House Justice Read Online Free PDF Page B

many affairs—probably wouldn’t do anything. But if the guy was up to something else, something illegal, well … DeMarco still had no idea what Mahoney might do. Turn the guy in? Maybe. Take him to the woodshed and make him see the error of his ways? Possibly. But more likely, unless the guy was a serial killer, Mahoney would just use the information to control his vote. With Mahoney, nothing was ever simple or certain.
    But instead of rooting out mischief in politics, DeMarco was watching a baseball game. Curtis Jackson, the man who supervised the Capitol’s janitors, had given DeMarco the ticket. A lobbyist had originally given the ticket to a congressman, and the congressman had passed it to Jackson, but because Jackson didn’t want to burn up his vacation time, he had asked if DeMarco wanted to go to the game.
    “On a Wednesday?” DeMarco had said. “Right in the middle of the workday? Hell, yeah, I wanna go.”
    And so there he sat, his seat right behind the Nationals’ dugout. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a seat this good. And heliked day games a lot better than night games, particularly when the weather was like it was today: a beautiful seventy degrees, not a cloud in the sky, the flags in the outfield barely moving. He took a sip of his beer and snuck another glance at the good-looking mommy sitting with the two little boys one row away. He noticed she didn’t wear a wedding ring. Hmmm. Maybe he’d…
    Shit! He could tell just by the sound the ball made coming off the bat that that baby was gone, outta the park, bye-bye baseball. The Mets now led four to zip, and it was only the second inning. But who cared? He had a beer, he had the sun on his face, there was a pretty woman to look at and hot dogs to eat—and he wasn’t working.
    The Nationals pitching coach and the catcher were out on the mound now. The shortstop was with them and DeMarco guessed he was there to translate, the pitcher being a Cuban defector who spoke only Spanish. DeMarco could imagine the conversation, the pitching coach saying to the shortstop, “Ask him why the fuck he keeps throwing fastballs belt-high, right over the plate?” The shortstop would then repeat the question in machine-gun-rapid Spanish, the translation probably beginning with, “This asshole wants to know why …”
    Two minutes later the home-plate umpire broke up the bilingual conference, and just as the pitcher was fondling the rosin bag to delay his next pitch, DeMarco’s cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. Crap. It was Mahoney.
    “Where the hell are you?” Mahoney asked.
    “Uh…”
    Fortunately, before DeMarco had to invent a plausible lie, Mahoney said, “I don’t care. Get over to Old Ebbitt’s. I gotta meeting over at Treasury that begins in ten minutes. When it ends, I’ll come over to the restaurant. I need you to…”
    Crack
! DeMarco looked up and saw the ball heading toward the right-field fence—and at the same time thirty-two thousand people at Nationals Park let out a massive groan.
    “Where the hell are you?” Mahoney asked again.

     
    The Old Ebbitt Grill was directly across the street from the massive structure that housed the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It had a mahogany-colored bar that seemed about a hundred yards long, a shiny brass foot rail that ran along the bottom of the bar, and behind the bar were about a thousand bottles of booze. He was served by a dignified bartender dressed in a white shirt and a black bow tie who spoke with an Irish brogue.
     
    DeMarco approved of Old Ebbitt’s bar.
    He’d been relieved that he’d been able to get to the restaurant before his boss and he’d just taken a sip of his martini when Mahoney walked through the door. He stood on the landing in front of the hostess’s lectern, his big white-haired head swiveling about as he looked for DeMarco. He finally saw him standing at the bar and made an irritated get-over-here gesture with his right arm.
    DeMarco