Читать книгу The Inside Ring - Mike Lawson - Страница 14

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.