Читать книгу Dead Man’s List - Mike Lawson - Страница 15

DeMarco looked in his rearview mirror and winced. The asshole that had been tailgating him for the last six blocks had just run a red light and had been broadsided by a cab. Served the dumb shit right. Five minutes later, DeMarco turned off Massachusetts and onto Pilgrim Road, driving into the shadow created by the National Cathedral’s towering walls.

When he’d spoken to Lydia Morelli the previous night she’d said, “Let’s meet at the cathedral, Mr. DeMarco. It’s seems an apt place for a confession.” He hadn’t known what she’d meant by that statement, but when he’d asked which cathedral, she said, “Why, the National Cathedral, of course. Do you know another here?” DeMarco did—but it hadn’t seemed like the right time to dazzle her with his knowledge of all the churches he didn’t attend.

The National Cathedral was the sixth or seventh largest church in the world, and like the great medieval cathedrals of Europe, it had taken almost a hundred years to complete, its construction interrupted not by siege, plague, or famine, but by more mundane reasons like lack of funds and squabbling labor. But after a century of toil it stood magnificent, a home God must have been proud to show his friends.

Lydia had told him to meet her in the Bishop’s Garden on the south side of the cathedral. DeMarco parked his car and hurried to the garden. He was ten minutes late but Lydia wasn’t there. He cursed himself for his tardiness and wondered if she’d left already, but a more likely explanation was that she’d changed her mind and decided not to meet him at all. He took a seat on a stone bench, checked around one more time for Lydia, then looked upward.

The National Cathedral has three huge stained glass windows, called rose windows, each sixty feet in diameter and made from thousands of pieces of glass. From outside the church, they appear as large dull circles in the white stone walls—shards of dark glass set into ornate stone frames, no pattern evident, no hint of radiance or beauty given. Inside the cathedral, it was completely different. From the inside, the windows were marvels of form and color, as intricate as oil paintings. DeMarco didn’t know why you couldn’t see the pattern in the windows from outside the church. He suspected it had to do with the physics of light but maybe divinity played a hand in this phenomenon as well: you had to enter God’s house to enjoy its wonders.

Fifteen minutes later he saw Lydia Morelli walking toward him. She was wearing a simple blue blouse, gray slacks, and low-heeled shoes. From a distance, she looked slim and elegant. Up close she looked weary and malnourished, and DeMarco wondered if she might be ill.

She took a seat next to him on the bench, breathing as if the short walk from the parking lot to the garden had winded her, and when she exhaled he could smell liquor on her breath. It was only nine-thirty a.m. It seemed that Lydia was indeed ill; her illness was alcoholism. DeMarco could understand a bit better now why her husband had seemed annoyed about her drinking.

Lydia closed her eyes until her breathing returned to normal then opened them and looked around, apparently checking to make sure no one was nearby. Impatient, DeMarco said, “Why did you want to see me, Mrs. Morelli?”

Lydia stopped scanning the area and looked directly into his eyes and said, “Because your life’s in danger.”

Whoa! If you want to get someone’s attention, that’s a good way to start a conversation.

“What are you talking about?” DeMarco said.

“I heard what you told Paul and the toady.”

“The toady?”

“Sorry. My pet name for Abe. At any rate, I heard what you told them. I eavesdropped. After I left Paul’s office, I stood near the door and listened.” When she said this she smiled somewhat smugly, as if she was proud to have put one over on her famous husband.

“Terry Finley didn’t die in a boating accident,” Lydia said. “He was killed because he was investigating Paul.”

“Mrs. Morelli, you need to tell me what you’re talking about.”

“What do you think of my husband?” she said.

“What do I think?” DeMarco said, confused by the question. “I guess I think he’s a brilliant politician. Everyone says he’s going to be the next president.”

Lydia nodded as if agreeing with DeMarco, then said, “He’s a monster. He belongs in a cage, not the White House.”

DeMarco was almost too stunned to react. “Mrs. Morelli,” he said, “I’m not sure where—”

“I’m the one who contacted Terry,” Lydia said. “I’m the one who asked him to dig into Paul’s past.”

Jesus Christ.

“I heard Paul and the toady talking about him one day,” Lydia said. “They were laughing, saying how he was this stubborn little journalist who never got it quite right.”

Now that bothered DeMarco. Paul Morelli had said that he didn’t know Terry Finley.

“But I asked around,” Lydia said, “and I figured that Terry was exactly who I needed. I needed someone willing to do anything to make a name for himself, yet it had to be someone connected with a credible paper like the Post or the Times. I decided it was time for me to finally do something, and Terry was perfect.”

DeMarco thought she may have selected Terry Finley for another reason: if she’d gone to one of the big-name reporters, they might have had more sense than to listen to her. But he still didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.

“I’m not following this, Mrs. Morelli,” DeMarco said. “What exactly did you want Terry to do?”

“I wanted him to destroy my husband.”

DeMarco rocked backward. “Why would you—”

“I told Terry that someone had been helping Paul his whole career. A very powerful man.”

“What man?” DeMarco said. Every time she opened her mouth he became more confused.

Lydia ignored the question. “What happened to those three men, those men on that list you found, was that they were set up. The man who was caught in bed with the teenage boy was drugged, just like he said. And the man who had the car accident…well, it wasn’t an accident. Someone ran him off the road or tampered with his car.”

“How do you know this?” DeMarco said.

“Because I just do. I don’t have any evidence, something you could present in court, but I know. I know because I’ve heard Paul and Abe plan the downfall of other men who have gotten in Paul’s way. People have been bribed and blackmailed and murdered to—”

“Murdered?” DeMarco said. He wondered if this woman might actually be mentally ill, some sort of schizophrenic with conspiracy delusions.

“Yes. Paul’s never killed anyone himself, of course. Other people do the dirty work but he’s the one who benefits.”

Lydia started to say something else but DeMarco interrupted her. “Who do you think he had murdered, Mrs. Morelli?”

“Besides Terry, a man named Benjamin Dahl. Paul—this was when he was mayor—was trying to build a community center in the Bronx and Dahl had a piece of land that he needed for the project but Dahl refused to sell. I heard Paul on the phone one night talking about Dahl. I heard him say: ‘This has gone on long enough. We need to do something.’ Two days later Dahl had an accident in his house. He fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck.”

“That’s it?” DeMarco said. “You think your husband had this man murdered because he said ‘we need to do something’?”

“Yes.”

“Well, maybe he was telling somebody to find a different piece of land, or to make Dahl a better offer or, or, to take legal action against him,” DeMarco said.

“He wasn’t,” Lydia Morelli said.

DeMarco started to swear, then stopped himself. Swearing wouldn’t help. “So,” he said, as calmly as he could, “you wanted Terry Finley to find proof that your husband had committed crimes to advance his career.”

“Yes.”

“And you were feeding him information to help him.”

“Not information. I didn’t really have any. All I was really doing was encouraging him, pressing him not to give up, to dig deeper. And he found something. I don’t know what, but the last time I talked to him he was excited. He…”

According to Dick Finley and Reggie Harmon, Terry was always excited.

“…he said he’d found someone in New Jersey who could break things wide open. But he didn’t tell me who the person was or what he knew. Terry was…I don’t know, overly dramatic. Unnecessarily secretive. And two days later he was killed.”

When Lydia made the last statement, she’d leaned in toward DeMarco, putting her face closer to his, and once again he could smell the booze on her breath.

DeMarco was thinking that he should just leave. He was talking to an alcoholic who obviously hated her husband—a description that probably fit more than a few women whose spouses worked on Capitol Hill—and it was a combination that made him doubtful of everything she was saying.

“What about the two women on Terry’s list, Marcia Davenport and Janet Tyler?” DeMarco asked.

“Paul raped them.” Lydia’s voice was completely flat when she said this, just a simple, unemotional statement of fact: Paul raped them.

Oh, this just keeps getting better and better, DeMarco thought. “And how do you know this?” he said, making no attempt to hide his skepticism.

As Lydia told the story, the thin fingers of her left hand tugged unconsciously at a tendril of hair above her ear. DeMarco found it ironic that while she spoke of her husband sexually assaulting women the sunlight was glittering off the diamonds in her wedding ring.

Lydia said that the night it happened Marcia Davenport had come to the Morellis’ house in Georgetown. She was there to take photos of the interior and to spend some time looking around to get ideas for decorating the place. Lydia said that after Davenport arrived, she left to meet a friend for drinks. The senator was home at the time, in his den. When Lydia returned home two hours later, she found Davenport sitting on the floor in Paul Morelli’s den, backed into a corner. She was crying, her clothes were disheveled, and Paul Morelli was on the phone with Abe Burrows.

“But how do you know he raped her?” DeMarco said.

“She told me he did,” Lydia said.

“She said your husband raped her? She used the word ‘rape’?”

“No. She said, ‘Help. He attacked me.’ What else could she have meant?”

“Attacked” didn’t necessarily mean rape, but DeMarco didn’t say that. Instead he said, “Then what happened?”

“When Paul saw me he screamed at me to go up to my room and stay there. When I didn’t move right away, he picked up a thing on his desk, a paperweight or something, and threw it at me. It hit the wall near my head. I don’t know if he was trying to hit me or just scare me, but he was acting insane. And he was drunk.”

DeMarco found it impossible to imagine Paul Morelli drunk and throwing things at his wife. It also occurred to him that Lydia Morelli had probably been drunk herself since she’d just returned from having drinks with a friend.

“Then what happened?” DeMarco asked.

“A few minutes later, Abe showed up at the house and he and Paul spent the next two hours in Paul’s den with the Davenport woman. Then she left and I never saw her again. And Paul would never tell me what happened.”

“And Davenport never reported the, uh, attack?”

“No. Paul must have talked her out of it. Or he paid her not to tell. Or he scared her. I don’t know what he did, but he did something.”

“And you didn’t call the police?”

“No. He’s my husband.”

DeMarco didn’t know how to respond to that.

“And this other woman,” he said. “Janet Tyler. How do you know he did something to her?”

A look of annoyance passed over Lydia’s face, as if answering DeMarco’s questions was irritating her. “This was when we were still in New York. He came home one night, all agitated. Paul’s never agitated, and I could tell he’d been drinking. He’d just walked through the door, he hadn’t even taken off his coat, when Abe showed up. I heard Abe say, ‘Tyler’s not going to be a problem,’ and when Paul asked why, Abe said ‘because of her fiancé.’ Then they realized I was there and they went outside.”

“That’s it?” DeMarco said. “That’s why you think she was assaulted?”

“No, there was something else Paul or Abe said, but I can’t remember the exact words. It was a long time ago.”

No shit. According to the dates on the napkin, it had been nine years ago. “But Tyler never reported being raped either, did she?” DeMarco said.

“No, but I know that’s what happened,” Lydia said. “I mean, I didn’t at the time but after what happened to Marcia Davenport later and…well, then I put it together.”

Before DeMarco could say anything else, she said, “Go talk to those women. That’s what Terry did. And find out what Terry was doing in New Jersey. You need to get evidence against Paul. You need to get him!” She almost shrieked the words “get him” and as she did, she reached out and dug her fingernails into DeMarco’s forearm.

Christ, she was nuts, DeMarco was thinking, and at that moment he heard a noise behind him and he turned. Thank God. It was a priest, not a reporter. The priest was walking down the garden path, reading from a prayer-book as he walked, moving his lips as he read. He glanced at Lydia and could see the anguish on her face, then he turned his gaze toward DeMarco, his expression not accusing, just asking if they needed his help. DeMarco shook his head no. Lydia didn’t need a priest; she needed a psychiatrist.

“Mrs. Morelli…,” DeMarco said, and then he stopped. He didn’t know what to say.

“I know,” Lydia said. “You can’t believe it. You can’t believe that the great Paul Morelli could have done the things I’ve said. Well, I’m going to tell you something about my husband, something that only Abe and I know.”

“And what’s that?” DeMarco said, having no idea what this woman might say next.

“Most of the time Paul is the most unemotional, calculating bastard you’ll ever meet. Like why do you think he married me, a woman five years his senior and with a child to boot?”

“I don’t kn—”

“He married me because of my father, because he thought my father could advance his career.”

All DeMarco could remember reading about Lydia’s father was that he’d been a judge, but he didn’t know anything else about the man.

“Paul analyzes everything,” Lydia was saying. “He never loses his temper. He never allows his opponents to rush him into doing anything prematurely, before he’s had a chance to think things through. And he is, as you said, brilliant. Except when he drinks. Paul can’t handle liquor. At all. Even small amounts. And he knows it and he hardly ever drinks, and whenever he does, at a party or a fund raiser, that little bastard, Abe, watches him like a hawk. But sometimes, for whatever reason, Paul gets drunk. Maybe it’s the stress of the job. Or maybe the demons inside his head are screaming at him. I don’t know. I don’t know what triggers it. But when he drinks, and he’s almost always alone when he does…well, then the genie comes out of the bottle and all Paul’s sick urges coming spewing out.”

This conversation was surreal. Here was this morning drinker talking about her husband’s drinking problem. Meeting with her had been a huge mistake.

“The night he attacked Marcia Davenport,” Lydia said, “Paul was in his den drinking and Davenport made the mistake of going in there.”

“He drinks then he assaults women,” DeMarco said. He was being sarcastic but Lydia Morelli didn’t notice.

“Yes,” she said. “And it’s always the same kind of woman.”

“What do you mean?”

“Go see Janet Tyler,” Lydia said. “Talk to her. Follow up on Terry Finley’s investigation.”

DeMarco was completely frustrated. “Mrs. Morelli, why are you telling me all this?” he said. “I’m not a cop or a reporter. I’m just a lawyer. So even if what you’re saying is true”—he almost added and that’s one big goddamn if—“you’re talking to the wrong guy.”

“I told you why I’m telling you. I’m telling you because your life’s in danger and I’m trying to keep you from getting killed like Terry. But I’m also telling you because you’re an investigator. I heard Paul say that when I met you.”

“I am, but…” DeMarco shook his head. “Look, you have to understand something: I don’t have the clout or the authority to investigate your husband.”

And he didn’t. To investigate someone like Paul Morelli, special prosecutors were assigned: smart, ruthless, independent bastards with dozens of people on their staffs. But Lydia Morelli didn’t care.

“You have an obligation,” she said. “You have a job to do and you need to do it.”

She rose from the bench and said, “I have to go. I have…I have an appointment.”

With a bottle was DeMarco’s immediate thought.

“And you have to do your job,” she said again, and then she turned to go.

“Wait a minute,” DeMarco said. “I have to know something.”

“What?” she said, now impatient to leave.

“According to the dates on that napkin, Davenport was, uh, attacked in 2002, Tyler in ‘99. Why are you doing this now?”

Lydia waved the question away, as if she were shooing flies. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “All you need to know is that I’m telling the truth. Now I have to go. Oh, and one other thing—if you tell anyone we had this discussion, I’ll deny it.”

With that pronouncement she walked away. She moved slowly, like an old woman, her back bent, her steps unsteady and weary, as if the knowledge she carried inside her head was weighing her down.

What the hell had he gotten himself into?