The Inside Ring Read online

  In his peripheral vision DeMarco noticed movement. The teenagers had stepped out from behind the Dumpster.

  “Go call the cops,” he called to them, but there was little force behind his words.

  Instead of doing what he asked, the boys started across the street toward him. Their finely tuned urban survival instincts had already concluded that DeMarco did not pose a threat.

  “Man, you smoked him,” one of them said.

  Still looking down at the body, DeMarco repeated softly, “Go call the cops.” He didn’t know what to do with the gun in his hand. He wanted to drop it but was afraid it might discharge and blow a hole through his leg. Finally he just put it down on the hood of Sammy’s car.

  “Is the motherfucker dead?” the same kid said.

  DeMarco nodded and looked over at them. The kids appeared to be about fourteen years old. The one who had been doing all the talking was a friendly youngster with a lopsided grin. He was wearing a Chicago Bulls baseball cap with the bill pointed backward, a Michael Jordan sleeveless T-shirt, and baggy shorts that reached his knees. On his feet were high-top tennis shoes that seemed designed for walking on the moon. The other boy was dressed almost identically, except he favored the New York Knicks.

  DeMarco took his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it to the kid wearing the Bulls cap. “Call the cops,” he said.

  The two boys glanced at each other uncertainly. Calling the police was not appealing in any circumstance.

  “Why don’t you call ’em?” the Knicks fan said.

  “Because I need to check on that guy by the bank machine,” DeMarco said, and started walking toward Billy. He didn’t walk fast. He already knew Billy was beyond help. “And don’t touch anything,” he yelled to the boys over his shoulder.

  “We know that, whitey,” the Bulls fan said. “Bet we been at more crime scenes than you have.”

  DeMarco was certain they had been.

  DeMarco gazed down sadly at Billy Mattis. Unlike Palmeri’s, Billy’s eyes were closed and he seemed oddly at peace. If it hadn’t been for the small red-black hole in his chest he would have looked like a man who had just picked a peculiar place to nap.

  Although certain he was dead, DeMarco knelt and checked for a pulse in Billy’s throat. With his own pulse racing the way it was, DeMarco wasn’t sure that he would have felt the last small surges of Billy’s brave heart. You poor, poor bastard, he thought. How does a guy who looks like Mickey Mantle end up dying like this?

  DeMarco refused to think about what Billy’s death would do to his wife.

  Returning to Sammy’s car he asked the boys if they had called the police.

  “Yeah,” the Bulls fan said. “Five-0 on the way.”

  He tossed DeMarco’s cell phone back to him. DeMarco almost dropped it.

  “I can’t wait till the cops get here,” the kid said. “They won’t fuckin’ believe it, two dead white guys, and another one blowin’ smoke out his nine.”

  “They probably won’t believe it, Ritchie,” the other kid said, looking worried. “They’ll probably arrest you and me.”

  “They’re not going to arrest you,” DeMarco said. “I’m staying right here. I’ll tell them what happened.” What the hell was he going to tell them?

  He leaned against the fender of Sammy’s now battered station wagon and lit a cigarette. The Bulls fan, the kid named Ritchie, bummed one from him. The other kid seemed uncertain, then asked for one too. DeMarco thought about lecturing them on the deleterious effects of tobacco on their young bodies but realized how absurd the speech would sound in present circumstances. He asked the other kid his name. Jamal, the kid said.

  DeMarco knew he had acted in self-defense but wasn’t sure the police were going to believe him. He could be in real trouble here—criminal, go-to-jail, spend-all-your-money-on-a-lawyer trouble—and that frankly bothered him a hell of a lot more than the death of the thug who had killed Billy Mattis. It occurred to him then that he needed Ritchie and Jamal as favorable witnesses and gave them each another cigarette.

  He also knew he might be in a whole different kind of trouble, much more serious than the police. His old schoolyard playmate had obviously progressed beyond car theft, and had climbed the corporate ladder. Jesus, could the damn Mob have been involved in the assassination attempt?

  The cops didn’t arrive for almost twenty minutes, giving credence to complaints from area residents about the slow response time of law enforcement in minority neighborhoods. When they did arrive, they didn’t seem particularly upset to find two dead bodies on the street, but like Ritchie had said, they were surprised to see the victims were white. The lack of visible emotion by either the police or the two teenagers made DeMarco recall a line from Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove: “By God, life’s cheap up here on the . . . Canadien.”

  In retrospect, it was a good thing the police had dawdled as that gave DeMarco time to figure out the pack of lies he planned to tell them.

  25

  Did you know either Mr. Mattis or Mr. Robinson?” the detective asked him. The detective needed a shave and had dark circles under his muddy brown eyes. He was a walking portrait of a man who worked double shifts in a live-fire zone.

  “Who?” DeMarco said, thinking, Who the hell is Robinson?

  Seeing the confusion on DeMarco’s face the detective clarified sarcastically, “Mattis was the guy killed next to the bank machine. Robinson was the guy you killed, cowboy. You blew away a Mr. David Robinson of Waycross, Georgia. Now did you know either of the victims?”

  DeMarco was surprised the detective didn’t mention that Mattis was a Secret Service agent. Mattis must not have had his government ID on him, and the tired detective obviously hadn’t made the connection between the dead man slumped at the base of the ATM and the agent in the video of the assassination attempt.

  “No, I didn’t,” DeMarco said.

  It was two in the morning by the time he left the police station. The police might have kept him indefinitely were it not for Ritchie and Jamal. The boys were excellent witnesses. Neither was confused or hysterical, and they were both able to accurately and independently tell the same story. By the time they finished, the detective was convinced that Mr. Robinson of Waycross, Georgia, had indeed shot Billy Mattis in cold blood and stolen his money, that DeMarco had rammed his car into Robinson’s to keep him from fleeing the scene, and that DeMarco had fired only in self-defense when fired upon.

  The police should have treated him like a hero—but they didn’t. Their sensitive, cynical noses smelled the aroma of rat when DeMarco explained how little ol’ white him, a semi-rich guy from Georgetown, just happened to be parked in southeast D.C. while Billy Mattis was being shot.

  He had decided from the beginning not to tell them he had been following Billy. The story he did tell was relatively straightforward and certainly sounded more credible than the truth itself.

  It was obvious, he said, that Billy was killed for the cash he took from the ATM and it was just a coincidence that he had been there. He had been drinking (true—a couple of beers at the Greek deli), had wandered into the neighborhood by mistake because he wasn’t familiar with the area (half true), and had stopped to call a friend to tell her he would be late meeting her (not true at all, but one and a half out of three wasn’t bad).

  The detective suspected DeMarco was lying but he couldn’t shake him, and thanks to Ritchie and Jamal he couldn’t debate the facts. And DeMarco was a lawyer. He told the cops he’d sue their asses off if they didn’t quit picking on him. In the end they kept Sammy Wix’s gun and gave DeMarco a steely-eyed warning not to leave town.

  AS HE PRIED the battered fender of Sammy’s car away from the front tire, DeMarco realized that in spite of the hour he wanted to talk to someone. He had just killed a man. He felt compelled to relive aloud the experience and justify everything he had done. And he wanted to explore the lack of emotion he was feeling after killing John Palmeri. He had taken the life of another human be
ing and knew he should be feeling something—remorse, regret, sadness, something. But he didn’t. There was a numb spot at the core of his being, and he wanted someone to stick a pin in him to see if his soul would twitch.

  He knew even Emma must sleep, but when she answered the door at three in the morning she didn’t look as though she had been rousted from her bed. She was wearing a beaded sleeveless top and leather pants that looked quite good on her. Behind her, in her foyer, DeMarco could see a cello case, and on the back of Emma’s hand was an ink mark, the type they stamp on your hand after you pay the cover charge to get into a club. Emma and her cello player had been clubbing.

  She opened her mouth to make a caustic remark but before she could speak DeMarco said, “I killed a man tonight.”

  Emma’s reaction was to raise an eyebrow. “I guess you better come in then,” she said.

  She told DeMarco to go sit in the living room then disappeared to the back of her home for a few moments. When she came back she poured him three fingers of bourbon over ice then listened without interrupting as he told her what had happened. DeMarco hadn’t shaved since early morning and Emma couldn’t help but think he looked rather brutal. If he had been pointing a gun at her across the hood of a car she damn well wouldn’t have resisted. Well, maybe she would have, but most people wouldn’t have.

  When DeMarco finished, Emma asked, “Who was the shooter?”

  DeMarco told her. “He was using the name David Robinson. His driver’s license said he was from Waycross, Georgia. Maybe in the morning you can get on the horn and find out about him.”

  “Sure,” Emma said.

  They sat in silence for a while before Emma said, “You realize, of course, that Billy wasn’t the victim of a random cash-machine rip-off. Those two phone calls Estep made this morning? I think one was to get permission to take Billy out and the other was to line up this good fella, Palmeri.”

  “Yeah,” DeMarco said. “Someone paid Palmeri to pop Billy. Estep, and whoever else is involved in this, probably this guy Taylor, decided Billy had become a liability. He was unraveling. The little scene at the restaurant this morning. So Estep told Billy to go to an ATM at the corner of such-and-such street, meet this guy after dark, and when he gets there give him some money.”

  “What reason would he give Billy for meeting the hit man?” Emma asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know. Estep made up a plausible lie and Billy, dumb innocent that he was, went along with it. It would have been a nice, neat scenario if I hadn’t been there. They would have found Billy on the ground in a bad neighborhood next to a cash machine, the receipt stuck in his hand, the money gone. An easy-to-explain killing. In D.C. the odds of it happening are better than getting hit by a bus.”

  “And you did them a favor when you eliminated the shooter,” Emma added.

  Standing with his back to Emma, he poured more whiskey into his glass then said softly, “I got Billy killed, Emma.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  DeMarco turned to face her. “I squeezed him just like the Speaker wanted and he buckled under the pressure. That’s what got him killed.”

  “That may be, Joe, but Billy got killed because he was mixed up in something bad.”

  “Yeah, but you and I both know he was somehow roped into this thing. Billy Mattis was a white hat that someone bent the wrong direction. And his poor wife, Emma. By now she knows he’s dead and she’s crying and she’ll never stop. There must have been something I could have done differently.”

  “Billy should have come clean with us when he had the chance,” Emma said. End of discussion. With Emma things were black and white—gray areas of ambiguity were for lesser mortals.

  “Yeah, I suppose,” DeMarco said. “What happened with Billy also explains what Estep was up to tonight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “While I was waiting for the cops tonight, I called Mike. He was following Estep. He said Estep went to a bar over on K Street about an hour before Billy was killed. Mike said that while he was there he made a total ass of himself. Loud, obnoxious, drinking like a fish, hitting on all the women, even the ones with dates. At one point he buys the house a round and ten minutes later he gets into a fight with some guy. The bartender threw him out about midnight.”

  “Ah,” Emma said. “He gave himself a twenty-person alibi.”

  DeMarco nodded. “Mike also said that while he was in the bar, Estep said that tomorrow, make that today, he’s getting the hell out of D.C. and heading back to Georgia. That’s why he bought the drinks, to celebrate leaving.”

  “Do you want Mike to follow him down there?” Emma asked.

  “No way. I think these people are killers. I’m gonna make Banks go to the FBI and if he doesn’t go, I’m leaking this mess to the press.”

  “I doubt it will be that simple, Joe.”

  “Yes it will,” DeMarco said. He emptied his drink and set his glass down. “It’s late,” DeMarco said. “I . . . I better let you get some sleep.”

  “Is something else bothering you, Joe?”

  DeMarco hesitated. “Emma, how many people have you killed?”

  “Really, Joe. You don’t expect me to answer that, do you?”

  “No, I guess not. But how did you feel about it? Did it bother you when you killed someone?”

  Her answer surprised him. “It always bothered me,” she said. Maybe there were shades of gray in Emma’s life.

  “Then why don’t I feel worse than I do?” DeMarco said. “I took a man’s life tonight, a man I knew as a kid. I should be feeling some remorse. But I don’t. I used to wonder how my father could do it, how he could live with himself after killing someone. Maybe he didn’t feel anything either.”

  Emma shook her head. “Joe, you’re tired and you’re in shock. You are not a sociopath. You are not your father.”

  “I’ve got to get going,” DeMarco said and stood up.

  “Just stay here tonight. It’s late and you’ve been drinking.”

  “I can’t,” DeMarco said. “I have to catch the first shuttle to New York in the morning.”

  “New York? What for?”

  26

  The old man heard the doorbell ring. He pushed himself out of his chair with a grunt and moved slowly toward the door. He could see a man standing on his porch through the mesh of the screen door, the sunlight behind the man making it difficult to see his features. Probably some damn salesman, the old man thought, some pain in the ass who had ignored the NO SOLICITATION sign. He was a couple of feet from the door when he stopped abruptly and his mouth dropped open in shock. He almost crossed himself, but pride prevented his hand from moving.

  “Gino? Is that you?” the old man said, ashamed of the tremor in his voice.

  “No, Mr. Taliaferro, it’s not Gino. It’s his son. Joe.”

  The old man barked a laugh. “Goddamn! You scared the shit outta me. Thought it was a fuckin’ ghost. It’s a good thing I got cancer ’stead of heart trouble.”

  “Can I come in, Mr. Taliaferro?” DeMarco asked.

  “Come in?” Carmine Taliaferro said, still confused by the appearance of a dead man on his porch. “Yeah, sure. You can come in,” he said, unlatching the screen door. “Come in, come in.”

  The old capo had lost a lot of weight since DeMarco had last seen him at his father’s funeral. The Carmine Taliaferro he remembered had always been heavy—too much of his wife’s good pasta, he used to joke—but the man standing before him was almost skeletal. Carmine’s eyes were the same though: inside the jolly, fat-man’s face had been the coldest eyes young Joey DeMarco had ever seen. The cancer had not changed his eyes; they had always belonged to a corpse.

  Taliaferro was wearing a short-sleeved blue shirt, open at the collar, and a pair of gray pants from an old suit. The pants were shiny in the seat and the cuffs dragged on the floor. On his feet were maroon slippers. The thin wisps of white hair remaining on his liver-spotted skull stood on end as if energized by static e
lectricity. It was hard to believe this had once been the most feared man in Queens.

  “I’m retired now, you know,” Taliaferro said as DeMarco followed him down a dimly lit hallway.

  “I figured as much when I didn’t see the bodyguards.”

  Taliaferro laughed. “Yeah. Nobody’s gonna waste a bullet on me now. All they gotta do is wait a couple months.”

  They entered a living room filled with old-fashioned, heavy dark furniture. On the fireplace mantel and end tables were black-and-white pictures of Taliaferro’s extended family. The television in the corner was a Sony with a nineteen-inch screen and the once beige rug on the floor was almost threadbare. DeMarco noticed a small rip in the upholstery of the couch where he was directed to sit.

  The house where Taliaferro lived was a modest three-bedroom affair in a middle-class section of the borough and most of his neighbors were blue-collar working stiffs. Taliaferro had lived in the house fifty years, and like most elderly people, couldn’t see the point of changing anything in it at this point in his life. DeMarco knew he was worth millions.

  Taliaferro dropped into a brown leather recliner. There was a green oxygen tank near the chair. “I’d offer you a coffee,” he said, “but my wife’s at the church. Lighting fuckin’ candles for me, like God can’t see in the dark.”

  “That’s okay, Mr. Taliaferro. I don’t want any coffee.”

  Taliaferro studied DeMarco’s face. “No, but you want somethin’. I know, after all this time, you ain’t here ’cause you’re worried about my health. So whaddaya want, Gino’s kid?”

  DeMarco nodded, glad the old bastard had decided to skip the stroll down memory lane.

  “I want to know—”

  “I kept track of you,” Taliaferro said. “I know you work down there for the Congress, but you’re nothin’ special. My butcher makes more money than you. You coulda hadda good life, you wanted it, but you didn’t want nothing to do with us, did you?”