“We’re not gonna sue her! I already told you: none of his relatives want the furniture. It’s a bunch of secondhand crap. And his landlady would have to pay about a hundred bucks a month to put it in storage.”
“She could be reimbursed from Paul’s estate,” the lawyer said. “The other thing is that if Paul made a will, he might not have left his possessions to his family. He could have left his estate to a charity or a close friend.”
This was hopeless.
Before he left Crenshaw’s office, the lawyer gave him a stack of paper that contained all the rules and forms-and charged him a hundred and twenty bucks.
DeMarco’s curses trailed behind him as he walked back to his car.
DeMarco stopped at a restaurant in Georgetown to get lunch-and a martini. It could be said that dealing with all the bullshit associated with Paul’s death was driving him to drink, but DeMarco didn’t need to be driven to drink. Like his boss, he drank too much as it was.
Which reminded him to check on Mahoney. This time, he called Mary Pat and asked how her husband was doing. Not good, she said, and started to cry. Mahoney was still in a coma, his vital signs were getting weaker, and the doctors were noncommittal. To all this, DeMarco responded with the usual useless platitudes people are reduced to in these situations: Don’t worry. He’ll be fine. He’s strong. He’s getting the best medical care in the country. I’ll pray for him.
And he would.
He sat there a few minutes, sipping his martini, thinking about the walking contradiction that was John Mahoney: corrupt yet intensely patriotic, self-serving and self-centered but incredibly loyal and generous to those he considered friends, a serial adulterer who was deeply in love with his wife. He hoped Mahoney had made a confession before he went into surgery; he wasn’t sure God knew about Mahoney’s good side. He finished his drink and his lunch and then called Hopper at the FBI. Agent Hopper did not sound delighted to hear from him.
“Did you happen to come across Paul’s will?” DeMarco asked.
“No, why would I?” Hopper said.
“Because you searched his house and you took the computers from his home and his office.”
Hopper didn’t say anything for a moment. “How do you know that? Are you bird-dogging my investigation, DeMarco?”
“I’m not bird-dogging anything. I went to Paul’s place because I gotta deal with the crap in his apartment, and his landlady told me you’d been there. And when I went to the place where he worked, his boss told me the same thing: that you searched his desk and took his computer. Anyway, I looked through the desk in his apartment and-”
“You were in his apartment?”
“Yeah. Like I was saying, I looked through his desk hoping to find his will, but I didn’t. I was thinking maybe it was on his computer, that maybe he made one of those online do-it-yourself wills. Or maybe his lawyer’s identified in the address book in his e-mail.”
“I didn’t find anything related to a will in his computer,” Hopper said. “Nor did I see anything about a lawyer.”
“Why did you take the computer?”
“Because we’re investigating his death and we’re looking for a drug connection.”
“From what I’ve been told about him, it’s pretty unlikely he was dealing drugs.”
“Is that right?” Hopper said. “Well, it may interest you to know that I found a bottle of Librium capsules in his apartment, and your cousin’s name wasn’t on the prescription label. It was only twenty pills, but-well, you know.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” DeMarco said, but he was thinking: Horseshit, you found any pills.
“And DeMarco, one other thing,” Hopper said. “Stay out of Russo’s house. It’s part of a crime scene.”
“A crime scene? I thought he was killed at the Iwo Jima Memorial.”
“Just stay out of his house,” Hopper repeated, and hung up.
DeMarco sat for a moment, spinning his empty martini glass in his hand, and reflected on his discussion with Hopper. The guy was lying to him; no doubt about that. There was no way he had found a stolen bottle of pills in Paul’s apartment. But why was he lying? Once again, he thought about the fact that General Breed had been Paul’s last patient and that maybe Hopper was lying because there were national security issues involved.
Then another thought occurred to him. When he searched Paul’s desk he’d been looking for file containing a will or a bill Paul had received from a lawyer. He hadn’t come across an address book in Paul’s desk, but then he hadn’t really been looking for one. DeMarco didn’t have a paper address book; he kept addresses on his computer at home and all the important phone numbers were in his cell phone. But maybe Paul was like his mother. His mom kept the addresses and phone numbers of her friends in a little black notebook, and she kept the notebook in a drawer in the kitchen near the phone.
He should take one last look in Paul’s place, try to find an address book stashed in away in a drawer, and see if the book contained the name of a lawyer. No way in hell was he going to go through the hassle of dealing with the state to settle Paul’s estate if he didn’t have to. Then he thought about Hopper’s warning-or maybe it had been a legal directive-for him to stay out of Paul’s place. And then he thought, Fuck Hopper. He wanted to get this bullshit with Paul’s estate settled and go play golf.
19
Charles Bradford watched through his office window as an Asian man wearing a stained gray fedora slowly pruned a rhododendron. He wondered what it would be like to have a job like that, a simple job, a job with no real responsibility, a job where other people worried about protecting the country.
“So all you know is that she worked for the Department of Defense,” Bradford said.
“Yes, sir,” Levy said. He paused and added, “I’m sorry I let you down, but she was a young woman. There was no reason to think-”
“Do you think she might have really worked at Fort Meade, John?”
“It’s possible. She had a badge to get on base, for the commissary like she said.”
Bradford didn’t say anything for a moment, as he mulled over what Levy had told him. “Fort Meade. Could someone have heard you that night, John?”
“Heard us? Do you mean could someone have intercepted our radio transmissions during the operation?”
“Yes.”
“That’s possible, of course, but it doesn’t matter. We were using encrypted com gear and we never mentioned any names.”
“Encrypted com gear,” Bradford repeated. “John, what’s the one organization in this country that might be able to listen in on an encrypted transmission?”
Levy was silent for a moment. “The NSA,” he said.
“Yes, the National Security Agency. And where are they headquartered, John?”
“Fort Meade.”
“The NSA helps design encrypted communications systems used by the military. And if they develop an encrypted system, you know damn good and well they know a way to break the encryption. They have to be able to do that in case the enemy gets their hands on our gear.”
Levy shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t buy it. The radios we used have a Type I encryption system with a 256-bit encryption key. It would take the NSA a million of hours of computer time to break the code, assuming they could ever break it.”
“Do you know that for a fact, John? Even I don’t know the latest advancements in NSA encryption technology. What I do know is that they’re always light-years ahead of the people using the radios.”
Levy nodded his head. He knew Bradford could be right.
Neither man said anything for a moment, then Bradford said, “I think I’m going to have someone poke around a bit over at the NSA.”
“Sir, that could be a mistake. Right now the only thing anyone knows is Witherspoon was driving a stolen ambulance and two soldiers from Fort Myer were reassigned to Afghanistan. And if the NSA had heard something, wouldn’t they have told somebody? Wouldn’t they have alerted someone here at the Pentagon, or maybe even the White House?”