House Odds (11 page)

Perry Wallace knew several cops who had political ambitions, like the desire to be appointed to a high-profile job in some federal law enforcement agency. Politics was all about connections and favors, and Perry Wallace had the connections. Normally, Perry would have refused to do DeMarco’s legwork for him, but since DeMarco was working on something involving Mahoney’s daughter, he reluctantly called a cop and asked him to do a record check on Campbell. The cop he called turned out to be the deputy chief of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Force, and he called DeMarco half an hour after Perry Wallace talked to him.

The deputy chief, a guy named Foster, sounded like he was irritated that he was having to waste his time on grunt work like a background check. He told DeMarco that Campbell had no convictions and, except for a couple of traffic tickets, hadn’t had a brush with the law in over twenty years. But twenty-four years ago—the same year the Cavaliers lost in the Citrus Bowl—Campbell was arrested for drunk and disorderly, which for a college football player wasn’t exactly earth-shattering news. But at the same time, he was also arrested for obstructing a homicide investigation—and that went way beyond your normal frat boy prank.

“But nothing ever came of it,” Foster said. “He was never formally charged or indicted and the whole thing was dropped. And I can’t tell from the records I was able to access what the whole thing was all about. All I’ve got here is a Charlottesville PD case number and the name of the detective who worked the case. And one other thing. The record is cross-referenced to another record involving a guy named Russell McGrath who was arrested at the same time and for the same things but, like I said, nothing ever went to trial. It sounds like they just arrested these guys to rattle their cages, but since this all happened more than twenty years ago, I doubt if anyone will remember anything. Do you want the case numbers and the detective’s name?”

“Yeah, I guess,” DeMarco said, and wrote down the information.

DeMarco turned back to his computer and looked again at the article on the team reunion in Charlottesville. Russell (Rusty) McGrath had also been on the team. He was one of the guys who made the pros.

DeMarco sat for a moment, trying to decide if he should call the Charlottesville police department, and decided not to. Maybe he’d call them later if there seemed to be a reason for calling them, but he agreed with Foster that he’d most likely be wasting his time trying to find someone who remembered an arrest that happened almost a quarter century ago.

He looked at his watch. It was almost six—time to knock off for the day—and that’s when the phone rang. It was the credit checkers, and the news they gave him wasn’t what he’d expected at all.

He decided to go see Douglas Campbell.

14

Douglas Campbell lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

His house was a behemoth with a three-car garage and had a front yard about as big as a soccer field. One of the garage doors was open, and DeMarco could see a Lexus SUV, this year’s model, which sold for seventy or eighty grand if you got all the bells and whistles. And Molly had said that Campbell also owned a boat.

The credit checkers had told DeMarco that Campbell had an excellent credit rating. In fact, other than a couple of credit cards that he paid off monthly, he didn’t owe anybody anything. He’d purchased his Maryland home for one point seven million ten years ago, and his “cottage” on Chesapeake Bay had cost six hundred grand, and neither place had an outstanding mortgage. Molly had told him that Campbell made around a hundred and fifty thousand a year; he couldn’t imagine how he owned all the things he owned and was debt free. He either had an excellent financial adviser or a very rich wife—and DeMarco hoped this wasn’t the case. If Campbell was completely legitimate that wouldn’t help Molly.

DeMarco rang the doorbell. The woman who answered was a forty-something blonde wearing white shorts and a pink Izod T-shirt. She had a cute, upturned nose and was fashionably thin, but her skin was leathery from too much unprotected exposure to the sun. Ex-cheerleader was DeMarco’s first impression. She’d probably been as cute as a button twenty years ago but her looks were fading, like a photograph left sitting too close to a window.

“Is Mr. Campbell available?” DeMarco asked.

“Doug?” she said, as if confused that DeMarco would be asking to see her husband in his own house. The woman swayed a bit as she stood in the doorway and DeMarco thought she might be drunk. The glass in her hand was another clue.

“Yes,” DeMarco said.

“Oh. Well, he’s out back, barbecuing. Ha!” she added, as if the idea of her husband cooking was hilarious. Not funny hilarious, but pathetic hilarious. “Why do you want to see him?” she then asked, her eyes narrowing, maybe thinking DeMarco was selling something.

“I work for Congress, Mrs. Campbell. I need to ask your husband some questions about an ongoing investigation.”

“Is that right?” she said, but she was already losing interest and looking back at the television in the room behind her.
Entertainment Tonight
was on, and Nancy O’Dell was asking some teenage actress with arms the diameter of spaghetti if she might possibly have an eating disorder.

“Yes,” DeMarco said. “May I come in please?”

“Nah, the place is a mess. Just walk around the side, that way, and you’ll find the master chef. Ha!” she said again and closed the door.

* * *

DeMarco walked around the house as directed and saw Campbell—and the kidney-shaped swimming pool behind him. The patio he was standing on was constructed from stone that looked like granite, and Campbell’s barbecue was big enough to roast a luau pig.

Campbell, as might be expected of an ex-college lineman, was a big man, at least six five. Also, as might be expected, twenty-plus years after his playing days, he was packing forty or fifty pounds he didn’t need. He had thinning blond hair combed forward to provide the most coverage for his scalp, and his complexion was ruddy from drink, sun, and lack of exercise. He was wearing a blue apron over Bermuda shorts and a white T-shirt; the apron had a picture of a big red lobster lying on its back with X’s for eyes. Campbell was using his two-thousand-dollar barbecue to grill two hot dogs.

“Mr. Campbell?” DeMarco said.

“Uh, hi,” Campbell said. “What . . .”

“Your wife told me to come back here. My name’s Joe DeMarco. I work for Congress and I need to talk to you.”

“At this time of night?”

It was only seven p.m. “Yeah,” DeMarco said. “When a situation involves the daughter of the highest ranking Democrat in the House, folks like me tend to work overtime.”

“Oh, it’s about Molly.” Campbell shook his big head. “It’s really a shame about her. I just can’t believe it.”

“That’s good, Mr. Campbell, because nobody else believes it either.”

“Well, that lady from the SEC sure as hell does. Man, I’d hate to have her down on my ass.”

“I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, Mr. Campbell,” DeMarco said. “The SEC knows that somebody at Reston Tech has been leaking insider information for twenty years. In other words, a long time before Molly Mahoney began working there.”

But as long as you’ve been there.

“You’re kidding,” Campbell said.

DeMarco just stared at him.

“Hey, where are my manners?” Campbell said. “You wanna drink?”

“No,” DeMarco said.

“Well, I’m gonna make myself another one. I’ll be right back.”

Campbell’s reaction to DeMarco’s statement about something criminal going on at his company hadn’t been right. Too nonchalant. No big surprise. No big denial. Just
off.

DeMarco looked through the sliding glass door that allowed entry to Campbell’s kitchen from the patio. Campbell was mixing his drink, head down, his back to his wife, trying to ignore her, while she made angry, jabbing gestures at his back as she yammered at him.

Two drunks in an unhappy marriage, DeMarco thought.

Campbell came back to the pool, a gin and tonic in his hand. He took a gulp of his drink then turned the hot dogs on the grill. He had the heat up too high and the hot dogs were scorched black on the side that had been facing the flame.

“Does your wife work, Mr. Campbell?”

“Not unless you call hitting tennis balls work,” Campbell said. “Anyway, what does my wife working have to do with . . .”

“You didn’t seem particularly surprised when I told you that the SEC has been trying to find a criminal at Reston Tech for twenty years.”

“Sure I’m surprised,” Campbell said, “but if something like that’s really going on, I sure as hell don’t know anything about it.”

“That’s not what Molly says.”

“What’s that mean?”

It was time for DeMarco’s big lie. “Molly overheard a conversation between you and another person in two thousand . . . Well, I’m not going to go into the details—we’ll save those for the trial—but when the SEC finds out what she knows, they’re going to start looking at you again, and this time they’ll find something.”

“Are you saying Molly’s accused me of doing something illegal? Well, if she has, it’s bullshit and she’s lying to take the heat off herself. And I’ll tell you something else, pal: this discussion is over. Right now. I’m not saying another word to you without a lawyer present.”

“Now, I know you have a partner, and . . .”

“A partner? What are you . . .”

“And when Kay Kiser hears what Molly has to say, she’ll find your partner.”

“What in the
hell
are you talking about?”

“Do you know how the government makes most of its cases, Mr. Campbell? By rolling one of the people involved. WorldCom, Enron, Madoff—in all those cases, one guy rolled and told the government what all the other guys did. And the reason the one guy always rolls is the government grants him immunity. The trick is, you have to be the first guy to turn over. But if you wait, and if somebody else talks first, then you get nothing but time in the pen. In your case, a federal pen.”

“This is outrageous! You get the hell off my property,” Campbell said, glowering down at DeMarco. Ordinarily, DeMarco would have been concerned goading a guy Campbell’s size, but Campbell was not only drunk, he also looked pretty foolish in his barbecue apron, his big gut pushing out the cloth.

DeMarco didn’t move. “I think you live far above your means, Mr. Campbell. There’s no way you can afford this place, your beach house, your boat, and all your cars and not be up to your neck in debt. But I did a credit check on you, and you’re debt free.”

“You gotta lotta goddamn nerve doing credit checks on me. Wait’ll my lawyer hears about that. And I know my rights. It doesn’t matter if you’re from Congress, you can’t interrogate me without a lawyer present.”

“Sure, I can. I’m not a cop. I’m just the guy who’s going to get Molly Mahoney off the hook—and if that means packing you off to prison for a dozen years, that’s fine by me.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!” Campbell shrieked. “I haven’t done a damn . . .”

“Your hot dogs are burning, sir. And remember what I said: only the guy that rolls first gets a pass. Now, here’s my card,” DeMarco said and placed his business card—the one that had nothing on it but his name and phone number—facedown on the patio table.

And bon appétit, motherfucker.

15

Mahoney ordered a Wild Turkey on the rocks and then looked around the bar of the Hay Adams Hotel. Oh, great. In one corner, a Republican senator was sitting with Ray Suarez, the PBS
NewsHour
guy. Three tables away was an assistant to the president’s chief of staff talking to one of the White House lawyers—Mahoney wondered if someone at the White House was about to be indicted—and at the bar was a lady who was an undersecretary over at State. The State gal was patting the hand of a guy who wasn’t her husband, and who looked about ten years younger than her. Ordinarily this would have piqued Mahoney’s interest, but not tonight.

He hated meeting Preston Whitman in a place where Washington’s political elite tended to eat and drink, but Whitman knew it would be a feather in his hat to be seen in a social setting meeting one-on-one with Mahoney, and he was taking full advantage of the situation
.

Mahoney felt like he’d been kidnapped.

Whitman finally walked into the bar, his tardiness adding to Mahoney’s mounting irritation. He gave Mahoney his Liam Neeson smile, waved cheerfully to another man in the room, and then strode over to Mahoney’s table. One of his big feet bumped a table leg when he sat down, almost spilling Mahoney’s drink. Out of the corner of his eye, Mahoney could see the assistant to the president’s chief of staff and Suarez both staring at him. Goddamnit.

After Whitman had ordered his drink, he said, “Thank you for meeting with me, sir, and I promise I won’t waste your time. I asked to see you because a client I represent wants to help your daughter.”

“You mean help with these false charges against her.”

“Well, not exactly.”

“Then why the hell are we here?” Mahoney said. If this meeting wasn’t about his daughter’s legal problems, Mahoney was going to string Preston Whitman up by his balls.