House Odds (5 page)

“Which brings us to Molly Mahoney and the submarine batteries. The thing that’s weird, though, and even Kiser will admit this, is in the previous cases we were dealing with a lot of money. These guys invested millions to make more millions. They weren’t screwing around with a lousy half-million-dollar buy-in and a quarter-million-dollar profit. The other thing is, the guy who pulled this off in the past was smart enough not to get caught—unlike Molly Mahoney, who practically hung a sign around her neck saying
I’m a crook.
”

“You sound pretty convinced that Molly’s guilty.”

“Well, I’d like to give her the benefit of the doubt, but frankly . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, but if Molly didn’t do it, then it could be the guys that pulled these scams in the past.”

Sawyer made a face that said
I kinda doubt that.

DeMarco chose to ignore Sawyer’s skepticism. “The good news about these other cases is they happened before Molly signed on with Reston. She’s only been there four years. So it’s not unreasonable to assume that whoever pulled these scams in the past could be behind the submarine battery thing. But the big thing is, these past cases
confuse
things, and there’s nothing a defense lawyer likes better than confusion.”

Before Sawyer could rain on his parade, DeMarco said, “Thanks, Randy. You’ve been a big help. I’ll make sure Mahoney knows.”

5

Hardly anyone scared Gus Amato, and he’d never backed down from a fight in his life. He was strong and he could take a punch, and if he couldn’t beat a guy with his fists, he’d use a pipe or brick or anything he could get his hands on.

Well, there’d been one guy at Bayside, a psycho named Holloway. He was only five foot eight, skinny as a rail, and had an ugly port-wine stain that covered half his face. He was also a convicted serial killer, doing six back-to-back life sentences. Gus had gotten the last dessert one day at chow, the wacko right behind him in the line, and the guy had said, “I’m gonna kill you if you take that.” He said this with no inflection in his voice at all. Gus had told Holloway to go fuck himself, and he took the dessert, but he spent the rest of his time at Bayside looking over his shoulder because Holloway was sneaky and smart. Yeah, he had to admit that Holloway had definitely scared him.

The only other guy who scared him that way was Delray, although he would never have admitted it out loud. And he’d fight Delray if he ever had to, even though he figured he’d probably lose. Delray was just as strong as him, and no doubt he was just as tough; he’d done time in worse places than Bayside. But it wasn’t his size or even the stories Gus had heard about him. It was the way he never talked, the way he held himself—and, of course, that fuckin’ eye of his. All Gus knew was that he’d have liked it better if McGruder had assigned someone else to come with him to visit Gleason.

He picked up Delray at Logan Airport in Boston, and the whole way to Portsmouth the only thing the guy said to him was, “Pull off over there. I gotta take a leak.” When they reached Gleason’s shack, Gus said, “This is the place. See the truck?” Delray didn’t respond.

Gleason, Gus had to admit, did a good job. It helped that he was scared shitless—so that didn’t require any acting on his part—but he also kept the story straight and said just what he was supposed to say. At one point, just to remind him of the box he was in, Gus picked up a picture and said, “This your grandkid?” When Gleason nodded, chin trembling like he was going to cry, Gus added, “She’s a chubby little thing, but don’t worry. I got a niece who was like this when she was ten or eleven but then, when she was sixteen, she went all anorexic. So there’s hope.”

He noticed Delray looked over at him when he said this, like he’d said something wrong, but it didn’t matter: Gleason got the point. He admitted that he sold the truckload of fish to a couple guys in Manchester and used the money to buy his new truck and outboard motor. And what was left over, he gave to his daughter. Gus had told him to say that; he figured that way the guy wouldn’t look like such a greedy prick and, therefore, might get less of a beating.

And he was going to get a beating, or so he thought. Gus had told him on his first visit that he was going to have to smack him around just to make things look right, but promised it wouldn’t be too bad unless Gleason fucked up.

Fortunately, he didn’t. He stuck to Ted’s script like his first name was Jackie instead of Tom.

“Why’d you do it?” Delray asked. So far, that was the only thing he’d said since they’d entered Gleason’s house.

“I needed a new truck,” Gleason said. “My old one was falling apart and I couldn’t get a loan or anything. And I needed a new motor, too. I mean, fish is practically all I eat.”

To keep Delray from asking more questions, Gus hit Gleason in the face, knocking him right off his puke-green couch.

“Go get the keys and the title for the truck, you dumb shit,” Gus said.

After Gleason handed Gus the keys and the paperwork, Gus pulled out a .22 semi-auto. Gleason said, “Hey, wait a minute.” Gus didn’t wait. He shot him in the chest, then put one more in his forehead. If Delray was surprised he didn’t show it. But then Delray never showed anything.

Gus picked up the shells ejected from the automatic, looked around the room, and said, “I didn’t touch anything in here except his face. Did you touch anything?”

Delray ignored the question.

They left Gleason lying on the filthy shag rug in his living room, cockroaches in the blood before they even closed the door. Gus figured the local cops would think that Gleason, after a million years of bad luck, finally fell into some money, bought himself a new truck, and then some asshole came along and killed him and stole it. Which, when he thought about it, was pretty much what happened.

* * *

“What do you think?” McGruder asked.

“I don’t know,” Delray said. “The guy was so scared he could barely talk. But he didn’t deny anything.”

“What does Donatelli say?”

“He backs up Ted’s story.”

McGruder snorted. “Marco Donatelli’s a fuckin’ snake; he ain’t like his old man. He might back up Ted’s story if Ted comped him a couple nights at the casino.”

Delray, of course, didn’t answer because McGruder hadn’t asked a question.

“Where are you now?” McGruder said.

“Driving back from Portsmouth, we’re almost to Boston. Gus is behind me, driving the guy’s truck, towing the boat trailer.”

“You tell Gus to drop the truck off at my place. My nephew’s got a landscaping business, so he can use the truck, but I don’t give a shit what he does with the boat. And then after you get back, you and me are gonna go have a talk with Ted’s accountant.”

6

Molly Mahoney was about two twitches away from a nervous breakdown.

Her fingernails were bitten to the quick, her blue eyes red from crying, and it appeared as if she had lost weight since the last time DeMarco had seen her. He hoped she wasn’t sick on top of all her other problems.

Her curly, shoulder-length auburn hair was arranged in a sloppy ponytail and tendrils of hair had escaped the rubber band at the back of her head. She was wearing a Harvard sweatshirt that looked at least one size too big, and unflattering blue jeans that were too short and baggy in the seat. Her thin face was pale and devoid of makeup, and the freckles on her cheekbones stood out starkly.

She had spent one night in jail; her lawyers hadn’t been able to keep that from happening. At her arraignment, she pled not guilty and was released on a hundred-thousand-dollar bond. DeMarco had watched on television when Molly left the courthouse with her mother. Molly’s lawyers had walked ahead of Mary Pat and Molly, pushing through a mob of reporters, muttering “No comment” like a mantra, while Mary Pat held her daughter’s arm and talked to her, smiling occasionally, acting as if the reporters weren’t there at all. Mary Pat was made of steel.

DeMarco had met with Mary Pat before coming to see Molly. Mahoney’s wife had three things in common with her husband: she had snow-white hair and blue eyes, and was Boston Irish. But that was where the similarities ended. Mahoney was built like a bear; Mary Pat was slender. Mahoney was slowly committing suicide by overeating, overdrinking, and smoking three or four cigars a day; Mary Pat was a vegetarian who practiced yoga. Mahoney was devious, tricky, and dishonest; Mary Pat donated her time to charities and probably wouldn’t tell a lie if her life depended on it. How on earth they had ever gotten together in the first place, and then stayed together for forty years, was a matrimonial miracle.

“I’m really worried about her, Joe,” Mary Pat had said. “And I don’t mean the . . . the SEC thing. I’m worried about her health, her mental health. I don’t think she’s suicidal but she seems so . . . so
fragile
. You have to find out who’s behind this.”

DeMarco had promised that he would—and it was a promise he meant to keep because he’d made the promise to Mary Pat.

So DeMarco was now sitting at the kitchen/dining room table in Molly’s small, none-too-neat one-bedroom apartment in North Bethesda. He didn’t know how long she had lived in the place, but there were still unpacked boxes in her living room and she’d made no effort to decorate—no pictures on the walls, no throw pillows on the sofa, no cute knickknacks on shelves or end tables. The building she lived in surprised him, too: it wasn’t in the best of neighborhoods and it didn’t have a swimming pool or a fitness center or any of the other amenities you’d expect to find in a place where a well-paid young professional lived.

“Who do you think could have done this, Molly?” DeMarco asked. “I need someplace to start looking.”

Mahoney’s daughters knew that DeMarco occupied some shady niche in their father’s universe; they just didn’t know exactly what the niche was. When Molly had asked him if he was working with her lawyers, he’d said, “Well, not directly. Your dad just asked me to poke into this a little on my own.”

What DeMarco meant was: your dad expects me to do things your white-shoe lawyers might be disinclined to do, particularly if some of those things might get a real lawyer disbarred. But Molly didn’t ask him to clarify his role in her defense. She just sat there staring down at the tabletop, seemingly shell-shocked by everything that had happened to her. She’d never been arrested before. She’d never been fingerprinted or strip-searched by a jailhouse matron. She’d never spent a night in a cage surrounded by crack-addicted prostitutes. That she was in shock was understandable, but DeMarco needed her help.

“Molly, I know you’re upset but you have to focus here. The lady from the SEC said that whoever did this used a computer at an Internet café. Have you ever gone to an Internet café?”

Molly nodded. “Yeah, a place called Milo’s. It’s just a couple blocks from here and whenever I need to go online for something, and if I’m not at work, I go there. It’s cheaper than paying for a monthly Internet connection.”

Now that surprised him—that a woman of Molly’s generation and income level wouldn’t have an Internet connection in her home. But maybe she was just frugal.

“Think, Molly,” DeMarco said. “Whoever did this knows your habits. He knows you use that café. He knows your address and date of birth and Social Security number. And half a million bucks was deposited into a checking account that supposedly belonged to you, which means this guy is rich or has access to piles of money. So come on, Molly. Who do you know that has money and access to your personal information? The list can’t be that long.”

Molly just shook her head.

Christ. “Well, do you have any enemies at work, someone who’s jealous of you or . . .”

“Jealous!” Molly said, and then she laughed—a short, unhappy bark of a laugh—as if the idea of anyone envying her was absurd.

“Then tell me about people you know who have the computer skills to do this.”

“Computer skills?”

“Yeah. Maybe somebody hacked into your computer to get information or installed one of them . . . them
things
that keep track of your keystrokes. And then he got onto this internet café’s computer and made it look like you bought the stock and set up the new bank account.”

Molly shrugged. “Most the people I work with are scientists or engineers,” she said, “and they all use computers. But none of them are hackers, at least not that I’m aware of.”

“What about your IT people? There must be some geeks where you work who service your machines.”

“We contract out the IT stuff, and I don’t even know any of the people who work for the contractor.”

“What’s the name of the IT company, Molly?”

She told him and DeMarco wrote it down. He was glad to have something to write down.

“What about the people that worked on this submarine battery project with you? Whoever did this had to know about the project and had to know when the battery company was going to announce the breakthrough. So how many people were involved in the project?”

“The main team had five engineers on it, including me, but lots of people in the company knew about it. We’d give the managers and the money guys biweekly updates on how we were doing.”

“Give me the names of these other engineers.”