by Lawson, Mike
“He won’t deal Samuels for a reduced sentence?” Emma said.
“No, because according to the Myrtle Beach cops, Harvey Samuels would have him killed.”
“Shit,” Emma said. “Can we leave now, Sergeant? All Buddy and Brian did was make a citizen’s arrest and they’ve given your people a statement. And when Maynard goes to trial, they’ll testify—assuming they’re still stateside.”
“Yeah, they can go. And so can you. But I don’t ever want to see them again in Montgomery County, lurking around some neighborhood armed to the teeth. If you’re concerned about some citizen’s life being in danger, you call us.”
* * *
DeMarco followed Emma out of the police station and watched as she shook hands with Buddy and Brian. After they left, she turned to him and said, “Let’s go talk to Campbell.”
“Yeah, sure, but why did you . . .”
Emma ignored him and walked toward her car.
* * *
Campbell and his wife were in bed when Emma and DeMarco arrived at their house. The police had woken them up after they arrested Casey Maynard and asked if Campbell knew the man. Campbell said he didn’t and thanked the cops for catching the guy—having no idea that two mercenaries hired by Emma had actually apprehended Maynard. After the cops left, Campbell went back to bed, telling his wife how lucky they were and how they needed to start setting the security system at night before they went to sleep.
Campbell answered the door when Emma rang the bell at six a.m. He was dressed in a blue T-shirt and white pajama bottoms with red stripes. He looked like an overweight Uncle Sam. His big feet were bare.
“What in the hell do you two want?” he said when he saw Emma and DeMarco standing on his porch. “And what are you doing here at this time of day?”
“Campbell,” Emma said, “the man the police arrested trying to break into your house was hired by Rusty McGrath to kill you.”
“What?”
“Let us in. We need to talk to you.”
They took seats in Campbell’s living room and Emma told him how she had hired people to protect him and who Casey Maynard was. “Do you believe me now, Mr. Campbell?” she said. “McGrath tried to kill you in Charlottesville with a bag of peanuts and he tried to kill you again tonight. If I hadn’t had people watching over you, you and your wife would both be dead.”
“You don’t know that,” Campbell said. “The guy could have just been trying to rob the place. I mean, this is a wealthy neighborhood and . . .”
“Get real!” Emma said. “That man didn’t drive all the way from South Carolina to rob you. Like I told you, the cops said he works for a gangster in Myrtle Beach and he’s a contract killer. And can you think of anyone, other than Rusty McGrath, who lives in Myrtle Beach and might want you dead?”
Campbell just shook his big head and DeMarco didn’t know if that meant he didn’t believe Emma or was just in denial over everything that was happening to him.
“Campbell, you dumb shit,” DeMarco said, “McGrath killed Praeter and he’s going to kill you. He’s afraid you’re going to give him up. And he’s willing to kill your wife, too. Your wife! You need to testify against him now, because the next time he tries, somebody might not be here to stop him.”
But Emma and DeMarco couldn’t move him. Campbell just sat there looking down at the floor—a hulking, brooding form on the couch—obviously scared and trying to figure out what to do next, but refusing to cooperate. Emma and DeMarco gave up.
As they were walking toward their cars, DeMarco said, “I thought you weren’t helping me anymore.”
“I’m not,” Emma said. “I hired Benton Security to watch over Campbell before I found out you lied to me. I couldn’t let McGrath kill that imbecile.” Emma stopped walking and gave DeMarco the full force of her eyes. “You’ve set something in motion to clear Molly Mahoney of a crime you know she’s committed, and now you’re getting people killed. Do you understand that?”
“I didn’t set anything in motion, Emma. I didn’t have some sort of master plan when this all started. All I did was ask Campbell a couple of questions.”
“And one other thing, genius,” Emma said. “McGrath didn’t kill Praeter. He has an alibi.”
“What! What alibi?”
“The guy who ran the marina in Myrtle Beach said McGrath was taking his boat out for a couple of days. Remember?”
“Yeah. You thought he parked it somewhere and flew up to New York using a fake ID.”
“Well, I was wrong,” Emma said. “I had asked a Coast Guard friend of mine to contact marinas near Myrtle Beach, and the day Praeter was killed, McGrath’s boat was docked in Georgetown, South Carolina. When I called the marina operator, he said McGrath was there the whole time entertaining a local woman. The woman confirmed McGrath was with her the night Praeter died.”
“I’ll be damned,” DeMarco muttered.
“Without a doubt,” Emma said.
“So maybe McGrath hired someone to kill Praeter. Maybe this guy Maynard was the one who did the job.”
Instead of responding to DeMarco’s latest theory, Emma said, “Don’t call me again regarding any of this, Joe. If fact, don’t call me period. And Campbell’s your responsibility from this point forward.”
After Emma drove away, DeMarco stood on the curb feeling . . . What? Shame? No, not so much shame as a sense of loss. One of the few good friends he had no longer trusted him.
Molly Mahoney wasn’t worth what he’d just lost.
44
“Why would Rusty want to kill us, Doug?” Kathy Campbell said.
Campbell had made the mistake of telling his wife what Emma and DeMarco had told him, and now she was yammering at him, asking questions he couldn’t answer.
The fact was, he didn’t know why Rusty wanted to kill him. With Praeter dead, both he and Rusty were safe. Praeter was the weak link—he was the one who bought the stock, hid the trail from the SEC, and set up the offshore accounts—but the SEC had never been able to connect him leaking information to Praeter. With Praeter gone, they didn’t have anything to worry about—so why did Rusty want him dead? Was Rusty afraid that he’d crack under the pressure if people kept investigating? Did he think this whole thing with Molly Mahoney was going to lead back to them? It just didn’t make sense.
Well, one thing made sense. Rusty McGrath was a cold-blooded son of a bitch who loved nobody but Rusty McGrath and he’d do anything to protect himself. And he was a fuckin’ psycho. When they’d played together at UVA, the one thing he learned about his pal, Rusty, was that he was not only willing to hurt people, he liked to hurt people.
“Doug, answer me!” Kathy Campbell shrieked, her voice piercing his skull. “What are we going to do?”
Campbell was still wearing the pajama bottoms he had on when Emma and DeMarco woke him. He left his wife—she was still yammering at him as he walked away—went to his bedroom, put on a pair of battered loafers and a lightweight jacket, and shoved his wallet and his car keys into one of the jacket’s pockets.
“Where the hell are you going?” his wife asked.
He ignored her and walked out of the house.
* * *
It took him fifteen minutes to find a pay phone. He called Rusty’s cell phone and said, “It’s me, you cocksucker. I’m still alive.”
“What?” McGrath said. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about, you demented fuck. Now, go find a pay phone and call me back. I don’t want to talk to you on your cell. Here’s the number I’m at.”
He read the number off the phone and ten minutes later McGrath called.
“So what’s going on, buddy,” McGrath said. “What are you all riled up about? You’re not drinking this early in the day, are you?”
“You know w
hat’s going on. You sent a guy up here to kill me but the cops caught him trying to break into my house.”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” McGrath said.
“You lying son of a bitch! Look, I have as much on you as you have on me but I’m not going to say anything to the SEC or anybody else. I don’t have any intention of testifying against you or telling anybody what we did. All I want to do is enjoy the money Dickie made us. But here’s what I am going to do. I’m going to put a letter in a safe deposit box and tell my lawyer if anything happens to me, anything at all, he should send the letter to the cops. You hear me, Rusty? You kill me and you’ll go to jail.”
McGrath didn’t say anything for a moment, then finally said, “I hear you, Dog. But let me tell you one little thing. If you do talk to anybody about what we’ve done, I know people who can get to you even if I’m in prison. So we’ll call it a draw for now and just hope that Dickie didn’t leave any kind of trail the feds can follow.”
* * *
McGrath hung up the phone and walked back to the marina. Goddamn Campbell. He wasn’t the brightest guy in the world but he may have been the luckiest guy in the world. First that gal Emma keeps him from sprinkling peanuts on Campbell’s dinner in Charlottesville and then the idiot Samuels sends to kill Campbell gets caught by the cops. Dog Campbell oughta be buying lotto tickets.
So what should he do now?
Well, the answer at this point was obvious: he should do nothing. Campbell might be lying about putting a letter in a safe deposit box but he probably wasn’t. So he’d just have to hope that this whole mess surrounding Molly Mahoney didn’t lead to anything, and if it did, that Campbell would have the brains and the balls to keep his mouth shut.
He had used a pay phone a couple of blocks from the marina and as he walked back to his boat, he looked up at the sky. It was gonna be a good day. Hot, not a rain cloud in sight. Yeah, it would be a good day to go fishing. He’d heard that a guy caught a good-size tarpon yesterday, and there was nothing more fun than getting a big ol’ tarpon on the line.
45
Mahoney pulled into the gravel parking lot of a tavern. The tavern was on the outskirts of Manassas, about thirty miles southwest of D.C., and Mahoney knew before he entered the place that it would have country-western songs on the jukebox, long-necked bottles of Bud, and pickled things in jars behind the bar. At eleven a.m., there were only two cars in the parking lot: a new Ford pickup with a Romney bumper sticker and a severely dented Mazda with red tape over one taillight. Mahoney was willing to bet that one of the vehicles belonged to the bartender and the other to some guy who’d gotten too shitfaced the night before to drive home—a predicament that Mahoney had found himself in more than once.
An hour earlier DeMarco had called and told him that Rusty McGrath had made another attempt on Campbell’s life. And that’s why Mahoney had gone for a drive—because there was just too much information to process.
Al Castiglia and Ted Allen. McGrath and Campbell. Big Bob Fairchild’s machinations. Molly’s legal problems. It was all just too much, and his head felt like it was about to explode. Finally, unable to get any work done, he changed clothes, told his secretary a lie, sent Perry Wallace to a meeting that he should have gone to himself, and left the Capitol.
He started driving, no particular destination in mind. He just wanted to get out of D.C. as if he might be able to think better if the distance between him and all the politicians were greater. When he saw the tavern, he decided to stop for a drink, thinking that the way he was dressed, no one would recognize him. He was wearing beige chinos, a short-sleeved white polo shirt that was tight across his gut, and a blue baseball cap with “USS Boston” emblazoned on the crown. The USS Boston was a nuclear sub—now decommissioned and dismantled—and the Chief of Naval Operations had given Mahoney the hat at the decommissioning ceremony. It was one of Mahoney’s favorite hats.
The bartender was a woman in her fifties. She was wearing jeans and a turquoise shirt with pearly-looking snap buttons. She had a good figure, dyed blond hair, and a face that said she didn’t take crap from anyone. She was reading the Wall Street Journal, looking at the mutual fund section, and she looked up in annoyance when Mahoney walked through the door. This was the quiet time of her day and she wasn’t thrilled to see a prelunch boozer. She stared at Mahoney’s face for a moment when she brought him a Wild Turkey on the rocks but didn’t say anything to him. After she handed him his drink she took her Journal down to the far end of the bar to read, leaving Mahoney to drink and brood alone.
A lot of Mahoney’s cronies in Congress were very wealthy people. They had large family fortunes and vast real estate holdings or had run successful businesses before turning to politics. But neither Mahoney nor his wife came from money; they didn’t have a fat family trust to fall back on. Prior to 2008, Mahoney was doing okay, however, and his net worth had been around three million bucks. He’d made most of the money off investments—investments where, during the normal course of his job, he learned which stocks to buy and sell. In other words, he’d profited from insider trading, which, ironically, was legal for members of Congress until a law was passed in 2012 banning them from doing what the general public—including his daughter—wasn’t allowed to do.
But in 2008, the recession hit him as hard as anyone—which was one of the reasons he beat up bankers whenever he got the chance. Money he had in mutual funds was reduced by over forty percent, but that wasn’t the big problem. In 2007, some smart guys who were supposed to know what they were doing talked him into putting a ton of dough into a development down in Florida. It was a sure thing, and he figured to make maybe five or ten million off the deal—until the housing market collapsed and he lost all the money he invested. Mary Pat was still steamed about that. On top of that disaster, he had to put more of his own money into his last two campaigns because the economy was pissing everybody off and he was more nervous than usual that he might lose his seat. The bottom line was, his net worth was now nowhere near three million bucks. He wasn’t sure how much he had in the way of liquid assets—he’d have to talk to his accountant—but it was probably in the range of two or three hundred grand.
The other problem Mahoney had with money was that he spent it quickly and in large amounts. It seemed to run through his hands the way bourbon ran down his throat. He made over two hundred thousand a year, which wasn’t bad, but he dressed well, he ate well, and he was always entertaining someone. And last year they had to give some dough to their youngest daughter, Mitzy, who still didn’t make enough to support herself, and Mary Pat’s mom, who had Alzheimer’s, was in a facility that was costing them a mint. He had a big house back in Boston, a condo in D.C., and his wife’s boat. The house and boat were paid for, but they were still paying on the condo. If all that wasn’t burden enough, now Molly’s lawyers were bleeding him dry.
There was no way he could pay off Molly’s credit cards, her lawyers, and the five hundred grand she owed Ted Allen unless he sold the house back in Boston and maybe Mary Pat’s boat as well. He supposed he could also sell the condo in D.C. and find someplace cheaper to live. . . . Aw, screw that; he wasn’t going to live in a dump.
He could get a loan, of course. There were plenty of people who’d be willing to lend him the money—or for that matter, who’d be willing to just give him the money. Mahoney was hardly a virgin when it came to trading to his influence for some sort of compensation, but there were two things he didn’t do. The first of those was that he didn’t take large amounts of cash; money just left too much of a trail. Instead, his house would be remodeled for an extraordinarily good price, his cars would cost him significantly less than the sticker price on the windows in the dealer’s showroom, a vacation in Hawaii . . . Well, it was amazing how little it cost him to travel first-class. Most often though, his compensation came in the form of campaign contributions, and when you had to run for of
fice every two years, you needed all the help you could get.
The other thing he didn’t do was approach people asking for something in return for his vote. They always approached him, asking for a favor, and he made sure they understood he couldn’t guarantee results in the unpredictable world of partisan politics. But if he went to somebody now and asked for money . . . Well, they would basically own him, and he wouldn’t allow that. It wasn’t a matter of integrity—it was a matter of being in charge of his own destiny. But if he didn’t do one of those things—get a loan, sell the house in Boston, or sell his vote—where in the hell was he going to get the seven hundred grand he needed?
Then on top of the money problem, which was huge, there was Big Bob Fairchild, who knew about Molly’s gambling and thought he could force Mahoney to do whatever he wanted. What he could do with Fairchild was tell the special prosecutor to back off on Little Bob and vote on a couple things to make Big Bob happy, but he knew that even if he did those things, Fairchild wouldn’t stop. He’d eventually leak to the media that Ted Allen had canceled Molly’s marker, and that could ultimately destroy his career. But he’d worry about Big Bob later; right now getting the Mob off Molly’s back and keeping her out of jail was his major concern.
He stirred the bourbon in his glass with one thick finger and thought about what DeMarco had told him, about this gangster, Al Castiglia. And he thought about Douglas Campbell and that maniac, McGrath.
And he came up with an answer.
A really ugly answer.
“Would you like another drink, Congressman?” the bartender said.
Aw, shit. She had recognized him.
“Yeah, maybe just one more,” Mahoney said.
“Kinda surprised to see you here, during the middle of the workday,” the bartender said, and then, jabbing a finger at the Journal, she added, “I mean, with the economy being all screwed up the way it is.”