The Inside Ring

by Mike Lawson

  Since Billy’s personnel file was no help, he called the high school from which Billy had matriculated. The high school was listed in his file even if Billy’s sire was not. He spoke to the vice principal, a lady who sounded like Andy Griffith’s sister. DeMarco faked a genteel Southern accent and claimed to be a reporter from Atlanta. He told the lady that it had come to his slow-witted editor’s attention that a son of ol’ Georgia was guarding the President the day that Yankee tried to kill him. He wondered if there was someone there at the school who remembered the man.

  The vice principal was delighted to tell DeMarco she knew Billy personally, having worked at the school since reading became a mandatory subject in Georgia. She put him on hold while she found a high-school yearbook, then reeled off a list of Billy’s accomplishments, which consisted primarily of lettering in every sport played with a ball. Scholastic achievements were not mentioned.

  DeMarco eventually steered the conversation toward Billy’s family and asked what she could tell him about Billy’s folks. There was a lengthy pause and when the lady finally answered some of the down-home Dixie friendliness was gone from her voice. She suggested DeMarco speak to Billy directly if he wanted to know about his ma and pa. She actually said “ma” and “pa.”

  It was clear to DeMarco by the tone of the woman’s voice and the pauses between her words that she knew more but was going to keep it to herself. DeMarco’s final question—did she know Billy’s favorite uncle, Max Taylor—got the schoolhouse door slammed on his tongue. He was coldly informed it was against school policy to give out information on former students, and any further questions would have to be submitted in writing to the county school board.

  DeMarco slowly put down the phone. He had touched a nerve asking about Billy’s lineage but couldn’t imagine why.

  CLYDE’S WAS A Georgetown institution, founded, according to the brass plaque near the front door, more than forty years ago, yet it still seemed to be a place in search of an identity. Model planes hung over some tables, palm fronds over others; the menu ranged from chili to French cuisine; old posters of steamships competed with pictures of motorcars and bicycles and busts of athletes from bygone days. On one wall, near the front bar, was a large picture of Custer’s last stand that would have seemed more appropriate in a Montana saloon. It was one of DeMarco’s favorite places.

  He took a seat at a wobbly table near the bar to wait for Emma. A waitress, a pretty young woman with too much blue eye shadow, asked him what he wanted to drink. He hesitated. He really wanted a sweet drink, something like a piña colada, but he could imagine the waitress snickering as she placed his order. So he manfully ordered a vodka martini and when the drink arrived and tasted like cold kerosene, it occurred to him that a man could pay too high a price for manliness.

  DeMarco checked his watch; Emma was late, which was unusual. He sipped his drink and again he grimaced. Maybe when Emma arrived he could convince her to order a piña colada and they could switch drinks.

  DeMarco glanced over at the door, and as he did, he noticed a woman sitting at the bar. She had dark hair, an olive complexion, and a very, very nice figure. The woman and DeMarco made eye contact and the woman gave him a soft smile. Not a come-hither smile, DeMarco thought, but a friendly, hello-stranger smile. Or maybe it was a come-hither smile.

  Emma arrived. She walked regally over to DeMarco’s table then waited until he got up and held her chair for her. She did things like that sometimes.

  The waitress asked Emma, “May I get you something, ma’am?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Emma said, sounding distracted. Then before DeMarco could stop her, she pointed at his martini and said, “Just give me whatever he’s drinking.”

  After her drink arrived, Emma said, “This fellow, Estep. He’s a park ranger.”

  DeMarco didn’t hear her; he was looking at the dark-haired woman sitting at the bar. Emma followed his line of sight and her lips compressed in irritation.

  “Joe, did you hear what I just said? Estep is a park ranger.”

  “A ranger?”

  “Yes. He’s in charge of a swamp in Georgia. The Okefenokee Swamp.”

  “The Okefenokee?”

  “Am I going to have to repeat every damn thing I say tonight?”

  “Sorry. So why the hell would a park ranger be smacking Billy around?” DeMarco asked.

  DeMarco glanced back at the bar again. Another woman, laden with packages from a marathon shopping excursion, joined the dark-haired woman at the bar. The two women hugged like old friends. Damn, DeMarco thought; he had hoped the woman was by herself.

  “I don’t know,” Emma said, “but Mr. Estep is not your normal nature lover. He’s a Vietnam vet with two citations for bravery but who was then given a bad-conduct discharge from the military when he was twenty.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. The DEA had a jacket on him for peddling a truckload of pot across state lines back in the early eighties. He was given a suspended sentence because of his military record.”

  “But you said he was given a dishonorable discharge.”

  “No, I said it was a bad-conduct discharge, and I also said he had medals. Maybe the judge felt guilty for dodging the draft and went easy on him. I don’t know. All I know is what my friend at the DEA had in his machine.”

  “And that’s all he had?”

  “Yes. Just the one arrest twenty years ago and nothing else.”

  “And Max Taylor?” DeMarco asked.

  “Nothing,” Emma said. “No criminal record with anyone. My guy’s still looking to see if either he or Estep have connections to Edwards.”

  DeMarco watched the dark-haired woman say something to her companion, then both women looked over at DeMarco and the dark-haired woman smiled at him again. Definitely a come-hither smile, DeMarco thought. No doubt about it.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Joe,” Emma said. “Why don’t you just go over and say, ‘Hi, my name’s Joe DeMarco and I’m smitten because you look just like my ex-wife. Are you by any chance a slut too?’”

  “She doesn’t look like—”

  “Yes she does. The same Italian coloring, the same cute little ass—and the same big tits. When on earth are you going to get over that woman?”

  DeMarco shrugged.

  “How many women have I set you up with, Joe?”

  Here we go again, DeMarco thought. But he didn’t answer Emma’s question.

  “Three,” Emma said. “And all three were lovely. And they all possessed traits your ex-wife didn’t have, little things like a sense of humor and compassion and intelligence. And they all, God knows why, liked you. And you didn’t call any of them back.”

  DeMarco knew she was right. His wife had been vain and spiteful and not all that bright—and she had cheated on him with his own cousin, a shitbag who worked as a bookie for his father’s old outfit. His wife used to tell him she was going to New York to see her mother, and then she and his cousin would spend the weekend in Atlantic City. But she had also been the most sensual woman DeMarco had ever known. And it was more than sex; he had fallen in love with her when he was sixteen and she was fourteen. She had been his first everything: the first girl he had held hands with; the first girl he kissed; the first woman he made love to. He wanted to tell Emma that love wasn’t logical, but they’d had this discussion before. And the mood Emma was in tonight, she’d shred his heart into thin strips.

  “You need to get on with your life, for Christ’s sake,” Emma said. “Buy some damn furniture, get a girlfriend, and join the human race again.”

  “Okay, okay,” DeMarco said. And yeah, he guessed the woman did look like his ex.

  “So where do you think I should go with this, Emma?”

  “Are we talking about your social life or the case?”

  “The case.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Emma rarely said “I don’t know.” She sat there for a while, preoccupied with her own thoughts, a long-nailed fi
nger idly tracing the rim of her glass.

  “I’m going out of town tonight, Joe. I’ll be back tomorrow or the next day. Call Mike if you need something.”

  Christ, he’d been so absorbed with his atrophied libido that he’d completely forgotten about Emma’s problem. He felt like a selfish shit.

  “Emma, is this about the young woman I met at your place the other night? Julie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she your daughter, Emma?”

  Emma hesitated. “Yes,” she finally said.

  There was no way DeMarco was going to ask how it was that Emma came to have a daughter. Instead he said, “Emma, what can I do to help? Tell me.”

  Emma took a sip from her drink and studied DeMarco over the rim of the glass.

  “My daughter’s a brilliant young woman who has terrible taste in men. Two years ago she became involved with a married man. She finally came to her senses and told him that she didn’t want to see him anymore but he won’t let her go. He’s obsessed with her. The last six months he’s harassed her relentlessly. E-mails. Midnight phone calls. He’s had people follow her. He’s tapped her phone. He’s opened her mail. A month ago he scared off a man she was dating and last week he caused her to lose her job, which is why she came home. He’s ruining her life.”

  “So tell his wife.”

  “Julie did. His wife is a doormat who has tolerated his affairs for years. And she’s probably been abused by this monster and is terrified of him.”

  “And the police won’t help?”

  “He is the police. Actually he’s the district attorney in a large western city. He’s very rich and very powerful and very well connected. The governor is a personal friend; a U.S. senator is his uncle.”

  “What are you going to do?” DeMarco asked.

  Her pale blue eyes were as cold and lethal as the polar seas.

  “I may kill him,” Emma said.

  18

  U.S. Army Colonel (Ret.) Byron Moore, was five foot seven, had a slender build, and wore black horn-rimmed glasses. His hair was dark, cut short on the sides, and combed forward on top to compensate for a receding hairline. He also had a slight hunchback and walked with a limp, both conditions caused by wounds incurred in Vietnam. DeMarco always thought of Shakespeare’s Richard III when he saw him.

  DeMarco met Moore five years ago. The Speaker had been tipped that an aide to a rival politician was using a military connection at the Pentagon to obtain inside information on defense contracts. The man in the Pentagon would find out which company was due for the next infusion of military moola and the congressional staffer would rush out and buy oodles of stock for himself and his cohort. The Speaker was probably jealous that he had not thought of the scheme himself.

  During the investigation DeMarco made the mistake of concluding that Byron Moore was the inside man at the Pentagon. One night while he was following Moore, Moore doubled back on him, flipped him on his ass with some sort of judo move, and promised to crush his windpipe with one finger. Moore smiled when he made the threat. Although DeMarco was four inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than the colonel, he didn’t have the slightest doubt that Moore was capable of doing exactly what he said.

  Moore eventually informed DeMarco that he was working for the military on the same case. He also told DeMarco that he had his head so far up his ass that sunlight was but a memory, that he had everything all wrong, and then told him who the real culprit was. His initial meeting with Byron Moore had been an altogether humbling experience.

  DeMarco discovered Moore had been a hell of a soldier: Green Beret, three tours in Vietnam, an expert in unarmed combat and demolitions. He had been forced to retire two years ago when he was passed over for a star. When DeMarco asked why he had not been promoted, Moore gave him a wry smile and said it was pretty simple: the army didn’t make generals out of little hunchbacks—it wasn’t good for the military’s image.

  Moore lived alone in a small apartment overlooking Arlington National Cemetery. There was an undeniable, poignant beauty in the endless rows of white markers but it was not a view DeMarco would have wanted to see every day. The colonel’s apartment was filled with pictures of friends in uniform and the memorabilia of campaigns the Pentagon would just as soon forget. On a side table, almost hidden by other photos, was a picture of a young Byron Moore: tanned and shirtless, his body straight and well muscled. He was holding an M16 and squinting into a cruel Asian sun. There was also a picture of Moore at his retirement ceremony. He was in full-dress uniform, his blouse a rainbow of gallantry, a ceremonial saber on his belt. The bitter smile on his lips was as crooked as his spine.

  The army had been his life and his love, and Byron Moore ached for it. While he and DeMarco talked he gazed out the window at the white headstones, and DeMarco could imagine him alone—which was almost all the time—anticipating the day his name would be engraved on one of them.

  “I hope you’re not doing something to make this guy Estep mad, Joe,” Moore said.

  “Not yet,” DeMarco said. “Why? Is he a scary guy?”

  “He’s a wacko. He joined the army after high school—volunteered, not drafted. He was a hell of a shot and they used him mostly for long-range recon. They’d send him out by himself, three, four days at a time, and he’d scout the territory. If he saw something to kill, he’d kill it.”

  “Is that the wacko part?”

  “No, that was his job. But he liked the killing a little too much. You’ve heard about guys who made necklaces out of ears over there?”

  DeMarco nodded.

  “Estep was a real collector.”

  “Is that why he was given the bad-conduct discharge?”

  Moore shook his head. “It took a special kind to work the bush alone. When you could find someone with the balls to do it, you put up with a few eccentricities.” Moore paused a moment. DeMarco sensed he was thinking about himself, not Dale Estep, and he wondered about the colonel’s eccentricities.

  Moore walked over to his desk and picked up a hand grenade he used for a paper weight. DeMarco knew instinctively that the grenade was still functional and not a harmless souvenir. Squeezing the grenade as if it was one of those spring-loaded hand strengtheners, Moore said, “One day Estep’s on patrol with a squad and they come on a rice paddy. Seven Vietnamese, half of ’em women, tending the plants. The second looie in charge wants to cross the paddy but he can’t tell if the farmers are friendlies or Cong. He tells his guys to spread out, sit tight, and watch for a while.

  “Well, this one old guy stops work and wanders off a bit from the others to take a crap. He’s squatting over a trench when a shot rings out. The old guy stands up, screaming, looking down at the place where his balls used to be.”

  DeMarco involuntarily shuddered.

  “Estep mows ’em all down before they can get to cover. Never misses. Seven shots, seven slopes—faster than you can blink. The lieutenant goes bananas. Starts screamin’ ‘Cease-fire’ like it’s his cousins being killed. Now the lieutenant doesn’t give a shit about the gooks, of course—he’s thinking My Lai. He sees his career going up in smoke every time a body drops. Later, Estep says he didn’t hear the order to stop shooting but he did hear the order, which nobody else heard, to start.”

  “And that’s what got him discharged.”

  “Yeah, but the paperwork says he was booted out for ‘repeated insubordination.’ There’s no record of what happened in the rice paddy that day.” The colonel flipped the grenade in the air and caught it in his left hand. Winking at DeMarco, he added, “Today that lieutenant wears two stars.”

  “If there’s no record of the incident, how did you find out about it?” DeMarco asked. Moore just stared at him. Stupid question.

  “One guy who knew Estep over there,” Moore said, “said he was the best shot he’d ever seen in his life. He also said Estep just loved killing things. People, monkeys, birds. Any fuckin’ thing. He liked shootin’ and killin’ more than baseball and beatin’
off.”

  Thinking of the shooting blind, DeMarco asked, “Do you think a guy with his training could hide pretty well? I mean for a couple of days in a place with people all around him?”

  Moore laughed. “Hide pretty well! Let me tell you a little story, Joe. Before my first tour we were running a training exercise against another squad. This squad was trained the same way Estep was, for long-range recon, and their job was to hide from us in an open field and our job was to find them before they killed us with paint balls. The field was two miles long, half a mile wide, and there wasn’t much cover. My guys were pretty good. We found three of them. While we were standing there looking for the fourth guy we get hit, all of us, in the back of the head by paint balls. Hurt like shit, I’ll tell you. Anyway, the fourth guy, we must have walked right over him. When I turned around to see where he was I still couldn’t see him, then all of a sudden the earth opens up and this kid in a gillie suit rises out of the ground. He’s grinning from ear to ear even though the side of his face is a mess, a mass of welts, one eye swollen completely shut. Some bug had been biting the shit out of him the whole time we were searching and this guy never moved.”

  Moore tossed the hand grenade into the air again.

  “Could Estep hide for a couple of days? Hell, Joe, a guy like him could hide in your toilet bowl for a week and you wouldn’t see him.”

  19

  Emma had seen Eric Mason’s photo on an Internet site, and she was sure he was the man walking toward the black Lexus. He was a handsome six footer with dark hair and a golfer’s tan and eyes that twinkled when he smiled. He was wearing a double-breasted gray suit, a blue shirt with a white collar, and a maroon tie. He whistled as he walked, jiggling his car keys in time to the beat. He seemed immensely satisfied with the world and his place in it.