The Inside Ring (20 page)

As the red pickup drove away, DeMarco rose slowly and unsteadily to his feet, his breathing still labored from the damage caused by Morgan’s fingers to his throat. He grimaced as he gently rotated his left arm. It was painful but fortunately his shoulder wasn’t dislocated. Not by much, it wasn’t.

He was lucky Morgan hadn’t killed him as the good citizens of Folkston went about their business.

IT TOOK DEMARCO more than an hour to find Hattie McCormack’s farm and by the time he did it was dark. Partly it took so long because many of the roads weren’t marked and he had to backtrack several times to pick up landmarks the bartender had given him for directions. The other reason the trip took a while was that he was being extremely careful to make sure he wasn’t being followed.

He came at last to a dented mailbox that had “H. McCormack” hand painted in uneven letters on the side. He drove up the single-lane dirt road and saw Emma’s rental car parked in front of a small cabin.

DeMarco parked his Mustang near Emma’s car and walked up and knocked on the cabin door. There were no lights on inside and no one answered his knock. He walked around and looked in all the windows, and quickly concluded the place was empty.

Emma must have gone someplace with Hattie. She said the first time she saw Hattie, Hattie was ripping a traffic ticket off the windshield of her pickup. There was no pickup near the house or a garage where one could be stored.

DeMarco looked at his watch: nine thirty p.m. He sat in his car until his back started to ache. He left the car to sit in one of the two rocking chairs on Hattie’s porch but a few minutes later retreated back to the car when the mosquitoes began to make a banquet of him. He rolled up the car windows to keep the mosquitoes out but couldn’t turn on the air-conditioning because he was low on gas. Within minutes the car became a sauna with bucket seats and DeMarco’s back started to cramp up again. Jesus, but he was sick of this damn place.

His shoulder was also throbbing. He was shamed by how easily Morgan had manhandled him, though logic told him he had no reason to be. Morgan was just quicker and stronger than him—and less human. But he was still ashamed. Joe DeMarco, a tough kid raised on the mean streets of New York, the son of Gino DeMarco, and he’d been slapped around like a ninety-pound weakling.

Which also led to the realization that there was no way that Morgan would have knocked his father around like that. Gino DeMarco would have put the barrel of his gun between Morgan’s black eyes the minute the man approached him—and he’d have killed him the instant he sensed a threat.

Enough of this. He wasn’t his old man. He didn’t want to be and he wasn’t going to be. But he had to wonder: What would he have done if he had been armed?

At ten p.m. he said to hell with it. He didn’t have any idea when Emma would get back and it made no sense to sit in his car all night waiting for her. He would return to the motel, sleep a few hours, then get up at dawn and drive back out here. If Emma still hadn’t shown up he’d contact the state police and get them to put out an APB on Hattie’s truck. He wasn’t going to bother calling the Charlton County authorities; it was obvious from what he had seen earlier that they would be no help if Taylor was involved in Emma’s disappearance.

But there was someone who could help. DeMarco punched numbers into his cell phone.

“Mary Pat, it’s Joe DeMarco. Is he there?”

“Joey! It’s so good to hear your voice. How are you?”

DeMarco absolutely loved Mahoney’s wife. If there was a kinder, more decent person on the face of this cruel planet, he didn’t know who it could be. And she qualified for sainthood being married to Mahoney.

“I’m fine, Mary Pat. But I need to talk to him. It’s impor—”

“Did you call that pretty young lady whose number I gave you, Joe? Bridgett, over at Senator Remmick’s office?”

“Uh, I tried, Mary Pat. We didn’t connect.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Joseph. You’d think you’d be better considering who you work for. Wait a minute. I’ll get him.”

“It’s about time you called,” Mahoney grumbled. “What’s going on?”

“Emma’s missing and a thug who works for Taylor beat the shit out of me.”

“You hurt bad?”

“Just my pride.”

“Pride heals.”

Not really,
DeMarco thought.

“So what’s happening?” Mahoney said, DeMarco’s bruises already forgotten.

DeMarco told him.

“So other than findin’ out that Taylor’s some small-town big shot, which you pretty much knew before you went down there, you don’t have squat connecting him to the assassination attempt or Donnelly or anything else.”

“I found out he’s paranoid and goddamn dangerous. And I’m pretty sure he knows Donnelly. He called D.C. today to find out about me and it had to be Donnelly he talked to.”

“Yeah, but
why
would Donnelly help him? And what’s Taylor’s motive for tryin’ to kill the President?”

“I don’t know.”

“Shit, Joe, you gotta do better than this.”

“Right now I have to find Emma.”

“Emma can take care of herself. I’ll bet you Taylor’s guy couldn’t beat her up.”

Now that hurt.

“She’s still missing and if Taylor’s involved, I’m not going to get any help from the locals finding her. I may need you to call someone down here, the governor or the attorney general.”

Mahoney didn’t respond.

“And one other thing,” DeMarco said. “If you don’t hear from me tomorrow, you definitely better call someone.”

“Ah, you’ll be all right. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Mahoney. What a peach.

DEMARCO APPROACHED HIS motel room door with a feeling of relief and immediately had the unflattering self-image of a field mouse returning to its burrow after venturing out into the dark, owl-infested night. Home, sweet, home it wasn’t but compared to Hattie McCormack’s pitch-black, mosquito-infested tobacco patch, the Days Inn was paradise.

He opened the door, reaching for the light switch as the door was still swinging open. He remembered his finger touching the switch, thought he remembered flipping it up, but in less time than it took for electricity to become light the world disappeared in a flash of pain.

36

DeMarco didn’t know where he was and for some reason his eyes wouldn’t open so he could find out. He knew he was lying on his back on something hard, and the hard thing was moving and the motion was making him ill. He shook his head to clear away the cobwebs. That was a mistake. The back of his head began to throb. With his eyes still shut he reached back and touched the spot from which the pain emanated and felt a soft lump.

A voice said, “Can’t hurt too much, bucko. I sapped you damn near perfect—didn’t even break the skin.” Adrenaline surged through DeMarco like an electric current and his eyes popped open in alarm. Dale Estep was smiling at him.

Estep was dressed in army camouflage fatigues and wore a shapeless hat that was also a mottled, camouflage green. His arms were moving oddly. Finally, DeMarco’s brain engaged. Estep was paddling a canoe and the hard surface he was lying on was the bottom of the canoe. DeMarco’s head was resting on the bow seat.

DeMarco started to sit up but Estep took the oar and poked him in the center of the chest. At that moment, DeMarco noticed the holstered pistol on Estep’s right hip and a long hunting knife in a scabbard on his right calf. “Relax, bucko,” Estep said. “I don’t want you rockin’ the boat.”

DeMarco checked the luminous hands of his wristwatch: it was one a.m. He’d been unconscious for more than an hour. He looked over the gunwale of the canoe at his surroundings: it was a moonless night but he could make out the silhouettes of a few cypress trees and hazy curtains of Spanish moss hanging from the lower branches. They were in the damn swamp!

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Estep?” DeMarco asked. He may have been scared but he was also angry. He was damn tired of getting pushed around by these hicks.

“So you do know me,” Estep said.

Fucked up again, DeMarco thought. He tried a different question. “Where are we going?”

“Due west, bucko, right into the middle of my favorite swamp.”

“Why?”

“Well, I like the Okefen at night. Night’s when things kill each other. Strong things kill weak things; fast things kill slow things. You hear things screamin’
all
the time out here at night. One more screamin’ thing won’t make any difference.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” DeMarco said, fearing he already knew the answer.

“Uncle Max asked me to have a little talk with you, bucko. Said he wanted me to find out what you were up to. Thought I’d take you someplace where we could chew the fat and not be disturbed. Uncle Max said when he talked to you earlier, all sorts of people kept droppin’ by. No chance of that where we’re going.”

Why did Estep keep calling Taylor “Uncle Max”? Billy had called him Uncle Max too. So had Honey, the young girl he had seen at Taylor’s place.

“You and Taylor are insane,” DeMarco said. “I’m from Washington, Estep. I work for the United States government. People know I’m down here.”

“Now that’s one of the things we’re going to talk about: who knows you’re down here and what they know.”

“Estep,” DeMarco said, “I’m working with the FBI. If I turn up missing, you’re the first guy the Bureau will come looking for.”

Estep stopped paddling and smiled at DeMarco—then he swung the oar at DeMarco’s head. DeMarco was able to get his arms up in time to block the blow, but the wood cracking against his left forearm hurt like hell.

“Shit,” DeMarco said, rubbing his arm.

“It’s not nice to lie to me, bucko. See, I already know you’re not working with the FBI. The FBI thinks you’re a looney. The only one you’ve been working with lately is some secretary named Banks. You and this Banks fella think me and Cousin Billy tried to kill the President.”

DeMarco now had no doubt it was Donnelly who had talked to Taylor. The little son of a bitch.

“Estep,” DeMarco said, “if you have a brain in your head, you’ll turn this canoe around and take me back to Folkston.”

Acting as if DeMarco hadn’t spoken, Estep said, “You see, bucko, Uncle Max believes he knows how you tied me and him in with Billy. He heard all about you tailing Billy and listening to his phone calls. Shame on you.”

That goddamn Donnelly must have told Taylor everything DeMarco had said during their meeting with the attorney general.

“Now what Uncle Max needs to know,” Estep continued in his lazy drawl, “are the names of everybody you’ve talked to about all this, what you told ’em, and what it was that made you decide to come down here to Georgia.” Estep smiled, his teeth luminous in the night. “So we might be talkin’ quite a while.”

Unless he did something, DeMarco was a dead man. This lunatic intended to take him into the swamp, torture him, and kill him.

DeMarco studied his captor. Estep was in his fifties but he was also a combat veteran and he was armed. At least he didn’t look as strong as Morgan; given a chance DeMarco might be able to overpower Estep and take away his damn gun. The problem was the position he was in: flat on his back in the unstable canoe. By the time DeMarco pulled himself to a sitting position and lunged to the rear of the boat, Estep would easily be able to pull the gun and shoot him, or just do as he had done earlier and smack him with the oar.

Off the port side of the canoe something heavy slapped the water and DeMarco jerked involuntarily.

Estep laughed. “Big gator there, bucko. Damn big. Bet that baby was ten feet long. Just et something cruisin’ on the surface. Muskrat, I’ll bet. Think you’re faster than a muskrat, bucko?”

DeMarco didn’t say anything. A moment later the boat passed through a curtain of Spanish moss. As the moss went over his head and arms, DeMarco let out an unmanly yelp. He was so jumpy he was coming out of his skin. This was not his environment.

Estep laughed and said, “Creepy feelin’ shit, ain’t it? Sometimes snakes nest in that stuff.”

DeMarco realized Estep had deliberately rowed the canoe into the moss to further unsettle him, and it had worked. He had to get a grip on himself.

“Why did you try to kill the President, Estep?” DeMarco asked.

Estep smiled. “Now that’s purely insultin’, sayin’ something like that. Gonna make you
squeal
for that, boy.” Estep rowed a few more strokes. “It’s gettin’ late, son, so let’s get started. Let’s start at the beginnin’. Let’s start with whatever that Banks fella told you that made you go after Cousin Billy.”

What the hell did he mean when he said he had insulted him, DeMarco wondered. Estep seemed to be telling him he wasn’t involved in the assassination attempt and in the same breath he was admitting that he and Billy had worked together. Were he and Billy involved in something completely unrelated to the assassination? And why did he keep referring to Billy as his cousin?

“I’m waitin’,” Estep said. “And I have to tell you, I’m not a patient man.”

DeMarco tried to think. There wasn’t anything he could tell Estep that the man didn’t already know but he needed to tell him something just to stall for time.

DeMarco took too long to make up his mind. “Well, I guess I just gotta get your attention, bucko,” Estep said, shaking his head as though disappointed. “You remind me of those gooks I interrogated over in ’Nam; they never figured you were serious till you cut a chunk off ’em.”

Cut a chunk off ’em! DeMarco tried to sit up again but Estep just jabbed him hard in the chest with the oar.

“Yeah,” Estep said, his tone conversational, “I think we’ve gone far enough.” He reached underneath his seat and pulled out a green plastic garbage bag. Looking DeMarco in the eyes, he took the hunting knife from the scabbard on his calf and slit the garbage bag open. The stench of rotting meat poured out. Seeing the expression of disgust on DeMarco’s face, Estep laughed and said, “Ripe, ain’t it?”

Sticking the knife into the sack, Estep stabbed what looked like a leg of mutton and flung it into the water, about ten feet from the canoe. Reaching down again, he stabbed another piece of meat and tossed it in. DeMarco watched the meat sink into the black water, then turned back to look at Estep, wondering what in the hell he was doing.

Estep grinned at him. “I want you to hop in the water, bucko.”

“What?” DeMarco said.

“I said, I want you to hop in the water. Time for you to go swimmin’ with my friends.”

“Fuck you,” DeMarco said.

“Thought you might say that,” Estep said. He patted the holster on his hip and said, “Now, friend, you don’t have a lot of choices here. I can shoot you a couple times, someplace that won’t kill you right off, then throw you in bleedin’. Or you can get in the water on your own and hope the gators go for that ripe meat before they go for you. If you got a third choice, I don’t know what it is.

“You see, bucko, the way this works is if you talk real fast, answer all my questions right away, I’ll keep the gators from you by throwin’ this chum in the water. They like rotten a whole lot better than fresh. Usually. Now I got a whole sack of chum here but you don’t want to dally. Now hop in.”

DeMarco had read that most alligators weren’t man-eaters and he figured Ranger Dale knew that too. Nonetheless, there was no way in hell DeMarco was getting out of the canoe.

“Look, Estep, I’ll—”

“Too late for that now, bucko,” Estep said, and he stabbed DeMarco in the calf with his knife. DeMarco screamed in pain—one more screaming thing in the night, just as Estep had said. The knife had penetrated about two inches and the wound began to bleed heavily.

“Now unless you want me to do that again, I’d suggest you jump on in like I told you. And I sure hope your blood don’t attract those gators.” Estep grinned and threw another piece of rancid meat into the water.

DeMarco rose slowly to a sitting position. As he did, Estep slid the knife into its scabbard and pulled the revolver from the holster on his hip. Casually wagging the gun at DeMarco, Estep said, “Careful now, son. Stand up real, real slow. You try tippin’ the boat and I’ll gut shoot you. Swear to God.”

DeMarco struggled to his knees and slowly rose to his feet. He stood with his legs apart, moving his arms slightly to maintain his balance and keep the canoe from rocking. He looked out into the swamp; he was surrounded by darkness. He couldn’t see anything in the water near the canoe but he didn’t know what was below the surface. Then he looked down into Estep’s eyes. Hunter’s eyes.

“Go on, son,” Estep said softly. “Just hop on in. The water’s warm.”

The next thing DeMarco did was not an act of bravery, but one of simple vindictiveness. Estep was going to kill him and he knew it. He was going to shoot him or knife him or let the alligators rip him apart. DeMarco decided then that he wasn’t going to suffer alone. He jumped up and came down as hard as he could on the starboard gunwale of the canoe, tipping the boat over.

Estep was caught by surprise. He squeezed off a shot, but even as good as he was with a gun, he was already off balance and falling toward the water when he fired. The bullet tugged at DeMarco’s shirt but missed his flesh.

As soon as DeMarco hit the water he dove and swam as fast as he could away from Estep—and the garbage bag which was now spilling its rotten contents into the water. At one point something hard and scaly brushed against his leg, the one bleeding from the knife wound. DeMarco involuntarily opened his mouth to scream and his mouth immediately filled with fetid swamp water. He broke the surface, coughing. Estep heard him cough and fired a shot in his direction. The bullet slapped the water next to his head.

DeMarco sucked air into his lungs, dove, and swam, kicking with his legs, using a breaststroke. He couldn’t see where he was going and was surprised when his right hand struck something hard and slippery. His left hand, then his head, struck similar objects. DeMarco realized immediately that he was tangled in the root-ball of a tree. There were at least a dozen roots, each about two inches in diameter penetrating the water and he was on the outer edge of the root-ball.

He stopped swimming, forcing himself to be calm, and grasped the roots and began to pull himself upward. He kept pulling on the partially submerged tree roots until his head was above water and he could feel the trunk of a good-sized tree. He put both arms around the slippery trunk and pulled himself up, his feet struggling for purchase on the tree roots. One shoe came off as he climbed which helped him get some traction, so he kicked off his other shoe. He kept pulling himself upward until he was finally standing on the exposed roots of the tree, holding tightly to the trunk. He swung around the tree so the trunk was between him and Estep’s last position, then looked back to where he thought the overturned canoe was. He couldn’t see Estep in the dark, but he could hear him. Estep was laughing.

“You got me that time, boy. I thought you was a broke dick, and you surprised me. Goes to show what can happen when a man gets overconfident. But them gators are gonna get you, bucko. They can
smell
that blood comin’ from your leg. They’re gonna chew your nuts right off.”

DeMarco tried to pull himself higher up the tree, but the trunk was too slippery. He didn’t like standing with his feet in the water, on top of the root-ball, the blood running from his leg down into the water, but he didn’t have a choice. And where he was, was hell of a lot better than being in the water swimming.

DeMarco didn’t know what he was going to do next. Estep would eventually right the canoe then all he had to do was wait until daylight to find him. He wished he could see what was near him. He could be just a few yards away from land where there might be bushes to hide in. But he wasn’t willing, not yet, to jump back into the water and go swimming in the dark.

With perfect timing, Estep said, “I’m gonna get you, son. I could survive in this swamp buck naked but you don’t know what the hell to do. And when I get you, I’m gonna make you suffer like God’s worst enemy.”

Sound carried oddly in the swamp. DeMarco didn’t know how far he was from Estep but he doubted he was more than thirty or forty yards away. Estep then uttered a muffled curse. It sounded to DeMarco like he was struggling to flip the canoe back over. The next thing he heard was a grunt but not the kind of grunt a man makes when he’s trying to move something. This sounded as if Estep had been hit in the gut and had had the wind knocked out of him.