“I really don’t,” I said.
“Say you made a lot of money making and selling illegal products and you needed to put that dirty money through a big ole washing machine…”
“Laundering— Oh! Money laundering? Oh, no.”
“Right,” he said. “These guys use shell companies to keep their identities out of it, but they work through property agents. Owners get pressured,threatened, properties get bid way up, the deals too good to pass up. After a sale, the buildings might sit empty, serving as banks for bad money, or they’re flattened and rebuilt, sold again, and the dirty money comes out the other side squeaky-clean. Everyone making the deal, they’re helping out these bad actors.”
“Bad actors,” I said. “Like their accents are wrong? They muff their lines.”
“Very funny,” Quin said impatiently, leveling me with a serious sort of look. “Criminals, okay?”
“Just lightening the mood while I’m processing the information that, just to be clear, Edith is working for someone like a… a gangster.”
“Exactly like a gangster, yes. Not theghostof Al Capone, thesuccessorof.”
“It’s notCapone’s—the ghost is… never mind. You think Edith Maxwell is in on this,” I said, “knowingly.”
“She knows,” Quin said. “Her bank accounts know all about it. I mean, my friend thinks so.”
Her house certainly knew about it. That damn peacock feather and all the other finery. Quin watched me work my way through to the problem.
“Hold on. One of her clients,” I said. “One of herclientswants to buy this building from Alex. And you think that would be a… crime boss?”
“I think the odds are good, if the deal is strangely generous,” Quinsaid. “‘The best deal he’s likely to get.’ He’s getting incentivized to take the deal, right? Maybe penalized for staying? Acts of vandalism? Break-ins…”
We’d been undersiege. “I should have known when I saw that rottenfeather,” I said.
Quin turned an ear toward me as though he hadn’t quite heard. “Feather?”
But I was beyond that feather now, remembering that I’d met Edith not through Alex and his plans to sell McPhee’s, but through Marisa’s disappearance.
ThroughSicily.
“I need to talk to your narc friend,” I said.
“Uh, would wesaynarc?”
“Oh, is that insulting to his narc culture? Get him to come by. Today, and I’ll stand you both a beer on the house.”
“It would help me get him here,” Quin said, “if I knew what you needed from him.”
“There’s a missing woman, my… a friend’s mother is missing,” I said. “She worked for Edith.”
Marisa had been nervous enough about something to buy a gun. A mobster client—a client roster full of them at the job she’d just started? That would do it.
“Couldn’t her disappearance be tied up in all this?” I asked. “Maybe they grabbed her up? As a witness?”
Quin had a strange look on his face.
“I don’t think they would do that,” he said. He seemed to be choosing his words very precisely. “I would—I wouldthinkthey’d let her family know she was safe, at least. If they had moved her to a safe location.”
“Or if they’re tailing that crime boss, andhehas her,” I said. “Or if he… if he killed her? The feds would know, right?”
Quin nodded into the mid-distance, either working through that scenario or figuring out how to tell me I was full of it.
“Look, I can’t guarantee I can get my friend here today. I think he’s pretty busy working to nail this client of Maxwell’s. Maybe after that, something with your friend’s mom will shake loose.”
“I don’t want her to beshaken loose.” I took a step toward him. I needed him to understand, and I would clutch at his elbow patches again if I had to. “Her daughter wants her home safe and I—I want that, too.”
