LITMIR.BIZ

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walking down the garden path, reading from a prayer-book as he walked, moving his lips as he read. He glanced at Lydia and could see the anguish on her face, then he turned his gaze toward DeMarco, his expression not accusing, just asking if they needed his help. DeMarco shook his head no. Lydia didn’t need a priest; she needed a psychiatrist.

      “Mrs. Morelli…,” DeMarco said, and then he stopped. He didn’t know what to say.

      “I know,” Lydia said. “You can’t believe it. You can’t believe that the great Paul Morelli could have done the things I’ve said. Well, I’m going to tell you something about my husband, something that only Abe and I know.”

      “And what’s that?” DeMarco said, having no idea what this woman might say next.

      “Most of the time Paul is the most unemotional, calculating bastard you’ll ever meet. Like why do you think he married me, a woman five years his senior and with a child to boot?”

      “I don’t kn—”

      “He married me because of my father, because he thought my father could advance his career.”

      All DeMarco could remember reading about Lydia’s father was that he’d been a judge, but he didn’t know anything else about the man.

      “Paul analyzes everything,” Lydia was saying. “He never loses his temper. He never allows his opponents to rush him into doing anything prematurely, before he’s had a chance to think things through. And he is, as you said, brilliant. Except when he drinks. Paul can’t handle liquor. At all. Even small amounts. And he knows it and he hardly ever drinks, and whenever he does, at a party or a fund raiser, that little bastard, Abe, watches him like a hawk. But sometimes, for whatever reason, Paul gets drunk. Maybe it’s the stress of the job. Or maybe the demons inside his head are screaming at him. I don’t know. I don’t know what triggers it. But when he drinks, and he’s almost always alone when he does…well, then the genie comes out of the bottle and all Paul’s sick urges coming spewing out.”

      This conversation was surreal. Here was this morning drinker talking about her husband’s drinking problem. Meeting with her had been a huge mistake.

      “The night he attacked Marcia Davenport,” Lydia said, “Paul was in his den drinking and Davenport made the mistake of going in there.”

      “He drinks then he assaults women,” DeMarco said. He was being sarcastic but Lydia Morelli didn’t notice.

      “Yes,” she said. “And it’s always the same kind of woman.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Go see Janet Tyler,” Lydia said. “Talk to her. Follow up on Terry Finley’s investigation.”

      DeMarco was completely frustrated. “Mrs. Morelli, why are you telling me all this?” he said. “I’m not a cop or a reporter. I’m just a lawyer. So even if what you’re saying is true”—he almost added and that’s one big goddamn if—“you’re talking to the wrong guy.”

      “I told you why I’m telling you. I’m telling you because your life’s in danger and I’m trying to keep you from getting killed like Terry. But I’m also telling you because you’re an investigator. I heard Paul say that when I met you.”

      “I am, but…” DeMarco shook his head. “Look, you have to understand something: I don’t have the clout or the authority to investigate your husband.”

      And he didn’t. To investigate someone like Paul Morelli, special prosecutors were assigned: smart, ruthless, independent bastards with dozens of people on their staffs. But Lydia Morelli didn’t care.

      “You have an obligation,” she said. “You have a job to do and you need to do it.”

      She rose from the bench and said, “I have to go. I have…I have an appointment.”

      With a bottle was DeMarco’s immediate thought.

      “And you have to do your job,” she said again, and then she turned to go.

      “Wait a minute,” DeMarco said. “I have to know something.”

      “What?” she said, now impatient to leave.

      “According to the dates on that napkin, Davenport was, uh, attacked in 2002, Tyler in ‘99. Why are you doing this now?”

      Lydia waved the question away, as if she were shooing flies. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “All you need to know is that I’m telling the truth. Now I have to go. Oh, and one other thing—if you tell anyone we had this discussion, I’ll deny it.”

      With that pronouncement she walked away. She moved slowly, like an old woman, her back bent, her steps unsteady and weary, as if the knowledge she carried inside her head was weighing her down.

       What the hell had he gotten himself into?

       Chapter 11

      Garret Darcy watched the man and woman in the cathedral garden through binoculars. The guy was dressed in a suit and tie but he didn’t look like someone who worked in an office. He was a hard-looking bastard. A cop maybe? Or maybe a hood. Yeah, he looked more like a hood than a cop. Now that would be interesting.

      It would be good if something interesting happened. It was great to be working again but following Ladybird was dull work. For one thing, she was so easy to follow. Not only was she a civilian but from what he’d seen, she drank quite a bit, not an activity that improved one’s observation skills. But even if she’d been teetotaler and trained to spot a tail, she never would have seen him. Darcy could tail a ghost; he’d spent an entire career following people.

      He sorta wished, though, that he’d been assigned to Big Bird. He couldn’t help but wonder if Phil and Toby had been given the primary target because of Kosovo. He had screwed up one time, one damn time, and that had been years ago—but he bet that was the reason that he’d been given the wife instead of the man himself.

      But what the hell. He was getting paid and it was easy work. Phil and Toby, they had to hustle to keep up with Big Bird because he was always on the move. Those guys, poor bastards, weren’t sleeping more than five hours a day and when they did sleep, half the time it was sitting in a car. By comparison, Ladybird was a piece of cake. She stayed in the house in Georgetown most of the time and, as near as he could tell, spent most of her day watching TV and sipping drinks. When she did go out, she’d meet a girlfriend and have lunch and more drinks, and at night, unless she was accompanying her husband to some function, she was usually in bed by ten, at which point Darcy would head on home.

      Today, however, was different, meeting this guy who looked like a hood in an out-of-the-way spot. He had to find out who the guy was. Maybe Phil and Toby knew already, but the boss, that tricky little shit, he liked to keep things compartmentalized. He’d ask Phil later if they knew the man, but for now, as soon as the hardcase and Ladybird quit blabbing, he’d follow the guy to his car and get a license plate number.

      If he’d had a parabolic mike he could have heard what they were talking about but he didn’t have one. That was the odd thing about this op. The boss didn’t seem to have access to the kind of equipment they’d used in the past. No mikes, no tracking devices, no night-vision goggles. They even had to bring their own cameras, which in his case was a little low-budget, piece-of-shit Kodak digital. And when Phil had asked if they should try to get a bug into Big Bird’s house, the boss had said no, not yet. Well, maybe that wasn’t so surprising considering who Big Bird was. But this op—it was just a little bit off. The boss was up to something.

      Now that was a laugh: that cagey bastard, he was always up to something.

      Hey, what the hell, it was an easy gig. When he’d enlisted in the marines, before he’d started working for the boss—a million years ago it seemed like now—he and some

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