House Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page A

insider trading. He didn’t know if Callahan was guilty of this particular crime but suspected a man with his money and connections might be. Mahoney, in fact, had been guilty of insider trading many times but as a member of Congress, and despite recent changes to a vaguely worded law called the STOCK Act, he could get away with it. But Callahan couldn’t. So unless the chairman of the SEC wanted to be dragged in front of a House committee to explain why his commission was so damn useless . . .
    He contacted the director of the FBI next, and told him that he wanted the bureau to investigate Elinore’s claim that Callahan’s people had stolen her mail. Stealing mail was, after all, a federal crime. The head of the bureau languidly said, “Not my job, Congressman. You need to talk to the Postal Inspection Service.” Mahoney had never dealt with the Postal Inspection Service in his life. He looked them up on the Internet and found that, yep, they were the guys who investigated if your mail got stolen. They also investigated mailbox destruction, letter bombs, identity theft, lottery fraud, and a whole bunch of other stuff. They had over a thousand inspectors, seventeen field offices, and even had their own forensic laboratory. No wonder the price of stamps kept going up. But when Mahoney learned that the postal service’s top cop had started off his career as a mail carrier in Mississippi, he “imaged” a guy with a wandering eye, in those shorts mailmen wear, one of those white safari hats on his head—and decided not to bother.
    Lastly, Mahoney called the mayor of Boston and the city councilman representing Elinore’s neighborhood. He told them one thing he wanted done immediately was to have the right people inspect Callahan’s project looking for building and safety code violations. He wanted inspectors crawling over Callahan’s development like red-hot ants. He also wanted to know why the civil suits Elinore and other tenants had filed to stop Callahan’s terrorist tactics hadn’t prevailed. He screamed at the mayor, “You tell the useless son of a bitch who’s supposed to keep Callahan from breaking the housing laws to do his goddamn job!”
    The mayor and the councilman said they’d do what they could but their response was noticeably lukewarm. It was apparent to Mahoney that those two jackals were in Callahan’s pocket, either getting a kickback from him or a promise to contribute to their next campaign—and Mahoney couldn’t help but wonder if the mayor might actually be thinking about running against him.
    Two days after meeting with Elinore Dobbs, a disgruntled Mahoney sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair at Logan Airport waiting for his plane to D.C. to board. On one hand, he felt good that he’d done the right thing by siding with Elinore against Callahan. Maybe his reason for siding with her had more to do with pride than anything else—but he’d done the right thing. On the other hand, he had this queasy feeling in his stomach that his next run for the seat he’d held for more than three decades might not be so easy.
    The other thing was, in spite of all the bureaucrats he’d leaned on, Mahoney knew that eventually Callahan was going to win and Elinore was going to lose. There was no way she could hold out for three more years against Callahan. He also knew that after a couple of weeks the media would become bored with the story, if they weren’t bored already. So he needed to do more. He needed to find some way to keep the heat on Callahan, and what he really needed was to find some legal way to stop him from harassing Elinore. Then he thought: Who says it has to be legal?
    He called Mavis, his secretary in D.C. “Track down that lazy bastard DeMarco. He’s probably playing golf. Tell him I want him in my office tomorrow, and to pack a bag. He’s going to Boston.”

5
    Ray and Roy McNulty