The Inside Ring

by Mike Lawson

  “A lot. I’m so drunk there’s two of you, and Lord knows, one of you is bad enough.”

  Emma returned to her chair, collapsed into it, and said, “I was standing in front of a hardware store dressed in my Scarlett O outfit, jawboning with these crackers, when this gal, gal about my age, comes out of the store and finds a ticket on the windshield of her pickup. She goes berserk. Starts cussing like you wouldn’t believe, rips the ticket off her windshield, and throws it in the gutter. Then she yells inside the store to somebody ‘You tell that son of a bitch Max Taylor the day he kisses my fat ass, I’ll pay that ticket.’ Then she drives off.

  “So I ask the crackers who the lady is and they tell me she’s Hattie McCormack, hell on wheels. Stay away from that old bitch, they said. I find out she has five acres on the outskirts of this hellhole and grows her own tobacco, so I go out there and spin my real estate line. Well Hattie takes a likin’ to me, charmer that I am. She invites me in and offers me some honest-to-God homemade white lightning. Joe, that stuff must have been two hundred proof. The hangover I’m going to have tomorrow may kill me. Anyway, we sat out there on her porch, drinking her booze, and talked. She was a kick, an American original. I had a ball talking to her.”

  “Obviously,” DeMarco said. “When are you going to get to the part about Taylor?”

  “Oh yeah, Taylor. According to her, Mr. Taylor not only owns all the land around here, he also owns the government.”

  “The government?”

  “Yes. The sheriff, judges, city councilmen. All those guys. She claims he even gets a share of the taxes. That’s why the ticket pissed her off; she said Taylor had the meters installed because he gets a kickback from the fees and fines.”

  “Why isn’t she afraid of Taylor like everyone else around here?”

  “I asked her that, and she said she’s too damn mean to be afraid of anyone. But she also said that if Taylor knew she was talking to me, he’d send the ‘Injun’ to see her.”

  “The Injun?”

  “Some guy who works for Taylor, I guess.”

  DeMarco knew there was more than one Native American in the area, but he immediately knew the “Injun” was the man with the ponytail he had seen in the diner that morning.

  “Anyway,” Emma said, “this Taylor’s a piece of work. Hattie says he spends most days just touring the county. Drives around checking on things like a general doing a command inspection. Tells folks to clean up a mess if he sees one; checks on what’s playing in the movie houses and what kind of books are being sold in stores.”

  “Books?”

  “Yep. Mr. Taylor doesn’t approve of girlie magazines or X-rated pictures or anything he considers pornographic. Guy’s a character. He even checks on what they teach in the schools. Sees something he doesn’t like and a teacher’s liable to get her liberal ass fired.”

  “He sounds like a dictator,” DeMarco said.

  “Indeed, but Hattie admitted it wasn’t all bad. There’s no crime here because Taylor’s judges throw away the key if you commit one. And Taylor’s donated a lot of money for various things: ball fields, a swimming pool, sports equipment, that sort of thing. He even has a scholarship fund set up for the underprivileged.”

  “So he’s a benevolent dictator.”

  DeMarco thought about what Emma had said and concluded that even if Hattie McCormack was right about Taylor, the information had no bearing on the assassination attempt or any connection to Patrick Donnelly. There wasn’t anything particularly newsworthy about the richest citizen in a small rural area having undue influence over city and county officials. Rich men have owned politicians for centuries. The possibility of Taylor getting a direct kickback from taxes seemed far-fetched, but even if he was, so what?

  DeMarco noticed Emma’s head had dropped and her aristocratic chin was resting on her chest. She was about to pass out. DeMarco rose from the bed where he’d been reclining, put a hand under her arm, and helped her from the chair to the bed.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Emma mumbled, but she didn’t resist.

  DeMarco gently lowered her to the bed, pulled off her shoes, and placed a pillow under her head.

  As DeMarco was opening the door to leave the room, Emma said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Hattie said in April or May a man who wasn’t from here asked her all kinds of questions about Taylor too.”

  “Who was it?”

  “She couldn’t remember his name, she was as drunk as I was, but she said he was a handsome, honey-tongued son of a bitch.”

  And then Emma began to snore.

  33

  Jillian Mattis’s house was on the outskirts of Uptonville, a burg a few miles north of Folkston. It was a boxy, one-story affair in need of a new roof and a coat of paint. On one side of the house was a small vegetable garden where the main crop was a short, flowering weed. Behind the house was a barn with a swaybacked roof, listing walls, and a paddock for horses, though DeMarco could see no sign of livestock.

  The woman who came to the door in response to his knock was tall, well proportioned, and handsome. She had striking blue eyes which were squinting as she peered through the screen door at DeMarco, trying to adjust to the contrast between the bright sunlight outside and the dark interior of the house. She was wearing a faded gray housedress that a million washings ago had contained a lilac-colored floral pattern. Her thick auburn hair was streaked with gray strands, and her eyes bore the look of a lifetime of wanting and never getting. If she had dyed the gray out of her hair and applied a little makeup she would have been a stunning woman, but DeMarco sensed she was beyond caring about the way she looked.

  She left the screen door shut and said, “Can I help you?” She spoke in a listless monotone.

  “I’m looking for Jillian Mattis,” DeMarco said.

  “I’m Jillian. What can I do for you?”

  DeMarco was surprised. The woman appeared to be only in her mid-forties and Billy was thirty-two when he died. She must have been a teenager when she bore him.

  “My name’s Joe DeMarco, Mrs. Mattis,” DeMarco said. “I work for the United States Congress.”

  DeMarco decided on the spot not to use his false writer persona. His instincts told him that she would resent some mercenary scribbler trying to make a buck off the tragedy of her son’s death.

  “Congress?”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your son, ma’am. You have my deepest sympathy.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She was looking at him but not seeing him.

  “I know you’re in mourning, Mrs. Mattis, but I was wondering if you would talk to me about Billy.”

  DeMarco could see the woman was almost paralyzed with grief, barely able to carry on a conversation, but he needed to know why her son had called her so many times the month before the assassination attempt. He also wanted to know who Billy’s father was. By now he suspected it might be Dale Estep. Estep was just a few years older than Jillian, and since he was crazier than a shit-house rat, DeMarco could also understand why the locals would be reluctant to discuss Billy’s paternity. Dale being Billy’s father also explained other things, like why a man like Billy might cooperate with him in the assassination attempt. The problem with this theory was that if all of DeMarco’s other theories were correct, then Estep had arranged the murder of his own child.

  “Why do you want to talk about Billy?” Jillian said.

  “As you probably know, ma’am, your son was guarding the President the day someone tried to assassinate him. There are still some unanswered questions about the assassination attempt.”

  “I thought . . . I thought a man already confessed to shooting the President.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Harold Edwards. But there are still some outstanding issues.”

  “Like what?”

  “Mrs. Mattis, do you know a man named Patrick Donnelly?”

  This is where she was supposed to say: Why, gosh yes—he was Billy’s mentor, pal, godfather, or some such thing. Instead
she said nothing. She was looking behind DeMarco. He turned to follow her line of sight and saw a tire swing hanging from the limb of a dying elm. She was seeing a young Billy Mattis, blond hair flying, a grin on his face, as he tried to swing to the moon.

  “Mrs. Mattis,” DeMarco said, “do you know a man named Patrick Donnelly?”

  “I’m sorry,” Jillian Mattis said, apologizing for her mental lapse. “No, I don’t know him. Who is he?”

  “He’s the director of the Secret Service, Billy’s boss.”

  “Oh,” Jillian Mattis said.

  “What about Maxwell Taylor, Mrs. Mattis. What’s his relationship to Billy?”

  Jillian Mattis suddenly gave DeMarco her full attention, her son’s death momentarily forgotten.

  “Max?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You need to leave now.”

  The woman seemed scared to death. “Mrs. Mattis, this is important,” DeMarco said. “Let me come in and talk to you. Please.”

  Jillian Mattis shook her head.

  “What about Dale Estep, Mrs. Mattis? Is he—”

  “You need to leave,” Jillian Mattis said. She hissed the words, almost a whisper, as if afraid of being overheard. “My son is dead, and he’s never comin’ back, and I don’t need any more pain in my life.”

  She shut the door in DeMarco’s face.

  FUCK MAHONEY, DEMARCO thought as he drove back toward his motel in Folkston. He was ashamed of himself for badgering Jillian Mattis. The damn FBI—with their badges and their warrants and their white-coated techies—they should be down here hassling people, not him.

  DeMarco continued to sulk as he drove. He was wasting his time and he knew it. He was not going to find a connection between Donnelly, Taylor, and Billy Mattis in the back issues of a county newspaper. And how could Billy’s mother lead him to any real evidence that Estep and Taylor had tried to kill the President?

  DeMarco knew what he should do next—he just didn’t want to do it. Had this been a normal assignment, something involving a politician on Capitol Hill, he would at this point vigorously stir the pot and watch for something foul to float to the surface. He would question all the people involved and make sure everybody knew everybody else was being questioned. He would imply that one of the participants was talking to the authorities, turning on the others. He would browbeat the miscreants, lie about evidence that didn’t exist, claim that an arrest was imminent. He would, in other words, do anything necessary to cause a precipitous reaction.

  Yes, if this case had involved a leak on some politician’s staff or the shenanigans of a wayward bureaucrat, that’s exactly what he would do. He also knew exactly what his opponents would do in return. They would try to intimidate him by puffing out their chests and flashing their power ties. They would try to frighten him with tales of their awesome, terrible clout. They might try to bribe him; they would certainly threaten to get him fired. Their worst threat, their very worst, was that they would call their retained lawyers and sue his ass into poverty.

  But Estep and Taylor, if they were involved—he always had to add “if they were involved”—would not bribe him or intimidate him or sue him. They would kill him.

  Yes, DeMarco knew what he should do next—he just didn’t want to do it.

  Back at his motel, he called Emma’s room but didn’t get an answer. That morning his badly hungover friend had said she was going back out to Hattie McCormack’s tobacco and moonshine farm. She wanted to question Hattie some more, but this time in a sober condition. DeMarco was puzzled that she wasn’t back yet; she should have been by now.

  DeMarco stared out the window of his motel room at the small swimming pool. He didn’t want to talk to Taylor until he had talked to Emma. Or to state it differently, Emma provided an excuse for him to delay meeting with Taylor. So since he could think of nothing better to do, he decided to go down to the pool, drink a couple of beers, and act like a tourist. Hell, he was a tourist.

  Arriving at the pool, beer in one hand, bath towel in the other, he discovered two small boys polluting the waters. They were nine or ten years old and wore baggy bathing suits covered with pictures of cartoon characters. They were running around the perimeter of the pool, squirting each other with magnum-sized water pistols, screaming at the top of their lungs.

  DeMarco didn’t exactly dislike children, he just wasn’t certain how to act around them. The fact that they looked like short people didn’t mean they were people. A caterpillar may be a butterfly in transition, but it isn’t a butterfly.

  DeMarco stood back from the pool and studied the boys. Frowning, he tried to guess the distance a sixty-pound kid curled into the shape of a cannonball could splash water. When he was certain he had it figured out, he placed the motel lounge chair twice that distance from the pool. He tried to relax but then one boy started shrieking because the other kid was trying to drown him. He watched anxiously for a bit, eventually realizing—somewhat to his disappointment—that neither child had the upper-body strength to hold the slippery head of the other under water the required length of time.

  DeMarco took off his T-shirt, opened his beer, and settled back into the lounge chair. He took a couple of sips of beer then closed his eyes. He was determined to relax and not dwell on the futility of his current mission. He sat there only a minute when he felt someone staring at him, then realized he could no longer hear the two boys yelling. Opening one eye he saw the boys standing a foot away from his lounge chair. The water pistols hung menacingly at their sides.

  They both had flattops, piggy blue eyes, and a sprinkling of freckles across stubby, runny noses. Brothers. Some woman had been twice cursed.

  “Mister,” one of them said, “you ever seen an alligator?”

  “Yeah,” DeMarco said. Go away, you little shit. “I saw one in a zoo once.”

  “We saw one in the swamp. A big one. Its mouth was open and it had lots of teeth.” The kid opened his mouth and showed DeMarco his teeth. His brother nodded earnestly in agreement.

  “Is that right,” DeMarco said.

  “Yeah,” the boy said, his face very serious. “Mister, do you think them alligators from the swamp can get all the way over here to the motel and crawl into the swimmin’ pool?”

  DeMarco was faced with a great moral dilemma. Should he tell the boys that chances were indeed high that a ten-foot alligator was coiled, chameleonlike, at the bottom of the clear swimming pool? This might make them go away, on the other hand he might give them bed-wetting nightmares of huge reptiles slithering over the transom of their motel-room door. What did they really want, DeMarco wondered—the thrill of danger close at hand, an imaginary beast to hunt with their water pistols, or assurance from a kindly adult that they were safe?

  DeMarco opened his mouth to answer, but before he could speak, a woman’s voice said, “Bobby. Randy. Are you kids bothering that nice man?”

  “No, Mom,” the two boys said in chorus. Little liars.

  DeMarco turned toward the sound of the voice and saw a woman who looked absolutely delicious moving toward him in a very small lime-green bikini. She had light-brown hair streaked blond by the sun, eyes as clear and blue as the water in the swimming pool, and like the boys, a sprinkling of freckles across a pert nose. She was yummy.

  “Have these monsters been bothering you?” she asked DeMarco, stroking the seal-wet head of one of the boys. She had a delightful smile.

  “Not at all,” DeMarco said, smiling back. Lying to this woman was apparently contagious. “They’ve been asking me about alligators.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she said, feigning exasperation. “Ever since we went on that swamp-boat ride yesterday, they’ve been driving me nuts about alligators and snakes.” Taking each child by the hand, she said, “Come on, you devils. You’ve been out here in the sun long enough. Let’s go inside and get cleaned up.”

  She smiled at DeMarco again. Her nose crinkled up cutely when she smiled. “We’ll let you enjoy the pool in
peace,” she said. “Bye now.”

  As she walked away DeMarco enjoyed the view of her lithe body moving gracefully in the tiny bathing suit, her hair swinging rhythmically across her back with each step. The only blemish in this enchanting scene was the armed midgets clutching her hands.

  DEMARCO MUST HAVE fallen asleep because the next thing he knew someone was kicking the lounge chair. He looked up into the sun and saw a man in a dark-blue uniform wearing a Smokey the Bear hat and mirrored sunglasses. Sunlight reflected off the badge on the man’s chest. From DeMarco’s reclining position, he seemed enormous, all beer gut and meaty, freckled forearms.

  “Your name DeMarco?” the man said.

  DeMarco sat up, trying to shake the fog of sleep from his mind.

  “Yeah,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Mr. Taylor wants to talk to you.”

  Well. It looked as though he’d stirred the pot without even trying. DeMarco stood up, not liking the cop looming over him. Upon standing he realized that the man wasn’t as tall as he had originally thought but was still not someone he’d like to arm wrestle.

  DeMarco squinted at the badge on the man’s chest: Charlton County Sheriff’s Office.

  “Mr. Taylor wants to see me, Sheriff, so he sent you over here to arrest me?”

  “Deputy,” the man said. “Deputy Sheriff Pat Haskell.”

  “Glad to meet you, Deputy, but why did Mr. Taylor send you?”

  The deputy’s mouth tightened in irritation. He was used to more respect than DeMarco was giving him.

  “The sheriff’s just doin’ Mr. Taylor a favor. Mr. Taylor said he wanted to talk to you, so my boss had me track you down.”

  Great. Taylor had enough pull to use the sheriff’s as a messenger service.

  “And if I don’t want to talk to Mr. Taylor, Deputy?”

  “You know, you’re kinda prickly, partner. I’m just passin’ on a message. If you want to follow me, I’ll lead you out to Taylor’s place. If you don’t wanna go, suit yourself.”