"So that got me thinking. My initial idea was, Colm had the backing of a more established boss. But as time went by, that became less and less likely. Really, Colm was making enemies of every single old boss. It made no sense that one of them was backing him, and anyway, there were only one or two that could have afforded it. Those two guys both fucking hate Colm."
She looked up at me and something clicked in her expression.
"The only other explanation is that he's been stealing all these years, right under our noses. Colm is a clever fuck, so I wouldn't put it passed him, which is why I got all these records out of storage and began combing through them."
"And?" she asked me.
"And, well, there are a lot of shady transactions."
Her expression dropped. "What do you mean?"
"Little things, a few dollars here and there, but always to some random bank account. This goes back a while, back to when he first started in the Mob."
"Is that enough?"
I shook my head. "No, but it's a start. He was stealing, I'm beyond positive about that, but I need a little more. I need the definitive proof, and it's somewhere in that box."
She looked down at it. "Okay, so you're telling me that this master plan of yours hinges totally on some sort of paperwork miracle?"
I laughed. "It's not a miracle. It's in there. When Colm started paying more attention to me, I stopped digging into it, afraid he'd catch on. But before I did, I grabbed every single document relating to his business going back years, and I shoved it all into that box. I just need to sort through it all and put it together."
She nodded, looking thoughtful. "I can help with this."
"No offense, but what do you know about laundering money?"
"No offense, but you're just some Mob asshole. And I happen to be pretty good at this sort of thing. And-"
"Okay, okay," I held up my hands, cutting her off. "You can help."
Her face softened and she smiled. "Thanks, Liam."
"Yeah, sure."
"When do we get started?"
I shrugged. "Right now. Unless you got something better to do?"
She gave me a look and flipped the box, dumping the papers onto the floor. I moved over toward her and crouched down at her side, staring at the huge pile of papers.
"How long do we have?" she asked.
"Let's just get it done as fast as we can."
She frowned and turned back toward the papers, starting to page through them. I stared at her body, at her pale skin and smooth legs, and wished I could skip the paperwork.
But the paperwork would save our lives; fucking was just fun.
Chapter Eighteen: Ellie
I looked out over the room, at the stacks of paper, and realized I never wanted to touch another bank statement in my entire life.
Three hours of sorting. Three hours of meticulously going through each paper, figuring out what it was and sorting it into whatever pile we felt it belonged in. Three hours of mind-numbing boredom, although I had to admit that it was better than sitting up alone, wondering whether or not someone was going to break down the door and murder me.
And Liam was shockingly attentive. More and more it was becoming apparent that I completely misread him. I thought he was some muscled Mob jock who didn't know the difference between a 401k and a W-4, but I couldn't have been more wrong. He was savvy, clever, and had an eye for details. I felt a little bad for stereotyping him, but then again, who could blame me? He really was all of those Mob stereotypes, crass and crude and violent and tough, but he had another level to him that he didn't show at first.
"I hate paper," I grumbled as I finished off my stack.
Liam laughed. "Was that the last of it?"
I looked up at him. He was leaning against the wall, sipping a glass of wine, and grinning at me. When we first started, the room was covered in stuff; now, though, it was all stacked into neat little piles.
"Wow, we're actually finished," I said, surprised.
"Well, with the easy part at least."
"What do you mean?"
He sighed and sat down next to me.
"Now we have to start reading all this shit."
I nodded. "Right, because you don't have the full picture yet."
"Exactly." He took a long drink of wine.
I blinked and yawned. "What time is it?"
He looked at his watch. "A bit after midnight."
"Long night ahead of us, then."
"Listen, you don't need to stay up. Why don't you get some sleep?"
I glared at him. "No, thanks. I'm helping."
He frowned and shrugged his shoulders. "You really don't need to."
"Just show me what you found already, and we'll go from there."
For a second, I thought he was going to argue. Instead, he leaned over me, his arm brushing against my chest, and grabbed a small pile of papers. Without another argument, he went through them one at a time, pointing out the tiny transactions to a foreign bank account. They took place over years; Liam said he did some rough math, and they equaled at least a half a million dollars. And those were only the ones that he knew about or noticed. Hidden away in the paper, there were bound to be more.
We got to work, digging through the papers and making note of anything fishy or odd. It was slow going at first, but I quickly fell into a rhythm. It felt like the numbers were swirling around me in the room, and I felt like I was starting to get a picture of what Colm's life was like. Fifty dollars for dinner on a Tuesday night, three thousand dollars from a jewelry store, two hundred at a bar, three hundred at a casino. On and on the transactions went, one little number after another, each one signifying something so much more than itself.
Seen individually, each transaction was practically meaningless. There was no context. Sure, he spent eighty dollars at the grocery store, but there was only so much we could pull out of that single event. But that moment combined with every other moment gave a strange picture of a man's life. Patterns started to emerge, habits and desires. For example, I quickly found out that he loved a particular deli; I didn't know why or what he got there, but he went almost once a week.
It was such a small thing, a bank statement, and most people kept them private because they didn't want other people to know how much money they had or how much they spent. I realized that they were so much more dangerous than that, though. With someone's full bank records, you could figure them out, get a sense of their habits and their likes and their desires. That could be so much more dangerous than just knowing how much money they had.
"I can't imagine my dad doing something like this," Liam said, jolting me out of my daydream.
"What's that?"
"My dad. I can't imagine him combing through bank statements."
I was surprised. He hadn't spoken much about his father since I met him. "Why not?"
"He was an old-school gangster, thought problems all existed out in the real world. Would have said that it was a waste of time to look at all these fake numbers and fancy bullshit."
"So why are you doing it?"
"Because the world changes. These words and numbers are as real as anything else."
I nodded, understanding. "They have power."
"Exactly. This stuff has power. Might be nerdy or whatever crap you want to call it, but it's this kind of shit that rules the world these days."
"What was he like? Your dad, I mean."
"Like I said, an old-school mobster. All violence and tough-guy act."
"Must have been hard to be his son."
"Yeah, sometimes it was. He was strict, and he beat the shit out of me a few times. But he taught me stuff, like how to fight and how to pick a lock and how to tell if someone was lying to me."
I could almost picture the young Liam, growing up with a violent, complicated father, and it made sense that he grew up into a violent, complicated man. That violence seemed tempered somehow, or at least suppressed enough to let him think the way that he does.
"Where did you learn all this stuff?" I gestured at the papers.
"Figured it out on my own, I guess. Talked to dad's people sometimes, let them teach me a bit about how his business worked. But mostly I just fucked around and learned as I went. I made a lot of dumb mistakes in the beginning."
"Like what?"
He laughed. "Dumb stuff, like lending money to the wrong guy, or investing in stupid shit. One time, I tried to open an upscale strip club, but that was a terrible move. Nobody wants to sit in a velvet-covered chair in a strip club, at least not in these neighborhoods. They're trashy for a reason."
I laughed, imagining swanky gentlemen in top hats and monocles cheering as a woman slowly unveiled her ankle. I was sure Liam's idea for the club was a lot dirtier, but I liked mine.
"It's weird. I was just thinking about how all this equals a man's life. Like, we can read his habits and what he loves just by looking at a bank statement," I said.
Liam nodded. "It's a little scary, I guess. How much you can learn about a person from all their data and whatever the fuck you call it."
I laughed. That was more like him.
"What are you going to do if we find what we're looking for?" I asked softly, hoping he was still in a sharing mood.
He paused and seemed to scrutinize me for a second. His eyes were deep and harsh, like vast whirlpools for my own, and I almost felt myself getting lost in them. Frankly, I was losing myself in him, and not just in his eyes or his arms, but in the way he held himself. I wanted to move closer but resisted the impulse.