Free The Second Perimeter by Mike Lawson Page B

reason for leaving was to pursue work in the private sector. He may have been bitter, but you don’t get that impression. I mean there’s no nasty letters to his CO in his file, no demands for hearings. It looks like he was just ready to move on after six years of putting his ass on the line for minimum wage.”

“Do you know what he did after he left the SEALs?”

“Sort of. I don’t have a lot of detail but he was in Hong Kong for almost seven years. He got out of the navy in ’96, bummed around Europe for a year, then he took a job at a utility company outside of Toledo that operates a nuclear power plant there. But in ’98 he quit the job at the utility company— it was probably too much like being back on a sub— and goes to Hong Kong where he lands a job with an outfit that provides security for big shots and their businesses and their families over there. I don’t know if Carmody was a bodyguard or some other kind of security consultant, but being an ex-SEAL he could have been either. Then the company he worked for in Hong Kong relocated to Thailand in 2003. This was six years after Hong Kong was returned to the Chinese so I imagine by then private enterprise in Hong Kong was starting to feel the heat from the old-timers in Beijing. The problem is, we have no record of what Carmody did after the security company relocated, but he stayed in Hong Kong until he came up with the shipyard training thing last year.”

“That’s quite a career change,” Emma said, “from hired muscle in Hong Kong to training consultant in the States. I wonder why he didn’t relocate to Thailand with his old company.”

“Beats me,” Peterson said.

Emma thanked Peterson and started to hang up, but before she did, the researcher said, “Emma, this guy Carmody is smart and if he’s gone bad, he’s dangerous. I’ve heard you’re kinda on your own out there. You be careful, ya hear?”

Emma put down the phone and stared for a minute at the picture on the wall across from her bed. It was an oil painting of Mount Rainier rising above magenta-colored clouds, and it was hideous. She wondered if there was a company somewhere called Ugly Art, and if every motel in the country purchased from them.

She thought for a moment, made another phone call, then called DeMarco’s room. There was no answer. Where the hell was he?
    * * *
    “SO TELL ME,” Diane Carlucci said, “how’d you land a job with Congress?”

DeMarco had asked a number of people for a nice place to take a lady to dinner and was directed to one in the little town of Winslow on Bainbridge Island. For a small-town restaurant it was pretty pricey, but DeMarco didn’t care. The view was good, the food was good, and Diane Carlucci was very comfortable to be with. There was no first-date awkwardness, no straining to find something to say— until now.

DeMarco hesitated. “I guess you know about my old man?”

Diane Carlucci nodded.

“Well,” DeMarco said, “he made it kind of hard to get a job after law school. Firms weren’t kicking down the door to hire the son of a guy who worked for a mobster and killed people for a living.”

“I can imagine,” Diane said. She hesitated and said, “You know I met your dad once. I liked him.”

“Yeah, he was a likable guy,” DeMarco said. “He was a good father, too. He just didn’t make the best career choice.”

“So how’d you get a job with Congress?” Diane asked again.

“I have a godmother, a friend of my mom’s I call Aunt Connie. She worked in D.C. when she was young and she had some pull with somebody. She talked to him and got me the job.”

What DeMarco had just said was the truth. It wasn’t the whole truth but it was the truth. “And you,” DeMarco said, “how do you like—”

“No, we’re not through with you yet,” Diane said. “I heard you were married, that you married—”

“Yeah, I did, and now I’m divorced.”

“I knew that. I heard that she left you