Inside Out Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Praise for John Ramsey Miller's Inside Out

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Preview of Upside Down

  About the Author

  Also by John Ramsey Miller

  Copyright Page

  Dedicated to the memory of

  Beverly Lewis

  Praise for John Ramsey Miller's

  Inside Out

  “INSIDE OUT is a great read! John Ramsey Miller's tale of big-city mobsters, brilliant killers and a compellingly real U.S. marshal has as many twists and turns as a running serpentine through a field of fire and keeps us turning pages as fast as a Blackhawk helicopter's rotors! Set aside an uninterrupted day for this one; you won't want to put it down.” —Jeffrey Deaver, author of The Vanished Man

  “John Ramsey Miller's INSIDE OUT needs to come with a warning label. To start the story is to put the rest of your life on hold as you obsessively turn one page after the other. With a story this taut, and characters this vivid, there's no putting the book down before you've consumed the final word. A thrilling read.” —John Gilstrap, author of Scott Free

  “Full of complications and surprises. . . . Miller gifts his characters with an illuminating idiosyncrasy. This gives us great hope for future books as well as delight in this one.” —The Drood Review of Mystery

  “Twists and turns on every page keep you in phenomenal suspense until the last page. A superb novel.” —Rendezvous

  And for John Ramsey Miller's debut thriller

  The Last Family

  “A relentless thriller.” —People

  “Fast-paced, original, and utterly terrifying—true, teeth-grinding tension. I lost sleep reading the novel, and then lost even more sleep thinking about it. Martin Fletcher is the most vividly drawn, most resourceful, most horrifying killer I have encountered. Hannibal Lecter, eat your heart out.” —Michael Palmer, author of Silent Treatment

  “The best suspense novel I've read in years!” —Jack Olsen

  “Martin Fletcher is one of the most unspeakably evil characters in recent fiction . . . A compelling read.” —Booklist

  “The author writes with a tough authority and knows how to generate suspense.”—Kirkus Reviews

  “Suspenseful . . . Keeps the reader guessing with unexpected twists.” —Publishers Weekly

  Acknowledgments

  For Susan Dedmon Miller, my wife, my best friend and inspiration for the past twenty-six years. To my sons: Christian McCarty, Rush Lane, and Adam Ramsey Miller, and my daughter, Natasha. Also to my Father, Rev. R. Glenn Miller, and my second mother, Joann, for their love and steadfast belief.

  This book would have remained desk ballast without the efforts of my agent, Anne “Anniehawk” Hawkins, of John Hawkins & Associates, NYC. There is no better.

  Thanks to my remarkable editor at Bantam Dell, Kate Burke Miciak. I have been so lucky in my writing life to have only worked with the best. KBM made me understand both what this book needed to be and how to build a better one next time.

  Heartfelt thanks to Irwyn Applebaum and Nita Taublib. They know why.

  Everyone at Bantam Dell who has touched Inside Out has added something of themselves, and they should know that I value the efforts of each and every one of them.

  I hope this book reflects the enormous respect I have for the ability and professionalism of the men and women of the United States Marshals Service. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency are often plumbed for villains. I did it in this book, but we should never lose sight of the fine, brave, and dedicated individuals who make up those organizations, all of them dedicated to our continued well being. They, and our armed forces, are all that stand between the devil and the deep blue sea.

  The inspiration for Winter Massey came from knowing United States Chief Deputy Marshal David Crews of Oxford, Mississippi, who is now a member of an antiterrorism task force. Any parallels between Winter's and David's lives are the sincerest flattery I can pay a friend who is a truly amazing professional. Also thanks to my shore patrol pal, Regional Security Director Commander for Navy Region Hawaii, Lieutenant Eugene “Dusty” Rhodes Jr. Any technical inaccuracies were either necessary for the story or because I wasn't paying close enough attention.

  I want to thank my readers, Rush Glenn Miller Jr., Judy Dedmon Coyle, Faith Ann Lyon, Mike and Ellen Nash, and Lesley Krause.

  My “blood” brothers, Jay McSorley and Kerry Hamilton.

  My dear friend and confidant, fellow thriller author John Gilstrap. His steadfast friendship over the years has been a special gift indeed.

  My close friends, Faith and Kip Lyon; Bill, Ann, Will, and Leslie Can
non; Robert D. and Kelia Raiford. God bless the Wing Nighters who gather weekly to festivate.

  Finally, a heartfelt thanks to all of the warm, remarkable people of Concord, North Carolina, who, for the past eight years, have somehow suffered this fool. If there is a better place on earth to live, I have yet to find it.

  1

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  A blanket of angry black clouds passed over the Crescent City, blotting out the moon and suffusing the air with the scent of rain. A paddle-wheeler glided upriver, making for its dock on the edge of the French Quarter. The voices of the revelers on the deck fought a pitched battle with the optimistic strains of the Dixieland band. After the boat passed by, its wash slapped at the pilings under the pier and the warehouse.

  A dark Mercedes sedan was parked in the doorway of the warehouse, its trunk open. Dylan Devlin looked up and down the pier, then finished loading the cargo, closed the trunk gently, and removed his gloves.

  People usually visited New Orleans because of the fine dining, for the atmosphere of revelry—to stroll up and down Bourbon Street clutching a plastic cup of beer. Tourists flocked to the city to enjoy the architecture, the history, the casinos. But Devlin had no interest in any of that. To him, New Orleans was just another piece of geography to be learned, streets to be navigated, and problems to be solved or avoided. Dylan was a lucky man who had discovered his true passion: He was paid to do something he would have done for free.

  A red-haired man of thirty-six with a youthful face, he had light-green eyes, and his smile was as disarming as a baby's. Since he was a child, women had wanted to coddle him and, as he matured, to offer their bodies and hearts, although only the former held any interest for him.

  He opened the car door, climbed in, and drove out of the lot, leaving the loading-dock door wide open—like an unblinking yellow eye staring out over the Mississippi River.

  The wall of rain moved down the river and closed like a curtain over the departing riverboat. Dylan pressed a button and the window purred up just as the downpour slammed into the pier.

  The two boys were seventeen years old. They were in a white Lexus 400, which belonged to the driver's mother, a divorced real-estate attorney.

  The teenagers had consumed two six-packs of Heineken and had managed to smoke most of a half an ounce of marijuana in the hours since sundown. It was raining hard and the wipers kept a beat along with the music. The Lexus was doing sixty-six miles an hour as the car approached the intersection of St. Charles and Napoleon Avenues. The driver saw the light change to red, but its meaning didn't penetrate the fog in his brain until it was too late to apply the brakes. A black Mercedes seemed to materialize before him, as if from nowhere.

  Far out.

  The Lexus sent Dylan Devlin's Mercedes skidding seventy feet into the oncoming lane. It rolled over and disgorged the trunk's contents into the middle of St. Charles Avenue—a spare tire and two limp bodies. The bloody sacks on the corpses' heads and their contorted limbs made them look like a pair of discarded scarecrows.

  Devlin shoved aside the physician's case on the passenger seat, which held his tools—the .22 automatic and silencer, the handcuffs. More than enough evidence to send him to death row. He slid from the stolen Mercedes through the shattered side window, dragging himself toward the curb like an injured dog. He gazed across the rain-slick asphalt at the corpses and marveled at how ridiculous they looked. He remembered shooting them, loading the two heavy bodies into the trunk.

  Cars were braking and people were running into the street, shouting. When he saw the blue lights converging, he smiled because he knew it was over. He knew, too, that it was only just beginning.

  2

  Two days after the newspapers and TV news teams in New Orleans first reported that a man had been arrested with the bodies of two warehouse workers he had murdered gangland-style, Florence Pruette started her day without once thinking about it. She'd seen the pictures of the bodies lying in the middle of St. Charles Avenue, but she hadn't paid much attention to the fact that the two dead men had worked for one of her employer's competitors.

  At precisely 6:45 that morning, Florence got out of a taxicab in front of Parker Amusement & Vending Company on Magazine Street to open the offices for business. At five that afternoon, the seventy-year-old woman would turn on the answering machine, lock up the office, and go home to her one-bedroom apartment on the eighth floor of the Versailles apartment building. Florence had kept the same routine every weekday all her adult life. The exceptions to the rule were Christmas day, Thanksgiving day, and Fat Tuesday. In 1971, the office had closed for Dominick Manelli's funeral. Manelli had founded and run the company for thirty-nine years before he retired.

  There had been four mornings in the fifty-two years when Florence had been too ill to come in, but otherwise she was as punctual as the sunrise. Florence had worked at Parker Amusement first as a receptionist, then secretary, office manager, and finally as private secretary to Dominick. After his death, his son, Sam, kept her on. In all her years with the company, she had never asked either of her employers a non-business-related question. She was paid generously, lived comfortably in an apartment she owned outright, and had good medical insurance. She could eat at any of Sam's restaurants for free as often as she chose. Because she tipped generously, Florence was fussed over by the restaurant staff. The taxi that chauffeured her to and from work was an additional perk. Best of all, Sam had promised her a paycheck for as long as she lived, and, although he had offered to let her retire whenever she wanted, the company was her life.

  The offices had not been renovated since the company moved into the building on Magazine Street in 1967. The walls were stained brown from decades of cigarette and cigar smoke issued from employees who, like the nonsmoking employees, answered to Florence.

  The office workers kept the books, taking orders for vending and gaming machines. The warehouse workers delivered the machines. Collectors picked up the coins and bills and stocked the machines with candy, soft drinks, cigarettes, CDs, and condoms. One warehouse stored the machines and was the site where necessary maintenance was performed, while another held the stock and was a subsidiary—MarThon Distributing Company. All of Manelli's businesses were separate entities, grouped under the master banner of SAMCO Holding Company. SAMCO owned bars, gas stations, adult bookstores, a travel agency, a tobacco shop, a French Quarter art gallery, an antique shop, a tour company, a limousine firm, parking lots, and more. Its entire holdings were worth over 60 million dollars, every dollar of which was squeaky clean. Every morning at seven-thirty Sam Manelli showed up at his Parker office to preside over his kingdom. It was unnecessary because people seldom stole anything from Sam Manelli. The downside of stealing his money was too frightening to contemplate. Sam was the most feared man in Louisiana for good reason. He was a Mafia don, a monster whose sadism was the whole cloth from which nightmares were cut.

  Florence was aware of Sam's reputation as a gangster, but she had never seen any evidence of it. She had heard that his illegal companies generated four times what SAMCO Holding was worth in cash, every year. A million dollars a day was the figure she had read in the Times-Picayune. It was said that Sam owned everyone he needed to maintain both of his empires. Books had been written about him, documentaries filmed, movies were based on his legend. He was famed as the last of the big-time mobsters, a tyrannosaur that had somehow survived the evolutionary process. Everybody knew what he did, but Sam had never once been convicted of a felony.

  Florence came in that morning, like every other, but on that Tuesday something was different. It was so different, it almost gave her a stroke. Minutes after Sam arrived, four FBI agents strolled into the office. They flashed badges, passed by Florence without answering her questions, and handcuffed Sam.

  “What's this about?” Sam asked calmly.

  “You're under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder. Among other things.”

  “That's a state rap.”

  �
�We're getting the first bite on the federal charges. The state can dine on the crumbs after we've boxed you up for life.”

  “Whose murder?” Sam demanded.

  “You hired one Dylan Devlin to come to Louisiana and kill two of your competitors' employees: Austin Wilson and Wesley Jefferson. You are charged with paying Devlin to murder an additional ten people.”

  “That's crazy! I don't know no Dylans, period.”

  Florence trembled as the four men hustled Sam out. Sam, sensing that she was upset, stopped in his tracks, forcing the agents to do likewise. He smiled at Florence and then winked, dropping the lid over a bright-blue eye. Florence Pruette relaxed instantly, certain that everything was going to be just fine.

  “Miss Flo, do me a favor and call Bertran Stern. Tell him to get to the Federal Building and straighten these birds out.”

  3

  JFK Airport, New York City

  Two weeks later

  Since she had left Buenos Aires she had been holding on to a mental picture. She would be in a throng of people walking down a wide corridor and he would be standing framed in the throat of the hallway, in the waiting area with a hundred other anxious people. He would be wearing an Italian blazer. His red hair slightly damp from the shower, he would have rushed to the airport, parked, and walked in as close to the customs area as he could get. After a year of marriage, he was still romantic. He might be holding flowers behind his back, or he'd have a small gift in his pocket. He would beam at the sight of her. After two weeks apart, he would be more attentive than ever and they would end the evening in bed, making noise. That part of the image made her smile—in fact, blush.

  She caught her reflection in a glass panel. The glove-leather jacket, tailored to accentuate her shape, was an Argentine purchase, as were the matching boots. Her shoulder-length dark hair was combed back and the glasses she wore made her feel—and look—like a model. She was young enough to be one, had been told that she had the bone structure, the figure. She was aware that she turned heads, but the only head she was interested in turning was her husband's.

  Her customs agent was a woman with stiff bleached hair. The tightly cinched belt around her waist made her look like a wasp. Her fingernails were an inch long and had stars painted on them. She stared at the passport picture and back at Sean.