St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

have the DNA results before the interview, give them to Jansen and let him shove them up Dykstra’s ass. Then we can get on with something that matters, like winning votes.”
    Josh hung up and went to look for aspirin.

TAOS
TUESDAY 10:00 A.M.
65
    “ HOW ’ S IT GOING ?” CARLY ASKED DAN .
    He didn’t look up from either of the computers he had in front of him. “I’m getting there.”
    “Where’s that?” She stood and stretched the kinks out of her back. She and Dan had been working for four hours already.
    “To the end of the charity food chain.”
    “Is that supposed to mean something?”
    “If it means what I think it does, somebody was hosing the Senator for about nine thousand a month since at least 1986. Eighteen thousand, really. Two separate payments, separate charities.”
    Carly pushed back from the most recent of the diagrams of people and circumstances and geography she was drawing. She felt like a spider on acid, spinning a crazed web.
    “Why two separate payments? Why not one?” she asked.
    “Federal law requires banks to report any transaction over ten thousand dollars. It’s a way to slow down money laundering.”
    Carly started to ask another question.
    “Gotcha,” Dan said, his voice oozing satisfaction.
    “What?” she asked, forgetting her own question.
    “Two of the automatic monthly charitable contributions the Senator made were to a laundry. Nine thousand bucks in the charity accounts, but somehow the amount never gets recorded. The amount minus transfer fee goes on to an account in Aruba. No name. No number. No way of tracing who’s getting fat. At least there’s not supposed to be, but there always is. Otherwise no one could collect on the Aruba end.”
    She started to ask another question, stopped, and waited while Dan’s fingers flew over the keyboard. There was no hesitation now. He was a hound on a hot scent, running flat out to overtake the prey. He typed in a final sequence of commands and sat back, waiting for the computer to run some names to ground.
    “Looks like you’ve done that before,” she said.
    “That’s what I do, chase black money. Charities are a particular favorite. It looks really tacky to investigate good intentions. Like asking your mother if she was a virgin when she got married.”
    Carly stayed with the part of the conversation that mattered to her. “Okay, you find black money. Then what happens?”
    “Depends on what the client requested. Usually there’s a finder’s fee, anywhere from twenty to forty percent of what’s recovered.”
    “Recovered?”
    “The ransom in a kidnap. Blackmail like this. Property stolen in such a way that the client has no recourse in law. Black money in a warlord’s or narcotraficante ’s account. That sort of thing.”
    “Is that legal?”
    “Mostly.”
    “And when it isn’t?”
    “It isn’t.” Dan looked away from the line on the screen that showed how close the program was to being fully executed. “That a problem?”
    “Um…”
    He smiled. “I’m not talking civil penalties if I’m caught, Carolina May.”
    “You’re talking ‘climbing accidents’?” she asked.
    “Yes.”
    She blew out a breath. “You go, um, climbing very often?”
    “This was the first time since I quit working for Uncle Sam. Somebody else was supposed to make the physical connection, but her baby came a month early so I pinch-hit for her.”
    Carly opened her mouth. Closed it. “Does that happen often?”
    “Early babies?”
    “Pinch-hitting.”
    “No.”
    “Thank you, God.”
    Dan pulled her down onto his lap. “Does that mean you’re not going to run screaming because I don’t have a regular nine-to-five gig?”
    She combed her fingers through his thick, dark hair. “Do I look like I’m running and screaming?”
    His computer made an I’m finished sound.
    Both of them looked at the screen.
    “Who is this Pedro Moreno who has over two million bucks in a numbered account on Aruba?” Carly asked.
    “Pete Moore. His real name, by the way. He just anglicized it to make life easier.”
    “Nine thousand a month?” Carly asked, remembering what Dan had said.
    “Two payments of nine thousand each.”
    “That’s not their wages, is it, Pete and Melissa?”
    “According to the ranch records, Pete was paid three thousand a month and change. Melissa made about a thousand a month less.”
    “How do you know that?”
    Dan shrugged. “Somehow the contents of the ranch computer ended up on my