting for Emma. She was shoeless, wearing faded jeans and a long-sleeved blue blouse. The last time Emma had seen the woman, Edith had been slim, but in the way that a person who eats a healthy diet and has a personal trainer is slim. Now she looked gaunt: hollow cheeks, corded neck, her jeans riding low on narrow, bony hips. The skin beneath her eyes was smudged gray from sleepless nights, and her hair – which had always been carefully styled and shaded an attractive honey-blond – was streaked with gray, the ends brittle and split, as if she hadn’t visited her hairdresser in a couple of months. Her eyes, though, seemed the same. The strength was still there, the indomitable will, the extraordinary intellect.

Edith didn’t waste time on small talk. She didn’t even invite Emma farther into her home, beyond the foyer. She immediately said, ‘What do you have to say about my son?’

‘I wanted to say how sorry I was for you and that I wish there was something I could do to take away your pain.’

‘Thank you, but I don’t think you came here just to express your sympathy. You sent me a card. Why are you really here?’

‘Edith, when I first met you, you struck me as being fairly liberal, or at least as liberal as someone can be who’s held the sort of jobs you’ve held. You were particularly sensitive when it came to discrimination.’

‘What’s this have to do with—’

‘This week I found out that you’re a major contributor to Senator Broderick. I’d like to know why.’

Emma expected Edith to tell her it was none of her business, but she didn’t. She said, ‘Because he’s the only politician in Washington who understands that we must act, that we must do something to fight those people. Is that why you’re here? To try to convince me to stop supporting Broderick?’

‘Not exactly,’ Emma said. She paused before adding, ‘Edith, I have reason to believe that the Muslims who committed these recent terrorists acts were forced to do what they did, and they were
not
forced by al-Qaeda or some other group of Islamic fanatics. I think these so-called terrorist attacks have been engineered to help Broderick’s bill pass.’

‘What? What are you talking about?’

Edith
looked
confused, but was she? During her career Edith Baxter had played boardroom poker for billions of dollars.

‘What I’m saying is that Reza Zarif was forced to fly his Cessna at the White House because someone made him. And whoever made him was doing so, at least in part, to advance Bill Broderick’s agenda. An agenda that you support.’

Edith studied Emma’s face for a moment. ‘Are you still with the DIA?’ she asked. ‘The last time I saw you, you told me you were retiring.’

Why had she asked that? Emma wondered. Was she trying to figure out if the government was investigating her activities? Emma opted for the truth. ‘I
am
retired,’ she said. ‘I’m not employed by anyone.’
Sorta
, she added mentally, as Mahoney would have done.

‘Then I don’t understand. What authority do you have for questioning me?’

‘None. I’m here because I’ve always admired you and I want to make sure that you’re not involved in any way with what’s been happening lately.’

‘That’s absurd!’

Behind Edith, Emma could see a formal dining room table that would seat twelve. The table was piled with books and magazines and manila file folders. Emma assumed that Edith must have some sort of home office in her spacious apartment, probably a library too, and could only imagine that whatever Edith was working on had overflowed those spaces. But Emma was standing too far away to see the titles of the books on the table. She took a step toward Edith, hoping the woman would back farther into her apartment so Emma could get closer to the table, but Edith wasn’t the sort to back up.

‘Reza Zarif’s children were killed, Edith. An eight-year-old boy. An eleven-year-old girl.’

‘
My
child was killed!’ Edith screamed. ‘Do you think I give a damn if some terrorist killed his own children? I don’t know what you’re playing at here, but whatever it is, it’s a dangerous game. If you were ever to say publicly that you think I’m doing something illegal, my lawyers would destroy you. And the fact that I support Bill Broderick shouldn’t surprise anyone. Those people mutilated my son. They butchered his family and they drove him to despair and they killed him.’

‘Which people, Edith? Your son’s family died in Spain. No one in this country had anything to do with it.’

‘You don’t know that! We’re at war with these people, all of them, everywhere. They’d kill us all if they could. They’re all responsible, every last one of them. Now get out of my house!’

Emma refused the doorman’s offer to get her a cab. She walked for half a block and then stopped and waited. Twenty minutes later a narrow-shouldered young black man wearing dreadlocks came in her direction. He was carrying a toolbox and wearing the cap and uniform of an AT&T employee. The young man’s name was Bobby, and he worked for Fat Neil.

When Bobby reached Emma, she looked at him, and he nodded his head and continued on his way.

Emma took out her cell phone and made a call. Someone answered.

‘Pictures of everyone going in and out of the building for the next twenty-four hours. If she leaves, follow her, but I don’t think she’ll leave.’ Then she made a second call and gave Fat Neil another assignment.

DeMarco met Emma at her house in McLean. When he entered her home, he looked around for Christine’s new pet and didn’t see the critter, but considering the size of the thing it could have been hiding in a tea cup.

‘Where’s the pooch?’ he asked Emma.

Emma shook her head. ‘Christine took that animal with her to practice today. She put it in her
purse
. She put a little coat on it to keep it warm. I don’t know what’s gotten into her.’

‘Did you ever train it to do its business outside?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Emma said, a small self-satisfied smile on her lips. DeMarco figured that Christine’s dog had been subjected to some sort of military psych-ops technique. It had probably been brainwashed so thoroughly it sprinted for the door whenever it even
thought
of peeing.

‘Hey, since it’s so trainable,’ DeMarco said, ‘maybe you could turn it into some sort of miniature attack dog. Like if a robber snuck into your house, the dog could snap the guy’s Achilles tendons in half. You know, hobble the bastard? Then when he’s on the ground, it could sink its little fangs into his throat.’

‘What do you want?’ Emma said.

‘To compare notes. To see what you got in New York.’

‘The only thing I got in New York was the impression that Edith Baxter’s gone off the deep end. She looked like she was … unraveling. But I asked Neil to do a little more research, and he found out some things.’

‘Like what?’

‘I saw a bunch of books in Edith’s apartment and Neil discovered from a credit card statement that she made a sizable purchase from a bookstore in Manhattan. Neil hacked into the store’s inventory records and found out that she purchased every book they had dealing with Muslims and terrorism and al-Qaeda.’

‘So?’ DeMarco said.

‘Edith’s doing research. If she was engineering the takeover of a rival company, she’d know everything there was to know about the company. And if Edith’s initiated some sort of campaign against Muslims, she’d do the same thing.’

‘Big deal, she bought some books.’

‘She also hired a PR firm. They’re the ones that have been producing Broderick’s television ads. And based on the amount of money she’s thrown at them, they’re probably doing other things like direct mailings and phone polling. She’s also engaged a lobbyist in D.C., and through him she’s been making donations to a number of congressmen. The ones she’s been giving money to are those who appear to be on the fence when it comes to the bill, and she’s obviously trying to knock them over to Broderick’s side.’

DeMarco shrugged. ‘She’s a rich person with a cause and she’s doing what rich people do. If she was supporting the Sierra Club on some kinda environmental legislation, she’d do the same thing.’

‘Neil also discovered that she sent a large check to a private security company.’

‘A security company? You mean like Dobbler’s outfit?’

‘No, I mean like mercenaries. This outfit supplies people to augment U.S forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. They provide protection for Iraqi poli ticians, Halliburton’s operations, oil fields, any mission that the U.S military’s too thin to support. But they also work for people like Charles Taylor, that sweet fellow who used to be the dictator of Liberia. They’re not choosy about their clients.’

‘So what are they doing for Baxter?’

‘I’m not sure. But we were saying earlier that if Edith was involved in something like what you suspect, she’d need people with expertise.
This
company has the expertise.’

‘Yeah, but do you think she’d hire them so openly? I mean, write ’em a check with her name on it?’

‘No. That’s the part that doesn’t make sense. What did you find out about Dobbler?’ Emma asked.

‘A couple of interesting things but no smoking gun. He seems like a rotten guy who would do anything to get ahead, but I didn’t learn anything that would lead me to conclude he’s doing anything illegal. He told me he spent twenty years in the army and worked in military intelligence, whatever that means. His Web site says he retired as a colonel, so he had some rank, and he probably knows a lot of other ex-military types. If you add it all up, he’d have the experience to organize these attacks. The other thing is, according to a guy that works for him, Dobbler muscled out the competition in Philly when he first got started.’

‘Muscled them out how?’

‘He hired pros to break into buildings being protected by other security companies to ruin their reputations. Supposedly.’

‘Huh,’ Emma said. ‘Well, as for him being in military intelligence, that covers a lot of ground, but he couldn’t have been anyone of note or I would have heard of him. But I’ll check out his record. One other thing about Mr Dobbler,’ Emma said. ‘He called Broderick’s office after you visited him.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I have Neil tapping his and Edith Baxter’s phones.’

‘Jesus, Emma, do you know how much Neil charges? There are
surgeons
who bill less than him per hour.’

‘I’m sure the speaker’s budget can handle it.’

That was true; the speaker’s budget, only part of which was visible to the General Accounting Office, was bigger than the GNP of some countries.

‘Anyway,’ Emma said, ‘he called Broderick’s office. But because of the way their phone system is set up, Neil didn’t know if he spoke to Broderick or Fine or someone else. On top of that, Dobbler and whoever he talked to were using STU-III phones.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘It means the call was scrambled – encrypted – and Neil doesn’t know what was said.’

DeMarco shook his head. ‘We just keep getting these little pieces, pieces that might mean something but we can’t be sure. Did that girl ever call you back, Mustafa’s niece?’

‘No. So what’s next?’ Emma said.

‘I dunno,’ DeMarco said.

They sat there in silence a moment. Then DeMarco said, ‘We have two things that are solid, or more solid than anything else. We have a fingerprint connecting Donny Cray to Reza Zarif, and Cray worked for Jubal Pugh, who, according to the DEA, is a white supremacist who kills people.’

‘Yeah, but Pugh
can’t
be the mastermind behind all this, Joe,’ Emma said. ‘That just doesn’t wash.’

‘Maybe not, but if he’s involved, he may know who is.’

‘Okay, but so what?’ Emma said.

‘Well, I think I have a way to nail Pugh based on something Patsy Hall, the DEA gal, told me.’

‘Nail him for what?’

‘Drugs. And if I can get him arrested for dealing drugs, that gives us the leverage to make him talk.’

‘How would you get him for dealing drugs when the DEA hasn’t been able to get him in five years?’