Page 43 of To Have and to Stalk
A message appeared on my screen. Unknown sender, but Utah area code. The head of the Rocky Mountain division. I glanced at my clock.
Shit.
I drove about an hour out of the city to where the remnants of a quarry battled with new development. Utah had blown up into a specific kind of toxic start-up scene. Known as Silicon Slopes, it attracted scammers, grifters, fraudsters selling everything from oils to twenty-first-century indulgences—crypto.
Which made it the perfect hub to launder money.
A man waited to greet me outside of a nondescript building. He wore the typical investor bro uniform of jeans, a fleece, and a puffy vest. He had white-blond hair and a smile that didn’t meet his eyes.
“You the cleaner?” he asked. When I nodded, he held out his hand to shake. “Andrew.”
I eyed his hand. Everything about this guy set my instincts on edge. But then, that wasn’t strange. This guy had moved up quickly, not little in part due to his influence in implementing a supercomputer crypto scheme.
Utah had gone from a small blip to the Mafia’s money hub. Every operation flowed through Salt Lake City. When I laundered something in Texas or Maine, SLC was providing the power to do it. You didn’t rise that quickly by being a good person.
I shook the hand.
“You been in Utah long?” Andrew asked, leading us inside.
I grunted my assent in response, and Andrew laughed. “Not the talkative type?”
Andrew walked me through the building, making empty small talk, not caring that I ignored every question.
I’d been prisoner to this world long enough to recognize the ritual of empty small talk. Beneath the smile, they were all waiting for blood in the water.
“I’m grateful you could come so last minute,” he said.
Like I had a fucking choice.
But my response was another half noise, half grunt.
Andrew led us into an empty conference room where boxes and boxes were piled high on a table. I paused.
Like most of my assignments, I wasn’t given any other information than a place and a time. I was to do my job: show up, clean money, ask no questions.
I slowly lowered my briefcase to the table. “What’s with the boxes?”
Andrew leaned in the doorway. “Didn’t expect I’d have to tell you how to do your job. You need to clean it, cleaner.” He threw out another humorless grin.
Curious, I lifted a lid. Inside the boxes were stacks of spreadsheets and black books for the organization’s brick-and-mortar buildings. It was the old way we’d used to clean money, shoving illegal transactions into the legal—clubs, car washes, et cetera—but then Utah happened.
Why do you think you’re in Utah?
Butcher’s words echoed in my mind as I flipped through the pages. I’d never cleaned for Utah. They’d always managed their own operations.
“We don’t have the capability for this kind of cleaning,” I said. “You moved us away from brick-and-mortar laundering. These businesses”—I held up a manila envelope—“make less than five hundred thousand annually.”
Andrew responded with a tight smile. “We’re moving back. Figure it out.”
“Figure out how to launder almost a billion dollars a month through small businesses? The current state of the organization relies on crypto?—”
“That’s not for you to fucking ask,” Andrew snapped. The good white boy demeanor dropped instantly, the shark beneath appearing. “Your job is to launder the goddamn money the way I tell you to.”
“The way you’re telling me to launder will expose the entire operation. I think you need to talk to headquarters?—”
“Figure it the fuck out,” he said. “Just because your brother’s out of jail doesn’t mean he’s safe. Or your sister. How is she doing?” He smiled white and sharp.
I worked my jaw.
