The Payback - Mike Lawson

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chewing in silence for a minute before DeMarco said, ‘Maybe he wasn’t really the low bidder and he gave a kickback to the guy who awarded him the contract. So maybe Whitfield’s right.’

      ‘I don’t know,’ Emma said. ‘I suppose that’s possible, but the bidding process is usually pretty transparent.’

      ‘Or maybe Carmody’s just being a prick,’ DeMarco said. ‘Since he didn’t give us a name, he knows that’s going to cause us to waste time tracking down the contract guy, and that’ll be time we don’t spend looking at him.’

      ‘Yeah, but he could be doing that,’ Emma said, ‘even if everything’s on the up-and-up, just to get us out of his hair.’ Emma pushed aside her salad, only half of it gone. No wonder the woman never gained an ounce. ‘At any rate,’ she said, ‘we – meaning you – need to find out who awarded Carmody’s contract. I’d suggest you start by—’

      Emma was interrupted by the ringing of DeMarco’s cell phone.

      ‘Hello,’ DeMarco said.

      ‘Hey,’ Mahoney said, sounding abnormally cheerful. ‘I’m flyin’ out there. In fact I’m on the plane right now.’

      Thanks to space-age technology, Mahoney could now jerk DeMarco’s chain from thirty thousand feet.

      ‘Why are you coming here?’ DeMarco said.

      ‘Ah, there’s a guy out there we’re runnin’ against the Republican in the fourth district. The Republican’s been there forever so Norm and I are gonna give a couple speeches tonight, pry open some wallets, give our guy a boost. But after that …’

      ‘Norm?’ DeMarco said.

      ‘Norm Dicks, Joe. The congressman from the Sixth. You’re right there in his backyard.’

      DeMarco knew Norm Dicks; he liked the guy. Unlike Mahoney, he was a straight shooter.

      ‘Anyway,’ Mahoney was saying, ‘tonight I’ll make a speech, but in the morning, I’m gonna go catch a salmon.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘There’s a guy out there, a contributor, and he’s gonna take me out on his boat. We’ll do a little business …’

      But not much.

      ‘… and then I’ll catch me a great big fish. He said he hooked into a fifty-pound king last week.’

      ‘Really,’ DeMarco said.

      ‘Yeah,’ Mahoney said. ‘So you need to pick me up tomorrow morning at my hotel. Get the details from Mavis. A fifty-pound king, Joe, can you believe it!’ Mahoney hung up.

      ‘Great,’ DeMarco muttered as he clipped his cell phone back onto his belt.

      ‘What?’ Emma said.

      ‘That was Mahoney. He’s coming out here to go fishing and I have to play chauffeur tomorrow.’

      Emma shrugged, the gesture meaning: that’s what you get for working for Mahoney.

      ‘Maybe, uh, you could start looking for this contract guy while I’m taking care of Mahoney.’

      Emma arched an eyebrow. This time the silent message was that she was more likely to marry Burt Reynolds.

      ‘I think tomorrow, while you’re drivin’ Mr Daisy,’ Emma said, ‘Christine and I will pay a visit to a spa near Snoqualmie Falls. They do seaweed facials and give hot rock massages. This thing with Dave Whitfield can definitely wait a day.’

      DeMarco didn’t know what a hot rock massage was, but he had an immediate, vivid image of Christine lying bare-assed on a massage table, her legs and butt glistening with baby oil.

       9

      DeMarco was a walking corpse.

      Mahoney’s secretary had told him to pick up Mahoney at six a.m. at the Sheraton in downtown Seattle, which meant that DeMarco had to leave Bremerton at four thirty to get there on time. When DeMarco said that he couldn’t believe that the Speaker would be up at that hour, Mavis had responded: ‘I know. He just works too hard sometimes.’ Mahoney had everybody fooled.

      But at six on the nose, Mahoney walked into the lobby with a big grin on his Irish face. He looked like a husky ten-year-old going on his first fishing trip. He wore Bermuda shorts that reached his dimpled knees, a sun-faded polo shirt stretched tight over his gut, and scuffed tennis shoes with baggy white socks. On his big head sat a Boston Red Sox baseball cap and he was carrying a nylon bag that DeMarco assumed contained whatever else he needed for the trip: sunblock, a jacket – and a fifth of bourbon in case they didn’t have his brand on board.

      The boat taking Mahoney fishing was moored at a marina on Shilshoe Bay. It was sixty feet long and had more antennae on the bridge than a navy destroyer. The owner of the boat was a very rich guy, Alex somebody, who had invented cell phones or cell-phone towers or maybe it was cell-phone cases. DeMarco hadn’t been listening when Mahoney told him. In addition to the rich guy there was a man who skippered the boat and a deckhand whose only function was to cater to Mahoney’s every need.

      DeMarco turned to leave after he had handed Mahoney’s bag up to the deckhand, but Mahoney said, ‘Where you going? You’re coming too. You need to tell me what you found out on this thing with Hathaway’s nephew.’

      Not again, DeMarco thought. This was just like the golf game. He wasn’t wearing a suit today – he was dressed casually in a short-sleeved shirt, khaki pants, and Top-Siders – but they weren’t clothes he wanted to get fish guts all over. Plus he didn’t have a hat to keep the sun off his head or a windbreaker in case it got chilly out on the water. He told Mahoney this.

      ‘Ah, don’t worry about it. They probably got stuff here on the boat you can use. Don’t you, Alex?’ Mahoney said to the rich guy.

      ‘Oh, I’m sure we do,’ Alex said.

      DeMarco could tell that Alex didn’t have a clue.

      

      It took an hour to transit from the marina to the area where the fish supposedly were. DeMarco was enjoying the ride, looking at the Olympic Mountains to the west, when his cell phone rang.

      ‘Mr DeMarco, it’s Dave Whit …’

      The cell-phone signal was weak and DeMarco couldn’t hear half of what Whitfield was saying.

      ‘What?’ DeMarco shouted.

      ‘It’s Dave Whit … those two guys … I was …’

      ‘Dave, I can’t hear you,’ DeMarco yelled into his phone.

      ‘I said, I think …’

      ‘Dave! I can’t hear you!’ DeMarco shouted.

      Then DeMarco could hear nothing but dead air and he hung up.

      The deckhand said to DeMarco, ‘If you need to talk to that guy you can go up to the bridge and use one of Alex’s phones. He’s got stuff up there that can reach the moon.’

      ‘Nah, that’s okay,’ DeMarco said. ‘I’ll just call him after we get back to the marina.’ He doubted if Whitfield had anything new to tell him, and at any rate, there wasn’t much he could do while stuck on a boat in the middle of Puget Sound.

      DeMarco would spend a lot of time in the days to come regretting that decision.

      

      The deckhand had set up three poles in three downriggers and the downriggers were set for three different depths to triple Mahoney’s chances of catching a salmon.

      ‘Now if one of them hits,’ the deckhand said to Mahoney, ‘you gotta set the hook. We’re using barbless hooks, and if you don’t

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