House Odds (16 page)

DeMarco remembered Molly telling him how Campbell used a prepaid calling card the time she overheard him talking to somebody in his office. He wondered if that’s why there was no record of Campbell ever talking to Praeter.

“How ’bout the other insider trading cases,” DeMarco asked, “the ones involving the body armor and those electric airplane motors? Did you look at Praeter for that?”

“Kiser did. But it’s like I told you before, we could never figure out who bought the stock so she couldn’t prove it was Praeter or anybody else. All I could tell was that she spent a lot of time looking at him.”

“How could you tell that,” DeMarco asked, but Sawyer had just heard a car door slam somewhere in the garage and his head spun about like he was a bucktoothed version of Linda Blair in
The Exorcist
.

“Randy, how do you know she spent a long time looking at him?”

“She did lots of record traces, reviewed the data on dozens of trades he’d made. I could tell by all the notes in the margins of the files. But like I said, she didn’t find anything. He’s either clean or he’s smart—and you have to be damn smart to hide anything from Kiser.”

“Did you see anything in Kiser’s files linking Praeter to McGrath?”

The garage elevator dinged, Sawyer’s head whipped around again. The elevator was empty. “What?” he said.

Randy Sawyer was not your ideal undercover operative.

“I asked if she ever saw any connection between Praeter and McGrath?”

“No, McGrath wasn’t in her files at all.”

“Shit,” DeMarco said.

“So what’s this all mean, DeMarco?” Sawyer said. “And does anything I’ve told you help Molly Mahoney?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s just great,” Sawyer said. There was a pause and he added, “My friend, this is the last time I’m meeting with you. You are on your own from this point forward. Got it?”

“Yeah, I got it,” DeMarco said. He didn’t bother to tell Sawyer that Molly’s lawyers would probably subpoena him, however, if they felt it would help her case.

21

DeMarco wanted to talk to Mahoney, to give him an update on what he’d learned, but no one knew where Mahoney was—and that was really strange. A politician of his rank can’t just disappear for a whole day, but it seemed as if he had.

Since DeMarco couldn’t talk to his boss, and since he couldn’t think of anything else to do, he decided to look into Mrs. Campbell’s trust fund. Sawyer said the trust was managed by Riggs National Bank but DeMarco learned that Riggs had been taken over by an outfit called PNC Financial Services in 2005. After a few minutes on the phone, telling a tight-lipped PNC VP that the entire weight of the federal government was going to land on his pointy head if he didn’t help, DeMarco was informed that Kathy Campbell’s trust was managed out of the Georgetown branch of the bank by a woman named Gail Martin. But that’s all the helpful banker would tell him.

DeMarco’s first impression of Gail Martin—
Mrs
. Gail Martin—was: sharp lady. She had a trim body, wavy dark hair, a narrow foxy face, and these incredible gray-blue eyes. And there was a twinkle in her eyes that said that even though she worked for a big stuffy bank, she found life pretty darn funny. DeMarco wanted a wife like Mrs. Martin: someone pretty, with a sense of humor, and smart enough to make him rich.

“Now you don’t really think I’m going to tell you anything about Mrs. Campbell’s trust, do you?” she said to DeMarco. She smiled when she said this; apparently DeMarco was one of those people who made life so darn funny.

“Like I said, Mrs. Martin, I’m from Congress and . . .”

“Honey, if you were my sweet ol’ mama, I wouldn’t give you information about a customer’s account without a subpoena.”

“Well, speaking of subpoenas,” DeMarco said—he just hated to get tough with someone as cute as her—“that’s what this may come down to. I’m working on something involving a very powerful congressman and his lawyers will subpoena your records—and you know what pain that can be.”

“Not for me,” smart Mrs. Martin said. “There’s a company we use that employs a bunch of college kids, and whenever we’re subpoenaed or audited, the kids print out and box up the records. No work for me at all.”

“So a college kid can look at Mrs. Campbell’s records but a representative from Congress can’t?”

“You got it,” Mrs. Martin said.

So much for the tough approach.

“Look,” he said, “we can save everybody a lot of work here. You, me, and the college kids. I only want to know one thing.”

Mrs. Martin shook her pretty head. “Sorry.”

Ignoring the head shake, DeMarco said, “All I want to know is if either a Russell McGrath or a Richard Praeter is involved in the trust in any way. That’s it.”

The twinkle in Mrs. Martin’s lovely gray-blue eyes disappeared like someone had thrown water on a camp fire. “Has Richard Praeter done something illegal?”

“So you know him,” DeMarco said.

“Yes. He calls me every once in a while and screams at me, and if I disagree with him, he swears and calls me names.”

“What? Why would he do that?” DeMarco asked.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said. “Has he done something illegal?”

“I’m not sure,” DeMarco admitted. “But he may be mixed up with some past insider trading cases, and that’s why I’m asking questions about him.”

“I see,” Mrs. Martin said, and then she paused as if she were trying to make up her mind about something. Finally she said, “Well, I don’t know who Russell McGrath is, but Mr. Praeter, per Mrs. Campbell’s verbal authorization, essentially controls her trust. Even though the bank—meaning me—is paid to manage it, all the trust’s investments are directed by him.”

“So Praeter pulls the strings but he’s not officially tied to the trust.”

“That’s correct. Mrs. Campbell told me Mr. Praeter was her financial adviser and that I was to do what he said. When I objected and asked for something in writing, her husband went over my head, threatened to move his wife’s money to some other bank, and my boss told me to stop being so persnickety. So Praeter in reality directs the trust’s investments, but I always get Mrs. Campbell to personally authorize any actions I take, which I’m required to do by law. And when I call her, she says, ‘Well, if that’s what Dickie says you should do, it’s fine by me.’ What I don’t like about the situation is that if something goes wrong, I have no documentation to show that Mr. Praeter is the one responsible and it will appear as if Mrs. Campbell was making decisions based on my advice.”

DeMarco could see why she didn’t like the situation from a legal standpoint, but he suspected that she also didn’t like Richard Praeter for personal reasons. He figured that Praeter had to be one obnoxious SOB to alienate a woman like her.

“I must say, however, that Mr. Praeter is very shrewd when it comes to the market. Or based on what you’ve just told me, maybe he’s not so shrewd; maybe he just has access to information the general public doesn’t. In any case, the trust was established by Mrs. Campbell’s father when she was eighteen. Its value was two hundred and fifty thousand at the time and her father stipulated that his daughter wouldn’t have access to the principal until she was thirty. And for a number of years, the trust’s annual payout was just a few thousand dollars. We’re a conservative institution, and I’m personally very conservative when it comes to my clients because I don’t want them to lose their money. But when Mr. Praeter became involved, this was about fifteen years ago, we started to take huge risks—and they paid off. Handsomely. Mrs. Campbell’s trust is currently valued at one point six million, and the Campbells have made substantial withdrawals from it several times since Mrs. Campbell turned thirty.”

“Wow!” DeMarco said, thinking that if he couldn’t marry Mrs. Martin that Richard Praeter would do. “But you don’t have anything that
officially
links Praeter to the trust? A memo? An e-mail? Something like that?”

“No.” Then Mrs. Martin smiled. “I do, however, record all my phone calls with Mr. Praeter so in case I’m ever accused of making bad investments related to the trust, my little butt is covered.”

“Does Praeter know you record these phone calls?”

“No.”

Sly Mrs. Martin.

She then added, “I imagine a correctly worded subpoena would produce those recordings.”

22

“Who was that big white-haired guy you had in your office yesterday?” McGruder said.

The son of a bitch, Ted thought. He had spies everywhere, and one of them must have seen Mahoney leaving his office.

“A jackass named Dohenny,” Ted said. “He owes us eight grand. You must have seen his name in the book.”

“Yeah, I saw it. He hasn’t made a payment in three weeks.”

“Well, that’s what we had a little chat about.”

“You talk to these deadbeats personally? You don’t have Gus do that for you?”

“Usually Gus does, but this guy pisses me off.”

“Huh,” McGruder said, as if he was impressed that Ted was willing to get his hands dirty.

“Anyway, he’s gonna pay tomorrow.”

Which meant that tomorrow Ted was going to have to pay off Dohenny’s debt with his own money. Goddamn McGruder. Tonight he’d have Gus beat the livin’ shit out of Dohenny, an auto parts dealer who lived in Camden.

“Good,” McGruder said. “You can’t let these guys stall you too long.”

No shit,
Ted almost said. But actually, having McGruder around hadn’t been that bad. The guy was constantly bugging him with questions, but every day he seemed less suspicious, and he still hadn’t figured out how Greg had doctored the books. Ted also discovered that McGruder had a thing for little Asian chicks, so every other night he sent him one.

The other thing he’d found out was that if he played up to McGruder, pretended he was asking for his advice, that made the asshole happy, too. But he had to get the money out of Mahoney and he had to show he was making progress on the convention center project.

And it looked like Mahoney was cooperating. Mahoney had walked out on him the other day, but Ted had found out from Preston Whitman that Mahoney’s chief of staff was quietly exploring options to get federal funding for the convention center. But Ted needed to get Mahoney moving faster, and he wanted his five hundred grand back in case McGruder eventually found something in the books.

It was time to send Mahoney a message.

23

Richard Praeter’s office was on the twenty-second floor of a building two blocks from the New York Stock Exchange. DeMarco opened the door and found himself standing in a small waiting room with a desk where a receptionist or a secretary would sit, but the desk was empty. Behind the receptionist’s desk he could see a larger room and a man in the room, standing, talking on the phone.

Praeter didn’t see DeMarco immediately because he was staring out his office window as he talked, so DeMarco walked up to the open door, planning to rap on the frame to get Praeter’s attention. He noticed that Praeter’s office contained a glass-topped table for a desk; a matching conference table; a multiline telephone; three flat-screen computer monitors; and an enormous wall-mounted TV tuned to some channel devoted to business news twenty-four hours a day. There were also several large, unattractive metal file cabinets against one wall. The cabinets were bolted to the floor and were locked with oversize padlocks, ugly industrial looking things that would have been more appropriate barring the gates to a factory than inside a wealthy investor’s office.

Praeter was saying into the phone, “Who’s banking the takeover?” and just then he turned and saw DeMarco. “What the hell?” he said. Into the phone he said, “I’ll call you back.” He hung up and said to DeMarco, “Who the hell are you?”

Before DeMarco could answer, Praeter noticed that DeMarco was able to see one of the monitors on his desk and he lunged at the monitor and pressed the power button to darken the screen.

“Who are you?” Praeter asked again.

Praeter was about five feet seven and maybe weighed a hundred and thirty pounds. He had dark hair combed straight back, a longish face, and jittery black eyes. In fact, everything about him was
jittery
. He reminded DeMarco of the actor James Woods playing one of his manic, hyperactive, fast-talking roles.

Praeter was wearing a suit—the jacket on even though he was alone in his office—a monogrammed shirt, and suspenders. The suit fit him well and probably cost a lot of money, as did Praeter’s watch and every other object in the room: the professional espresso machine, the ultrathin TV, his ergonomic executive’s chair. But no matter how expensively Praeter was attired, and regardless of the cost of the furnishings in his office, DeMarco’s initial impression was: immature, insecure nerd. This was the kid in high school who got straight As in math, wore high-water pants and owlish glasses, and pined hopelessly for girls who laughed at him.

“Mr. Praeter, my name’s Joe DeMarco. I’m from . . .”

“How did you get into my office?” Praeter said.

“The outer door was unlocked,” DeMarco said.