The second perimeter Read online

  “Are you saying they’re not qualified to do this study, and you think this is fraudulent?” Emma said.

  “No,” Whitfield said. “They’re qualified, I guess. They’re ex-navy, they were reactor operators on subs, and like I said they worked in the shipyard for more than twenty years. So on paper, they’re qualified. But they’re just…I don’t know. Incompetent. Before they retired they were always in trouble for something, not paying attention to details, doing sloppy work, not showing up on time. Like I said, losers. It’s hard to believe somebody would hire them.”

  “I’m confused, Dave,” Emma said. “What exactly is it that you think they’re doing that’s illegal.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What!” DeMarco said.

  “Go on, Dave,” Emma said, giving DeMarco a settle-down look.

  “You see,” Whitfield said, “all of a sudden these guys have got gobs of money. One of them just bought a new fishing boat and the other guy, I heard him talking about getting a home-entertainment system that’s worth ten grand. And one day I asked one of them how much he was getting paid working for this company. He beats around the bush for a while, but he finally tells me he’s getting about twice what he used to make working for the government.”

  “So that’s it?” DeMarco said. “You don’t think these two guys oughta be doing this study and they’re making more money than you.”

  “No, damn it, that’s not what I’m saying,” Whitfield snapped. “I’m saying there’s something funny going on here. These guys just shouldn’t be getting all this money for what they’re doing. Something’s wrong. And that’s not all.”

  “Yeah?” DeMarco said. “What else is there?”

  “They don’t act like they’re reviewing our training program. They ought to be gathering data on class sizes and training costs and reviewing curriculums, that kinda thing. But they don’t seem to be doing that. They just seem to sit around a lot, bullshitting, and looking at the reactor plant manuals.”

  “What are those?” DeMarco said.

  “They’re manuals that tell you how navy reactor plants work. You understand?”

  By now DeMarco thought he had a pretty good sense of Whitfield. He was the type who was always outraged by something; he probably called up the mayor’s office and wrote passionate letters to the editor every time something got his goat.

  “So,” DeMarco said, “let me see if I got all this straight. You got a couple of guys you don’t think are very good, who have come into some money recently that you can’t explain, and they’re going about this study all wrong. Is that it?”

  “Yeah,” Whitfield said. “Something stinks.”

  * * *

  “CAN YOU BELIEVE that guy?” DeMarco said to Emma after Whitfield had left. “No wonder Hathaway didn’t want NCIS talking to him. I mean, did you hear one damn thing that sounded like fraud to you? Anything?”

  “Take it easy, Joe,” Emma said. “You’re in a beautiful part of the country. Take a walk. Go for a drive. Tomorrow we’ll meet these two people, talk to the company they work for, and get their side of the story. And we’ll talk to somebody in shipyard management who’s more objective than Whitfield.”

  Christine was going to be in Seattle for another day with the symphony and DeMarco could tell that Emma— the new, laid-back, take-it-easy Emma— had decided that torturing consultants and shipyard managers would be more fun than sitting around doing nothing.

  Emma rose from her chair and said, “I have to get going. I need to catch the next ferry to Seattle to meet Christine in time for dinner.”

  “And after we question these guys tomorrow and don’t find anything illegal going on, then what?” DeMarco said.

  “Then you tell Hathaway to tell his sister to tell her son to quit being such a damn crybaby.”

  * * *

  AFTER EMMA LEFT, DeMarco sat sipping his beer, thinking a little more about Whitfield. He still thought the guy was a whiny flake but Emma was right: he’d worry about Whitfield tomorrow. He looked around the bar. Other than the bartender, he was the only one there. On the television set, a baseball game was playing: the Seattle Mariners versus the Toronto Blue Jays, both teams at the bottom of their respective divisions. Professional bowling was more exciting.

  He walked to a supermarket two blocks from the motel, bought half a dozen car magazines, and returned to the motel bar. He’d research the auto market, become an informed consumer. He’d probably still get screwed if he bought the Beemer convertible but he could console himself with the thought that he’d done his homework. He ordered another beer— it must have been his fourth and he was starting to feel like a bloated sumo wrestler— and began to read his magazines.

  He concluded that the smart thing to do— the practical thing— would be to buy a Honda or a Toyota. Last year’s model. These cars were rated top of the line in terms of quality and gas mileage and resale value, and if he could find last year’s model with less than thirty thousand miles on it, he’d be getting a practically brand-new car and shave four or five thousand off the price of a really brand-new car. Yeah, that made sense. That would be smart.

  The problem was he couldn’t tell the difference between a Honda and a Toyota. They looked like they’d been designed by a computer based solely on data from wind-tunnel tests. They were about as sexy as an old lady’s bloomers. Beemer Z3. Jaguar. Mercedes coupe. Porsche. Those cars had va-voom. They had sex appeal. They were created by artists, not some pencil-necked engineer trying to squeeze one more mile per gallon out of a friggin’ four-cylinder engine.

  “Well, hello there,” a very sultry voice said.

  Thank you, Jesus, DeMarco thought, and looked up from his magazine. The lady who had spoken looked hard. The expression “forty miles of bad road” came immediately to mind. She had crammed a size fourteen body into a size eight dress, wore a blond wig that didn’t match the dark mustache over her upper lip, and her makeup looked as if it had been applied with a trowel.

  DeMarco mumbled something inarticulate, scooped up his magazines, and headed back to his room. Why did he always have such bad luck with women? Why couldn’t the old hooker have been a Swedish stewardess or foxy young businesswoman looking for some fun? Why didn’t those sorts of fantasies ever come true for him?

  Because he drove a Volvo, that’s why.

  5

  The offices of Carmody and Associates were in Bremerton on the corner of Pacific and Burwell, on the ground floor of a building that housed three other small enterprises: an independent insurance agent, a tax consultant, and a beauty shop with no customers. Emma knocked once on the door, then immediately opened it without waiting for an answer. Two men— sitting at a card table, drinking beer and playing gin— looked up in surprise.

  Both men were in their early fifties, and both wore blue jeans and short-sleeved shirts. Pretty casual attire for consultants, DeMarco thought. One of the men was tall, had gray-brown hair in need of a trim, a scraggly mustache, skinny arms, skinny legs, and a small potbelly. The other man was short, almost bald, and had a much larger potbelly. The bald guy also had an anchor tattoo on his right forearm.

  Maybe it was the tattoo, but DeMarco had the immediate impression that if these two had been born two hundred years earlier they would have been pirates.

  “You need something?” the tall one said.

  “Yes,” Emma said. “We’re doing a review for Congress. We called earlier to set up an appointment but no one returned our phone call. I guess you were just too busy,” she said, looking down at the card table.

  The tall man looked over at the short man. The short man made eye contact with Emma, a touch of insolence in his eyes, then turned his head toward a partially open door behind him and yelled, “Hey, boss!”

  The man who came through the door was big and good-looking: six three, broad shouldered, maybe two hundred and twenty pounds. He wore gray slacks and a blue polo shirt, and his chest and biceps strained against the material of the shi
rt. The guy worked out. His dark hair was cut short and he had a small scar on his chin. He struck DeMarco as being tough and competent, but more like a cop or a solider than someone you’d hire to study a navy training program.

  “It’s that lady who called this morning,” the bald man said.

  The big guy was silent for a moment as he sized up DeMarco and Emma, then he relaxed and smiled. He had an engaging smile. “I’m Phil Carmody,” he said, and shook hands with them. “I’m in charge of this little zoo. That’s Bill Norton,” he said pointing at the short, bald guy. “And that’s Ned Mulherin.” Mulherin nodded like a friendly puppy; Norton glared.

  Carmody didn’t invite DeMarco and Emma into his office, which DeMarco found odd. Instead he told Norton to grab a couple of chairs from the office and directed Mulherin to clear the cards and bottles off the card table. DeMarco noticed the way he spoke to his employees, giving curt orders, not bothering to say “please” or “thank you,” having no doubt he’d be obeyed immediately. DeMarco had the impression that if Carmody had told his two guys to eat their playing cards, they’d start chewing.

  “And in case you’re wondering,” Carmody said as Mulherin removed the beer bottles from the table, “we only bill the government for the hours we work, and these two were not on the clock.”

  “Right,” Emma said, not bothering to hide her disbelief. DeMarco expected Carmody to protest but he didn’t. He just shrugged, obviously not overly concerned about her perception of his billing practices.

  When the extra chairs were in place, Carmody said, “You want anything to drink? Coke? Bottled water? Coffee?”

  “No,” Emma said.

  “Okay, then,” Carmody said. “So how ’bout showing me some ID.”

  DeMarco passed Carmody his congressional identification. Emma stared into Carmody’s eyes for a moment, then pulled a library card from her wallet and held it up for Carmody to see. She didn’t hand him the card. Emma was screwing with Carmody and DeMarco waited for his reaction, but all Carmody did was smile, his lips twitching in amusement. Unlike most people, Carmody wasn’t intimidated by Emma; he seemed tickled by her attitude.

  “So what can I do for you?” Carmody said.

  Before DeMarco could say anything, Emma responded to Carmody’s question. Emma had a tendency to assume command whenever she and DeMarco worked together. “A congressman,” Emma said, “received a complaint from one of his constituents regarding how much you’re charging the navy for the work you’re doing.”

  “You flew out here because of one complaint?” Carmody said. He seemed to find that both astounding and amusing.

  Emma ignored the question. “We’d like to understand what you’re doing, how much you’re billing, how long it will take, that sort of thing.”

  “That fuckin’ Whitfield,” Mulherin muttered.

  “What did you say?” Carmody said sharply to Mulherin.

  “Oh, there’s this guy I used to work with and he keeps bitching about how much I’m making. I’ll betcha he caused this. I mean, I explained to him—”

  “That’s enough,” Carmody said. DeMarco knew that after they left Carmody was going to have a pointed discussion with Mr. Mulherin. To DeMarco and Emma, Carmody said, “As you probably already know, we’re doing a review to streamline a shipyard training program. The current program is expensive and I have, we have, some ideas for how to improve it. Get the book, Norton.”

  Norton dashed into Carmody’s office and returned with a three-ring binder. Carmody spent the next fifteen minutes going over the existing training program, what it cost, the curriculum, class sizes, class hours, that sort of thing. DeMarco didn’t understand everything Carmody said but based on the questions she asked, Emma seemed to. The one thing DeMarco did understand was that as opposed to what Dave Whitfield had led them to believe, Carmody seemed to have acquired exactly the sort of information you’d expect him to have to do his review, and he seemed to know what he was talking about.

  “We understand that your guys here,” DeMarco said, gesturing toward Mulherin and Norton, “are making a lot more money than they made when they worked in the shipyard.”

  Carmody shrugged. “So what?” he said. Before DeMarco could respond, he said, “Look, I submitted a bid to get this job, the navy accepted my bid, and I’m paying these guys the going rate. It’s not my problem that some yardbird thinks they should be paid less.”

  “Who awarded you the contract?” Emma asked.

  Carmody hesitated, but just for a second. “NAVSEA,” he said.

  “Who?” DeMarco said.

  “It’s not a person,” Emma said. “NAVSEA is the Naval Sea Systems Command. A navy headquarters outfit back in D.C.”

  “Right,” Carmody said. “You people could have saved yourself the trip out here. Somebody at NAVSEA could have given you the same information I just did.”

  DeMarco wished he had known that before he flew out to Bremerton.

  “But who specifically at NAVSEA?” Emma said. “Who’s the individual that awarded you the contract?”

  “I don’t know,” Carmody said. “Whoever handles this sort of thing back in Washington, I guess.”

  Carmody’s response had been casual but DeMarco had been looking at his arms when he spoke. Carmody was holding a coffee cup in both hands and when he answered the last question, he squeezed the cup hard enough that the muscles in his forearms jumped. DeMarco would hate to have to arm wrestle this guy.

  Emma stared at Carmody for a moment but before she could say anything else, Carmody stood up. “Hey, it’s been great talking to you but I have a meeting I have to get to. All I can tell you is that the review we’re doing is needed, our billing rates are not out of line, and I was low bidder on the job. If you have any more questions you need to talk to the people back in D.C. who awarded me the contract.”

  As they walked back toward Emma’s rental car, she said, “What do you think?”

  DeMarco shrugged. “I don’t know. Norton and Mulherin didn’t exactly strike me as rocket scientists but the study sounds legit, and as for Carmody, he seems pretty sharp.”

  “Yes, he does,” Emma said. She paused before she added, “He reminds me of mercenaries I’ve known.”

  6

  Carmody watched through the window as DeMarco and Emma walked away, then turned and stared at Mulherin. Mulherin looked like a dog waiting to be kicked, and Carmody definitely felt like kicking him. Goddamnit, what an idiot. But he’d deal with Mulherin later.

  He went into his office and closed the door and took a seat at his desk. He put his right hand on the phone but he didn’t pick it up.

  He wasn’t worried about the questions they had asked. There was nothing wrong with his contract or what he was charging the government or anything else. No, it wasn’t the questions that worried him— it was the people asking the questions.

  First, if somebody had really written their congressman to complain about his contract, the congressman would have handed off the complaint to the GAO or the Naval Inspector General. He wouldn’t have sent congressional staffers out here to deal with it.

  And then there was DeMarco. There was something about him, a toughness to him, that didn’t match his mission. Carmody had been exposed to House staff people in the past and they were usually eager young kids, not some hard case like DeMarco. DeMarco’s ID had looked legit so he might be some kind of political operator— but he sure as hell wasn’t a guy you sent out to check on a nickel-and-dime navy contract.

  But the woman was the real problem. Carmody had met her once before, ten or twelve years ago. She was someone you didn’t forget. He didn’t remember her name though— and that little game she’d played with the library card had kept him from finding it out— but he knew what she was even if he didn’t know who she was. Fortunately, she hadn’t recognized him, which wasn’t surprising considering the conditions under which they’d met. But whether she recognized him or not, the fact that she was here could mean real trouble.
/>   His hand was still resting on the phone. He knew he should make the call. The problem was that he could never predict how she was going to react. Or overreact. He finally took his hand off the phone. He’d wait. If they came back again and if they asked different questions, then he’d call her.

  Goddamnit. He felt like killing Mulherin.

  7

  DeMarco and Emma were having lunch, Emma picking at a tuna salad while DeMarco consumed a cheeseburger the size of a catcher’s mitt.

  The navy dominated the city of Bremerton and the county in which it was located. In addition to the shipyard in Bremerton, which employed about ten thousand people, there was the Naval Submarine Base located in Bangor, Washington, and the Undersea Warfare Center in Keyport, Washington. The place where they were dining reflected the community’s support— and financial dependence— on the navy. The walls were covered with photographs of submarines bursting from the water and fighters taking off from the decks of aircraft carriers. Two tables away from Emma and DeMarco sat a gentleman who wore a dark blue baseball cap emblazoned with the words U.S. NAVY RETIRED— a totally redundant statement as the man looked old enough to have sailed with John Paul Jones.