Page 156 of Homecoming

“How?”

Cunningham made an impatient sound, hand flailing – nearly spilling the new Scotch that the server set before him before retreating in a hurry. “Come on, don’t play stupid. A rumor here, a bag of Dog-labeled pills there. Enough people turn against them, make it too hard for them to do legit business around here, and they’ll show themselves for what they really are.”

Too vague. Time to take it up a notch.

Working some delight into his voice, Fox said, “Wait, are you setting them up? Are the bags – it is bags, right? – with the Dog logo on them, are they coming from you?”

“Damn straight! Sometimes you gotta do shit like that for the greater good, you know?”

“Oh, I know.”

“Tell me more about Abacus,” Ian said, and, obligingly, he did.

~*~

“That’s the number I just called,” Ghost said, tone grim, when Carter showed him the photos he’d taken of Cunningham’s day planner. The number listed for R. “Wherever the phone is, I’m gonna guessRickyisn’t with it. Luis left us a little message.”

“Abacus?” Tango said, frowning as he looked over Carter’s shoulder. “Where have I heard of that?”

“Hold on,” Ratchet said, clicked a few keys on his laptop, and turned it to face them.

It was YouTube, a video labeled “Abacus ad NEW.” Ratchet clicked play, and the video faded in slow, with artful, soft piano music, a shot of a man standing on a cool beach, hands in the pockets of his linen pants, staring out at the waves with a look of deep contemplation. The image faded, melted into one of a family playing in a yard, parents pushing a child on a swing. Then an elderly couple holding hands on a quiet front porch. A young woman clutching a briefcase and satchel, dashing along a crowded sidewalk in heels and a skirted suit.

“Big dreams? Whatever they are, Abacus is here to help you count them,”the voiceover said. A title card flashed up at the end, the company’s name and logo in elegant script. The logo looked like some sort of geometric flower done in yellow.

“Okay, but what the hell do they do?” Aidan asked.

“Consult, apparently,” Fox’s voice called from the door, and everyone turned to see him striding in, Tenny in his wake – both of them wearing slim-fitting, flashy suits.

Aidan chuckled. “What’s up, Al Capone?”

“A crime syndicate alliance, apparently,” Fox said, not rising to the bait. “It took an obscene amount of Scotch, but we got Mayor Cunningham properly sauced and he spilled the beans about everything.”

“He talked about this Abacus?” Ghost asked.

“In detail,” Ian added, swanning into the room, Bruce in his wake. Ian held out hand to his bodyguard, and had a memory stick placed in his palm. “This is our lunch conversation,” he said, handing it over to Ghost. “You should find it very enlightening.”

“But the short answer,” Fox said, “is that he got in with them first, and they advised him to take us out. He confessed to distributing the drugs with our patch on the bags, and to stirring up rumors and gossip. He didn’t outright say anything incriminating about Allie Henderson and Nicole Myer, but he was awfully coy”–

“That is to say subtle as a chainsaw,” Ian quipped.

–“about Abacus providing ‘entertainment for every taste.’ He admits on the tape that the whole consulting group thing is a flimsy cover. They service a select clientele of the very wealthy. From all the winking and elbowing, and what he managed to say outright, they can get you anything from blow, to a girl, to a boy, to an exclusive weekend on a private island.”

The enormity of it hit Carter like a physical blow. He swallowed the sudden lump that formed in his throat.

Ghost had been standing, shifting his weight restlessly back and forth, but paused, now, face blanking. After a moment, he eased back to sit on the edge of the table behind him. “Candy said that, according to the fed who gave up his badge, the FBI had been sniffing around a trafficking ring that was made up of several different outlaw groups. Mafia, cartel, overseas interest, New York street gangs. Are you saying you think Abacus is them?”

“Yes,” Fox and Ian said together, and Tenny nodded, hands going in his back pockets.

“It makes sense that they would operate similarly to us,” Fox said. “A legit business to handle the money, and provide cover, and a reason for dealing with one another. This way they don’t have to hide, and it’s easier to fence product if you can use coded messages in advertising and social media than relying on the old-fashioned grapevine.”

Ian’s expression had gone thunderous. “If this is true, they’re operating internationally, and they also see your club as a threat to success.”

“They know we’ll interfere, if we can,” Fox said.

Ghost let out a long, slow breath. “If they’d just left us alone, we would have never known about it.”

“The truly depraved aren’t very good at leaving anyone alone,” Ian said, acidly.

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