House Revenge

by Mike Lawson

  House Revenge

  Also by Mike Lawson

  The Inside Ring

  The Second Perimeter

  House Rules

  House Secrets

  House Justice

  House Divided

  House Blood

  House Odds

  House Reckoning

  House Rivals

  Rosarito Beach

  Viking Bay

  House Revenge

  MIKE LAWSON

  Atlantic Monthly Press

  New York

  Copyright © 2016 by Mike Lawson

  Jacket design by Carlos Betrán

  Jacket photograph by Kasia Baumann/Getty Images

  Author photograoh © Tara Gimmer

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic,

  154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or permissions@groveatlantic.com.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-0-8021-2523-1

  eISBN 978-0-8021-9039-0

  Atlantic Monthly Press

  an imprint of Grove Atlantic

  154 West 14th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  groveatlantic.com

  For Dan Caine (1942–2015)

  Lawyer. Naval officer. A good husband. A good father.

  A good friend. We all miss you.

  Author’s Note

  To the best of my knowledge, there is no Delaney Street in Boston.

  House Revenge

  Prologue

  It’s impossible to know how Ray and Roy McNulty might have turned out if they hadn’t been raised by two violent, ignorant drunks.

  And maybe nothing would have happened at all if Sean Callahan had just pretended to show John Mahoney the respect Mahoney felt he deserved.

  But when the McNulty brothers tried to kill Elinore Dobbs and cracked Joe DeMarco’s skull . . . Well, after that, things just spun out of control.

  1

  It was humid and almost a hundred degrees outside, the day John Mahoney met Elinore Dobbs—but Mahoney was feeling about as mellow as a man can feel.

  On the way to his district office on Boylston Street, he’d stopped for a massage at an establishment he visited occasionally when he was in Boston. The masseuses were all tiny Vietnamese women and reminded him of bar girls he’d enjoyed in Saigon when he was a marine, a lad of just seventeen, fighting in a war he didn’t understand. The masseuse he had that day was a lovely lady named Kim with coal-black hair and sparkling black eyes and breasts the size of apples. She started out with his back, pummeled and rubbed tight muscles, making him moan with pain and pleasure, then her soft lips brushed his ear and whispered that he should turn over.

  Then it was off to lunch at L’Espalier, also in the Back Bay, also on Boylston Street. L’Espalier was one of the most—if not the most—­expensive French restaurants in Boston. Mahoney had lunch in the Crystal Room, a room bordered on three sides by bottles of wine resting in striking steel and glass cases. The tables were covered with ­linens whiter than fresh-fallen snow—and certainly whiter than John ­Mahoney’s soul.

  Mahoney had L’Espalier’s signature Maine lobster bisque with garlic flan for an appetizer, followed by Amish chicken, roasted with herbed cannoli, rum raisins, and pine nuts. This fine repast was preceded by a tumbler of A. H. Hirsch Reserve, one of the priciest bourbons sold in America. With his lunch, he had a bottle of Chardonnay that he guessed went for over a hundred bucks a bottle. He had to guess the cost of the wine, of course, because he didn’t pay for a thing. L’Espalier’s owner comped him, as he always did, Mahoney being who he was: the senior congressman from Boston, a former Speaker of the House and currently the House Minority Leader—arguably the most powerful Democrat on Capitol Hill, and a man sensitive to the needs of his friends in the restaurant business.

  At three p.m., he finally sauntered into his district office. He was supposed to have been there at two. The lobby was crowded with about twenty people, ordinary citizens—and John Mahoney’s constituents. Sitting behind a desk overflowing with correspondence was a stout woman with unruly gray hair and a noticeable mustache. Her name was Maggie Dolan and she’d worked for Mahoney for years. She ran the office, was intimately involved in Mahoney’s ongoing reelection efforts, and acted as boss and den mother to three or four summer interns. Maggie glared at Mahoney, letting him know she wasn’t the least bit happy that he was late and that she’d been forced to deal with all the whiners.

  Also present was one behemoth, a guy with a shaved head who would have fit right in on the New England Patriots’ offensive line. He wore a navy-blue blazer, never-press gray slacks, a blue button-down shirt, and a blue-and-green-striped clip-on tie. He was security. He wasn’t armed, except for a can of Mace, but was so damn big it looked as if it would take a bazooka to knock him down. He was present in case any of Mahoney’s constituents violently disapproved of the way he represented them.

  “Hey, how’s it going,” Mahoney said to the citizens. “Sorry I’m late. I had to take a call from the president, some flap going on with Iran. I’ll be with you all in a minute, and I’m looking forward to talking to you.”

  Mahoney was five foot eleven, broad across the back and butt; he had a big hard gut that swelled his shirt. His hair was snow white—it had been that color since his forties—and he had bright blue eyes and handsome features. When he turned on the charm, people were charmed. The folks he’d kept waiting for an hour instantly forgave him now that they understood he’d been assisting the president in a matter of national security. Had they known he’d been getting his nob polished, they might have been less forgiving.

  Mahoney stepped through a door and walked back to his office. On the way he passed the space where the interns sat, two boys, two girls, all about twenty or so, all Harvard undergrads. Mahoney was sure they had IQs that went off the chart but he had no idea what they were doing on his behalf; Maggie Dolan gave them their assignments.

  He stuck his head into the interns’ office and said, “Hey, guys, how’s it going?”

  The interns leapt to their feet like Mahoney was an admiral and somebody had called out: Officer on deck!

  “Congressman!” they all cried in unison.

  “Thanks for being here,” Mahoney said. “Keep up the good work.” Whatever the hell it was.

  He finally reached his office. He took off his suit jacket and hung it on a wooden coat tree, loosened his tie, rolled up his sleeves, and took a seat behind a large mahogany desk. The desk was old, battered and scarred, as was all the other furniture in the room. Mahoney didn’t want anything fancy in the office; he didn’t want the citizens to think he was squandering their hard-earned tax dollars.

  On the wall behind the desk were photos of Mahoney posing with various luminaries: presidents, movie stars, and athletes who played for the Sox, the Celtics, the Bruins, and the Patriots. One picture showed hi
m standing on the Great Wall of China next to his wife, Mary Pat, and their three daughters. The women in the photo all looked wonderful; Mahoney’s family was good-looking and incredibly photogenic. Mahoney, however, looked pale and his smile seemed off center. He appeared to be ill, which he had been that day. The night before the photo was taken he’d stuffed his face with every delicacy the Chinese cooked while drinking about two gallons of Tsingtao beer—and when the sun started to beat down on his head the next day, he’d upchucked everything he’d eaten. He figured he was probably the highest-ranking American politician to ever throw up on the Great Wall of China.

  He picked up the phone, punched a button to speak to Maggie, and said, “Send the first one in. Oh, and have one of the kids bring me a Coke. I’m gonna need the caffeine to stay awake.”

  At least once a month, Mahoney would fly up to Boston from D.C., where he’d attend fund-raisers, make speeches, and try to get on local talk shows. Most important, he’d meet with his big-money donors and see what he needed to do to keep them happy. As Mahoney ran for office every two years, he was constantly scheming and groveling to keep the campaign money rolling in. But about every fourth month, he’d do what he was doing today. He called it Open House.

  Mahoney didn’t care at all for the town hall meeting format used by some politicians. He’d tried it once and hadn’t liked the unruly, disgruntled crowd that gathered—yelling out questions, booing his responses—not to mention the Republican-planted hecklers trying to shove political sticks in his eye. Then there were the reporters writing down every word, taking things out of context, pointing out every inconsistency with things he’d previously said. So instead he held Open House, where he could meet with his constituents one-on-one—without the media jackals ­present—and listen to their problems. He did this partly to give the impression he cared—which he actually did—about the ordinary slobs who voted for him. He’d take the temperature on how they were feeling about certain issues, listen to them bitch, and assure them that he was fighting for them body and soul down there in Washington. The other purpose of Open House was that he was always looking for something that would play well in the press, something to remind the voters that the man they’d elected was really on their side, and not on the side of the people who contributed vast sums of money to him.

  Politics was a cynical game. But what can you do?

  Most of the people who showed up for Open House were old folks, which was understandable as Mahoney held it on an afternoon, during the week, when everyone else was usually working. The first old guy wanted to bitch about his property taxes, which kept going up and were killing him as he was on a fixed income. Mahoney could have said that property taxes were a local issue and he should be tossing eggs at the mayor and not at him—but he didn’t. Instead he told the old coot that he was meeting with the mayor and the city council that night (he wasn’t), and he would give them a piece of his mind.

  The next old guy, who was about the size of your average jockey, complained that Social Security cost of living increases weren’t keeping up with the cost of living. So what else was new? But here was an issue that Mahoney could handle. First, he blamed everything on the Republicans, then he picked up the phone and said to Maggie: “Have one of the kids bring in a copy of the speech I gave at the Knights of Columbus over in Charlestown a couple months ago.”

  Two minutes later one of the interns, one of the girls, ran into the office with a copy of the speech. Mahoney couldn’t help but notice that the young lady had an outstanding rack on her. He handed the little guy the copy of the speech and said, “Read that, Mr. Compton. You’ll see that I’m on top of the issue, that I’m all over the bastards.”

  The third person who entered his office was Elinore Dobbs.

  2

  Elinore Dobbs looked like she was in her seventies; Mahoney found out later she was actually eighty-two. She was wearing a 2004 Red Sox World Series T-shirt, baggy blue jeans, and cheap running shoes. She was a slender five foot one and had short gray hair she didn’t bother to dye or perm; she probably had it cut at a men’s barbershop. Bright blue eyes twinkled behind wire-rimmed bifocals.

  The first words out of her mouth were: “I know you’re basically a useless shit, but I figured I didn’t have anything to lose by coming here.”

  Mahoney laughed.

  “What’s your name?” Mahoney asked.

  “Elinore Dobbs,” she said.

  Elinore Dobbs immediately reminded him of his maternal grandmother. Mahoney’s parents had both been working stiffs. His father had been a machinist in a shipyard that had closed down decades ago and his mother had been a waitress, a secretary, a clerk at various stores. His mom took whatever job she could get to send her son to parochial schools. So Mahoney’s grandmother had largely raised him. She babysat him when he was too young to go to school and when he started school, he’d go to her house afterward and stay there until his folks got home from work. And like Elinore Dobbs, his grandma was a tough old bird. She made him do his homework, wouldn’t let him hang around with boys she considered riffraff, and wouldn’t take the least bit of guff from him. If he annoyed her she’d box his ears and many a night Mahoney went home with ears as red as Rudolph’s nose—or as red as his nose would later become thanks to all the booze he consumed.

  “So, Elinore, what can I do for you?”

  “I live in an apartment building on Delaney Street and they’re trying to force me out. Two years ago, I signed a five-year lease to fix my rent because I didn’t plan to move until they carried me out in a coffin. But not long after I signed the lease—”

  “A five-year lease is kind of unusual, isn’t it?” Mahoney said.

  “I suppose,” Elinore said, irritated that Mahoney had interrupted her. “But the guy who used to own the building was a good guy and getting old, and some of the long-term tenants like me convinced him to give us longer leases. Anyway, like I was starting to say, not long after I signed the lease, the owner died and his kids sold the building to this damn developer. In fact, this guy has bought up all the real estate in the entire neighborhood, and now he’s trying to force everybody out of my building so he can tear it down and put up a fancy new one with high-priced condos.”

  “I see,” Mahoney said.

  “No you don’t. Let me finish. This developer, the first thing he did was triple the rent for everybody whose leases were expiring even though we did everything we could to stop him. We filed a suit in housing court but his lawyers kicked our ass. I organized protests. We protested in front of his house on Beacon Hill—there was a picture of me in the Globe—and protested around his construction site to keep the trucks from going in, but the cops made us move. Anyway, by the end of the first year, he managed to get rid of about eighty percent of the people who used to live in my building.

  “The next thing he did was try to buy out the folks with long-term leases like me and offered to help us relocate. By the time he was done with that, all but four tenants had moved out.”

  “But I take it he couldn’t buy you out,” Mahoney said.

  “You’re damn right he couldn’t. And that’s when he started playing dirty. He fired the building super, a great guy who’d been there for twenty years, and replaced him with these two thugs, the McNulty brothers. Now the elevator hasn’t worked in a year, and some of the tenants aren’t in good shape like me and it practically kills them to take the stairs. The power goes out half a dozen times a month, and it’ll be out for days, like we’re living in some third world country. The front door doesn’t lock anymore so junkies can get in and steal things, although I don’t think it’s the junkies who are doing the stealing.”

  “Geez,” Mahoney said, the grimace on his face real and not feigned.

  “It gets worse,” Elinore said. “The hot water isn’t hot about half the time and the air-conditioning stopped working the first summer this all started. Today it’s like a bl
ast furnace inside my apartment. They took out the washing machines and the driers in the basement so I have to go to a Laundromat four blocks away. Mail gets stolen. My apartment’s been vandalized twice. And the McNultys, these thugs the developer hired, they just hang around the building intimidating folks.”

  “I get the picture,” Mahoney said, but Elinore still wasn’t finished.

  “I’ve complained to everybody. The mayor, the city council, the cops. I hired a lawyer but this developer’s got slick lawyers coming out his ass, all of them smarter than the guy I hired. Right now, I’m the only one keeping the few tenants remaining from moving, but they’re not going to last much longer. Within the next couple of months, I’m sure I’ll be the only one living there. So what are you going to do to help me?”

  Instead of answering her question, Mahoney said, “I’m just curious. Why don’t you take the money this guy’s offering you to relocate? I’m guessing you’re costing him a bundle, so he should be willing to pay quite a bit, and in the end, three years from now when your lease expires, you’re going to have to move anyway.”

  “I told you. I don’t want to move.” Her lips compressed into a thin, unyielding line the way his grandmother’s used to when she got her back up over something. “I like where I live. I like the parks I can walk to. I like the bakery a couple blocks over where I go for bagels in the morning. There’s a T-stop just three blocks away so I can get around town. But those aren’t the main reasons I won’t move. I’m taking a stand against this guy and all the other guys just like him.”

  “You’re taking a stand?” Mahoney said.

  “That’s right. This kind of crap is happening all over this country. Places like Manhattan and San Francisco and Boston are becoming the domains of the ultrarich. The poor folks are being forced out and replaced with people who can afford to spend millions on condos or five or ten grand a month for rent. The rent on little mom-and-pop stores is set so high that none of the small shops can afford to stay in business and they’re being replaced by swanky boutiques where only rich people shop. I read just the other day in the paper, out there in Seattle, some developer is trying to force a bunch of tenants out of an apartment complex and an old lady like me is taking the guy on. So I’m taking a stand.”