House Rivals (15 page)

Patterson finally got his door open and DeMarco shoved him hard in the back to get him inside. The trailer was a pigsty with unwashed dishes, fast-food cartons, and empty beer cans on every flat surface. There was a galley-like kitchen with a two-burner stove and half-size refrigerator. A frying pan encrusted with burnt eggs was on the stove. Along one wall was a small dining room table that had a bench seat on one side and a single, freestanding folding chair on the other.

“Sit down,” DeMarco said, pointing at the folding chair, then he reached into a pocket and turned on the tape recorder he'd purchased at RadioShack.

“What do you guys want?” Patterson said.

“I want to know who was with you the night you roughed up Sarah Johnson.”

“Who?” Patterson said—and Doug Thorpe smashed a fist into Patterson's face, knocking him off the chair. Thorpe may have been in his seventies but he could still throw a punch.

“That's enough,” DeMarco said to Thorpe.

DeMarco helped Patterson back into the chair. His mouth was bleeding and his eyes were glassy.

“Sarah Johnson was the young woman you and two of your friends assaulted a couple weeks ago in a parking lot. You threatened to rape her.”

“Oh, I know who you mean now. We didn't hurt her. We just scared her.”

“Who was with you?”

“Who are you guys?”

DeMarco placed the muzzle of the .45 against Patterson's forehead, right over the bridge of his nose. “If you don't answer my question in the next two seconds, I'm going to put a bullet into your brain. I think one of the assholes with you was a guy named Mark Jenkins, the guy who alibied you when the cops came to see you. So I don't really need you and after I kill you, I'll go talk to Jenkins. One. Two.”

“Okay! It was Tim Sloan! It was me and Mark and Tim.”

“Why did you do it?”

“Because Tim gave me and Mark a hundred bucks. He said he just wanted to scare the girl.”

“Why?”

“Tim said she was a big-mouth reporter and was writing shit that was going to cost people their jobs.”

“What does Sloan do? Is he involved in natural gas?”

“Tim? He doesn't do anything. He gets a disability check for his back.”

“Did someone tell Sloan to assault Sarah?”

“I don't know. He didn't say. Mark and me, we was just having a drink down at Shorty's and Tim comes up to us and says he wants some help making this chick back off. But he didn't say anything about anyone telling him to do it.”

“Then where'd he get the two hundred bucks he paid you and your buddy?”

“I don't know. We've both known Tim since high school and he just said it would be fun.”

“Fun?” Thorpe said. “Did you say fun?”—and he hit Patterson on the right side of his head with the .38 he was holding and knocked Patterson off the chair again. A trickle of blood was now running down the side of Patterson's neck.

“Goddamnit,” DeMarco said to Thorpe. “Knock it off. Once was enough.”

Patterson was on the floor moaning, holding a hand over the place where Thorpe had hit him.

“Where does Sloan live?” DeMarco asked.

“Jesus Christ, that hurt,” Patterson said.

“Tell me where Sloan lives or I'm going to let him beat you to death.”

“Over on the east side of town. He lives with his girlfriend.”

“What's the address?”

“Hell, I don't know.”

DeMarco again pressed the muzzle of the .45 against the top of Patterson's head.

“What's Sloan's address?” DeMarco said.

“I'm telling you, I don't know. I swear to God.”

DeMarco believed him. “What's his girlfriend's name?”

“Debbie something. I don't know her last name. I've only met her a couple of times.”

“Okay, Roy,” DeMarco said, “we're leaving now. But if you call Sloan and he isn't home when I get to his place then I'm going to come back here and kill you. Do you understand? You call Sloan, you better get in that piece of shit you drive and just keep driving until you fall off the edge of the earth, because I'll find you.”

“Let's go,” DeMarco said to Thorpe.

As they were leaving, Patterson said. “Who are you guys?”

“CAA,” DeMarco said.

“CIA?” Patterson said.

“CAA. Citizens Against Assholes.”

Back in DeMarco's rental car, DeMarco said, “It's too late now, but tomorrow I'll call Mahoney and have him get Sloan's address.”

“Okay,” Thorpe said.

“You got a place to stay tonight?”

“I'll find something.”

“You don't need to do that. There are two beds in my motel room. Stay with me.”

DeMarco actually wanted Thorpe to stay with him because he was afraid Thorpe might go back to Patterson's trailer and beat him to death.

20

DeMarco had set the alarm for six a.m. and that's when he woke up—even though getting up at that time of day almost killed him. ­Nobody —not farmers, fishermen, or even roosters—should be required to rise at such an ungodly hour. He used the bathroom, then noticed that Thorpe's bed was empty. “Goddamnit,” he muttered.

He woke up so early because he wanted to get Tim Sloan's address as soon as possible and again decided to let Mahoney use his connections in D.C. to get what he needed. He knew Mahoney wouldn't answer his phone at seven a.m. EST—Mahoney might not take a call from the president at seven a.m.—but Mahoney's secretary would already be at her desk.

“Mavis, tell the boss I need an address for a guy named Tim Sloan who lives on the east side of Bismarck, North Dakota. He gets some kind of disability check for his back so maybe he's got a file with Social Security or the VA. He's got a girlfriend named Debbie. The only other thing I know about him is he went to high school with a full-blown asshole named Roy Patterson. Tell Mahoney I also need to know if Sloan has any sort of connection to a man named Leonard Curtis, another man named Leslie William Logan, and a woman named Marjorie Dawkins. Did you get all that? Tell him I need the information right away.”

DeMarco took a shower wondering the whole time where Thorpe could be. He didn't have a cell phone number for Thorpe; he didn't know if Thorpe even owned a cell phone. All he could do was pray that Thorpe hadn't killed Patterson. He dressed and thought briefly about shaving, then said screw it. As long as he was acting like a thug he might as well look like one.

DeMarco stepped outside the motel room and was relieved to see Thorpe's pickup parked where it had been the night before. He went back into the motel room and scratched out a note for Thorpe to call him and placed the note under a windshield wiper on Thorpe's truck. A block from the motel was a diner that was open twenty-four hours a day and DeMarco decided to go there and get a cup of coffee. He desperately needed coffee; his heart was barely pumping blood because of the hour.

When he walked into the diner, he saw Thorpe sitting alone in a booth. DeMarco sat across from him, and said, “Couldn't you sleep?”

“No. Did you call John?”

“No, but I talked to his secretary and she'll get to him. I don't know who Mahoney's using to get information from, but last time I got what I needed in a couple of hours.”

DeMarco had breakfast—a cholesterol-laden plate of eggs, hash browns, and link sausages—and felt almost human by the time he was finished. Thorpe hardly spoke while DeMarco was eating. He just stared out the window at the parking lot. At one point he did say, “I can't imagine how people can live in a place like this.”

“A place like what?” DeMarco said.

“An ugly city. I've lived next to a Montana river my whole life. I couldn't imagine living anywhere else.”

DeMarco and Thorpe
walked back to the motel. They couldn't really do anything until Mahoney's guy called him back. DeMarco thought briefly about calling Agent Westerberg to see if she'd learned anything more, then decided not to. He certainly had no intention of telling her what he'd been doing. Not at this point.

At eight a.m., DeMarco's phone rang. He didn't recognize the number on the caller ID, just saw that it was a 202 area code.

“Hello,” DeMarco said.

“I have Tim Sloan's address for you,” a soft-spoken man said. DeMarco wondered what organization employed the man: FBI, IRS, Justice? Hell, he could be CIA or NSA.

“Hang on,” DeMarco said. “Let me get a pen and paper.”

The guy rattled off Sloan's address and DeMarco wrote it down.

“Did you find out if Sloan had any connection to—”

“He was married to Leslie William Logan's sister for four years. She divorced him three years ago. Sloan's not married now. I couldn't find any connection between Sloan and Dawkins or Curtis.”

“You gave me what I needed, masked man. I thank you.”

Marjorie was not happy. Last night Heckler had informed her that Doug Thorpe, Sarah's grandfather, came to DeMarco's motel. Then ­DeMarco and Thorpe got into DeMarco's car and DeMarco deliberately shook Heckler. This meant three things: One, DeMarco now knew he was being followed. Two, he most likely knew that whoever was following him worked for her and Bill Logan. And three, since DeMarco shook the tail, he was probably up to something sneaky.

Marjorie couldn't think of anything DeMarco could do to cause them a problem but it was worrisome that he was still in Bismarck, running around.

She called Heckler. “What he's doing now?”

“He just had breakfast with Thorpe. Last night, after he lost me, the only thing I could do was go back to his motel and wait for him. DeMarco returned to the motel about two in the morning and Thorpe spent the night in his room. This morning, Thorpe left the motel before five and went to a restaurant, and DeMarco joined him an hour or so later. DeMarco and Thorpe are back at the motel now. I've had about two hours of sleep, Marjorie. I can't keep this up.”

“Well, you're gonna have to keep it up. Or hire someone to help you.”

“If I can get DeMarco's phone number,” Heckler said, “and find out the type of cell phone he uses, maybe Gordy can download that spyware shit onto his phone so I can use GPS to track him.”

“Gordy's not here this week,” Marjorie said. “He went to some video game conference in Vegas.” She was pissed at Gordy. Technically, Gordy didn't work for her—he was an independent businessman, not her employee—but as she and Bill were his best paying customers, she was annoyed that he hadn't told her in advance that he was going to Vegas. Instead, he'd just left a message on Marjorie's office answering machine saying he'd be gone for a few days and wasn't sure when he'd return. She was going to ring his dope-smoking neck when he got back.

“Anyway,” she said to Heckler, “I don't want to just know
where
DeMarco is. I want to know what he's doing.”

“Well, shit,” Heckler said.

“Yeah. So you do whatever you gotta do to stick with him,” Marjorie said and hung up.

Goddamnit, what the hell was DeMarco up to? And why was Johnson's granddad hanging out with him?

She wondered, for about two seconds, if she should make Bill contact Murdock and tell Murdock to make DeMarco disappear. No murder, no accident, DeMarco just vanishes. Then she immediately decided it would too risky to do something to DeMarco. He claimed to have his own FBI agent assigned to the case and Heckler had seen him with a woman packing a gun who looked like a cop. So DeMarco was probably telling the truth about the FBI being involved in Johnson's death and if something happened to him, they might end up with an entire FBI task force in Bismarck.

No, she wouldn't do anything and she wouldn't panic. There was no reason to panic. Neither DeMarco nor the FBI would find anything because there wasn't anything to find. Her biggest fear at this point was still Bill. Bill made her nervous. Bill was barely holding it together. When they had to deal with the swing judge, Wainwright, six years ago, Bill went through a period where he couldn't sleep and drank too much, but he eventually got over it. The same thing was happening again, but he seemed even worse this time. Maybe she'd make him go on vacation. He could go sit on a beach in Hawaii, drink mai tais, and chase after sluts.

Yeah, it might be smart to get Bill out of town

DeMarco told Thorpe what he'd learned from Mahoney's guy, that Tim Sloan was Logan's ex-brother-in-law.

“So I guess we go see Sloan next,” Thorpe said.

“No,” DeMarco said. “I mean, we don't go see him like we saw Patterson. Beating information out of Patterson was okay as it led us to Sloan and now I know Sloan's working for Logan.”

“But you don't know for sure,” Thorpe said.

“I know,” DeMarco insisted. “That's the only thing that makes sense. But I don't want a forced confession out of Sloan. In the long run, that won't do any good. What I want is for Sloan to agree to testify against Logan in court. Then I'll have something I can use to squeeze Logan.”

“You won't have shit,” Thorpe said. “Even if Sloan can be forced to testify, all you'll get is him saying that Logan paid him and his pals to scare Sarah. Since they didn't really hurt her, it's not like you can put Logan in jail for years.”

“I don't know what kind of prison sentence you can get for threatening to kill someone, but whatever it is, it'll be something.”

“So what's the plan?”

“I'm going to make my FBI agent arrest Sloan. But I need to talk to her alone. You can't be there.”

Before Thorpe could debate the issue, DeMarco said, “You should head back to Montana. I'll give you a call after I meet with the FBI and Sloan and let you know what happened. Do you have a cell phone?”

“Yeah, got one in my truck for emergencies.”

“Good. Write down the number, and I'll call you later.”

“Okay, but I'm not leaving, DeMarco, until after I see what happens with Sloan.”

DeMarco nodded. He should have known that. “All right. And if you want to save the expense of a room you can stay in my room again tonight.”

Thorpe laughed, although it didn't sound like a laugh. “DeMarco, the least of my worries is money. I'm the beneficiary of Sarah's will. I could buy that motel where we're staying. One of the things I need to do is have my will changed. My will says everything I've got goes to Sarah. With her dead, the goddamn state of Montana will get the money.”

“So call a lawyer while you're waiting to hear from me and get a new will drawn up.”

“Yeah, but who do I leave all that money to?” Thorpe asked.