The Inside Ring

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.