by Mike Lawson
“We met once. It doesn’t mean a—”
“You assigned Mattis to the President’s security detail when Taylor ordered you to,” Emma said. “You may not have known that he planned to kill the President but after the assassination attempt you did everything you possibly could to hinder the investigation. And why? Because Taylor has been holding over your head—over the head of the director of the Secret Service—what you and he did in November of 1963. The last thing in the world you ever wanted discovered was your connection to Maxwell Taylor.”
“You can’t prove any of this,” Donnelly said again, maybe for the third time.
And he was right. They couldn’t. There was no record of any communications between Taylor and Donnelly; both men were too careful for this. There was no way they could prove Donnelly and Taylor had found a large amount of cash in Guerrero’s car. They couldn’t even use the IRS to squeeze Donnelly; he’d paid his taxes regardless of the source of the money. But none of that mattered.
“Proof is for judges, Mr. Donnelly,” Emma said, “but journalists don’t require proof to make your life a living hell. We have a string of coincidence and strong circumstantial evidence that will be more than enough for Stone Phillips to stand up on Dateline and make you look like an accomplice to robbery, murder, and conspiracy while saying with every other breath that you’re not an official suspect. And the FBI will be forced to dig harder. Who knows what they might find at Taylor’s house linking the two of you. And your friends in Congress, not that you have any, will invite you to televised hearings. You’re going to have to explain why you lied about giving lie detector tests to Secret Service agents and why you didn’t investigate the link between Dale Estep and Billy Mattis. You’ll be asked repeatedly, and for the rest of your life, about your ties to a madman in Georgia and your role in the attempt to murder the man you were sworn to protect.”
Mahoney had told DeMarco not to tell Donnelly that Montgomery was the real target of the assassination. It’s one thing to conspire to kill an author; it’s a whole other thing to conspire to kill a President.
Donnelly’s face had turned ashen. DeMarco was guessing that he was probably a heartbeat away from a stroke.
“No,” Donnelly said. He rose from his chair on shaky legs. “No,” he said again, louder this time. “You can’t get to me. Nobody can get to me. I run the Secret Service.”
He left the table walking slowly at first, trying to maintain his dignity, but before long he was walking as fast as his short legs could move. His bodyguards had to run to catch up to him.
“Well that was fun,” Emma said.
45
The Speaker was torturing a pigeon.
He and DeMarco were sitting next to each other on the steps of the Capitol looking west toward the Washington Monument. The sky was cloudless and there was just enough wind to make the flags around the monument fly in picture-perfect fashion.
Mahoney, who had bought a bag of unshelled peanuts from a street vendor, had dropped a peanut on the ground only a couple of inches from one of his oversized feet. A few yards away stood a pigeon with tail feathers that looked as if they’d been caught in a lawn mower. The pigeon had just waddled in toward the peanut, then waddled away, then waddled back in again. The bird was a study in indecision, its small brain trying to decide if a single nut was worth coming within stomping range of the huge white-haired animal that smelled of fermented grain.
“You actually went to his retirement ceremony?” DeMarco said.
“Hell, yes. And I took Andy Banks with me.”
“Banks went with you?”
“Yeah, I had to explain things to him, make sure he understood why we were doin’ what we were doin’ and why he needed to keep quiet about it. He didn’t like it at first, straight arrow like him, but he figured out pretty quick that I was right—and that it’s better having me and the President on his side than not. He’s actually a pretty good guy. I’m glad he’s in that job.
“Anyway, I had a ball at that damn ceremony. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. The little shit was so popular that only about twenty people were there; the bosses probably made their secretaries go. The neat thing was they held it in an auditorium that seated three hundred. That was a nice touch on somebody’s part.”
“If he was fired, why hold a retirement ceremony?”
“Woulda looked funny if we hadn’t. The press might have asked why a guy as important as him wasn’t given a send-off.”
Mahoney dropped another peanut next to his foot, doubling the pigeon’s temptation. The pigeon flapped its wings madly, loose feathers flying; the bird’s way of protesting Mahoney’s cruelty.
“Yeah, the President got up, said about three sentences, and then he gave Donnelly a pin and a cheap watch and the kinda little plaque they give postal workers for luggin’ the mail.”
A third peanut slipped from Mahoney’s paw. The pigeon was now insane, darting back and forth on its little pigeon feet—toward the peanuts, away from the peanuts, toward the peanuts. Mahoney was oblivious to the bird’s anguish.
“Banks just glared at Donnelly the whole time he was there, like he was trying to laser the skin off his face with those eyes of his. But not me. I walked up to him while people were eatin’ this shitty little cake they got him. He was just standing there by himself, lookin’ damn near catatonic. Anyway, I leaned down and said, ‘This was for Marge Carter, you little fuck.’ And you know what he said? He said, ‘Who?’ I almost belted him, Joe.”
The pigeon was now moving sideways toward the peanut pile, a crab with feathers, apparently thinking this maneuver rendered it invisible. It had just entered the shadow created by the creature’s body, the peanuts only inches away.
“But right at the end, when everyone’s ready to leave, this woman comes up and screams at him, right in front of the journalists. ‘I’m gonna tell ’em all what you did, you bastard,’ she says. Naturally Donnelly doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about. How could he, he never met her. But the journalists surrounded her right away.”
“Who was the woman?” DeMarco asked.
“The beginning of Donnelly’s legal troubles,” Mahoney said with a wink.
Then Mahoney whooped a laugh and slapped a knee to punctuate his joy—and the pigeon exploded into the sky like it had a bottle rocket up its ass. Its ragged feathers almost hit Mahoney’s square chin.
“Jesus!” Mahoney said. “Crazy fuckin’ bird. What’s its problem?”
“So that poor bastard Edwards is going to go down in history as an assassin, and nobody will ever know about the link that may have existed between Kennedy and a dead Cuban,” DeMarco said.
Mahoney waved a hand, removing this small obstacle. “Nah, I wrote up a memo last night. I’ll have it put over in Archives, not to be opened for fifty, sixty years. Can’t you just see it when people read it? I wish I could be there to see the fuss it’ll cause.”
Given his luck, DeMarco thought, he probably would be.
Mahoney stood up and dusted off the back of his pants.
“I gotta get goin’. It’s my anniversary, did I tell you?”
“No,” DeMarco said.
“Yeah, we’ve been married, Mary Pat and me, almost forty years now. Can you believe it?”
DeMarco decided to remain silent.
“How ’bout you, Joe? What’s a handsome young fella got planned for a perfect Friday night?”
“I’m meeting a woman I know. She works over at Interior.”
“Good for you. It’s about damn time you got back in circulation. Get yourself laid, get drunk, have a good time.”
“Actually she’s gonna help me pick out some furniture,” DeMarco said.
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY
a division of Random House, Inc.
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, even
ts, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lawson, Michael, 1948–
The inside ring / Michael Lawson.
p. cm.
1. Presidents—Assassination attempts—Fiction. 2. Attempted assassination—Fiction. 3. Attorney and client—Fiction. 4. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. 5. Secret service—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.A934I57 2004
813'.6—dc22
2004061794
eISBN 0-385-51579-0
Copyright © 2005 by Michael Lawson
All Rights Reserved
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