The Inside Ring - Mike Lawson

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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

      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

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