Dead on Arrival

31

DeMarco needed Emma and he needed Fat Neil. He needed Emma because there was something he wanted her to do that he couldn’t. He needed Fat Neil because he wanted to pry into the finances of a United States senator.

Neil was an old friend of Emma’s, and DeMarco had used his services in the past. He called himself an ‘information broker,’ this bland euphemism meaning that if a client was willing to pay his outrageous fees and wanted information on a certain party or subject, Neil would tap into a vast network of contacts to obtain said information. And if he couldn’t obtain the information legally, he would hack into computer networks or place bugs in boardrooms and bedrooms or do anything else necessary to satisfy a paying customer’s desires. Neil worked for both the private sector and the U.S. government, and it was most likely because of his government work that he wasn’t currently in jail. DeMarco assumed that he had worked for Emma on occasion when she was with the DIA, though neither she nor Neil had ever confirmed this.

Neil was a short, wide man with a big head and a bigger ego. His once-blond hair was thinning on top, but what remained he tied into a thin, shaggy ponytail that reached down past his collar. Neil had married not long ago, and DeMarco was surprised that Neil’s new wife hadn’t made him clip off the unsightly extension. Wives can’t resist the urge to renovate their spouses, and Neil was ripe for major improvements. She was managing to get him to dress a little better, though, DeMarco noted. On all the other occasions when he had seen Neil, he had been wearing shorts, beat-up sandals, and a Hawaiian shirt. He must have owned fifty Hawaiian shirts. Today he was wearing a V-neck sweater, a nice pair of gray slacks, and cordovan loafers.

The meeting was being held in Neil’s office because Neil, even though he was the one billing DeMarco for his time, didn’t like to leave his desk. Emma, who was working for free and had come only as a favor to DeMarco, had been somewhat reluctant to attend. She said she was training Christine’s dog to do its business outdoors, and she didn’t want to disrupt the process. DeMarco immediately had a vivid image of Emma wadding up the critter like a bedraggled furry sponge and mopping up the pee on one of her Persian rugs. Fortunately, Emma didn’t like Bill Broderick’s politics and had decided that DeMarco’s problem took precedence over housebreaking Christine’s mutt.

After they had assembled in Neil’s soundproof, electronically impenetrable room — Neil was paranoid that there was someone out there as good as he was — DeMarco briefed them on the few facts he had and concluded by saying, ‘So I have no idea if there’s really some sort of super conspiracy going on here, but there are too many things that don’t make sense.’

‘Such as?’ Neil asked. He’d been only half listening while DeMarco had been talking, busy taking something out of a box.

‘Such as the following,’ DeMarco said. ‘First you have a guy like Reza Zarif killing his family, an act that’s inconceivable to those who knew him. Then the guy whose fingerprint was found on the bullet box conveniently dies in a car accident before the Bureau can talk to him. Next there’s Rollie Patterson, a normally indecisive slug who suddenly decides to take a walk around the Capitol in freezing weather and becomes some sort of take-charge Wyatt Earp when he sees Mustafa Ahmed. Rollie’s actions, just like Reza’s, were out of character and he too died, making it impossible for anyone to question him further. Oh, I almost forgot: Rollie had a newly purchased RV sitting in his driveway.’

‘So you’re assuming that this Rollie person was told in advance that Mustafa was going to try to blow up the Capitol and he was paid to kill him,’ Neil said. Neil had finally managed to extract from the box whatever was inside it, but DeMarco couldn’t see what it was.

‘I’m not assuming that,’ DeMarco said. ‘I’m just saying it’s a possibility. And although I don’t have any evidence to support it, I think something similar may have happened with the air marshal who shot the hijacker. I think he may have been tipped off in advance that Youseff Khalid was going to try to hijack the plane, and just like Rollie he plugs the guy before he can do anything. Or confess to anything.’

‘Is the marshal dead too?’ Neil said.

‘Not that I know of. I tried to see him when I went up to New York, but he wasn’t home. He’s one of the reasons I need some help; while I’m trying to track him down I need to get some other things moving.’

Now DeMarco could see what Neil had taken from the box. It was one of those games they give hyperactive ten-year-olds on car trips, the type where you try to get all the little BBs to roll into the proper hole. Neil was now playing with the game.

‘I’ll tell you another thing that’s bothering me,’ DeMarco said, speaking to the top of Neil’s head as he tilted the BB toy back and forth in his hands. ‘With the exception of Zarif’s family, none of these three terrorist events resulted in anyone dying except the supposed terrorists. Reza was shot down before he could crash his plane into the White House, Mustafa’s bomb didn’t explode, and the shuttle hijacker was killed before he could do anything other than scare a planeful of people. If al-Qaeda’s really behind these things, I have a hard time believing they’re this inept.’

‘So what do you want us to do?’ Emma said, speaking for the first time.

‘A bunch of things. The first thing I want Neil to do is find out who Broderick’s biggest backers are.’

‘Bastard,’ Neil said, speaking to one of the BBs; then he added, ‘Do you actually think Broderick could be personally involved in these incidents?’

‘I’m not saying he is,’ DeMarco said, ‘but everything that’s happened works in his favor. So maybe that’s why someone is doing these things, to scare people and get Broderick’s bill passed, and maybe that same person is backing Broderick financially.’

‘I don’t know,’ Neil said, sounding unconvinced. ‘Someone would have to really want that bill passed. I mean — Jesus, two kids were killed.’

‘I’ve thought about that,’ DeMarco said, ‘and I can come up with a couple different motives. One is hate. Whoever’s doing this hates Muslims and wants them treated like the Jews in Nazi Germany, little yellow stars of … of somebody pinned to their coats.’

‘But why do they hate Muslims?’

‘Hell, I don’t know, Neil! Why are some people bigots? Why do some people become white supremacists? And, by the by, the guy Donny Cray worked for, some character name Jubal Pugh, heads up some white-power group and Rollie had some racist literature in his house. So maybe the people doing this are just Muslim-hating white-power loonies. Guys like Timothy McVeigh who get a screwball idea in their head and start blowing things up.’

Before either Emma or Neil could object to DeMarco’s logic — or point out the flaws in his logic — DeMarco said, ‘Another motive could be money.’

‘Money?’ Neil said. ‘How could anyone make money from this?’

‘I don’t know, but whenever a law is passed in Congress, some people make money and some people lose money. It’s like a political law of physics.’

‘But how could someone make any money by kicking out Muslim students?’ Neil said.

‘I just said I don’t know, Neil! Will you put that damn game down and pay attention? What I do know is that we need to look for a money motive, particularly among anyone backing Broderick.’

‘There’s something else we should look for,’ Emma said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Expertise. If these events were not orchestrated by al-Qaeda, you need to look for somebody or some group who has the ability to acquire C-Four and fabricate a plastic gun. Somebody who has the experience, the contacts, and the organizational ability to plan these ops.’

‘Good point,’ DeMarco said. Then, sounding like the man in charge, knowing that no one was ever in charge of Neil or Emma, he added, ‘So Neil finds out who’s supporting Broderick financially, and sees if any of these people could have a hate or a money motive and if they have the expertise to pull this stuff off. He also pulls the financial records for Rollie and this air marshal who shot the hijacker to see if there’s anything squirrelly there. I wanna know how Rollie paid for his RV. I’m going to get the autopsy results for Rollie and Donny Cray, and I want to check out this air marshal some more.’

‘And what do you want me to do?’ Emma said.