LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 10

      DeMarco looked in his rearview mirror and winced. The asshole that had been tailgating him for the last six blocks had just run a red light and had been broadsided by a cab. Served the dumb shit right. Five minutes later, DeMarco turned off Massachusetts and onto Pilgrim Road, driving into the shadow created by the National Cathedral’s towering walls.

      When he’d spoken to Lydia Morelli the previous night she’d said, “Let’s meet at the cathedral, Mr. DeMarco. It’s seems an apt place for a confession.” He hadn’t known what she’d meant by that statement, but when he’d asked which cathedral, she said, “Why, the National Cathedral, of course. Do you know another here?” DeMarco did—but it hadn’t seemed like the right time to dazzle her with his knowledge of all the churches he didn’t attend.

      The National Cathedral was the sixth or seventh largest church in the world, and like the great medieval cathedrals of Europe, it had taken almost a hundred years to complete, its construction interrupted not by siege, plague, or famine, but by more mundane reasons like lack of funds and squabbling labor. But after a century of toil it stood magnificent, a home God must have been proud to show his friends.

      Lydia had told him to meet her in the Bishop’s Garden on the south side of the cathedral. DeMarco parked his car and hurried to the garden. He was ten minutes late but Lydia wasn’t there. He cursed himself for his tardiness and wondered if she’d left already, but a more likely explanation was that she’d changed her mind and decided not to meet him at all. He took a seat on a stone bench, checked around one more time for Lydia, then looked upward.

      The National Cathedral has three huge stained glass windows, called rose windows, each sixty feet in diameter and made from thousands of pieces of glass. From outside the church, they appear as large dull circles in the white stone walls—shards of dark glass set into ornate stone frames, no pattern evident, no hint of radiance or beauty given. Inside the cathedral, it was completely different. From the inside, the windows were marvels of form and color, as intricate as oil paintings. DeMarco didn’t know why you couldn’t see the pattern in the windows from outside the church. He suspected it had to do with the physics of light but maybe divinity played a hand in this phenomenon as well: you had to enter God’s house to enjoy its wonders.

      Fifteen minutes later he saw Lydia Morelli walking toward him. She was wearing a simple blue blouse, gray slacks, and low-heeled shoes. From a distance, she looked slim and elegant. Up close she looked weary and malnourished, and DeMarco wondered if she might be ill.

      She took a seat next to him on the bench, breathing as if the short walk from the parking lot to the garden had winded her, and when she exhaled he could smell liquor on her breath. It was only nine-thirty a.m. It seemed that Lydia was indeed ill; her illness was alcoholism. DeMarco could understand a bit better now why her husband had seemed annoyed about her drinking.

      Lydia closed her eyes until her breathing returned to normal then opened them and looked around, apparently checking to make sure no one was nearby. Impatient, DeMarco said, “Why did you want to see me, Mrs. Morelli?”

      Lydia stopped scanning the area and looked directly into his eyes and said, “Because your life’s in danger.”

      Whoa! If you want to get someone’s attention, that’s a good way to start a conversation.

      “What are you talking about?” DeMarco said.

      “I heard what you told Paul and the toady.”

      “The toady?”

      “Sorry. My pet name for Abe. At any rate, I heard what you told them. I eavesdropped. After I left Paul’s office, I stood near the door and listened.” When she said this she smiled somewhat smugly, as if she was proud to have put one over on her famous husband.

      “Terry Finley didn’t die in a boating accident,” Lydia said. “He was killed because he was investigating Paul.”

      “Mrs. Morelli, you need to tell me what you’re talking about.”

      “What do you think of my husband?” she said.

      “What do I think?” DeMarco said, confused by the question. “I guess I think he’s a brilliant politician. Everyone says he’s going to be the next president.”

      Lydia nodded as if agreeing with DeMarco, then said, “He’s a monster. He belongs in a cage, not the White House.”

      DeMarco was almost too stunned to react. “Mrs. Morelli,” he said, “I’m not sure where—”

      “I’m the one who contacted Terry,” Lydia said. “I’m the one who asked him to dig into Paul’s past.”

       Jesus Christ.

      “I heard Paul and the toady talking about him one day,” Lydia said. “They were laughing, saying how he was this stubborn little journalist who never got it quite right.”

      Now that bothered DeMarco. Paul Morelli had said that he didn’t know Terry Finley.

      “But I asked around,” Lydia said, “and I figured that Terry was exactly who I needed. I needed someone willing to do anything to make a name for himself, yet it had to be someone connected with a credible paper like the Post or the Times. I decided it was time for me to finally do something, and Terry was perfect.”

      DeMarco thought she may have selected Terry Finley for another reason: if she’d gone to one of the big-name reporters, they might have had more sense than to listen to her. But he still didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.

      “I’m

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