by Mike Lawson
“I let my fingers do the walkin’,” Neil said, wiggling pudgy digits. “Both of these men were raised dirt poor, Taylor at the no-shoe poverty level in rural Georgia and Donnelly not much better in Pennsylvania where his father was a foundry worker.”
“So what happened in 1964?” Emma said.
“I don’t know, Emma dear. And that’s why my staff and I spent so much time on this request of yours. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get information from forty years ago, prior to the birth of the thinking machine?”
“So what did you find, Neil? And I swear to God if you don’t stop dragging this out, I’m going to break parts of your body.”
“You’ve always been so violent, Emma,” Neil said.
“Luckily for you in Tel Aviv,” Emma muttered.
Neil shuddered at the memory.
“We’ll start with Donnelly,” Neil said. “In 1964, he paid income tax on an inheritance of approximately two million dollars.”
“Who did he inherit from?” Emma said.
“I don’t know. As I said, this happened in 1964, before our lives were reduced to ones and zeros. But I do know he couldn’t have inherited from his no-pot-to-piss-in Pennsylvania relations. It’s possible Donnelly had a rich aunt who lived in Singapore and he was her favorite nephew. I just don’t know. All I do know is that Donnelly dutifully reported his newfound wealth to the IRS, and, sap that he is, paid an amazing amount of tax for his honesty.
“From that point on he has behaved in such a fiscally conservative manner that it makes my stomach turn. If someone gave me two mil in 1964, I would have casinos next to Trump’s in Atlantic City by now. But Donnelly, this boob, sticks his inheritance money and the salary he makes as well-paid civil servant, into savings accounts, CDs, bonds, mutual funds, that sort of thing. Absolutely no imagination, no risk-taking. He is today worth approximately six million, if you include his home.”
A net worth of six million sounded fantastic to DeMarco, but Neil was clearly disdainful.
“I also looked at Donnelly’s insurance records since I found Mr. Estep’s so enlightening. They revealed that Donnelly is a modest collector of Oriental art. He buys a sword or a rice bowl every couple of years. His collection is insured for two hundred thousand but his ability to purchase Eastern trinkets is well within his income.”
“But you don’t know where his original nut came from,” Emma said.
“No, Emma, for the third fucking time, and I feel very bad about that. May I continue?”
Emma nodded.
“The esteemed Mr. Taylor. This good ol’ boy is Donnelly’s opposite, a financial wunderkind. I take my hat off to him. In 1964 Taylor quit the Texas state police, returned home to the red earth of Georgia, and started buying everything. Where he got the money for his original purchases is a complete mystery, the financial equivalent of spontaneous combustion. In part this is because at the same time that he began acquiring things, he also retained the services of the best tax firm in Atlanta.
“Now, Emma, as you know, I’m rather good at following the greenback trail but these boys in Atlanta are absolute wizards at financial obfuscation. Taylor’s returns show charitable deductions to every organization but the Klan; enormous business losses; tax shelters in which you could hide a humpback. My best guess at Taylor’s current net worth is more than a hundred million, but I could be wrong by a factor of four.”
“But he started in 1964, the same time Donnelly inherited?” Emma asked.
“Oui, but how much he started with and where it came from, I don’t know. And it really pisses me off.”
“Could you Capone Taylor?” DeMarco asked.
“No way. The Atlanta tax boys I mentioned. And theoretically, Taylor’s fortune could be completely legitimate. Say, for example, he won nine thousand in a poker game in 1964 and he used the money to buy IBM. His money doubles. Then he buys some land and sells it and his money quadruples. And so on. Maybe that’s the way it happened and nothing underhanded happened in 1964. I just don’t know, Emma.”
“Did their paths ever cross?” DeMarco said.
“Not that I could see. In 1963 Donnelly was stationed in Los Angeles and Taylor, as I said, was in Texas. Between June 1964 and January 1966, Donnelly was stationed in New York and from 1966 until the present he’s been in D.C. Taylor left Texas in December of 1963 and moved back to his hometown in Georgia. He’s lived in the same house since 1965.”
Emma rose from her chair. She reached out to shake Neil’s hand then noticed the sticky green juice stain of his last Popsicle on his fingers. She reached into her pocket for her car keys instead.
“Thank you, Neil,” she said.
“Anything for you, Emma,” Neil said.
21
Well, Joe,” Senator Maddox said, “I wish I could hep ya but I just don’t know that much about ol’ Max, him livin’ down there by the swamp, so far out of the mainstream. He’s jes a good ol’ boy who supports the Party, God bless him, and that’s all I know about the man.”
“Senator,” DeMarco said, not bothering to disguise his disbelief, “Maxwell Taylor’s rich enough to buy his own swamp. If I know that much, I know you know one hell of a lot more. It’s important for me to get a fix on this man, sir.”
“I’m sorry, Joe, but—”
“How’s Mrs. Maddox, Senator?” DeMarco said, and both men turned to look at a picture on the corner of Maddox’s desk: the senator’s wife, a onetime Southern belle turned battle-ax.
J. D. Maddox was the senior senator from Georgia and had been in politics since he wore short pants. The J.D. stood for Jefferson Davis but about the time they gave blacks in Georgia the opportunity to vote he started using his initials instead of his given name. He had an accent as thick as a slab of Alabama ham, snowy white hair, and a Mark Twain mustache. These more attractive features joined a face blotched red from too many juleps and a stomach bloated from free lunches. He had become in his seventies, and possibly because he intended it, a caricature of a Southern politician.
Two years ago, Maddox—married man, father, grandfather, and archenemy of all things unholy—had been dipping his wrinkled old wick into a twenty-nine-year-old staff assistant. An aide to another politician got wind of Maddox’s little fling. The aide discovered that whenever he wanted the senator’s vote, all he needed to do was give him a wink and a nudge and remark on the sweetness of young Georgia peaches.
The Speaker heard about Maddox’s troubles and was naturally sympathetic. DeMarco was dispatched to get the pesky aide out of the senator’s hair and did so by discovering that the lad had a penchant for the hookers on Fourteenth Street. The senator was so grateful to DeMarco that he promised his eternal gratitude—two years apparently being the time span of eternity.
Maddox was now seated behind a desk the size of an aircraft-carrier flight deck, twirling one end of his mustache with a liver-spotted hand. He was trying to come up with a nice way to tell DeMarco to go to hell. Maddox may have owed DeMarco a favor but Max Taylor was a member of his constituency. On the other hand, DeMarco’s reference to the senator’s wife was an unstated threat. Maddox, experienced politician that he was, chose pragmatism over principle.
“Max Taylor’s an enigma, Joe. He’s got more money than Midas but I’ll bet outside the state of Georgia there ain’t ten people who know his name. Outside of Charlton County, there ain’t fifty people in Georgia who’ve ever heard of him. But in Charlton County, every man, woman, and large dog knows Max for the simple reason that the man owns the whole damn county.”
“Where’s Charlton County, Senator? I mean, what major city is it near?”
“It’s not near a major city, son. It’s near the Okefenokee Swamp.” Rising from his chair with some difficulty, the senator said, “Come on over here, Yankee, and I’ll show you on the map.”
DeMarco joined Maddox near a Georgia state map that took up most of one wall in his office.
“You see right here?” Maddox said, “This square in th
e southeast corner, right next to Florida? That’s Charlton County, Georgia. All them little green hash marks you see there takin’ up the whole western half of the county is swampland—the great Okefenokee. Right here along the eastern rim of the swamp, runnin’ along Highway 23, are all these little pissant towns, like Racepond, Uptonville, and St. George. The biggest one’s Folkston, county seat and home of Maxwell Taylor.”
DeMarco remembered from Billy Mattis’s file that he had been raised in Uptonville. According to the senator’s map this put Billy’s hometown less than a map grid away from Folkston, where both Estep and Taylor lived.
“What do you mean, Senator, when you say he owns the county?” DeMarco asked.
“Ah am speakin’ quite literally, son. Max Taylor owns three-quarters of the land in the county and damn near any business bigger than a gas station. He’s been buyin’ up the place for forty years. It’s the man’s personal kingdom.”
This may have explained Taylor’s current financial position but not how he got started.
“Where’d he get the money for his initial purchases, Senator?” DeMarco asked.
Maddox ignored DeMarco’s question while he returned to his chair. The chair’s springs protested his arrival. He smiled slyly, pumped his eyebrows like a Dixie Groucho, and said, “That’s one of them things that makes Max an enigma.”
“What do you mean, sir?” DeMarco asked. Christ, it was like pulling teeth with this guy.
“Nobody knows where he got his seed money from, is what I mean. Max was raised in a one-room shack, with no indoor plumbing. His father was a sometime miner, a sometime logger, and a full-time drunk. He beat his wife and he beat his kids. And Max has two sisters, one about fifteen years older than the other. I’ve heard talk the older sister is the younger one’s mother and that Max’s father was the father. You know what I’m sayin’?”
DeMarco nodded.
“Anyway, it was that kinda family and Max left home when he was sixteen. He spent a few years in the army then got a job with the Texas highway patrol, and in 1964 or so he comes back home and starts buyin’ things. But where the money came from—well, it beats the hell out of me, Joe, and that’s God’s truth. If I had to guess, I’d say Max had more money in 1964 than can be explained by just plain thrift.”
The senator paused to blow his nose loudly into a red bandanna.
While Maddox was inspecting the contents of his handkerchief, DeMarco asked, “Did you ever hear any rumors about him being involved in anything illegal, Senator?”
“No, Joe, can’t say as I ever did. But then Max always struck me as a careful man.”
“What about his politics, Senator?”
The senator flashed dentures as white as toilet-bowl porcelain. “Let me tell you a story about Max’s politics. Max called my office one day a month before an election—this was years ago, keep in mind—and discussed his immense dissatisfaction with my position on some bill affecting one of his investments.”
“What kind of investment, Senator?” DeMarco asked. “Do you remember?”
“Oh, I remember all right. Offshore oil. Max belonged to some group that wanted to sink a couple of wells in some bird sanctuary off the coast. The tree huggers in the cloakroom voted to block the drillin’ and I voted with ’em as a trade-off for a military contract I wanted for a company in Savannah. Max didn’t give a rat’s ass about them birds, I can tell you that.”
The senator wheezed a laugh in recollection of the event, and the laugh turned into a full-blown coughing fit that changed the color of his face from red to indigo. When his eyes stopped watering, Maddox said, “Now I’ll tell you what he did, Joe. Max called me up and told me his county—I repeat, his county—was votin’ against me in the next election. Can you imagine the ego it would take to make such a statement? Now I naturally thought he was full o’ shit as Charlton County had always voted for the Party in the past, so I blew him off. But come election day, Joe, damn near every registered voter in that county voted for my opponent. Ninety-eight percent of them.
“Now if you think about it, son, that oughta scare the hell out of you. Max either told those people how to vote and they obeyed like a buncha sheep or he controlled the ballot boxes and changed their votes. Either way’s scary, if you ask me. I retained my seat by a margin thinner than a gnat’s pecker, Joe.”
The senator paused to take a drink from a coffee mug on his desk. To DeMarco, it smelled as if the coffee was made from bourbon beans.
The senator smiled at DeMarco. “Fortunately, these days I rely more on the good people in the cities than I do the rednecks living by the Okefenokee, so I don’t lose as much sleep as I used to when Max is pissed. But I’ll tell you that one time he damn near gave me a heart attack.”
DeMarco was silent a moment as he tried to figure out how to ask the next question. He couldn’t find a subtle way to do it.
“What are Taylor’s feelings about the current administration, the President in particular?”
“The President? Well, I reckon he likes the man. He donated fifty grand to his last campaign.”
“Why would he do that?”
“The President’s a big believer in tax reform, Joe—and ol’ Max pays a lot of taxes.”
“Has he called lately to complain about anything the President’s done?”
“No. Why are you askin’ about Max and the President, son?”
22
DeMarco hesitated, then raised his fist and knocked on Billy Mattis’s front door. A pretty woman in her late twenties opened the door. She had shoulder-length ash-blond hair cut in an outdated Farrah Fawcett style and a good figure displayed in shorts and a tank top. DeMarco had the immediate impression of ditsy yet good-natured and likable. He couldn’t help but think that there should have been a couple of towheaded kids tugging on the hem of her shorts.
“Hi,” she said with a smile. “What can I do for you?”
DeMarco took out his ID wallet and flipped it open and shut before she could read it. “Federal government, ma’am,” he said in his best Joe Friday voice. “I need to talk to Mr. Mattis.”
“Uh, sure,” she said, momentarily unsettled by DeMarco’s seriousness, then she brightened again and added, “I’m Darcy, Billy’s wife. Come on in.”
She was proud to be Billy’s wife; DeMarco could tell just by the way she said the words. As he followed her into the house, she said, “Y’all work with Billy?”
“No, ma’am, I just need to speak to him.”
“Well, you have a seat and I’ll go get him.” She left the room yelling cheerfully, “Honey, there’s a fella here to see you.”
DeMarco looked around Mattis’s home. He knew from fat Neil’s report that they didn’t have much money but he could see that every piece in the house had been selected with care by a discerning eye. The place was warm and comfortable and inviting. He wished he could ask Darcy Mattis to help him decorate his nearly barren home.
Billy entered the room. His short blond hair was damp, as if he had just stepped from the shower. He was wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans. His feet were bare. Barefoot boy with cheek of tan, DeMarco thought. When Billy saw DeMarco standing in his living room, he rocked back on his heels in surprise and DeMarco could almost see the knot of apprehension forming in his flat stomach.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Billy said.
DeMarco saw Darcy Mattis’s eyes go wide. These were polite, decent people and her husband’s unexpected hostility shocked her.
When DeMarco didn’t answer immediately and Billy continued to glare at him, Darcy Mattis looked toward DeMarco with concern and distrust. Her faith in her husband was unwavering, her loyalty given without question. If Billy didn’t like DeMarco, she didn’t either.
“What’s goin’ on Billy?” she asked. “Who is this man?”
“Billy,” DeMarco said, “we need to talk. It might be best if we spoke alone.”
Billy looked over at his wife, then back to DeMarco.
“No. We don’t need to talk. Get out of my house.”
“Billy, I’m here to help you. Whatever happened at Chattooga River, whatever you did, I know you were forced into it.”
“Billy, what’s he talkin’ about?” Darcy Mattis said.
Hearing the alarm in his wife’s voice Billy took her hand and said softly, “He’s not talkin’ about anything, hon.” His Southern accent was designed to sooth her cares away but this time it didn’t work. Looking back at DeMarco, he said, “And he’s leaving. Now.”
“Billy, don’t be a fool,” DeMarco said. “I know about Taylor and Estep.”
Billy’s face blanched white. “Oh, Christ,” he said. The words slipped out before he could stop himself.
“Billy, it’s not too late,” DeMarco pleaded. “Level with me.”
Billy shook his head. DeMarco could tell he was still thinking about Taylor and Estep. He looked so shell-shocked that he reminded DeMarco of a cancer patient who has just been told he has but months to live.
“Billy,” Darcy Mattis said, “this is scarin’ me. What’s going on?”
Billy gave his wife’s hand another squeeze and said, “Hush, hon. Everything’s all right.” The love that existed between these two people was palpable. It made DeMarco ache to think how Darcy Mattis would be affected if anything happened to her husband. It also made him wonder what it would be like to be loved so unequivocally.
“It’s not all right, Billy,” DeMarco said, “and you know it.”
“Get out of here, goddamnit, or I’m gonna hurt you!”
No he wouldn’t, DeMarco thought. This man didn’t hurt people, he protected them. “Okay, Billy. I’ll leave, but please call me if you change your mind.” He handed Billy a card with his phone numbers on it and when Billy didn’t take it from him, he set it down on a nearby end table.