House Odds Read Online Free PDF Page B

to learn that banks in places like Belarus and Nigeria don’t follow the same record-keeping practices we have over here, particularly if you tip the banker.”
    “Earlier, you said he . Do you know the investor’s a he?”
    “No. It could be a she or a they. But the thing is, we now knew the insider had to be at Reston Tech. I mean, when it happened with the water treatment gizmo it could have been somebody at either the water treatment place or at Reston. But when it happened a second time, and with a different company, we knew there had to be a bad guy at Reston.”
    “But you don’t have any idea who he is?”
    “Not a clue—and believe me, Kiser’s dug hard for him. Anyway, five years ago it happened again. This time it was for a company who was designing an electric motor you connect to the wheels of a jet.”
    “What?” DeMarco said.
    “You know when an airplane is sitting at the gate and they use that little truck to push the plane back? And after the jet is on the runway, it taxis for twenty minutes, using up a bunch of fuel. Well, this electric motor, which operates off a rechargeable battery, hooks up to the airplane’s wheels and you can use it to move the plane and taxi. You not only save on fuel, but you can also fire all the guys who drive the little trucks that push the planes around. The thing never got approved by the FAA, but just the idea of it was enough to drive the stock up.”
    “So what happened?” DeMarco asked.
    “What happened is the same thing that happened with the body armor. Right before the company announces their super-duper new electric airplane motor, somebody buys a ton of their stock and makes a mint. This time the investor was a European hedge fund and, once again, the hedge fund was just an empty shell and because it was set up in Liechtenstein or Switzerland or wherever the hell it was, it was even harder for us to figure out who was involved.”
    “So what I’m telling you is, Reston Tech is a perfect company for insider trading. At any one time, Reston is working with thirty or forty different industries on new technologies and if you can figure out what the next big thing is going to be, the place is a gold mine. And this has happened three times in the past that we’re aware of.
    “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.