Dead Man’s List. Mike Lawson
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Название: Dead Man’s List
Автор: Mike Lawson
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Триллеры
isbn: 9780007352494
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“Paul Morelli?” DeMarco said. “Do you mean Senator Paul Morelli?”
Senator Paul Morelli was, according to every political pundit on the planet, the man most likely to be the Democratic candidate for president in the next election.
“I do,” Neil said. “In 1992, Marshall Bachaud was the district attorney of the fair isle of Manhattan. In January of that year, he was in a car accident which kept him hospitalized for twenty-six weeks and required three surgeries to rebuild various parts of his anatomy. Over the protests of many, the governor of New York appointed a young assistant DA named Paul Morelli as the acting district attorney until such time as Bachaud could resume his duties. As acting DA, young Morelli became a visible public figure.
“In 1996,” Neil continued, “Morelli became the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City. His opponent was a popular fellow with a good record named Walter Frey. Frey was the New York State attorney general at the time, and four months prior to the election he was accused of throwing a major case involving a company in Albany. Emails between Frey and the company were discovered, the emails indicating that Frey had been providing helpful information to the defendant’s attorneys. Then, and although unrelated to the case, it was also discovered that Frey was having an affair with a young lady who worked for him. Frey eventually admitted to the affair but he claimed, and looked quite stupid doing so, that the young lady had been hired by someone to seduce him. And if you look at photos of Walter Frey, it is hard to imagine why the woman would have succumbed to his charms. Ironically, the affair damaged him more politically than the case-fixing accusations because Frey had always been such a big family values guy.”
“Was he ever convicted of a crime?” DeMarco asked.
“No,” Neil said. “The evidence was circumstantial at best, but it didn’t matter because his reputation was destroyed by the press. And Paul Morelli became mayor.”
Neil licked a fat finger and flipped to a new page in the file. “Now to Mr. Reams. In 2001, while still mayor, Paul Morelli decided to run for the Senate. Polls showed that he was the people’s choice but the Democratic old guard in New York wanted David Reams. Reams was well-connected, came from money, and had served in the House. The thinking was that Morelli was young and his time would come, and that Reams had more experience and connections in D.C.”
“Oh, I remember this,” Emma said.
“Yes,” Neil said. “One fine day, the police burst into a motel room on Staten Island and find Reams in bed with a sixteen-year-old boy. Reams claimed that he had no idea who the boy was or how he had ended up in the motel room. He said he must have been drugged and demanded that his blood be tested, which it was, and the results came back negative for narcotics. Reams was convicted because of the boy’s age and served ten months. And Paul Morelli was elected to the Senate.”
“What about Tyler and Davenport,” DeMarco said. “What happened to those guys?”
“Those guys are women,” Neil said.
According to Neil, J. Tyler was Janet Tyler. Tyler had worked briefly for Paul Morelli when he was mayor of New York, which Neil discovered by searching W-2 forms provided by the city to its employees in 1999. M. Davenport was Marcia Davenport, an interior decorator who had apparently helped the Morellis decorate their Georgetown home when Morelli moved to Washington to begin his first term in the Senate. Neil’s file on Davenport contained a copy of a check signed by Paul Morelli’s wife and a billing statement pilfered from Davenport’s home computer showing that she’d charged the Morellis $365 for her services.
But that was it. There were no news articles or police reports or any other public documentation on either woman to explain why they were on Terry Finley’s list.
Since Davenport lived in Washington, D.C., and Tyler lived in New York, DeMarco decided to begin with Davenport. She was thirty-six years old, had been married briefly, but was now divorced. She had no children and lived in a condo on Connecticut Avenue not too far from the National Zoo. Riggs National Bank held the mortgage on her condo, her credit rating was excellent, and according to her tax return, she made seventy-two thousand dollars last year.
The concept of privacy evaporated when people like Neil booted up their computers.
The woman who came to the door was quite attractive in DeMarco’s opinion. Blond hair; large, warm brown eyes; and a slight overbite that DeMarco thought was sexy as hell. She was small, no more than five foot four, but had a lush figure: relatively large breasts, a small waist, and a nicely rounded backside. She was wearing a white blouse and jeans, and she was barefoot—one of the advantages of working out of one’s own home. A pair of reading glasses was stuck on top of her head and she was holding a piece of cloth in one hand, some sort of fabric sample, DeMarco guessed.
“Ms. Davenport, my name’s Joe DeMarco. I work for Congress and I was wondering if I could speak to you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’m really busy right now. So if you’re conducting a poll or something…”
“I’m not a pollster. I need to talk to you about Senator Morelli.”
At the mention of Morelli’s name, Davenport inhaled sharply, her lips closed in a tight line, and the sexy overbite disappeared. DeMarco couldn’t immediately categorize the look on the woman’s face. Fear? Anxiety? Maybe anger. Whatever emotions she was feeling, fond memories of Paul Morelli were not included.
“What’s this about?” Davenport said. She was crushing the fabric sample, but might not have realized it.
“May I come inside?” DeMarco asked.
“No. And I want to know why you’re here.”
That was a hard question for DeMarco to answer. He didn’t want to tell her that he was there because her name had been found on a napkin in a dead man’s wallet.
“I just want to know about your experience working for Senator Morelli,” DeMarco said.
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you that. It’s a government matter relating to an investigation in progress.”
For a minute, DeMarco thought that Davenport was going to refuse to say anything but then she said, “I never worked for the senator. I worked for his wife, and I only consulted with her twice.” She hesitated a second, then added, “Things just didn’t work out.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means she didn’t СКАЧАТЬ