House Justice by Mike Lawson Read Free Book Online

accuse you of giving him up.”
    Whitmore lit a cigarette and her eyes narrowed as the smoke drifted upward. She studied DeMarco for a minute, thinking about what he’d just said, then looked around the small room. “Couldn’t you have asked for a room with a damn window in it?” she muttered. “I can’t remember the last time I saw the sky.”
    DeMarco didn’t respond; he’d been with her less than five minutes and was already tired of her company.
    “Okay,” she said. “His name is Derek Crosby and he works for the CIA, just like I said in my story. And if you tell anyone I told you that, I’ll crucify Mahoney, I swear to Christ I will. I’ll make him sound like the biggest pervert since Hugh Hefner.”
    DeMarco ignored the threat. “How do you know Crosby’s CIA?” he asked.
    “Do I look stupid to you?” Whitmore said. “He showed me his credentials. And I called the CIA from a pay phone so there wouldn’t be any record of the call and asked to speak to him. When they rang me through to his desk, I hung up before he answered because I was worried they might monitor phone calls, but I know he works there.”
    “What does he look like?”
    “Big, tall guy. Late fifties, early sixties. Curly, ginger-colored hair. A bit of a potbelly but otherwise not in bad shape. And tan, like he spends a lot of time outdoors.”
    “Any distinguishing characteristics? A scar, a tattoo, a limp, anything like that?”
    “No. But he lisps.”
    “Lisps?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Where’d you meet him?” DeMarco asked.
    “The Hyatt by Grand Central Station.”
    “Did you meet him in his room or the bar or did you leave the hotel?”
    “The bar.”
    “Did you sit at the bar or at a table?”
    “At a table.”
    “And do you know if Crosby registered under his own name?”
    “Yeah. When I got there I used the house phone to let him know I was there. I had to give his name to the reservation desk so they could ring his room.”
    “This is good,” DeMarco said. “I may be able to find someone on the hotel staff who saw you together.”
    “Or,” Whitmore said with a smile DeMarco found obscene, “you could
pay
somebody to say they saw us together whether they did or not.”
    It didn’t take long for ol’ Sandy to get into the spirit of things.
    “Wouldn’t Crosby have known that your story would put this agent in jeopardy?” DeMarco asked.
    “How would I know?” Whitmore said. “But from what I’ve read, LaFountaine’s polygraphed everyone at Langley that knew about the spy and it wasn’t very many people. So maybe Crosby was in the loop about Diller’s trip to Tehran but he didn’t know about the spy. Or maybe he never thought exposing Diller would hurt the spy. I don’t know. All I know is it wasn’t
my
fault that woman was killed.”
    DeMarco wanted to say,
Yeah it was, you remorseless bitch
—but he didn’t.

Chapter 10
     
    Marty Taylor sat on a rock fifty yards from the Pacific Ocean.
     
    He had just come from a board meeting and was wearing an Armani suit, a Dolce and Gabbana dress shirt, and black lace-up shoes that had cost eight hundred dollars. It was a gray, blustery day—so windy that when the surf crashed onto the beach he was drenched with spray—but he didn’t care. He didn’t care that the back of his pants was filthy from the sandy rock and his expensive clothes were soaked with saltwater.
    Naturally, the board meeting had been devoted to what Conrad Diller was accused of doing, and trying to assess what impact his arrest would have on the company. The stock price had been headed toward the basement before this happened; tomorrow it was expected to reach an all-time low. And the Pentagon was threatening to send out a team to do a security review to make sure there weren’t any more Dillers in the company. Every board member was absolutely dumbfounded that Diller, a young professional who made a good salary, would do such a thing. Well, everyone wasn’t shocked—but Marty and