House Odds (18 page)

“Dog Campbell. That’s what we called him, back in the day,
Douglas
being kind of a pussy name for a defensive tackle. I used to crawl right up ol’ Dog’s fat ass when we played together. I’d use his big butt like a launchin’ pad to bring down them sneaky little runnin’ backs. Anyway, he said you came out to his house the other night and tried to scare him. Shame on you, DeMarco. His wife’s already givin’ the man ulcers; he doesn’t need you puttin’ pressure on him too.”

“Did Campbell tell you what we discussed?”

“Yeah. He said you’re trying to get some big shot’s daughter off the hook with the SEC, so you accused him of pulling some kinda insider trading scam. Pure bullshit, but you got the boy’s attention.”

“Why did he call you?”

“Cuz we’re teammates, best buds from way back.” McGrath winked then added, “Good thing he doesn’t know I nailed his old lady a few times when she still had some juice in her.”

“What do you do for a living, Mr. McGrath?”

“You know, I feel like tellin’ you to kiss my ass, but since you’re with the G you’ll just go check my tax returns. Anyway, I’m an investor.” Jerking a thumb in the direction of his boat, he added, “And a pretty darn good one, if I say so myself.”

“Is Richard Praeter your financial adviser?”

“Dickie? Hell, no! Dickie’s crazier than a shithouse rat. I use a couple boys down here, got offices over in Charleston.”

“But you do know Richard Praeter.”

“Yeah, I just said so. He went to school at UVA for a while with me and Dog.” McGrath laughed. “I used to make him do my homework so I wouldn’t lose my eligibility. But so what if I know Dickie? Why are you here, DeMarco?”

“I’m here because Douglas Campbell called you about twenty minutes after I talked to him.”

“You know the time of the call? What’d you do, tap his phone or something?” When McGrath said this he was grinning. Apparently, everything was a game to this guy.

“Maybe,” DeMarco said, his expression dead serious.

For just an instant, DeMarco saw concern in McGrath’s eyes as he thought about the possibility of DeMarco having recorded his conversation with Campbell, but then he laughed. “You government guys, you crack me up,” he said.

“McGrath, the SEC knows that somebody at Reston Tech, on three separate occasions, made a killing in the market based on insider information. The first time, the information was most likely leaked to Richard Praeter, although the SEC could never prove this. The second and third times, information was leaked to someone who set up phony investment companies, made a ton of money, and then disappeared before the SEC could get him. Well, I’m pretty sure Campbell is the inside guy, and I think you and Richard Praeter are the ones buying the stock. So I’ll tell you the same thing I told Campbell: the first guy who testifies gets a deal for a reduced sentence, and if you explain how and why you set up Molly Mahoney, you’ll probably get immunity.”

DeMarco had no authority to promise immunity to anyone, but he didn’t care.

McGrath just shook his head, a small smile playing on his lips. “You’re barkin’ up the wrong tree, bud. You check my records and you’ll see that every year I make a lot of investments. Some win, some don’t, but all of them are completely aboveboard. And I’ve never had anything to do with Reston Tech because I figured any company that would hire Dog Campbell couldn’t be worth a shit. And I’ll tell you one other thing. If . . . Ah, here comes Tammy. Damn, that girl’s slow.”

“What else were you going to tell me?”

“Oh. I was gonna say that if the SEC had anything on me, they’d be down here instead of you. Tammy!” he shouted down the pier. “Come on, baby, move that fine ass. Daddy needs a nice cold drink after talking to this scary man.”

* * *

McGrath placed a canvas deck chair on the aft end of his boat, took a seat, and put his feet up on the rail. DeMarco had almost reached the end of the pier, and just before he turned to go up the stairs to the parking lot, he looked back at McGrath. McGrath gave him a jaunty, two-finger salute. DeMarco’s only response was to stare a moment longer then turn away. That’s one hard-looking bastard, McGrath thought. Not exactly how he pictured them D.C. political types.

Tammy brought McGrath his drink, a gin and tonic with a twist of lime. He took it from her without looking at her and said, “Thanks, baby.”

“When are we goin’ to dinner, sugar?” Tammy said. “I’m starvin.’”

He looked at Tammy’s lush figure, the full breasts, the way her waist flared into her hips. She was a beauty now but McGrath had met her mama, who weighed in at well over two hundred pounds; he was guessing that in ten or fifteen years, Tammy would look just like her mother. But that was ten years from now.

“I just wanna sit here and think a bit, sweetie. Why don’t you go get dressed? Put on your war paint, or whatever it is you do.”

“Rus-tee,” she said, dragging out his name in an annoying, little-girl voice. “I
am
ready. I’ll just put on a tank top and a pair of shorts. The steak house ain’t all that formal, you know.”

He looked at her, letting his eyes go frosty. “Don’t go gettin’ bitchy on me, Tammy. I’m not in the mood. Just plop your butt down somewhere and I’ll let you know when it’s time to go.”

“Jesus, Rusty, what’s wrong with you?” Then she did the hair flip thing and flounced away, down a ladder, and into the living section of the yacht.

McGrath looked out at the water, at the whitecaps bouncing on the surface, at the sailboats half a mile away. The wind had picked up a bit and the sailboats were at a forty-five-degree angle to the water as they tacked.

Dog and Dickie, what a pair. The SEC had been trying to get a lock on them for years and had never come close, and yet here was this guy DeMarco asking everybody questions. But DeMarco wasn’t the SEC and he wasn’t Justice and he wasn’t the FBI. Dog said he worked for Congress, but nobody knew what he did over there. All Dog knew was that this gal at Reston, this Molly Mahoney, had gotten her ass nabbed by the SEC and the next thing you know, out of the blue, DeMarco’s asking questions. It just didn’t make sense. They had no connection to this Mahoney broad; Dog said he barely knew the woman. Which made him wonder if his ol’ Dog was lying.

Dog and Dickie. Dog was a marshmallow and Dickie was a squirrel. If they squeezed Dog, he’d cave in like a house of cards. If they squeezed Dickie, he was liable to start throwing his own shit at the walls.

McGrath realized that he was humming a song, that gambling song by Kenny Rogers, the one that said you had to know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. In other words, when to stop playing and just walk away from the table. Damn, the subconscious mind was a wonder. It truly was.

McGrath rose from the deck chair and tossed the ice cubes from his drink into the water. He looked around—at his beautiful boat, at the postcard perfect picture of the racing sailboats, at the cushion where Tammy had been sunning herself. He was a lucky man. He had it all.

He had too much to lose.

Well. Time to go down and give Tammy a little jump, get her head right again, then go get a steak for dinner. A good, rare rib eye dripping blood.

* * *

DeMarco didn’t return immediately to his rental car. He went back to the bar overlooking the marina and ordered a drink—this time a Corona—and gazed down at Rusty McGrath sitting on his boat.

A picture was beginning to emerge, albeit a blurry one. Twenty years ago, Douglas Campbell had been a low-level personnel weenie at Reston Tech probably making an adequate but not spectacular living; Richard Praeter was the leper-genius of Wall Street, a guy who couldn’t hold down a job or get the financial backing he needed to make big investments; and Rusty McGrath’s career in the NFL had ended prematurely thanks to some other monster shattering his knee. In other words, two of these young men were going nowhere and the third was barely moving.

Then, out of the blue, Praeter gets his hands on a million bucks, invests it, and makes a fortune.

So, DeMarco thought, here’s one possible scenario. The three men pool the money they have. Praeter and Campbell wouldn’t have much but Rusty McGrath would have whatever was left over from his NFL signing bonus, his first year’s salary, and maybe even an insurance settlement for a career-ending injury. Ergo, McGrath was most likely the money guy. Then, based on an insider tip from Campbell, Praeter makes his first major killing in the market—and shares his profits with Campbell and McGrath. McGrath gets a great big boat and Praeter a high-rent office a couple blocks from the Wall Street bull where he can look down on the tourists rubbing its balls.

Campbell, however, has to maintain a lower profile than Praeter and McGrath; to do otherwise might make some government watchdog like the SEC or the IRS wonder why he’s suddenly rich. To allow Campbell to at least have a taste of the good life, Praeter uses his expertise to steer Mrs. Campbell’s trust fund and deposits the rest of Campbell’s ill-gotten gains in some offshore account. Campbell’s ultimate plan, however—as he told Molly—was to retire early so he could really enjoy all that money that Praeter had socked away for him.

The final thing, DeMarco concluded, was that they didn’t go back to the Reston well too often, just three times in a twenty year period, but when they did go there, they made a bundle. And the reason they didn’t tap Campbell’s insider position at Reston more than three times was because they didn’t need to. Richard Praeter, according to Sal Anselmo, was actually a very good investor and he’d made his two pals even richer with legitimate trades.

Yep, that was DeMarco’s theory—and it had several problems.

The biggest problem was that he didn’t have one shred of evidence to support it. Second, he couldn’t understand the relationship between Campbell and McGrath and Praeter. Campbell and McGrath were old football buddies, but as far as he could tell, they hadn’t been close to Praeter. Randy Sawyer had told him that Praeter hadn’t even graduated from UVA and the only thing he appeared to have in common with Campbell and McGrath was that he was in the same room with them when another football player flew out a dormitory window. And if McGrath was the money guy like DeMarco thought, he’d have to have a lot of faith in Praeter’s ability before he’d give him his savings to invest. Or maybe it wasn’t faith; maybe it was fear. Maybe Praeter was blackmailing McGrath over the other football player’s death. Hmmm. Maybe. It was hard to imagine a guy like McGrath being afraid of Crazy Dickie Praeter.

Whatever the case, DeMarco liked his half-baked idea: McGrath was the one who gave Praeter the start-up money he needed, Campbell was the insider, and Praeter was the one with the brains. Then DeMarco realized something. His three-man conspiracy theory might explain why Praeter, McGrath, and Campbell were all so wealthy—but he had learned absolutely nothing that connected their activities to Molly Mahoney.

DeMarco finished his beer. He had no idea what he was going to do next, but he was pretty sure that doing what he wanted to do—which was stay in Myrtle Beach for a couple of days playing golf—would not suit Master Mahoney. He rose reluctantly from his bar stool, took a final look at McGrath sitting content on the stern of his yacht—and trudged wearily to his rental car.

26

“There’s a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in that envelope,” Preston Whitman said. “Enough to pay off Molly Mahoney’s gambling debt and a little extra to compensate you for your trouble.”

“What?” Ted Allen said. “Why are you paying off the girl’s marker? And where the hell did the money come from?”

“Calm down, Ted. Let me explain. You see, there are a lot of people who don’t like John Mahoney. Some don’t like him for personal reasons, and some don’t like him because he’s a Democrat. I went to a number of these people . . .”

“You what! Goddamnit, if you’ve . . .”

The lobbyist held up his hand. “Ted, just listen to me. I’ve been in this business a long time. I know what I’m doing. Anyway, as I was saying, I went to these people and said I was collecting money, just small donations, five or ten thousand dollars—and believe me, that’s a
small
donation to these people—and I said the money would be used to cause Mahoney a significant political problem. When they asked exactly how it would be used, I said ‘You don’t want to know.’ It was easy.”

“What will these people say when nothing happens to Mahoney?”

“With Mahoney, there’s always the possibility that he’ll do something to damage himself without any outside help, and if he does, I’ll whisper to these donors that they had a hand in his misfortune. If nothing bad happens to him in the near future, then I’ll say: be patient, these things take time. If nothing happens after a long
period has passed, I’ll say: I’m sorry, I tried. These people understand that plans don’t always work out and for the amount of money it cost them, they won’t be terribly upset. And if they are upset, it will be with me and have nothing to do with you.”

Ted Allen thought about everything the lobbyist had said—then he smiled. “You’re a tricky bastard, Whitman.”

“I’m glad you approve, Ted.”

“But I still don’t see why telling Mahoney I canceled his daughter’s marker is a good thing.”

Preston Whitman almost said:
Think about it, you arrogant twit
. But he didn’t. Instead he said, “Canceling the girl’s debt is a two-edged sword, Ted. On one hand, it’s a goodwill gesture on your part. You want Mahoney’s help on your project, and by canceling the girl’s marker, you’re essentially giving him—or his daughter—a hundred grand.”