House Revenge

by Mike Lawson

  “That’s just terrible,” Rosenberg said. “But what do you want from me?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I’m just trying to get a handle on Callahan. Elinore can’t sue him thanks to her daughter, so I’m trying to come up with some other angle to pursue. I figured since he used to be your partner, you might be able to help. How’d you meet him in the first place?”

  “I used to be a guest speaker at a class that prepared folks to get their real estate licenses,” Rosenberg said. “I’d tell the students about flipping houses and how you could get into serious trouble if you didn’t do your homework and got too greedy. Anyway, Sean was in one of my classes, and after he got his license he asked me for a job.

  “I’ve always worked alone, but at the time I had a lot going on and decided I could use his help. And it was a good decision. He was a go-getter, he learned fast, and he worked his tuchus off. The couple of years he worked for me, I made more money than I did in the previous decade.

  “Anyway, one of the projects we worked on together was renovating some public housing in Dorchester, and Sean got smart on public housing, the federal and state agencies involved, the city council people who had some influence, and so on. Then he got wind of a plan to build some low-income housing in another part of Boston, and he pretty much went behind my back to get the contract. And he just took off from there.”

  “So he screwed you,” DeMarco said.

  “You could say that, but he didn’t do anything illegal. We didn’t have a formal partnership agreement—but a nicer guy would have included me in the deal since I’d been a mentor to him and gave him his first real job. Anyway, like I said, after that he took off like a rocket, using the money from that project to go after bigger things, and before he was thirty he was millionaire.”

  “Huh,” DeMarco said. He didn’t see how any of this could help, but then Rosenberg said something that did help.

  “I’ll tell you the person who really got screwed by him was Adele, his second wife. She was an only child and her family was worth ten, twenty million when she married Sean. Well, Adele’s dad never liked Sean. Thought he wasn’t good enough for his little girl and figured he’d never amount to anything. So her father forced Sean to sign a prenup to prevent him from getting his hands on the family money if they divorced.”

  Rosenberg laughed. “What Adele’s old man never considered was that the prenup could work to Sean’s advantage if he divorced Adele. You see, prenups often protect what’s called nonmarital assets, and Adele’s inheritance would be considered such an asset. But Sean’s company was also a nonmarital asset since he formed the company before the marriage. What this meant was that Adele could get at income Sean made off his company while they were married, but she couldn’t get to all the assets he had tied up in the company, like cash reserves and properties he owned for future development. And, as you might expect, almost all of Sean’s wealth was in his company at the time of the divorce. So I don’t know all the legal ins and outs. But by the time the lawyers got through fighting, Adele got the short end of the stick and only ended up with a condo in Boston, a house on the Cape, and a settlement of twenty or thirty million.”

  “I wouldn’t call a house on Cape Cod, a city condo, and twenty million getting the short end of the stick,” DeMarco said.

  “No, but twenty million isn’t two hundred million, which is what she might have gotten if she hadn’t signed the prenup. But you’re right: Adele’s never going to have to apply for welfare. And the thing that really pissed her off wasn’t the money. She was very prominent in the Boston social scene and Sean humiliated her when he dumped her for a twenty-something Georgia peach. Adele is one very bitter woman.”

  “Carl,” DeMarco said. “Let me buy you lunch. I want to ask you a couple more questions.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Rosenberg said. “A man’s gotta eat.”

  They took the elevator to the lobby of Rosenberg’s building and when they stepped outside, DeMarco looked around to see if the McNultys were parked nearby. They were. He still didn’t want them to know that he’d spotted them tailing him, so he just glanced over at them once, then forced himself not to look again as he and Rosenberg walked to the restaurant. He needed to figure out some way to deal with those guys.

  They ate at a place called Woody’s Grill and Tap on Hemenway Street, half a block from Rosenberg’s apartment/office. The waitress was a college-age kid with pink hair and a brilliant smile, and when she saw Rosenberg she said, “Carl! Where have you been? I thought you didn’t love me anymore.”

  “I’ll never stop loving you, darling,” Rosenberg said, “but I’m just not ready to settle down with one woman yet.”

  “You’re breakin’ my heart, Carl,” the waitress said.

  Rosenberg ordered ice tea and a Reuben, and as that sounded good, DeMarco ordered the same. While waiting for their lunches to arrive, DeMarco said, “Tell me how a project like Delaney Square comes together.”

  What DeMarco was really wondering was how precarious Sean Callahan’s financial position might be. If he was teetering on the edge financially, maybe DeMarco could devise a way to give him a wee nudge and over the edge he goes.

  “Well, as you might guess, it’s complicated,” Rosenberg said. “A project, especially one as big as Delaney Square, starts five, six, seven years before they dig the first spadeful of dirt. The developer has to purchase the land or the properties he wants, and get some firm to design whatever he’s building. He’s got to do environmental impact studies and get a million permits from the city. And along the way there will be some neighborhood association or historical society fighting whatever he wants to do, and he’s got to deal with them. Then, because he’s going to have to tear up city streets and tie in to utilities like power, sewer, and water, he has to wrestle with the city to work all that out. So it isn’t until after all the preliminary stuff is done and the design is complete and he’s figured out a way to get around most of the roadblocks that he hires a construction firm and they start building. Then it takes however long it takes, depending on the problems he encounters during construction.”

  And DeMarco thought: Someone like Elinore Dobbs being one of those problems.

  “But the first thing he has to do, before he completes the designs or buys all the land, is line up the money,” Rosenberg said. “With Delaney Square, according to what I’ve read, you’re talking five hundred million bucks. So Sean can’t just walk into his local neighborhood bank and get a loan like he’s buying a house. For a project that size, he’ll have to convince one or more of the major banks to loan him the money, but they’ll only loan him eighty percent of what he needs. He’ll have to line up the other twenty percent from other sources or use his own money, which I imagine isn’t all that liquid. So now we’re talking about a hundred million that he has to come up with from private investors.

  “The other thing is the bank doesn’t give him the entire eighty percent up front. They dole it out in increments based on the project reaching certain milestones. For example, they give him twenty percent to buy the land, then, when that’s done, they’ll give him another ten percent to demolish existing buildings. What this means is that if Sean isn’t making the progress he’s supposed to make, the bank might not give him the money he needs to complete the project. They’re not going to give him all the money up front, then get left holding the bag if he blows it and has nothing to show for it except a large hole in the ground.”

  “Why do they only give him eighty percent and not the entire amount he needs?” DeMarco asked.

  “Because they want Sean and some other guys to have some skin in the game. More important, the bank wants to be able to force Sean to use his own assets or turn to these other investors when the project gets in trouble rather than running back to them with his hand out. Like I said it’s complicated, but the bottom line is that Sean probably had to toss a lot of
his own money into the pot and had to find some rich investors to cough up the twenty percent he needed.

  “The thing you need to understand,” Rosenberg said, “is that guys like Sean Callahan are walking a tightrope the whole time they’re trying to complete a development and it doesn’t take much to make ’em fall off the rope. They unearth a skeleton, and the project grinds to a complete halt until they can figure out if it’s from an Indian burial ground or some guy from Southie that Whitey Bulger planted. Or the workers making the big components he needs for heating and ventilation go on strike, and Sean’s screwed until they go back to work. I mean, if you’ve ever remodeled the kitchen in your house, you know how it can go. The contractor discovers dry rot when he’s replacing the windows, the cabinets don’t fit, the city inspector makes you rip out the wiring because it’s not up to code. So if you think remodeling your kitchen is tough, imagine what it would be like to construct office buildings and a hotel on fourteen acres in downtown Boston.

  “I’ve seen lots of guys go bankrupt,” Rosenberg said. “They bite off more than they can chew, start having problems, and the next thing you know they’re filing Chapter Eleven. I suspect Sean’s leveraged up to his neck and if Delaney Square doesn’t stay pretty much on schedule and close to budget, the bank will stop giving him money to complete the project. Then his investors will lose their money, and Sean goes under, loses his big house on Beacon Hill and maybe everything else he owns.”

  DeMarco really liked what he was hearing—and then Rosenberg burst his bubble.

  “But also keep in mind that big developers anticipate having problems, and they budget for them. Like Elinore Dobbs. If she hadn’t slowed him down, something else would have, and Sean most likely has more than enough money in his contingency fund to deal with somebody like her, so he’s probably not in big trouble yet.”

  “Well, shit,” DeMarco said.

  The pink-haired waitress came by at that moment, refilled their ice tea glasses, and asked if they wanted some dessert.

  “Not me, darling,” Rosenberg said. “All my girlfriends like me slim and trim so I can dance the night away.”

  “How come you never take me dancing?” the waitress said.

  “Darling, you’d never be able to keep up.”

  The waitress squealed and said, “Carl, you crack me up.”

  “Let me ask you one more thing,” DeMarco said. “What kind of profit do you think Callahan will make on Delaney Square?”

  “I have no idea,” Rosenberg said. “Like I told you, big developments are a house of cards and he could lose his shirt. But Callahan’s been in the game over twenty years and he’s sharp, so I doubt that’ll happen.”

  “But what’s the normal profit margin on big developments?” ­DeMarco asked again.

  “It depends,” Rosenberg said. “If a developer makes ten percent after he pays off the interest on all the loans, and what he owes the builders and architects and lawyers, he’s probably feeling pretty good.”

  “Ten percent on a five-hundred-million-dollar project would be fifty million,” DeMarco said. “That’d make me feel pretty good.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll bet Sean’s going after a lot more than fifty. It depends on how he has things structured. He’s probably getting a straight fee from the solar energy company for building their corporate headquarters, and he could be planning to sell the hotel to some chain like Hilton or Marriott for all I know. And the apartments he’s building. Some of those are going to sell for more than a million, and I have no idea how much of a cut he’ll get from them. When it’s all said and done, Sean will lie about how much he made to keep the tax man from taking too big a bite, and he and the banks and his investors will probably all make a killing.”

  They finished their lunch and Rosenberg, after hugging the pink-haired waitress, headed back to his office. DeMarco didn’t leave the restaurant, however. He walked over to a window, where he could see the McNultys still sitting in their car. What did those dummies have in mind? Were they hoping he’d walk into a deserted parking garage again? Whatever the case, he wanted them off his back—and then he realized there might be a simple way to accomplish that. He called Detective Fitzgerald of the Boston Police Department.

  “The McNultys are following me,” he told Fitzgerald.

  “Oh, yeah? Why would they be doing that?”

  “I think they think I had something to do with them being arrested for smuggling guns.”

  “Well, did you?” Fitzgerald said.

  DeMarco couldn’t tell Fitzgerald that he’d conspired with mobsters in Philadelphia and Providence to set up the McNultys, so he said, “No, of course not. But I went to their arraignment just to gloat about them getting arrested, and one of them accused me of setting them up. They’re a couple of idiots, but they’re violent idiots.”

  “Huh,” Fitzgerald said. “It did seem odd to me that the ATF knew exactly when those guys would be hauling a van full of guns.”

  DeMarco ignored Fitzgerald’s comment and said, “I’d like you to do me a favor.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m in a place called Woody’s Grill and Tap on Hemenway. I want you to get a squad car over here and when I leave, I’m going to catch a cab and the McNultys are going to follow me. I want your cops to pull them over and search their car for weapons. If they have a gun in the car, their bail will be revoked and they’ll get tossed into the can until their trial.”

  “What reason would our guys have for pulling them over? And what right would they have to execute a search of their vehicle?”

  “Jesus Christ, Fitzgerald, tell them to use their brains. Invent a traffic infraction—failure to come to a complete stop, failure to signal when changing lanes. Whatever. Then when your guys check to see if they have outstanding warrants, they’ll learn these clucks are currently on bail for transporting machine guns. That ought to be close enough to probable cause for a search.”

  Fitzgerald didn’t respond.

  “Fitzgerald,” DeMarco said. “Do you really want the McNultys roaming around Boston for the next six months? Wouldn’t you prefer they be inside a cage where they belong?”

  “Yeah, okay. What kind of car are they driving?”

  DeMarco ordered a piece of apple pie to give Fitzgerald enough time to send a squad car his direction, and saw one drive by while he was eating his pie. He hoped that the squad car he saw was the one Fitzgerald had sent and not another cop randomly driving by. He paid his bill, stepped outside the restaurant, and flagged down a cab. On the way back to the Park Plaza, he checked to see if the McNultys were following. They were. Good.

  About two blocks from his hotel, he saw a BPD squad car come through the traffic, get behind the McNultys’ car, and the light rack on the police car light up like a Christmas tree. DeMarco had no idea what happened after that. He could only pray that the McNultys were packing a weapon or had some dope on them or had the smell of alcohol on their breath.

  Fitzgerald called him fifteen minutes later. “Sorry, DeMarco, they were clean.”

  “Well, crap,” DeMarco said.

  Fitzgerald paused. “If you’re really worried about these guys attacking you, you better take some precautions. I mean, I can’t assign guys to protect you twenty-four hours a day, and I can’t advise you to arm yourself but . . .”

  “Yeah, I know,” DeMarco said.

  “Maybe you should head back to Washington. I don’t understand why you’re still here in Boston anyway.”

  “I just have something I need to wrap up here before I leave.” There was no reason to tell Fitzgerald he was sticking around Boston to find some way to screw Sean Callahan.

  “Why the hell did they stop us?” Ray said.

  “What do you mean?” Roy said. “You heard what that bull dyke cop said. She said we made an illegal lane change.”

  “Oh, that’s bullshit. Tha
t was just an excuse to pull us over and search the car and hassle us. It’s a damn good thing we didn’t have anything in the car.”

  “How did they even spot us? Do you think they have us under surveillance?”

  “Maybe. Maybe they think we got some big-time gun connection and they’re hoping we’ll lead them to that guy. Or maybe they know it was Soriano who hired us to get the guns.”

  “That motherfucker, Soriano. We shoulda known we couldn’t trust a wop.”

  “Or maybe DeMarco spotted us and called the cops.”

  “He didn’t act like he spotted us,” Roy said.

  “Then I don’t know. But we better keep our eyes open to see if anyone’s watching us. And we need to get a different car. We can’t keep using Doreen’s.”

  “Aw, screw Doreen.”

  DeMarco went to the Park Plaza bar and ordered a martini. While he drank, he thought about what he’d learned from Carl Rosenberg and concluded: not much. He’d found out that Callahan had a bitter ex-wife so maybe he’d drop in on her and see if she could tell him some dirty secret about Callahan that he could use. The only other thing he’d learned was that Callahan’s financial situation was precarious, that he was probably leveraged up to his chin—but that this was almost always the case with developers trying to complete a project. It would take something a whole lot bigger than Jim Boyer identifying safety violations to cause Callahan a significant problem. It would be nice to know who was financing Delaney Square—the major banks and whoever else had invested—but even if he had that information, he wasn’t sure what good it would do him.

  Well, he’d worry about that next—after he’d figured out a way to deal with the McNultys. There was no way he was going to spend the next six months of his life looking over his shoulder for them. Since the first martini didn’t inspire him, he had another—and the answer came to him. It wasn’t going to be easy, and he might end up getting killed. On the other hand, if he didn’t take care of the McNultys he might get killed anyway. He’d stay in the hotel for the rest of the day, then tomorrow, bright and early, he’d begin phase one of his plan for washing the McNultys out of his hair.