House Secrets (46 page)

Calvetti continued to sit silently, staring out at the snow-covered forest. After what seemed an eternity, he said, “Now here’s what you’re gonna do.” As he spoke, DeMarco was again struck by the absence of warmth in Calvetti’s eyes. He couldn’t imagine a man with eyes like that loving anyone, not even a granddaughter.

“You understand?” Calvetti said, and then he added, “It’s either you or him.”

DeMarco nodded. He understood perfectly; he just didn’t like it. This wasn’t the course of action he’d expected.

“Give it to him, Mr. Loomis,” Calvetti said.

Loomis wordlessly handed DeMarco a holster that contained a small-caliber automatic. It looked to DeMarco like a .25, the same caliber weapon that Morelli had used to kill his wife. The holster was designed to clip onto a belt. As DeMarco accepted the weapon, Eddie, the driver, took out his gun and pointed it at DeMarco’s face. DeMarco noticed that Eddie’s gun was bigger than his gun; Eddie’s gun would blow a hole in his head the size of a grapefruit.

“If you take that peashooter out of the holster while you’re anywhere near the car, you’re dead,” Eddie said.

DeMarco clipped the holster to his belt, opened the door, and stepped from the car. Before shutting the door, he looked at Calvetti. The Mafia boss had pulled a blanket over his knees and another across his thin shoulders. He looked cold and uncomfortable. A snow-covered forest in the mountains was not a natural hunting ground for an old urban predator.

The enigmatic Loomis exited the rear of the Lincoln, holding the ominous suitcase in his hand. He pointed and said, “Up there about fifty yards, you’ll see a driveway on the left. And do this quick. Mr. Calvetti doesn’t like it up here.”

DeMarco made sure his ski jacket concealed the automatic, then stood a moment, looking at the woods around him. It was a scene peeled off the front of a Christmas card: evergreens dusted with snow, the ground covered with a soft white blanket, a twenty-foot holly tree on his right decorated with bright red berries.

Loomis set the aluminum case on the hood of the Lincoln and DeMarco heard the latches click open. He wondered how long it would take to dig a grave through four feet of snow. He wondered if the corpse would be cold for eternity.

The cabin was made of logs and had a cedar-shake roof and a stone chimney. Nearby was a firewood shed stacked with at least two cords of wood. Smoke drifted skyward from the chimney; the cabin windows were glazed with frost; icicles hung from the eaves. It was the perfect haven: an escape from the stress of the city, a hidey-hole to come to with your lover—a snowy Elba for a self-imposed exile.

DeMarco walked quickly toward the cabin. With the frost on the windows, he couldn’t see anyone inside, nor, he assumed, could anyone see him. When he reached the door, he partially unzipped his jacket so he’d be able to reach the gun, then raised his hand to knock. Before his knuckles struck the door, a voice said: “Why hello, Joe. It’s good to see you again.”

DeMarco turned and saw Paul Morelli standing less than four feet away. Morelli was smiling—he had a beautiful, infectious smile—and DeMarco almost smiled back. Morelli was holding an axe in his right hand and in his left hand was a cloth sling holding several pieces of firewood. DeMarco’s lips moved in a silent curse. Morelli must have been behind the firewood shed when DeMarco arrived.

DeMarco glanced down to make sure the weapon on his belt wasn’t visible and when he raised his eyes, he noticed that Morelli wasn’t looking at him. Instead he was scanning the nearby woods, apparently checking to see if DeMarco was alone. DeMarco thought of pulling out the pistol at that moment but was afraid that Morelli might
cave in his head with the axe before he could draw the weapon. He’d wait until Morelli put down the axe.

“Where’d you park?” Morelli asked. He seemed completely relaxed; if he was surprised that DeMarco had found him, he didn’t act like it.

“Up on the main road,” DeMarco said. “I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get down your driveway.”

Morelli laughed, and said in a perfect Yiddish accent, “You’ve never heard of four-wheel drive, chickie?”

Morelli’s hair was longer than he normally wore it, touching his collar, partially covering his ears. He was wearing a blue plaid shirt over a cream-colored turtleneck sweater, and gray corduroy pants were tucked into boots with fur lining around the tops. He had to be the handsomest beast ever seen in these woods.

Morelli scanned the forest a few more seconds, then said, “I don’t know why you’re here, Joe, but let’s go inside. It’s too cold to talk out here.” He put down the firewood sling he was carrying, but kept the axe in his hand. He reached past DeMarco, opened the unlocked cabin door, then waited for DeMarco to enter the cabin ahead of him. When DeMarco hesitated, Morelli said, “Come on, Joe. You become mindful of heat loss when you chop your own wood.”

DeMarco stepped into the cabin, heard the door shut behind him—then felt the barrel of a gun at the back of his head.

“Aw, shit,” he muttered. It had never occurred to him that Morelli might be armed. Then he realized, too late, that his frame of reference was completely wrong. He wasn’t dealing with a United States senator—he was dealing with a murderer. And when you killed people as Morelli had done, you began to expect others to act the same way. Or maybe there was something else going on. Maybe Calvetti had set DeMarco up. But if that was the case, why had he given DeMarco the gun?

“Stand still,” Morelli said. “Don’t even twitch. I need to see if you’re armed or wired. Remove the coat, please. Slowly.”

DeMarco hesitated and Morelli prodded him with the barrel of his gun. DeMarco shrugged out of the ski jacket and when Morelli
saw the weapon in the holster on his belt, he said, “Now what have we here? Was it assassination you had in mind?”

DeMarco didn’t answer. He was fucked without that gun. He needed that gun.

Morelli took DeMarco’s weapon and tossed it to the other side of the room, then completed frisking him. Satisfied that DeMarco didn’t have another weapon and wasn’t wearing a recording device, he patted DeMarco affectionately on the shoulder and said, “Let’s go sit over by the fire and have a little chat. I’ve been alone up here so long, it’s good to have someone to talk to.”

There were two rocking chairs near the fireplace and DeMarco sank down slowly into one of them. Morelli took a seat in the other chair and began to rock gently—but the gun in his hand remained steady, pointed at the center of DeMarco’s chest.

DeMarco looked around the cabin. There was a bed along one wall and a small kitchen area with a propane-fueled stove. In the center of the room was a table with a rough-plank top. On the table was a laptop computer. Behind the table was a free-standing whiteboard, and the board was filled with terse phrases, such as: philanthropic support, hydrogen research, nuclear power, Detroit resistance. There were a number of names on the board. DeMarco recognized a few of the American names—all billionaires—but there were other names he didn’t recognize, including some that looked Arabic, and DeMarco had no idea who these people were. There were lines connecting some of the phrases to some of the names. None of it made any sense to him.

“How did you find me?” Morelli asked. His tone was conversational, not the least bit hostile.

“Your wife told me about your relationship with Dominic Calvetti,” DeMarco said. Actually Lydia hadn’t, but she could have.

“My God, that woman was a liability,” Morelli muttered, speaking more to himself than DeMarco.

“When people started dying, I realized Calvetti was helping you, and I figured you had to be someplace like this. So I started checking property records—yours, your wife’s, then Calvetti’s.”

Morelli shook his head. “I don’t think so, Joe. Dominic’s too smart to have this place in his own name.”

“It’s not. It’s owned by a corporation he controls.”

Morelli didn’t say anything for a moment as he considered DeMarco’s answer, then apparently satisfied, he said, “Who else knows you’re here?”

“Several people,” DeMarco said.

Morelli smiled and shook his head. DeMarco amused him. “I don’t think so,” he said. “If you were planning to assassinate me, you wouldn’t have advertised the fact. And you did come to assassinate me, didn’t you?”

That was the third time Morelli had used the word “assassinate.” Heads of state were assassinated, common folk merely killed. And Morelli’s calmness infuriated DeMarco.

“Why in God’s name did you kill Brenda? And that young cop and Clayton Adams? If you wanted revenge, why didn’t you just kill me?”

“Clayton Adams?” Morelli said, appearing puzzled. “I didn’t have Clayton killed, Joe.”

The way he said it, DeMarco believed him. So Adams had died of natural causes just as the papers had said.

“And you’re wrong about something else,” Morelli said.

“Wrong about what? Are you saying that you didn’t . . .”

“Those people didn’t die because I wanted vengeance. They died so I could reclaim my destiny.”

“Your destiny?”

“The presidency, Joe.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind. You’re finished in politics.”

“Wrong again, Joe. Doesn’t it bother you to be wrong so often?”

Before DeMarco could respond, Morelli said, “Do you know what’s in that computer, and on that board over there?”

“No.”

“A road map to the White House. Al Gore gave me the idea. Poor Al loses to Bush, crawls off with his tail between his legs, and we all
thought he was finished. But then what happens? He gets an Oscar and a Nobel Prize. And what did he do? All he did was make a movie, for Christ’s sake, and not even a very good one in my opinion. But the point is, Al took an issue like global warming, became the poster boy for the cause, and the next thing you know he’s an international hero and people are saying he should run for president again.

“And that’s what I’m going to do, Joe. I’m gonna do an Al Gore—except I’m going to go
way
beyond making a movie. What I’m going to do is make this country oil-independent.”

“You’re what?” DeMarco said.

Morelli laughed. “Now I can see by the look on your face that you think I’m crazy, but I’m not. I can do it. I have the whole thing figured out.”

Morelli then launched into an animated speech explaining that it wasn’t the lack of affordable alternatives that kept the U.S. dependent on oil. It was instead a complex conspiracy between oil companies, automakers, OPEC, and, of course, Congress all doing whatever they could to maintain the status quo. But according to Morelli, he knew how to break this conspiracy apart. He’d drag the whistleblowers out of the closet; he’d apply leverage—with the help of Dominic Calvetti if needed—to get laws changed; he’d convince billionaire philanthropists to fund start-up companies that would show that fuels like hydrogen were cheap, feasible alternatives to oil. Much of what he said was too complex for DeMarco to follow, and it occurred to him that Morelli’s energy plan may have been nothing more than the delusional ramblings of a madman—but DeMarco didn’t think so. Paul Morelli may have been a murderer but he was also a genius.

“I’m going to resign from the Senate, Joe. I’ll say that even though I’m innocent I’m resigning because my circumstances are distracting the legislature from doing its job, but the real reason I’m resigning is to shift the media’s focus. Then in a couple of months, I’ll launch my campaign. I’ll tell the press that I’ve given up on politics to devote myself to a far more noble cause.” Morelli’s dark eyes gleamed
when he said, “Joe, I promise you that in less than ten years I’ll be a hero to the average citizens of this country. They’ll be buying cars that don’t pollute the skies and that cost pennies per mile to drive. And as a nation, we’ll never again have to pander to some Muslim dictator just because he was lucky enough to be born in a place with oil beneath his feet.”

Morelli sat back in the rocker and made a face that seemed to say: Now do you get it? And in case DeMarco didn’t, he said. “Joe, I’m only forty-seven years old. By the time I’m fifty-seven, I’ll be president.”

DeMarco laughed. “Do you really think it’ll be that easy? Ted Kennedy never made it because of Chappaquiddick and you’ll never get there because of what you did to Brenda. Your political career is dead.” It made DeMarco feel good to say that.

Morelli shook his head, as if he was disappointed that DeMarco was such a dunce. “You’re standing too close to the problem, my friend. You need to step back to see the picture clearly. Now pay attention. Please.

“In a few months that video of me and Brenda, and the copy that crooked detective made, will be destroyed. Dominic will arrange for a fire or an explosion in the police evidence locker; knowing him, he’ll probably destroy the whole building. And keep in mind that the
public
has never seen the video that Berg took. Oh, I know a lot of people saw it—but how clear do you think their memories will be in a few years? And with the video gone, and if I say events happened a certain way, who’s going to be there to contradict me? No one, Joe, because all the witnesses to what actually transpired that night will be gone. Now do you understand? I wasn’t killing people for revenge. I was eliminating
witnesses
.”