House Odds Read Online Free Page B

and how he or she could be used to advance Mahoney’s agenda, whatever that agenda might be.
    Wallace’s reaction to DeMarco’s theory—that somebody was using Molly’s legal problems to harm Mahoney—was: “I don’t see it. So she’s convicted of a crime. Big deal. Everybody has kids, and sometimes their kids do stupid things. Mahoney’s numbers wouldn’t dip two points if she went to jail. And if they showed Mary Pat crying while they carted Molly off to jail, his numbers would probably rise two points.”
    By Mahoney’s “numbers,” Wallace meant Mahoney’s standing in the polls, polls that Wallace conducted on every major decision Mahoney made to see how popular or unpopular it might be.
    “Okay,” DeMarco said, “but what if somebody came to Mahoney and said, ‘I have evidence that will get Molly off, but I’ll only give it to her lawyers if you’ll push the Democrats my way on a particular issue?’ Don’t you think Mahoney might change his vote to keep his daughter out of jail?”
    “Maybe,” Wallace said.
    “Maybe!” DeMarco echoed. “Definitely. He’d never let his daughter go to jail for a crime she didn’t commit.”
    Or for a crime she did commit .
    “Okay, so maybe he wouldn’t. So what?” Wallace said.
    “So is there some bill out there that’s going to make somebody tons of money, so much money that using half a million bucks to frame Molly for a crime would be worth it?”
    Wallace laughed. “DeMarco, there’s always some bill out there that’s going to make somebody a lot of money—or cost somebody a lot of money. You really oughta pay some attention to what those guys do in that big room downstairs every day.”
    “Yeah, but can you think of something specific?”
    “I can think of twenty specific things. The number of bills that involve big bucks is large, but more importantly, the number of people behind those bills is almost infinite. It could be any CEO in America; any millionaire who wants to be a billionaire; any one of a thousand special interest groups.”
    “Come on, Perry, help me out here. Who’s rich enough and hates Mahoney enough to do something like this? Who hates him so much that they’d use his daughter to get to him?”
    “Who hates him so much that . . .” Perry Wallace’s small eyes suddenly grew wide and a look of shock spread across his broad face.
    “My God, Joe, I think I know who it is!”
    “You do?”
    “Yeah. But it’s not a single person. It’s a large group, a gang actually.”
    “A gang? What gang? What are they called?”
    “They’re called Republicans, you moron.”
    * * *
    “Pat, it’s Ted Allen.”
    “What do you want?” McGruder said, his voice all tight.
    “I want to apologize for the way I spoke to you the other day when you came to the casino. I know you were just doing your job.”
    McGruder didn’t respond—he just sat there wheezing into the phone. How long, Ted wondered, could a guy in his condition possibly live? “Anyway,” Ted said, “that’s not the main reason I called. You remember when you were here, Greg telling you how we lost money on a load of fish?”
    “Yeah, almost fifty grand,” McGruder said.
    “That’s right. Marco Donatelli ripped off a truckload of fish, most of it lobster and crab, and we bought it from him. We’ve dealt with him lots of times, and we’ve never had a problem in the past, but this time the truck’s refrigeration system went out between here and Maine and we lost the shipment. Donatelli gave us back our money, of course, but I had to pay retail for fish to stock the restaurants that week. So, like we told you the other day, it affected the bottom line by almost fifty K.”
    “Why are you telling me this again, Ted? Are you changing your story now?”
    “I’m telling you because I just found out that the driver Donatelli used bought himself a new truck. It looks like this clown lied about the fish spoiling and then sold the load to someone else and kept the