The Inside Ring (11 page)

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 returns. 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.

“I let my fingers do the walkin’,” Neil said, wiggling pudgy digits. “Both of these men were raised dirt poor, Taylor at the no-shoe poverty level in rural Georgia and Donnelly not much better in Pennsylvania where his father was a foundry worker.”

“So what happened in 1964?” Emma said.

“I don’t know, Emma dear. And that’s why my staff and I spent so much time on this request of yours. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get information from forty years ago, prior to the birth of the thinking machine?”

“So what did you find, Neil? And I swear to God if you don’t stop dragging this out, I’m going to break parts of your body.”

“You’ve always been so violent, Emma,” Neil said.

“Luckily for you in Tel Aviv,” Emma muttered.

Neil shuddered at the memory.

“We’ll start with Donnelly,” Neil said. “In 1964, he paid income tax on an inheritance of approximately two million dollars.”

“Who did he inherit from?” Emma said.

“I don’t know. As I said, this happened in 1964, before our lives were reduced to ones and zeros. But I do know he couldn’t have inherited from his no-pot-to-piss-in Pennsylvania relations. It’s possible Donnelly had a rich aunt who lived in Singapore and he was her favorite nephew. I just don’t know. All I do know is that Donnelly dutifully reported his newfound wealth to the IRS, and, sap that he is, paid an amazing amount of tax for his honesty.

“From that point on he has behaved in such a fiscally conservative manner that it makes my stomach turn. If someone gave me two mil in 1964, I would have casinos next to Trump’s in Atlantic City by now. But Donnelly, this boob, sticks his inheritance money and the salary he makes as well-paid civil servant, into savings accounts, CDs, bonds, mutual funds, that sort of thing. Absolutely no imagination, no risk-taking. He is today worth approximately six million, if you include his home.”

A net worth of six million sounded fantastic to DeMarco, but Neil was clearly disdainful.

“I also looked at Donnelly’s insurance records since I found Mr. Estep’s so enlightening. They revealed that Donnelly is a modest collector of Oriental art. He buys a sword or a rice bowl every couple of years. His collection is insured for two hundred thousand but his ability to purchase Eastern trinkets is well within his income.”

“But you don’t know where his original nut came from,” Emma said.

“No, Emma, for the third fucking time, and I feel very bad about that. May I continue?”

Emma nodded.

“The esteemed Mr. Taylor. This good ol’ boy is Donnelly’s opposite, a financial wunderkind. I take my hat off to him. In 1964 Taylor quit the Texas state police, returned home to the red earth of Georgia, and started buying
everything
. Where he got the money for his original purchases is a complete mystery, the financial equivalent of spontaneous combustion. In part this is because at the same time that he began acquiring things, he also retained the services of the best tax firm in Atlanta.

“Now, Emma, as you know, I’m rather good at following the greenback trail but these boys in Atlanta are absolute wizards at financial obfuscation. Taylor’s returns show charitable deductions to every organization but the Klan; enormous business losses; tax shelters in which you could hide a humpback. My best guess at Taylor’s current net worth is more than a hundred million, but I could be wrong by a factor of four.”

“But he started in 1964, the same time Donnelly inherited?” Emma asked.

“Oui, but how much he started with and where it came from, I don’t know. And it really pisses me off.”

“Could you Capone Taylor?” DeMarco asked.

“No way. The Atlanta tax boys I mentioned. And theoretically, Taylor’s fortune could be completely legitimate. Say, for example, he won nine thousand in a poker game in 1964 and he used the money to buy IBM. His money doubles. Then he buys some land and sells it and his money quadruples. And so on. Maybe that’s the way it happened and nothing underhanded happened in 1964. I just don’t know, Emma.”

“Did their paths ever cross?” DeMarco said.

“Not that I could see. In 1963 Donnelly was stationed in Los Angeles and Taylor, as I said, was in Texas. Between June 1964 and January 1966, Donnelly was stationed in New York and from 1966 until the present he’s been in D.C. Taylor left Texas in December of 1963 and moved back to his hometown in Georgia. He’s lived in the same house since 1965.”

Emma rose from her chair. She reached out to shake Neil’s hand then noticed the sticky green juice stain of his last Popsicle on his fingers. She reached into her pocket for her car keys instead.

“Thank you, Neil,” she said.

“Anything for you, Emma,” Neil said.

21

Well, Joe,” Senator Maddox said, “I wish I could hep ya but I just don’t know that much about ol’ Max, him livin’ down there by the swamp, so far out of the mainstream. He’s jes a good ol’ boy who supports the Party, God bless him, and that’s all I know about the man.”

“Senator,” DeMarco said, not bothering to disguise his disbelief, “Maxwell Taylor’s rich enough to buy his own swamp. If I know that much, I know you know one hell of a lot more. It’s important for me to get a fix on this man, sir.”

“I’m sorry, Joe, but—”

“How’s Mrs. Maddox, Senator?” DeMarco said, and both men turned to look at a picture on the corner of Maddox’s desk: the senator’s wife, a onetime Southern belle turned battle-ax.

J. D. Maddox was the senior senator from Georgia and had been in politics since he wore short pants. The J.D. stood for Jefferson Davis but about the time they gave blacks in Georgia the opportunity to vote he started using his initials instead of his given name. He had an accent as thick as a slab of Alabama ham, snowy white hair, and a Mark Twain mustache. These more attractive features joined a face blotched red from too many juleps and a stomach bloated from free lunches. He had become in his seventies, and possibly because he intended it, a caricature of a Southern politician.

Two years ago, Maddox—married man, father, grandfather, and archenemy of all things unholy—had been dipping his wrinkled old wick into a twenty-nine-year-old staff assistant. An aide to another politician got wind of Maddox’s little fling. The aide discovered that whenever he wanted the senator’s vote, all he needed to do was give him a wink and a nudge and remark on the sweetness of young Georgia peaches.

The Speaker heard about Maddox’s troubles and was naturally sympathetic. DeMarco was dispatched to get the pesky aide out of the senator’s hair and did so by discovering that the lad had a penchant for the hookers on Fourteenth Street. The senator was so grateful to DeMarco that he promised his eternal gratitude—two years apparently being the time span of eternity.

Maddox was now seated behind a desk the size of an aircraft-carrier flight deck, twirling one end of his mustache with a liver-spotted hand. He was trying to come up with a nice way to tell DeMarco to go to hell. Maddox may have owed DeMarco a favor but Max Taylor was a member of his constituency. On the other hand, DeMarco’s reference to the senator’s wife was an unstated threat. Maddox, experienced politician that he was, chose pragmatism over principle.

“Max Taylor’s an enigma, Joe. He’s got more money than Midas but I’ll bet outside the state of Georgia there ain’t ten people who know his name. Outside of Charlton County, there ain’t fifty people in Georgia who’ve ever heard of him. But in Charlton County, every man, woman, and large dog knows Max for the simple reason that the man
owns
the whole damn county.”

“Where’s Charlton County, Senator? I mean, what major city is it near?”

“It’s not near a major city, son. It’s near the Okefenokee Swamp.” Rising from his chair with some difficulty, the senator said, “Come on over here, Yankee, and I’ll show you on the map.”

DeMarco joined Maddox near a Georgia state map that took up most of one wall in his office.

“You see right here?” Maddox said, “This square in the southeast corner, right next to Florida? That’s Charlton County, Georgia. All them little green hash marks you see there takin’ up the whole western half of the county is swampland—the great Okefenokee. Right here along the eastern rim of the swamp, runnin’ along Highway 23, are all these little pissant towns, like Racepond, Uptonville, and St. George. The biggest one’s Folkston, county seat and home of Maxwell Taylor.”

DeMarco remembered from Billy Mattis’s file that he had been raised in Uptonville. According to the senator’s map this put Billy’s hometown less than a map grid away from Folkston, where both Estep and Taylor lived.

“What do you mean, Senator, when you say he owns the county?” DeMarco asked.

“Ah am speakin’ quite literally, son. Max Taylor owns three-quarters of the land in the county and damn near any business bigger than a gas station. He’s been buyin’ up the place for forty years. It’s the man’s personal kingdom.”

This may have explained Taylor’s current financial position but not how he got started.

“Where’d he get the money for his initial purchases, Senator?” DeMarco asked.

Maddox ignored DeMarco’s question while he returned to his chair. The chair’s springs protested his arrival. He smiled slyly, pumped his eyebrows like a Dixie Groucho, and said, “That’s one of them things that makes Max an enigma.”

“What do you mean, sir?” DeMarco asked. Christ, it was like pulling teeth with this guy.

“Nobody knows where he got his seed money from, is what I mean. Max was raised in a one-room shack, with no indoor plumbing. His father was a sometime miner, a sometime logger, and a full-time drunk. He beat his wife and he beat his kids. And Max has two sisters, one about fifteen years older than the other. I’ve heard talk the older sister is the younger one’s mother and that Max’s father was the father. You know what I’m sayin’?”

DeMarco nodded.

“Anyway, it was that kinda family and Max left home when he was sixteen. He spent a few years in the army then got a job with the Texas highway patrol, and in 1964 or so he comes back home and starts buyin’ things. But where the money came from—well, it beats the hell out of me, Joe, and that’s God’s truth. If I had to guess, I’d say Max had more money in 1964 than can be explained by just plain thrift.”

The senator paused to blow his nose loudly into a red bandanna.

While Maddox was inspecting the contents of his handkerchief, DeMarco asked, “Did you ever hear any rumors about him being involved in anything illegal, Senator?”

“No, Joe, can’t say as I ever did. But then Max always struck me as a careful man.”

“What about his politics, Senator?”

The senator flashed dentures as white as toilet-bowl porcelain. “Let me tell you a story about Max’s politics. Max called my office one day a month before an election—this was years ago, keep in mind—and discussed his immense dissatisfaction with my position on some bill affecting one of his investments.”

“What kind of investment, Senator?” DeMarco asked. “Do you remember?”

“Oh, I remember all right. Offshore oil. Max belonged to some group that wanted to sink a couple of wells in some bird sanctuary off the coast. The tree huggers in the cloakroom voted to block the drillin’ and I voted with ’em as a trade-off for a military contract I wanted for a company in Savannah. Max didn’t give a rat’s ass about them birds, I can tell you that.”

The senator wheezed a laugh in recollection of the event, and the laugh turned into a full-blown coughing fit that changed the color of his face from red to indigo. When his eyes stopped watering, Maddox said, “Now I’ll tell you what he did, Joe. Max called me up and told me his county—I repeat,
his
county—was votin’ against me in the next election. Can you imagine the ego it would take to make such a statement? Now I naturally thought he was full o’ shit as Charlton County had always voted for the Party in the past, so I blew him off. But come election day, Joe, damn near every registered voter in that county voted for my opponent. Ninety-eight percent of them.

“Now if you think about it, son, that oughta scare the hell out of you. Max either told those people how to vote and they obeyed like a buncha sheep or he controlled the ballot boxes and changed their votes. Either way’s scary, if you ask me. I retained my seat by a margin thinner than a gnat’s pecker, Joe.”

The senator paused to take a drink from a coffee mug on his desk. To DeMarco, it smelled as if the coffee was made from bourbon beans.

The senator smiled at DeMarco. “Fortunately, these days I rely more on the good people in the cities than I do the rednecks living by the Okefenokee, so I don’t lose as much sleep as I used to when Max is pissed. But I’ll tell you that one time he damn near gave me a heart attack.”

DeMarco was silent a moment as he tried to figure out how to ask the next question. He couldn’t find a subtle way to do it.

“What are Taylor’s feelings about the current administration, the President in particular?”

“The President? Well, I reckon he likes the man. He donated fifty grand to his last campaign.”

“Why would he do that?”

“The President’s a big believer in tax reform, Joe—and ol’ Max pays a lot of taxes.”

“Has he called lately to complain about anything the President’s done?”

“No. Why are you askin’ about Max and the President, son?”