House Odds (24 page)

“First, there were no marks on the body incompatible with a fall. More important, there was no indication that there was anyone with him when he died.”

“No indication? Does that mean they’re positive he was alone when he died?”

“Not exactly,” Emma said, and then she explained.

The building where Praeter worked had a guard in the lobby and there was a security camera in the lobby as well, but there were no cameras in the stairwells or elevators. After normal business hours, doors were secured such that people had to go through the lobby to enter the building but tenants could also enter the building through the parking garage. To enter the garage required a key card, and to get into the elevator from the garage, you needed the same key card. The building security system recorded the time key cards were used. This meant that if Praeter drove into the garage he could take the elevator to his office without being seen by the guard, and Praeter’s Jaguar had been found in the garage. According to the guard, no one else was in the building around the time Praeter died, and nor had anyone else used their key card near that time.

“Doesn’t seem like much of a security system,” DeMarco said. “Praeter was a pretty paranoid guy; I would have thought that the building would have been better protected.”

“The building may not be that secure,” Emma said, “but his office has a steel door and the best lock you can buy, and the security system on his computers is state of the art. Most of the files on it are encrypted and NYPD’s computer guys don’t think they’ll be able to figure out what’s in them unless they get the NSA involved, which they have no intention of doing.”

“What time did he die?” DeMarco asked.

“The swing shift guard saw him leave at seven p.m. and NYPD’s computer people say he turned off his computer at six fifty p.m. The security system showed he then returned to the building at one a.m. because he used his key card to enter the garage elevator at that time. His computer was turned on five minutes later and was still on when the cops got to the scene. At five a.m., a janitor who works in an adjacent building found his body on the roof.”

“On the roof?”

“Yeah, but the roof of the adjacent building is six floors below Praeter’s office. Anyway, it appears that Praeter returned to his office about one and turned on his computer for some unknown reason. He then apparently decided that life wasn’t worth living, broke a window in his office with a chair, and took a dive out the window.”

“But if there was another man with Praeter, he could have gone up the elevator with him and the guard wouldn’t have seen the other guy.”

“True,” Emma said.

“Would the guard be able to tell if someone left the building after Praeter died?”

“Not if he took the elevator down to the garage and left via the garage. To exit the garage, all you have to do is duck under a bar at the entrance.”

“So someone could have been with Praeter the night he died. And I think it’s a lot more likely that someone killed him than that he killed himself. I mean, he was a rich, successful guy. Why the hell would he commit suicide?”

“According to my NYPD friend, Richard Praeter was not a particularly stable personality,” Emma said. “He didn’t have any close friends in New York they could find, but they did talk to a few people who knew him. These people all agreed he was, for lack of a better word, a complete fruitcake. And when the cops contacted Praeter’s mother to notify her of her son’s death, she told them that when he was in college, he tried to commit suicide. So there’s a history of suicidal behavior.”

“When did this happen, the college suicide attempt?”

Emma told him. It was a month after the wide receiver fell out the dorm window at UVA.

“Well, I didn’t know about the previous suicide attempt,” DeMarco said, “but the unstable part is definitely true. I met Praeter, and he was a wack job. My pal in New York called him Crazy Dickie.”

“So there you go,” Emma said. “And Mr. Praeter had a blood alcohol content of .21 the night he died. Most people who commit suicide are drunk or high at the time, and the official thinking goes like this: Praeter was just served with a subpoena for a case involving insider trading. He knows he’s guilty, drinks himself into a depressed state, becomes terrified that he’ll become someone’s prison bitch, and out the window he flies.”

DeMarco shook his head. “I don’t buy it,” he said. “The SEC has never been able to pin a thing on him. He wouldn’t have gone off the deep end just because he got a subpoena. I think Campbell or McGrath killed him.”

“But
why
would they kill him? And how is Praeter’s death tied to Molly?”

DeMarco must have done something—a sideways glance, a guilty facial tic—and Emma noticed. Her cynical blue eyes bored into his. “Are you keeping something from me, Joe?” she said.

Oh, boy.

DeMarco hadn’t told Emma that Molly Mahoney was guilty as sin and in hock to a casino for a horrendous amount of money. He hadn’t told her because Emma had a righteous streak wider than an eight-lane freeway, and she would have insisted that Molly plead guilty and take her medicine. DeMarco also knew it was a mistake to hold out on Emma—she’d find out eventually—he didn’t know how, but she would—and when she did, she’d flay him alive. But for now, he didn’t want her to know.

“Of course not,” DeMarco said in response to Emma’s question. “Let me tell you what I think is going on here. Molly overheard Campbell making a strange phone call related to something Reston Tech was working on a couple years ago. At that time no one, including Kay Kiser at the SEC, had any proof that Campbell was involved in anything shady. But then Molly gets arrested and she tells me about Campbell, and I link Campbell to McGrath and Praeter. So Daniel Caine, Molly’s scary, high-priced attorney, then subpoenas all three of these guys, and one of them—Campbell or McGrath—
he’s
the one who panics. Campbell and McGrath know that Praeter’s not only a loose cannon but he’s the linchpin to everything. He’s the one who made the insider trades based on tips from Campbell and hid the money trail from the government and . . .”

“And maybe he’s the one who set up Molly. He’d be smart enough to set up those e-trade accounts using her identity,” Emma said.

“Uh, yeah, right,” DeMarco said. “Anyway, if the government can break Praeter, he can provide all the evidence they need to put Campbell and McGrath in jail.”

“And you think Campbell or McGrath killed him because one of them was afraid of this?”

“I think it’s possible—and a hell of a lot more probable than Praeter committing suicide. I think Praeter made McGrath and Campbell a lot of money, enough to last the rest of their lives, and one of them decided he wasn’t going to risk Crazy Dickie cracking under the strain of an investigation.”

“Maybe,” Emma said, “but there’re some things that don’t make sense. Why did they decide to use Molly’s identity in this latest scheme? Why her, of all people? They had to know that if she was accused of a crime her father would get involved and, with his clout, he could cause them problems. And why were they so . . . so inept this time? You told me in that one case they used a fake European hedge fund to hide the money trail.”

“I have no idea,” DeMarco said, terrified that Emma’s bullshit-detector was about to go off. He should have had a Botox injection before coming here, something to freeze his features into complete immobility. Before Emma could ask another question, he said, “Look, I need some help here. I’m getting stretched too thin to cover everything. I’m still trying to run down some things regarding these old insider trading cases at Reston Tech and . . .”

That was lie.

“. . . and some Republican congressman’s got his hooks into Mahoney.”

“You mean because of Molly?” Emma said.

Whoops. He shouldn’t have said that. He didn’t want to talk about how Fairchild was using Molly’s problems to blackmail Mahoney because then he’d have to talk about Ted Allen and Molly’s gambling problems.

“No, over something else,” DeMarco said, “but it’s urgent and I have to get this guy off Mahoney’s back right away. So I could really use some help and I was wondering if you could do some more digging into Praeter’s death since you’re the one with all the cop connections.”

“Now?” Emma said. “Can’t you see all the things I’m doing here in my yard?”

She sounded like a surgeon being interrupted during a heart transplant.

“It’s Mahoney’s
daughter,
Emma. Come on. How would you feel if it was your daughter?”

Now, that was a rotten thing to do, pushing that particular button. Emma had a daughter and she was fiercely protective of her. How she came to have a child was something she had never discussed with DeMarco. But then there were a lot of things she had never discussed with DeMarco.

He watched her trying to make up her mind. Emma had helped him in the past but the reasons varied. Sometimes she helped because whatever he was working on was something she cared about, but most often he suspected she helped him because she was bored. When Emma worked for the DIA, she’d been a player on the international stage, involved in major military and political dramas. She’d been a spy. And as much as she enjoyed her current lifestyle, he knew she missed the adrenal rush of the good old days, which probably hadn’t been all that good. She probably also felt bad that it was Mahoney’s daughter who was in trouble; if it had just been Mahoney, she most likely wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help.

“All right,” she finally said, “as long as it doesn’t interfere too much with what I’m doing here.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate it, and I’m sure Molly will, too.”

She was going to kill him when she found out he was lying.

35

One of the things DeMarco had to do was find out which gangster Ted Allen worked for, and he knew he worked for somebody. Ted was too young to be out on his own, running a place like the Atlantic Palace. He could have asked Mahoney to talk to the FBI’s organized crime guys, but then the Bureau would know that something was up, and you could never tell what those headline-hunting glory-seekers might do. So he decided to fly to New York and ask another gangster. And while he was in New York, he’d go visit his mom and spend the night at her place in Queens. He felt guilty that the last time he was in the city he spent all his time drinking with Sal Anselmo and didn’t even call her.

DeMarco knew several gangsters and he knew them because his father had been one. Gino DeMarco had been an enforcer, and occasional hitman, for a now dead mobster named Carmine Taliaferro. After Taliaferro died, a man named Tony Benedetto took his place.

Tony had narrow shoulders, a small paunch, a big nose, and hair that had been dyed jet-black, the color contrasting absurdly with his seamed, seventy-four-year-old face. He preferred to wear jogging suits when at home, and today’s suit was black with a gold stripe running down the legs. On his feet were tennis shoes designed for marathon runners.

Tony was sitting at the kitchen table of his house in Queens and taking his blood pressure when DeMarco walked into the kitchen. He held up a finger for DeMarco to wait as he squinted through bifocal lenses at the digital readout on the white box in front of him. He raised his head and smiled.

“One thirty-five over seventy-nine. That’s not bad. And my cholesterol, it’s down to two ten. And my pulse, unless somebody really pisses me off, is usually around seventy-five.” He ripped the blood pressure cuff off his arm. “I’ll bet I’m in better shape than you are, kid.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you are too,” DeMarco said.

Christ, had the whole Mob changed? First that yuppie Ted Allen, and now Tony Benedetto acting like Jack LaLanne. Twenty years ago Benedetto would have been sitting in a bar, smoking cigars, and drinking bad red wine. Now here he was checking his blood pressure.

As if reading DeMarco’s mind, Benedetto said, “I quit smoking ten years ago, eat red meat only two times a week, and I drink Slim Fast for lunch. And my dick . . . Well, let me tell ya: I don’t need no fuckin’ Viagra.”

Thank God, at least he still talked like mobster.

“How’s your mom?” Benedetto asked.

“Tough as shoe leather,” DeMarco said.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Benedetto said, shaking his head. “Man, I think she hates my guts. She acts like it was my fault your dad . . . well, you know.”

“Yeah,” DeMarco said. DeMarco’s father died while working for Carmine Taliaferro, three bullets in the chest, but Tony Benedetto didn’t have anything to do with that. At least DeMarco didn’t think so.

“One time,” Benedetto said, “you were maybe ten or eleven, playing ball down there at the school, and I stopped to watch you bat. Well, your mom, she sees me standing there, and she comes runnin’ over and tells me that if I ever come near you she’ll cut my heart out. And she was serious. Geez, it was embarrassing. I bet the people who heard her thought I was some kind of child molester.”

“I remember that,” DeMarco said. DeMarco’s mother had done everything she could to keep him out of his father’s world.

“Mothers and their kids,” Benedetto said. “Doesn’t matter if they’re ducks or dogs or people, if a mother thinks you’re a threat to her kids . . . well, you better watch out.”

“Yeah,” DeMarco said. Enough of this. “Do you know a guy named Ted Allen? He runs a casino in Atlantic City.”