The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(29)

“Nice to talk to you too, Pix. Which guys?”

“The New Life Project! Holy crap, Faust, there is some serious craziness going on here. First of all, they’re not a 501(c)3. They’re not a charity at all.”

I shifted in the vinyl seat.

“What are they, then?”

“Nada. They don’t exist. Bogus entity, no papers. Here’s the thing, though: their shelter is legally owned by McMillan Trade Group LLC. McMillan is just a holding company. It doesn’t do or make…well, anything. They’re one hundred percent owned by the Nevada Heritage Coalition. The NHC’s a political action committee.”

“Hold on,” I said. “Why would a PAC want to start up a charity and bury it two layers deep?”

“Wait for it. The NHC is basically Senator Alton Roth’s reelection machine. Not only is he their sole beneficiary, they’re playing all kinds of games with the campaign financing rules. Like they fund him up to the legal cap, then they pour even more funding into his street teams and sponsoring voter registration drives in neighborhoods that lean his way. On top of that, they pay for ‘independently funded’ attack ads going after his opponents.”

The name set off alarm bells. Roth was Lauren Carmichael’s bought-and-paid-for man in the Senate. It was his influence that had pointed the feds in Nicky’s direction, Lauren’s little dose of payback for Nicky’s betrayal.

“Is that even legal?” I said.

“Legal-ish. Ready for the good part? I got my hands on their donor list, and it’s uber-shady. Tons of individual contributions, but that’s a smoke screen. Half these names are just pulled off a state census. The money transfers tell the real story: the vast majority of NHC’s funding comes from two sources. The first is Ausar Biomedical.”

I scratched the back of my neck and glanced at my rearview mirror. This wasn’t a great street to be hanging out on, especially after midnight.

“Name rings a bell,” I said.

“You probably remember the media coverage. Back in the early nineties, Ausar was testing a new fertility treatment. Just small trial runs, but the result was…ugh. You remember the thalidomide babies? Like that, but even worse. A lot worse. I’m gonna have nightmares for a week just from the pictures. They got sued into oblivion after that and went into receivership. The company still exists, on paper, but it’s been inactive for a little over twenty years.”

Twenty years. My jaw tightened. Twenty years ago, Lauren Carmichael went to Nepal, and she damn near destroyed the world with the secrets she brought back.

Like I said, I didn’t have much faith in coincidences.

“If Ausar doesn’t have any money,” I said, “how is it making secret donations to Roth’s PAC?”

“That’s the million-dollar question. Literally. It looks like they hid a metric butt-ton of cash from the government, and they’ve spent years slipping it into NHC’s pockets through offshore intermediaries, turning it into crisp clean campaign dollars.”

“Money laundering,” I said.

“That’s a bingo,” Pixie said. “Now guess who their other big corporate donor is?”

I didn’t have to guess. I already knew, down in my gut.

“The Carmichael-Sterling Group,” I said.

“Then we get to the outbound cash, which is where things get even weirder. Not all of it’s going to support Roth.”

“How do you know that?”

She fell silent for a moment, concentrating. I listened to her fingers rattling over the keys.

“Because I’m rooting around inside one of their bank accounts right now,” Pixie said. “Duh. They’ve been making secret payments to a guy named Angus Caine. Former British Special Air Service, now president and owner of Xerxes Security Solutions. They’re a private military contractor based out of the UK, like Blackwater but with an even nastier reputation.”

“Mercenaries,” I said. “Senator Roth’s got mercenaries on his payroll.”

I’d been assuming that Roth’s hands were as clean as your average politician’s—just dirt under the nails, not blood—and that he’d helped Lauren out in exchange for cash under the table. A simple trade of favors. Now I wasn’t so sure.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Pixie said.

I turned the key. The Barracuda’s engine fired to life with a hungry growl.

“I’m thinking,” I said, “that I need to get inside that building.”

Fortunately, I’d been handed an invitation.





Fourteen



I barely slept that night. I tossed and turned on Bentley and Corman’s scratchy couch, nursing a twinge in my back. When I finally drifted off, I dreamed I was standing in the middle of an earthquake on the Vegas Strip, the street ripping open beneath my feet.

The fury of a shattered world turned into the staccato buzzing of my phone, vibrating against the coffee table. I reached over, nearly tumbling off the couch, and pressed it against my ear.

“‘Lo?” I mumbled, head half-buried against the cushion.

“It’s Agent Black.”

I opened my eyes. The sunrise rubbed up against the living room curtains, painting the white gauze in shades of gold.