The Payback. Mike Lawson

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СКАЧАТЬ you know what he did after he left the SEALs?’

      ‘Sort of. I don’t have a lot of detail but he was in Hong Kong for almost seven years. He got out of the navy in ’96, bummed around Europe for a year, then he took a job at a utility company outside of Toledo that operates a nuclear power plant there. But in ’98 he quit the job at the utility company – it was probably too much like being back on a sub – and goes to Hong Kong where he lands a job with an outfit that provides security for big shots and their businesses and their families over there. I don’t know if Carmody was a bodyguard or some other kind of security consultant, but being an ex-SEAL he could have been either. Then the company he worked for in Hong Kong relocated to Thailand in 2003. This was six years after Hong Kong was returned to the Chinese so I imagine by then private enterprise in Hong Kong was starting to feel the heat from the old-timers in Beijing. The problem is, we have no record of what Carmody did after the security company relocated, but he stayed in Hong Kong until he came up with the shipyard training thing last year.’

      ‘That’s quite a career change,’ Emma said, ‘from hired muscle in Hong Kong to training consultant in the States. I wonder why he didn’t relocate to Thailand with his old company.’

      ‘Beats me,’ Peterson said.

      Emma thanked Peterson and started to hang up, but before she did, the researcher said, ‘Emma, this guy Carmody is smart and if he’s gone bad, he’s dangerous. I’ve heard you’re kinda on your own out there. You be careful, ya hear?’

      Emma put down the phone and stared for a minute at the picture on the wall across from her bed. It was an oil painting of Mount Rainier rising above magenta-colored clouds, and it was hideous. She wondered if there was a company somewhere called Ugly Art, and if every motel in the country purchased from them.

      She thought for a moment, made another phone call, then called DeMarco’s room. There was no answer. Where the hell was he?

      

      ‘So tell me,’ Diane Carlucci said, ‘how’d you land a job with Congress?’

      DeMarco had asked a number of people for a nice place to take a lady to dinner and was directed to one in the little town of Winslow on Bainbridge Island. For a small-town restaurant it was pretty pricey, but DeMarco didn’t care. The view was good, the food was good, and Diane Carlucci was very comfortable to be with. There was no first-date awkwardness, no straining to find something to say – until now. DeMarco hesitated. ‘I guess you know about my old man?’

      Diane Carlucci nodded.

      ‘Well,’ DeMarco said, ‘he made it kind of hard to get a job after law school. Firms weren’t kicking down the door to hire the son of a guy who worked for a mobster and killed people for a living.’

      ‘I can imagine,’ Diane said. She hesitated and said, ‘You know I met your dad once. I liked him.’

      ‘Yeah, he was a likable guy,’ DeMarco said. ‘He was a good father, too. He just didn’t make the best career choice.’

      ‘So how’d you get a job with Congress?’ Diane asked again.

      ‘I have a godmother, a friend of my mom’s I call Aunt Connie. She worked in D.C. when she was young and she had some pull with somebody. She talked to him and got me the job.’

      What DeMarco had just said was the truth. It wasn’t the whole truth but it was the truth. ‘And you,’ DeMarco said, ‘how do you like—’

      ‘No, we’re not through with you yet,’ Diane said. ‘I heard you were married, that you married—’

      ‘Yeah, I did, and now I’m divorced.’

      ‘I knew that. I heard that she left you for—’

      ‘Yeah, my cousin.’

      ‘The one who works for—’

      ‘Right. Why haven’t you guys arrested him yet?’

      Diane Carlucci laughed. She had a great laugh.

      ‘So now can we talk about you?’ DeMarco said.

      

      DeMarco was the only customer in the motel bar.

      He’d enjoyed dinner with Diane and had been sorry the evening had ended so early – seven thirty – but Diane was the dedicated type. She had told DeMarco that she needed to get back to her motel, review her case notes, and prepare for tomorrow. She and her partner had found out that Whitfield, who all agreed was a rather contentious fellow, was engaged in a property dispute with a neighbor, a man who had anger-management problems, which meant he tended to beat the hell out of people when he got upset. Although Diane’s partner still thought the homeless guy looked pretty good for Whitfield’s murder, Diane wanted to verify the neighbor’s alibi, which was a girlfriend with a drug habit.

      DeMarco didn’t suggest that he accompany Diane back to her room for a nightcap. He wanted to, but he didn’t. He knew a nice Catholic girl from the old neighborhood wasn’t going to sleep with him on the first date. So now he sat, feeling horny and depressed, halfheartedly watching the Mariners get creamed by the Yankees. He glanced up at the television just as Jeter knocked the ball almost into the railroad yard behind Safeco Field and heard the bartender mutter, ‘Fuckin’ Yankees.’

      DeMarco realized at that moment that he was no longer alone, that he was in the company of a brother. He and the bartender – a man with a severely peeling, sunburned nose – belonged to the largest, unhappiest fraternity in America: the Benevolent Order of Jealous Yankee Bashers. For the next half hour they repeated the sad litany of the brotherhood: Steinbrenner bought the World Series every year; Joe Torre looked like a dour leprechaun and was just as lucky. And so on. Members of the Order could bitch about the Yankees for hours. The bartender had just begun to decry the immorality of the Yankees acquiring Alex Rodriguez from the Texas Rangers when he looked over DeMarco’s shoulder and muttered, ‘Oh, shit.’

      DeMarco followed the bartender’s line of sight and saw that he was looking at Emma. She had stopped at the entrance to the bar and was looking into her purse. She rummaged in her purse a moment – even Emma had the female tendency to overstuff her handbag – then turned and walked away as if she had forgotten something.

      ‘What’s the problem?’ DeMarco said.

      ‘That broad. She was in here last night and orders a martini to take back to her room. I had to make it three times before she was happy. Geez, what a ballbuster. Oh hell, here she comes.’

      Emma walked over to the bar, nodded curtly to the bartender, and said to DeMarco, ‘I should have known this was where you’d be. Let’s go get some dinner.’

      ‘I just ate,’ DeMarco said.

      ‘Then you can watch me eat. We need to talk. Settle up your bill and meet me at my car.’ With that she turned and walked away, completely confident that DeMarco would follow. Emma could be a very irritating person.

      ‘Sorry,’ the bartender said to DeMarco after Emma left, ‘didn’t know she was your friend.’

      ‘Nothing to apologize for,’ DeMarco said. ‘She is a ballbuster. The biggest, baddest one you’ll ever meet. How much do I owe you?’

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