Theaella

12

A Best Buy box under one arm, Matthew paused in the main room and took in the place. It was unclear whether it was in the process of being torn down or rebuilt.

He supposed he could say the same for Vincent.

Lincoln Heights wasn’t as bad as it used to be, fair-trade coffeehouses staking a tentative hold on corners that used to be gang-held. But it was still the Eastside.

Over where the kitchen used to be, a pair of work boots, a loaded tool belt, and a McKenna Properties baseball cap lay where they had fallen, as if the worker who’d owned them had ascended to heaven, leaving his earthly belongings behind.

As Vincent poked his head into the dorm-size bedroom, Matthew tugged the Dell laptop out of the box, shedding the Styrofoam bookends. It had cost a little over two hundred dollars, money well spent for a clean device on which to test Grant’s thumb drive. When Matthew dropped the box, it stuck to the floor with a thud, impaled on an exposed length of tack strip where the carpet had been ripped up.

A new tile floor had been laid in anticipation of a kitchen so Matthew sat there cross-legged, resting the laptop on the shelf of his knees.

As it booted up, he pulled the Swiss Army knife key chain from his pocket and flicked up the thumb drive. Vincent returned from the bedroom, leaned against the wall, and looked at Matthew.

Matthew plugged in the thumb drive.

A series of files populated the screen. He frowned at the confusion of numbers.

Vincent cleared his throat. “What is it?”

Matthew said, “Spreadsheets.”

“Of what?”

Matthew didn’t answer. He clicked. And he read.

For a long time, there was no sound save Vincent’s breathing and the occasional tap of water dripping from a sweating pipe. The glow from the dim can lighting was as faint as the laptop screen, a chiaroscuro contrast of shadows and silhouettes.

Vincent said, again, “What is it?”

“Gimme a sec,” Matthew said.

“It’s been forty minutes, man.”

Matthew checked the Victorinox fob watch clipped to his belt loop, the time surprising him. “Come over here,” he said.

Vincent shoved off the wall and joined Matthew in the weak orb of light thrown by the laptop. “It looks like a set of books.”

“Two sets of books,” Matthew said.

“Why two?”

“One cooked. And one real. The real one shows the actual money flow.”

“Laundering,” Vincent said.

Matthew scrolled through entry after entry of figures in the low thousands. Dozens a day. “See—they’re smurfing it through these entities, breaking it up into amounts small enough not to raise any red flags.”

The light reflected in Vincent’s eyes. “That’s gotta be three, four million dollars a month,” he said. “What do you think it’s from?”

“Could be anything,” Matthew said. “Drugs. Foreign money. Gunrunning.”

“No wonder Grant was digging into it. But who was he working for?”

“See this client code?” Matthew pointed to where “HWDPD” recurred at the top of each page. “That’s Hollywood Community Police Station.”

“They hired him?”

“Yes. Seems like a big case for a community station—this sort of stuff usually gets kicked downtown.”

“Even if the crimes are taking place in their jurisdiction?”

Matthew nodded. “I’m thinking they were piecing it together, prepping it for the handoff to Vice.” With a knuckle he tapped the screen. “This set of spreadsheets tracks the three steps of the process—injection, confusion, and acquisition. You inject the cash into the financial system. Then you camouflage its source through wires between various accounts. Look here. Then it loops through there, see?”

Vincent nodded, tracing a figure between documents on the screen. “And then back into this account.”

“Right. And once it’s been run through the system and cleaned up, the money’s acquired ‘legitimately’ here. See these withdrawals? Grant was still figuring it out, helping Hollywood PD shore up the case.”

“Against who?” Vincent said.

“Doesn’t say. We have the dirty books but not the names attached to them. I’m guessing these codes here are initials. But there are plenty of blanks and question marks. The case was still being built. Grant was in the process of identifying the players. Which explains why the cops couldn’t protect him. They weren’t sure who to protect him from.”

“So what next?”

Matthew thought of the shooter from Grant’s office, nursing that injured arm. Right now he’d be fighting off the inevitable. Trying to convince himself that it would get better, that he could deal with the pain, that he wouldn’t have to go in and get that dislocated radial head popped back into place.

Matthew said, “Next I take names.”

He snapped the laptop shut and stood. Vincent found his feet as well. “Should we turn this over to the cops?”

“Sure,” Matthew said. “They’ll continue the investigation. Send you on your way. And you’ll wind up like your cousin or Lorraine Lennox.”

Vincent’s eyes got glassy. “Right. But how are you gonna figure out who’s behind it?”

“Not being bound by the law enables me to be more … efficient.”

Vincent nodded a few times rapidly. “Grant dealt with a lot of criminals. But something about these guys was scary enough for him to decide to put a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency option in place. And the guy at my apartment? He makes the dude who shot at us look like a minor-leaguer. These are bad men.”

Matthew handed Vincent a roll of hundred-dollar bills and a burner cell phone. “I’ve dealt with a lot worse than money launderers and street-level hit men.” Matthew started for the door. “Don’t use any credit cards. Don’t contact anyone. Don’t leave this place except to buy food. Use the phone I left you only to reach me. I’ll come back and update you on my progress tomorrow.”

The air of the entryway was humid and thick, tinged with the soggy reek of mold.