The Payback

After their drinks were served – to DeMarco’s amazement Emma declared hers to be just right – Emma told DeMarco what she had learned from the DIA researcher.

‘So now what?’ DeMarco asked her.

‘Well,’ Emma said, ‘if Bill Smith won’t help then I guess we have to help ourselves.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought you were going to say,’ DeMarco said.

17

Emma was picking the lock on Phil Carmody’s back door.

Fortunately, Carmody had a big fence around his backyard. As long as nobody had seen them go through the back gate, they were probably okay. Provided Carmody didn’t come back home. Provided he didn’t have some kind of security system. Provided one of his neighbors didn’t see them through the windows walking around inside of Carmody’s house. DeMarco could just see himself: hands cuffed behind his back, a cop pushing his head down as they put him into a squad car.

And then the dog started making noise, little whimpering sounds like it was hungry or had to shit.

When DeMarco first saw the German shepherd in the backseat, he hadn’t wanted to get into Emma’s car. DeMarco wasn’t a big dog fan – too many stories about pit bulls gnawing off people’s arms – and the German shepherd was huge. He could just see it: they’d be driving down the road, and one minute the dog would be sitting there, its big snout sticking out of the window, and the next minute it’d be taking a bite out of DeMarco’s skull because his hair resembled rabbit fur.

‘Shut up,’ DeMarco hissed at the dog. The dog didn’t obey of course; it just kept making the whimpering noise. He felt like jerking on the leash, but was afraid that might piss it off. ‘Shut up,’ he hissed again at the dog. ‘And why couldn’t you get some kinda machine for this?’ DeMarco whispered to Emma. ‘They make machines for this, don’t they?’

‘There,’ Emma said, and she pushed the door open. Turning toward DeMarco she said, ‘A good dog is more reliable than most portable machines and they’re faster. Now come on. We’ll start on the second floor and work our way down.’

‘Should we close the blinds?’

‘No,’ Emma said and started up the stairs.

They knew Carmody had rented the house and DeMarco assumed it had come furnished – haphazardly furnished. The place was neat enough, but you could sense that it was just a temporary residence for its occupant. There were no personal touches, no family photographs, no memorabilia from Carmody’s time in the service. It was a place where the man slept and ate and not much more.

The second floor of the house had two small bedrooms and a bath. As Emma opened drawers and looked into closets, DeMarco walked around the rooms and let the dog poke its snout wherever it wanted. At least it wasn’t whimpering anymore; in fact it looked like it was having a pretty good time. DeMarco hoped it didn’t raise its leg and pee on something to mark its territory.

They finished searching the second floor in forty minutes then went back to the first floor. Emma was thorough, and the kitchen was particularly time-consuming as she pulled things out of the freezer and poked around inside of boxes of cereal and rice. DeMarco was surprised the dog didn’t try to eat a roast when Emma put a leftover one on the counter. He had to admit the critter was pretty well trained.

DeMarco checked his watch. They’d been inside the house an hour and a half.

‘Come on,’ Emma said, ‘let’s do the basement.’

‘Aren’t you going to put that stuff back?’ DeMarco asked, pointing his chin at the food sitting on the counter.

‘No,’ Emma said. ‘He’s going to know we’ve been here anyway.’

DeMarco was afraid the basement would take forever. Basements are where people store boxes and boxes of old crap they don’t need but are too lazy to sort through and throw away. But the basement of Phil Carmody’s rented house was small and almost barren. A hot water heater and a furnace took up half the space, and Carmody had a set of free weights and a bench-press bench in the middle of the room. DeMarco mentally tallied the weights on the bar and concluded that Carmody bench-pressed three hundred and fifty pounds.

There was an old Formica-topped kitchen table along one wall and above the table was a Peg-Board containing hand tools. Clamped to the table was a small vise, the sort fly fishermen use to tie flies, and a magnifying glass on a movable arm was mounted over the vise. On the table was a model sailing ship – a four-masted man-of-war under full sail. It appeared the model was ninety percent constructed, with only a few parts remaining to be painted. DeMarco could imagine Carmody sitting here alone at night, in the dimly lit basement of his silent house, slowly constructing the model. It was an image of a lonely man killing time – not a man passionate about a hobby.

As Emma stood in the center of the room deciding where to begin her search, DeMarco pulled the dog over to the table to take a closer look at the model. It had a zillion parts, little ropes and pulleys and cleats, and DeMarco didn’t see a smudge of glue anywhere. He was wondering if he had enough patience to build something like this when the dog went berserk. It started barking at the top of its lungs and straining against the leash to get at a shoe box underneath the table.

‘Jesus!’ DeMarco said. ‘Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up!’ he hissed at the dog. He didn’t know why he was whispering since the dog could be heard a mile away.

Emma came over and patted the dog on the head and said, ‘Good girl, that’s a good girl,’ and she pulled a doggy treat out of her pocket and fed it to the dog. DeMarco wondered how come she had the doggy treats instead of him. The dog immediately stopped barking, but it continued to push its nose against the box.

Moving the dog’s head out of the way, Emma pulled the box out from under the table and placed it on the tabletop next to the model. It was sealed in two places with clear packing tape. She studied the box for a few minutes, shrugged, and picked up an X-Acto knife that was lying near the model.

‘Hey!’ DeMarco said. ‘What are you doing? What if that’s a letter bomb or package bomb or something like that?’

‘Look at the dust,’ Emma said. ‘This box has been sitting here for quite a while.’

‘So?’ DeMarco said. ‘That just means it could be a highly unstable package bomb.’

Emma shook her head, dismissing DeMarco’s objections, and carefully sliced the packing tape and slowly opened the shoe box.

‘Shit,’ Emma said.

DeMarco looked down into the box. It contained a water pistol, a top, a couple of Matchbox cars, and a yo-yo. And a dozen bottle rockets.

It took them twice as long to search Mulherin’s place. The guy’s house wasn’t any bigger than Carmody’s but Mulherin had lived there a long time – and he was both a slob and a pack rat. His basement, unlike Carmody’s, contained so many boxes and bins and cartons that there was barely room to move. Mulherin also had a garage, and it too was filled with junk, so much junk that there wasn’t space to park a car. Even Emma, the woman who never admitted to the impossible, admitted it was going to be impossible for them to search Mulherin’s house thoroughly in less than two days – and all they had was about four hours.

The dog reacted twice to objects in the house: a case of marine flares in the garage stored next to a two-gallon can of gasoline, and a box of shotgun shells in the pocket of a moth-eaten hunting vest. The shotgun shells looked so old that DeMarco was afraid they might explode in his hand.

When they finished searching, even the dog looked tired.

‘Now what?’ DeMarco said when they were back in the car. ‘It’s too late to check Norton’s place.’

‘He lives in an apartment. It won’t take long.’

‘Emma, it’s almost four o’clock. They said these guys hardly ever work later than four and usually leave earlier to avoid the traffic.’

‘We’ve got time,’ Emma insisted, her lips set in that don’t-argue-with-me line.

Norton had a two-bedroom apartment. The living room was dominated by a television with a fifty-inch screen and there were more auxiliary components than DeMarco had ever seen connected to the set. He counted six speakers in different spots around the small room.

Unlike Mulherin, Norton was neater than DeMarco’s mother – and that was very neat. There were no unwashed dishes in the sink, no unmade bed, no clothes on the bedroom floor. All the boxes on the upper shelf of his closet were neatly labeled as to their contents. Now that, DeMarco thought, was weird.

‘If this guy isn’t arrested,’ DeMarco said, ‘I’m gonna see if he wants to be my maid.’

Emma ignored him and went directly to the kitchen and began opening drawers.

‘Let’s go, partner,’ DeMarco said to the dog and tugged on its leash and started walking the animal around the living room. For some reason the dog was panting now; its tongue was about a foot long.

When they opened the door to the second bedroom, Emma said, ‘My, my.’

Against one wall was a long table. On the table was a flat-screen monitor, a laser printer, and a state-of-the-art scanner – those were the items that DeMarco recognized. What had most likely elicited the ‘my, my’ from Emma were the half-dozen other devices that DeMarco didn’t recognize. Above the table was a bookshelf filled with computer books and computer magazines; the magazines were filed in chronological order. Beneath the table was a red Craftsman toolbox on casters and it housed small hand tools and electronic components.

Emma walked over to the table, picked up an object lying there, and said, ‘Huh.’

‘What’s that?’ DeMarco said.

‘A section of fiber-optic cable. It can be attached to a miniature camera or video recorder.’

‘Ah,’ DeMarco said. ‘One of those things that weirdos poke through a little hole in a bathroom wall so they can watch women pee.’ Norton struck him as the Peeping Tom type.

‘That’s one use for it,’ Emma said. ‘Another possibility is Carmody walking around a nuclear submarine with one of these cables up his sleeve, taking pictures of anything he wants and nobody noticing.’

Emma took a digital camera out of her jacket pocket and began to photograph the computer equipment and the books on the shelf above the table. After she finished photographing the equipment, she sat down at the table and turned on the computer.

‘Let’s see what he’s got in this thing,’ she said.

DeMarco looked at his watch. ‘Emma, we gotta get going,’ he said.

Emma ignored him and DeMarco soon heard the little tune that Microsoft Windows plays when a computer starts up.

‘Damn it,’ Emma muttered a moment later. ‘It’s password protected, and judging by all the sophisticated crap this guy has, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the programs were encrypted. I’m going to need a pro to find out what’s in this machine.’

Now Emma looked at her watch. ‘It’s getting late,’ she said.

‘No shit,’ DeMarco said. Geez, she could be annoying.

‘Take Lucy outside and stand watch. I saw an owner’s manual for a laptop, but I can’t find the laptop. I want to spend a little more time looking for it. If Norton shows up, call me.’

DeMarco thought Lucy was a really dumb name for a German shepherd, even a female one. German shepherds should have names like Bullet, Fang, or Killer. They should have rabid doggy-slobber dripping from their fangs. Lucy, DeMarco now realized after having spent the day with her, was just a big, friendly puppy with a sensitive nose. She was an embarrassment to the breed, and the name confirmed it.

DeMarco picked a spot to wait near the entrance to the apartment building and ten minutes later Norton drove into the adjacent garage. DeMarco immediately called Emma on the cell phone.

‘Stall him for five minutes,’ Emma said and hung up before DeMarco could complain.

Goddamnit, DeMarco thought, he needed to come up with some reason for being here. Maybe he could tell Norton he’d taken a job as a dog walker.

Norton exited the garage. He was holding a knapsack in one hand.

DeMarco walked up to him and said, ‘Mr Norton, I need to talk to you.’

Norton looked confused for a moment, before he recognized DeMarco. ‘I’m not talkin’ to you,’ he said.

‘It’ll only take a minute.’

‘Nope. You got any questions, you talk to Carmody.’

Norton started to move around DeMarco, but when he did, Lucy barked. It was a scary sound and Norton stopped immediately.

‘If that thing bites me, I swear to God, I’ll sue your ass,’ Norton said.

DeMarco looked down at Lucy. Now she looked like a German shepherd. Her teeth were exposed, she was straining against the leash, and her eyes were focused on Norton’s knapsack. Norton again started to walk around DeMarco but when he did the dog lunged at him and barked again, making Norton take a step back, his eyes wide with fear. ‘Jesus Christ! You call that fuckin’ thing off,’ Norton said. ‘You hear? I’m not kiddin’.’

‘What’s in the knapsack, Mr Norton?’ DeMarco said.

‘None of your business. Now call that motherfucker off.’

‘Norton, I bought this dog from a buddy of mine who works for the DEA. She’s trained to sniff out drugs.’

‘Drugs?’ Norton said. ‘I don’t have any drugs.’

‘Show me what’s in the knapsack. If you don’t, I’m calling the police and we’re all going to wait here until they arrive.’

‘I’m not showing you shit. And I’ll say it again: if that bitch bites me, I’ll sue you.’

‘You’ll be suing me with half your butt in a bandage,’ DeMarco said.

Over Norton’s shoulder, DeMarco saw the door to the apartment building open and Emma exit. She made a let’s-go-gesture at DeMarco and kept walking toward where their car was parked.

‘All right, goddamnit,’ Norton said to DeMarco. He unzipped the knapsack and held it out so DeMarco could look inside it. There were two small bags. One contained potting soil and the other fertilizer. DeMarco had seen a couple of red plants – geraniums, he thought – on the small balcony of Norton’s apartment.

‘You happy now?’ Norton said.

‘Yeah,’ DeMarco said and walked away, practically dragging Lucy with the leash. Stupid dog. It couldn’t tell the difference between chicken shit and a bomb.

‘Fertilizer can be an explosive,’ Emma said. ‘What do you think they used to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma?’

‘I know that,’ DeMarco said, ‘but McVeigh had a damn truckload of the stuff, not a one-pound bag.’

Emma wasn’t listening. She was talking baby talk to Lucy. ‘You’re a good girl. Yes you are. Yes you are,’ she said. As she spoke, Emma thumped her right hand against the mutt’s thick rib cage. It sounded like she was beating on a drum, but the dog seemed to like it. Dogs are weird, DeMarco thought.

‘So now what?’ he said. They were back on Highway 3, heading south. Emma was driving and Lucy was once again in the backseat, her head stuck happily out the window. Lucy belonged to the Transportation Security Administration at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. Emma’s pals at the DIA had arranged for her to borrow the animal, and she and DeMarco were now returning the dog to its handler.

‘I need to get into Carmody’s office,’ she said.

‘That’s gonna be tough. It’s in the middle of downtown Bremerton and there are people walking around there all the time.’

‘Yeah,’ Emma said, already thinking about how she was going to break in.

‘We’re going to get our asses arrested for sure,’ DeMarco said.

‘You won’t,’ Emma said. ‘I want you to go back to D.C.’

18

DeMarco was getting pretty damn annoyed with the United States Navy. He was now into his second hour of looking for whomever had awarded Carmody the shipyard training contract and he seemed no closer to finding this person than when he started. If he’d owned an aircraft carrier, he would have picked a fight with the navy.

He had been told by Carmody that Carmody’s contract was administered by someone who worked at NAVSEA – the Naval Sea Systems Command. NAVSEA was located in the Washington Navy Yard in southeast D.C. The Washington Navy Yard had once been a real shipyard but the repair facilities had been closed years ago and its current function was to provide office space for navy headquarters personnel and their minions.

It took DeMarco half an hour to get past security after which he learned that NAVSEA was a gigantic bureaucracy consisting of hundreds of people working on all aspects of navy business: weapons, ship construction, overhauls, personnel, logistics, and on and on and on. The number of cogs in this bureaucratic juggernaut was endless, and the people in the various departments seemed to know nothing other than their own function.

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