by Mike Lawson
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 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 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
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
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?