The Last Witness (Badge of Honor 11)

Santos grunted. “You ever smell cow shit, Rapp?”

Badde, looking out the windshield at the dramatic colorful skyline of downtown Dallas in the near distance, had to think about that. After a long moment he shook his head, then looked at Santos. “Maybe once, as a kid, out in Pennsylvania’s Amish country. If I did, I don’t really remember it.”

“Well, you’re not missing a damn thing.”

Badde then snorted.

“What?” Santos said.

“I just remembered I did. It was in Lancaster County. In a tiny town called Intercourse.”

Santos laughed.

“I’m calling bullshit on that,” Bobby Garcia said from the backseat, but Badde saw that he was grinning.

Badde turned on his politician’s big toothy smile and shook his head. “No. And get this: Intercourse actually isn’t far from a place called Blue Ball.”

Garcia now laughed.

“You’d think it would be far the hell away,” he said.

“They were dairy cows,” Badde said. “It was a long damn time until I drank milk again after that trip.”

“There you go,” Santos said. “I decided that I didn’t want to spend a lifetime smelling shit—especially back home. But because I was still a Colombian national and my student visa was all but expired, I had to find something fast so I could legally stay in the States. I wanted to go into venture capital and that got me—got Bobby and me, after starting OneWorld Private Equity Partners—introduced to the Fed’s EB-5 green card program.”

OneWorld funded a huge part of the casino, Badde thought.

And is funding part of the new sports complex.

Each of those to the tune of a hundred million.

I’d like to get more than the crumbs I’m getting. . . .

“Speaking of that,” Garcia said, “Yuri says you’re doing good things in Philly with PEGI.”

Hearing the Russian billionaire businessman’s name always made Badde uncomfortable. Especially in the same sentence as PEGI.

And he just pronounced “Peggy” right.

How much do these guys know about Yuri’s involvement? That is, the intimidation beyond the money. He’s made it clear that there are consequences for failing to meet his high expectations.

“PEGI is working,” Badde said, trying not to overplay it.

It’s been a pain in the ass. But it is looking like it will work.

If no one pokes their damn nose in it. . . .

The Philadelphia Economic Gentrification Initiative was a special program developed—and solely administered—by the city council’s Housing and Urban Development Committee. Specifically by its chairman, one H. Rapp Badde, Jr. He had conceived it after attending an urban-renewal conference with Jan in Bermuda.

PEGI was helping pave the way for new projects—including those of Yuri Tikhonov. The first had been the Lucky Stars Casino & Entertainment. And soon to begin construction was a new indoor sports and live music coliseum that could fit sixty thousand fans under its retractable roof. It was owned by Diamond Development, forty-nine percent of which was in the hands of Tikhonov. The rest, the fifty-one percent majority, belonged to minority-owned companies such as Urban Ventures LLC, of which Badde quietly had a piece, one much smaller than he preferred.

“And,” Santos added, “that as mayor, you will make even better things happen. But first you have a hotel to build, yes?”

Badde met his eyes and said, “I certainly hope so. About being mayor, I mean. And I’m definitely going to build the hotel. Just takes money.”

And I’m not going to deal with Yuri having a piece of this project.

“I don’t think there’ll be any trouble finding that money,” Garcia said.