House Odds

by Lawson, Mike

  “I asked what you men wanted,” Campbell said, this time trying to put some authority into his voice.

  Delray pivoted on his right foot and backhanded Campbell across the face with the barbecue tongs. Slashed him a good one.

  Campbell cried out in pain and stumbled backward, tripping over the chair where he’d been sitting. His wife spilled her drink and leapt to her feet, mouth wide open, eyes the size of walnuts.

  “Take the bitch in the house and do her,” Delray said to Billy.

  The woman sucked in air to scream, but Billy, who was amazingly fast for a guy his size, clamped his hand over her mouth and began to drag her toward the house.

  Campbell was still on the ground, but now on his knees and trying to get back up onto his feet. Tears were leaking from his eyes. Before he could stand, Delray kicked him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.

  Delray looked over his shoulder to make sure the woman was under control then reached down and grabbed the back of Campbell’s shirt, and, with one hand, dragged the two hundred and seventy pound man over to the edge of the swimming pool. He started to kneel down next to Campbell, but then realized he was going to get the knees of his pants wet and dirty. He kicked Campbell again to immobilize him, and went over to the chair where Campbell’s wife had been sitting, took the cushion off the chair, and tossed it near the pool. That was better.

  Kneeling down on the cushion, he grabbed Campbell by his belt, pulled him forward until his head was over the edge of the pool, then pushed his head under the water. Campbell’s legs started to kick and he tried to get his head out of the water, but Delray was too strong.

  After about forty-five seconds, after all the air was gone from Campbell’s lungs and he started to ingest water, Delray let Campbell raise his head. He allowed him enough time to cough and hack a bit, then said, “You owe my boss half a million dollars. He wants it back.”

  “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re making a mis—”

  Delray pushed Campbell’s head under the water again.

  Man, those steaks smell good. Gonna have to go for a steak after this.

  He pulled Campbell’s head out of the pool a second time and again had to wait for Campbell to stop gagging. He hoped the fat fool didn’t have a heart attack.

  “My partner’s in there raping your skinny bitch of a wife,” he said, “and then I’m gonna have my turn, and then I’m gonna start cuttin’ parts off your body until we reach an understanding. Now, what are you gonna do about the half million?”

  “I swear to you . . .” Campbell said.

  “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Campbell and Delray both turned toward the man who had yelled. It was DeMarco.

  “Help!” Campbell screamed.

  “Oh, shit,” Delray said, trying to put a little panic into his voice, and let go of Campbell. He had to get past DeMarco to get out of the backyard. “Billy!” Delray yelled, “Get out of the house!”

  DeMarco stepped to one side to allow Delray to get by him, making no attempt to stop him, and Delray smiled slightly—then lowered his shoulder like a running back, hit DeMarco square in the chest, and knocked him into an azalea bush. He chuckled as he moved toward his car.

  By the time Delray reached the front yard, Billy was coming out the front door. They walked casually to their car.

  “You didn’t hurt the broad, did you?” Delray asked.

  “Nah. Just ripped her clothes a little and told her all the nasty stuff I was gonna do to her. She’s got a pretty nice rack on her, I mean for a gal her age.”

  “I’m hungry,” Delray said. “Let’s go get us a steak.”

  59

  “Thank God you got here when you did,” Campbell said.

  That was about the third or fourth time he’d said that, and DeMarco still didn’t say anything to acknowledge his gratitude. He knew the man was going to be much less grateful in a few minutes.

  They were sitting at the Campbells’ kitchen table. Kathy Campbell was wearing a bathrobe to cover her torn blouse, Campbell was holding an icepack to his face, and DeMarco was rubbing his chest where Delray had smacked into him. The son of a bitch had knocked him ass over teakettle, and his chest hurt, his back hurt, and his pants were a mess. There’d been no reason for the bastard to do that.

  It took a while for Kathy Campbell to stop crying and when she finally did, she wanted to call the police. “You don’t want to do that, Mrs. Campbell,” DeMarco said.

  “Why not? That man was going to rape me. And look at Doug’s face!”

  “You need to know what’s going on before you talk to the cops. And the cops aren’t going to be able to help you, anyway.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. Turning to her husband, she said, “What’s he talking about, Doug?”

  Campbell ignored his wife. He rose from the table, took a bottle of gin out of a cupboard, and poured three fingers into a glass. When he didn’t pour a drink for his wife, she gave him a dirty look and a sarcastic “Thank you, Doug,” then got up and poured her own.

  Campbell swallowed half the drink before he sat back down at the table. His thin blond hair was plastered over his scalp and his T-shirt was still wet. The one-inch-wide welt on the left side of his face was bright red and that side of his face was beginning to swell. Delray really enjoyed his work.

  “The men that attacked you and your wife, Mr. Campbell, work for a crime syndicate.”

  “A crime syndicate?” Kathy Campbell said.

  “Mafia. Mob. Whatever you wanna call ’em.”

  “But why the did they come here?” Doug Campbell said.

  “The half million that Molly Mahoney is accused of investing in that insider-trader scheme, the money that’s been frozen by the government? Well, that was Mob money.”

  “But what hell does that have to do with me?” Campbell said.

  “They think you’re the one who lost their money,” DeMarco said.

  “But I’m not!” Campbell shrieked.

  “Campbell, I need to talk to you privately.”

  * * *

  Kathy Campbell wasn’t too happy to be excluded from the discussion, but Campbell told her to shut up—which caused her to start crying again—and then he grabbed the gin bottle and led DeMarco outside onto the patio. Campbell noticed his steaks were still on the grill, now looking like two hockey pucks. “Shit,” he said, and turned off the barbecue.

  “So what the hell’s going on? Why do those guys think . . .”

  “First,” DeMarco said, “I want to apologize for your wife getting roughed up. I didn’t think they’d do something like that.”

  “What! You knew they were coming?”

  “Well, not them specifically, but I knew somebody would be coming to see you.”

  “I don’t understand. How did you know . . .”

  “Campbell, those two guys work for a murderous lunatic up in Philly. And the money that was frozen by the SEC when Molly was arrested? Well, the money belonged to that lunatic, and what I did was tell him that you were Molly’s partner and it was your fault his money was confiscated.”

  “You gotta be shittin’ . . .”

  “I told this gangster if he wanted his money back all he had to do was knock you around a bit.”

  “This is outrageous!”

  “Keep your voice down, Doug.”

  “But I never had anything to do with Molly Mahoney.”

  “I know that, Doug, but somebody has to pay this mobster back and I decided you were the guy. You see, I know you were the inside guy at Reston and I know you fed information to Praeter. And he made you and Rusty McGrath a shitload of money in the last twenty years. So to keep Molly Mahoney from getting killed by the Mob, I fed you to them. Sorry, but I did
n’t have a choice.”

  “This is bullshit. You can’t do this.”

  “Doug, I’ve already done it. And let me tell you what else I can do. If the Mob doesn’t get you, I’ll give you to the State of New York.”

  “New York?”

  “Yeah, I’ll make sure they arrest you for Praeter’s murder because I know you killed him. At first, I thought McGrath killed Praeter, but then I found out he had an airtight alibi for the night Praeter died. But you don’t have an alibi. What you have is an EZ-Pass sticker on your car, which means you were recorded going through every tollbooth between Maryland and Manhattan, and you were in Manhattan the night Praeter was killed.”

  DeMarco knew this because of sneaky Neil.

  “I didn’t kill Dickie,” Campbell said. “I went to Manhattan that night to recruit a guy we were trying to hire. The guy will tell you I was with him.”

  DeMarco figured Campbell was probably telling the truth; he’d been smart enough to come up with a reason for being in New York the night Praeter died. But he wasn’t that smart.

  “I believe you, Doug. I believe you met this guy, maybe had dinner with him, then met up with Praeter later that night, got him drunk, and killed him.”

  “That’s not true. I . . .”

  DeMarco held up his hand. “Campbell, right now NYPD thinks Praeter committed suicide because he was a wack job who’d tried to kill himself before. The cops don’t even know that you knew Praeter. But when I tell them how you were afraid that Praeter was going to testify against you after he was subpoenaed by Molly’s lawyer, and after Molly’s father leans on the cops with all his political weight . . . Well, they’re going to get you, Doug. And they’re going to get you because they’re good and because you’re a fuckin’ moron.”

  “I’m telling you, I didn’t . . .”

  “They’re going to find witnesses that will put you and Praeter together in some bar that night. They’re going spot your ugly mug on one of the ten million cameras they have all over Manhattan. They’re going to find fingerprints or DNA in Praeter’s office. They’re going to find something, Doug, and then you’ll be convicted for murder—assuming the Mob doesn’t kill you first, and right now my money’s on the Mob.”

  “So what the hell do you want? Did you just come here to tell me how you’ve fucked up my life?”

  “No. I came here to make you a deal.”

  “A deal?”

  “I want you to take the fall for Molly Mahoney. I want you to confess that Praeter set up a bank account in her name, that you and your pals put up the money she supposedly invested, and that Praeter was the one who really bought the stock through those e-brokers she allegedly used.”

  “Why the hell would I do that? Why would I admit to committing a crime I never committed?”

  “Because it’ll keep you alive, Doug, and it will keep you out of jail. And if you do what I want, you can also keep your money. The money that Praeter made you, that is.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You see what I’ve done, Doug, is I’ve worked out a deal for you with the Justice Department.”

  “The Justice Department?”

  “Yeah,” DeMarco said. Actually, Mahoney and Perry Wallace had worked out the deal but he wasn’t going to tell Campbell that. “And the deal is this: You take the fall for Molly, admit you and McGrath worked with Praeter on the Reston insider-trading scams, then you testify against Rusty McGrath—this good friend of yours who’s tried to kill you twice. If you do that, then Justice won’t put you in jail and you’ll go into the witness protection program so the Mob can’t get you. And once you’re in the program, you can start spending all the money Praeter made you, and that you’ve got socked away in some offshore account. In other words, Doug, you can start life over with a new identity and a lot of money in the bank and go live in fucking Tahiti for all I care.”

  “You’ll let me walk?

  “I’m not letting you walk. The SEC and the Department of Justice are letting you walk in return for testifying against McGrath. Justice knows McGrath hired a guy to kill you even if they can’t prove it. So they’d rather have McGrath than you. But if you don’t take the deal . . . Well, there’s no point in repeating myself.”

  “Why are you doing this to me? I never did anything to you.”

  “Because that’s my job, Doug. My job is to keep Molly Mahoney out of jail and the only way I can do that is to hang your ass out to dry. So are you going to take the deal or not?”

  “I gotta think this over.”

  “Sure. Take your time. You’ve got until I reach my car to make a decision, after which you’ll never see me again.”

  “I need time to think! I can’t just . . .”

  “Time’s up, Doug. So which door is it going to be?”

  “Which door?”

  “Yeah. Door number one is the deal I just offered you. Door number two is the NYPD, a murder conviction, and the rest of your life in a cage. Door number three is a guy from Philly that’s going to cut your fucking head off. So pick a door. Now.”

  Campbell sat there for a bit, looking down at his feet, then nodded. “Okay.”

  “Okay? What’s that mean.”

  “I’ll do what you want.”

  “Good. There’s just one more thing.”

  “What else could you possibly want?”

  “I want to know what happened at UVA twenty-four years ago when that kid, Sweet, went out the window.”

  “Jesus. You know about that, too?”

  “Yeah. I know Sweet died, and I suspect that either you or McGrath killed him. But I don’t know why and I want to know.”

  Campbell looked away, like a man looking for an exit, then, to stall further, picked up the gin bottle, topped off his glass, and took a drink before he started speaking.

  “McGrath’s a smart guy but he’s got dyslexia, and he can barely read. The whole time he was at college he had guys do his homework and take tests for him.”

  “How could someone take tests for him?”

  “It was easy. He was enrolled in all these general courses where there were two or three hundred kids in the class, and the professors didn’t know who half the kids were. And when they gave you a test, the professor wasn’t even there. Some teaching assistant would pass out the exams and collect them after you were finished. And don’t forget, McGrath was a football player. I imagine some professors were told to look the other way. Anyway, senior year, Dickie Praeter was the guy McGrath used.”

  “What did Praeter get out of this?”

  “Money. UVA alumni would give McGrath money, and he’d give some to Dickie. I mean, you gotta realize what a big deal McGrath was back then. All-American linebacker, headed for the pros, and the Cavaliers were going to a bowl game for the first time in ages.”

  “So where did Sweet come into all this?”

  “Jimmy Sweet was a righteous, Bible-thumping prick. Nobody on the team liked him, and he didn’t like McGrath, particularly after he found out that McGrath got his girlfriend drunk one night and screwed her. Sweet had been going with the broad since junior high. Anyway, he heard from someone that Praeter was doing McGrath’s work for him and he went to see Praeter to see if what he’d been told was true. That same night, me and McGrath were out drinking and McGrath decided to stop by Dickie’s room to pick up some essay Dickie wrote for him, and when we got there, Sweet had one hand around Dickie’s scrawny neck and was shaking the shit out of him.

  “He’d already made Dickie confess to what he’d been doing for McGrath and he was planning to march him over to the dean’s house and make him tell the dean, which meant that McGrath wouldn’t have played in the bowl game. I mean, the school knew a guy like McGrath couldn’t pass his courses without help, and they looked the other way as much as they could, but if
Sweet brought it all out into the open, the university wouldn’t have been able to cover it up.”

  “So you guys killed Sweet because of this?”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. We saw Sweet choking Dickie and asked what the hell was going on, and he tells us he’s going to turn McGrath in. We tried to talk him out of it—we begged him to think about what he was doing to the team—but that prick said he had an obligation to God Almighty to tell the truth. Although it probably had more to do with McGrath nailing his girlfriend than God. Anyway, he started to walk out of Praeter’s room, and I grabbed his arm. All I was trying to do was stop him from leaving so we could talk to him some more, but I kind of swung him around and he trips and out the window he goes. I mean, I was strong back in those days and pumped up and pissed at Sweet because he was going to screw up the team. And I was drunk. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  “Then you guys just covered it up.”

  “Well, yeah. What else were we supposed to do? I wasn’t going to admit I threw Sweet out the window and McGrath sure as hell wasn’t going to tell folks that Dickie was taking tests for him. So we said it was an accident, that Sweet tripped, which was actually pretty much the truth.”

  “Why did Praeter try to commit suicide?”

  “Because he was a nut. I mean, he was a genius, but he was the most paranoid son of a bitch you’ve ever seen in your life, and he was scared of everything. He was convinced that somebody was eventually going to tell the school that he’d been doing McGrath’s homework, and that he was going to go to jail for being an accomplice in Sweet’s death. He was a fuckin’ basket case after Sweet died.”

  “And that’s why he tried to kill himself? Because he was afraid of going to jail?”

  “I’m not even sure he tried to kill himself,” Campbell said. “The night of his so-called suicide attempt, he drank a fifth of Jack Daniel’s at the same time he was taking speed to stay awake so he could finish some paper he was working on. Speed. Not downers or sleeping pills. Anyway, another kid finds him lying in his own puke, sees the pills, and calls 911. After they pumped out his stomach, a shrink talked to him and concluded that Dickie was a depressed nut, which, of course, he was, and that he tried to kill himself. But did he really try to kill himself? I don’t know. I doubt it. But a couple weeks later he transferred to another school.”