by Lawson, Mike
Mahoney stood up and his big hands clutched the edge of his desk, and for a moment DeMarco thought he was going to flip it over.
“That guy works for Ted Allen. Are you telling me they kidnapped my daughter!” Mahoney screamed.
They finally decided that Molly hadn’t been kidnapped. Ted Allen wouldn’t be that stupid, and if even he was that stupid, he wouldn’t have kidnapped her in broad daylight. They concluded that Ted was doing two things: one, he wanted to meet with Molly and tell her what would happen to her if she testified against him. He’d trot out Denny Reed, as he had for Mahoney, and make sure Molly understood that Denny could be either her salvation or her demise. The second thing they concluded was that Ted was sending Mahoney a message, and not a very subtle one. The message was: Your daughter could have been in her car.
Mahoney said, “I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch.”
DeMarco had never considered it his job to protect Mahoney; he’d always figured that Mahoney was the last guy who needed his protection. But maybe that wasn’t the case right now. In the frame of mind he was in, Mahoney just might kill Ted Allen. And that’s when DeMarco had said: “Look, boss, Molly’s okay. I’ll drive up to Atlantic City and bring her back. And I’ll have a talk with Ted.”
The last thing Mahoney said to him before he left was: “When you find her, Joe, bring her to me. I want to talk to her before her mother does.”
So DeMarco was on his way to Atlantic City to get Molly—and to have a chat with Ted Allen. He was now driving by all the giant billboards on the expressway that proclaimed that the slot machines in every casino just spit out money. They used the term “loose”—the “loosest slots on the Boardwalk.”
He pulled into the Atlantic Palace’s parking garage and took the elevator to the main casino floor. The sound of all the loose slot machines almost deafened him when the doors opened. He walked over to the security desk and told a man standing there that he wanted to see Mr. Allen. The guard asked if he had an appointment and DeMarco said no. “Tell Mr. Allen I’m from Washington, D.C., and that a very pissed off politician sent me.”
* * *
When DeMarco entered Ted’s penthouse office, Ted was sitting behind his desk wearing a black sport jacket, a maroon T-shirt, and grey slacks. His tasseled loafers were up on the desk. He was a portrait of a relaxed, confident man—a man who had no doubt that he had the world by the balls.
With Ted, standing off to one side, was a short, wide guy wearing a dark suit over a white polo shirt. On his feet were white alligator-skin cowboy boots. He was also wearing a shoulder holster containing a big black automatic.
“Where’s Molly?” DeMarco said.
“Who are you?” Ted said.
“My name’s DeMarco. I work for John Mahoney. I’m the guy he sends to deal with people like you.”
“People like me?” Ted said, and smiled.
“That’s right, Ted.”
“So you know about the problem I currently have with Mahoney and his daughter.”
“Yeah. You got your hooks into Molly, then fucked up big time when she was arrested and your money was frozen.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Ted said. “Has Mahoney decided to cooperate?”
“He’s still thinking about it,” DeMarco said.
Ted took his feet off the desk and stood up. He didn’t look so relaxed now. He looked like he was about to have a little hissy fit.
“You need to make it clear to Mahoney,” Ted said, “that I’m not screwing around here. Either he does what I want, or his daughter goes to jail. And that’s the best scenario.”
“Is that why you firebombed her car and dragged her up here? To scare Mahoney?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t firebomb anything. And I didn’t drag her up here. I sent a car for her. I even gave her a couple hundred in chips so she can play for a while.” Ted barked out a laugh before he added, “But with her luck, I doubt she’ll be playing all that long. The last time I checked she was having lunch, and when she’s finished playing, Gus,” Ted said, pointing at the guy with the boots, “will take her back to D.C.”
“No, she’ll be going back with me,” DeMarco said. “Now I want you to listen to me, Ted. You’re screwing around with one of the most powerful politicians in this country. Do you understand that? He’s not some small-time city councilman. He can have the FBI climbing all over your dumb ass with one phone call. The smartest thing you can do right now is to write off your losses and let Molly take her chances at a trial. In return, I promise we’ll keep your name out of it.”
“No, you listen to me,” Ted said. “I’m gonna give Molly a little break and cancel her gambling marker, but . . .”
“What?” DeMarco said.
“I said, I’m canceling her gambling marker. Tell Mahoney he can consider that a gift, a gesture to show that I’m a reasonable man. But I want the five hundred grand back that’s been frozen by the SEC, and I want federal funding for my convention center. And if I don’t get what I want, Molly Mahoney’s bony ass is going to end up in prison. Or worse. Now toss this asshole out of my casino, Gus.”
Gus said, “Let’s go, pal,” then he made the mistake of grabbing DeMarco’s shoulder to move him out of the room.
DeMarco had a punching bag in his Georgetown home. He liked to hit it when he was frustrated—and right now he was very frustrated. He was mad about what Molly had done and the way she’d lied to him and her parents. He was also pissed at Ted Allen for trying to take advantage of the situation. And his tooth hurt. So when Gus Amato grabbed his shoulder, he spun around and hit him on the chin harder than he had ever hit his punching bag.
In a fair fight, Gus would most likely have beaten him. He looked stronger than DeMarco and he was probably used to hitting folks. But it wasn’t a fair fight. DeMarco punched him when he wasn’t expecting it, and Gus collapsed to the floor, landing hard on his butt, legs sprawled straight out in front of him. His eyes had the glassy, unfocused look of someone on the verge of unconsciousness. But then he shook his head like a dog shaking off water, and his limbs began to move in slow, uncoordinated movements as he struggled to get to his feet—so DeMarco pulled the automatic from Gus’s shoulder holster and hit him on the side of the head with the barrel of the heavy weapon.
Then Gus was unconscious.
* * *
Molly Mahoney was not eating lunch as Ted had said. She was at a craps table and it looked like she was winning. The rack in front of her was filled with chips—green and black chips. A green chip is worth twenty-five dollars; a black one is worth a hundred. Her face was flushed and her eyes were shining as if she’d just had the best sex of her young life.
DeMarco wanted to grab her by the nape of the neck and shake her.
Molly had the dice in her hand and she was rolling—and judging by the chips in front of her, she’d been rolling for a very long time. She was making money for herself and the other ten men standing at the craps table, and if DeMarco interrupted her roll they’d take him outside and feed him to the seagulls.
At that moment, Molly hit her point, a four. The men at the table all roared and Molly high-fived the guy on her right, then the one on her left. She threw a green chip to the stickman as a tip.
It was her turn to roll again. She put five hundred dollars on the pass line, the table limit. She shook the dice, then stopped, and tossed a hundred dollar chip to the stickman. “Boxcars,” she said.
Boxcars is the number twelve, six dots showing on each die, and if Molly hit the number on her next roll her she would collect three thousand dollars because the bet paid thirty to one. But she had to throw the twelve on the next roll, and the next roll only. And the reason the bet paid thirty to one was, of course, because the odds of hitting the number were practically nil. It was an absolutely stupid bet—
but Molly rolled a twelve and won.
The guys at the table all roared again. Molly was their queen.
She rolled again. She threw a nine, then three—then a seven. Her roll was over. All her new friends congratulated her on the fine job she’d done as if skill had been involved instead of dumb luck, and then immediately forgot about her as the dice were passed to the next guy.
DeMarco walked up behind her and whispered in her ear, “Pick up your fuckin’ chips and cash out. Now.”
Molly spun around and saw it was DeMarco. She started to say something, but before she could, DeMarco said, “I swear to Christ, Molly, I’ll drag you away from this table by your hair.”
DeMarco’s feelings toward Molly Mahoney had changed. At first he’d felt sorry for her, the way Kay Kiser had refused to give her the benefit of the doubt. And later, when he saw the way she was living and discovered how much money she owed, he still felt sorry for her. He had wanted to defend this frail young woman who was being assaulted from every side. But now he knew she was guilty of the crime that Kiser had accused her of, and that wasn’t the worst part. There was something devious and manipulative about Molly. She’d been clever enough to pitch Ted Allen the stock scheme to get out from under him, and then, after she was caught, she’d been smart enough to point DeMarco at Douglas Campbell. The only good, unselfish thing she’d done was try to solve her gambling problem without involving her parents, but that had backfired so horribly that her father was now in more trouble than he would have been if she had just gone to him in the beginning and asked for his help. DeMarco didn’t feel sorry for Molly anymore; she just pissed him off.
DeMarco followed her over to the cashier’s cage and watched as she exchanged her chips for cash. The cashier paid her almost seven thousand dollars.
“I’ve never had a roll like that in my life,” she said, her eyes glowing.
DeMarco didn’t say anything. He took her arm and marched her toward one of the casino’s bars—the place was so damn big it had five bars—and as they walked, the flush of victory began to drain from Molly’s face. From the bartender, DeMarco ordered a cup of coffee, a white wine for Molly—and a champagne bucket.
The bartender looked confused. “You want a champagne bucket for a glass of wine?”
“Just give me a bucket and fill it with ice.”
The bartender did, and DeMarco led Molly over to a booth where they could talk. He put the champagne bucket on the seat next to him and shoved his right hand into it, the hand that he’d used to hit Gus Amato.
“Is something wrong with your hand?” Molly said.
“Do you know who Ted Allen is, Molly?” DeMarco said.
“Yeah, he owns the casino.”
“No, he doesn’t own the casino. The fucking Mob owns the casino, Molly. Ted just works for them.” DeMarco started to scream something else at her but he took a breath and said, “How’d this ever happen, Molly?”
And Molly Mahoney began to cry.
* * *
“It started about a year ago,” she told DeMarco.
She came up to Atlantic City with a guy she’d been dating, a physics professor at GW. The professor introduced her to the game of craps and then the very worst thing that could have possibly happened, happened —she won. She won almost two thousand dollars. She was hooked.
She explained to DeMarco that what she liked about craps was that a player who understood the odds had an advantage. The game of craps looks complicated to most people, she said. All those numbers all over the table—hardway bets and field bets, pass and don’t pass bets—but it was actually quite simple once you understood the mathematical probability of the dice rolling a seven versus any other number.
As she was saying all this, DeMarco was thinking that this was how even smart people, people like Molly Mahoney with an engineering degree, got into trouble. The odds always favored the house. Always. And sometimes the biggest losers were bright, educated people who thought they were brighter than the guys who the built the casinos. The other thing was that for some people gambling was addictive—it could be just as addictive as alcohol or cocaine—and a person’s IQ was often no defense when it came to addiction.
After she won that first time, she started going to Atlantic City almost every weekend and within ten months her savings account was bare and her credit cards were maxed out. It wasn’t long before she had to find a cheaper place to live and her salary—the part she didn’t gamble with—went for paying her rent and utilities and the minimum balance on her credit cards. Like any gambling junky, she always figured the next trip to the casino was going to be the trip, the one where she’d hit it big. It really didn’t take long at all before her standard of living had more in common with single moms on welfare than with professional women who make almost a hundred grand a year.
She always came to the Atlantic Palace because this was where she won the first time—and because Ted Allen was such a nice guy. Once, when she lost ten thousand dollars in less than four hours, he comped her dinner, a show, and a room. And then Ted said that if she needed money to play some more that weekend, he could give her an advance, and he took a little card out of his wallet and wrote something on the back of it. “Just take this to any cashier in the casino whenever you’re up here,” he had said, “and they’ll give you whatever you need.” Then he said, “But you do understand that these are loans, Molly. Right?” Before she could answer, he laughed and ordered her a glass of Dom Pérignon.
“I didn’t even know how much I’d borrowed until two months ago,” Molly said. “I went to the cashier’s cage one day with my magic card and the next thing I know a security guy is taking me up to Ted’s office. I knew I owed a lot but when Ted handed me a statement that I had borrowed a hundred and nine thousand . . . I threw up, right there in his office.”
Bet Ted had really liked that.
“They told me . . .”
“They?”
“Ted and this other guy, Greg, his accountant. I heard Greg got killed in a traffic accident. Anyway, they said I either had to pay back the money in a week or they were going to talk to my dad and maybe the press. That’s when I came up with the stock idea. I knew Doug Campbell was doing something like that—that phone call I told you about really happened—so I figured I could, too, and I knew that when the submarine battery design went public . . . Well, it was a sure thing.”
“So that’s when you went to Ted,” DeMarco said, “this guy who has a degree in business, and he pretends that he’s never heard of a little thing called insider trading. He says: Sure, Molly, here’s five hundred grand. Make us a little money, too, while you’re at it.”
“Yeah,” Molly said. “I didn’t think anybody would notice me buying such a small amount of stock. It’s not like I’m Martha Stewart; I’m not famous or anything. And I was careful. I did everything online and . . . Oh, God, what am I going to do, Joe?”
It was apparent that Molly hadn’t known that the SEC had been keeping an eye on Reston Tech for past problems. Maybe if she’d known, she wouldn’t have taken the risk. Or maybe not. Maybe she was so desperate she felt she had to take the risk.
He didn’t necessarily believe her about Douglas Campbell, though. DeMarco had unwittingly pointed her at Campbell when he asked: Who do you know that has access to your personal information and lives above his means? And that’s when she thought of Campbell. Maybe she really did hear the call she claimed to have heard—and maybe that’s what gave her the idea for the insider trading scheme—but Molly Mahoney, this person he thought was a victim, was clever enough to point DeMarco at a viable alternate suspect.
“I don’t know what you’re going to do,” DeMarco said, answering her question. “Right now there’s about a fifty-fifty chance of you going to jail. The odds of you being convicted would normally be higher, but your lawyer’s a shark and he’s going to
throw up a smoke screen saying that Campbell and a couple of his buddies are the real insiders and not you. And it might work. And Kay Kiser still wants to know where you got the half a million you invested. So if it looks like you’re going to lose at trial, you could give her Ted, and maybe the people behind Ted—they’re bigger fish than you—and you might get a reduced sentence. But then you’d have a problem.”
“What problem?”
“For starters, Molly, and I’m sure Ted told you this, they have a guy who’s willing to testify that he gave you the money and that Ted didn’t have anything to do with it. But that’s not your biggest problem.”
“What is?” Molly said.
“Your biggest problem is that Ted might have you killed.”
* * *
DeMarco drove Molly back to D.C. It was a four-hour trip and almost nine p.m. when they arrived at the Capitol. Mahoney had said that he wanted to talk to his daughter before she spoke to her mother, and he was waiting in his office.
The rest of Mahoney’s staff had left for the day, except for Perry Wallace. When DeMarco arrived with Molly, Wallace was sitting in front of Mahoney’s desk with a six-inch stack of paper on his lap, briefing Mahoney on a dozen different political matters. The wheels of government hadn’t stopped spinning just because Molly Mahoney had been arrested.
Mahoney dismissed Wallace and said to Molly, “Sit your ass down. I’ll be with you in a minute.” Molly started crying again.
DeMarco told Mahoney about his meeting with Ted—leaving out the part where he beat Ted’s bodyguard unconscious. “Ted also told me he’s canceling Molly’s marker.”
“Why the hell would he do that?” Mahoney asked.
DeMarco shrugged. “I don’t know. He said it was a goodwill gesture. But he still wants the funds for his convention center and he still wants his half million back.”
“Something’s going on here,” Mahoney muttered. Then when he couldn’t figure out what it was, he added, “Anyway, you can take off. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”