Amanda's Blue Marine (37 page)

“Don’t look at me that way, Amanda. The deep green eyes don’t quite have the effect on me that they used to, back in the day when I actually thought you cared about me. You may not have noticed it but while your love with paddy was in bloom my life became a joke. Poor Tom Henderson, can’t hang onto his woman, she dumped him for that cute cop who got the medal. The two of you made a fool out of me before the whole district. You gave me the boot after his big moment, kissing you on the stage in front of my constituents, the whole police force, the world, and the next thing anyone knew you were hanging on him in every public spot in Metro. You didn’t exactly keep your relationship a secret. I was a laughingstock at the club, in the state house, everywhere I went people were giggling behind their hands about the cuckold Congressman who lost his rich girlfriend to that detective.” He paused. “I wonder what they’ll say when the detective winds up behind bars. Makes a better ending to the story, don’t you think?”

Amanda was stunned by the venomous tirade. She had known Tom’s pride was hurt, but this speech signaled something far worse, a desire for revenge that was truly alarming.

“He doesn’t deserve what you’re doing to him,” she finally said softly.

“He’s a low rent, shanty Irish punk with the social mores of a retardate and you’re mesmerized by what’s in his pants,” Tom said disgustedly.

“Is that it?” Amanda replied curiously, after a long, thoughtful moment. “He has no money, no pedigree, no fancy background or illustrious career. My choosing him demonstrates to the world that I prefer sex with him to anything you could possibly give me, since sex is the ONLY thing he can give me.”

Mandy saw that she had struck home when his mouth tightened visibly and his icy eyes grew colder. She wished instantly that she hadn’t said it when she saw his response, but it was too late to take the words back.

Even Tom was vulnerable where his manhood was concerned.

“I wouldn’t consider myself a special case if I were you,” Tom spat back viciously. “My sources tell me that guy has been scoring with every miniskirted tart in three counties over the last few years. You’re not exactly in a privileged class or exclusive company.”

“What Kelly did before I met him doesn’t matter to me,” Mandy said honestly. “We were both different people then.”

“Oh, of course,” Tom sneered. “You’ve changed him, shown him what the love of a good woman will do for him. Speaking of that, how does he feel about having you shill for him?”

“Do what?” Tom demanded. “Save your lover’s future? That’s what I plan to explode, sweetheart. And he handed me the means to do it himself. Now you expect me to have pity on this jumped up bog trotter who stole MY future?”

“Kelly stole nothing. You were never in love with me. You were in love with the idea of marrying Jonathan Redfield’s daughter.”

Tom glared at her silently.

“I accepted it at the time because I didn’t think anything better was out there for me. And you’re angry now, not because I hurt you emotionally but because in your mind I dumped you publicly for an unworthy rival. It’s humiliating for you to be tossed out and replaced by a cop, a nobody.”

“All that sounds very psychobabble, Amanda, but have you ever considered that I might have done you a favor in sending this oaf packing?”

“What do you mean?”

Tom shrugged negligibly. “The guy is a bad seed from a bad family. His old man was kicked off the Philly force twenty years ago. Did you know that?”

Mandy shook her head.

“You really don’t know much about him, do you?” Tom said in an insinuating tone. “Doesn’t that tell you something, Amanda? He hasn’t been very eager to share, has he?”

Mandy waited again. Tom lifted his shoulders once more, as if it were a matter of no importance to him.

“The father was a heavy drinker, abusive, wound up abandoning the family and just wandering, always on the sauce,” Tom said. “The kids had to fend for themselves, the mother was sickly, the older girls raised the two younger boys. The old man died when he was still in his forties, froze to death in a train yard in Boston when he was tanked and riding the rails. Fell off a freight car and was too drunk to get up and get inside when the temperature dropped.”

Mandy felt tears come to her eyes as she listened to the pathetic story, her heart breaking for Kelly. Now wonder he never talked about his father.

Tom shrugged again. “He’ll be kicked off the force like his drunken old man and then he’ll go to prison where he’ll find all the felons he put in there waiting for him.”

“You’re going to drop the civil complaint, talk Sam Rhinegold’s office out of pursuing the criminal prosecution, get the case expunged from Kelly’s record and get his job reinstated at full rank and full salary. First thing tomorrow morning.”

Tom gaped at her in astonishment, as if she were levitating. “The hell you say! Have you lost your mind? Your boytoy is through, Amanda. I’m going to make sure he winds up in shackles.”

“I felt there was something suspicious about the way you were handling the imported steel. My father didn’t know anything about it and you were conducting the business covertly, as if you were smuggling enriched uranium.”

Tom held his breath, watching her.

“All you were doing, supposedly, was bringing in steel rods to support the marina roof at a better price than you could get the steel for domestically.”

“That’s what I have been doing,” Tom said swiftly.

Mandy shook her head again. “No, Tom. You’ve been doing a lot more than that.” Mandy got up and removed one of the manila folders from her briefcase. She dropped it on the desk where Tom stood.

“You’ve been bringing in the steel, all right, but at a lower grade than was acceptable for the local standards until about six months ago. You’re paying for the imports about half of what you would have had to pay for the domestic version. But the domestic version has a safety standard about three times as stringent as the Chinese grade rebars you’re buying.” Amanda folded her arms as Tom exhaled slowly and regarded her soberly.

Amanda paused.

Tom said nothing.

“In short,” Amanda said, “you used your influence in the legislature to get the safety standards lowered so that the cheaper imported steel could be used in the marina. This will allow you to construct the buildings at much lower cost and will result in much heftier profits for you.

“Nothing wrong with making money,” Tom said. “It’s the American way.”

Amanda removed the second folder from her briefcase.

“Is it the American way to bribe public officials to get them to lower the safety standards in the first place, thus allowing you to use the imported steel? That sounds like endangering public safety, and a trifle illegal to me.”

“Inside that folder is a list of ‘donations’ from you to your friends, bribes disguised as campaign contributions to ensure that these political buddies would first, get into office or remain in office and then second, vote the way you wanted them to vote to make the safety standards mesh with your imports. These people are all members of the construction standards committee which lowered the safety requirements for the steel you imported. They changed the standards for you to make more money and then you split the difference with them, I’m guessing. Nobody works for free.”

“That list proves nothing.”

“What would these people say if I deposed them? If a judge conducting an inquiry asked them questions about why they voted the way the did? Could they defend their decisions or would they break under the questioning? Would they lie to protect you?”

Tom was looking cagey, rebounding enough to think about covering his butt. “There’s plenty of latitude in those standards,” he said defensively.

“Not when I can show that several buildings constructed according to your new guidelines have collapsed,” Mandy said gently.

“That’s a load of crap,” Tom said shortly. His ability to counter her was waning so she knew she was getting through to him.

“Then how about this?” she said. “Inside that folder you will also find a record of payments made to thirteen local contractors for work that was never done. More bribes.”

“How do you know the work was never done?” he shot back at her.

“Oh, on paper it looks like it was done. All the permits were issued, all the plans were filed on time, everything was documented. But I checked. The work was all interior, refurbishing and reconstruction. No one can tell from outside if anything was ever done, and nothing was done. And in exchange for those payments, the contractors, who by a strange coincidence are the very same people on the civic advisory board which changed the building code, made the lower grade steel acceptable in the marina.”

“What about the lives you would have endangered using this low grade steel?” Mandy demanded. “As I just said, the whole marina could collapse like the Hartford Civic Center auditorium in 1976. In that case it was the same soft steel, the same deal, and the roof fell in under the weight of accumulated snow when nobody was there. Nobody got hurt, since the jai’alai match scheduled for that day was canceled because of the weather. If the auditorium had been occupied hundreds of people could, probably would, have died. Did you think about that at all when you were calculating your profits?”

Tom stared at her and she could see his mind racing. Then he sighed again, more deeply.

“What do you want?” he asked tersely.

“First, I want the crappy steel to go back to China or hell or wherever you want to send it. Store it in a warehouse if you want to, just don’t use it. I’ll be watching. Then order the right grade of domestic product to be used in the construction. I don’t care what you say about effecting the changes, just make sure that it’s done, and without implicating my father, who I’m sure knows nothing about what you’ve been pulling. I haven’t told him and I don’t plan to tell him.”

“What else?”

“Do exactly what I stated regarding Kelly’s case. Get him out of it with no repercussions, no record, and with full restoration of everything you took away from him.”

“How the hell am I going to do that?” Tom demanded angrily. “They’re serious charges and I worked hard to make sure they would stick!”

“That’s your problem. Get all of it dropped or your head will roll, and the only way you can silence me is to kill me. If you’re prepared to go that far I can’t stop you, but with Kelly out of my life I have nothing to lose, and that makes me dangerous. You have plenty of political friends who can help you. Get started now because you have just three days.”

“I know he can take care of himself, Tom. I’m afraid of what he might do when he thinks our relationship is over and he’s going to be alone for good.”

“How touching, and so dramatic. You’re afraid he’ll despair.”

“I’m not taking that chance. I want him out as soon as possible and you’re going to make it happen.”

“Does that thug have you hypnotized, or what?” Tom asked, amazed. “Did you have to ruin everything I had planned in order to hook up with him? Why didn’t you just screw him until he couldn’t walk if that’s what you wanted but leave the rest of it alone?”

“You could never comprehend how I feel, so I’m not going to try to explain it to you. The interesting thing is that you will never get it, but my father understands.”

“Oh yeah, you and your daddy are so pristine, napping blissfully on your pile of money. I came up the hard way and had to earn everything for myself. No trust funds, no rich grandpa. Easy for you to sit on your high horse and dictate terms to me now. After this marina deal I would never have had to think about money again.”