Dead on Arrival (4 page)

Danny let Vince take the lead going up the stairs.

Charlie Logan lived on the fifth floor of an ancient apartment building in Flushing, not too far from Shea Stadium. It was a crummy, stinky place, the elevator broken, the stairway barely lit, the rug on the steps so dirty and worn that it was impossible to tell what color it had originally been. They found Charlie’s apartment, and Vince took a snub-nosed .38 out of his jacket pocket.
Oh, shit
, Danny thought.

Vince used the butt of the .38 to rap on Logan’s door. He waited a minute and then slammed the gun butt three times against the wooden door, the sound echoing down the hallway. Danny figured whoever was in the apartment across the hall from Charlie had to have heard the noise. But fuckin’ Vince, he didn’t think about things like that. He didn’t care about things like that.

Vince Merlino didn’t look like a tough guy. He was five-eight, wiry, not heavily muscled. At forty-five his hair was getting thin right on the top, like he was going to have a little skin circle up there in a couple of years. Yeah, if you saw Vince from the back you wouldn’t be scared at all, a half-pint guy in a cheap leather coat and jeans and high-top Nike knockoffs. But from the front, he’d give you pause. His face looked like it didn’t know what a smile was, lips so thin they practically weren’t there at all, but it was his eyes that got you. He had these flat don’t-give-a-fuck eyes, eyes that said he’d go off on you no matter how big you were.

Vince hit the door again, practically splintering the wood. ‘Jesus,’ Danny said. ‘You’re gonna wake up everybody in the fuckin’ building. Maybe he’s not home.’

‘He’s home,’ Vince said. He raised the .38 to hit the door again, but before he did they heard a bellow from inside the apartment and the door flung open. ‘What the hell do … oh, hey, it’s you,’ Charlie said when he saw Vince, and he stepped back so Vince and Danny could enter the apartment.

Charlie Logan was a fat guy, six-foot-four, two hundred and eighty pounds. Maybe it was because of Charlie’s size that Mr B had told Danny to go with Vince. Danny didn’t normally do this sort of stuff, but he’d been hanging around Mr B’s office when Vince said he was going to see Charlie, and that’s when Mr B had told him to go too. Danny had said he didn’t think Vince needed any help – it wasn’t like Charlie was gonna wrestle with him or something – but Mr B had said to shut up and do what he was told.

Charlie was wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt and white boxer shorts with blue stripes. The T-shirt was the ribbed kind, clinging to Charlie’s love handles ballooning out around his waist. His shoulders were hairy and his arms were heavy and flabby looking. His legs were surprisingly thin compared to his frame and his feet …
Christ
, he had ugly feet, the toenails yellow and cracked, big corns on some of the toes, nasty blue veins running all over the place. Danny wished he’d never looked down at the guy’s feet.

‘Hey,’ Charlie said again. ‘Can I get you some coffee? It’s not made, but I can make some. Or a beer maybe.’

Then Charlie saw the gun in Vince’s hand.

‘Hey,’ Charlie said a third time, and pointed at the gun. ‘Come on, guys, what’s with that?’

Vince looked at Charlie for a moment, his eyes as warm as a snake’s. ‘You owe twelve grand. I told you two weeks ago to pay it. I told you last week to pay it. Now you’re gonna either pay it today, right now, or you’re gonna give me the keys to your Lincoln.’

‘I can’t give you the Lincoln,’ Charlie said. ‘How would I get to work?’

‘I don’t give a
shit
how you get to work,’ Vince said. ‘Gimme the money or gimme the keys.’

‘Let me have until Saturday night,’ Charlie said. ‘Oklahoma’s playin’ Nebraska. I got it nailed.’

Danny would have laughed if he hadn’t been trying to look tough. Fuckin’ gamblers. Charlie had borrowed money from some
other
shark, hoping he’d win enough to pay back the
first
shark. These guys should just kill themselves.

‘Go get the keys,’ Vince said.

‘Come on, just till Saturday,’ Charlie said. When Vince just stared at him, Charlie looked over at Danny, his eyes begging.

Then Vince hit Charlie with the gun, whacked him right across the side of the face, high up near his left eye. Danny thought Charlie would collapse to the floor or hold his hands up to his head and start moaning – but he didn’t. Instead he let out a yell and grabbed Vince’s throat.

The crazy bastard. He ignored the gun like it wasn’t even there, put two big hands around Vince’s throat, and began to strangle him. Danny thought later that that was why Mr B had made him go with Vince. Mr B had known Charlie was the kind of nutcase who would do something dumb like this.

As Charlie was choking Vince, Vince banged his gun ineffectually on the top of Charlie’s head, but Charlie, the maniac, was oblivious to the blows. Danny tried to pull Charlie away from Vince, and when he couldn’t, he jumped on Charlie’s back, put his right forearm under the fat man’s chin, and began to press his arm against Charlie’s windpipe. The faces of both Vince and Charlie were now turning purple as a result of being simultaneously strangled.

And then Danny heard the gun go off.

The first thing that went through Danny’s brain was that it was lucky Vince’s bullet hadn’t passed through Charlie and hit
him
. The second thing he thought was that Vince hadn’t really wanted to shoot the guy. You never kill someone who owes you money. No, Vince hadn’t meant to shoot him. He’d just panicked, thinking Charlie was going to kill him. Or maybe he didn’t panic; maybe he was so goddamn mad at what Charlie had done, so humiliated that Charlie had made him squawk, that he stuck his gun into the guy’s gut and pulled the trigger.

‘What the hell did you
do
?’ Danny said, looking down at Charlie lying on the floor, the front of his white T-shirt turning red.

Vince didn’t say anything. He just stood there rubbing his throat, staring at the gun in his hand as if he was surprised at what
it
had done.

And then Danny saw Charlie give a little shudder and die.

Vince hadn’t shot him in the gut, he’d shot him in the heart.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Vince said.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Danny said, still looking down at Charlie.

‘Come on. Let’s go!’ Vince said. He turned toward the door and started running.

By the time Danny got to the door, Vince had almost reached the fourth floor landing, one flight down. Danny started to follow him, then for some reason, for some fuckin’ reason, he pulled out a handkerchief so he wouldn’t leave prints and started to close the door to Charlie’s apartment. That was his big mistake.

Just as he was shutting Charlie’s door, the door across the hall opened. He and the woman stared at each other for about two seconds. She was a short, heavy old broad with a fat nose and gray hair tied up in a bun. Polish or German, Danny thought, and she looked tougher than elephant hide.

‘Danny!’ Vince cried out from the stairwell. ‘Come on!’

Great, just call out my fuckin’ name
, Danny thought, as he tore his eyes away from the old Polish woman and started to run. But Vince wasn’t through. Just as Danny reached the stairs – the woman now standing in the hall looking at his back as he ran – Vince yelled again.

‘DeMarco!’ Vince screamed. ‘Move your ass!’

Joe DeMarco’s hand was on the doorknob when the phone rang again.

Mahoney’s secretary had called twenty minutes ago, waking DeMarco and telling him to get to Mahoney’s office right away. He took a quick shower, skipped shaving, and dressed in a white shirt and a dark suit. He’d put on his tie and shave in the cab on the way to the Capitol.

When the phone rang the second time he thought about not answering it, but maybe it was Mahoney’s secretary calling back, telling him the meeting with Mahoney had been canceled. Half the meetings he had with Mahoney were canceled. He picked up the phone.

‘Hello.’

‘Joe, it’s me.’

DeMarco couldn’t speak. He could barely breathe. It was his ex-wife. He hadn’t spoken to her in almost two years. He hadn’t even thought about her in … shit, maybe a week.

‘What do you want, Marie?’ he finally said. He tried to keep his voice flat, to let her know how much he hated her, but somewhere in the back of his mind was the thought that she was calling because she wanted him to take her back. It was pathetic that he should think such a thing, pathetic that he’d even
consider
such a thing.

‘I need your help, Joe,’ Marie said.

‘My help?’ DeMarco said. ‘My help with what?’

‘It’s Danny, Joe. He’s in trouble, big trouble. I didn’t know who else to call.’

DeMarco couldn’t believe this. His ex-wife was one of the vainest, most self-centered people he had ever known. And not all that bright, if he was honest about it. But he couldn’t believe she’d ask for his help when it came to Danny.

Danny DeMarco was Joe DeMarco’s cousin. Marie had had an affair with him, and then she divorced Joe and married him. She didn’t even have to change her last name when she married the asshole.

‘You gotta be shittin’ me!’ he said, and started to slam down the phone.

But he didn’t.

DeMarco sat impatiently in Mahoney’s office, staring at the photographs on the walls. In them Mahoney was posing with various famous people, mostly politicians, and in the photos all the politicians were smiling – as if they actually liked Mahoney.

The man that DeMarco and Mahoney were waiting to meet was fifteen minutes late, which was almost unheard of. Mahoney kept people waiting all the time because he was rude and inconsiderate – and, yes, busy – but no one kept Mahoney waiting.

DeMarco was five-eleven and Mahoney was the same height, but he always seemed taller than that to DeMarco. Maybe that was because of Mahoney’s bulk – or maybe it was because of his personality. The speaker had a big hard gut, a broad back, and a wide butt. His hair was thick and white, his features large and well formed, and his blue eyes were red-veined and watery. Mahoney had the eyes of an alcoholic, which he was. And like DeMarco’s ex-wife, Mahoney was vain and self-centered and selfish; he was conniving and manipulative. But, unlike her, he was very, very bright.

As DeMarco sat there, his mind kept drifting back to the call from Marie. He had no idea what he should do. No, that wasn’t right; that wasn’t right at all. He knew
exactly
what he should do: absolutely nothing.

While DeMarco stewed about his ex, Mahoney sat in the big chair behind his big desk and made phone calls. He was currently talking to someone named Bob. At least that’s what he had called the man at the beginning of the conversation, but in the last five minutes, as the phone call had progressed,
Bob
became
Congressman
and finally
you greedy little asshole
, as in: ‘Listen to me, you greedy little asshole! You’ve got four projects in that bill worth more than sixty million, including a fuckin’ bridge to nowhere that’s gonna have your name on it. Now that’s
enough!
’

DeMarco realized that Mahoney was talking about a so-called transportation bill, a bill intended to resurface potholed highways and prop up crumbling bridges that was, in reality, a five-thousand-page pork package. Every member of the House was squeezing into the bill as many pet projects as he or she could, and any link to transportation, no matter how remote, was considered a fair addition. The most outrageous example that DeMarco had heard of was the proposed construction of a velodrome, a stadium for racing bicycles. This was included in the bill under the guise that erecting such a structure would give birth to legions of bicycle-peddling commuters and thus save the country’s highways from future wear and tear. At least that was the most outrageous thing he’d heard until Mahoney began his dialogue with Congressman Bob.

‘I’ve been trying for six weeks,’ Mahoney was saying, ‘to get this thing finished. It’s already twenty billion bigger than what we agreed on, and every fuckin’ time – my
language
? I don’t give a shit about my language, you sanctimonious twit! Now I’m
tired
of this. It’s bad enough I can’t get the other side to line up, but when the people in my own party start pullin’ this crap. … Yes, Bob, crap! Why should the taxpayers have to pay for a freeway exit that goes right to your brother-in-law’s goddamn furniture store? Tell me that.’

The speaker sat silent for a moment, his large face the color of a boiled beet, as he listened to Bob explain how easy access to a retail store in his home state would improve the flow of goods and services throughout America.

‘Okay, Bob,’ Mahoney said, ‘I give up. I’ll leave the exit thing in the bill, but then I’m gonna call up every newspaper in your state and tell ’em it’s in there. I’m gonna tell ’em, because no one with a human-sized brain’ll be able to spot that little gem in five thousand pages of text. So fine, Bob, you win. Now you better get ready to explain your victory to everybody who’s not related to you.’ With that, Mahoney slammed down the phone.

‘Of all the jackasses on Jenkins Hill,’ he muttered.

‘Jenkins Hill?’ DeMarco said.

‘That’s what Capitol Hill used to be called,’ Mahoney said, ‘back before they built this building and started stuffing it with idiots.’

Mahoney sat there fuming a moment longer and then looked at his watch. ‘Go see if he’s being held up at security,’ he said. ‘I’ll bet that’s what happened. If I hadn’t been preoccupied with Bob-goddam-Meechum I woulda thought of that sooner.’

As directed, DeMarco left the speaker’s office and traveled to the door that approved visitors, those with appointments, used to enter the Capitol. Normally it took only a couple of minutes to get past security if your name was on the list, but DeMarco suspected, times being what they were, that the U.S. Capitol Police were exercising more diligence than normal – especially with this particular visitor.

The man who was keeping Mahoney waiting was named Hassan Zarif. DeMarco didn’t know Hassan, but he figured it was a pretty safe bet that the Arabic-looking guy standing with his arms outstretched as a security guard patted him down was him. On the table next to Zarif was everything that had been in his pockets: wallet, keys, spare change, and a pen. Another guard was now taking the pen apart, a simple ballpoint, to see if there was a surface-to-air missile packed inside it. A briefcase was lying open on the table, emptied of its contents, and next to the briefcase were Hassan’s belt and tie and shoes.

Hassan Zarif was a short, slender, handsome man. His hair was black, his nose aquiline, his eyes an odd but attractive caramel color. Clearly embarrassed at the treatment he was receiving, he was restraining himself, saying nothing, but he looked as if he was about to explode.

‘Hey, guys, what’s going on here?’ DeMarco said to the security guards.

The man frisking Hassan looked over at DeMarco, then glanced down at the security badge pinned to the breast pocket of his suit, the badge confirming that DeMarco was permitted to be inside the building. DeMarco had worked in the Capitol for many years, but this particular guard didn’t recognize him and DeMarco didn’t recognize the guard.

‘What do you want, sir?’ the guard said.

DeMarco looked at the guard’s name tag. McGuire.

‘Mr McGuire, would you come here a minute so I can talk to you without everybody hearing?’

‘I’m in the middle of—’

‘McGuire, a lot of powerful people work in this building. You are not one of them. I’m just trying to save you some pain, m’man. C’mere.’

McGuire turned to the guard dissembling the pen and said, ‘Watch this guy,’ gesturing with his head toward Hassan, then he stepped over to DeMarco. ‘Yeah, so what is it?’ he said.

‘That guy you’re screwin’ with, McGuire, was invited here by John Mahoney. The speaker. In fact, he was supposed to be in Mahoney’s office fifteen minutes ago.’

‘I’m just following procee—’

‘McGuire, it feels like it’s about twenty degrees outside. Right now you’re working indoors, probably a pretty good place to be this time of year. How hard do you think it would be for Mahoney to have you assigned to a less comfortable post? Now, the speaker’s waiting to see that man and you’ve had plenty of time to confirm that he’s safe, so quit dickin’ with him, put his stuff back in his briefcase, and apologize for hassling him.’

McGuire’s face flushed red – not as red as Mahoney’s had been a few minutes ago but red enough. But he didn’t say all the profane things flashing through his Irish brain. He turned and said to Hassan, ‘Sir, you’re free to enter the building. And I – uh, I apologize for the inconvenience of our – ah, current security procedures.’

Hassan didn’t say anything. He put his belt back through the loops in his pants and shoved his belongings into his pockets. He put on his shoes and started to tie his tie, then just shook his head and stuffed the tie into a pocket in his suit jacket.

‘Mr Zarif,’ DeMarco said, ‘I’ll escort you to Mr Mahoney’s office.’

‘Thank you,’ Hassan said, but he didn’t look at DeMarco. He just stared straight ahead as they walked toward the staircase, bristling from the embarrassment of what had just happened but too dignified to complain.

As they stepped into the speaker’s office, Mahoney got up from his chair and came out from behind his desk. DeMarco thought he would shake Hassan’s hand but instead Mahoney pulled the smaller man close, crushing him in a hug.

While Mahoney was greeting Hassan, DeMarco explained what had happened at the security checkpoint.

‘Goddamn, Hassie, I’m sorry,’ Mahoney said. ‘I should have had someone down there to meet you.’ Then he glowered at DeMarco as if DeMarco should have thought of that.

Hassan smiled, but it was a bitter twist of his lips. ‘It wasn’t as bad as at the airport. I was expecting that they’d give me a hard time, so I left Boston early yesterday morning. I missed my first flight because they spent so long inspecting my luggage and searching me. I was actually
strip
-searched. That’s never happened before.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Mahoney said again. ‘Would you like a drink?’

Hassan looked away and his chin began to tremble, and for a moment DeMarco thought the man was going to cry, but then Hassan took in a breath and said, ‘Yes, Mr Mahoney, a drink would be good. Bourbon if you have it.’

Hassan Zarif, DeMarco concluded, was not a strict Muslim. Any more than Mahoney and DeMarco were strict Catholics, for that matter.

Mahoney poured drinks for himself and Hassan, Then, realizing that he hadn’t bothered to ask if DeMarco wanted one, he said, ‘Joe, what about you?’

‘No, I’m okay,’ DeMarco said. He knew that’s what Mahoney expected him to say. Plus – sheesh! – it was only ten in the morning.

‘How’s your father doing?’ Mahoney said.

‘Not well, sir. He’s in intensive care. It was his second heart attack. We’re not sure he’s going to make it.’

‘But they’re taking good care of him?’ Mahoney said.

‘Yes, the nurses at the hospital, they have souls. And at least, where he is, the press can’t bother him.’

Mahoney didn’t say anything for a minute. ‘So,’ he finally said. ‘What can I do for you? When you called—’

‘Excuse me, Mr Mahoney, but is this gentleman,’ Hassan said, looking over at DeMarco, ‘one of your assistants?’

DeMarco knew Hassan might have asked the question simply because he wanted to know who DeMarco was before he spoke. But DeMarco also suspected that the question may have had to do with the way he looked. DeMarco had dark hair that he combed straight back, a strong nose, and a big, square, dimpled chin. He was broad-chested and had thick shoulders and heavy, muscular arms. He was a good-looking man, but he looked tough and hard – he didn’t look like some congressman’s assistant.

Most congressional staffers were eager young kids just a few years out of college. Or, if not kids, they looked like crafty old negotiators, wheeler-dealers who spend all their time in dimly lit bars making the trade-offs that pass the laws. DeMarco didn’t look like someone from either of those groups. He looked instead like the guy a casino boss might assign to have a word with a card counter or a man the Teamsters might deploy to talk to a trucker who was behind on his dues. He looked, in other words, a lot like his father – and DeMarco’s father had been a hit man for the Italian Mafia.

In response to Hassan’s question, Mahoney made a motion with his head – a little bit of a shake, a little bit of a nod – a motion that could have meant anything, and said, ‘Sorta. When you called, I figured it might be good if Joe sat in on this meeting. He’s a guy who helps out with things around here.’

That was
sorta
clear as mud, DeMarco thought, and Hassan seemed to think so too.

‘I only ask because—’

‘Joe’s okay, Hassan. Now tell me why you’re here. Is it because the FBI’s hassling your family?’

‘No. I mean we are being hassled – the FBI’s questioned me and my sister and searched our houses – but I don’t need your help with that.’

‘So what is it, son?’ Mahoney said.

‘I want some answers!’ Hassan said, his voice rising. ‘This thing is killing my father. I want to know what really happened.’

‘Answers?’ Mahoney said. Then he added, in a surprisingly gentle voice, ‘Reza
was
flying the plane, son. There’s no doubt about that.’