by Lawson, Mike
“A demonstration?” Mahoney said. What the hell was this guy gonna do? Show him PowerPoint slides?
Ted hit a button on his phone and said into the speaker, “Tell Gus to bring Mr. Reed in.”
A moment later two men entered Ted’s office. One was a wide-shouldered thug in a bad-fitting suit wearing white cowboy boots. The other guy was in his fifties and scrawny-looking, particularly standing next to the other guy. The scrawny one looked scared to death.
“This is Denny Reed,” Ted said to Mahoney. “The one that looks like he’s about to puke all over my rug. If Denny pukes, Gus, I want you to rub his nose in it.”
The thug just popped the bubble gum he was chewing; it sounded like a rifle shot going off in the room.
“Now then, Denny,” Ted said, “did you deposit five hundred thousand dollars into Molly Mahoney’s bank account?”
Reed hesitated for a second then said, “Yes.”
Reed’s voice was kinda froggy, Mahoney noted, like there was something wrong with his throat. Or maybe it was fear that caused him to croak.
“And are you willing, Denny,” Ted said, “to admit that you put this money into her account without her knowledge and that you then used the money to buy a certain stock.”
“Yes,” Reed said.
“And are you willing to testify that Molly had nothing to do with this illegal transaction, that some person who you are unwilling to name, gave you the stock tip?”
“Yes,” Reed said.
“Very good, Denny,” Ted said. “But now let me ask you this: are you also willing to admit that Molly was the one who told you about the stock and that you and she conspired together to buy it?”
“Yes,” Reed said.
“Wonderful, Denny. You gave the right answer every time. Gus, why don’t you take Denny back to his room.”
After the two men left his office, Ted said, “Did you get the point of that demonstration, Congressman?”
Mahoney nodded. “Yeah, I got the point. Denny will say whatever you tell him to say.”
“That’s right. Denny, who has a criminal record by the way, is willing to do the time for your daughter’s crime all by himself or he’s willing to testify that your daughter was his accomplice. In one scenario, your daughter avoids a jail sentence and in the other, she and Denny both go to jail, but Denny gets a reduced sentence for giving up Molly, she being who she is.”
“So what do you want?”
“The first thing I want is my half million back, plus the money Molly owes the casino. That’s a total of six hundred grand. The second thing I want is for the U.S. government to provide a hundred million dollars for a certain construction project here in Atlantic City.”
“A construction project? What in the hell are you talking about?” Mahoney said.
Ted explained about the new convention center, and how the acting governor of New Jersey was being a prick by insisting on supplemental federal funding.
“As I understand it from talking to Preston Whitman,” Ted said, “all you have to do is attach the funding as a rider to some bill, something Preston says you can do if you set your mind to it.”
Mahoney didn’t say anything for several seconds. He felt like throwing Ted through the window and watching his brains splatter all over the boardwalk. But he didn’t. Instead he rose from the chair where he’d been sitting and said, “I’m gonna need a little time to think this over.”
“I’m afraid that won’t do, sir. I need an answer. Right now,” Ted said.
“Okay, then I’ll give you one,” Mahoney said. “Kiss my ass.”
* * *
Mahoney needed a drink, but he wasn’t going to drink in Ted’s casino, so he left the Atlantic Palace and walked over to the next casino on the boardwalk, which meant he had to walk about half a mile.
It was only eleven a.m. and the casino wasn’t all that full, but the slot machines were still making their nerve-jangling, god-awful racket. He found a lounge that had a stage in the middle, a place where they probably had some kind of free show at night, but at this time of day the stage was dark. There were only two people in the lounge, a man and a woman sitting at separate tables, and they both looked as if they’d been up gambling all night—and lost. They were staring down into their drinks, the looks on their faces saying that they’d lost more than they could afford and had no idea what they were going to do. Goddamn idiot gambling junkies—and it appeared that his daughter was one of them. He could just imagine Molly sitting here at some earlier date, looking just like these two losers.
Mahoney ordered bourbon from the bartender and took a seat at a table the size of a Frisbee. He wasn’t worried about having walked out on Ted; Ted wasn’t going to do anything immediately. No, he’d give Mahoney a day or two to think things over and either contact him again or have Preston Whitman do it. The problem was, he didn’t have any idea what he was going to do.
But Molly was screwed if he didn’t do something. She would either go to jail for a crime which he now knew she’d committed or he had to pay Ted Allen six hundred thousand dollars—six hundred thousand that he didn’t have. Plus there were Molly’s legal expenses, which would be at least another hundred grand. Finally, as if he didn’t have enough on his plate, he also had to get a law passed that would give the state of New Jersey a hundred million bucks. Oddly enough, the hundred million was the least of his many problems.
A hundred million dollars sounds like a lot of money, but in terms of federal spending it’s a drop in the bucket. Or maybe half a drop. Getting that amount tacked onto some bill was something he thought he might be able to do, but to get his hands on seven hundred grand . . .
But there was something else going on here. It was obvious that Ted had some scheme where he thought he could make a ton of money if this convention center was built, and six hundred thousand dollars had to be pocket change for an operation the size of the Atlantic Palace. The casino could lose that much in a single night if some whale got lucky at the tables. Yeah, Ted should have been willing to simply give Mahoney the money in trade for his influence. So why didn’t he? Ted Allen might just be a greedy prick, but Mahoney didn’t think that was it. No, there was something else going on, something he was missing.
There was one thing he wasn’t missing, though: Ted was connected. At least he thought he was. He had a white-bread name and diplomas on the wall, and he didn’t say “youse guys” or “fuckin’ this” and “fuckin’ that” in every other sentence, but no doubt about it, Ted was Mob. Mahoney thought at first that Ted was just a crooked businessman who had tried to make a fast buck in the market, but when that palooka Gus hauled that pathetic bastard Denny Reed into the room . . . Well, that’s when Ted had shown his spots. It was obvious Ted had told Denny that if he didn’t agree to do the time for Molly he was going end up with a thousand feet of Atlantic Ocean over his head.
So he had three problems: he had to come up with a boatload of money he didn’t have; he had to get his daughter off for a crime that he now knew she’d committed; and he had to divert a hundred million dollars of the taxpayers’ money to a construction project that would benefit organized crime. That’s all.
No, wait a minute. He didn’t have three problems. He had four problems.
The fourth problem was that Ted might kill his daughter if he thought she might testify against him.
19
Big Bob Fairchild needed his wife’s advice.
Fairchild had met Barbara Jane Evans at the University of Arizona when he was a junior and she was a freshman, and he decided the day he met her that he was going to marry her.
Barbara Jane’s father was dead now, but he’d been a real estate mogul, one of those guys who would—repeatedly—buy a seemingly useless vacant lot in a run-down neighborhood. The next month, Hilton would decide to build on that very spot or the
state would decide it needed the land, and offer him a hundred times what he originally paid for the lot. At the time Fairchild met his bride-to-be, there were four Arizonans richer than Sinclair Evans—but being the fifth richest man in the state was still a pretty good thing to be. And Barbara Jane Evans was an only child and her mother had died when she was sixteen.
Barbara Jane was a gold mine.
She was a tall girl, and she had the broadest shoulders that Fairchild had ever seen on a woman. Her breasts were small—at least then they were—but she had a nice ass and good, long legs. And she wasn’t exactly ugly; homely was probably a better word. She had mousy brown hair, her nose was a bit too long, and her ears . . . Well, she didn’t look too good when her hair was short. And although she had the misfortune to have inherited her daddy’s face, she’d also inherited his brains, and she’d always been Robert Fairchild’s principal adviser.
“You say his daughter owes this casino a hundred thousand?” Barbara Jane said.
Barbara Jane was now forty-seven, and maybe the best-looking forty-seven-year-old woman in Tucson. Hell, maybe she was the best-looking forty-seven-year-old woman in the entire Southwest. The reason she now looked so good was because at the age of thirty, she overcame her fear of cosmetic surgery in a major way. Her hair was now ash blonde and perfectly suited to her face—a face that she’d picked from a catalogue in her doctor’s office: I’ll have those cheekbones, and that chin, and ooh, give me that cute little nose, too. And her body, now that she had the same-size breasts as Marilyn Monroe and sag-proof implants inserted into her butt, was flawless.
They were seated by the pool of Barbara Jane’s D.C. mansion. (Barbara Jane had lavish homes in half a dozen places around the world—and all the property was in her name alone.) Fairchild was dressed in a suit that was too hot for the weather; his wife was wearing a white one-piece bathing suit and painting her toenails as they talked. The polish she was applying was a garish, candy-apple red.
Fairchild didn’t know why his wife painted her toenails. She had a lady that gave her manicures and pedicures, but for some reason she liked to put the polish on herself. All he knew was that it was irritating talking to the top of her head, and the little balls of cotton stuck between her toes looked stupid.
“Yeah,” Fairchild said, answering her question. “And right now the SEC and Justice don’t know that. They think Molly’s motive was credit card debt and they’ve probably figured out from her statements that she spent a lot of time and money in Atlantic City, but they don’t know about the money she owes the casino.”
“So if you leaked that she owes the casino money, all that would do is confirm she’s a gambler,” Barbara Jane said. “Sounds bad, but so what? I don’t see how her being a gambling junky hurts Mahoney any more than the insider trader charges against her have already hurt him—which is to say that they haven’t hurt him at all. And the fact that she owes money to a casino doesn’t really make the prosecutor’s case any stronger, I mean, not really.”
“But there has to be some way to take advantage of . . .”
“How do you like this color?” Barbara Jane asked.
“What?” Fairchild said.
“This nail polish. How do you like it?”
“Uh, it’s fine. It looks great.”
“You know what it’s called?”
Now, how in the hell would I know that?
“No,” Fairchild said. “Look, there has to be some way . . .”
“It’s called I’m Not Really a Waitress.”
“What?”
“The name of this color is: I’m Not Really a Waitress. Don’t you just love that?”
“Goddamnit, Barbara Jane, will you . . .”
“And you say the casino’s connected to some mobster in Philadelphia?”
“Yeah, a man named Albert Castiglia.”
“How did you find out about him?”
“I talked to a guy in the Bureau. He said that when Ted Allen was a kid he worked for Castiglia in Vegas, and Castiglia took a shine to him and sent him to college. The FBI figured that a nice-looking, college-educated yuppie like Ted would be the perfect front for Castiglia. There was no way Castiglia was going to get a gaming license, but Ted could. The bottom line is that the Atlantic Palace Casino is probably laundering money for the Mob, but there’s no proof of that. And Ted Allen almost certainly works for Castiglia but there’s no proof of that, either.”
“Well, sugar,” Barbara Jane said, “journalists don’t need proof. You know that.”
“Yeah, but so what? How does leaking that Ted Allen is tied to the Mob hurt Mahoney?”
“Baby, baby, you just gotta learn to think outside the box.”
Fairchild just hated that expression. “What box? What are you talk—”
“What if the casino was to cancel Molly Mahoney’s debt?”
“What?” Fairchild said again. She just confused the shit out of him.
“Now, I don’t know about you, honey, but I can see the headline right now: Mob Controlled Casino Absolves Mahoney’s Daughter’s Debt. And the sub-headline, or whatever it’s called, would say: Is Mahoney Tied to the Mob?”
“But why would the casino cancel . . .”
“And you said that this Ted person wants federal funds for some project?”
“Yeah.”
“So even if Mahoney can’t get a rider attached to a bill, all you need is someone willing to say that Mahoney is trying to get one attached.”
“I still don’t see . . .”
“Can’t you just see the next headline? Mob Controlled Casino Cancels Mahoney’s Daughter’s Debt for Federal Funding. Well, maybe that’s kind of a long headline, but you get the idea, don’t you? That kind of press just might be enough to get his big butt bounced right out of the House.”
“But why would Ted Allen cancel the girl’s marker?” Fairchild asked again.
“Why, he wouldn’t, of course. But if someone was to give him a hundred grand, and maybe just a little more as sort of a . . . a service fee, he’d probably be willing to say that he did.”
Before Fairchild could say anything else, Barbara Jane wiggled her toes and laughed. “That just cracks me up! I’m Not Really a Waitress.”
20
“I’m sorry, Mr. DeMarco, but the doctor doesn’t have another opening on his schedule until August.”
“August! That’s four months from now! This tooth . . . Look, I’m not kidding you. I’m in agony here.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re pissed, aren’t you? You’re doing this because I walked out on you.”
“I am not . . .”
“You know I work for Congress. I can’t tell you why I had to leave because it’s classified—you know, national security—but believe me, I had to go. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Sorry.”
The woman was a rock—and she had a heart of stone. Not an ounce of compassion in her entire body.
“Well, is there some sort of dental emergency room somewhere?”
“Not that I know of, but I believe there’s a free clinic in Southeast. A place where dental students practice on the underprivileged.”
* * *
DeMarco had seen All the President’s Men, the Watergate movie starring Redford and Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein. He figured Randy Sawyer had seen the movie, too, because Sawyer had decided to re-create the scene where Woodward meets Deep Throat in an underground parking garage, a cavernous space of eerie shadows with concrete pillars to hide behind. DeMarco thought the meeting place Sawyer had picked was not only overly dramatic but downright uncomfortable. Any bar in the District would have been safe enough—and a lot more pleasant—but apparently Randy Sawyer didn’t think so.
“I’m telling you,” Sawyer said—or whispered, to
be precise, “if Kiser finds out I looked at her case files, she’ll have my nuts.”
“I thought she worked for you,” DeMarco said.
“Have you ever supervised people, DeMarco?”
DeMarco figured that Alice at the phone company didn’t count, so he said no.
“Well, let me tell you how it is. You have two kinds of people. First, there are the ones who are afraid of you and always do what you tell them. That’s most of them. Then you have people like Kay Kiser who aren’t afraid of anybody and do any damn thing they please.”
“I don’t get it,” DeMarco said. “You sound like you’re afraid of her.”
“I am afraid of her. And it’s because she would hand me my head on a platter if I did anything that she construed as preventing her from doing her job. She’d go over my head, she’d go to the press, and she’d call the cops if she thought I did something illegal.”
“But looking at her files isn’t illegal and is certainly within your purview as a manager,” DeMarco said.
“But leaking information to Molly Mahoney’s lawyers is illegal.”
“Randy, nobody is ever going to know that we talked.”
“You better be right about that,” Sawyer said.
“So what did you find out?” DeMarco said. He was tired of hiding behind a concrete pillar like he and Sawyer were two guys having a quickie.
“Kiser checked out Douglas Campbell’s finances five or six years ago. There’s hardly anybody at Reston Tech she hasn’t looked at, but Campbell was on her list because she thought he lived above his income.”
“She thought?”
“Yeah. But then she found out that Mrs. Campbell has a trust fund that was established by her late father and whoever manages the trust is doing a pretty good job. Kiser didn’t have all the numbers in the file, but from her notes it looks like the annual proceeds from the trust more than double Campbell’s salary.”