“Whatever. You’re picking up the check.”
Finding DiMarco had taken the senator exactly one phone call to his father. Edward Day III had provided his son, through DNA, with the brains, the looks, and the inherent instinct to survive at all costs. He shared his son’s ambition. He wanted nothing more than to be the father of the President. If his son would only learn how to use a condom.
“Where can I find the individuals in question?” DiMarco asked over a steaming plate of mussels on the table.
“Saipan.”
“Just where the hell is that?”
The senator gave DiMarco a brief geography lesson. Vincent DiMarco listened and nodded.
“You have pictures of these acquaintances of yours?”
“No,” the senator lied. He sure as hell wasn’t about to hand over the pictures he did have.
DiMarco, dark eyes staring at the senator, thought for a moment. “One hundred thousand before I start. Another one hundred thousand when the job is done. Plus fifty thousand for expenses.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “I deal in cash, and I don’t start until I receive the first payment. This is the address where you can deliver the money. There is a door on the second floor in the back. Someone will answer. Here is a phone number where you can reach me. Don’t use my name. I am the only one who will answer at that number, so you don’t have to go asking for me. If I don’t answer, don’t leave a message. If I need to contact you, I will do so from a public phone or I will use an untraceable prepaid phone.”
“Agreed,” the senator answered. “It will take me a couple of days to get the cash.”
“Fine. Like I said, I will be waiting. Once I receive the payment, I will start. When I finish, I will contact you and you will deliver the second payment to another address I will identify later.”
“Fine.”
“Now what can you tell me about your acquaintances?”
The senator liked the sound of the word “acquaintance.” “My first acquaintance is a man by the name of Lee Chang, owner of a sweatshop operating under the name Chang Industries. My second acquaintance is a girl named Wei Ling who works at the sweatshop.” The senator pointed to an address from a corner of his old itinerary to the island. “Here’s the address of the sweatshop—it should be easy to find. Saipan is not a big island.”
“Well, nothing is as easy as it sounds. I’ll have to do some surveillance and pick my spot. It’ll take a week. Maybe less, maybe more.”
“The sooner, the better.”
“Any preference?”
“What do you mean?”
“There are a lot of ways to get injured in this world. I mean, I’ll take what I can get as far as the opportunity goes, but I try to accommodate my client’s request.”
Senator Day looked around the empty private dining room as if he expected the FBI to come busting through the door. “I’m not sure what you are saying,” the senator answered coyly. “But if I had a choice of how I would like to die, I would prefer it be an accident.”
“I’ll see what I can do. I think I can rule out the use of a firearm. I’m not about to fly to some foreign country with a gun in my bag.”
“It’s not a foreign country. Saipan is a U.S. territory.”
“Well, just the same. Taking a gun on an airplane, even a gun with a proper license, is not in our best interest.” DiMarco didn’t bother telling the senator that he preferred knives. They did the job, left fewer clues if you took the weapon with you, and they were silent. Every musician has their favorite instrument and DiMarco’s were stainless steel, heavily weighted, razor sharp blades made by an old codger in Toledo, Spain.
The senator nodded and said nothing.
Mr. Gelodini entered with a fresh basket of bread and filled the senator’s wine glass. Vincent DiMarco stood and straightened his jacket.
“Michael, my guest can’t stay for dinner. Would you please see him out?”
“Certainly, sir. Will the senator still be dining with us this evening?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Very well.”
Michael Gelodini led Vincent DiMarco through the kitchen and out the side door to an alley beside the restaurant. The metal door shut and darkness surrounded DiMarco like a comfortable jacket. With quarter of a million dollars on his income horizon, DiMarco looked down the alley in both directions. To the left he could see the lights of Hanover Street silhouetting patrons as they shuffled down the sidewalk. DiMarco turned away from the light and vanished into the night.
Chapter 18
Marilyn opened her eyes as the morning sun peaked through a crack in the curtains. For the third night in a row, she had spent more time staring at the dark ceiling than she had at the back of her eyelids. The fax that had poured into the office earlier in the week had forced her to reflect on the last twenty years of her life, something she had managed to avoid through self-therapy and good old-fashioned medication. Admitting that she was the cause of Jake’s parent’s divorce, combined with the plight of a seamstress named Wei Ling, sent her tail-spinning into a level of depression she hadn’t visited in years. She rolled over, got out of bed in her nightgown, and downed two Valium and a Zoloft with her morning espresso.
An hour later, she grabbed a seat on the crowded Metro and cautiously circled job possibilities from the employment page, looking over her shoulder as she rode the subway six stops on the red line. At the office, she made travel plans, took phone calls, and shifted around a never-ending carousel of meetings and appointments, dinners, and lunches. She brewed coffee for her boss as soon as she knew he was on the floor and served it with one spoonful of real sugar, stirred well. But for the first time in her life, she was looking at other job alternatives, scanning the opportunities available to a forty-five-year-old secretary with no educational background.
Reeling from guilt, she asked Jake to lunch—an offer which he politely declined. Marilyn’s third offer to buy him a drink after work was finally, grudgingly, accepted. She didn’t want to leave anything unsaid. She didn’t want Jake to have any questions about the past. He was going to be burdened for life by the truth she had already spilled. She was going to apologize again, try to explain the unexplainable, and act like an adult for once in her life, even if it killed her.
Jake got out of a late evening meeting, a conference call with an Indonesian firm looking to import a new generator for an offshore, wind-power venture. He had prolonged the meeting as long as he could by peppering the international team with an inordinate number of questions. In the back of his mind, he hoped Marilyn wouldn’t be waiting when he finished. Luck wasn’t on his side.
The waiter led Jake and Marilyn to a two-seater booth in a shaded corner of The Dark Room, an appropriately named hole in the basement of an old office building five blocks from Winthrop Enterprises.
The waiter gave the young man and the older woman the usual look. Boy toys for the city’s wealthy and lonely wives were an old sport, and a few establishments in Georgetown survived on such clientele alone.
Marilyn grabbed the red menu with the gold edge and flipped to the cocktails. Jake, uncomfortable, looked around the bar.
“Your friend Al is a little out there.”
“He can help.”
“He said he would, but not without giving me the first degree.”
“He is a very smart man. Don’t let the mental breakdown fool you.”
“Did you know the guy used to work in intelligence?”