Prologue

Mahoney disconnected the call, then just stood there staring out the window.

From his apartment in the Watergate complex, he could see a portion of the Kennedy Center, the broad black ribbon that was the Potomac River, and the lights of Northern Virginia. Had it been daylight, he would have been able to see some of the white headstones in Arlington National Cemetery, a view, that when he was in his cups, often brought tears to his eyes.

Tonight there were tears in his eyes, but not because he’d been contemplating the final resting place of so many valiant Americans. The tears had welled up after the call he’d received.

His wife said, “John, is something wrong? Who was that?”

Mary Pat could tell the call had stunned him, but he couldn’t tell her why. No way could he tell her why.

He wiped a big hand across his face to brush away the tears, and finally turned to face her. She was standing in the living room doorway, in a robe. She’d been about to go to bed when he’d received the call. Her face was scrubbed free of makeup, and he thought: Geez, she looks old. But then, if Mary Pat—who, unlike himself, didn’t drink or smoke and exercised daily—looked old, he knew he must look like the walking dead. He supposed it was the call that had made him think about what little time they both had left on this capricious planet.

He said, “I gotta … I gotta go out for a bit.”

“At this time of night?”

It was almost midnight.

“Yeah, I need to …”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He couldn’t tell her that it felt as if the walls were closing in on him. He needed air. He couldn’t breathe. And he was afraid he might burst into tears—and then he wouldn’t be able to explain to her why.

He headed for the door, and Mary Pat said, “I hope you’re not planning to drive anywhere. You’re in no shape to be driving.”

That was probably true. He’d been drinking since he got home from work, but he always drank when he got home from work—and usually drank while he was at work. He was an alcoholic. But he wasn’t planning to drive. He just needed to be alone.

He said, “I’m not driving. I just need some fresh air.”

“John, what’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow. Go to bed.”

Now he was going to have to make up something to tell her. He didn’t know what; he’d figure it out later. He opened the door, and she said, “John! Put on a coat. You’ll freeze out there.”

She was right. It was March. It wasn’t raining at the moment, but the temperature was in the low forties, and he was wearing only the suit pants he’d worn to work and a white dress shirt. He grabbed a trench coat off a hook near the door and shrugged it on. Mary Pat was saying something as he closed the door, but the words couldn’t penetrate the fog surrounding his brain.

John Mahoney had just been told that his son had been killed—and his wife didn’t know that he had a son.

Mahoney stepped outside the building and started walking in the direction of the Lincoln Memorial, a couple of miles away. The wind whipped the trench coat around his legs and stung his cheeks, but he didn’t notice.

Mahoney was a handsome, heavyset man, broad across the back and butt. His most distinctive features were sky blue eyes and a full head of snow white hair. When he appeared on camera, he had the makeup lady cover the broken veins in his nose.

He was currently the minority leader of the United States House of Representatives. He’d been the Speaker of the House for more than a dozen years, then lost the position when the Republicans took control, but he was still the most powerful Democrat on Capitol Hill. When he’d had the affair with Connie DiNunzio, he’d been in Congress for only three years.

Connie, like him, grew fat as the years passed, but when he met her she was … hell, she’d looked like Sophia Loren: thick dark hair, a long straight nose, full lips, heavy breasts, shapely legs. She’d been an absolute knockout—and Mahoney was a man who rarely met a temptation he was able to resist. Connie was neither the first nor the last affair he’d had—he’d had a lot of affairs over the years—but she was the only one to bear him a child. Connie DiNunzio wasn’t too Catholic to sleep with a married man, but she was too Catholic to get an abortion.

When she’d told him she was pregnant and that he was the father, he’d had no doubt she was telling the truth. He also figured that if she had the kid it could be the end of his fledgling political career. But Connie never told anyone. She’d been an aide to a New York congressman when they met and she quit the job, went back to New York, and had the child. And she never asked anything of Mahoney—at least not for herself or her son. She did ask for a favor later—and Mahoney was still paying back that favor.

Anyway, time went on. Connie married a guy she later divorced and ended up becoming a career bureaucrat in Albany and a major player in the backstabbing, bare-knuckles world of New York state politics. As for the kid, he went on to college, got married, had three kids, and started his own accounting firm in Manhattan. Mahoney had kept tabs on his illegitimate son—but he’d never met him.

The call he’d gotten had been from Connie. She’d told him that her boy—their boy—had been shot and killed in a bar in Manhattan. She wasn’t crying when she called. She didn’t intend to share her grief; she’d called because she wanted vengeance. She told him that the man who’d killed her son was the son of a rich guy, a guy rich enough to buy his way out of anything. She said, her voice as cold and hard as ice, “You make sure this little prick gets what’s coming to him, John. Dominic was the father of the grandkids you never met, and you damn well better do everything in your power to make sure that the man who killed him pays for what he did.”

Mahoney had three daughters, but none of them were currently married and none of them had given him and Mary Pat grandkids. As Connie had said, the only grandchildren he had were as much strangers to him as their father had been.

Mahoney sat down on a bench and thought for a time about all the mistakes he’d made in his long life. He thought about his son’s wife and his grandchildren, and made a promise to do whatever it took to make sure they were financially okay. Regarding what Connie had told him—how he’d better make sure the killer went to prison—he could think of only one thing to do immediately.

He took out his cell phone. The face of the iPhone informed him that it was now one a.m.—and Mahoney didn’t give a shit. He called a man who worked for him. A guy named DeMarco.

He woke DeMarco up. After DeMarco said a sleepy hello, Mahoney said, “Dominic DiNunzio was killed this evening in Manhattan. Get your ass up there and find out what’s happening with the case.”

DeMarco said, “What? Dominic? Dominic was killed?”

DeMarco knew Dominic DiNunzio. He just didn’t know he was Mahoney’s bastard.

Connie DiNunzio happened to be Joe DeMarco’s godmother because Connie was DeMarco’s mother’s best friend. Connie DiNunzio was also the only reason that DeMarco had a job working for John Mahoney.

The way it all came about was that DeMarco’s Irish mother had had the misfortune to fall in love with a man who worked for the old Italian mob in Queens. DeMarco’s dad had been a mob enforcer. A killer.

When Gino DeMarco was killed, young Joe DeMarco—who was a few years younger than Connie’s son—had just graduated from law school and couldn’t find a job, as no law firm on the eastern seaboard wanted the son of a Mafia hit man on its payroll. And that’s when Connie had called Mahoney and asked for the only favor she’d ever asked. And actually she didn’t ask for the favor—she demanded it. She told Mahoney, who at that time was the Speaker, to give young Joe a job. If he didn’t give young Joe a job, well then, Connie might … Mahoney hired young Joe.

Over the years, DeMarco had become Mahoney’s go-to guy when Mahoney had problems he couldn’t or didn’t want to solve by going through normal channels. He was also Mahoney’s bagman—the one he sent to collect contributions some nitpickers might construe as bribes. DeMarco was smart enough—and ethically bent enough—to do the job well, but he was also lazy. He was a guy who would rather play golf than work, and Mahoney knew he was just marking time, doing as little as he could until he could collect a federal pension. That is, he’d collect one if he didn’t get indicted and go to jail first. One thing about DeMarco, though, and even Mahoney had to admit this, was that if he had a personal stake in an assignment he could be as determined and devious as he had to be to get results. And this time Mahoney knew it would be personal for DeMarco, because he loved Connie DiNunzio and had known her son.

DeMarco called Mahoney from New York the next day and said, “There’s no doubt whatsoever that the guy who killed Dominic is going to be convicted of second-degree murder. The case is a slam dunk for the prosecutor.”

DeMarco was dead wrong.