House Odds (36 page)

“I want your ass back in Philly before the day’s over,” McGruder said to Gus. “You got it?”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“Hey, Pat, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ted said. “Gus works for me.”

Ted noticed the motion out of the corner of his eye and tried to move but he was too slow. Delray had taken one of his diplomas off the wall and smashed it down on Ted’s head. The glass in the frame broke and Ted’s head punched through the paper. The frame ended up on his shoulders, his face nicked in several places by broken glass.

“Be quiet,” Delray said softly to Ted.

Ted started to tremble. No way would McGruder be doing this without Al’s permission.

McGruder glanced over at Ted, then resumed chewing out Gus.

“It’s like in the majors,” McGruder said. “A guy starts to fuck up in the bigs, they send him down to the minors, to get a tune up, to get his head straight again. That’s what we’re doing with you. Now get your ass out of here and I’ll see you tomorrow, give you a job a dumb shit like you can handle. And if you’re wearing those boots . . .”

“I won’t be,” Gus said. He looked once more over at Ted, shrugged an apology, and left the room.

McGruder returned to the chair in front of Ted’s desk and sat down, winded just from talking to Gus. He looked at Ted for a few seconds without speaking, trying to catch his breath.

“Smart guy,” he said at last. “Such a smart fuckin’ guy. It’s really too bad about you.”

53

“You’re an idiot,” Barbara Jane said to her husband. Then she addressed the snowball-white Pomeranian in her lap. “Isn’t that right, Johnny? Yep, Johnny Carson thinks you’re an idiot, too.”

Fairchild was sitting with his wife on a balcony overlooking the swimming pool. She was dressed in a white tennis outfit, the skirt so short you could see her butt. He didn’t say anything in response to the idiot remark. What could he say?

“I just can’t believe,” Barbara Jane said, “that you never told me about this secretary and what you did. But what I
really
can’t believe is that you were dumb enough to leave a paper trail. Can you believe he did something that stupid, Johnny? No, I can’t either.”

“Look, I need to . . .”

“Tell me something, Bob. I just have to know. Why’d you have the foundation send her checks? Why didn’t you give her cash?”

“Because I would’ve had to come to you for the money!” he cried, making it clear how much he resented the way she controlled the purse strings. Lowering his voice, he added, “Plus, it was such a small amount. I figured with all the money the foundation gives away every year, it wouldn’t even be noticeable.”

“And I suppose you told the foundation’s accountant that I authorized the expenditure.”

“Yeah. I mean, like I said, it was such a small amount.”

“My God,” Barbara Jane said, shaking her head. She was so tired of it all. She was tired of being a politician’s wife and she was
really
tired of him. The man just plain wore her ass out.

“You realize,” she said, “that you’re going to have to do something about this, don’t you?”

“Like what?” Fairchild said.

“Bob, Melinda Stowe can do more than just embarrass you. You lied about killing a man in self-defense! You probably won’t end up in jail—not with a Tucson jury—but you’ll sure as hell be finished in politics, covering this up the way you did.”

“I’ll have the records deleted.”

Cupping the Pomeranian’s small face in her hands, Barbara Jane looked into its liquid brown eyes and said, “Did you hear him, Johnny Carson? Did you hear dumb ol’ Bob? He’s going to have the records deleted.” Looking at her husband, she said, “Tell me something, Bob. Are you going to delete the accountant who’s been sending checks to Melinda? Are you going to delete this DeMarco person who talked to her? Are you going to delete whoever hacked into the foundation’s computers and probably made copies of the records?”

“That’s why I’m talking to you, goddamnit! I need to know what to do about all this.”

“Did Bob just swear at me, Johnny?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m looking for some advice here. So will you quit talking to that dog and tell me what you think I should do?”

“I really don’t know what you should do, Bob. All I know is your political career is over if this ever comes to light. Maybe the best thing to do is call Mahoney and tell him it’s a draw. Tell him if he keeps quiet about the cover-up, you won’t say anything about his daughter and the casino. Then I guess you’re just going to have to hope that none of this stuff with Melinda Stowe ever gets out.”

“That’s your advice? Trust Mahoney?”

Barbara Jane rose and smoothed the wrinkles out of her short skirt. “I’m supposed to meet some of the girls at the club. We’ll bring our tennis rackets, but all we’re really going to do is sit around and drink mimosas and check out the butt on the new pro they hired. So I have to get going. What I want you to do while I’m gone, Bob, is just sit here and think. Maybe if you sit here long enough you’ll come up with a different solution.”

Barbara Jane thrust the Pomeranian at him. “Here,” she said. “You can talk it over with Johnny Carson. He’s got lots of good ideas.”

* * *

As soon as his wife left, Fairchild dropped the Pomeranian on the ground and gave it a good kick in the ass. The dog yelped and ran back into the house. He’d always hated that little shit.

The last four years he’d done everything he could to get the VP slot in the next election. A lot of politicians scoffed at being the vice president, who played an almost powerless ceremonial role, filling in for speeches and photo ops not worth the president’s time. But he wanted a place in the history books, and if he ended his days as just a congressman, he might not even be remembered in Arizona. Not so if he was the veep. And he knew that eight of forty-three American presidents died while in office, turning the White House over to that no-longer-powerless butt of jokes. Those weren’t great odds, but they weren’t bad either.

His chances of being the number-two man on the ticket had never been higher. He had the support of traditional conservative voters and the big Republican donors and—thanks to Barbara Jane’s money and her advice—he was well liked by the Hispanic community. The Hispanic vote really counted these days. But now Mahoney, that bastard, had information that could sink all his plans.

Mahoney would wait until he got the nomination, and then he’d spill what he knew about Melinda Stowe. He wouldn’t go to jail for having shot the bum; the bum
had
pulled a knife. For that matter, he doubted there’d even be a trial. It would be his word and the official police reports against the word of Melinda Stowe. The cover-up was the problem; the cover-up would ruin him.

He’s seen what happened when politicians tried to cover up their misdeeds: Nixon, Clinton. Look how they went after John Edwards. If Melinda Stowe told her side of the story publicly—that he’d been paying her off for years to keep quiet about what happened that night in an alley in Tucson . . . Well, he’d be finished in politics. No doubt about it.

So what options did he have?

He could do nothing, as Barbara Jane had said. He had information about Mahoney’s daughter that could damage Mahoney’s career, so it was possible that Mahoney wouldn’t use the information he had regarding Melinda Stowe. But the last thing he wanted was John Mahoney having that kind of hold over him; John Mahoney was just too vindictive and unpredictable. The other problem was that people other than Mahoney knew about Melinda: that thug, DeMarco, and whoever had accessed the foundation’s records. He wasn’t too worried about the records, however; the records could be . . . finessed. No, the problem wasn’t the records; the problem was Melinda explaining what the records all meant.

He could meet with Melinda and offer her an enormous amount of money to deny the story she’d told DeMarco, but that probably wouldn’t work. DeMarco had forced the story out of her once, and if someone threatened her with something—tax evasion, conspiracy to cover up a crime, some damn thing—she’d tell everything she knew, and giving her more hush money would just make his situation worse. He could just see it: some hard-nosed
60 Minutes
interviewer pounding away at him and Melinda on television, and if they tried to stonewall the interviewer, the
60 Minutes
guy would make her look like she was lying and he would end up looking guilty as sin. No, just paying her more wouldn’t work.

But maybe he could convince her to get on a plane and just disappear. He’d get her a new identity, hand her a suitcase full of cash, and she could go live like a queen someplace where the cost of living wasn’t too high, someplace like Ecuador or Panama where she’d be able to afford a cook and a maid and a house on the beach. But that probably wouldn’t work, either. Mahoney, with his clout, would get some federal agency to track her down, and then he’d be right back where he was now.

The Pomeranian came back onto the balcony and started barking at him, acting like he was some kind of burglar, like it had never seen him before. He looked around for something to throw at it, but the only things available were the china coffee cups he and Barbara Jane had been drinking from. He forced himself to smile and held out his hand for the mutt to sniff, hoping to lure it closer. “Come here, Johnny, you little shit. Come here.” If it came within reach he was going to grab it and throw it into the swimming pool. At least he thought he could throw it that far. And if he missed . . .

There was only one thing he could think to do about Melinda Stowe.

54

“This was a good idea, hoss,” Billy said. “Beats the hell out of a pick and shovel.”

Billy pulled back on a lever, letting the backhoe’s bucket scrape away another foot of dirt. The trench was now seven feet long and about five feet deep.

“Take one more pass,” Delray said. “That’ll be deep enough.”

“You sure?” Billy said. “Operating this thing is kinda fun.”

After they’d left Atlantic City, they’d been driving down the Black Horse Pike and Delray had noticed the road construction in progress. They were widening one section of the road—they hadn’t paved the new section yet—and on one side of the road they were planting a bunch of trees to make things prettier. Delray had told Billy to stop the car near a yellow Caterpillar splattered with mud. It was Sunday, and he figured if the construction crew wasn’t working by now, there was little chance of them showing up later in the day. And people driving by wouldn’t think twice about a guy operating a backhoe near a construction project, all those orange road-cones blocking things off. It took him all of two minutes to hot-wire the machine.

“Yeah, that’s enough,” Delray said.

Billy climbed down from the backhoe and he and Delray went over to the car, and Delray popped open the trunk. They glanced around to make sure no cars were coming and carried Ted’s body over to the trench.

“Could you believe that fuckin’ McGruder, whacking off his thumb?” Billy said. “I mean, what the hell was the point of that? The guy had already told us everything.”

“I dunno,” Delray said.

“Jesus,” Billy said. “What a fuckin’ psycho, wheezin’ like he was gonna croak, trying to cut through bone with a goddamn paper cutter. I thought he was gonna have a heart attack.”

“Put a couple feet of dirt over him,” Delray said, “then we’ll get one of them trees.”

There were two dozen unplanted saplings, the roots wrapped in burlap, the trees spaced at ten foot intervals. After Billy had partially covered the body, they picked up one of the saplings and placed the root ball into the hole, directly over Ted’s chest.

“What kinda trees are these?” Billy said.

“How the fuck would I know,” Delray said. “Fill in the hole.”

“Well, whatever kind they are, I’ll bet you that damn tree grows faster than any of them,” Billy said.

55

When Fairchild arrived at Orville Rate’s house in Casas Adobes and knocked, Rate didn’t come to the door. He called out that the door was unlocked and for Fairchild to let himself in. He didn’t rise from the chair where he was sitting to shake Fairchild’s hand, either. He just pointed at another chair, and after Fairchild was seated, he said, “I was real surprised you called me, Congressman. It’s been a long time.”

It had been a long time. The last time Fairchild had seen Orville Rate was eight years ago when he spoke at Rate’s retirement party, but Rate still looked pretty much the same. He was a big, gaunt man with crew-cut gray hair. His face was weathered and there were deep furrows on both sides of his mouth, and his dark eyes had as much life in them as marbles. He was wearing a white dress shirt, the top button buttoned, and jeans—but not his cowboy boots. It was the only time Fairchild could recall seeing Orville Rate when he wasn’t wearing boots. He was wearing slippers with thick white socks.

When Fairchild was Tucson’s prosecutor, he had a good conviction record and Orville Rate was one of the reasons why. Rate knew how to get suspects to confess, and if he couldn’t get a confession, he didn’t have a problem manufacturing evidence and getting witnesses to commit perjury. Fairchild didn’t think he’d ever sent an innocent person to jail—he just figured that Orville Rate had simplified the process of convicting the guilty.