“We’ll give him something that’ll make him suspicious of Hopper. I mean, he’s already suspicious; you can tell by the sound of his voice that he doesn’t believe Russo was dealing drugs. So we’ll give him something else. We’ll tell him no autopsy was performed on his cousin and Hopper lied about Russo being killed with a handgun. Or maybe we tell DeMarco the night Russo died he was meeting with a reporter from the Post, and the reporter’s disappeared.”
“How would you leak all this to DeMarco?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll figure something out. But the idea is we give him something that’ll make him call Hopper again and make Hopper meet with whoever’s controlling him.”
“That could be rather dangerous for Mr. DeMarco, don’t you think?” Dillon said.
Claire stopped pacing and looked at Dillon. The expression on her face said and your point is?
“We actually don’t have to use DeMarco directly,” she said. “We’ve recorded his voice and I can have a guy imitate him. Then Hopper will run to his boss. Or maybe Hopper’s boss will send people to watch DeMarco…”
“And maybe kill him,” Dillon tossed in.
“… but we’ll be there covering DeMarco, and we’ll follow these people right down the rabbit hole.”
“No, Claire. I don’t want this DeMarco person involved, and I definitely don’t want him killed. Let’s leave him out of this, for the time being.”
Claire opened her mouth to debate this directive but, before she could, Dillon asked, “Tell me what else you’ve learned.”
Claire stared at Dillon for a moment, making no attempt to hide her annoyance. She was probably thinking how things would be different if she had his job. “We checked traffic cameras,” she said. “There wasn’t one right near the Iwo Jima Memorial but there was one half a mile away. The camera caught Hansen’s car going through the intersection half an hour after Russo’s body was discovered.”
“What about before Russo was killed? Did any of the cameras show Hansen going toward the memorial?”
“No. We looked at cameras on the most likely routes from Hansen’s apartment to the memorial, but none of them picked him up. He’s a local boy, so maybe he knew some back-road way to get there. Or maybe he didn’t drive from his apartment.”
“And I take it you couldn’t see who was driving the car.”
“No. Just the license plate. I don’t know why they don’t set up those fucking cameras so you can really see what’s going on.”
“They’re designed to catch people running stoplights, Claire, not to spy on the citizenry.”
“Well, that’s pretty damn shortsighted, if you ask me.”
“So you don’t really know who was in the car, Hansen or the people who might have killed him.”
“No, but you have one hell of a coincidence. Hansen goes missing the same day as the hit, and half an hour after the hit his car is spotted near the memorial. That’s good enough for me. They popped Russo and Hansen, and whoever was in charge took Hansen’s body. Then, while all the cops were looking at Russo’s corpse, one of the guys on the hit team comes back and picks up Hansen’s car.”
“And did what with it?”
“I don’t know,” she said, exasperated with Dillon’s mania for detail. “They took it to a wrecking yard and squeezed it into a little metal cube. Or they took it to a chop shop and had it cut up into a hundred pieces. It’s gone, just like Hansen, and neither will be found again. Hansen’ll be like that old-time reporter you like so much.”
“Do you mean Ambrose Bierce?”
“Yeah, the guy who walked into Mexico and disappeared. And that’s what they’ll say about Hansen twenty years from now: he was on to something big and he vanished.”
Dillon liked to quote Ambrose Bierce, one his favorites being: An idiot: a member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence on human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
“I also had an agent search Hansen’s apartment,” Claire said, “but she didn’t find anything helpful. She said the place might have been searched before she got there, but Hansen was such a slob it was hard to be sure.”
“I know Hansen’s laptop went missing with him,” Dillon said, “but could he have e-mailed something from it?”
“No. Hansen used his laptop like a typewriter and when it was time to file a story he’d copy it to a disc and take the disc to work. He never e-mailed anything related to his stories. Maybe he was afraid to.”
“So another dead end,” Dillon said.
“Yes. Which is why I need DeMarco for a Judas goat. Please, Dillon. Let me tether his ass to a stake and see who comes to eat him.”
“No, Claire,” Dillon said. “Find another way.”
21
DeMarco knocked again on Betty’s door, and she frowned when she saw who was standing on her porch. He wondered if she’d forgotten who he was.
“Hi, Betty. Joe DeMarco, Paul’s cousin? Remember?”
“Of course I remember. Why do people your age always assume someone my age can’t remember anything?”
Sheesh. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t implying-”
“Oh, never mind. What do you want?”
“Well, I was wondering if you’d mind letting me into Paul’s apartment again. I still can’t find his will.”
And then he told Betty what the lawyer had said, how she might be forced to store all of Paul’s things until Paul’s estate was settled by the state, which could take until the next ice age. He could tell Betty wasn’t too happy to hear that-and she gave him the key.
There was no Rolodex or address book in Paul’s apartment.
This whole thing was really beginning to piss him off. He’d just blown a hundred and twenty bucks on a lawyer who’d been no help at all, and now he was wasting more time on a guy he barely knew. And the worst thing was, it was a gorgeous day outside, a perfect day for golf, and he was inside a stuffy apartment.
The money he’d paid the lawyer made him think he should go through Paul’s bills again. If a lawyer had prepared a will for him, there would definitely be a bill, and since he couldn’t find a file labeled LAWYER, he spent forty minutes looking at old Visa bills and canceled checks. No joy.
Then another thought occurred to him: he kept his really important papers in a safe deposit box at his bank, things like his own will and the deed for his house. But he also had a little fireproof box down in his basement where he put semi-important stuff like his passport, his insurance policies, and his disaster cash. Maybe Paul had a box like that, too.
He rooted around in Paul’s closets-one in his bedroom, one in his office, and one by the front door. It was a small house and there was no basement. All he found was the usual crap people dump on the top shelves of their closets, things they never use but are too lazy to throw out. He didn’t find a strongbox, but he did find a cardboard box filled with photographs.
He flipped through the box and saw a picture of his mom, Paul’s mom, and Paul’s Aunt Lena-the person who, if she wasn’t eighty-seven years old, should be dealing with this. Then there were the usual snapshots people take and never look at again: pictures of people sitting at barbecue tables, in front of Christmas trees, posed like they were guests at a wedding or some other celebration. There was one guy who was with Paul in a lot of the pictures, and there were several pictures of the guy standing alone. Hmm, he thought.
He knocked on Betty’s door again-he could tell Betty was becoming a wee bit tired of him-and showed her the picture of the man he’d found so frequently in Paul’s photo collection. “Do you know who this is?” he asked.
“Oh, that’s Anthony,” she said. “He and Paul dated for about two years, but they broke up over a year ago. Paul took it very hard. I felt so sorry for him.”
“Huh,” DeMarco said. “Do you know Anthony’s last name?”
“McGuire. He lives in Fairfax.”
An ex-lover. Maybe he’d know if Paul had a will.
But then he looked up at the sky-that beautiful, cloudless blue sky-and he thought, Life is too short. Look at Mahoney. One day he’s running around, on top of the world, and the next day, with no warning at all, he’s on his back, in a coma, half a step from death’s door. Yeah, life is too short and to hell with Paul, his furniture, and his will. He was gonna spend the afternoon playing golf. He’d go see this McGuire guy tomorrow.