by Mike Lawson
Taylor also knew that if he simply killed Montgomery, the police might wonder if the motive wasn’t related to whatever Montgomery was writing about. So Taylor did something incredibly audacious: he made it appear as though Montgomery was killed accidentally during an attempt to assassinate the President. Taylor’s great advantage in pulling off the murder, in addition to Estep’s marksmanship, was Billy Mattis. Taylor could manipulate Billy into giving him the President’s security arrangements, and Billy was someone who could also find a perfect fall guy to blame for the shooting. DeMarco wondered now how much of Taylor’s hold over Billy was the threat to harm his mother and how much was because Taylor was his father.
Now DeMarco knew everything except for the link to Patrick Donnelly.
42
You were right,” DeMarco said into the phone. “Montgomery knew everything Taylor was up to. The man was a helluva researcher.”
“But nothing in his notes connected Taylor to Donnelly?” Emma said.
“No. There was one weird . . . Hang on a second, Em. Emma, they’re calling for my row to board. I gotta go.”
“You started to say something,” Emma said. “About something weird.”
“Oh, yeah,” DeMarco said. “There was a notation in the notebook that didn’t seem to fit. There were a buncha dollar signs, followed by the name Guerrero, followed by Dallas, then a buncha question marks. Anyway, I couldn’t figure out how it tied to what Taylor was doing. Emma, I gotta go. I don’t want to miss this flight.”
“Dallas?” Emma said. There was a pause then she said, “Oh, Christ!”
“What?” DeMarco said, irritated. Goddamnit, if he missed this flight there wasn’t another one to D.C. for three hours.
“Joe, when did Taylor and Donnelly get rich?”
“Early ’64. What’s that have to do with—”
“And what happened the year before? November of 1963, specifically?”
DeMarco thought for a second, then said, “Oh, come on, Emma. Kennedy? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Change your reservation, Joe. Neil and I will meet you in Dallas.”
43
Mahoney had a migraine. The curtains were drawn and the lights were out in his office. There was a light on in the hallway outside his office and it provided enough illumination for DeMarco to see Mahoney’s silhouette but not the expression on his face. He didn’t have to see the expression to know his boss was unhappy.
“So they never were after the President?” the Speaker said.
“No,” DeMarco said.
“But you have no more proof that they killed Montgomery than you did when you were convinced they were trying to kill the President?”
“No, sir,” DeMarco said. “But it all fits—and I found a hell of a motive.”
“Humph,” Mahoney said.
“And everyone involved is dead?” Mahoney said. “Estep, Mattis, Taylor, all of ’em?”
And Harold Edwards and John Palmeri and Morgan and Jillian Mattis. A lot of people had died and DeMarco had killed two of them.
“Yeah,” DeMarco said. “All except Donnelly and I don’t think—”
“And the link between Taylor and Donnelly, you can’t prove that either?”
“No way,” DeMarco said. “Just two reports related to a forty-year-old accident.”
“But if Donnelly and Taylor really did what you think, coverin’ that thing up . . . My God.”
“We don’t have any proof. All we’ve got is the timing and Emma’s gut feeling.”
“And Montgomery’s.”
DeMarco shook his head. “Texas is a dead end, boss.”
“Damn it all,” Mahoney said. He put down the ice bag he’d been holding to his forehead and his hand reached out from the shadows and grasped the bottle on his desk. It never occurred to him that bourbon might contribute to his headaches; if it did occur to him, he would drink anyway.
“I feel bad about Mattis,” DeMarco said as Mahoney poured his drink. “He was a victim in this whole thing from the beginning.”
“Fuck him,” Mahoney said, his voice rumbling. “His job was to protect the President and he didn’t do it.”
Sitting in the dark as Mahoney was, DeMarco felt as if he was talking to a bear in its cave. A wounded bear.
“But the President was never the target,” DeMarco argued. “And he was afraid for his mother. If you’d seen this guy Morgan you would have understood why.”
“Fuck him anyway,” Mahoney said.
Mahoney sat there glumly for a moment then said, “Do you know why I wanted to get him, Joe? Donnelly, I mean.”
DeMarco shrugged. “I assumed he had something on you.”
“Nah. You remember Marge Carter, what happened to her five years ago.”
“Yeah,” DeMarco said.
Margaret Carter had been a Republican representative from Mississippi. Even though she’d been a member of the opposition Mahoney had liked her and found it possible to work with her. Five years ago an article, complete with grainy, long-range photos, had appeared in a tabloid. The photos showed Carter, who was married, in a compromising position with her lover—a gentleman of color. She lost her seat in the House and her marriage. And her husband, who was by all reports a complete bastard, gained custody of their two children.
“Those photos in that scandal rag were taken by agents working for Donnelly. I know that for a fact. He was pissed at Marge because she cut some of his budget in committee. That little bastard ruined a woman because he was mad about a budget mark, and he used his agency to do it.”
And all this time DeMarco had thought the Speaker’s animus against Donnelly had been personal. The man continued to surprise him.
“We can still go to the media with this,” DeMarco said. “I’ve got more than enough to feed 60 Minutes, and by the time they’re done the FBI would be forced to investigate Donnelly.”
DeMarco saw Mahoney shake his head.
“Going public now would be bad for the country,” Mahoney said.
“What are you talking about?”
“You go to 60 Minutes with this and Mike Wallace or Morley, one of those guys, they’d make Donnelly look guilty as hell but—”
“He is guilty. Maybe he wasn’t directly involved in the assassination attempt but he did everything he could to obstruct the investigation.”
“I know, but there isn’t enough to send him to jail, so after 60 Minutes gets done with him Congress’d be forced to hold a buncha damn hearings. We’d be holdin’ fuckin’ hearings for the next two years. And the Secret Service and the FBI and Homeland Security, they’d all get black eyes. They’d—”
“They deserve black eyes.”
“No they don’t, Joe. Not the career civil servants, not the agents, not the men and women who really do the work. Clucks like Donnelly and Simon Wall and Kevin Collier, they deserve it but the agents don’t.”
Mahoney, champion of the little guy. DeMarco could not believe him sometimes.
“Yeah,” Mahoney said, “if all this went public, this whole incredible fuckup—Secret Service agents helpin’ assassins, Donnelly trying to cover it up, the FBI pinning it on the wrong guy . . . I mean . . . Hell, Joe, Donnelly would lose his job, sure, but then we’d waste more time running the Secret Service up the flagpole than it would ever be worth. Nah, no media. If I can’t put Donnelly in jail then I just want his ass fired. So that’s what I’m gonna tell the President to do.”
“You think he will?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll explain it to him. I’ll talk slow. And anyway, the President won’t want this to go public either.”
“Why the hell not? They killed his best friend.”
Trying to follow the workings of John Mahoney’s mind was like driving a winding road at night with the headlights off.
“Joe, think about it,” Mahoney said. “That lad in the White House has gotten a lotta mileage outta this thing. For a guy who dodged the draft, getting shot the way he did is as good as a combat
wound. Hell, the man’s still wearing a damn sling and his doctor told me all he needs now is a bandage! No, the President doesn’t want it known he wasn’t the intended victim. He’s up twenty points in the polls.”
Mahoney rubbed his hands together—a fat white-haired spider spinning its web.
“Yeah, the President will fire Donnelly and that’s when his troubles are really gonna start.”
“Oh?”
“Without his position to hide behind, without access to the government’s lawyers, Lil’ Pat’s gonna start havin’ all kinds of legal problems. Old ladies are gonna slip on his sidewalk. He’s gonna rear-end a family with spinal cords as brittle as eggshells. Ex-agents are gonna sue him for discrimination and sexual harassment and any other damn thing I can think of. The motherfucker’s gonna spend the rest of his life in a courtroom and every damn dime he has to his name.”
John Mahoney was not a man you wanted for an enemy.
“But none of that will be as bad for him as getting fired. Without his job, that little fuck is nothing. His job defines him; it’s his whole life. That’s why he’s never retired, no matter how much money he has. He loves walking around with his agents, meeting with the President, having the local cops kiss his ass whenever he comes to their town. And since 9/11, he’s had a new lease on life, investigating every poor bastard in the country with an Arabic name. Yeah, if he loses his job he’ll be just another short old guy waitin’ in line at the pharmacy window.
“Who knows,” Mahoney said, ever the optimist, “maybe he’ll commit suicide.”
Mahoney turned on the light on his desk. He looked terrible. He looked his age.
“So you go see him today, Joe. Tell him everything you’ve got on him. Embellish as much as you want. Just make sure he understands he’s in shit up to his eyeballs.”
“Maybe he’ll resign after I talk to him.”
“No, he won’t do that. But after you soften him up, when he gets the call from the President, he’ll go without a fuss.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“He’s a weak man, Joe. He proved that in Texas in ’63. And his actions before and after the assassination attempt prove it. You lay it out for him and he’ll stew on it—and when he gets the call, he’ll go.”
Mahoney opened a drawer in his desk and rooted around inside it with a thick hand.
“Damn, I’m outta cigars. No wonder my head hurts the way it does.”
44
DeMarco sat with Emma in the bar of the Georgetown Four Seasons, sipping a cobalt-blue martini. They were there because Emma liked the piano player, a man she claimed sounded like Tony Bennett, though DeMarco had never heard him sing.
“Are you sure you want to be here for this meeting, Emma?” DeMarco said. “If this guy finds out who you are, he could turn your life upside down.”
“Let him,” Emma said. “I have nothing to hide.” Then she said something that made DeMarco choke on his drink: “My life’s an open book.”
Donnelly arrived at that moment accompanied by four of his agents, all strapping six-footers who towered over their boss. Donnelly, DeMarco realized, loved to travel with a contingent of bodyguards as if he was an ancient rock star and needed his guards to beat back the autograph seekers.
Donnelly saw Emma and DeMarco and pointed at their table for his agents’ benefit. The agents glared at them, then spread out, taking up positions around the room. They stood out like cactus plants in a rain forest, holding no drinks, grim expressions on their faces, the ever present earpieces in their ears.
Donnelly walked over to DeMarco, his face a thundercloud. “Who’s this?” he said, pointing at Emma.
“She’s—”
“I’m Emma,” Emma said, smiling brightly. “Now sit down, you little shit.”
“Lady, I don’t know who the hell you think you are but I run the Secret Service. I can—”
“Pardon me,” Emma said. She stood and walked over to the piano player, chatted with him briefly, then put a large bill into his tip bowl. Donnelly, confused and not knowing what else to do, took a seat. As Emma walked back toward their table, the pianist began to play “As Time Goes By.”
“I love that song,” Emma said, resuming her seat. “Now let’s talk about you, little man.”
“I want to see some ID from you, you bitch,” Donnelly said. “Right—”
“In 1963,” Emma said, “you were twenty-five years old and working at the Secret Service’s Los Angeles field office. On November 23rd of that year you were sent to Dallas to help investigate the Kennedy assassination. You didn’t fly—I’ve heard you don’t like to fly—and you drove from LA to Dallas in an agency car.”
“So what?” Donnelly said. He was still angry but there was a tone of uncertainty in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Your car broke down in Odessa and you called the Texas highway patrol and told them to send a car to get you. The highway patrolman who gave you a lift to Dallas was a young man named Maxwell Taylor.”
Donnelly inhaled sharply. He started to say something but Emma kept going.
“On I-20, thirty miles east of Abilene, a hundred and sixty miles from Dallas, you and Patrolman Maxwell Taylor came upon a one-car accident. A car driven by one Ivan Antonio Guerrero had overturned. The front of the car was badly damaged, a dead deer was found on the side of the road, and Mr. Guerrero was dead. Do you have any recollection of this event, Mr. Donnelly?”
“What the hell does this—”
“You and Maxwell Taylor became suddenly and mysteriously rich in the winter of 1964. Taylor quit his job with the highway patrol three weeks after you two good Samaritans happened upon that accident.”
“I inherited—” Donnelly said.
“Ivan Antonio Guerrero was a Cuban national,” Emma said, “and there is no documented explanation for why he was in Texas in November of 1963. But I have to wonder, Mr. Donnelly, what would the Warren Commission have concluded had they known that in Mr. Guerrero’s car was four million dollars in cash?”
“Four million?” Donnelly said. “What in the hell are you talking about?” Donnelly was trying to act as if he was completely lost by Emma’s narrative but he was too nervous to bring off the lie.
“That’s right. Four million. You were financially reborn in 1964, Mr. Donnelly. You paid taxes on two million dollars that year and claimed you’d inherited the money. I guess you felt the need to come up with a cover story to explain your newfound wealth. Coincidently, Maxwell Taylor started to buy acres of real estate at the same time you supposedly inherited, but unlike you he gave no accounting for the source of his capital. So I did the math, Mr. Donnelly. I multiplied your two million dollar bogus inheritance by two and deduced that the amount of money you found in Guerrero’s car was four million, assuming you and Taylor split it down the middle.”
Fat Neil had previously been unable to find any connection between Taylor and Donnelly, but he had discovered that Taylor had been a highway patrolman in Texas in 1963. It occurred to Emma, when she heard about the strange notation in Montgomery’s notebook, that a Secret Service agent assigned to the Los Angeles field office in 1963 just might have been sent to Dallas after Kennedy’s assassination to assist with the investigation.
Emma, Neil, and DeMarco had spent four days in Texas looking through boxes and boxes of old records. They’d pushed and prodded and bribed and lied to people to get access to those records. And they finally found what they were looking for: a documented link between Taylor and Donnelly. On November 23, 1963, Texas highway patrolman Maxwell Taylor gave young Secret Service Agent Patrick Donnelly a ride from Odessa to Dallas. This simple fact would never have surfaced had Taylor not reported Guerrero’s accident. Why he’d reported the accident was not clear.
There was no mention of Patrick Donnelly in Montgomery’s notes, but Emma assumed that Montgomery had tried to determine the source of Taylor’s wealth and had traced Taylor’s career back to Texas in 1963. He would have l
earned either from the same records that Emma and Neil had found or from other sources, such as acquaintances of Taylor’s during his time in Texas, that Taylor quit his job with the state patrol three weeks after coming upon a car accident involving a Cuban national. If Montgomery found the same report, the one that mentioned that a Secret Service agent was traveling with Taylor when they found Guerrero’s body, he would have made the same assumption that Emma did: that the Secret Service agent was in Texas at that time because of the Kennedy assassination.
That Guerrero had cash on him, and that Taylor and Donnelly, two young men who had been poor all their lives, had decided on the spot, as they stood over a bloody corpse on a bleak Texas highway, to split the money and tell nobody, was pure speculation. But it made sense to Emma as it had made sense to Philip Montgomery.
“Who was Ivan Guerrero,” Emma said to Donnelly, “this Cuban national with a load of money in his car? A second gunman fleeing with the money he’d been paid? Or maybe he was just a bagman, and the money in the car was for Oswald and whoever helped him. Or maybe he wasn’t even connected to Kennedy.”
“Oswald acted alone,” Donnelly muttered—but by now all the belligerence had leaked out of him like air escaping a punctured tire.
“Well I guess we’ll never really know, Mr. Donnelly. Thanks to your greed.”
“I’m leaving,” Donnelly said. “This is all nonsense and you can’t prove a damn thing you’ve said.” To DeMarco that statement sounded more like a question, and he noticed Donnelly had made no effort to rise from his chair.
“I can prove you had a large amount of unexplained income in 1964, Mr. Donnelly,” Emma said.
“I inherited that money, goddamnit.”
“From who, Mr. Donnelly? Never mind, we’ll let the FBI ask you that question.”
“The FBI isn’t going to ask me shit,” Donnelly said. “I run the—”
“But the most important thing I can prove, based on a report filed in Texas in 1963, is that you and Max Taylor knew each other.” Emma leaned across the small table until her face was almost touching Donnelly’s. “That I can prove, you little bastard.”
