House Odds

by Lawson, Mike

  “So how’d the insider-trading stuff all start?”

  “That was Dickie’s idea. At the time, I was the only one who had a job, working in the HR office at Reston Tech. McGrath had just been let go by the Jets because of his knee and Dickie was up in Manhattan with all these hotshot investment ideas but he didn’t have any money to invest. But McGrath had money, over a million from his signing bonus and the insurance he collected when he was injured. So I passed on to Dickie all the stuff that Reston Tech was working on at the time, and he picked the company to invest in, this water-treatment company. We only did it three times.”

  This was just what DeMarco had thought the first time he met McGrath.

  “So why did you kill Praeter?”

  “McGrath forced me to. He was afraid if the SEC or Justice started squeezing Dickie, he’d give us up. I mean, I don’t know how many different ways I can say it, Dickie was a genius but he was a total flake. He wasn’t a guy you could rely on and McGrath wanted him gone, and he said if I didn’t take care of Dickie, he was going to tell what happened at UVA with Jimmy Sweet.”

  “Bullshit,” DeMarco said. “I don’t think McGrath made you do anything. I think you killed Praeter because you and McGrath decided together that he was a liability and you drew the short straw to get rid of him.”

  “No, it wasn’t that way. Rusty said . . .”

  “I think you’re lying, Doug, but it doesn’t really matter at this point. The only thing that matters is that you take the fall for Molly Mahoney.”

  60

  It was a big meeting: DeMarco; Douglas Campbell; Molly’s lawyer, Daniel Caine; Randy Sawyer from the SEC; and a lawyer from the Justice Department, Dave something or other—a young guy with a bad haircut and a yellow bow tie. DeMarco had always thought bow ties were a pretentious affectation, the poster boy for this particular fashion being George Will. And Dave, before too long, proved that DeMarco’s bow-tie prejudice had some merit.

  They were all sitting in Daniel Caine’s swanky conference room at a table that was bigger than DeMarco’s office. But it was DeMarco’s meeting, not Caine’s.

  “So here’s the deal,” he said. “Campbell will testify that he, Richard Praeter, and Russell McGrath have pulled off three successful insider-­trading scams involving Reston Tech clients. He will also testify that Richard Praeter, based on a tip from him, bought ten thousand shares of stock in a company that makes submarine batteries and Praeter used Molly Mahoney’s identity to buy the stock. In return for his testimony, Justice and the SEC will recommend that the judge give Mr. Campbell a suspended sentence and a big fine. All charges against Molly will, of course, be dismissed since Campbell’s testimony fully exonerates her. Finally, Mr. Campbell and his wife will go into the witness protection program.”

  Randy Sawyer started to speak, but Dave, the bow-tied man from Justice, jumped in first. “You know, there’re some things here I don’t understand. Like why’s this guy confessing, and why does he get witness protection?”

  Whoa! This was not good. Dave was supposed to have known all this before he got to the meeting. Dave was supposed to be a human rubber stamp and not say a fucking thing.

  “He’s confessing,” DeMarco said, “because he can see the handwriting on the wall. He knows you guys will get him and McGrath eventually, and he knows if he testifies now against McGrath, he’ll get a deal he can live with. He’s also confessing because he fears for his life. McGrath has tried to kill him twice and he knows McGrath’s a psycho who will keep on trying, even from a jail cell—which is why he’s insisting on witness protection.”

  “Huh,” Dave said, still looking skeptical. He was really starting to make DeMarco nervous.

  “And you’re saying that this guy Praeter, who’s dead so we can’t confirm the story, is the one who bought ten thousand shares of Hubbard Power stock using Molly’s identity?”

  “That’s right,” DeMarco said.

  “Well, Praeter may have bought the stock,” Dave said, “but Molly Mahoney was the one who set up those brokerage accounts. We know she did, and we want her, too.”

  DeMarco looked pointedly over at Randy Sawyer, a look that said it was time for him to slap a muzzle on Dave. Mahoney had greased the skids with Sawyer and with Dave’s boss. Sawyer was going to slide into a soon-to-be-vacant undersecretary’s chair at Treasury, and Dave’s boss was getting a job at Harvard and a hundred and twenty-five grand a year position on a corporate board. And all Mahoney had asked these men to do was accept Campbell’s confession. Just accept it—and don’t probe any deeper. But Dave, the little twit, was probing.

  It appeared that Dave’s boss, to make sure that his fingerprints were nowhere on this deal, had sent Dave to the meeting instead of attending himself, and then, to make matters worse, hadn’t fully explained to Dave that his only reason for being here was to nod.

  Daniel Caine chose that moment to step into the breach. He smiled graciously—at this point he could afford to be gracious—and said, “Dave, get serious. Your case against Molly was weak before this happened. Now, with Campbell’s confession, you have no case at all. So please, son, save my client the hassle and the Justice Department the embarrassment.”

  Dave’s bow tie quivered; he didn’t like being called son.

  “But why’d they set up Molly?” persistent Dave now wanted to know. “I thought in the past when these guys pulled off one of their insider scams they developed some kind of bulletproof cover.”

  “We don’t know,” DeMarco said. “And we’ll never know. Praeter handled all the financial transactions. We think he may have been doing some kind of dry-run for something bigger. You know, a test to see what he could get away with. All we know, and as Mr. Campbell has stipulated, is that Praeter did it.”

  “What happened to your face, Mr. Campbell?” Dave asked.

  “Tripped,” Campbell muttered. DeMarco had made it clear to Campbell that Al Castiglia and his men would in no way be part of the discussion during this meeting.

  Dave sat a moment, looking confused and stubborn. Mostly stubborn. “I don’t know about all this,” he said. “Ignoring the evidence against Molly, Campbell getting off without doing any time . . . This just doesn’t sit right with me. People are going to think Molly’s getting a break because of who her father is. There’s no way we’ll agree to this. Right, Randy?”

  Randy Sawyer didn’t respond. He was doodling furiously on a legal pad, refusing to make eye contact with DeMarco.

  “Dave, take the deal,” DeMarco said. “Take away all of Campbell’s money and relocate him to bum-fuck Idaho. Get him a job pumping gas. His life turns to shit, you clear three cases that the SEC’s been trying to solve for twenty years, and you put a killer in jail. Isn’t that enough?”

  “A killer?” Dave said. “Who’d McGrath kill?”

  “Richard Praeter.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “No, which is why you need to throw the book at McGrath. But without Campbell’s testimony, you’ll never get McGrath, you’ll have a damn hard time getting Campbell, and Campbell won’t testify against McGrath unless he gets the deal.”

  “I don’t think so,” Dave said. “Now that we know . . .”

  “I agree with Mr. DeMarco.” Randy Sawyer had spoken at last. “Our chances of convicting Molly are weak. Let’s get this guy,” he said, chin pointing at Campbell, “and McGrath. We’ve already got half a million dollars that we can give back to the taxpayers, and we’ll make another three or four million off Campbell’s and McGrath’s assets. Maybe more.” Sawyer chuckled. “I’d say that’s not a bad day’s work for a couple of civil servants, Dave.”

  “I dunno,” Dave said again. “I think . . .”

  “Dave,” Sawyer said, “I think you and I need to excuse ourselves for a moment.”

  Finally, DeMarco thought.

&nbs
p; When Dave and Randy Sawyer came back to the conference room, Randy said, “We’ll take the deal.” Dave didn’t say anything, but he had bright red spots on his cheeks. It looked as if he’d just had a major temper tantrum and been told to go stand in a corner.

  Daniel Caine asked if anyone would like to have a drink while his secretary prepared a few documents for folks to sign. Doug Campbell instantly agreed. So did Randy. “Nothing for me,” Dave said—his way of making it clear he wasn’t going to attend the party.

  DeMarco excused himself, saying he was late for another meeting, which was a small lie compared with the others he’d told in the past hour. As he was leaving, he took one last look at Douglas Campbell—a man who looked surprisingly content after just being told that he was going to have a record as a convicted felon and be relocated to some godforsaken place where he’d be working for minimum wage.

  Poor Campbell. He didn’t know it, but he wasn’t going into witness protection; he was going to prison. And he was never going to spend any of the money that Richard Praeter had hidden away for him.

  61

  Billy was watching the marina while he played a pinball machine using a lot of violent body English to move the ball around. He was drinking a Coke. Billy was an alcoholic, but one thing Delray liked about him was that he never drank on the job. Delray was flipping through a golf magazine, wondering if maybe when they were finished here he could get in a few rounds.

  “Here she comes,” Billy said. “Finally. I thought that guy was gonna screw her forever. Not that you can blame him, the body she’s got.”

  Delray looked over the top of the magazine and down at the marina. The guy’s girlfriend was just moseying down the pier. If that girl didn’t learn to move faster she was gonna have an ass on her the size of a boxcar. But he had to admit, she was one good-looking woman.

  As soon as McGrath’s girlfriend drove away, Delray rose from his seat. “Let’s get this over with,” he said.

  They walked down the pier, taking their time, and Billy asked why most of the boats were named for women. “I mean, don’t these guys think ahead?” Billy said. “They get a girlfriend, it’ll piss her off every time she sees the wife’s name on the boat.”

  Delray just shook his head.

  It was twilight. There was one guy, a couple piers over, doing something on his boat but not paying any attention to them. McGrath was on the bow of his boat doing something, too. People who owned boats were always fiddling with them.

  Delray had never had any desire to own a boat. Everyone he knew who had one hardly ever used ’em. They’d sail them maybe three, four times a year but most of the time they just fussed with things, fixing shit, polishing shit.

  “Are you sure you can drive a boat that size?” he asked Billy.

  “Yeah. Quit worrying about it.”

  They reached McGrath’s slip and Delray said, “You Rusty McGrath?” It never hurt to make sure.

  “Yeah,” McGrath said. “What can I do for you boys?”

  Delray took off his sunglasses so McGrath could see his eye.

  “Whoa! You just clumsy, or did you piss someone off?”

  “I think I’m going to enjoy this,” Delray muttered to Billy.

  “What’s a boat like this cost?” Billy asked McGrath.

  “Why? You thinkin’ about makin’ me an offer?”

  McGrath had moved over to the gangway of his boat as he was talking, and on the way there, he had managed to pick up a long, heavy wrench. People like Billy and Delray tended to make other people nervous. Even tough guys like McGrath.

  “We were told it was worth close to a million,” Delray said.

  “You were told?”

  Delray nodded. McGrath was a good-size guy, as big as him. And he looked to be in shape. He was gonna be a handful, with or without the wrench in his hand, and Delray didn’t feel like tusslin’ with him.

  He took a silenced .22 out from beneath the windbreaker he was wearing and shot Rusty McGrath in the knee, the same knee that had been destroyed the first and only year he played in the pros.

  62

  DeMarco had just taken a seat when the phone on Mahoney’s desk rang. Mahoney listened for a moment, grunted, hung up, then rose from his chair.

  As he was shrugging into his suit jacket, he said, “I gotta go over to the White House. The president’s thinking about bombing someone.”

  DeMarco sometimes forgot about the arena in which Mahoney played.

  “Wait here until I get back,” he said to DeMarco, “but give me the bottom line right now. Is my daughter going to be okay?”

  “Yeah,” DeMarco said. “She’s going to be okay.”

  DeMarco figured Mahoney would be gone at least an hour. He left the Capitol and walked across Independence Avenue and found a hot dog vendor. The vendor had on one article of clothing for every team that played professional sports in D.C. DeMarco had just taken a bite from his hot dog, a blob of mustard just missing his tie, when his cell phone rang.

  “Kay Kiser just resigned,” Randy Sawyer said.

  “Why?” DeMarco said.

  “Why do you think? I cut her out of the meeting with Campbell and then agreed to a deal that set Molly Mahoney free.”

  “Is she going to go to the press?”

  “I don’t know. She might. She’s really pissed. I thought she was going to hit me.”

  The story that had been given to the media matched the agreement that had been reached at the meeting in Daniel Caine’s office: Campbell confessed that he and his old college pals had been pulling off insider scams at Reston Tech for years, the police were currently hunting for Rusty McGrath, and it was Campbell and his friends who committed the crime that Molly had been accused of. Daniel Caine, acting as Molly’s spokesman—Molly didn’t attend the press conference—said that Molly and her family were just relieved that the SEC had found the real culprits and Molly just wanted to get on with her life. She wouldn’t be granting any interviews.

  Randy Sawyer was the SEC’s spokesman at the press conference and DeMarco had to admit that he did a good job of explaining everything to the news guys, leaving them no place to go with the few questions they had. Fortunately, insider trading, even if it involved Mahoney’s daughter, wasn’t a particularly sexy story and the media appeared happy to move on to more entertaining news. But if Kay Kiser started talking to the press . . . DeMarco felt once again like Richard Nixon trying to keep the lid on Watergate.

  “What does Kiser want?” DeMarco said.

  “What does she want? She wants to put criminals in jail—and that’s all she wants. If you think you can bribe Kay Kiser, you’re nuts.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about bribing her, Randy.”

  He almost added: Unlike you, me, and Mahoney, she has integrity.

  * * *

  “So it’s all settled,” Mahoney said. “I mean, I saw the press conference but I want to make sure that there aren’t any loose ends.” Mahoney had returned from the White House five minutes earlier. He didn’t bother to tell DeMarco what conclusion the president had come to regarding bombing someone.

  “Yeah,” DeMarco said. “It all worked out the way you wanted.” He tried not to sound judgmental, but he couldn’t help it. And he knew he was being a hypocrite because he was just as guilty as Mahoney since he’d gone along with the plan.

  Mahoney had ordered DeMarco to tell Al Castiglia what Ted Allen had done, knowing that Al would most likely kill Ted. Al would kill him not just because Ted had lost Al’s money; Al would kill him because Ted had lied to him. But Al would still want back the half million that Ted had lost, so Mahoney gave him Rusty McGrath.

  Rusty McGrath had a custom-built yacht worth about a million and a ton of money in various offshore accounts. McGrath would have to be convinced, of course, to give up the codes t
o access those accounts, but DeMarco had no doubt that Delray and his pal, Billy, could be quite convincing. Then after they convinced McGrath, he and his boat would both disappear. McGrath would most likely end up in the Atlantic Ocean and his boat would go to a yacht broker who would paint over the name, sell the boat, and pass on the proceeds to Al Castiglia.

  Campbell, of course, got completely screwed. He had signed a confession admitting not only to the crimes that he, Praeter, and McGrath had committed but he also took responsibility for Molly’s crimes. But Campbell’s deal was contingent upon him giving testimony leading to the conviction of Rusty McGrath—and so when McGrath disappeared, the only guy left to take the fall was Campbell. If Campbell tried to tell folks a different story—that he really hadn’t had anything to do with Molly and that DeMarco had coerced him into taking the fall for her . . . Well, who was going to believe a man who had already signed a confession? And after Campbell got out of jail—or maybe while he was still in jail—Al Castiglia would most likely get his money, too.

  Mahoney’s plan had been brutal. And his only moral justification had been—not that Mahoney felt the need to justify anything—that Molly was his daughter.

  It wasn’t that DeMarco felt bad about what happened to Ted Allen and Rusty McGrath, and what was going to happen to Campbell. He didn’t. He didn’t feel badly about that at all. He knew Campbell was a killer, that McGrath had tried to kill both Campbell and his wife, and, although he couldn’t prove it, he knew that Ted Allen had most likely killed as well. So he wasn’t sorry for the misery that these people had brought down upon their heads. What he felt bad about was that he had undermined a decent person like Kay Kiser and corrupted the legal system to save a guilty a person: Molly Mahoney, the lesser evil.