House Odds (10 page)

What a dumb system of government.

Finally, the congresswoman stopped talking. Thank God. But now another guy—a Democrat—Christ, what the hell was his name?—was jumping up so he could tell the cameras how wrong the congresswoman was.
Finally
, the time for debate expired, stopping all the nonsense, and everybody cast their vote as they’d intended all along. Mahoney rose from his chair, in a hurry now, as his bladder was about to burst.

“Sir, do you have a moment?”

Mahoney turned to see who was speaking. It was a lobbyist named Preston Whitman.

Whitman had always reminded Mahoney of that actor Liam Neeson: he was a tall man with large hands and
enormous
feet—those puppies had to be size 15s—and he had a big nose and a wide mouth and hair that always looked windswept, as if he had just stepped from a convertible.

It really pissed Mahoney off that Whitman was on the floor of the House. Whenever he saw lobbyists on the floor he felt the same ire that Jesus must have felt when He saw the money changers in the Temple. Well, maybe that was a poor analogy, but it still pissed him off.

“Sorry, Preston, but I’m expecting a call from the White House,” Mahoney lied. “If you need to see me, just make an appointment.” There was no way Whitman—whose clients didn’t contribute to Mahoney—would get an appointment, and both men knew it.

“I need to talk to you about your daughter, sir. About Molly. I have some information you need to hear.”

“My daughter?” Mahoney said, and he felt his face begin to redden. “You listen to me, Whitman. My family is off-limits to you and every other snake on K Street, and if you ever . . .”

“Mr. Speaker, I’m going to be at the Hay Adams at seven p.m. For your daughter’s sake, I’d suggest you meet me there for a drink. You need to hear what I know before anyone else finds out. I’m trying to
help
you, sir.”

“What?” Mahoney said, but he was speaking to Whitman’s back as Whitman was already walking away.

Goddamnit, Molly, you’re killin’ me.

13

DeMarco had been waiting outside Kay Kiser’s office for twenty minutes; she wasn’t about to interrupt her schedule just because he had decided to drop by. As he waited, he dripped oil of clove from a small bottle onto his index finger, then stuck his finger in his mouth and rubbed the oil against his fractured tooth. This crude remedy had been suggested by his mother, and it seemed to help, but he was a little concerned. The label on the clove-oil bottle said the product was meant to be used to “flavor potpourri” and to “avoid contact with skin, lips and tongue,” none of which sounded good for a dental anesthetic
.

Kiser finally opened her door and made an irritated motion for him to step into her office. Today she was dressed in a short-sleeved white blouse with an open collar and formfitting slacks. The only jewelry she wore was small gold studs in her ears. The woman just glowed with good health: high, hard cheekbones; clear eyes; perfect muscle tone. He was willing to bet that she kept to a regular . . . no, make that a
rigid
workout schedule: gym four times a week, jogged every other day, avoided junk food, and went to bed at the same time every night. He’d wager there were robots less disciplined than Kay Kiser.

On her desk was a framed photograph of her when she was younger, standing between a middle-aged couple. Relaxed and with a smile on her face, Kiser was stunning. The people in the photo were probably her parents; they looked like nice people. Other than the family portrait there were no other personal touches in the room: no executive toys, no plants, no poster of that Tuscan vineyard she’d once visited. Completely obsessed with her job, as Randy Sawyer had said.

“I have a meeting in fifteen minutes,” Kiser said, cramming papers into a briefcase as she spoke. “And I’ll tell you nothing about our case against Ms. Mahoney other than what I told you the other day. Now, what do you want?”

DeMarco felt like giving her the punch line of an old, raunchy joke:
So I guess a blow job’s out of the question
. But he didn’t.

“I want to know if you’ve ever investigated a guy at Reston Tech named Douglas Campbell.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you anyway.”

But DeMarco saw something in her eyes—this
flick
. Kay Kiser was a species rarely encountered: a lawyer who was a poor liar.

DeMarco had not really wanted to talk to Kiser about the Douglas Campbell phone call that Molly had overheard. He had wanted to talk to Randy Sawyer, but when he called Sawyer’s office, he was informed that Sawyer was attending a conference in Las Vegas. It had become fashionable for government agencies to hold conferences in Vegas, not because the bureaucrats wanted to gamble and see bare-breasted showgirls, but instead because the city gave them good deals on hotel rooms. Yeah, you bet. So because Sawyer was on a taxpayer-funded boondoggle, and since Neil wasn’t available to help him, he was forced to talk to Kiser.

“I got it from a pretty good source,” DeMarco said, possibly selling Randy Sawyer right down the river, “that somebody over at Reston Tech was involved in three big insider swindles in the last twenty years, and that the SEC never caught the folks involved. And since I know from this source that you’ve probably looked at everybody working at Reston, I was just wondering if Douglas Campbell was ever a person of interest.”

“Who told you about those cases?” Kiser said.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you,” DeMarco said, “but it was a guy over at Justice.”

DeMarco was a much better liar than Kiser. In fact, if lying ever became an Olympic event, DeMarco figured he had a pretty good chance of making the American team. Mahoney would get the gold medal, of course, but still . . .

“And if you don’t tell me what I want to know,” he said, “Molly’s lawyers are going to ask the same question in a long, formal subpoena. And you know what a hassle that can be.”

Lawyers would submit a subpoena asking for the contents of an entire library when all they wanted was one book.

Kay Kiser stood a moment without moving, her teeth clenched, a little muscle jumping in her jaw. DeMarco could tell that she was the type who hated to compromise—and she didn’t like being threatened either.

“So give me a subpoena,” she finally said. “I’m not going to help Molly Mahoney’s lawyers develop their case.”

“Oo-kay,” DeMarco said. “But you’ve already confirmed the main thing my source told me, which is that something screwy has been going on over at Reston for a long time—long before Molly ever worked there. And I think you’ve investigated Campbell before, too.”

Kiser’s dark eyes flashed, emitting enough heat to melt steel.

“You people make me sick,” she said. “Molly Mahoney is a privileged little brat who’s committed a crime. But she has a big shot for a father who can afford a high-power defense team, and her lawyers are going to throw up a smoke-and-mirrors defense. They’ll say that somebody stole little Molly’s identity and opened accounts in her name, and that somebody else over at Reston is
really
the bad guy. And maybe they’ll win, DeMarco, but I’ll be damned if I’ll help them. I’m going to do everything I can to put Molly Mahoney in a federal prison.”

DeMarco was stunned by the force of her anger; she was acting like Molly had mugged her grandmother. “Jesus, Kay,” he said, “can’t you concede that it’s even remotely possible that she could have been framed?”

“No! She wasn’t framed. She did it!”

“Then what was her motive? Why would she do something like this?”

Kiser laughed. “You need to get to know your client a lot better, DeMarco.”

What the hell did she mean by that?

* * *

DeMarco returned to his office, which was in the subbasement of the U.S. Capitol. Not the basement, the
sub
basement—and his work space was smaller than some walk-in closets. Located down the hall from him were the janitors, and across the hall was the emergency diesel generator room. His was not a power office. He did have a title, though. The flaking gold paint on the frosted glass of his office door proclaimed him
Counsel Pro Tem for Liaison Affairs.

The title was John Mahoney’s invention—and complete nonsense.

DeMarco had worked for Mahoney for a long time but there was no organizational chart that showed this to be the case. Mahoney preferred this in part because of DeMarco’s family history and in part because he sometimes asked DeMarco to do things that he didn’t want traced back to his office. This meant that if DeMarco was ever caught doing something inappropriate on his boss’s behalf, Mahoney could—and would—deny any connection to DeMarco’s position.

DeMarco had a small refrigerator in his office, one just large enough to hold a six-pack of beer. He pulled a Coke out of the fridge—it was too early in the day for beer—popped the top on the can, took a careful sip to avoid cold liquid touching his temperamental tooth, and booted-up his computer. He wanted to know about Douglas Campbell.

If Neil had been available, DeMarco would have called him and Neil would have charged him—meaning the U.S. Treasury—a mind-boggling amount of money, but he would have turned Campbell’s financial and personal life inside out and upside down. For Neil, most computer security systems were a weak joke, and within a couple of hours he would have examined Campbell’s bank accounts, tax returns, and credit card statements; he would have learned about every investment Campbell had ever made and if the investment had turned a profit or not.

But Neil wasn’t available—he was off with his bride, wallowing in pleasures of the flesh—so DeMarco did about the only thing he could do: he googled Douglas Campbell, and since the name was only slightly less common than John Smith, he got about two zillion hits. An hour later he found one article about the Douglas Campbell he cared about. The article was in the
Charlottesville Daily Progress
and was about the reunion of a University of Virginia football team that had gone to the Florida Citrus Bowl twenty four years before—where they lost. The reason the reunion made the papers was that a couple of the UVA players had gone on to play in the pros and one was a Hall of Famer. Campbell wasn’t the Hall of Famer. He had played defensive tackle for the Cavaliers and his football career ended after college.

Having learned nothing other than the fact that Campbell had once played college football, DeMarco called a neighbor in Georgetown. The neighbor lived across the street from him and worked at the IRS, and he answered DeMarco’s questions every year when DeMarco was grappling with his tax return—usually at ten o’clock at night on April 14. The accountant liked DeMarco because his wife had become a teetotaler and wouldn’t allow alcohol in their house, so if the poor guy wanted to enjoy the simple pleasure of drinking a beer, he’d find some excuse to visit DeMarco.

So the IRS accountant was a pal and a neighbor—but he wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of giving DeMarco Campbell’s Social Security number, which DeMarco needed. DeMarco, consequently, had to resort to pleading and lying. His neighbor knew he worked for Congress and the lie DeMarco told was that his interest in Campbell was related to a classified security issue, but he couldn’t say exactly what the issue was.

“Look,” he said, “I just need to check a few records related to this guy but if I call Homeland Security—which I could, of course—they’ll take forever. Plus, if I get those guys involved, the next thing you know Campbell’s on the no-fly list and he’s got federal agents interviewing him. I don’t think the guy’s done anything wrong so I don’t want to screw him like that, but I need to look into a few things and for that I need his DOB and his SS number. I mean, come on, you know me. It’s not like I’m gonna steal the guy’s identity or something. Oh, hey, I forgot. The Nats are playing Pittsburgh tomorrow. Maybe you oughta drop by and watch the game with me and have a couple of beers.”

His neighbor finally gave him what he needed, but he wouldn’t give him any other information off Campbell’s tax returns, so DeMarco’s second call was to a company that performed credit checks.

Molly Mahoney had told him that Campbell appeared to live above his means, and DeMarco wanted to see if there was any evidence of this. Specifically, he wanted to know how much Campbell owed on his credit cards, the size of the mortgages on his two houses, and any outstanding loans he might have on cars and boats. The company he called worked mostly for banks trying to avoid lending money to folks trying to buy a home, and all they needed to do their job was Campbell’s name, date of birth, and the Social Security number wheedled out of his neighbor.

The next thing DeMarco wanted to know was if Campbell had a criminal record—which he thought was pretty unlikely—and what he needed was some law enforcement agency to run Campbell’s name through their database. DeMarco knew a few cops but he met almost all of them while working for Mahoney, and not under circumstances where they became his friends. One of them had wanted to arrest him. Neil, once again, could have obtained what he wanted, but since Neil wasn’t there he called Perry Wallace, Mahoney’s devious chief of staff.