House Odds Read online

  House Odds

  Also by Mike Lawson

  The Inside Ring

  The Second Perimeter

  House Rules

  House Secrets

  House Justice

  House Divided

  House Blood

  House Odds

  A Joe DeMarco Thriller

  Mike Lawson

  Atlantic Monthly Press

  New York

  Copyright © 2013 by Mike Lawson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 or [email protected].

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  e-BOOK ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9360-5

  Atlantic Monthly Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  [Fluffer Nutter]

  This book is dedicated to my nephews: Dan Smaldore, an officer in the Arlington County Police Department, and Nick Marshall, U.S. Army. Thank you both for your service.

  House Odds

  1

  “There’s something off here,” McGruder said as he stared at the monitor, one fat finger tapping the scroll-down key.

  Pat McGruder was sixty-four years old, five foot seven, two hundred and sixty pounds, and he had emphysema—and he was scaring the hell out of Greg. He was actually scaring Ted, too, but unlike Greg, Ted wasn’t letting it show. Ted sat there sipping his latte, pretending to read Fortune, while McGruder studied the spreadsheets. But Greg—the dumb shit—he was fidgeting, wringing his hands, swallowing like he had a golf ball lodged in his throat.

  McGruder continued to look at the monitor, wheezing, his thick lips pursed in disapproval. He was sitting in Ted’s chair, at Ted’s desk, using Ted’s computer, while Greg and Ted sat on the couch in front of the desk like two wayward kids called to the principal’s office.

  “There’s something off here,” McGruder muttered again.

  “Jesus Christ, Pat!” Ted said, tossing the magazine to the floor, acting pissed. “There’s nothing off. We’re down maybe two percent and . . .”

  “Two point one,” Greg said.

  Ted shot Greg a shut-the-hell-up look.

  “. . . and the books show you exactly where, and we’ve told you exactly why. We’re not trying to hide a damn thing. The economy being the way it is, every casino on the boardwalk lost money this quarter, and profits fluctuate in a business like this.”

  McGruder didn’t answer. He continued to tap the keyboard and squint at the monitor. Finally, he stopped tapping and looked at Ted.

  “Don’t tell me how things fluctuate, sonny. And I heard what you told me and I can see the numbers. But something’s off.”

  “Pat, can you believe I’d ever try to skim on Al? Come on! Not only is the man like a father to me but . . .”

  “Ted, you remember a guy named Pauly Carlucci?” McGruder said.

  “Yeah, out in Vegas,” Ted said, like he could give a shit.

  “That’s right,” McGruder said. “Out in Vegas. And what do they call Pauly now, Ted?”

  Ted didn’t answer. He just stared at McGruder, letting him know that he wasn’t intimidated.

  “They call him Pauly No-Thumbs, don’t they, Ted?”

  Ted just stared.

  “Yep, Pauly No-Thumbs. And you know why they call him that?”

  Ted still didn’t answer, but McGruder pretended he had.

  “That’s right,” McGruder said. “They call him that because Al hacked off his thumbs. And Pauly just tried to screw Al out of a lousy two grand. Can you imagine what he’d do to a guy who really ripped him off?”

  “I’ve had enough of this,” Ted said.

  “You’ve had enough?”

  “Yeah. I’m sick of you sittin’ there, you fat fuck, implying that I’m stealing from Al because you think something’s off, but you don’t know what.”

  “You better watch your mouth,” McGruder said.

  “To hell with you,” Ted said.

  McGruder stood up with some effort. He looked at Ted for a moment, then nodded. “Okay,” he said.

  Ted didn’t know what that meant.

  McGruder waddled away from the desk, over to the coatrack, and shrugged into a suit coat that had to be a size seventy short.

  “I’m gonna be back in a couple days,” McGruder said. “Look things over again, talk to a few of your people, check out some of these losses you claim you had. I’m coming back because it ain’t all about numbers, sonny. It’s about my nose.” McGruder tapped the end of his broad snout as he said this, then pointed at Greg. “And it’s about the way he’s sweating and how you’re acting so fuckin’ cool you’re practically whistling.”

  Ted shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  McGruder opened the door to leave, but then he turned back and said, “Oh, I forgot those copies I made.”

  Greg leapt to his feet and practically ran to the printer. He reached out to pick up the copies, and when he did, McGruder said, “No, Greg, don’t pick ’em up like that. Pick ’em up without using your thumb.”

  * * *

  “We’re dead,” Greg said. “Absolutely dead. And did you have to talk to him like that?”

  Ted didn’t say anything. He stood with his back to Greg, looking out a window. His office was on the twenty-ninth floor and there was nothing but ocean as far as he could see, not one boat on the water. He’d never found the Atlantic Ocean, at least this part of it, all that picturesque. The Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the waters off ­Hawaii—those cobalt-blue and turquoise seas—now, they were lovely. But here, the water was most often a dirty gray-green—and that was on the nice days.

  “Ted, are you listening to me?” Greg said. “The guy knows something’s wrong. He’s going to tell Al.”

  Ted Allen was the CEO of Indigo Gaming, which meant he ran the Atlantic Palace Casino in Atlantic City. Greg Porter was his head accountant, but called himself the CFO. Whatever. Ted turned away from the window and looked at Greg.

  He and Greg had attended UNLV—the University of Nevada, Las Vegas—and they were both thirty-three years old, six feet tall, and tended to dress casually for work: sport jackets over polo shirts, tailored slacks, loafers. But that’s where the similarities ended.

  Greg’s dark hair was beginning to thin and a ring of fat bulged unattractively around his waist. And lately he had stopped wearing his contacts—something about allergies—and had taken to glasses with tortoiseshell frames. Greg thought the glasses made him look intellectual; Ted thought they made him look like the number-crunching wimp that he was.

  Ted worked out every day, had broad shoulders, muscular arms, and a washboard stomach. He had a full head of reddish-blond hair, wi
de-set blue-green eyes, full lips, and a nose that had been worth every penny he’d paid the surgeon. A woman once said that he looked like those Hitler Youth models who pose for Abercrombie & Fitch. He’d never been sure, though, if she’d meant that as a compliment.

  “Greg, sit down,” Ted said. “And calm down.”

  “Calm down! I’m telling you, McGruder . . .”

  “Have you ever considered that this whole thing could be turned into an opportunity?”

  “An opportunity! An oppor—”

  “Greg!” Ted snapped. “Quit repeating everything I say. Now, sit down and listen to me. I have an idea.”

  As Ted spoke, he glanced over at the diplomas on one wall, at his double degrees in business and hotel management. He was proud of those framed pieces of paper. His mother had been a bare-breasted dancer at the Flamingo in Vegas until her tits began to sag, and back in those days she’d also hooked a bit when money was tight. Now she tended bar at the MGM Grand and applied her makeup so heavy she looked like a clown. Good ol’ Mom. But she had introduced him to Al, and Al had paid for his education.

  That Al now owned him, body and soul, was the price he had to pay.

  “I dunno,” Greg said. “It might work, but it’s risky. I think we should tell Al what we did—what that bitch did—and what you have in mind. I mean it’s a good idea but we should come clean first, get everything out in the open. Al will listen to you, Ted. He loves you. He won’t do something crazy.”

  Ted shook his head slowly, not because of what Greg had said, but because of what Greg had become. In college, Greg was the guy you went to if you needed to buy a term paper or the answer key to an exam. He could get you pot, a fake ID so you could drink and, if your girlfriend got knocked up, he knew a lady who could take care of that, too. Back then Greg had balls, which was why he and Ted had become friends, and why Ted had later hired him to keep the casino’s books. But not anymore; these days there were mustard seeds bigger than Greg’s balls.

  Thank God he was a good accountant, though. Or at least a better one than McGruder.

  “Greg, we didn’t just lose the money,” Ted said. “It’s the way we lost it. Then we cooked the books. No, Greg, I’m not telling Al. I’m going to get the money back and I’m going to get the project financed. I’m going to turn this whole fucking mess to our advantage.”

  He was going to make lemonade out of lemons, as his dippy mother always said.

  But Greg just sat there, head down, looking like he’d just been told that he had colon cancer. Then he reached out to pick up a bottle of springwater. It took Ted a second to figure out what he was doing: he was trying to pick up the bottle without using his thumb. Christ.

  “Greg, go find Gus and tell him to come up here,” Ted said. “I need to give McGruder something else to think about until I can put everything in place.”

  2

  When DeMarco’s cell phone rang, the dental hygienist was jabbing at a tooth with something sharp and painful. He made a noise that sounded like “Waaa” to get her to stop, checked the caller ID, and told the pretty sadist he had to take the call.

  “He needs to see you immediately,” Mavis said.

  “I’m at the dentist’s. I can probably be there in . . .”

  “Joe, I don’t care if they just yanked every tooth out of your head and you’re bleeding to death from the holes in your gums. Get back here. Now!”

  Mavis glared at him when he arrived, which was unusual because he knew that she had a soft spot for him in that small, hard organ the Boston Irish call a heart. He assumed she was displeased because he hadn’t been able to instantly teleport himself from Alexandria to the Capitol, and half an hour had elapsed since her phone call. She shooed him toward Mahoney’s office with a brisk, “Hurry up, hurry up.” He wondered what the hell was going on.

  He entered the room expecting that the big man behind the desk would complain because he, too, had to wait—but he didn’t, and this surprised DeMarco. Mahoney was the type who demanded instant gratification, and he whined loud and long when it wasn’t forthcoming.

  Mahoney gestured with his blunt chin at a young black woman sitting in one of the two visitors’ chairs in front of his massive desk. “This is Kay Kiser,” he said.

  Kiser was wearing a navy-blue suit, a white blouse, and flat-heeled black shoes. DeMarco could tell, even though she was seated, that she was tall. He was five eleven and Kiser was at least that tall, maybe taller. And she looked athletic: good shoulders; flat stomach; shapely, muscular legs. With her height, he wondered if she’d played basketball in college, or maybe volleyball. She was also pretty—and probably even prettier when she smiled—but right now she wasn’t smiling. The expression on her face was beyond serious; it was downright grim.

  “Ms. Kiser,” Mahoney continued, “this is Joe DeMarco. He’s a guy who helps me out every once in a while.”

  Kiser’s only reaction to DeMarco’s less-than-enlightening job description was to study his face as if she wanted to be sure she could pick him out of a lineup. What she saw was a broad-shouldered, muscular man with a full head of dark hair, blue eyes, a prominent nose, and a big square dimpled chin. DeMarco was a handsome man with a hard-looking face, although he never thought of himself as a hard guy.

  “Ms. Kiser works for the SEC,” Mahoney said.

  Aw shit, boss! What have you done now?

  John Fitzpatrick Mahoney had a broad chest, a wide butt, and a substantial gut. His hair was white and full, his features large and handsome, his eyes blue and watery, the whites perpetually veined with red. John Mahoney had the eyes of a committed drinker.

  Mahoney was a Democrat and the minority leader in the House of Representatives. He’d represented a district in Boston for decades and had been the Speaker of the House for years, but lost the top job when the Republicans took control a couple of years ago. He was not an easy man to live with even when things were going his way; he’d become even harder to live with since he’d lost the Speaker’s gavel. His life these days was devoted to putting his party back in power.

  DeMarco had worked for Mahoney for a long time and he knew that his employer skated close to the edge in almost everything he did, but DeMarco had never thought him greedy enough—or stupid enough—to do something that would come to the attention of the SEC.

  Rising from his chair, Mahoney said to Kiser, “I gotta go—I gotta go vote on something—but I want you to tell DeMarco everything you told me.”

  “Sir, I don’t have time to . . .”

  “Yeah, you do,” Mahoney said.

  There was usually a life-is-but-a-game twinkle in Mahoney’s eyes—particularly in the company of an attractive woman—but not today. And his message to Kiser was clear: no matter what Mahoney may have done, he was still one of the most powerful politicians in the country and she was just a bureaucrat at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” Mahoney said to DeMarco. “And Ms. Kiser,” Mahoney said, his hand on the doorknob.

  “Yes?” Kiser said. DeMarco thought the woman’s eyes looked like pieces of polished flint—a rock used to start fires and make arrowheads.

  “Thanks for doing this thing this way,” Mahoney said. “I appreciate it,” he added, surprising both Kiser and DeMarco.

  * * *

  “We’re arresting the congressman’s daughter, Molly, for insider trading,” Kiser said.

  “What!” DeMarco said. Now he understood why Mahoney had been so solemn. But Molly? No way.

  “My boss sent me here as a courtesy to Mr. Mahoney to inform him of his daughter’s situation,” Kiser said. “Also, as a courtesy to the congressman, we’re giving Ms. Mahoney until seven p.m. to turn herself in and be placed under arrest.”

  Every time Kiser said “courtesy” she spit the word out as if it were something nasty stuck
to the tip of her tongue. She clearly resented the preferential treatment Molly Mahoney was receiving and DeMarco could tell if Kiser had had her way, two big federal agents would have marched into Molly’s office, slapped handcuffs on her, and hauled her away in full view of her co-workers—just the way they would have handled some coke-snorting young trader on Wall Street.

  Kay Kiser wanted to crucify Molly Mahoney on a high hill.

  “What makes you think Molly did anything illegal?” DeMarco said.

  “I don’t think. I know. Ms. Mahoney works for Reston Technologies in Rockville, Maryland, and she recently purchased ten thousand shares of Hubbard Power stock for fifty-two dollars per share. She . . .”

  DeMarco did the math in his head. “She bought half a million dollars worth of stock?”

  “Yes. Reston Tech is a research company that works with major manufacturers to improve their products. One of the companies they work with is Hubbard Power and they build batteries used in submarines.”

  “Submarines?”

  Kiser ignored DeMarco’s confusion. “Reston came up with a design to reduce the weight and size of submarine batteries by thirty percent. This was a major scientific breakthrough in battery design, and the U.S. Navy is going to spend millions on these new batteries.”

  “Why?” DeMarco asked.

  Kiser kept talking as if DeMarco hadn’t asked the question. “Ms. Mahoney worked on the submarine battery project and she bought stock in Hubbard Power a month before the company’s shareholders were informed of the breakthrough. And when the company announced the new design, the stock price rose to seventy-eight dollars a share and Molly Mahoney made a profit of approximately a quarter million dollars.” Kiser’s lips curved upward in a small, humorless smile. “As soon as she sold her shares, her original investment and her profits were seized by the government.”

  “I still don’t get it,” DeMarco said. “So what if she bought some stock in this other company?”