LITMIR.BIZ

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drug habit.

      DeMarco didn’t suggest that he accompany Diane back to her room for a nightcap. He wanted to, but he didn’t. He knew a nice Catholic girl from the old neighborhood wasn’t going to sleep with him on the first date. So now he sat, feeling horny and depressed, halfheartedly watching the Mariners get creamed by the Yankees. He glanced up at the television just as Jeter knocked the ball almost into the railroad yard behind Safeco Field and heard the bartender mutter, ‘Fuckin’ Yankees.’

      DeMarco realized at that moment that he was no longer alone, that he was in the company of a brother. He and the bartender – a man with a severely peeling, sunburned nose – belonged to the largest, unhappiest fraternity in America: the Benevolent Order of Jealous Yankee Bashers. For the next half hour they repeated the sad litany of the brotherhood: Steinbrenner bought the World Series every year; Joe Torre looked like a dour leprechaun and was just as lucky. And so on. Members of the Order could bitch about the Yankees for hours. The bartender had just begun to decry the immorality of the Yankees acquiring Alex Rodriguez from the Texas Rangers when he looked over DeMarco’s shoulder and muttered, ‘Oh, shit.’

      DeMarco followed the bartender’s line of sight and saw that he was looking at Emma. She had stopped at the entrance to the bar and was looking into her purse. She rummaged in her purse a moment – even Emma had the female tendency to overstuff her handbag – then turned and walked away as if she had forgotten something.

      ‘What’s the problem?’ DeMarco said.

      ‘That broad. She was in here last night and orders a martini to take back to her room. I had to make it three times before she was happy. Geez, what a ballbuster. Oh hell, here she comes.’

      Emma walked over to the bar, nodded curtly to the bartender, and said to DeMarco, ‘I should have known this was where you’d be. Let’s go get some dinner.’

      ‘I just ate,’ DeMarco said.

      ‘Then you can watch me eat. We need to talk. Settle up your bill and meet me at my car.’ With that she turned and walked away, completely confident that DeMarco would follow. Emma could be a very irritating person.

      ‘Sorry,’ the bartender said to DeMarco after Emma left, ‘didn’t know she was your friend.’

      ‘Nothing to apologize for,’ DeMarco said. ‘She is a ballbuster. The biggest, baddest one you’ll ever meet. How much do I owe you?’

      

      Emma, like DeMarco, had questioned the locals for the name of a decent eatery and had been directed to a place on a scenic bay called Dyes Inlet. DeMarco said it was even nicer than the spot where he’d taken Diane, but as soon as Emma stepped through the entrance she sniffed the air and said, ‘I smell cigarette smoke. I thought they’d outlawed smoking in restaurants in this state.’

      Outlawed? She made it sound as if smoking was a Class A felony. DeMarco himself couldn’t smell a thing but Emma’s sensitive nose had apparently detected a solitary, illicit nicotine molecule polluting the atmosphere near the door.

      ‘Maybe they have a gas mask you can borrow,’ DeMarco said.

      This earned him an arched eyebrow for his impertinence, but he was fortunately spared a lecture on the lethal nature of secondhand smoke. Emma did ask the hostess for an outside table on the deck of the restaurant, where a slight breeze ensured the purity of her air supply. DeMarco liked the deckside view. He’d heard that orca whales occasionally swam into the inlets of Puget Sound, and that’s what he wanted to see: a great big orca flying out of the water.

      Their waiter – a gangly kid whose name tag said NATHAN – asked what they wanted to drink. Emma described the perfect vodka martini, exactly how it should be made, the exact proportion of both ingredients. The kid nodded while she talked but the only thing he wrote down on his pad was ‘V. Martini.’ Poor bastard, DeMarco thought; he was going to be schlepping martinis back and forth from the bar all night long.

      ‘And for you, sir?’ Nathan asked DeMarco.

      ‘Uh, I’ll have a martini, too. Make it just like hers.’

      ‘Very good, sir.’

      The waiter turned to leave but DeMarco said, ‘Hey, do you ever see orcas over here?’

      ‘Orcas?’

      ‘Yeah, you know, killer whales. Those black ones with the white spots.’

      ‘I know what an orca is, sir, but they rarely come in this far.’ When Nathan saw the look of disappointment on DeMarco’s face he said, ‘But you might see salmon jumping, and over there,’ Nathan pointed, ‘is an eagle’s nest. That big tree, just to the left of the house with the red roof? Do you see it?’

      DeMarco looked over to where the waiter was pointing but couldn’t see anything but tree branches and sky in the fading daylight. Big deal, he thought, a bird’s nest, but all he said to the waiter was, ‘Yeah. Cool.’

      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;

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