He was surprised Betty didn’t ask to see proof that he was related to Paul but she didn’t. Maybe she was trusting and naive-or maybe she was just happy to have someone take care of Paul’s furniture so she could lease out his side of the duplex.
“I just can’t believe he’s dead,” Betty said. “He was such a wonderful young man. If I ever needed anything, he was always there for me. When that FBI agent told me he’d been killed, my heart almost stopped.”
“The FBI called you?” DeMarco asked, wondering why they’d called his landlord and not him.
“No, an agent came here and told me.”
“Do you remember the name of the agent?”
“Oh, what was his name? Whoever he was, he was a very handsome man but very serious.”
“Was his name Hopper?”
“Yes, that was it. He said he had to look inside Paul’s apartment. For clues, I guess.”
“When did he come here?”
“Yesterday morning, about six. Fortunately, I’m an early riser. I don’t know what he did, but he spent a couple hours inside Paul’s apartment.”
It sounded to DeMarco like the FBI was really moving on Paul’s case. They perform an autopsy on him faster than you can dice an onion and then Hopper rushes right from the murder site to Paul’s apartment to search it. DeMarco didn’t know how the FBI normally did things, but he couldn’t help but think of what Glazer had said. If Paul had been somebody famous he could understand the FBI making his case a high priority, but he couldn’t imagine what made Paul so important.
DeMarco concluded his cousin wasn’t into material possessions in a major way. There was no big-screen TV or fancy audio system inside his apartment, and his furniture was inexpensive and mismatched, like stuff you’d buy at yard sales or from secondhand stores. He noticed a crucifix over the bed and one of those Sacred Heart pictures of Jesus in the living room.
The second bedroom in the apartment had served as an office, so DeMarco took a seat behind Paul’s small desk and spent some time looking through the file folders in the desk. He didn’t find what he was hoping to find: a will. He did find a bunch of pay slips from a hospice organization. A hospice? He’d always assumed that Paul worked at a regular hospital, and again he felt guilty that he hadn’t made a better effort to get to know the guy. He also found statements from a bank where Paul had his savings and checking accounts. As of two weeks ago, Paul had almost four hundred in checking and thirty-eight hundred in savings. If he’d been a drug dealer, it didn’t appear that he was a very successful one.
He sat back, trying to decide what to do next, when he noticed there was a printer and a monitor for a computer on the desk, but no computer. He wondered if Hopper had taken Paul’s computer or if the computer was being repaired.
His next thought was that the money in Paul’s bank account should go to somebody-probably his Aunt Lena-but how in the hell was he supposed to get access to the money if he couldn’t find a will? And if Paul did have a will, it might be in a safety deposit box at his bank, but how was he supposed to get into that? This whole thing was becoming a gigantic pain in the ass.
He decided he was probably going to have to talk to an estate lawyer to figure out what the procedure was if he couldn’t find a will-and it was gonna really piss him off if he had to spend his own money on the lawyer. As for Paul’s possessions, he’d do like his mother said and call Goodwill and see if they could pick up the clothes and furniture. He’d take Paul’s files over to his place and shred the paper, but he wasn’t going to do that right now.
What he wanted to do next was go to the place where Paul had worked. Maybe his boss or one of his coworkers would know if he had a lawyer and where his will might be. Or maybe he kept his will at work. Yeah, right, like he would ever get that lucky.
He knocked on Betty’s door again and told her he was leaving and it was going to take him a few days to figure out what to do with Paul’s things. She said that was all right, and started to go on again about what a fine young man Paul had been and how much she was going to miss him. Then she said, “Even if he was gay, if I had a son, I would have wanted him to be just like Paul, to be as decent as he was, I mean.”
“He was gay?” DeMarco said.
“Yes. Didn’t you know?”
“Uh, no. We weren’t close. Was he dating someone?” DeMarco was thinking that a lover might know about Paul’s will.
“No, not at the moment,” Betty said. “At least I don’t think so.”
“How ’bout close friends?”
“As far as I know, all his close friends were people at his church. He spent most of his free time there.”
“Which church is that?” DeMarco asked.
8
“Good morning, gentlemen,” the president said, as he took his seat at the head of the conference table.
Charles Bradford didn’t like the president-but then, he couldn’t remember the last president he had liked. He didn’t agree with the man’s social programs, disagreed completely with his handling of the recent financial crisis, and thought he was overly ambitious, as if he were trying to create a legacy in the first year of his first term. He was a bright guy, though-that much he had to admit-and no president since Kennedy could give a speech like he could. But overall, Bradford had the same disdain for him that he had for every other so-called commander in chief who had never worn a uniform.
There was one good thing about the president, however: on any matter even remotely related to national defense, he relied heavily on the opinion of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Bradford suspected the president trusted him on military matters not only because of his experience and reputation but also because of his appearance: Charles Bradford looked the way army generals were supposed to look. He was six foot four and his stomach was washboard-flat because he exercised religiously. His skin was tanned and leathery; he wore his gray hair cut close to his skull; and he had a large bony nose that gave him the profile of a bird of prey. The left half of his chest was covered with campaign ribbons and medals, and he had two Purple Hearts and a Silver Star. The Silver Star had been awarded when he was a second lieutenant in Vietnam; he’d always believed he should have received the Medal of Honor but never said so publicly.
Also present in the White House Situation Room were Gregory Hamilton, the Secretary of Defense; Martin Cohen, the president’s national security advisor; Cohen’s deputy, an idiot named Clark Palmer; CIA Director Samuel Mentor; NSA Director Admiral Fenton Wilcox; and one of Wilcox’s top men, a man named Dillon Crane. Bradford had met Crane before. He was a rich smart-ass. Bradford suspected that if times ever got tough, Crane would run back to the silver-spoon mansion where he’d been raised.
Not present in the room, but appearing on a video screen, was the American general who had overall command in Afghanistan, and the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the status of the war, which wasn’t going well at all. Bradford believed the reason the war was taking so long and costing so many American lives was because the president was too concerned about public opinion polls and placating our so-called ally, the Pakistanis. If Bradford had been given a free hand, he would have sent in thirty thousand more troops, pushed directly into Pakistan, dropped bunker busters on every cave in the region, and disarmed the entire population.
Forty minutes later-and after no decisions of any magnitude had been made-the president was ready to adjourn the meeting. But at that point, Clark Palmer, the deputy national security advisor, said, “Mr. President, there’s one other issue.”
The president looked at his watch. “What is it?”
“It’s something the NSA brought to my attention a couple of days ago. Admiral Wilcox, if you wouldn’t mind,” Clark said, nodding to the NSA director.
Admiral Wilcox was a short, slim, perpetually frowning man with iron-gray hair. He quickly explained that the NSA had intercepted a phone call between an opium warlord in Afghanistan named Sayed Wafa and one of his underlings discussing the elimination of a provincial governor whose province bordered Pakistan.