House Odds (2 page)

“He needs to see you immediately,” Mavis said.

“I’m at the dentist’s. I can probably be there in . . .”

“Joe, I don’t care if they just yanked every tooth out of your head and you’re bleeding to death from the holes in your gums. Get back here. Now!”

Mavis glared at him when he arrived, which was unusual because he knew that she had a soft spot for him in that small, hard organ the Boston Irish call a heart. He assumed she was displeased because he hadn’t been able to instantly teleport himself from Alexandria to the Capitol, and half an hour had elapsed since her phone call. She shooed him toward Mahoney’s office with a brisk, “Hurry up, hurry up.” He wondered what the hell was going on.

He entered the room expecting that the big man behind the desk would complain because he, too, had to wait—but he didn’t, and this surprised DeMarco. Mahoney was the type who demanded instant gratification, and he whined loud and long when it wasn’t forthcoming.

Mahoney gestured with his blunt chin at a young black woman sitting in one of the two visitors’ chairs in front of his massive desk. “This is Kay Kiser,” he said.

Kiser was wearing a navy-blue suit, a white blouse, and flat-heeled black shoes. DeMarco could tell, even though she was seated, that she was tall. He was five eleven and Kiser was at least that tall, maybe taller. And she looked athletic: good shoulders; flat stomach; shapely, muscular legs. With her height, he wondered if she’d played basketball in college, or maybe volleyball. She was also pretty—and probably even prettier when she smiled—but right now she wasn’t smiling. The expression on her face was beyond serious; it was downright grim.

“Ms. Kiser,” Mahoney continued, “this is Joe DeMarco. He’s a guy who helps me out every once in a while.”

Kiser’s only reaction to DeMarco’s less-than-enlightening job description was to study his face as if she wanted to be sure she could pick him out of a lineup. What she saw was a broad-shouldered, muscular man with a full head of dark hair, blue eyes, a prominent nose, and a big square dimpled chin. DeMarco was a handsome man with a hard-looking face, although he never thought of himself as a hard guy.

“Ms. Kiser works for the SEC,” Mahoney said.

Aw shit, boss! What have you done now?

John Fitzpatrick Mahoney had a broad chest, a wide butt, and a substantial gut. His hair was white and full, his features large and handsome, his eyes blue and watery, the whites perpetually veined with red. John Mahoney had the eyes of a committed drinker.

Mahoney was a Democrat and the minority leader in the House of Representatives. He’d represented a district in Boston for decades and had been the Speaker of the House for years, but lost the top job when the Republicans took control a couple of years ago. He was not an easy man to live with even when things were going his way; he’d become even harder to live with since he’d lost the Speaker’s gavel. His life these days was devoted to putting his party back in power.

DeMarco had worked for Mahoney for a long time and he knew that his employer skated close to the edge in almost everything he did, but DeMarco had never thought him greedy enough—or stupid enough—to do something that would come to the attention of the SEC.

Rising from his chair, Mahoney said to Kiser, “I gotta go—I gotta go vote on something—but I want you to tell DeMarco everything you told me.”

“Sir, I don’t have time to . . .”

“Yeah, you do,” Mahoney said.

There was usually a life-is-but-a-game twinkle in Mahoney’s eyes—particularly in the company of an attractive woman—but not today. And his message to Kiser was clear: no matter what Mahoney may have done, he was still one of the most powerful politicians in the country and she was just a bureaucrat at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Mahoney said to DeMarco. “And Ms. Kiser,” Mahoney said, his hand on the doorknob.

“Yes?” Kiser said. DeMarco thought the woman’s eyes looked like pieces of polished flint—a rock used to start fires and make arrowheads.

“Thanks for doing this thing this way,” Mahoney said. “I appreciate it,” he added, surprising both Kiser and DeMarco.

* * *

“We’re arresting the congressman’s daughter, Molly, for insider trading,” Kiser said.

“What!” DeMarco said. Now he understood why Mahoney had been so solemn. But Molly? No way.

“My boss sent me here as a courtesy to Mr. Mahoney to inform him of his daughter’s situation,” Kiser said. “Also, as a courtesy to the congressman, we’re giving Ms. Mahoney until seven p.m. to turn herself in and be placed under arrest.”

Every time Kiser said “courtesy” she spit the word out as if it were something nasty stuck to the tip of her tongue. She clearly resented the preferential treatment Molly Mahoney was receiving and DeMarco could tell if Kiser had had her way, two big federal agents would have marched into Molly’s office, slapped handcuffs on her, and hauled her away in full view of her co-workers—just the way they would have handled some coke-snorting young trader on Wall Street.

Kay Kiser wanted to crucify Molly Mahoney on a high hill.

“What makes you think Molly did anything illegal?” DeMarco said.

“I don’t
think.
I
know
. Ms. Mahoney works for Reston Technologies in Rockville, Maryland, and she recently purchased ten thousand shares of Hubbard Power stock for fifty-two dollars per share. She . . .”

DeMarco did the math in his head. “She bought half a million dollars worth of stock?”

“Yes. Reston Tech is a research company that works with major manufacturers to improve their products. One of the companies they work with is Hubbard Power and they build batteries used in submarines.”

“Submarines?”

Kiser ignored DeMarco’s confusion. “Reston came up with a design to reduce the weight and size of submarine batteries by thirty percent. This was a major scientific breakthrough in battery design, and the U.S. Navy is going to spend millions on these new batteries.”

“Why?” DeMarco asked.

Kiser kept talking as if DeMarco hadn’t asked the question. “Ms. Mahoney worked on the submarine battery project and she bought stock in Hubbard Power a month before the company’s shareholders were informed of the breakthrough. And when the company announced the new design, the stock price rose to seventy-eight dollars a share and Molly Mahoney made a profit of approximately a quarter million dollars.” Kiser’s lips curved upward in a small, humorless smile. “As soon as she sold her shares, her original investment and her profits were seized by the government.”

“I still don’t get it,” DeMarco said. “So what if she bought some stock in this other company?”

Kiser looked at him like he was an idiot. “That’s what insider trading is, Mr. DeMarco. When a person has information not available to other shareholders, and this person uses the information to make a profit or avoid a loss, it’s called insider trading.”

“Maybe she didn’t know that what she was doing was illegal.”

“She knew. Reston’s corporate policies specifically prohibit their employees from buying stock in companies they’re working with—to prevent insider trading. In an amateurish attempt to avoid discovery, Ms. Mahoney set up a new e-mail address, a new bank account, and established trading accounts with five different online brokers. Then, over a two-week period, she bought Hubbard stock in increments, buying ten or twenty thousand dollars’ worth of stock at a time. She apparently thought that by using multiple brokers and buying the stock in small batches, her half-million-dollar purchase wouldn’t be noticed. She sold her shares through these same online accounts and the cash was electronically deposited into her new bank account. In other words, no paperwork, no links to her old e-mail addresses and old bank accounts, no personal checks and, obviously, no visits to the brokers’ offices.”

“Then how do you know she even bought the stock?”

“Because the brokerage and bank accounts are in her name, with her Social Security number.”

“So maybe somebody stole her identity or rigged her computer in some way, and whoever did this set up these accounts.”

“It wasn’t her computer,” Kiser said. “Again, in an attempt to deceive, Ms. Mahoney used a computer at an Internet café.”

“Well, hell,” DeMarco said. “Then anybody could have done this.”

Kiser shook her head as if she felt sorry for DeMarco. “I would suggest,” she said, “that her lawyers adopt a different defense strategy.”

“Look, there are millions of stock transactions every day . . .”

“
Really,
” Kiser said.

“. . . so how’d you happen to spot Molly’s trades out of all those other transactions?”

“Because that’s what the SEC does, DeMarco. That’s our job. That’s my job.”

In other words, Big Brother is always watching. Or in this case, Mean Big Sister.

“But where in the hell would Molly get half a million dollars?” DeMarco asked. “She’s not rich, not that rich.”

“I don’t know,” Kiser said, and she looked momentarily less confident —but she recovered quickly. “And I don’t care. Half a million was deposited into this new checking account she established, and she used the money to buy the stock.”

“But who deposited the money?”

“Her partners.”

“What partners?”

Kiser ignored the question; she was good at ignoring his questions. “And it would be in her best interest to name those partners immediately. It could reduce her sentence.”

So Kiser thought Molly had partners but didn’t know who they were. “Are you promising her immunity if she cooperates with you?” DeMarco asked.

“The U.S. Attorney will not give her immunity. I’ll make sure that never happens. The best she can expect is a reduced sentence.”

DeMarco decided that Kay Kiser was more likely to set her own head on fire than show Molly any leniency.

“Has anyone talked to Molly yet?”

“Her father called her while we were waiting for you to get here. And her lawyers have been notified.”

Kiser uncrossed her long legs and rose from her chair. DeMarco rose with her. She was taller than him, by at least two inches.

“I’m leaving now,” she said, brooking no argument. Her boss may have forced her to kiss Mahoney’s ass, but DeMarco wasn’t Mahoney. Then Kay Kiser marched through the door without a “goodbye,” her back as straight and rigid as a steel rod.

Javert,
DeMarco thought as he watched her go.

He’d seen
Les Miserables
in New York a few years ago, and that’s who Kiser reminded him of: Javert, the French cop who hounded poor Jean Valjean to the ends of the earth for stealing a loaf of bread.

God help Molly Mahoney.

3

“The driver’s name is Gleason,” Gus said. “The good news is Donatelli doesn’t like him and only uses him when one of his regular long-haul guys is doing something else. He used to work at a government shipyard up there in Kittery, but he’s retired now and he pisses away his money on booze and lotto tickets. He lives in a fuckin’ shack and most the time, unless Donatelli has work for him, the only thing he eats is fish and crab, and it don’t matter to him what fish are legal.”

Ted was jogging on a treadmill in the casino’s fitness center wearing only shorts and running shoes. A short, white towel was wrapped about his neck. His body glistened with sweat and he knew he looked good; he’d just seen a lady giving him the eye. If she had been closer to twenty than forty, he might have invited her to sit with him in the jacuzzi when he finished his workout. Half the women he slept with he met in the gym.

He glanced down at the heart-rate monitor, to make sure his pulse was staying above one thirty, then looked at Gus and said, “Get to the point.”

Ted was convinced the term “knuckle-dragger” had been coined with Gus Amato in mind. He was about forty and he wasn’t very tall—only about five foot nine—but he had a broad chest, massive shoulders, and long, powerful arms connected to huge, hairy hands. His nose was broad and his dark hair was curly—so curly that Ted suspected he was the direct descendant of some Moorish invader who’d screwed a Sicilian a few centuries ago. He was wearing gray slacks and an orange golf shirt, which Ted didn’t mind, but on his feet were white alligator-skin cowboy boots, and dangling from his left ear was a gold hoop the size of a man’s wedding ring. The boots and the earring were something he’d just started wearing, and Ted thought they looked absurd.

“Last week,” Gus said, “Gleason got a brand-new pickup—well, almost brand-new, only twenty thousand miles on it—and he bought a new motor for his fishing boat.”

“Where’d he get the money? From Donatelli?”

“No, that’s the beauty of it. Donatelli would be totally surprised that all of a sudden this loser is driving a new rig.”

“So where did it come from?” Ted noticed his pulse was rising, but he didn’t think it was because he was running. It was rising because Gus, as usual, was annoying the shit out of him.

Gus laughed. “Two years ago, this useless dick filed a disability claim against the shipyard where he used to work, saying the job had destroyed his hearing. And the government, for whatever fuckin’ reason, decided to settle with him. They sent him a check for thirty-eight thousand dollars two weeks ago.”