The Inside Ring Read online

  “This guy Estep,” Banks said. “Ex-military was the first thing I thought when the FBI said the shooter hid in that blind for two or three days. But what’s his connection to Edwards? Did he help him?”

  “I don’t know,” DeMarco said.

  DeMarco rose from his chair, walked over to a window, and looked in the direction of the White House. The papers had said the President was back at work, putting in half days as he continued to convalesce. DeMarco turned back to face Banks who was still contemplating what DeMarco had just told him.

  “General, it’s possible Harold Edwards had nothing to do with the shooting.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “General, just because Edwards turned up with a tag on his toe saying ‘I did it,’ doesn’t mean we should forget everything else we know. We know about the warning letter—the FBI doesn’t—and we know that Mattis probably wrote that letter. And now we know his death wasn’t a random act of violence.”

  “So what?” Banks said.

  “I talked to Mattis’s wife before coming here. She said before the assassination attempt her husband was staying late at work using the Service’s computers. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time but now it does. I think Billy may have been trying to find—or was being forced to find—someone like Harold Edwards. Someone already identified in the Secret Service’s files as being a threat to the President. I think it’s possible that Billy found the perfect patsy, that Estep stole the weapons from the Fort Meade armory because Edwards previously served there, and that Estep was the shooter. After the assassination attempt, they killed Edwards—maybe Estep or maybe the guy who shot Billy—and then planted all this evidence at his house.”

  “That’s a lot of goddamn maybes,” Banks said.

  “Yes, sir, it is,” DeMarco said. “And that’s why you have to talk to the FBI. They need all the facts. They need to be told about the warning letter and Estep and this man Taylor. If Edwards had nothing to do with the shooting there’s a good chance the people who really tried to kill the President will try again.”

  Banks didn’t respond. He took off his wire-rimmed glasses and polished the lenses. He looked oddly vulnerable without his glasses, DeMarco thought, like an ancient eagle with weak eyes.

  DeMarco knew that Banks had only asked him to investigate Mattis because he felt guilty about not acting on the warning letter as he should have. He’d never been certain that Mattis was involved in the assassination attempt, and even with everything DeMarco had just told him, he was still reluctant to expose the fact that he’d kept the letter from the FBI. Coming forward at this point could be more than just embarrassing for Banks—it could be political suicide.

  Banks put his glasses back on, looked at DeMarco, his expression unreadable. He stared at DeMarco a moment longer, then he rotated his chair and looked at the photo of the World Trade Center behind his desk.

  “Goddamnit,” Banks said, “you’re right. Let’s get this over with.”

  29

  When DeMarco saw Patrick Donnelly sitting at the conference table in Simon Wall’s office, he knew he and Banks were going to get their asses kicked. Banks had not invited Donnelly to his meeting with the attorney general, which meant the attorney general had. And DeMarco could tell that Donnelly, Simon Wall, and the third man in the room, FBI Director Kevin Collier, were quite good pals. As DeMarco and Banks entered Wall’s office they were treated to the tail end of a pretentious conversation about the cost of country club memberships. Bretton Woods, it appeared, had raised its greens fees while simultaneously lowering its standards. The white man’s burden was heavy indeed.

  As soon as Banks saw Donnelly he said, “What are you doing here, Mr. Donnelly?”

  Before Donnelly could respond Simon Wall said, “I invited him, General.” Wall spoke in the soothing, nonconfrontational tone of a hostage negotiator trying to keep a volatile situation under control. “When you called and said you wanted to discuss the assassination attempt, I thought we might benefit from Pat’s, ah, experience.”

  Simon Wall had sleek brown hair and oversize dark-framed glasses that magnified liquid brown eyes. Before he became attorney general he had been the Party’s chief fund-raiser and there was talk about his viability as a vice-presidential candidate in the next election. Wall was a political hybrid who had evolved to survive in any environment. Like a beast with both gills and lungs he could live on land or sea, and if the air supply was suddenly cut off, he could hold his breath longer than any other species.

  “A better question is what’s he doing here?” Donnelly said, scowling and pointing at DeMarco. DeMarco was again struck by the incongruity of Donnelly’s cruel, blue-jowled features atop his short form. He looked like a doll somebody had stuck the wrong head on.

  Banks’s head snapped toward Donnelly. “I’m the one who called this meeting, mister,” he said, “and I don’t have to explain whom I invited or why.”

  The attorney general, still playing the mediator, said, “Pat, I’m sure the general had a good reason for bringing Mr. DeMarco to this conference.” Looking at DeMarco, he added, “I’m also sure Mr. DeMarco can be relied upon to keep whatever he hears to himself. Isn’t that right, Mr. DeMarco?”

  “Yes, sir,” DeMarco said. And three bags full. It bothered him that Wall even knew his name. He had tried to convince Banks that he wasn’t needed for this meeting but Banks had insisted that he come. DeMarco was taking a big risk. He should have talked to the Speaker before talking to Banks, and he certainly should have told Mahoney about this meeting with the AG. There’s an old civil service adage: it’s better to ask first for permission than to have to beg later for forgiveness. DeMarco had violated a fundamental tenet of bureaucracy and he hoped he didn’t pay for it with his job.

  DeMarco and Banks joined the other men at a large circular conference table.

  “Why don’t you start, General,” Simon Wall said. “When you called, you said the FBI might be overlooking some important information and you wanted to be sure Kevin and I had the benefit of your, ah, insights.”

  “I may be wrong,” Banks said, “but I think there’s a possibility that Edwards was not the assassin or if he was, that he didn’t act alone.”

  Kevin Collier was a stocky man in his fifties. He had protruding eyes and a pugnacious face, and reminded DeMarco of one of those feisty little dogs with the pushed-in snouts. Collier wasn’t as politically astute as Simon Wall but he was smart enough to know the FBI’s arrest record was less important than whom he played golf with.

  “General, forgive me, but the evidence against Harold Edwards is simply overwhelming,” Collier said. “I mean, hell, the man left a note in his own handwriting saying he did it.” With a false chuckle, Collier added, “What else do you want him to do, sir? Come back from the dead and confess?”

  Banks ignored Collier’s attempt at levity and said gruffly to DeMarco, “Tell ’em what we got.”

  DeMarco didn’t like being thrust into the role of briefer but he cleared his throat and complied. “Prior to the shooting, the general received a letter that could have only been written by a Secret Service agent. The letter was on Secret Service stationery and was delivered in the Homeland Security pouch. It said—”

  “Here we go,” Donnelly muttered and looked over at Kevin Collier.

  It was apparent that Donnelly had already discussed the warning note with Wall and Collier, and DeMarco could easily imagine the spin he’d put on it. So could General Banks.

  Banks’s head spun toward Donnelly, his eyes blazing. “Do you have something to say, Mr. Donnelly?”

  “Nope,” Donnelly said, and shook his head in an I-give-up gesture. “If you want to continue to believe there was any truth to that letter, there’s nothing I can do to stop you.”

  Before Banks could say anything else, the attorney general said, “General, why don’t we let Mr. DeMarco continue with his, ah, summary.”

  And continue DeMarco did. He was doing fine un
til he made the mistake of saying that both he and Banks thought Mattis appeared nervous on the video of the shooting.

  “Why don’t we talk about that for just a moment, General,” Kevin Collier said. “Because Mattis dropped his sunglasses before the first shot, my technicians naturally looked at him particularly hard when they examined the video. For example they timed how fast he moved to stand in front of the President’s body and found that he moved faster than any other man in that detail. He was also the first agent to fire at the bluff to distract the shooter. There is absolutely no scientific evidence that Mattis acted or reacted in any way that was questionable.”

  “Mr. Collier,” Banks said, “I may not have timed Mattis’s movements with a stopwatch but I know men—and I know that Mattis looked different than the other men in the detail. That man was unusually nervous that morning before the first shot was ever fired.”

  “That may be, General,” Collier said, “but in addition to the lack of anything empirical on the video, Mr. Donnelly polygraphed all his agents, including Mattis.”

  “Billy Mattis denied being given a polygraph,” DeMarco said.

  “You talked to Mattis?” Donnelly said, sounding genuinely surprised. “What in hell gave you the right to do that?”

  Before DeMarco could respond, Banks said, “I gave him the right. Keep going, DeMarco.”

  Later, DeMarco realized that Donnelly—a better inside puncher than either he or Banks—had just vectored the discussion away from whether or not he had lied about giving Mattis a polygraph.

  But DeMarco kept going, as Banks had ordered. He explained how he had questioned Billy first on the National Mall and again at his home. “He looked guilty,” he said. “It was obvious he knew about the warning letter and was somehow involved in the assassination attempt.”

  Donnelly laughed. Guffawed, to be accurate. “He looked guilty! That’s your idea of evidence. He looked guilty!”

  DeMarco said you had to be there, which sounded incredibly lame even to him.

  Donnelly snorted and said, “If you ever presented a case like this in a courtroom they’d disbar you.”

  Before DeMarco could answer, Banks said, “Donnelly, I want you to quit interrupting this meeting. And that’s an order, goddamnit!”

  A direct order from a superior meant something to a man who had served a lifetime in uniform; it meant nothing to a civilian bureaucrat of Donnelly’s standing.

  Once again Wall stepped in to placate Banks. “I must agree with the general, Pat. Let’s allow Mr. DeMarco to finish.”

  But when DeMarco talked about how he had discovered Dale Estep and Maxwell Taylor by following Billy and listening in on his phone conversations, Donnelly couldn’t restrain himself. “Would you like to tell us, DeMarco, how you obtained these phone numbers without a warrant?”

  “No,” DeMarco said.

  Things did not improve as he proceeded. He described how he had followed Billy Mattis and watched him die, and was then forced to shoot Billy’s killer.

  “When I heard about you killing that guy Robinson,” Donnelly said, “my first thought was that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “What the hell’s that mean?” Banks said, not understanding the reference to DeMarco’s father.

  Before Donnelly could respond, Wall said, “Let’s get back on track, gentlemen. I don’t see how Mattis’s death has anything to do with—”

  “It has everything to do with it, Mr. Wall,” DeMarco said. It was obvious, he said, that Billy was waiting for his killer at the ATM and he was certain that Estep had arranged the meeting. He even told them what Billy’s wife had said, that Billy never used his bank card in Washington. He concluded by saying, “Why would Mattis hang around a bar until dark, then go to a cash machine he never used, in a part of town he had no reason to be in?”

  “You know,” Collier said, “this is exactly the sort of fuzzy, addle-brained thinking that gives birth to conspiracy theories. If I didn’t know better, DeMarco, I’d say you worked for the damn Enquirer. The facts are that Billy Mattis went to an ATM and a man robbed him and killed him. Unfortunate, but rather common. Why Mattis went to that particular bank machine could have any number of rational explanations. He may have been on his way to see a friend that lived on that end of town and decided to stop because that particular ATM was convenient. Whatever the reason, we have no evidence to support, or even suggest, that Mattis was killed because he had a part in the assassination attempt. And to imply so, sir, is simply irresponsible!”

  DeMarco felt his face flushing red. He was getting sick of Collier pinning his ears to the wall. “The man who killed Billy Mattis came from Waycross, Georgia,” he said, “and the morning of Billy’s death, Estep made a call to Waycross.”

  “All that tells me is that Mr. Estep made a phone call to an unknown party in his home state,” Collier said. With an avuncular chuckle, he said to Banks, “My young agents do this sort of thing all the time, General. They leap to unsubstantiated conclusions because in their minds they’ve already solved the crime. I teach them they need to let the facts form their opinion, and not let their opinions organize the facts.”

  “One of the facts,” DeMarco said, “is that Billy Mattis’s killer was not some guy who made a habit of ripping people off at cash machines. His real name was John Palmeri not David Robinson, and he was a Mafia hit man in the Justice Department’s witness protection program.”

  DeMarco could tell by the look that Collier exchanged with Simon Wall that they knew exactly who Billy’s killer was and were hoping this fact would not come to light. This was why Wall had interrupted Donnelly earlier when Donnelly had made the comment about apples falling not far from their trees. Even if Mattis’s death had nothing to do with the assassination attempt, the last thing Wall wanted publicized was that criminals placed in the witness protection program continued to be criminals.

  “How did you get that information?” Simon Wall asked, his voice suddenly cold.

  “What difference does it make?” DeMarco answered. “The point is that John Palmeri wasn’t a local bandit. He was a contract killer and he was hired by someone to kill Billy Mattis.”

  Neither Collier nor Wall said anything for a moment, then Wall said, “Well, we’re obviously going to find out what this Palmeri person was doing here but at this point we have nothing that connects him in any way to Chattooga River.”

  Before DeMarco could respond that Billy Mattis’s death connected him to Chattooga River, Collier jumped in with: “And the man you think hired Palmeri was this Dale Estep, this park ranger?”

  “That’s right,” DeMarco said.

  “Park rangers aren’t exactly in the same company with disgruntled postal workers, Kevin,” Donnelly said to Collier, “but I understand they’re a bad breed.”

  Collier started to chuckle and DeMarco saw Banks’s big hands grip the edge of the conference table. He seemed on the verge of reaching across the table and throttling Patrick Donnelly, but then he took a breath and sat back in his chair.

  “Estep,” DeMarco said, “is not just some park ranger. He was a sniper in Vietnam and was discharged because he was a nut.”

  “You also said that he’s been a model citizen for the past twenty years,” Collier responded.

  DeMarco looked over at Banks for support. The general’s face was now set harder than concrete as he looked from Donnelly to Wall to Collier. DeMarco had the impression that Banks’s military mind had already accepted the fact that his position had been overrun; he was planning the next campaign.

  But the ongoing assault continued.

  “And this man Taylor,” Donnelly said. “You said the only thing you know about him is that he’s rich and gives money to the President’s campaign fund. Do you think you just might be a little light on motive here, DeMarco?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to thoroughly investigate Taylor,” DeMarco admitted. “I thought that should be left to the FBI,” he added.

  “H
ell, you thought you were qualified to investigate everyone else, including one of my agents,” Donnelly said. “Why not Taylor? Why didn’t you have this Georgia peckerwood hauled in in handcuffs and goosed with a cattle prod?”

  DeMarco ignored Donnelly and said to Collier, “Let’s talk about your suspect, Edwards, the guy you people think dug a shooting blind in the side of a mountain and snuck past a platoon of Secret Service and FBI agents. He was an overweight, unemployable loser who drank too much. How did he—”

  “He was an expert marksman, an outdoorsman, a hunter, and on record for blaming the President for losing his job. Those pesky facts again, Mr. DeMarco,” Collier said.

  “Then let me give you another fact,” DeMarco said. “Billy’s wife said the month before the assassination attempt, Mattis was staying late at work to use the Service’s computers. I think he was searching through records for the perfect fall guy and he found him.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Donnelly said.

  “Do you have any proof of this?” Collier asked.

  “No,” DeMarco said, “but maybe the Service’s IT people can tell what he was using the computers for. Maybe there’s a hard-drive record of his queries.”

  When he looked over at Donnelly to confirm this was possible, he realized he had made another mistake. If DeMarco was right, Donnelly’s computer nerds would wipe out any trace of Billy Mattis’s search.

  “For the sake of argument,” Collier said to DeMarco, “let’s follow your logic, if we can call it that, all the way through. Let’s assume that Billy Mattis, for whatever reason, was—”

  “I think he was being blackmailed or coerced in some way by Estep and Taylor,” DeMarco said.

  “—was trying to locate somebody like Harold Edwards in the Secret Service’s files. How did the assassination weapon end up in Edwards’s house—a weapon stolen, by the way, from the same Army Reserve unit that Edwards belonged to?”

  “Estep could have stolen the rifle from the armory. Billy Mattis being in the Reserve could have helped him or briefed him on the security procedures at Fort Meade.”