Theaella

37

She grimaced and then dug beneath her desk and came up with a leash and a black fabric collar with a cutesy skull-and-crossbones motif.

Matthew said, “You bought him a collar?”

“Just so it’s easier to take him out. Everything doesn’t have to mean some big thing.”

Matthew noted her first use of the masculine pronoun but kept his mouth shut.

When Theaella crouched to pull on the collar, Dog licked her cheek. She didn’t smile. But she didn’t protest either.

They rode the elevator down and stood outside, Theaella holding the leash while Dog the dog sniffed the grass, moved a few feet, sniffed it again. Lifting his leg, he unleashed a fire-hose stream onto an elm sapling.

“Are you feeding him Big Gulps?” Matthew said.

“He’s a big animal—a lion hunter, like you said. That’s just how they pee.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to defend him.”

“I’m not defending him. But while I’m stuck babysitting him, I’ve learned how he rolls. That’s all.”

Despite wanting to needle Theaella more, Matthew changed course. “So what’d you get on Petro? From Grant’s files?”

“Well, you’re right—he’s definitely upper management. Oversaw the washing process with the cash that Vincent and his crew brought in. The books are light on proper nouns, but I pieced together some of the EINs. They were laundering money through—wait for it—kebab vans and plumbing companies. I know, right? These guys didn’t take the sensitivity workshop on ethnic stereotyping. But it’s a lotta money. Like, a lotta lotta money. After a while kebab vans and plumbing trucks just wouldn’t do. So Petro got himself a bank.”

Dog the dog was still going. The elm sapling looked woeful. At last he lowered his leg and shook his head, his ears giving off leathery snaps against the sides of his skull.

“A bank,” Matthew repeated.

“Yeah,” Theaella said. “I broke the code on the routing numbers in, like, ten seconds. It was simple-stupid—middle-aged men playing at a girl’s game. Oh, yeah!” She did some sort of dance move with her hands shoving the air upward. Matthew and Dog the dog stared at her. “So I followed the trail. Know what ‘bank capture’ is?”

“It’s where you buy a controlling interest in a bank in some nonreporting jurisdiction or a tax haven with shitty records. Then you channel your money through it, and no one’s the wiser.”

“Impressive. How’d you know that?”

“Because I’ve done it,” Matthew said.

“What? What? When did you own a bank?”

“It was a onetime thing,” Matthew said. “Long story.”

“O-kay. Anyways. You said Hollywood PD’s trying to build a case. But I don’t get why the feds aren’t involved, since we’re dealing with banks in Singapore and whatnot.”

“Because,” Matthew said, “they don’t know it’s that big yet. They don’t have the thumb drive. We do.”

Dog the dog stretched languidly and yawned, curling his tongue and emitting a tired whine that bordered on adorable. A crew of guys made their way up the sidewalk toward Matthew and Theaella, roughhousing and joking. With their gym muscles and notched-in side parts, they looked sparkly clean and uniform, rolled off an assembly belt. But Theaella wasn’t looking at them with annoyance. Not in the least.

She snapped out of her daze, noticed Matthew watching her. Blushing, she tugged on the dog’s leash to move him back toward the lobby. “Can we please get inside already? Us being seen together is social suicide, okay?”

Matthew said, “For me or for you?”

“With all that training you got, it woulda been helpful if they’d included a crash course in, like, actual humor.”

In the lobby a few workers had appeared, measuring the flimsy single-panes and jotting notes on clipboards.

“New owners,” Theaella said. “They’re fixing the place up, taking care of all those oh-so-scary security holes you’re so fussy about. Happy?”

Matthew looked back at the loose guard plate on the front door. “Partly.”

“Are you ever happy?”

He thumbed the elevator button. “When I’m ballroom dancing.”

Theaella’s emerald eyes widened. “Really?”

“No.”

Back upstairs, Matthew crowded into the cockpit with her and studied the screens.

He pointed. “I’m assuming these initials are code names?”

“Yeah. Lower-end workers, payoffs, bribes, whatever. I guess I could run them down, tracking the precise amounts of the payments and then digging through bank records, but it’d be a slog.”

“Do it anyway. It would be helpful to match the code names with real identities.”

“For what? These are peripheral players.”

“Once I take care of Petro and his goons and Jack is in the clear, I’ll send him into a police station with that thumb drive. If they know the names of the bottom feeders, it’ll help them put a ribbon around the case later, tie up the loose ends. Plus, I want to make sure I know the extent of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“This mission already telescoped on me once. Last time I thought it ended with Vincent. Then I found out about Petro. I could do without another eleventh-hour surprise.”

Theaella reached down, unplugged a zip drive from a port, and tossed it to Matthew. “Here’s a copy. I’ll keep chipping away at the original.”

Matthew squatted to scratch the dog’s ears. “Okay. Take care of Dog.”

“Where are you going?”

Heading out, he glanced at the Victorinox fob watch clipped to his belt loop. In less than an hour, he was due to meet with the jackass who had mugged Ida Rosenbaum—Jerry Z of the frequent typos and the rationalized orthography. As if Matthew didn’t have his hands full already with money launderers and organized-crime outfits.

Matthew said, “McDonald’s.”