The Inside Ring Read online

  Emma was wearing a short red wig and big sunglasses. She was dressed in jeans, a University of Nevada sweatshirt, and hiking boots. She walked toward Mason, timing her pace so that she met him just as he reached his Lexus.

  “Excuse me,” Emma said. “Aren’t you Eric Mason, the district attorney?”

  Mason smiled at the woman, flashing white, perfectly capped teeth. “Yes, I am,” he said. He was anxious to be off to his club where he was meeting his broker for drinks, but it never hurt to be nice to potential voters. And the woman was attractive, though too old for him he realized looking closer.

  “Just wanted to make sure,” Emma said, then she swung the sap she had been holding down at the side of her leg and broke Eric Mason’s perfect nose. Mason spun around at the force of the blow and Emma swung the sap again, hitting him at the base of his skull. Mason collapsed unconscious to the ground, and Emma picked his car keys up from the concrete where he had dropped them. By the time Emma opened the trunk of Mason’s car, another woman was at her side to help place Mason in the trunk.

  MASON REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS slowly. He was lying on his back; he wasn’t bound but he had very little room to move. Reaching up, he felt a hard, smooth surface above him, only four inches from his face. He was in a container of some sort, and the air smelled stale, dank . . . earthy. At that instant he realized he was in a coffin, underground, and he began to scream and beat his hands against the lid.

  As he screamed he thought he heard a voice in his ear. The voice was telling him to be quiet. He stopped screaming, his panic barely under control, and realized there was an earpiece in his left ear and that’s where the voice was coming from.

  “That’s better,” the voice said. He recognized the voice of the red-haired woman who had sapped him in the parking garage.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Mason yelled. “Who are you? Let me out of here!”

  “What’s wrong, Mr. Mason. Are you claustrophobic?”

  She knew he was; Emma had researched the man carefully.

  “Goddamnit, let me the fuck out of here!”

  “Mr. Mason, the air you’re currently breathing is coming in from a one-inch-diameter tube directly over your head. Look up, Mr. Mason. I’ll shine a light and you’ll see.”

  Emma shined a small penlight down the breathing tube. She could see Mason’s eyes; they were enormous, ready to pop right out of his head.

  “The breathing tube is open now, Mr. Mason, but since you’re being rude I’m going to put a stopper in it.”

  “No!” Mason screamed.

  “Your air supply will run out in exactly fifteen minutes. I’ll talk to you again in sixteen minutes.”

  “No,” Mason screamed again and watched in horror as the light disappeared and he heard something being shoved into the opening of the breathing tube. For the next few minutes he screamed and pounded on the coffin lid with his hands and kicked upward with his feet.

  The voice in his ear said, “You’re using up your oxygen much too fast, Mr. Mason. I don’t think it will last fifteen minutes as I said earlier. Maybe thirteen or fourteen minutes. Can hold your breath for three minutes, Mr. Mason? You don’t smoke, do you?”

  Emma knew that he did.

  As Mason lay there in the dark, trying not to breathe, trying not to panic, Emma watched him. Above his head was a small fiber-optic cable connected to a video monitor, the cable itself less than a quarter inch in diameter. Emma could record Mason’s demise if she chose to. She shut off the microphone she had been using to communicate with Mason and said to her friend, “You did a good job on this, Sam.”

  Emma and Samantha were seated on plastic lawn chairs. They were in a rented garage two miles from Mason’s office. The coffin was lying on the floor at their feet; the earthy odor Mason had smelled upon awakening was caused by a small mound of compost near the breathing tube. Samantha had rigged the coffin with the breathing tube, the video monitor, and the communication system.

  “It was pretty simple,” Samantha said. “I had all the stuff in my shop; I didn’t have to buy anything but the box.” Though officially retired from government service Samantha occasionally helped out certain agencies—and old friends—who had special surveillance needs.

  “Well, I appreciate it,” Emma said. “Coffee?” she asked, reaching for the thermos by her feet.

  “Love some,” Samantha said.

  They were just two gals enjoying each other’s company, their pleasure interrupted only occasionally by muffled noises coming from the coffin.

  “How’s Richard doing these days?” Emma asked. Richard was Samantha’s husband.

  “He’s nuts about fly-fishing at the moment. You know Richard. He becomes absolutely obsessed with whatever his latest hobby is, and we’ve spent every weekend the last two months on some river or lake or beaver pond.”

  “A man can have worse hobbies than fly-fishing,” Emma said.

  “Yeah, like this asshole,” Samantha said, looking down at the coffin.

  Emma checked her watch. Ten minutes to go. She glanced at the video monitor to check on Mason. She hoped he didn’t have a heart attack.

  “And how’s your granddaughter doing?” Emma asked.

  Samantha had been very precise in her calculation of the volume of air in the coffin, and when Emma checked on Mason ten minutes later he was gasping like a fish out of water and breaking his manicured nails on the lid of the coffin.

  Emma pulled the stopper out of the breathing tube and shined the penlight down on Mason’s face.

  “Mr. Mason, are you ready to listen now?”

  “Yes, yes,” Mason said. “Just tell me what you want. Is this about one of my cases?”

  “No, Mr. Mason. This is about a young woman named Julie Fredericks whom you have been harassing relentlessly the last six months. She can’t sleep, she’s lost weight, and she’s taking antidepressants. She’s on the edge of a nervous breakdown—all because you won’t take no for an answer.”

  “Julie?” Mason said, seeming genuinely puzzled.

  “Yes, Julie,” Emma said. “You are an egomaniac without a conscience, Mr. Mason. And you are afraid of nothing because you know the legal system can’t touch you. You will continue to harass this young woman until she either kills herself or kills you. And killing you would ruin her life.”

  “I’ll stop,” Mason said, “I swear to God I will.”

  “It never occurred to you that somebody would ignore the law and attack you physically, did it? That’s the kind of thing gangbangers do. You never dreamed it could happen to a powerful man like yourself, and certainly not for something as trivial as stalking a young woman.”

  “Please, I promise . . .”

  “And it was so easy. I took you out of the parking garage in the building where you work, in a building crawling with law enforcement personnel. Do you still feel invincible, Mr. Mason?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’ll get back to you on that in sixteen minutes, Mr. Mason. No, let’s make it seventeen minutes this time.”

  Emma inserted the stopper back in the breathing tube, cutting off Mason’s scream.

  “How’s Audrey?” Samantha asked.

  “She moved to New York.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Emma.”

  “She had a job offer she couldn’t pass up, something she’d wanted for a long time.”

  “You couldn’t go with her?”

  “You know me, Sam. I’m pretty set in my ways. And . . . well, maybe it was for the best.”

  Emma waited this time until Mason passed out, then pulled the stopper from the breathing tube. She was afraid for a minute that she might have to open the coffin to resuscitate him but he came to on his own.

  “Can you hear me, Mr. Mason?” Emma said.

  Mason’s response was to noisily suck in as much air as he could.

  “Now to answer your question: Who am I? Well, I belong to a society that was created to help women like Julie Fredericks, women who are a
bused and terrorized by men. Women who receive no protection from the law because the law is run by men like you. It is a society of women for women, Mr. Mason. A society which saves women like Julie Fredericks from predators like you.”

  Emma looked over at Samantha and mugged a face. She sounded like the leather-clad heroine in a comic-book adventure. Samantha grinned back at her and silently mouthed: You go, girl.

  “I promise I’ll leave her alone,” Mason screamed.

  “I don’t believe you, Mr. Mason.”

  Emma jammed the stopper back into the breathing tube and Mason began to cry. Claustrophobia combined with the thought of being buried alive, further combined with the very real experience of being suffocated was enough to push a brave man over the edge—and Emma knew Eric Mason was not a brave man.

  Sixteen minutes later, Emma pulled the stopper from the breathing tube again. She wrinkled her nose; Mason had soiled his expensive suit. It took several minutes before he calmed down enough for Emma to talk to him.

  “Mr. Mason,” Emma said, “do you believe we can get to you anytime we want?”

  “Yes!”

  “Do you believe that some nice woman who looks like a grandmother could walk up behind you with a silenced gun in a shopping bag and put a bullet in your spine?”

  “Yes!”

  “Do you believe that a young woman who looks like a secretary could gain access to your building and poison the coffeepot right outside your office?”

  “Yes!”

  “Do you believe a young mother, a very credible young mother, could run you down while you’re jogging and say you tripped and fell under the wheels of her car? Do you believe those things can happen to you now, Mr. Mason?”

  “Yes, goddamnit, yes. I believe you!” Mason shrieked.

  “I hope so, Mr. Mason, because one of those things will happen to you if you ever bother Julie Fredericks again. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I swear to God I’ll never—”

  “In ten minutes, Mr. Mason, you’ll hear an alarm clock ring. When you hear the alarm, push up on the lid of the coffin. If you push up the lid before the alarm sounds, you’ll blow off your hands.”

  Samantha pressed her hands over her mouth to keep from laughing.

  “Your car is parked outside the building you’re in, Mr. Mason. The keys are under the floor mat on the passenger side. And Mr. Mason, after you’ve changed your shit-stained pants, and after you’ve spent a few days in your office with your flunkies telling you what a big shot you are, and after your nose has healed and you look in the mirror and become delighted once again with what you see, do not start to think that this experience you’ve just had was some sort of nightmare, that it didn’t really happen. We’ll be back, Mr. Mason, if Julie Fredericks ever hears from you again.”

  20

  Hello, Emma.”

  “Neil,” Emma said, nodding her head.

  “You didn’t tell me you’d be bringing a friend, Emma,” Neil said, pointing his chin—or to be accurate, three chins—at DeMarco.

  Neil was an immensely fat man in his fifties with a yellow-gray ponytail hanging down the back of his balding head like the tail on an animal with mange. He was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, baggy shorts, and sandals. His calves were almost as big around as DeMarco’s thighs.

  The large room he occupied was filled with computers, recording equipment, and a dozen other electronic devices that DeMarco couldn’t begin to name. The only illumination in the room was provided by the monitors of the computers. Neil sat on a stool with casters, his buttocks overflowing the seat. The stool allowed him to move quickly and effortlessly between his gadgets. When he wasn’t talking, he sucked on a lime-green Popsicle.

  “He’s all right, Neil,” Emma said. “Not only is Joe my friend, he’s the client.”

  DeMarco thought Emma looked tired but she seemed to be her old self again. Maybe she had talked to the man who was bothering her daughter. DeMarco knew Emma could be persuasive.

  “Ah, the client,” Neil was saying. “So he’s the one paying the bill?”

  “No one’s paying, Neil. Tel Aviv. Remember?”

  “Emma, my staff and I—”

  “Your staff?”

  Neil jerked his head in the direction of a young African American man wearing a Washington Wizards sweatshirt. Neither Emma nor DeMarco had noticed him when they entered the dimly lit room. He was in a corner, almost invisible behind the screen of a laptop computer. Rust-colored dreadlocks hung to the young man’s shoulders; his body moved in rhythm to whatever sound was coming from the headphones he wore. He was so absorbed in his work and his music, he didn’t appear to realize that Neil had visitors.

  “Staff isn’t good, Neil,” Emma said.

  “Neither is bringing unannounced friends, Emma.”

  Emma made a gesture with her head acknowledging Neil’s point.

  “As I was saying, Emma, my staff and I spent more than thirty hours on this project. Thirty hours I could have devoted to paying clients.”

  “We’ll consider Tel Aviv paid in full, Neil. Okay?”

  Neil was silent a moment, then his face broke into a broad smile exposing oddly formed teeth.

  “In that case, Emma, let’s go into my office where we can be comfortable.”

  Emma and DeMarco followed Neil’s large backside from the computer room, through a metal door, and entered an adult’s playpen. Every board game imaginable was stacked on shelves. Nintendo and Sega hardware was connected to forty-five-inch plasma television screens hanging on the wall like modern art. A pinball machine, pool table, and foosball table stood all in a row.

  Neil gestured Emma and DeMarco to two overstuffed armchairs in front of his cluttered desk and took a seat behind the desk in a chair that must have been specially built to suit his bulk.

  “Can I get you and your friend anything, Emma? Popsicle, Nutty Buddy, fudge bar?”

  “Oh, good Lord. Get on with it, Neil.”

  Neil picked up a laptop from the floor behind his desk. He opened it and tapped a few keys. “Ah, here we are,” he said.

  “First I can find no links between the late Harold Edwards and any of the other players in this Dixieland drama. Mattis has never contacted him by phone or by e-mail. He and Edwards never served in the same Army Reserve unit, nor did they belong to any of the same churches, clubs, or other social institutions. Edwards was ten years older than Mattis and lived exclusively above the Mason-Dixon Line, which would further reduce the chances of them being acquaintances at some prior point in their lives.

  “From Edwards’s medical records, I noticed that he’s slightly over his ideal weight . . .”

  DeMarco almost laughed aloud at this. Anyone less than a hundred pounds too heavy would be considered “slightly” overweight by Neil.

  “. . . but is otherwise in good health, and from court records I observed that he’s had two DUIs in the last thirty-six months.”

  Neil took another slurp from his Popsicle before saying, “Now for William Raymond Mattis. The lad is a GS-11 and his wife is a hairdresser who makes about five bucks an hour.” Neil looked up from the computer screen to Emma and shook his large head in dismay. “We really do need a livable minimum wage in this country.”

  “Get on with it, Neil,” Emma said again.

  “William and his wife live within their means and exactly as would be expected based on their income. Their home has a mortgage that will not be paid off for forty years; they have less than five thousand dollars in their joint savings account; they own two vehicles, both with nigh one hundred thousand miles on the odometer. Thank God for William’s civil service pension or these people would be eating Spam three meals a day after they retire. Bottom line: if this lad is an apprentice assassin, the work doesn’t pay for shit at the entry level.

  “Next we come to the swamp tender, Mr. Estep. This one was interesting. He, like William, is a midlevel government worker. Unlike William he has no money in savings. I pulled his tax retu
rns. He has no financial instruments paying interest, at the same time, he pays no interest. Meaning he has no outstanding loans. I concluded initially that Estep took his meager salary, lived within his means, and possibly inherited his home. Then I did something inspired—which is why people other than Emma pay me so well, Joe: I checked his insurance policies.

  “The good Mr. Estep possesses every toy known to macho man. He has a 1999 Corvette, bought new at the time and top of the line. His house, on which he has no mortgage, is assessed at one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. If he lived somewhere civilized, say Arlington for example, that same house would be worth half a mil. He owns a 2000 Jeep, a 2003 four-wheel drive Ford truck, a bass boat worth thirty thousand, and a Jet Ski worth fifteen thousand. His gun collection is insured for thirty thousand. What do you think of dem apples, Emma and friend?”

  “The same as you, Neil,” Emma said. “He has some source of invisible income, it pays cash, and it pays very well.”

  “You could Capone this one if you wanted, Emma. For leverage, I mean.”

  “Capone him?” Emma said.

  DeMarco spoke for the first time. “Al Capone was sent to prison for tax evasion, not for being a gangster.”

  “I know that,” Emma said. “I’d just never heard Capone used as a verb before.”

  Bet you didn’t know, DeMarco was thinking. Emma didn’t like it when she wasn’t the smartest person in the room.

  Neil sucked loudly on his Popsicle and stripped the stick bare. “And now we come to the really interesting ones,” he said. “Taylor and Donnelly. These two gentlemen were financially reborn in 1964.”

  “What does that mean?” DeMarco said.

  “Prior to 1964 both Donnelly and Taylor had lower-middle-class incomes as would be expected considering their professions. Donnelly was a newly hired Secret Service agent and made a GS-5’s salary in 1963, about five thousand dollars per annum. Mr. Taylor enlisted in the army, rose to the exalted rank of sergeant, and after he was discharged, worked for the state police in Texas. He made, in 1963, less than Donnelly. These young men—Donnelly was twenty-five at the time and Taylor was twenty-seven—had no savings and didn’t own real estate. Neither was—nor have ever been—married.