Mike Lawson: Dead Man’s List

“That’s the best you can do? I thought in your old job you decoded encrypted messages.”

“Not me,” Emma said. “The people who do that sort of thing have PhDs and use really big computers. I did other stuff.” This last statement was followed by an enigmatic smile. Emma had a really good enigmatic smile.

“Great,” DeMarco said. “So that’s it? You don’t have any bright ideas about what I should do next?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” she said.

“Emma,” DeMarco whined, “why can’t he just fax me the damn information? We’re dealing with names on a cocktail napkin, for Christ’s sake, not plans for a missile defense system.”

“Fax you! You must be joking,” Emma said. “Neil’s so paranoid he never puts anything sensitive into a computer connected to the net, he doesn’t even own a cell phone, and he never, ever sends information out on lines that can be tapped.”

It was for this reason that Emma and DeMarco, the day after their session at the shooting range, were now sitting in a room on the Washington side of the Potomac River within sight of the Pentagon. Neil was an associate of Emma’s from her days at the DIA and he called himself an “information broker”—which really meant that he hacked and bugged and spied, then sold whatever he acquired to the highest bidder. DeMarco had always found it disconcerting that a man with Neil’s skills should have an office so close to the Pentagon.

Neil sat behind a cluttered desk in a chair engineered for his girth. He was in his early fifties and growing bald on top, but he gathered his remaining gray-blond hair into a thin ponytail that hung down from the back of his head like the tail on a well-fed rodent. As usual, he was dressed in a loose-fitting Hawaiian shirt, baggy shorts, and sandals. DeMarco had no idea what Neil wore when the temperature dropped, but as he rarely left his office, the issue was academic.

“Emma, you look lovely as always,” Neil said.

“Thank you,” Emma said. “And you look as if you’ve lost some weight.”

DeMarco looked over at Emma to see if she was serious. Neil was the size of the Chrysler Building; if he lost a hundred pounds it wouldn’t be apparent.

Neil, however, was pleased by the compliment. He beamed a smile at Emma and said, “Thank you for noticing.”

DeMarco cleared his throat.

“Yes, Joe,” Emma said, “we’ll get to it in a minute. You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to develop a few social skills, such as the ability to make small talk for more than sixty seconds.”

“It’s all right, Emma,” Neil said. “I need to get going. Cindy and I are going dancing tonight.”

Cindy was Neil’s wife—and the fact that Neil had a wife and DeMarco did not was proof of God’s dark sense of humor. But Neil dancing ? The image that came to mind was the hippo in Fantasia, not Travolta in Pulp Fiction.

“Well, good for you,” Emma said. “Maybe if Joe took his girlfriends dancing he might be able to keep one.”

Neil smirked at Emma’s comment then pulled an unlabeled manila file folder out of a stack of identical folders sitting on one corner of his desk. DeMarco didn’t know how he knew which folder to select, but knowing how Neil liked to show off, he wouldn’t have been surprised if the files were marked like a crooked deck of cards.

“To begin,” Neil said. “We have five names, five apparent dates, and a partial phone number. The phone number I’m still working on. I’ve checked Finley’s home and cell phone records but he didn’t call anyone with a number matching the seven numbers on the napkin. He may have called the number from a public phone, in which case I can’t tell who he called. So, since there are three missing digits from the phone number, and therefore a thousand possible phone number combinations, what I’m doing now is cross-checking those combinations against existing phone numbers to see if I can find anyone connected with what else I’ve learned. Which brings me to the names on the list. The obvious thing to do was to see if there was any common factor linking them. And there was.” He paused, then said: “The common factor is Paul Morelli.”

“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.