by Siobhan Muir
Loki shook his head. “No, we’ll let it ride for now. It might prove useful in finding out who he really works for.” He stopped as his phone rang. “Ja, Neo?”
“Luke on Skype for you, boss.”
“Det er bra. Put it up on the big screen, Neo. Tusen takk.”
The large video screen behind the desk lit up with the face of Luke Everfall, our nomadic member. He had brown eyes and a red bandana wrapped around his bald head do-rag style, and perfectly arched blond eyebrows. He lounged on a luxurious couch with palm trees and bright blue skies filling the windows behind him. He had the rugged, don’t-give-a-fuck biker look down, though under the blond goatee, his features were just as angelic as Michael’s.
That might be because he’s Michael’s older brother.
“Ja, Luke. Thanks for calling. What do you know?” Loki waved at the man on the screen. “Michael and Karma are here with me.”
“Good, ’cause I got some news about the dickhead who died in the mine.”
“What kind of news, Luke?” Michael moved to stand beside me so we were all in the view frame.
“Someone’s been looking into his death. A couple different someones, actually. All law enforcement.”
Loki shrugged. “It’s as we expected. Why is this a big deal?”
“Because there are people from a lot of different jurisdictions lookin’ into it. Not just the LVMPD and Searchlight PD, but also the FBI from San Diego and Seattle, an ATF agent from D.C., and U.S. Marshal from Chicago. Even the NSA has been snooping around more obviously than usual. What the fuck was this guy Hopkins into?”
Loki shook his head. “I don’t know, but our reasons for taking him out had to do with Scott’s old lady.”
“Yeah, well, something else is going on. Hopkins must have been into something bigger than just the FBI because there’s a lot of people looking for what really happened to him.”
“Or they’re looking into what he was hiding.” I tapped my chin with a finger. “Did Numbers ever find a connection between him and Eisenburg other than they worked for the FBI?”
“No, not in terms of money at least. Why?” Michael shook his head.
“I think we should have Neo look into what other things they had in common. You know, like a bowling league or a passion for flower arranging or making ice sculptures with chainsaws. See where they made charitable donations, stuff like that.” I grinned as Michael and Luke both laughed. “Seriously, there are people out there who do that kind of shit.”
“Not in Las Vegas, they don’t. Too damn hot.” Luke’s dry remark made Loki smile.
“See what you can dig up while you’re there, Luke, but don’t get too close to the cops. I don’t want our club to be on their radar, ja?”
Luke nodded. “Yeah, I get you.”
“Det er bra. We’ll see what we can find out on this end. We have a private investigator taking a look, too.” Loki’s gaze shot to me but his expression didn’t change. “We’ll let you know if anything turns up. Keep your head down and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, ja?”
Luke grinned. “Loki, is there anything you wouldn’t do?”
“Not that I can think of at the moment.”
Luke laughed. “That’s what I thought. Talk at you later.” His screen went blank as he disconnected the call.
Loki turned back around to face me. “It was a good idea about the other connections, Karma. I’ll have Neo look for that.”
“What about Coop, Loki?” Michael’s face held sadness and wariness.
“For now we let him do what he said he’d do, and see what he comes up with. Maybe he will ferret out what we’ve missed. And maybe he will show us who he really is.”
Loki’s gaze landed on me and a chill ran down my back. If Coop turns out to be someone from law enforcement, what will he do? And how would I deal with it if he chose death?
Chapter Eleven
Cooper
I approached the office marked Financial Advisor and knocked on the door. The blonde woman who’d been sharking the pool tables last night looked up from her computer and pushed her glasses closer to her eyes.
“Can I help you?”
“Hi, are you Oriana Hunter, the woman they call Numbers?” I paused at the door, trying to appear harmless, though I suspected every new man she met wouldn’t be able to pull that off.
“Yes.” She didn’t offer anything else as she regarded me with wary attention.
“My name’s Coop DeVille and Loki hired me to investigate the other places where Eisenburg stashed the Concrete Angels’ money.”
She scowled. “Why?”
I shrugged. “He said you’d found all but three million and I offered to look in places you either couldn’t see or hadn’t thought of.”
“I assure you, Mr. DeVille, I’ve searched everywhere, and I’m quite capable of thinking despite having blonde hair.”
Damn, this woman was prickly, but I shoved my frustration aside and turned on the charm. “Yeah, I can see that. Karma said you’re a former FBI agent and a damn good forensic accountant. I’m not here to critique your work, Ms. Hunter.”
“Then why are you here?”
To find out if the Concrete Angels are conspiring with Backlog or just being used by them.
“I’m here to pick up where you left off and see if my friends in low places have any clues where the rest of the money went.” I kept my voice even. “Two people with experience will get farther than just one, right?”
She studied my face with those sharp hazel eyes and I realized she could probably see more than most people gave her credit for. And if she’s former FBI, she’s been trained like me to see what people are hiding. Shit. That meant I’d have to be extra careful.
“All right, Mr. DeVille. I’ll show you what I’ve found on Eisenburg’s accounts and we’ll go from there.”
I gave her a relieved smile. “Great.” I stepped into the office and left the door open as I snagged the chair and sat down. “I know Eisenburg was undercover FBI. Did you ever find out who his handler was?”
She shook her head as her fingers flew over the keyboard, bringing up windows containing her work. “Not that I’m aware of, but I was just following the money. I don’t know if his handler knew about his embezzling and helped him with it or was completely ignorant. But I can show you what I found.”
When she brought up the spreadsheets full of information, she went through everything she’d located and the codes Eisenburg, as Roy, had used. Some of them were easy to figure out and she’d traced those to the various accounts overseas, but others were more obscure with weird acronyms. We worked at it for a couple of hours, writing down on a pad of paper each abbreviation and what it might mean as referenced from other records.
“Damn, he had fingers in a shit-ton of pies.” I scanned the list, hoping something would jump out at me, but they kept blurring together.
“Yeah, he did.” She sighed and rubbed her neck. “I’ve been over it a thousand times, but I can’t figure out to where he siphoned the money.”
I nodded, looking again. There had to be a clue. Undercover or not, Eisenburg had still been a cop and they were lousy at hiding money. But Ms. Hunter found all the personal accounts. I frowned. There had to be some sort of record of how Eisenburg funneled money to Backlog.
“Personal accounts.”
“What?”
“Eisenburg’s personal accounts.” I pointed at the paper and then at the screen. “Did he put anything down in his personal accounts that seemed weird? Some sort of annotation or mark that stood out?”
She shook her head. “No, they were pretty straight forward.”
“What about the amounts? You said you’re missing three million dollars. Did the amounts deposited and withdrawn match with what’s currently in the accounts?”
“No, that’s how I know we’re missing the money. But I can’t see where it could’ve disappeared.” She blew her out her breath with frustration. “I’ve checked, re-check
ed, and cross-referenced. I got nothin’.”
I scowled and dropped my head onto my hands, supporting my chin as I looked over the records. “Can you show me the original hand-written records?” When she shot me a narrow-eyed look, I held up my hands in surrender. “I just want to see what kinds of notations he put in his notes. I might recognize some.”
Oriana sighed and clicked something on her screen. The printer in the corner hummed and spat out a couple of pages with markings on them. I rose and collected them before sitting down again.
“He did have a strange short-hand.” She pointed to the symbols on the paper. “I’ve figured out most of them. That means ‘paid in full,’ and this one shows what the product was. But there are a few that don’t seem to have a translation.”
She moved her hand down the page to a squiggle that looked like a V with a tiny o at the vertex, like a TV with an oversized antenna. Cute little alien steals money? Yeah, I could understand why Oriana might find it puzzling.
The second symbol looked like someone had taken a capital T and laid it on its side, making the crossbeam vertical. It would be incomprehensible to anyone looking at it for the first time. It was for me. But I’d seen that symbol before.
“Fuck.”
“What?” Oriana raised her eyebrows. “What’s wrong?”
“I know what that one means.”
“The sideways T?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, biting my lip. “That’s the symbol for the Backlog.”
She frowned. “What’s the Backlog?”
I met her gaze and debated what to tell her. She was smart and the minute I revealed what I knew, she’d figure out what I really was. I might be an investigator, but I wasn’t private. A P.I. wouldn’t know who Backlog was, not unless they were investigating local LEOs.
I got up and closed her office door before I returned to my chair, chewing on my lip. The question became how much to reveal to get what I needed but would still keep me alive. I had no illusions of what the Concrete Angels would do to me. Two FBI agents were dead after tangling with them.
“You’re telling me you don’t know about Backlog?” I met her gaze.
Oriana shook her head. “Never heard of them.”
“And you’re sure Loki, Michael and the others don’t know about it?”
She frowned. “I can’t speak for them, but they hired me to look for their money and they couldn’t find it before I came along. They definitely couldn’t read Eisenburg’s notes. And Loki was adamant about finding who was stealing from him.”
I nodded. “A couple of years ago, I was contacted by a source”—me—“inside law enforcement who’d noticed some odd shit going on. Evidence disappearing or being tampered with, suspects escaping or being ignored, captured funds diminishing, witnesses getting killed, stuff like that. He hired me to take a look and find out what the hell was going on.”
“And this was only in his agency?”
I shook my head. “Not just his. I started noticing trends in other agencies. FBI, ATF, U.S. Marshal Service, police departments all over the country. The incidents were too numerous to be just random, and they all seemed to have one common source. The Backlog.”
“How did you find out the name?”
“I started seeing that sideways T and hearing things like people couldn’t get evidence back because of the backlog or DNA results were put on hold because of the backlog.” I shrugged. “At first, I thought it was the usual. Funding is tight and people are overworked. But after a while, what I thought people were attributing to a backlog of work, they were actually attributing to a shadow organization that had infiltrated all the agencies of law enforcement. My source didn’t know who to trust and he wanted me to find out just how high and deep it went.”
Oriana tapped her chin with a pen. “What do the Concrete Angels have to do with this?”
“Through my investigation, it became clear that Backlog needed a way to launder the money they stole and get more.” I rubbed the back of my neck as the frustration with Backlog returned. “From what I could tell, they’d hire or coerce other groups to help them. Inner city gangs, mafia groups of various kinds, motorcycle clubs. Anyone who society could write off as the bad guys and Backlog could hide behind. None of the illegal stuff would be traced back to them.”
“You thought the Concrete Angels were part of this shadow organization?”
I spread my hands. “I couldn’t know either way. Some of the groups are definitely in on this scheme and happy to help. Others, it’s less clear. I had to know if the Concrete Angels were willing participants or just pawns. From what I’ve learned, I’m pretty sure Backlog was using you to get shit done.”
“And Agent Eisenburg was a mole or plant, steering the club to benefit Backlog.”
“Yeah, looks that way.” I nodded with a grimace as she scowled. “Part of the reason I’m here is because Agents Dirk Hopkins and Arnold Eisenburg were part of the Backlog organization. I’d tracked funky payments and actions by them that were later covered up and the evidence disappeared. When they ended up dead, I wondered if they’d gotten too sloppy and Backlog killed them to cover their tracks. Or whoever they were infiltrating got wind of them. But I had to be sure the Concrete Angels weren’t really in the know and on the take.”
“So, you’re saying you think the Concrete Angels have been used by Backlog to do their dirty work, and their mole was both inside the club and the FBI. You’re saying part of the skimming Eisenburg did sent money back to Backlog, and that’s what that inclined T represents.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re saying you came here to investigate all this to be sure we weren’t in on it, but you’ve used Karma to get inside?” Oriana’s expression was carefully neutral, but the storm brewed in her eyes and I swallowed hard.
“Yes, ma’am, that’s correct.”
She narrowed her eyes and scanned me, and I knew I’d fucked up. The question became how much.
“You’re a cop, aren’t you? You’re not a private investigator, you’re a real one.” She sat back in her chair and looked me over. She hadn’t reached for her phone yet, but it wouldn’t take long. “Is all this for real or were you just trying to find your way into Backlog?”
I blanked my expression and shook my head. “It’s for real and I want to dismantle Backlog. They’re a blight on law enforcement and they make things harder for regular people.”
“Regular people. Are the Concrete Angels included in that?”
“Yeah, they should be, under the law.”
She nodded slowly, but her expression didn’t change. “Which agency do you work for, Mr. DeVille?”
I kept my mouth shut for a few moments, considering the possibilities. The question became, who did I trust? The Concrete Angels weren’t exactly Kindergarteners who did nice things for people, but they also weren’t involved in supporting Backlog. On the other hand, the people meant to protect the public and uphold the law where neck-deep in Backlog’s pockets and would kill me without hesitation for poking around. I weighed my loyalty to the U.S. Marshal Service against the reality that it had been infiltrated and corrupted by a group far worse than the motorcycle club, a group with no code or honor.
“I’m a U.S. Marshal, but I’m officially on leave. Only my boss knows where I am so if you kill me, no one will really know.” I shrugged at her raised eyebrows. “You’re former FBI, Ms. Hunter. You know how it is.”
“I don’t have any loyalty to the FBI.”
I nodded. “I figured after what happened there and their support of your rapist. But here’s the thing: I’m ninety-nine percent sure that was the Backlog’s doing, too. Hopkins was a high-ranking FBI agent on Backlog’s payroll. They couldn’t have him thrown out of his position. So they made it harder for you to stay. They had to get rid of you to keep Hopkins in play.”
Anger rolled over Oriana’s face, but I wasn’t sure it was at my deception or Backlog’s actions to keep Hopkins employed. I just hoped she would
n’t pull a gun and shoot me for telling her. When she met my gaze, I shivered with the fury I read in her eyes.
“How did you recognize that symbol?” She pointed to the inclined T.
“I’d seen it from my investigation on papers and ledgers of cops and agents who’d let shit get past them in terms of suspects, evidence tampering, and money. I started to put together the backlog they were worried about wasn’t the work they hadn’t gotten done, but the organization at large.” I pointed at the symbol. “See how the T is tipped over? The crossbar is “back,” like a backstop, and the stem is “log”. Backlog. An easy way to show something that no one will know if looking.”
She nodded again and I could see the wheels turning. “So, now you know the Concrete Angels aren’t part of this organization, at least not willingly, and you know that Eisenburg was skimming from the club to fund Backlog. What will you do now? Leave? Turn the Concrete Angels over to the cops?”
I shook my head. “I promised to help you find the three million dollars Eisenburg stole from you. I’m not going anywhere until I’ve done that.”
“Right. And does Karma know you’re actually an undercover U.S. Marshal just here to find out if her club was involved in the Backlog and the killings of two FBI agents?”
The question hung in the air between us and my gut curdled with guilt.
“No.”
Oriana sighed and dropped her chin, her lips tightening. “Karma is my friend and I don’t tolerate men fucking around on my friends. Did you lie to get into her bed, too? She might be just a biker chick to you, but she’s a person and deserves honesty. She definitely doesn’t deserve to be used just so you can get the information for your investigation, Mr. DeVille.”
“I know. And I’m going to tell her, but I had to be sure the Concrete Angels weren’t part of Backlog.”
“Fuck you. That’s an excuse and you know it. You just wanted some free pussy while you worked.”
My anger kindled at her accusation. Yeah, because you know she’s right. “No, thanks, you’re not even my type. And as I understand it, you’re taken.”