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The Inside Ring
Mike Lawson


The West Wing meets 24 in a pace-ridden thriller of conspiracy, corruption and cold-blooded murder.Joe De Marco is running out of time.Someone has made an attempt on the president’s life, but the wrong man is dead. How could this happen when the president and those nearest to him are protected by a group of men known as The Inside Ring? Is there is a chink in the armour? A break in the circle? Is someone not quite what they seem?Joe's search for the answers takes him from the corridors of power to the swamps of the southern states, where one lie will lead to another until finally the shocking truth emerges in an orgy of violence.‘The Inside Ring’: where greed and corruption walk hand in hand with murder.









THE INSIDE RING

MIKE LAWSON








For my father

Bernard Norman Lawson

1924–2004




Contents


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Title Page (#u54ab8bda-0f5a-5a7d-be28-2619de436526)

Dedication (#ucbd02236-fca0-5189-8559-3c37638a9a72)

Prologue (#u3b7a8e79-2b1f-5f26-8cf7-8323d2ca1a33)

Chattooga River Assassin Found Dead (#u0a20dc5c-aee4-54e8-9891-a4ece755067e)

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Prologue (#ulink_be7275cb-f89b-506b-9d45-5bd450cbcb53)


The video begins with the President walking toward a marine helicopter.

The rapids of the Chattooga River are visible behind the helicopter, and beyond the river is a dense pine forest, the ground rising sharply to a bluff overlooking the river. The President is dressed in khaki pants, a blue T-shirt, and hiking boots. Over the T-shirt he wears a lightweight fishing vest with multiple pockets for storing tackle. He appears relaxed, his pace is unhurried. He smiles and waves once in the direction of the camera, and then ignores it. In the third year of his first term he’s comfortable with the mantle of power, undaunted by the media’s ever present eye.

There are two Secret Service agents in front of the President and two behind him. The agents wear identical dark-blue Windbreakers and all have on sunglasses. A puff of wind exposes the automatic weapon one agent carries on a sling beneath his Windbreaker.

Walking next to the President, on his right, is the writer Philip Montgomery. Montgomery also wears outdoor clothing, though his outfit has a more lived-in look than the President’s. Montgomery is talking to the President as he walks, then looks toward the camera and holds his hands apart as if describing a good-size fish. The President shakes his head and mutters something, his lips barely moving. Montgomery throws back his head and laughs.

As the group of men nears the helicopter they pass into the shadow created by the bluff across the river. A Secret Service agent in front of the President, the agent on his right-hand side, takes off his sunglasses. He folds them quickly and attempts to pocket them in his Windbreaker, but he misses the pocket and the sunglasses fall to the ground. The agent quickly bends at the waist to scoop up the glasses but Philip Montgomery, who is still talking to the President and looking to his left instead of forward, bumps into the agent’s rump as he’s reaching for the glasses. The agent pitches forward, almost falling, and the collision throws Montgomery off balance and he stumbles into the President.

This chain reaction of gaucherie would have been slightly amusing, something for the anchormen to chuckle about on the evening news, except it ends with Philip Montgomery’s brains exploding out the back of his skull. A second later a spray of blood spurts dark red from the President’s right shoulder.

With the second shot the President’s security detail reacts. A Secret Service agent shoves the President hard to the ground then lies on top of him, covering him with his own body. The other three agents form a protective triangle around the President’s prone form. The agent who had dropped his sunglasses stands directly in front of the President’s head, and between this agent’s spread legs can be seen the President’s face. His eyes are white-blue saucers of panic and pain.

The picture spins: a slice of blue sky, a fuzzy wedge of green forest, the whirring blades of the helicopter. When the camera refocuses, the agents have weapons in their hands and are frantically searching the area for a target. One of the agents suddenly points upward, at the bluff, and his weapon begins to spit bullets into the air. At the same time the agent fires, the assassin fires a third time. His bullet hits the forehead of the agent who is lying on the President, missing the President’s face by less than two inches. Experts later testify that the bullet passed between the legs of the agent who was standing in front of the President.

The last images frozen on the screen are Montgomery’s body, limbs bent at awkward angles, and then a close-up of the President’s face: a crimson mask created by the blood pouring down from the forehead of the agent who died protecting him.



WASHINGTON, D.C.




Chattooga River Assassin Found Dead (#ulink_5d8d680c-3d42-5242-9baa-26f11915af75)


Probable Suicide Victim

By Sharon MathisonThe Washington Post

Last night police in Landover, Maryland, found the body of the man believed to be responsible for the attempted assassination of the President and the deaths of author Philip Montgomery and Secret Service Agent Robert James.

At 10:30 p.m. on July 19th, a 911 caller reported hearing a single gunshot at the home of Harold Mark Edwards. Landover police responding to the call en-over, tered the house and found Mr Edwards’s body.

According to FBI spokesperson Marilyn Peters, Edwards died from what appeared to be a self-Montgomery inflicted gunshot wound from a .45 caliber automatic pistol. Ms Peters said that in a suicide note, written in what appears to be the victim’s handwriting, Edwards confessed to attempting to assassinate the President on July 17th. In this same note, Edwards stated that he had acted alone.

Edwards was an unemployed machinist who was laid off sixteen months ago when his job was outsourced to Thailand. The FBI spokesperson said the Secret Service was in possession of two letters written by Edwards earlier this year in which he blamed the President for losing his job. In one of those letters, Edwards threatened the President’s life.

Also found in Edwards’s home were two rifles. Preliminary ballistics tests conducted by the FBI indicated that one of the rifles was the weapon used during the assassination attempt.

Mr Edwards was a prior member of the Army Reserve and was classified as an expert marksman. His neighbors said that he was an avid hunter and also said that he had been despondent over his inability to find work.

Still unanswered is how Edwards could have penetrated the President’s security at Chattooga River, Georgia, the morning of July 17th. When asked to comment, Secret Service spokesperson Clark Brunson would only say that the Secret Service does not discuss procedures used to protect the President.




1 (#ulink_0cbec974-e8b8-5d0d-89f2-acfe5a51915f)


The receptionist – Boston-bred, fiftysomething, hard and bright as stainless steel – arched a disapproving eyebrow at DeMarco as he entered Mahoney’s offices.

‘You’re late,’ she said. ‘And he’s in a mood today.’

‘So since I’m late I guess that means I can go right in,’ DeMarco said.

The receptionist was married to a successful accountant, a very nice man, very slim and neat and considerate. On those rare occasions they made love she fantasized about burly Italian construction workers. She used to fantasize about black men with washboard abs and shaved heads but the last few months it had been men who looked like DeMarco: dark hair, blue eyes, a Travolta dimple in his chin – and arms and shoulders made for wife-beater undershirts. However, fantasy man or not, she didn’t approve of tardiness – or flippancy.

‘No, you can take a seat,’ the receptionist said, flashing a brittle smile, ‘and in a few minutes, after I finish my tea, I’ll tell him you’re here. Then he’ll make you wait twenty more minutes while he talks to important people on the phone.’

DeMarco knew better than to protest. He took a seat as directed and pulled a copy of People magazine from the stack on the coffee table in front of him. He was addicted to Hollywood gossip but would have died under torture before admitting it.

Thirty minutes later he entered Mahoney’s office. Mahoney was on the phone wrapping up a one-sided conversation. ‘Don’t fuck with me, son,’ Mahoney was saying. ‘You get contrary on this thing, this time next year, the only way you’ll see the Capitol will be from one of them double-decker buses. Now vote like I told ya and quit telling me about promises you never shoulda made in the first place.’

Mahoney slammed down the phone, muttered ‘Dipshit,’ then aimed his watery blue eyes at DeMarco.

‘You see Flattery?’ Mahoney asked.

DeMarco took an unmarked envelope from the inside breast pocket of his suit and handed it to Mahoney. DeMarco didn’t know what was in the envelope; he made a point of not knowing what was in the envelopes he brought Mahoney. Mahoney sliced open the envelope and took out a piece of paper the size and shape of a check. He glanced at the paper, grunted in either annoyance or satisfaction, and shoved the paper into the middle drawer of his desk.

‘And the Whittacker broad?’ Mahoney asked.

‘She’ll testify at the hearing.’

‘What did you have to give her?’

‘My word that I wouldn’t tell her husband who she’s been sleeping with.’

‘That’s all it took?’

‘She signed a prenup.’

‘Ah,’ Mahoney said. Greed never surprised him – nor did any other human frailty. ‘So those bastards at Stock Options R Us will spend eighteen months in a country club prison, the guys who lost their pensions will eat Hamburger Helper for the rest of their lives, and her, she’ll get her fuckin’ picture on Time as whistle-blower of the year. Jesus.’

DeMarco shrugged. There was only so much you could do.

‘You need anything else?’ he asked Mahoney.

‘Yeah, I want you to …’ Mahoney stopped speaking, derailed by his addictions. He reignited a half-smoked cigar then reached for a large Stanley thermos on the credenza behind his desk. The thermos was battered and scarred and covered with stick-on labels from labor unions. Mahoney poured from the thermos and the smell of fresh coffee and old bourbon filled the room.

As Mahoney sipped his morning toddy DeMarco studied the bundle of contradictions that sat large before him. Mahoney was an alcoholic but a highly functional one; few people accomplished sober what he had managed in his cups. He was a serial adulterer yet deeply in love with his wife of forty years. He stretched soft-money laws like rubber bands and took tribute from lobbyists as his royal due, and yet he was the best friend the common man had on Capitol Hill. John Fitzpatrick Mahoney was Speaker of the House of Representatives and only the vice president stood between him and the Oval Office should the President fall. DeMarco doubted the authors had Mahoney in mind when they penned the Twenty-fifth Amendment.

The Speaker was DeMarco’s height, almost six feet, but DeMarco always felt small standing next to him. Mahoney had a heavy chest and a heavier gut, and created the impression of a man perfectly balanced, impossible to rush, fluster, or inflame. His hair was white and very full, his complexion ruddy red, and his eyes sky blue, the whites perpetually veined with red. His features were all large and well formed: strong nose, jutting jaw, full lips, broad forehead. It was a face that projected strength, dignity, and intelligence – it was a face that got a man elected to a national office every two years.

Mahoney swallowed his laced coffee and said, ‘I want you to go see Andy Banks.’

‘The Homeland Security guy?’

‘Yeah. He needs help with something.’

‘What?’

‘I dunno. We were at this thing last night and he said he had a problem. Something personal. He says somebody told him I had a guy who could look into things.’

DeMarco nodded. That was him: a guy who looked into things.

‘Go see him this morning. He’s expecting you.’

‘What about that problem in Trenton?’

‘It’ll wait. Go see Banks.’




2 (#ulink_bb50be00-b4fb-5ea3-bab8-7c9f1febf0d6)


Andrew Banks, secretary of Homeland Security, was a retired marine three-star general. He was fifty-nine years old, tall and flat-bellied, and his brown suit and olive-green tie resembled the uniform he had worn for thirty-three years. He had a prominent nose, a gray crew cut, and a mouth that was a slash above a thrusting chin. DeMarco noticed that his eyes, magnified slightly by wire-rimmed glasses, were the color of roofing nails.

Behind Banks’s desk, framed by two American flags, was a large pre-9/11 photograph of the World Trade Center. The twin towers had been shot looking up from ground level, and they rose, seemingly forever, white and pristine, into a flawless blue sky. The photograph was a vivid, silent reminder of Banks’s responsibilities.

DeMarco sat in one of three chairs arranged in a semicircle before Banks’s desk. The chair was so uncomfortable that DeMarco wondered if it had seen prior duty in an interrogation room at Guantánamo Bay.

‘John Hastings, Congressman Hastings, told me about you,’ Banks said. ‘He said he was being flexed by someone to influence his vote. He wouldn’t tell me who or how, but he said he went to Mahoney for help and the next thing he knows, there you are, prying things off his back. He said you’re some sorta troubleshooter.’

Banks stopped as if expecting a response from DeMarco, but DeMarco, like a good witness in court, hadn’t heard a question so he said nothing.

‘Well I have a problem, maybe a big one, and I don’t want a lotta people knowin’ about it. I was wondering what to do when I saw Mahoney at this function last night. I asked him what he could tell me about this guy DeMarco I’d heard about. And Mahoney, that prick, you know what he says to me? He says, “I don’t know any DeMarco but he’ll be at your office tomorrow morning.” Then he walks away and starts chattin’ up some gal half his age.’

She was probably one-third his age, DeMarco thought.

‘The thing is, I don’t know zip about you.’

‘I’m a lawyer,’ DeMarco said.

‘A lawyer?’ Banks said. The D.C. lawyers he knew looked smooth and sophisticated, slick enough to slide under airtight doors. This DeMarco looked like a kneecapper for an Italian bookie.

‘But you’re also an investigator, aren’t you?’ Banks said.

‘Yeah, sometimes,’ DeMarco said, and shifted his butt in the uncomfortable chair. ‘General, are you going to get around, anytime soon, to telling me what your problem is so I can tell you whether I can help or not?’

Banks smiled. It was a smile that said it’d be a distinct pleasure to take DeMarco out into the parking lot and beat him bloody with his fists and feet.

‘Mister, I’m trying to decide if I want to hire you and you’re not helping yourself, sittin’ there saying nothing.’

‘General, I’m not here for a job interview and you’re not hiring me. The federal government pays my salary. I’m here because the Speaker told me to come see you.’

Banks opened his mouth to give DeMarco an old-fashioned, Parris Island tongue-lashing, then remembered he wasn’t addressing a buck private. He shook his head and muttered, ‘This fucking town.’

DeMarco could sympathize with the man’s frustration. He didn’t like D.C. himself most days.

Banks rose from his seat and walked over to a window. He turned his back to DeMarco, shoved his hands into his pockets, and stared down at the traffic on Nebraska Avenue. He pondered his options less than thirty seconds – officers are trained to make decisions – and turned back to face DeMarco.

‘Hell, I have to get on with this,’ he said. ‘I have too much on my plate as it is and I can’t take the time to find someone else. And Hastings did recommend you. Hastings was in the corp, you know.’

Semper fi, DeMarco almost said, but controlled his wit. ‘I didn’t know that,’ he said instead and shifted again in the chair. It felt like the damn thing didn’t have a seat cushion, just a thin layer of cloth stretched over the hardest wood on the planet. Or maybe it wasn’t wood, maybe it was metal or that stuff that rhino horns are made of.

‘Okay,’ Banks said, ‘but you have to promise me something. You have to promise that you’ll keep everything I’m about to tell you completely to yourself, that you won’t tell another living soul. You promise?’

‘I do,’ DeMarco said. He considered raising his right hand when he responded but decided that would be a bit much.

Banks studied DeMarco’s face, looking for twitchy-eyed indicators of falsehood, but DeMarco, journeyman liar that he was, gave up nothing. And DeMarco was lying.

‘You better be tellin’ the truth, bud, or I’ll rip off your head and shit down your neck.’

DeMarco looked at his watch. He suspected Banks’s problem was a family thing: one of his kids was in trouble or his wife was having an affair with someone human.

‘Okay,’ Banks said again, and he took in a lungful of air through his big nose as if preparing to dive into deep waters. ‘I want you to investigate a Secret Service agent named Billy Ray Mattis.’

‘An agent?’

‘Yeah.’

The name rang a bell.

‘Investigate how?’ DeMarco said.

‘I want you to …’ Banks stopped.

‘Yes,’ DeMarco said. It was like trying to get a virgin’s knickers off, getting this guy to say whatever was on his mind. Finally the dam broke.

‘I want you to see if Mattis was an accomplice in the assassination attempt on the President.’

‘Whoa!’ DeMarco said, half rising out of his chair. ‘Stop right there. Do not say another word.’ DeMarco shook his head in disbelief at what he had just heard. ‘And anyway,’ he said, ‘I thought the guy who shot the President acted alone.’

‘Yeah,’ Banks said, ‘he probably did.’

This was ridiculous, DeMarco was thinking. ‘Look, General,’ he said, ‘you wanted to know about my background. Well, I’ll tell you. I’m a lawyer who does odd jobs for Congress. That’s it. If a constituent turns into a stalker, I make him go sit in a corner. If a congressman thinks his kid is doing drugs, I find out before the kid becomes a liability. If a politician thinks his wife is cheating on him, I make sure she’s not screwing a journalist. That’s the kind of stuff I do, sir. Little stuff. Small stuff. Assassinations are out of my league. Way out of my league. So if you really believe this agent was involved in the assassination attempt, you need to talk to the FBI.’

‘I don’t want to do that,’ Banks said. ‘At least not yet.’

‘But why not?’

Banks didn’t answer him. He just stood there looking simultaneously guilty, stubborn, and annoyed.

In the four days since the assassination attempt Banks and Patrick Donnelly, head of the Secret Service, had been interviewed by the FBI. The press had camped out on their doorsteps screaming questions at them, and Congress, in a rare and rapid bipartisan gesture, had slapped together a nosy panel that had grilled both men for hours on how the President’s security had been so disastrously penetrated. Banks had had multiple opportunities to tell people he suspected a Secret Service agent of involvement in the assassination attempt – yet here he was, telling DeMarco he couldn’t.

DeMarco knew he should leave. Just get his ass out of this fuckin’ chair, walk out, and never look back. He also knew if he left before finding out what was going on, Mahoney would flay him.

Before DeMarco could decide one way or the other, Banks picked up an index card lying on the blotter in the center of his desk. He held it gingerly, by one corner, as if it was coated with anthrax, and handed it to DeMarco.

‘This is what started it all,’ Banks said. ‘That’s not the original but that’s what it said, verbatim. I sent the original to … Never mind. Just read it.’

DeMarco read: ‘Eagle One is in danger. Cancel Chattooga River. The inside ring has been compromised. This is not a joke.’ The note was signed: ‘An agent in the wrong place.’




3 (#ulink_132ba8d0-f04d-5a5f-9301-6972e0d77919)


The Speaker had recently taken to walking at lunchtime in a futile attempt to prevent the heart attack that was certain to kill him. He had told DeMarco to meet him at the Taft Memorial at noon. DeMarco had arrived at twelve fifteen and it was now twelve thirty.

At the Taft Memorial stands a ten-foot bronze statue of Senator Robert A. Taft and behind his statue is a carillon made from white Tennessee marble that rises one hundred feet into the air. The twenty-seven bells in the carillon were cast in Annecy, France, and the largest bell weighed seven tons. What Senator Taft had done to deserve such tribute had faded from memory – at least from DeMarco’s memory – but he was grateful that the memorial was located in a pleasant urban park close to the Capitol. It was a good place to wait for his boss.

DeMarco took a seat on a wooden bench facing the memorial. He closed his eyes to nap and enjoy the sun on his face but he was soon denied this simple pleasure by two noisy squirrels. One animal was frantically chasing the other across the lawn, around bushes, up and down tree trunks. Whenever the chaser would finally corner the chasee, the trapped one would back up, feign desperation, then escape with a death-defying leap to a thin limb which seemed out of reach and incapable of bearing its weight. DeMarco didn’t know if the chase was a mating ritual or just plain fun, but there was no end to it. He wished one of the critters would miss when it jumped but the vivid image of a bushy-tailed little body, spread-eagle on the ground, a ribbon of blood oozing from its bucktoothed mouth made him change his mind.

DeMarco was so busy fantasizing the demise of tree-dwelling rodents that he was startled when Mahoney sat down heavily on the park bench. He was even more startled by the sight of Mahoney in athletic togs: size XXX-large blue sweatshirt, blue sweatpants with white trim, and squeaky new Nikes the size of canoes.

‘I saw General Banks this morning,’ DeMarco said.

‘And?’ Mahoney said, still trying to catch his breath.

‘Well, sir,’ DeMarco said, ‘Banks wants me to investigate the recent assassination attempt on the President.’

‘You?’ Mahoney said.

Mahoney’s reaction may have been appropriate but DeMarco was mildly offended.

‘Yes, sir. The General is concerned that a Secret Service agent may have had some part in the assassination attempt.’

‘Ah, that’s horseshit,’ Mahoney said and looked at his watch, bored already by Banks’s silliness. ‘And anyway, if he’s really worried he oughta be talkin’ to the Bureau.’

‘I agree and that’s what I told him,’ DeMarco said, ‘but the part I thought you might find interesting is that both Banks and Patrick Donnelly are withholding evidence from the FBI, and—’

‘Donnelly?’ the Speaker said, turning his magnificent head to look at DeMarco for the first time.

‘Yes,’ DeMarco said.

‘Donnelly,’ the Speaker said again, then he grinned, his teeth yellow and strong, and DeMarco was reminded of a large rumpled bear, one that has just spotted its lunch walking toward him.

Oh God, DeMarco prayed, please don’t let this happen.

‘Tell me what Banks said, Joe,’ Mahoney said. ‘Don’t leave out a thing.’

DeMarco did and when he finished Mahoney just sat there, a small smile on his lips, a contented look on his broad Irish face. In an attempt to head off the disaster he feared was coming, DeMarco said, ‘Sir, it’s pretty unlikely this agent’s guilty of anything – even Banks admits that – but in case he is, the right thing to do is to tell the Bureau. Or the press.’

Mahoney nodded as if agreeing with DeMarco but there was a gleam in his eye. It was the gleam of a man who has sighted a sail on the horizon and knows that it’s his ship that’s coming in.

DeMarco played his last card. ‘If the FBI catches me fooling around in this, it could lead back to you. You don’t want—’

The Speaker rose slowly from the bench.

‘Help Banks out, Joe,’ he said. ‘Do whatever the man wants.’

Mahoney patted DeMarco affectionately on the shoulder. As he walked away there was a spring in his step caused by more than his new tennis shoes. He was a few paces up the sidewalk when DeMarco heard him bark a laugh and say, ‘Donnelly. I fuckin’ love it.’




4 (#ulink_03bf9580-efb2-5bf2-85df-36895e2cf567)


‘Do you like chamber music, Joe?’

‘No. I like rock and roll. I like jazz. I like Ella singin’ the—’

‘That’s nice, dear. A quartet is playing Mozart in the National Art Gallery cafeteria today. Meet me there at three. And don’t be late.’

‘Do you know someone in the quartet, Emma?’

The phone was silent. ‘The cello player,’ Emma finally said, and then she laughed. ‘I’m becoming predictable in my dotage. I hate that.’

‘The last thing you’ll ever be is predictable, Emma, but what I have to tell you can’t be told in front of the cello player.’

‘I’ll send her shopping. Just be on time, Joe.’



The cafeteria was crowded and a number of spectators were standing, yet Emma sat alone at a table for four. DeMarco could imagine music lovers approaching, asking politely if they might sit, and Emma backing them off with a glance and a growl, like a lioness protecting a bloody haunch from a flock of timid vultures. At present, the lioness was serenely drinking a glass of white wine while tapping a manicured nail in time to the music.

Emma was tall and slim. Her features were patrician, her complexion flawless. Her hair, cut short and chic, was neither gray nor blonde but some mysterious shade in between. She was beautiful in an austere way and with her ice-blue eyes she reminded DeMarco of the actress Charlotte Rampling. He suspected that she was somewhere between fifty and sixty, not because she looked it, but because of what little he knew of her history.

The operative word with Emma was always ‘suspected.’ She refused to discuss herself, past or present. She would drop hints – tantalizing, inconsistent tidbits – but would never explain when asked to clarify. She admitted to having once worked for the government, but she wouldn’t say in what capacity or for which department. She claimed to be retired but was often out of town for extended periods and never returned with a tan. She lived expensively and owned a home in pricey McLean, Virginia – property that did not seem affordable on a civil servant’s pension. She was gay but something she had once said made DeMarco think she had been married and might have a child. But he wasn’t certain; he was never certain.

DeMarco knew that Emma was at times enigmatic because she chose to be, because it suited her contrary nature. But he also knew that she was sometimes elusive because she had to be.

As he walked toward her table, DeMarco glanced over at the musicians and noted, as he had expected, that the cello player was a beauty: a tall, willowy, Viking blonde – with legs to die for, spread erotically for her cello.

DeMarco pulled back a chair to take a seat next to Emma. She heard the chair scrape the floor and said without looking, ‘That seat’s taken. So are the other two.’

‘Liar,’ DeMarco said.

‘Takes one to know one,’ Emma muttered.

Pointing his chin at the cello player, DeMarco said, ‘She’s a hottie, all right.’

‘A hottie? God, Joe.’

As DeMarco listened to the quartet he wondered why all these people were here. Did they really enjoy this music or was it something they forced themselves to endure, a self-prescribed dose of sophistication, the cultural equivalent of swallowing a carrot smoothie for one’s health.

‘When will this end, Emma?’ DeMarco said. ‘I’ll slip into a coma if it goes on much longer.’

‘Sit there and be quiet,’ Emma said. ‘It’s time you learned to appreciate something other than the Dixie Chicks.’

The quartet finally finished and the cello player handed her instrument to a pimply-faced volunteer. She wagged a finger at him in a stern you-be-careful-with-that gesture, then moved toward Emma’s table, blonde mane flying behind her, long thoroughbred legs flashing. Had Emma not been his friend DeMarco would have been jealous. Hell, he was jealous.

Seeing DeMarco, the cello player hesitated when she reached the table but Emma said, ‘It’s all right, Christine, sit down. Christine, this is Joe. Joe’s a bagman for a corrupt politician.’

‘Jesus, Emma,’ DeMarco said.

‘Which one?’ pretty Christine asked.

Thankfully, Emma ignored her question and said, ‘Joe, be a good bagman and fetch Christine a glass of white wine.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ DeMarco said.

DeMarco returned with Christine’s wine and a Pepsi for himself. Emma was complimenting Christine on her playing, gushing how the third movement had almost moved her to tears. DeMarco rolled his eyes when he heard this; bamboo splinters jammed under her toenails wouldn’t move Emma to tears. To his relief Emma finally said, ‘Dear, I have some business with Joe. Something tedious. Would you mind if I met you at your suite in an hour? I’ll bring some of that champagne you like.’

‘And strawberries?’ Christine asked.

‘Strawberries too,’ Emma said.

As Christine walked away, Emma shook her head and muttered, ‘Strawberries and champagne. What a cliché.’ Turning to DeMarco, she said, ‘So, Joseph, what’s the problem? Might I assume that shit Mahoney has once again dropped you in the soup?’

‘The Speaker was at a dinner the other night, drunk as a Lord, when he decided to loan me to Andy Banks.’

‘Homeland Security?’

‘Yeah. So I meet with General Banks this morning and he tells me he has a small problem.’

‘Joe, I have a lovely friend waiting for me.’

‘Banks thinks a Secret Service agent may have been an accomplice in the assassination attempt on the President, and both Banks and Patrick Donnelly are withholding information from the FBI.’

‘Well! You do know how to get a girl’s attention.’ Then Emma said exactly what Mahoney had said: ‘Tell me what Banks told you, Joe. Don’t leave out a thing.’




5 (#ulink_37a449f1-1b9e-53ac-afc0-9f0308fa6702)


Philip Montgomery and the President had been roommates at Harvard. Montgomery was the best man at the President’s wedding, and the President had returned the favor for two of Montgomery’s three nuptials.

The President went on to become governor of his home state, then U.S. senator, then President. He was a bright man, though not a brilliant one, and felt he was dodging his responsibilities if he worked less than sixteen hours a day. Montgomery, the President’s opposite in temperament, was a literary genius who drank like Tennessee Williams and played and fought and fucked like Hemingway. He was a master of the twelve-hundred-page epic that blended fact and fiction so artfully that it was difficult to tell which parts were which, not that his readers particularly cared.

Every year, for more than twenty years, the President and Montgomery got together for three or four days to enjoy various pastimes: skiing, hunting, fishing, river rafting – and a lot of drinking. This annual holiday with Montgomery, an event that was highly publicized, was the only time the President appeared to let his hair down. As for Montgomery, his hair was always down. After being elected to the highest office in the land, the President continued to enjoy his reunions with Montgomery and insisted that his Secret Service detail be as small as possible. The reason for this was to minimize the number of people seeing him and a Pulitzer Prize winner behaving like drunken fools. Like the time they threw empty whiskey bottles into the Bitterroot River and blasted them to bits with automatic weapons borrowed from the President’s bodyguards; hardly an activity he wanted reported to either the environmentalists or the gun-control crowd.

This year Montgomery and the President had decided to do a little fishing in Georgia, on the Chattooga River. The dates of the trip – July 14 to July 17 – had been established long in advance as is necessary with a president’s schedule, but according to Banks the location of the trip wasn’t finalized until late May. Naturally, a host of people knew about the trip and the number of potential leaks was almost infinite.

Banks had received the warning letter four days before the President was scheduled to depart for Georgia and the first thing he did was call Patrick Donnelly, director of the Secret Service. Donnelly told Banks it was damn unlikely that an agent had sent the letter. In fact, he found it amusing that Banks had given the letter any credibility at all – not an attitude the general appreciated.

Banks pointed out to Donnelly that the letter had been printed on Secret Service letterhead, placed in a Secret Service business envelope, but most important, it had been delivered via the department pouch. The pouch was a mailbag delivered by armed courier and used to transport classified documents between Secret Service headquarters on H Street and Banks’s office on Nebraska Avenue. Only personnel inside Secret Service headquarters, a secure facility, had access to the pouch and it was delivered directly to Banks’s executive assistant.

Then there was the jargon in the note: Eagle One and the inside ring. ‘Eagle One’ was the President’s code name. The ‘inside ring’ was those agents closest to the President whenever he was on the move. The outside ring was the agents guarding the perimeter: agents in the crowd, on rooftops, manning strategic control points. If the outside ring was penetrated, the inside ring was to die protecting the Man.

Donnelly still claimed the letter was a hoax. Maybe an agent had sent it – a lot of his people weren’t happy with changes Banks had made since taking over Homeland Security – but that still didn’t mean there was any truth to the letter. Then Donnelly, a master of the bureaucratic full nelson, dared Banks to call up the President and ruin his long-awaited vacation based on an unsigned note that claimed he was at risk from his own bodyguards. Banks didn’t make the call, but he did keep the warning letter.

Seven days later Philip Montgomery and a Secret Service agent were killed and the President was wounded. After the assassination attempt, Banks was racked with guilt, terrified the note had been authentic and that he had failed to act upon it. He called Donnelly and told him that he was sending him the warning letter. He wanted it analyzed for fingerprints and DNA in saliva on the envelope seal, and for Donnelly to make an effort to find out who had put it in the pouch.

Donnelly tried his best to talk Banks out of having the letter analyzed. He told him if he sent the letter to a lab and started questioning people, the contents of the letter would be leaked to the media within hours. Absolutely the last thing they needed, Donnelly said, was to give birth to a preposterous theory that the Secret Service could have been involved in the assassination attempt. But Banks insisted. Donnelly may have been a presidential appointee but Banks was still his boss.

The next day Donnelly came to see Banks. Although he categorically dismissed the possibility of Secret Service complicity, he did take steps to convince Banks that the warning letter was bogus. First, he told Banks, in accordance with standard Secret Service procedures for incidents like this, all the agents at Chattooga River were given polygraphs to see if they were involved. All the agents had passed as would be expected. And if this wasn’t good enough, there was the timing of the note and its relationship to the men assigned to the inside ring.

At Chattooga River the outside ring consisted of more than sixty agents. The cabin where the President had stayed was selected not only because it was located near several good fishing holes but also because it was in an isolated area with limited access. Three days before the President’s arrival the Secret Service sent a large advance team to the area, drew an imaginary circle five miles in diameter around the cabin, then blocked off all roads and trails into the area and manned these entry points with agents. Following this, they searched the area inside the circle by air and on foot to make sure no one was there. All people entering the area before the President’s arrival were escorted through to make sure they left, and after the President arrived, people were not allowed to enter at all. Periodic surveillances of the area were conducted by helicopter during the entire time the President was visiting.

Confident the perimeter was secure, and in keeping with the President’s explicit direction to minimize the number of on-site guards, the inside ring at Chattooga River consisted of only four agents: Billy Mattis, Robert James – the agent who was killed while covering the President with his own body – Richard Matthews, and Stephen Preston.

The inside ring had been selected on July 5th and the warning note was sent to Banks five days later, July 10th. At the time the letter was sent agents Matthews and Preston had not been assigned to the Chattooga River detail. Two other agents had been assigned but those two men, who carpooled together, were in a traffic accident on the Beltway on July 12th and Matthews and Preston were last-minute substitutes. Thus, explained Donnelly, whoever wrote the note couldn’t have been referring to Matthews or Preston. Banks argued that maybe one of the two agents who had been originally assigned had compromised the President’s security before the traffic accident, and that the accident had been a ruse to avoid being at Chattooga River the day of the shooting. Donnelly said this was damned unlikely since the accident had involved a head-on collision with a cement mixer.

The third agent was the man who was killed: Agent James. Donnelly ruled him out based on his distinguished record, the fact that he had served the Secret Service for twenty-five spotless years – and that he died saving the President’s life. Banks, however, countered Donnelly’s logic, suggesting that maybe the assassin had shot Agent James to silence him. Donnelly said that idea was absurd; it was clear from the video of the shooting that the first shot hit Montgomery by accident, the second shot winged the President but didn’t kill him, and the third shot had been aimed at the President but missed and hit the agent. Banks had to agree with him.

This left a single agent: Billy Ray Mattis. Mattis also had an impressive record, but since he hadn’t been killed like Agent James or assigned after the warning letter had been sent like the other two agents, Donnelly couldn’t rule him out as definitively as the other three men. But the main problem with Mattis, Banks told DeMarco, was that he looked hinky on the video. Hinky.

The next day, while Banks was still stewing over what to do about the warning letter, the body of Harold Edwards was found along with the suicide note that said he’d acted alone. Donnelly called Banks shortly after the discovery of Edwards’s body and said that the lab had drawn a blank on the warning letter: no fingerprints, fibers, saliva, anything. He also said that he’d personally talked to the courier who’d delivered the pouch to Banks’s office and the courier had no recollection of any agent giving him a letter for delivery to Banks.

But Banks still wasn’t happy.




6 (#ulink_2bf971c0-3e40-5fc0-bea8-aec7a535b782)


Most people had left the art gallery cafeteria immediately after Christine’s quartet finished playing. A cleanup crew was now stacking chairs and clearing off tables, and the man in charge was giving Emma and DeMarco looks encouraging them to leave. Emma was impervious to the looks.

‘I don’t get it,’ Emma said. ‘What exactly does Banks want you to do?’

‘He says he wants me to see if there’s a link, no matter how remote, between Mattis and the assassination attempt,’ DeMarco said. ‘He’s not convinced Mattis is guilty of anything, and at the same time he’s not a hundred percent positive he’s innocent either. All he wants me to do is check out Mattis and then he says he can rest with a clear conscience.’

‘A politician striving for a clear conscience,’ Emma said, ‘is like Sir Percival searching for the Grail.’

‘Aside from that medieval insight, Emma, what do you think?’

‘Joe, sweetie, we’re in Washington, D.C. Here live the fine people who brought you the Bay of Pigs, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and invisible weapons of mass destruction. Do I think it feasible that a government agency – particularly one headed by a weasel like Patrick Donnelly – could be involved in an attempt to kill a president? The answer is yes. Do I think it likely? The answer is no.’

Emma took a sip of her wine. ‘And the reason Banks wants you to investigate Mattis is because he looks “hinky” on this video?’

‘I guess. Banks says he’s a big believer in listenin’ to his gut, and his gut’s tellin’ him there’s something wrong with Mattis. By the way, the agent in the video, the one who dropped his sunglasses? That was Billy Ray Mattis.’

‘Is that why Banks is suspicious of him?’ Emma said.

‘I don’t know, but Mattis was also the agent who stood directly in front of the President after the shooting started. That last bullet the sniper fired, the one that killed that other agent, went right between his legs. Missed his johnson by an inch.’

‘Small target,’ Emma muttered. ‘Who took the video, by the way?’

‘A local station out of Gainsville. The President thought it would be a treat for them to get an exclusive of him and Montgomery flying off in the helicopter. They were given about four hours’ notice.’

A member of the cleaning crew stopped at their table, a dignified-looking Hispanic. He asked Emma politely if she’d be leaving soon so his crew could finish cleaning up. Emma just stared at the poor guy until he backed away, bowing, making apologies in two languages.

‘And there’s something else that’s bothering Banks,’ DeMarco said.

‘Oh?’ Emma said.

‘Yeah. Patrick Donnelly. He says Donnelly’s response to the warning note was out of character. I don’t know how long Donnelly has been director of the Secret Service but—’

‘A long time,’ Emma said.

‘—but according to Banks he doesn’t have a reputation as a guy who goes out on a limb and he certainly doesn’t go out on a limb for his agents. Banks said he was surprised that Donnelly didn’t try to get the Chattooga River trip canceled just to cover his ass. At a minimum, he should have switched out the agents assigned to the inside ring, but he didn’t do that either.’

‘I agree,’ Emma said. ‘So why didn’t he?’

‘Banks doesn’t know, but it’s just one more thing that’s making him nervous.’

‘I’ll tell you another thing that would make me nervous if I was Banks,’ Emma said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Why didn’t the person who wrote that letter send it to Donnelly, the guy directly in charge of the Secret Service, instead of Banks?’

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ DeMarco said.

Emma was silent for a moment before saying, ‘So why doesn’t Banks just call up the FBI, tell ’em about the warning letter, and let them investigate?’

‘He says he’s not willing to unleash a media hurricane about Secret Service involvement in the assassination attempt based solely on his gut feeling. And he’s particularly not willing to do that now that they’ve got Edwards’s suicide note.’

‘So he wants you looking into this instead of the Bureau?’

‘Yeah. At least I won’t leak the story to the Post. Well, maybe not.’

‘I guess you’re better than nothing,’ Emma muttered.

‘Thanks for that vote of confidence, Ms Emma, but frankly I agree with you and that’s what I told Mahoney. But once I told him Donnelly was acting weird on this thing, he insisted I get involved.’

‘What’s Mahoney have against Donnelly?’

‘I don’t know. And there’s one other thing: Banks doesn’t think Donnelly really had that note analyzed.’

‘He thinks Donnelly lied to him?’ Emma said.

‘Yeah. Banks doesn’t think there was enough time to check the letter out, not if they analyzed for DNA and questioned people and stuff like that. And when I told Mahoney that, his big ears really perked up.’

‘From what I’ve heard about Donnelly,’ Emma said, ‘I suppose anything’s possible.’ She ran a hand through her short hair as she thought over everything DeMarco had told her. ‘Tell me something, Joseph,’ she said. ‘That note said the inside ring had been “compromised,” whatever the hell that means. Exactly how could any of those four agents guarding the President that morning have compromised his security?’

‘Good question, Emma, and I don’t know. They certainly protected him when the shooting started, and the dates and location of the trip were hardly state secrets. And if the FBI had found some major hole in the Service’s security procedures, that would have been all over the news by now. So far no one is blaming the Secret Service for misconduct, dereliction of duty, or anything else. Not yet, anyway.’

‘Well,’ Emma said, gathering up her purse, ‘this is all very interesting, Joe, but as I said earlier, I have a lovely friend waiting for me. Is there anything else you wanted?’

‘Yeah. How ’bout asking your buddies to do a records check on Mattis? See if he knew Harold Edwards. Check out his finances, his history, that sorta thing.’

‘He’s a Secret Service agent, sweetie. I doubt the databases will be revealing.’

‘We gotta look.’

‘We?’

DeMarco shook his head in despair. ‘Why in the hell would Mahoney want me fooling around with something like this, Emma? I mean, Jesus. If he wants to cause Donnelly a problem all he has to do is leak this shit to the Post.’

‘Honey, I think the Speaker is playing a zillion-to-one long shot. I don’t think he believes there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that Mattis or anyone else in the Secret Service was involved in the assassination attempt. But he hopes they were. And if they were, he can destroy Patrick Donnelly – not just annoy him with some unflattering press.’

‘That damn Mahoney,’ DeMarco said.

‘Come on, Joe, quit whinin’ and let’s get crackin’. You have to take me someplace where they sell fresh strawberries.’




7 (#ulink_02737e1a-7510-578b-af48-9afbb849d87c)


DeMarco passed under the Capitol’s Grand Rotunda without an upward glance. To reach the stairway leading to his office he had to excuse his way through a cluster of tourists, their sunburned necks straining skyward as they gazed reverently at the painted ceiling above them. The tourists irritated him. He was in a bad mood already because of this nonsense with Banks, but it bugged him, every day when he went to work, these rubberneckers in their baggy shorts blocking the way.

He descended two flights of stairs. Marble floors changed to linoleum. Art on the ceiling was replaced by water stains on acoustic tile. The working folk dwelled on DeMarco’s floor. Here clattered the machines of the congressional printing office and directly across from his office was the emergency diesel generator room. The diesels would periodically roar to life when they tested them, scaring the bejesus out of DeMarco every time they did. And just down the hall from him were shops occupied by the Capitol’s maintenance personnel. Considering what DeMarco did some days, being located near the janitors seemed appropriate.

The faded gilt lettering on the frosted glass of DeMarco’s office door read COUNSEL PRO TEM FOR LIAISON AFFAIRS, J. DEMARCO. The title was Mahoney’s invention and completely meaningless. DeMarco entered his office, took off his jacket, loosened his tie, and checked the thermostat to make sure it was set on low. Adjusting the thermostat was something he did from force of habit, for his psychological well-being; he knew from experience that twisting the little knurled knob had absolutely no effect on the temperature in the room. He could call his neighbors, the janitors, to complain but knew he would rank low on their priority list. Who was he kidding? A guy with an office in the subbasement didn’t make the list.

In his office squatted an ancient wooden desk from the Carter era and two mismatched chairs, one behind his desk and one in front of it for his rare visitor. A metal file cabinet stood against one wall, the cabinet empty except for phone books and an emergency bottle of Hennessy. DeMarco didn’t believe in keeping written, subpoenable records. On his desk was an imitation Tiffany lamp – a redundant appliance as strips of harsh, fluorescent lights provided all the illumination needed – and on the black-and-white tile floor was a small Oriental rug, the predominant colors being maroon and green. On the wall opposite his desk were two Degas prints of dancing ballerinas. His ex-wife had given him the faux-Tiffany lamp, the rug, and the ballerinas – a futile effort on her part to ‘warm the place up.’ Only an arsonist, DeMarco had concluded long ago, could give his office any warmth.

DeMarco took to the chair behind his desk. He put his feet up, laced his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes. What to do about Billy Ray? He doubted the agent was guilty of anything. It was just as Emma had said: Mahoney was playing a long shot and using DeMarco’s career for chips. He was hoping DeMarco would get lucky and find out Billy Mattis was dirty, in which case Donnelly’s failure to properly investigate the warning letter could be used to nail his slippery hide to the wall. DeMarco didn’t know why the Speaker disliked Patrick Donnelly but it was obvious he did. The bear wanted to gobble him up.

So since the bear wanted his snack, DeMarco was stuck. He couldn’t disobey a direct order from Mahoney yet he could do nothing that would come to the attention of the Secret Service or the FBI. If they discovered he was mucking about in their business they’d stomp him to death with their wing-tipped shoes – and when the stomping began the Speaker would pretend he’d never heard the name Joe DeMarco. So he would investigate Billy Ray as ordered, but carefully. Invisibly. Discreetly. And investigating Billy meant making a gigantic leap of logic: he had to assume Mattis was guilty. To think otherwise left him nothing to do.

DeMarco’s investigation began with the warning note. He took the index card Banks had given him and reread the words. The signature was interesting: ‘An agent in the wrong place.’ It sounded as if the author was being coerced or had knowledge he didn’t wish to have. It was a … reluctant signature. So if the note was legitimate and if the Secret Service was somehow involved in the assassination attempt, maybe Billy Mattis was the one who sent the note. He knew the assassination was going to take place, didn’t want any part of it, but could do nothing to stop it.

A second possibility was that the note referred to Mattis and he had intentionally dropped his sunglasses to give the shooter a clear shot at the President. A third and more likely possibility was that the note was a prank and Mattis was innocent. Possibilities and could bes and ifs. He was skipping down a yellow brick road of nonsense in a political land of Oz.

Banks had also given DeMarco a copy of Mattis’s personnel file, so he put aside the index card to shine the bright light of his intellect on that thin document. He would learn all there was to know about his quarry; he would study the jackal’s past.

According to the file, the jackal was as American as grits and moonshine. He was born in Uptonville, Georgia, wherever the hell that was, and had lived there until he enlisted in the army at age eighteen. He spent fourteen uneventful months in South Korea and after the service joined the Army Reserve and spent a couple of years at a community college. Following college, the Secret Service hired him and he’d been with the agency for six years.

There were two noteworthy incidents in Billy Ray’s file. Billy’s Army Reserve unit had been activated for eight months in the get-Saddam war and he had performed some unspecified act of heroism worthy of a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. The second incident had occurred two years earlier and closer to home.

While Billy was standing on a street corner in Gary, Indiana, waiting for the President’s motorcade to pass, a bank robber decided the President’s visit would provide perfect cover for a robbery. It never occurred to the robber, who had the IQ of a rabbit, that the President’s route was saturated with both uniformed and undercover cops. As the robber exited the bank, alarms sounded. A nearby cop turned toward the noise, drew his weapon, and the robber shot at the cop. The crowd scattered, screaming civilians running in every direction like chickens from a hawk, and at that moment the President’s limousine turned the corner. Billy, the closest agent to the robber, was afraid to fire his weapon for fear he would hit the civilians, yet at the same time he had to make sure the robber didn’t shoot bullets in the President’s direction. Billy charged the robber. His body armor deflected the robber’s first shot; he caught the second with his left bicep before he tackled the robber and disarmed him.

Billy Mattis may not have been the brightest guy on the block but he was a brave man. He had been scarred twice in the service of his country. He was a Secret Service agent and a decorated veteran. He had willingly put himself in harm’s way at Chattooga River. Could there possibly be an individual less likely to attempt to kill a president?

One thing DeMarco did notice while reviewing Mattis’s personnel file was that until two and a half months ago Mattis had never had any of the glamour jobs. He was often a perimeter guard at the White House or Camp David, and frequently one of the anonymous agents standing on the street whenever the President graced Middle America with his presence, but he had never been a personal bodyguard to the President or the President’s family. DeMarco couldn’t tell from the file if Billy had been assigned to the praetorian guard on May 15th because of his previous heroism or if he just had enough seniority in the Service to automatically get the detail. He needed someone with the inside skinny on the Secret Service to tell him more about Billy’s promotion. The fact that he’d recently been assigned to the President’s security detail struck DeMarco as intriguing – well, intriguing if you liked conspiracy theories.

DeMarco put Billy’s file and the index card in the top drawer of his desk and locked the drawer. Leaving his office, he walked down the hall to the maintenance shop. He knocked, waited patiently until he heard a deep voice say ‘Yo,’ and opened the door. Three black men dressed in dark-blue coveralls were seated at a table playing pinochle. A fourth man, also black, also wearing coveralls, was working on an air-conditioning unit on the shop bench. When the cardplayers saw DeMarco he was greeted by the now expected chorus: ‘It’s the I-talian stallion.’ ‘The wop who don’t stop.’ ‘The guinea wit da skinny.’

‘Jesus,’ DeMarco said, ‘do we have to go through this every damn time?’

‘Yeah,’ the man at the workbench said. ‘We have to go through this every damn time because they’re idiots and because you look like Sonny fuckin’ Corleone.’ Then the man wiped his right hand on the leg of his coveralls, walked over, and shook hands with DeMarco.

‘How’s your boy, Curtis?’ DeMarco asked. Curtis Jackson’s oldest son played catcher for the Mets’ triple-A team. Last week he had blocked the plate when a first baseman the size of New Jersey slid into home. He didn’t drop the ball but he was out cold for two innings.

‘He’s okay. Got a head like his mother. He’ll be back playin’ next week.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Hey, Dee-Mar-ko,’ one of the cardplayers said. ‘You noticed you the only white guy in the building got an office in the basement?’

‘He ain’t white,’ cardplayer number two said, ‘he’s I-talian. He darker than you, Clark, he got a tan.’

‘You oughta join a union, DeMarco,’ cardplayer one said. ‘That way you get seniority, you get an upstairs office.’

‘Hell, no,’ DeMarco said. ‘If I joined a union, I’d have to wear them ugly coveralls and get my name sewn on the pocket.’

‘DeMarco, you fool,’ cardplayer two said, ‘you never sews your own name on your pocket.’

‘Yeah,’ said cardplayer three, ‘I got your name on my shirts, DeMarco, and one of these days they gonna fire your lazy ass.’

As the cardplayers whooped and high-fived each other, DeMarco said to Curtis, ‘Why aren’t those guys working?’

‘Not that it’s any of your business but their shift doesn’t start for an hour. They come early to play cards and get away from their wives. You need something, Joe?’

‘Yeah. Can I borrow your TV and VCR?’

‘Sure,’ Curtis said, ‘but bring ’em back before tomorrow afternoon. The Skins got an exhibition game.’

This prompted a fifteen-minute discussion between DeMarco, a die-hard Redskins fan, and the cardplayers. The cardplayers, unhampered by sentiment or geographic loyalty, ran down the coach, the defensive line, the offensive line, and a fullback who they said ran like a fat girl. They were unanimous, however, in their support of the cheerleaders.

Back in his own office, DeMarco popped a borrowed copy of the assassination tape into the VCR. He tapped the play button on the remote then sat back, finger poised to pause the tape. He was ready to assess the hinkiness of Billy Ray Mattis.

The television commentators and their hired experts had, for the last four days, endlessly discussed the fact that Mattis had dropped his sunglasses before the first shot. And they had all reached the same conclusion: Mattis’s fumble was a clear sign that God was a Democrat. Had Mattis not dropped his sunglasses, Montgomery would not have bumped into Mattis’s ass, and, in turn, Montgomery would not have bumped into the President – in which case the first bullet would have blown the President’s head apart. The lads and lasses at the FBI didn’t disagree with this interpretation of events, yet neither they nor the journalists had seen the warning note.

As DeMarco watched the tape this time he thought that Mattis was maybe more nervous than the other agents. And as the President’s group approached the helicopter, right before the first shot, Mattis seemed to scrunch his head down into his Windbreaker, like a turtle trying to make its head disappear. Yet, DeMarco noticed, Mattis moved quickly and without hesitation to protect the President and he had fired his weapon before any of the other agents.

There was nothing conclusive about the film yet DeMarco now understood what Banks meant. Mattis did look different than the other agents but it was difficult to articulate how and there was nothing you could point to with any certainty. More important, DeMarco knew that by now the FBI had positively Zaprudered the video: they had taken it apart pixel by pixel, blown up every frame, and built 3-D computer simulations. If the FBI and its legions of white-coated techies had found nothing suspicious on the tape there was no way that DeMarco’s naked eyeball would find a smoking gun. After watching the video five times, DeMarco gave up; the tape either showed a very alert agent acting as he’d been trained or a very nervous agent with foreknowledge of a shooting that was about to occur.

DeMarco looked at his watch. It was four p.m. The sun was over the yardarm – at least in the mid-Atlantic it was – and that was close enough for DeMarco. He called Alice.




8 (#ulink_0b4db060-088f-5068-9dcb-6cf13af73767)


The Monocle was a historic drinking establishment on the senate side of the Capitol, a block from Union Station. The walls were covered with photographs of smiling, glassy-eyed politicians. Mahoney’s own picture was displayed prominently near the entrance, a thick arm around the neck of a rival who looked decidedly uncomfortable.

DeMarco liked the place. The kitchen served an adequate meal, the bar an excellent martini, and from his favorite stool he could watch the young ladies who worked on the Hill fast-walk by in their tight skirts as they hustled to catch the Metro at Union Station.

Mr William, the Monocle’s afternoon bartender, brought DeMarco his martini, the expression on his face as solemn as if he were bearing the Eucharistic wine. Mr William was in his sixties, black, skinny, and six foot six. He had inherited from his forebears the dignified, mournful face of an undertaker – a face which belied a filthy, adolescent mind.

‘You watch the Birds against Seattle last night, Joe?’ Mr William asked.

‘We have discussed this before, sir,’ DeMarco said, ‘and you know my feelings on this subject. I will watch the Orioles only when the Senators return to Washington.’

In 1971 the Washington Senators left D.C. and moved to Texas to become the Texas Rangers, and all good D.C. baseball fans mourned the team’s departure as if their sainted mothers had expired. For years Washingtonians had lobbied to return a major league team to the capital but the owner of the Baltimore Orioles blocked every effort, rightfully concluding that a team in D.C. would take butts out of the seats at Camden Yards. It appeared that Washington might finally prevail in the coming year, but only by giving major financial concessions to the Orioles’ owner, a man DeMarco had come to loathe with a passion that could only be understood by other baseball fanatics.

‘Then you didn’t see Rodriguez’s triple play followed by Rodriguez’s inside-the-park home run?’ Mr William said.

Shit. Either a triple play or an inside-the-park home run was as rare as dinosaur droppings. And he’d missed ’em both. Fuckin’ Orioles. Their owner was an avaricious spoiler, their front office cheaper than Scrooge’s offspring, and their pitchers not fit to play at the high-school level – but they had Alonzo Rodriguez, currently the best player in either league. But DeMarco would not lift his embargo. Ever.

‘Screw Rodriguez and his triple play,’ DeMarco said, trying to act as if he meant it.

‘You’re a stubborn man, Joe.’

He was. DeMarco sipped from his martini, nodded his gratitude to the martini’s creator, and said, ‘Excellent, Mr William. May I use your phone please?’

‘You don’t have a cell phone, like all the other yahoos who come in here?’

‘Yeah, but I don’t want to use up my minutes. Come on, gimme the phone. It’s not like you pay the bill.’

DeMarco dialed. ‘It’s Joe,’ he said when Emma answered.

‘Say it ain’t so, Joe,’ Emma said.

‘You sound cheery, Emma.’

‘I’m healthy, wealthy, and wise – and unlike you, I have an active sex life. Why shouldn’t I be cheery? So what do you want? I’m doing my nails.’

‘I’d like to borrow one of your associates for surveillance duty.’

‘The Mattis thing?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Goin’ whole hog, are you?’

‘What’s an investigation without surveillance, Em? I’ll have your man tail Billy for a day or two then I’ll report back to Banks that he’s as pure as the fallen snow.’

‘The fallen snow is black from pollutants, Joe. Anyway, what will you be doing while my guy’s tailing Billy?’

DeMarco told her.

‘I think Mike’s free,’ she said. ‘I’ll have him call you.’

‘Is this the same Mike you loaned me in February?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. He’s an okay guy. By the way, Emma, what’s his background?’ DeMarco rolled his eyes when he asked the question, knowing he was wasting his breath – but as Mr William had observed, he was a stubborn man.

‘Oh, the usual,’ Emma said. ‘Navy SEAL, licensed to kill, that sort of thing.’ Emma hung up.

The truth was Mike could be licensed to kill. DeMarco had discovered in the years he had known her that Emma had access to a wide variety of talented people: ex-cops, ex-soldiers, and, he suspected, ex-criminals. She knew wiretap experts, document forgers, and computer hackers. They were all competent and for reasons he was sure he would never know, completely loyal to Emma.

DeMarco had met Emma by giving her a ride. He had just dropped off a friend at Reagan National. He was parked ahead of the cab lane, checking traffic on his left, ready to pull out, when his passenger door opened and a woman entered his car. She was attractive, middle aged, and dressed in an elegant white pantsuit that was rumpled from travel. She was also out of breath, and it didn’t look as if she’d slept for a while. The only thing she was carrying was a purse.

DeMarco said, ‘Hey, what—’

‘In about ten seconds,’ the woman said, ‘two men are going to come out of the terminal. They’re armed and they’re going to try to kill me. They’ll probably kill you too since you’re with me. Now drive. Please.’

The woman was desperate, DeMarco could tell, but not panicking.

‘Hey, look—’ DeMarco said.

‘You now have less than five seconds. I work for the government and I’m not lying.’

DeMarco almost said ‘I’ve heard that line before’ but he didn’t. He was starting to get scared. He looked intently at the woman. She could be someone running from the cops or a mule hauling drugs. But he didn’t think so. She didn’t have a particularly kind face but it seemed to be one you could trust.

DeMarco glanced into his rearview mirror at that moment and saw two dark-complexioned men run out of the terminal. They looked frantically up and down the sidewalk in front of the terminal, and then one of them pointed at DeMarco’s car.

‘Shit,’ he said, and he stepped on the gas and pulled into the arriving airport traffic. ‘Why didn’t you just take a damn cab?’ he said to the woman.

‘Did you see the line at the cabstand?’ she answered. She looked behind her. ‘Damnit, they had a car waiting.’

DeMarco checked his rearview mirror. The two men were getting into a black Mercedes sedan.

‘What’s going—’

‘Just get me to the Pentagon,’ the woman said. ‘And if a cop tries to pull you over, don’t stop.’

‘Wait a—’

‘You’ll get the cop killed. Now drive. Fast.’

The woman checked the traffic behind them. The Mercedes was gaining on them. She pulled a cell phone out of her purse.

‘It’s me,’ she said into the phone. ‘I just got in from Cairo. I’ve got the sample but they were waiting for me at baggage claim. That wasn’t supposed to happen, you moron!’ She was silent for a moment. ‘No, I don’t have a gun. How the hell was I supposed to get a gun on the plane? Look … Shut up. Listen to me. I’m with a civilian. We’re in a 19 …’ She looked over at DeMarco.

‘Ninety-four,’ he said.

‘A 1994 Volvo, maroon in color. We’re just leaving National and headed for the GW Parkway. You’ll be able to tell it’s us because we’ll be going a hundred miles an hour with a Mercedes on our tail. Now scramble someone. Fast!’ She closed the cell phone.

‘What’s your name?’ she said to DeMarco.

‘Joe,’ he said.

‘Well, Joe, you need to put the pedal to the metal. A wreck is the least of your problems at this point.’

The Mercedes was directly behind them now but it wasn’t trying to pass or cut them off.

The woman glanced back at the other car. ‘They’re going to wait until you’re on the parkway, then I’m guessing one of those guys is going to pull out an automatic weapon and shred your tires.’

‘Jesus!’ DeMarco said. ‘Why don’t you just throw whatever the fuck they want outta the window?’

The woman laughed, apparently not realizing that DeMarco hadn’t been joking.

DeMarco reached the George Washington Parkway with the Mercedes fifty yards behind him. He was soon going ninety miles an hour and was thankful that traffic was light. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw one of the guys in the Mercedes stick half his body out the passenger-side window. Then he saw flashes of orange light erupt from the end of the man’s arm – he didn’t hear any shots being fired – then he saw sparks, about a dozen of them, fly up from the asphalt next to the Volvo.

‘Son of a bitch!’ DeMarco screamed. He jammed his foot down on the gas pedal, but it didn’t move. The Volvo couldn’t go any faster.

Then it was over.

A helicopter, a big black one, was suddenly above the Mercedes shining a spotlight down on it and DeMarco could see a guy hanging out of the helicopter holding a rifle. Where the helicopter came from, DeMarco didn’t know. The Mercedes slowed down slightly, apparently looking for an exit or a turnaround. DeMarco didn’t slow down; he kept the gas pedal jammed to the floor. A minute later he saw red-and-blue lights from five or six cars flashing in his rearview mirror and the Mercedes was surrounded.

‘You can pull over now,’ the woman said.

DeMarco kept going.

‘It’s okay,’ the woman said. ‘Calm down. Pull over.’

DeMarco did and when the car stopped he put his head on the steering wheel for a moment and closed his eyes. Without raising his head he said, ‘Would you mind telling me—’

‘Sorry, Joe, but I can’t.’

The damn woman would never let him finish a sentence.

A white van with government plates pulled up behind DeMarco’s Volvo. The woman got out but before she closed the door she said, ‘By the way, I’m Emma. And thank you.’ Then she got back into the van and took off.

The next morning DeMarco was sitting in his office, flipping through the paper to see if last night’s incident had made the news. It hadn’t. A moment later there was a knock on his door, which surprised him as people rarely visited his office. He opened the door. It was Emma.

‘How did you …’

DeMarco had started to say ‘How did you find me,’ then realized that would have been a very silly question.

‘I just wanted to thank you properly for what you did last night,’ Emma said. She entered DeMarco’s office without being asked, raised an eyebrow at the decor, then handed DeMarco an envelope. ‘Two seats for the Wizards for tomorrow night, right behind the players’ bench. I’ve heard you’re a sports fan.’

‘Jeez, thanks,’ DeMarco said. The tickets must have cost about five hundred bucks. ‘I appreciate the tickets but I’d still like to know what happened last night.’

‘I’m sorry, Joe, I can’t tell you. But as they say in the funnies, you have the thanks of a grateful nation. And, Joe, here’s my phone number.’ She handed DeMarco a card that had nothing on it but a phone number with a 703 area code.

‘If you ever need help – with anything – give me a call,’ Emma said.

‘Well,’ DeMarco said, thinking about his current assignment from Mahoney, ‘you wouldn’t by any chance know a guy who can crack a safe, would you?’

That had been the beginning of a long, often bizarre, relationship which DeMarco had never regretted.

DeMarco did know one small thing about Emma. He had asked the Speaker to run a background check on her shortly after he met her. DeMarco was guessing she was CIA, something Mahoney should be able to confirm easily. Or so DeMarco had thought.

When the Speaker got back to DeMarco, he was as flustered as DeMarco had ever seen him.

‘She’s ex-DIA,’ Mahoney said.

The Defense Intelligence Agency was formed by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara after the debacle at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Some said it was the organization the CIA wanted to be when it grew up. Not only was it so competent that it rarely made the papers but it was involved in military operations so sensitive and so vital that even ranking politicians feared to challenge them.

‘When I asked about her, my buddy said he’d get back to me. Next thing I know I got two guys in my office so fuckin’ scary I almost soiled my britches. They wanted to know how I knew her name and why I was askin’. Me. The Speaker. Anyway, after I do a song-and-dance routine like goddamn Fred and Ginger, they finally tell me she’s ex-DIA – and I think the ex part might even be bullshit.’

No kiddin’, DeMarco had thought.

‘But that’s all they’d tell me, Joe,’ Mahoney said. ‘Whatever she used to do for them is something they wanna keep buried until the Potomac dries up.’

But that was enough for DeMarco: to know the one thing about Emma that explained why Emma never explained.

The sound of a dump truck landing on the bar next to DeMarco’s right elbow startled him from his reverie. It turned out not to be a dump truck but Alice’s purse, fifteen cubic feet of fake leather filled, apparently, with everything she owned.

Without acknowledging DeMarco, Alice signaled to Mr William. He approached tentatively. Mr William was a gregarious person who enjoyed his patrons; Alice was the rare exception.

‘Black Jack on the rocks, string bean, and make it snappy,’ Alice said.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Mr William said. It’s difficult for a man six foot six to cower but Mr William managed.

‘You know,’ Alice said to DeMarco, ‘since you knew I was coming and you know what I drink, you coulda had my drink waitin’ for me.’

‘Like your liver would shut down if you got your evening booster shot five minutes late.’

‘Don’t be a smart ass.’

Mr William delivered her drink then backed away like Michael Jackson doing his moonwalk.

‘Hey,’ Alice yelled at him. ‘No peanuts? None of them little goldfish things?’

‘I’ll get you some, ma’am,’ Mr William said, his face wooden, his eyes bright buttons that warned of impending homicide.

Alice was fifty, with dyed blonde big hair, too much makeup, and twenty pounds she didn’t need. She had a husband she referred to as ‘that asshole’ and a son she called ‘that little jerk.’ Alice lived for only one thing: the slot machines in Atlantic City, a mecca she pilgrimaged to every weekend. She worked for AT&T.

Alice slugged down half her drink and then began to rummage through her bottomless purse. ‘Here,’ she said, dropping six wrinkled pages on the bar in front of DeMarco: Billy Mattis’s phone records for the last three months.

Assuming Billy was actually involved in the shooting, he had at least one accomplice – the guy who pulled the trigger. And if you have an accomplice, DeMarco reasoned, you have to communicate with him. Ergo, one looks at phone bills to see who Billy has been blabbing with lately.

DeMarco realized that if Billy Ray was a professional hit man or an undercover agent for a foreign government, his methods of communication would be more sophisticated than the kitchen telephone. But just looking at Billy Ray’s file, DeMarco was positive the man was not a mole the Russians had trained from birth, then parachuted into rural Georgia to work his way into the confidences of the American elite.

‘You know, it was a lot of work to get those records,’ Alice said to DeMarco as she stuffed peanuts in her mouth. To Mr William she yelled, ‘Hey, stilts! If it ain’t too much trouble, how ’bout another one here.’

‘Alice,’ DeMarco said, ‘who are you kidding? You hit maybe three keys on your keyboard to get this stuff.’

‘How would you know?’ Alice said. ‘You work for the phone company too, Mr Big Shot? Anyway, I’m a little short this month.’

Alice was a little short every month. DeMarco suspected the only thing keeping the loan shark’s bat from her wrinkled kneecaps was the monthly retainer he paid her.

As Alice droned on about the state of the economy in general and her personal finances in particular, DeMarco looked at Billy Mattis’s phone records. Alice’s computer had provided names and addresses of people and businesses Billy had called from his home phone and using his calling card. DeMarco would have Emma’s people check out the names to see if anyone was noteworthy, but nothing leaped out at him: no calls to businesses that made spotting scopes or sniper rifles – and most important, no calls to the late Harold Edwards.

The only strange thing he did find was that in June Billy had called a Jillian Mattis twenty times in a two-week period. Jillian Mattis, DeMarco remembered from Billy’s personnel file, was Billy’s mother. He looked at the previous month’s bill and saw that Billy had only called his mother four times. The high number of calls began two weeks after he had been assigned to the President’s security detail. DeMarco realized that Billy’s increased phone calls to his mother during this period could have a number of mundane explanations. Maybe she’d been sick around that time and he was just checking on her. Or maybe Billy was planning to visit her and was finalizing his plans. Or maybe Billy was a closet mama’s boy.

‘Well,’ Alice said.

‘Well what?’ DeMarco said. He hadn’t heard a word she’d said for the last five minutes.

‘Can you give me an advance?’

‘Yeah,’ DeMarco said. Giving in to Alice was easier than haggling with Alice. And Lord knows Trump could use the money.




9 (#ulink_091ff1b3-f372-5709-ae1a-4f4421d74fbb)


Middleburg, Virginia, was fifty miles west of the capital, a picture-postcard of a town surrounded by rolling green hills that were once Civil War battlefields. The battlefields were now white-fenced pastures where well-bred horses pranced. Wealthy Washingtonians bought land near Middleburg, and on weekends attended steeplechases and pretended they were country squires.

Frank Engles was not a country squire; he owned a bed-and-breakfast. His establishment was a multihued Victorian with leaded-glass windows and sun-catching dormers and was as romantic as a bouquet of roses. It was the sort of place DeMarco might have chosen to take a girlfriend to spend a fall weekend – if he had a girlfriend.

DeMarco had told General Banks he needed to talk to someone who knew Billy and understood the Secret Service’s promotion practices. Banks had his people contact the Service’s human resources department and they very fortunately came up with Frank Engles. The very fortunate part was that just before he retired Engles had supervised Billy.

A plump, white-haired woman wearing an apron dusted with flour answered the doorbell. She told DeMarco he would find Engles behind the house doing some chores. He walked around the house as directed and saw a man in the backyard splitting wood. The man’s back was to DeMarco. Lying on the ground near the man was a dog.

DeMarco liked dogs that were cuddly and came only to his knee. The dog he was now looking at was a German shepherd the size of a Shetland pony and as cuddly as a polar bear. The beast’s head swiveled toward DeMarco like a gun turret, and then it gave a single yelp and charged. DeMarco, in turn, did what he always did when confronted by a hundred-and-twenty-pound canine moving in his direction with its teeth exposed: he stood completely still, tried to look unthreatening, and wished like hell he was armed.

Engles finally noticed the tableau behind him: DeMarco frozen in mid-stride, trying not to quiver like a flushed quail, and his four-legged monster in a ready-to-lunge position. The retired agent came trotting over to DeMarco and with a little chuckle said what dog owners always say: ‘Hey, don’t worry about Ol’ Bullet. He’s just bein’ friendly.’

Engles was in his early sixties. He wore faded jeans and a yellow T-shirt with I ♥ VIRGINIA on it. He had wary-looking gray eyes, a nose that had been broken more than once, and there was a bald spot on the back of his head that looked like a monk’s tonsure. The tonsure, combined with his broken nose, gave him the appearance of a priest who didn’t turn the other cheek.

Since DeMarco wanted Engles’s cooperation he didn’t tell him he should keep his pet wolf shackled to a short chain and muzzled. Instead he said, ‘Yeah, looks like a really friendly pooch.’ The dog was now sniffing DeMarco’s groin.

‘Mr Engles,’ DeMarco said, trying to ignore the damn dog, ‘I’m Joe DeMarco. I work for Congress.’ DeMarco flipped open a leather half wallet and showed Engles his congressional security pass.

‘Congress?’ Engles said, glancing down at DeMarco’s credentials then back up at DeMarco’s face. DeMarco was willing to bet that Engles had just memorized every word on his security pass.

‘Yes, sir,’ DeMarco said. ‘I’m here concerning the recent assassination attempt on the President. As you may have heard, there’s a committee taking a hard look at the President’s security. I’d just like to ask you a few questions.’

‘Seems to me Congress oughta do their own damn job,’ Engles grumbled, ‘and let the experts take care of security.’

DeMarco gave him an embarrassed half smile, and said, ‘Confidentially, I agree with you, sir, but when my boss says ride, I hop on my horse.’

The I’m-just-a-working-stiff routine worked.

‘Yeah, sure,’ Engles said. ‘Come on up to the house. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and you can ask your questions. Bullet! Get off that man’s suit. Dog’s so darn friendly he’d just lick a robber to death.’

Dog owners always say that too.

Engles took DeMarco to a kitchen that smelled of apples and cinnamon and had a fireplace big enough for a Yule log. It was a comfortable, cheery room and he could imagine generations of grandkids licking the spoon from the icing bowl. Engles poured coffee into two large mugs and they took seats at a sturdy wooden table. Ol’ Bullet flopped down on the floor near Engles’s chair.

‘So what do you need from me?’ Engles asked as he added cream to his coffee. ‘I’m retired, you know.’

‘We’re taking a look at agent-selection procedures, Mr Engles. We’re particularly interested in how the inside ring is picked. You know: experience requirements, qualification criteria, that sort of thing.’

The ‘we’s were for Engles’s benefit. DeMarco was hoping he’d imagine an army of marching gray bureaucrats, the full and ponderous weight of government behind his mission.

‘What’s goin’ on here?’ Engles said. ‘You can get all that stuff right from the department’s personnel office. They have write-ups about training programs, selection guidelines, qualification criteria, all that crap. You didn’t drive down here for that. Why are you really here?’

So much for the ponderous weight of government.

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ DeMarco said, feeling like he’d been caught trying to hold up Santa Claus. ‘We’re curious about one agent who was at Chattooga River. A man you supervised before you retired.’

‘Who is it?’ asked Engles.

‘Billy Ray Mattis.’

‘You think Mattis shouldn’t have been assigned to that detail? Is that what this is all about?’

‘Not necessarily, but he was the youngest and least-experienced agent on duty that morning.’

DeMarco knew Billy was the youngest agent based on the video; he was guessing he was the least experienced.

‘You guys know Mattis took a bullet for the President in Indiana?’ Engles asked.

‘Yeah, I’ve seen his record. Is that why you selected him, because of Indiana?’

Engles went silent, his hands betraying his nervousness as they squeezed the coffee mug in front of him. Ol’ Bullet sensed the change in his master’s mood. The mutt’s eyes locked onto DeMarco’s jugular and from his throat came a low, rumbling sound. Engles reached down and ruffled the fur on the dog’s thick neck, calming it, while he thought about DeMarco’s question.

When Engles still didn’t respond, DeMarco said, ‘Look, I’m not trying to pin a rose on Billy Mattis. I just want to know why he was picked for the most sensitive assignment in the Service.’

‘Maybe it’s me you’re trying to pin the rose on,’ Engles said.

‘Mr Engles, you retired before the assassination attempt. There’s no way you can be held culpable for anything.’

‘Yeah, right,’ he said.

His voice oozing false sincerity, DeMarco said, ‘All we want to do, sir, is make sure the President continues to have the best security in the world – the kind of security men like you have always provided.’ He hoped Ol’ Bullet couldn’t smell the bullshit in the air.

Engles looked at DeMarco, looked away, and then looked back. He cleared his throat.

‘I didn’t select Mattis,’ he said. ‘Every other man who worked for me, I handpicked. But with Mattis, one day I just get word he’s being moved into my unit. When I asked why, I was told not to make waves. Somebody doing a favor for somebody. Happens all the time.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean the Secret Service is like any other big company. People get transferred around. Bosses make deals with other bosses to help their fair-haired boys. Or a guy’s having problems in one division so they move him somewhere else to see if he’ll do better.’

‘Is that what happened in this case?’

Engles shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘So who moved him into your unit?’

Engles hesitated. ‘Well, I heard it was Little Pat, hisself. Now I don’t know that for a fact; it’s just what I heard.’

‘Patrick Donnelly personally moved him into your unit?’ DeMarco was unable to keep the shock from registering in his voice.

‘Like I said, that’s what came out of the rumor mill.’

‘Why would the director of the Secret Service take an interest in the career of Billy Mattis?’

‘Hell, I don’t know. I also don’t see what the big deal is here. Mattis passed all the qualification boards, and when I got to know him, I liked him. Quiet guy. Serious about his work. Mind always on the job. Not one of those guys who gets bored and starts watching skirts in the crowd.’

‘So you didn’t complain about the assignment?’

‘No. I was pissed because I didn’t have a say in it, but there was no reason to make a stink. I would have, had he been a fuckup, but he wasn’t.’ Shaking his head, he added, ‘Poor Reynolds.’

‘Reynolds?’

‘Guy who replaced me. He must be catching hell right now, lettin’ that guy Edwards get into position that morning. I saw him the other day leaving his house, fuckin’ newsies shovin’ microphones in his face.’

‘Yeah,’ DeMarco said, feigning sympathy for poor Reynolds. ‘But what about Mattis? How much hell do you think he’s catching right now?’

‘For what?’ Engles asked.

‘You must have seen the video of the shooting. How Mattis dropped his sunglasses right before the first shot was fired.’

‘Is that what this is all about?’ Engles said, eyes blazing. ‘Look, any man in that unit could have dropped something, or tripped, or moved the wrong way. Just because Mattis did doesn’t have a damn thing to do with his experience or the selection procedures or who assigned him or any other fuckin’ thing.’

‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ DeMarco said, sounding unconvinced. ‘But tell me, how did you rate Mattis’s performance when he worked for you, Mr Engles?’

Engles, still fuming, took a breath to regain his composure.

‘Let me put it this way,’ he said. ‘I had two kinds of good people who worked for me. I also had a few bad ones over the years but we won’t waste our time talking about those. The first kind, the kind who eventually move up through the ranks, were the guys who figured things out on their own. They didn’t always do exactly what you told them, but they did what you really wanted done. You understand what I’m sayin’ here?’

DeMarco nodded.

‘The second kind of good guy,’ Engles said, ‘was Billy Mattis. He just plain followed orders. Every organization needs people like him, people you can always rely on to do what they’re told, but Billy’s rank and file, a frontline grunt, and he always will be.’

‘What about his personality?’

‘I already told you: quiet, easygoin’. Raised proper, taught to respect his mama and love his country. He didn’t have any close friends in the unit but he got along with everybody. He was a likable guy. I liked him.’

‘How ’bout his politics?’

‘I honest to God don’t remember him ever expressing a political opinion about anything. I couldn’t tell you if he voted Republican or Democrat, or if he voted at all.’ Engles frowned. ‘Why are you asking about Mattis’s politics? You people think he actually had something to do with the shooting?’

Yikes. ‘Of course not,’ DeMarco said.

‘I sure as hell hope not. That boy would no more be involved in something like that than Ol’ Bullet here would turn himself into a cat. Ain’t that right, Bullet,’ Engles said, tugging on the dog’s collar.

DeMarco thought he saw Ol’ Bullet smile but the dog may have been choking.

DeMarco schmoozed around with Frank Engles another fifteen minutes trying to get him to remember nasty things about Billy Mattis. Nada. Billy Ray was the Muffin Man, Mr Goodwrench, sugar and spice and everything nice. And he probably was.

As DeMarco was driving back to Washington, picking dog hairs off his trousers, his cell phone rang. It was Banks.

‘Be in my office at one,’ Banks said. ‘The FBI has something new on the assassination attempt and they’re sending someone over to brief me.’




10 (#ulink_2009514b-a687-5235-aea1-fb5e772ee029)


The FBI briefing consisted of a single agent equipped with a spiral-bound notebook, and DeMarco could see that Banks was disappointed. The retired general had obviously been expecting a Pentagon PowerPoint presentation with multicolored charts showing maps, shooting angles, and enlarged copies of lab reports.

The agent, one Gregory Prudom, was a man of medium height with regular features. His hair was short and brown. His blue suit, white shirt, and red-and-gold striped tie were bureaucratic camouflage. He was so nondescript that his own mother couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup. At the same time, he had the air of a man who would hold the line if commanded, never giving an inch until directed to retreat. A titanium cookie cutter down at Quantico stamped out men like Agent Prudom.

Prudom started the briefing by glancing at DeMarco and saying, ‘General Banks, I was told to extend to you the courtesy of a progress report but I was of the understanding you would be alone. May I ask who this gentleman is?’

‘Courtesy, my eye,’ Banks said. ‘I run Homeland Security. I have a need to know.’

‘You do, sir, but does this gentleman?’

‘Yeah. He’s one of my assistants.’

Turning to DeMarco, Prudom said, ‘May I see some identification, sir?’ DeMarco smiled at Prudom but didn’t reach for his wallet. This son of a bitch didn’t look like anybody’s assistant, Prudom was thinking; he looked like guys he’d brought up on racketeering charges.

‘You don’t need to see his ID, Mr Prudom,’ Banks said. ‘You’ll take my word that he’s properly cleared and with a need to know. Now get on with it.’

Prudom sat a second pondering his options, looking Banks directly in the eye. He wasn’t intimidated; he was just trying to figure out if bucking Banks was in the Bureau’s best interest.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said at last, and opened his notebook. He flipped to a page with a few notes scribbled on it and said, ‘We finally figured out how Edwards pulled it off.’

‘That’s great,’ Banks said, but DeMarco thought he looked nervous.

‘The day the President was shot,’ Prudom said, ‘the agents never saw the shooter; they weren’t even sure where he fired from.’

‘Then what the hell were they shooting at?’ Banks asked.

‘The bluff above the river,’ Prudom said. ‘It was the only place that provided any cover so they saturated it with bullets in an attempt to keep the shooter from firing again. They were unsuccessful, as you know, because the shooter fired a third shot after the agents opened fire, killing Agent James, the agent who was lying on top of the President.

‘After the third shot, the shooting stopped but no one could get up to the bluff right away to go after the assassin. The remaining Secret Service agents had to get the President into the helicopter so he could be evacuated to the nearest hospital, and two of the three agents accompanied the President in the helicopter. The third agent stayed at the site and—’

‘Who was the agent that stayed?’ Banks asked.

Prudom consulted his notes again. ‘Agent Preston. Anyway, as soon as the helicopter lifted off, the agent, Preston, called the agents guarding the five-mile perimeter around the cabin and told them to start moving in toward the shooting site. After that Preston went up the bluff by himself to go after the shooter. It took him half an hour to climb to the top and by the time he got there the shooter was gone. Or so he thought.’

‘What’s that m—’ Banks started to say but Prudom raised a finger silencing him.

‘Our forensic people arrived on scene four hours after the shooting but they couldn’t find a thing: no brass, no footprints, no areas where the grass had been trampled down. Everyone figured Edwards had to have fired from the bluff, it was the only thing that made sense, but the Secret Service was adamant they would have spotted the guy. They said they’d patrolled the bluff right up until it was time for the President to leave, and the helicopter that was taking the President back to Washington had been hovering above the bluff until just prior to the President’s departure. Everybody figured Edwards must have done one helluva camouflage job not to be seen on top of that bluff before the shooting, either that or he was the fuckin’ Invisible Man. Excuse me, sir,’ Prudom added for his blue language.

‘Go on,’ Banks said.

‘From the beginning,’ Prudom said, ‘one of the guys in our lab said the shooting angles didn’t make sense. He did a bunch of computer simulations, and kept saying that in order for the angles to make sense, the shooter would have to have been about three feet below the top of the bluff. Everybody blew the tech off, figuring his calculations were screwed up. Yesterday this tech got permission to fly down to Georgia, and he finds a hole in the side of the bluff, three feet below the top.

‘You see,’ Prudom said, excited now, ‘Edwards had burrowed this hole – it was about six feet long and three feet in diameter – into the side of the bluff sometime before the President arrived at Chattooga River. He camouflaged the opening so you couldn’t see it unless you were about two inches away, looking straight at it.’

‘Jesus,’ Banks said.

‘Yeah,’ Prudom said, abandoning any attempt at formality, ‘this bastard lowered himself over the side of the bluff, probably suspended from a rope, and dug a damn shooting blind into the side of a hill. Based on the timing of the President’s trip, the arrival of the Secret Service’s advance team at Chattooga River to secure the area, and patrols performed while the President was there, we think he dug the blind at least a week before the President arrived. Then, just before the President arrived, the son of a bitch snuck in at night, right past the guys guarding the perimeter, and entered the blind. He hid in the blind the two days the President was fishing on the river with Montgomery and then – and this is the really amazing part – he stayed in that damn hole for at least a day after the shooting. He got away the second night when all the evidence techs had knocked off for the day, and he went right by the FBI’s perimeter guards. It’s the only way he could have gotten off that bluff.’

‘I saw pictures of this guy Edwards in the Post,’ DeMarco said. ‘He didn’t look all that athletic. You know, kinda hefty.’

It was the first time DeMarco had spoken, and Banks gave him a look that said assistants should be seen and not heard. DeMarco pretended not to notice.

Prudom shrugged. ‘He was small enough to fit in the blind. We measured. And every chubby guy you see isn’t out of shape either. Plus this guy was a hunter and he was in the reserve, which brings me to the next thing,’ Prudom said. ‘The rifle he used was a Remington 700 with a Leupold Mark 4 tactical scope. We traced the serial numbers and found out it was stolen a month ago from an Army Reserve armory.’

Banks looked over at DeMarco. Billy Ray Mattis was a member of the Army Reserve.

‘Which reserve unit was it stolen from?’ DeMarco asked.

‘Edwards’s old unit. The one over at Fort Meade in Maryland,’ Prudom said.

DeMarco remembered from Billy’s file that his Army Reserve unit was based in Richmond, Virginia.

‘I thought Edwards was a hunter,’ DeMarco said. ‘Why didn’t he use one of his own guns?’

‘He hocked ’em,’ Prudom said, ‘because he’d been off work so long. All he had in his house were a couple of shotguns.’

‘And I suppose the Bureau is investigating the armory theft?’ DeMarco said.

Prudom nodded impatiently. ‘Of course, along with army CID, but we haven’t come up with anything that ties it directly to Edwards – other than the fact that all the weapons that were stolen were in his damn house. The .45 he killed himself with? It came from the armory.’

‘Is the rifle the only physical evidence you have?’ Banks asked.

‘You mean besides the suicide note?’ Prudom said.

‘Yeah,’ Banks said.

‘Well, we found a receipt in his car from a gas station about thirty miles from Chattooga River. But the guy left nothing in the shooting blind, and when you think about it, that’s also amazing. He was in that hole digging, eating, shitting, pissing, and shooting – and he managed not to leave any trace. He took all his garbage with him when he left and while he was in there he must have been covered head to foot in some kinda suit because he didn’t leave any hair or skin or anything else we could get DNA from. We didn’t find the suit in his house, by the way.’

Prudom closed his notebook. ‘The good news, General, is that this helps the Secret Service. I mean it’s not like their procedures were sloppy or they were goofin’ off on the job. This guy Edwards may have been a whack job – but he was good. Really good.’

‘But how did he plan this thing?’ DeMarco asked. Banks almost gave himself whiplash as his head spun toward DeMarco.

‘What do you mean?’ Prudom said.

‘You said Edwards went down to Georgia the week before the Secret Service’s advance team arrived at Chattooga River, and that’s when he dug the shooting blind. How’d he know when to go?’

‘We’re not sure, but this thing the President did every year with Montgomery always got plenty of ink. And obviously lots of people here in D.C. knew when the President was leaving and where he was going. The other thing is, we found out the other day that when Montgomery was at some book signing he talked about going down to Georgia to do some fishing with the President. We got that from his publicist. So to answer your question, we don’t know exactly how Edwards figured out the President’s schedule but we do know that planning for the trip wasn’t controlled like the Manhattan Project.’

After Prudom left, Banks and DeMarco sat together in silence a moment thinking about what Prudom had told them.

‘You know,’ Banks said, ‘Mattis being in the reserve, same as Edwards, you need to follow up on that armory break in.’

‘If the FBI can’t find anything, I doubt I’ll be able to.’

‘Yeah, but you gotta check it out.’

‘Sure,’ DeMarco said.

He had no intention of checking it out.




11 (#ulink_452a2ee2-eba0-5615-b97d-1be406727cb2)


The man sitting at the bus stop across from Secret Service headquarters wore a blue polo shirt, chinos, and sandals with white socks. He was in his sixties, had iron-gray hair, and a face that DeMarco could envision, for some reason, behind the plastic face shield of a riot helmet. This was Emma’s man Mike, last name unknown.

‘Hi,’ DeMarco said as he sat down next to Mike on the bench.

‘Hey, Joe,’ Mike responded, but he didn’t look at DeMarco. His eyes continued to scan the building across the street, moving from exit to exit, and occasionally over to a nearby parking lot. When you got a guy from Emma, you got a pro.

‘How’s it going?’ DeMarco asked.

‘Like watchin’ paint dry,’ Mike replied. ‘He leaves his house at six thirty and gets here at eight – 395 was a fuckin’ parking lot this morning. He goes directly to this building where he stays all morning. What he’s doin’ in there, I don’t know. At twelve he comes outside, grabs a burrito from a street vendor, takes a walk around the Mall, then goes back inside the building.’

‘Did Mattis see you tailing him?’

Now Mike looked at DeMarco; his stare answered DeMarco’s question.

‘And I take it no one approached him while he was taking his lunchtime walk.’

‘You take it right,’ Mike said.

They sat in silence for a while, Mike watching the building, DeMarco watching the women walk by. As he sat there, DeMarco thought back to the FBI briefing. What Edwards had done fascinated him. He couldn’t imagine a man lying in a dark, claustrophobic space for two days waiting for the opportunity to take a shot and then having the balls to stay in the shooting blind while the FBI scoured the bluff above him for evidence.

Which made DeMarco think of something else: Why did he take the shot he took? There must have been an easier shot Edwards could have taken while the President was fishing. Instead he waited until the day the President was departing, surrounded by his bodyguards. Then he remembered that Prudom had said that while the President was on the river the Secret Service had patrolled the bluff, so maybe that’s what had prevented Edwards from shooting earlier.

The skill it had taken to sneak into and out of the area was also remarkable. Prior to the shooting Edwards had to get past a Secret Service cordon to get to the shooting blind he had previously dug. After the FBI’s forensic people arrived on-site, Prudom said they worked sixteen hours a day, and when they weren’t there, the area had been patrolled to keep out sightseers and protect the crime scene. Yet the assassin had left the shooting blind, probably the day after the shooting, reconcealed the blind, and either climbed back up to the top of the bluff or down the bluff to the river, carrying his waste and all his gear with him. Then he waltzed past all the people guarding the site.

The rifle also intrigued DeMarco. Why would Edwards have taken the assassination weapon back to his house? Why didn’t he just dump it the first chance he got? It was almost as if …

‘You ever seen pictures of Mickey Mantle, Joe?’ Mike said. ‘I don’t mean right before he died of cancer, but when he was playing.’

‘Sure,’ DeMarco said.

‘Well that’s who this kid looks like. He looks like the Mick, ol’ number seven. Why am I tailing a guy who works for the Secret Service and looks like Mickey Mantle, Joe?’

DeMarco rose from the bench. ‘I’ll check in with you again tomorrow, Mike. Thanks for helping out on this.’

‘Sure, Joe,’ Mike said, ‘but if I gotta spend another day sittin’ in the sun on a concrete bench, I’m gonna go crazy. And when I do, you’re gonna be the first person I kill.’



DeMarco lived in a small town house in Georgetown, on P Street. The town house, a carbon copy of several others on the block, was a narrow two-story affair made of white-painted brick. Wrought-iron grillwork covered the windows; ivy clung to the walls; azaleas bloomed in the flowerbeds in the spring. It was a cozy place, and he and his neighbors pretended the artfully twisted black bars barricading their lower-floor windows were installed for aesthetic reasons. He had purchased the house the year he married.

The interior of DeMarco’s home looked as if thieves had backed a moving van up to the front door and removed everything of value – which, in a way, is exactly what had happened. A house once filled with fine furniture, Oriental rugs, and pricey artwork now contained only a few haphazardly selected pieces that DeMarco had bought at two yard sales one Saturday morning. The entertainment center in his living room had been replaced with a twenty-four-inch television on a cheap metal stand. A lumpy recliner sat a few feet from the television and on the floor near the recliner was a boom box that served dual purpose as a radio and a place to set his drink when he read or watched TV.

DeMarco tossed his suit coat on the recliner – the antique oak coat stand that had been by the door was gone – and walked toward his kitchen. Each step he took on the bare hardwood floors echoed throughout the house like punctuation marks in a sonnet to loneliness.

When DeMarco’s wife left him she decided not to take the house. Her lover had a house. She didn’t, however, like her lover’s furniture so her lawyer made DeMarco a deal: if he didn’t contest the divorce he would pay no alimony and get to keep his pension and a heavily mortgaged house. In return, his wife would get all the furniture and furnishings – and all the money in their joint savings account, the cash value of his insurance policies, and DeMarco’s best car.

DeMarco’s dinner was two slices of cold pizza eaten while standing in front of the refrigerator. Dinner the night before had been the same pizza, except hot from the box. DeMarco was a good cook and he enjoyed cooking, but he didn’t enjoy cooking for one.

He felt restless after his supper and the pizza sat like a cheese boulder in his gut. He changed into a pair of shorts, a sleeveless Redskins T-shirt, and a pair of scuffed tennis shoes and trudged slowly up the stairs to the second floor of his home. For a brief period, DeMarco’s ex had used one of the two upstairs bedrooms as a studio, ruining yards of perfectly good canvas while whining that the windows didn’t let in the northern light. This hobby, like others that followed, lasted only a short time before she returned to those activities at which she excelled: shopping and adultery.

Now the bedrooms were empty and the only thing in the upper story of DeMarco’s home was a punching bag, a fifty pounder that swung black and lumpy from a ceiling rafter like a short, fat man who had hanged himself. When asked why he had installed the heavy bag he would shrug and say it was for aerobic exercise, but the truth was that he loved to beat the shit out of an inanimate object when the mood struck him.

He put on his gloves, warmed up with a little shadowboxing, and attacked the bag. The bag took the first round but by the second he was drenched with sweat, pounding leather with a vengeance, imagining his wife’s lover’s ribs cracking like kindling with each blow. His wife’s lover had been his cousin. He was so into violent fantasy that he almost didn’t hear the doorbell ring.

Standing on his porch was a compact man in his thirties wearing a gray suit. When DeMarco noticed the pistol in the shoulder holster beneath the man’s suit jacket, he gave the stranger his full attention. Behind the man was a black limousine with government plates parked at the curb.

‘Are you Joseph DeMarco?’ the man asked.

‘Yeah,’ DeMarco said, still trying to catch his breath. ‘How can I help you?’ DeMarco thought it prudent to be polite to armed men.

‘Patrick Donnelly, director of the Secret Service, would like a word with you, sir. Would you mind joining the director in his car?’

Ah, shit, DeMarco thought. Shit, shit, shit. On the case less than two days and the Secret Service already knew he was involved. He thought of slamming the door in the agent’s face and running to hide under his bed.

‘Please, sir, would you mind coming with me,’ the man prodded.

Dignity prevailed over the ostrich defense. ‘You bet,’ DeMarco said, his voice sounding more confident than he felt.

Donnelly’s driver opened the rear door of the limo for him. Feeling foolish in his shorts and Redskins T-shirt, DeMarco stepped into the car and took his place on the jump seat so he could face Patrick Donnelly. The armed driver closed the door behind DeMarco then remained standing outside the limo, several feet away; apparently Mr Donnelly didn’t want his man to hear their conversation.

Lil’ Pat Donnelly stared at DeMarco, his eyes projecting his hostility. He was a slender man in his late sixties, no more than five feet six inches tall. His hair was dyed glossy black and parted so precisely on the left side that DeMarco could imagine him using a straightedge to guide his comb. He had small features, close-set ears, and narrow black eyes with drooping lids. His mouth was a cruel slash and his face was covered with a smear of five o’clock shadow. DeMarco thought he looked like a fencer, slim and wiry and nasty – the type who would use real swords if allowed the opportunity.

DeMarco ignored Donnelly’s glare and looked casually around the limo, at the leather upholstery, the small TV, the bar inset into the back of the front seat. The jump seat of the limo was more comfortable than his recliner, and he bet Donnelly’s TV got better reception than his did.

‘Afraid I’m gettin’ sweat on your upholstery,’ he said to Donnelly. ‘I was working out.’ Ya little shit, he added silently.

‘Shut up,’ Donnelly said. ‘You were in Middleburg today where you interrogated a retired Secret Service agent. What in the hell makes you think you have the authority to do such a thing?’

DeMarco gave Donnelly the same line he’d fed John Engles. ‘Congress is concerned about the President’s security, Mr Donnelly, and—’

‘Congress my ass,’ Donnelly said. ‘You talked to Frank Engles because Banks told you that jackass idea of his about Billy Mattis.’

DeMarco’s face gave away nothing but inside his gut was a small mad animal, gnawing at the lining of his stomach. He knew how Donnelly had found out about him: Engles, still loyal to his old outfit, had called some pal and told him about DeMarco and his questions. The word immediately went up the chain of command to Donnelly. Donnelly knew, even if no one else did, about Banks’s concern with Mattis. And maybe Donnelly had someone check Banks’s appointment calendar and found out that DeMarco had met with him. DeMarco should have used a phony name with Engles.

‘What happened at Chattooga River is a matter for the FBI and the Secret Service, mister, and you are going to stay out of it. Do you understand? Not only have they found the guy who did it, there are still three hundred goddamn FBI agents investigating the assassination attempt! Even if you had the authority, what in the fuck do you think you could possibly do that the FBI and my people aren’t already doing?’

Before DeMarco could respond, Donnelly said, ‘I run the Secret Service, you idiot, which means I can find out anything about anybody. I know, for example, that you’re John Mahoney’s heavy. If it’s something easy, getting a few guys to compromise on some chickenshit bill, Mahoney sends his chief of staff, that fat guy who wears suspenders. But when he doesn’t want to compromise, when he wants to shove his dick up somebody’s ass, he sends you.’

‘I don’t work for the Speaker,’ DeMarco said, ‘I’m an independent coun—’

‘Bullshit. You don’t show up on any org chart linking you to Mahoney, but Mahoney set up your position. Counsel Pro Tem. What a crock. You work for Mahoney and I know it.’

But can you prove it? DeMarco wondered.

‘I also know why Mahoney doesn’t want any official connection to you. Your father was Gino DeMarco, a low-life cocksucker who worked for Carmine Taliaferro. Fifteen years ago your daddy wasted three of Taliaferro’s rivals before the fourth one got lucky and plugged him. Isn’t that right?’

DeMarco said nothing but he felt like ripping Donnelly’s tiny ears off for calling his dad a cocksucker.

‘The amazing thing,’ Donnelly said, ‘is that Mahoney hired you when you got out of law school. I don’t know why he hired you – that’s the one mystery I haven’t unraveled – but I know he did. And I do know that your father is the reason Mahoney keeps you down in his cellar. He doesn’t want to have to explain your dago ass to anybody.’

Donnelly leaned forward so his face was closer to DeMarco’s and said, ‘So let me ask you something, sonny boy. Knowing John Mahoney to be the self-serving son of a bitch that he is, how long do you think you’ll keep your job when the press finds out about you and your father and your job with the Speaker?’

‘Did you personally assign Billy Mattis to the President’s security detail, Mr Donnelly?’ DeMarco said.

‘Why you …’ Donnelly took a breath. ‘Now you listen to me and you listen good: my agents are clean. They all have outstanding records, particularly Mattis, and they all passed lie detector tests. Banks is a fool to think the Secret Service had any part in this.’

‘Then why didn’t you have the warning note analyzed?’

‘You impertinent son of a bitch!’ Donnelly said, his face turning scarlet.

That’s it, DeMarco thought. Have a stroke, you little fuck.

Donnelly opened his mouth to scream something else but managed to get his emotions under control. He jerked his thumb in the direction of DeMarco’s house. ‘I’d suggest you put that place on the market,’ he said. ‘You’re not going to be living in this town much longer.’

‘Really,’ DeMarco said.

Donnelly smiled. His teeth were small and sharp. ‘Your job requires a security clearance, smart ass. Guess what agency does the background checks to provide that clearance? Now beat it.’

DeMarco stepped from the limo and closed the door quietly. As he watched the taillights of the limo disappear up the block, he stood quietly in the center of the street, feeling the sweat go cold on his arms and legs.

So Donnelly knew about his father.




12 (#ulink_a862e575-b6d2-5a25-b599-eb6dac4b9db3)


A woman answered Emma’s phone; she sounded like Emma, the same low voice, the same inflections, but the speaker wasn’t Emma. The woman, whoever she was, passed the phone to Emma who said, ‘If you’re a telemarketer, I’m going to hunt you down, burn your house, and kill your dog.’ She sounded serious.

‘It’s Joe, Emma. And wouldn’t it be easier to get on one of those do-not-call lists?’

‘Those lists are unconstitutional.’

‘And house burning and dog killing aren’t?’

‘Why are you calling at such an ungodly hour?’

‘Emma, it’s only nine.’

‘Oh. So what do you want?’

‘Patrick Donnelly just came to my house and threatened me. The other day, when we listened to your friend, the cello player, you seemed to know something about him. I’d like to know what you know.’

‘He came to your house?’

‘Yeah.’

Emma hesitated then said, ‘All right. Come on over.’

Her voice sounded strange. She sounded … worried. DeMarco had rarely known Emma to be worried about anything.

Emma answered her door wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, and a blue smock smeared with paint. DeMarco didn’t know she painted; just one more thing about her he’d discovered accidentally. She took DeMarco into a living room that could have made the cover of House Beautiful and poured them whiskeys. She slugged hers down and immediately poured herself another.

Before DeMarco could say anything a young woman entered the living room. He was immediately struck by her resemblance to Emma. She was tall like Emma and had Emma’s nose and Emma’s chin, but her hair was dark and her eyes were brown. The young woman looked over at DeMarco, her expression wary.

‘Julie, this is Joe DeMarco. A friend of mine.’

No smart-ass cracks tonight, like DeMarco being a bagman. Emma was definitely not herself.

The young woman nodded at Joe then turned back toward Emma.

‘I’m tired. Jet lag, I guess. I’m going to hit the sack,’ Julie said.

I’m tired, Mom. That’s what it sounded like to DeMarco. He was sure the young woman was Emma’s daughter.

‘That’s a good idea, hon,’ Emma said. ‘We’ll sort this out in the morning.’

And Emma, DeMarco thought, sounded absolutely, unbelievably maternal. A maternal Emma seemed stranger to DeMarco than snakes cuddling.

After Julie left the room, DeMarco said, ‘Is everything okay, Emma?’

Emma shook her head, dismissing DeMarco’s question.

‘Tell me what Donnelly said to you,’ she said.

DeMarco relayed the gist of his one-sided conversation with Donnelly.

‘I knew about your father,’ Emma said.

DeMarco nodded, not the least surprised. ‘I know this is going to sound strange,’ he said, ‘but he wasn’t a bad guy.’

Emma didn’t say anything but her eyes widened momentarily in amazement.

‘Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: he was a killer. How could he not have been a bad guy. But from my perspective, as his son, he was okay. He was a quiet man, not some Mafia big mouth always trying to prove how tough he was. And when my dad wasn’t, uh, working, we had dinner together like other families and most of the conversation centered around me, his only child. What I was doing in school, how I was doing at sports, why my grades weren’t better. That sorta thing. He was good to my mom and he was good to me. He and I used to go see the Yankees play almost every Saturday they were in town, and Sundays he always made breakfast – pancakes and sausage.’

DeMarco was silent a moment, remembering his father, how he sat in the bleachers with him at Yankee Stadium, an old flat cap on his head, an unlit cigar in his mouth, not cheering much, mostly just watching DeMarco enjoy himself. And he remembered his mother when they got home from the games and how she’d rail at his dad for feeding him so much junk, and his dad standing there, this big guy with arms that could bend rebar, his head hanging contritely while his cap hid the pleasure in his eyes. DeMarco knew one thing for sure: his mother had never feared his father.

‘I really didn’t know what he did until I was about fifteen,’ DeMarco said, ‘and even then I had a hard time believing it. I just couldn’t imagine him taking some guy out to a marsh in Jersey and putting one into the back of his head.’




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