House Odds (31 page)

“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 what’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 office 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.”

Aw, shit
.

* * *

Mahoney told DeMarco to meet him at a park that sat on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. Why he wanted to meet there, DeMarco didn’t know. Or maybe he did know.

During the time he’d worked for Mahoney, he’d observed that when Mahoney wanted him to do things that were borderline illegal —or just plain illegal—he liked to meet outside. He’d always been a bit paranoid about somebody bugging his conversations, but as time went on—and as technology improved and Homeland Security planted even more cameras around the Capitol—he’d become even more paranoid. Even meeting outside wasn’t a guarantee that some eavesdropper, using the kind of high-tech gadgets the NSA employed, wouldn’t be able to hear him. The park seemed safe, however. There were lots of trees around to disrupt lines of sight, and it wasn’t a likely terrorist target, so there wouldn’t be cameras hidden in the bushes.

DeMarco arrived at the park before Mahoney. There were no other cars in the parking lot, and he walked down to stand on the bank of the river and stare at the city on the other side. When he heard a splash in the water to his left, he discovered that he wasn’t alone. There were two kids fishing, one black, one white, ten or eleven years old. It was like a scene from a Mark Twain novel until one of the kids pulled out a cell phone and started texting someone. The kids hadn’t seen DeMarco, and he walked away from the riverbank and back to the parking lot before they did.

Mahoney arrived a moment later. He was dressed in casual clothes, a Navy ball cap on his big head, and DeMarco wondered where his boss had come from and why he was dressed the way he was. His security guys weren’t with him, either, which meant that Mahoney had ditched them—another indication that Mahoney didn’t want anyone to know about this meeting.

He jerked an arm at DeMarco, and DeMarco joined him in a small stand of trees where they weren’t visible from the parking lot or to anyone looking across the river. He thought about telling him about the two kids fishing but didn’t for fear that Mahoney would insist they drive to some other place. DeMarco just wanted to get this meeting over with and go home and go to bed, since he’d been up most of the night.

The first words out of Mahoney’s mouth were: “Here’s what you’re gonna do.”

When he finished talking, DeMarco was so shocked that for a moment he couldn’t speak, and when he could speak, he was dumb enough to say, “Are you serious?”