“You said you wanted in. Here’s where you start.”
She sets it down and walks away. Doesn’t wait for an answer, doesn’t watch to see whether I take it. She just turns and heads off with that particular stride she has, the walk of a woman who’s made a decision and isn’t interested in discussing it.
Her fitted top from the other night at the club is gone, replaced by an oversized shirt that should, by all rights, make her look shapeless. It doesn’t. The way it falls off one shoulder exposes a strip of collarbone I have no business noticing. And staring at.
I take the bag inside. Close the door.
The papers sit unopened on my bed for four hours. I attend to other things. Schedules. An equipment dispute between two work crews that sucks up twenty minutes of my time and noneof my brain power. I handle it all while the plastic bag sits on my mattress.
I don’t want to read the papers in it.
No, wait. The truth is, I don’t want towantto read them. There’s a difference. Not wanting to do something is clean, a decision, something I can defend. But,notwanting to want something is a mess. It’s an admission that the wanting exists and has to be actively suppressed.
I’ve been doing a lot of suppression lately. Most of it related to Vi.
It started with the club, her on top of me, my mask coming down, both literally and figuratively. The sound she made when I drove into her, that punched through every wall I’d ever built and left me exposed in a way I still haven’t recovered from. Her hands on my face, her mouth on my ear.Follow me.
I followed her and I’d fucking follow again. That’s the problem, or one of many problems, because it means the operational logic I’ve relied on for years, the clean lines, the control, the ability to assess a situation, now has a huge Vi-shaped hole in the middle of it.
And now, her father’s papers are on my bed.
At eleven p.m., I start reading them.
I tell myself it’s threat assessment. I need to know what’s in these documents in case they create problems for the crew. I need to understand the scope of what Vi’s uncovered so I can anticipate fallout. Standard operational stuff, due diligence, what I’d do with anything new that crossed my desk.
But that’s all bullshit. I’m reading because she asked me to. Because she stood in my doorway with a bruise on her face and a strip of collarbone showing and saidyou wanted in, and she was right. I wanted in.
I spread everything out on the floor into the three collections she’s organized, each from a different source. I read everypage, some of them twice. Carefully and precisely, which is the problem, because the more carefully I read, the harder it is to maintain the story I’ve been telling myself.
The dates line up. Not approximately, not loosely, but exactly. The city council session where the infrastructure budget was approved feeds directly into the first shell company filing three weeks later. The payments from phantom construction firms correspond to specific budget items that were cut from social services. Elder care. Youth programs. Community health.
The nursing home where my mother worked.
It’s all there in black and white. The fuckers barely cared enough to cover their tracks. The arrogance of it makes me want to rip someone apart.
I sit with all this for a moment. The line I’ve just drawn, the direct connection between a spreadsheet entry and the day my mother came home and told me the facility was closing. I always knew the money went somewhere. Now, I’m looking at where.
Holy fuck.
Vi’s father’s handwritten notes are in the margins of nearly every document. Careful and methodical. He was tracking what I’m tracking now, and his annotations are precise enough that I can follow his thinking. Here’s where the money left the public accounts, here’s where it entered the shell companies, here’s where it disappeared into private holdings. And here, in his tight, careful handwriting:no personal accounts. None. Where is it going?
The money flowed in a lot of directions. None of those included Vi’s dad. Mayor Renner’s salary deposits are in the records Mara recovered. Consistent, modest, middle-class, the pay of a man who didn’t skim.
I sit back and rub my eyes. I think about Vi. Not the papers, but Vi, and how she looked at me in the Skylight Room last night, moonlight on her face, saying “Dorothy,” like she knewthe woman. Of course, she didn’t. But she knew thesortof woman I was talking about.
She knows how easy it is to forget the Dorothys of the world.
This woman has been telling me the truth about her father from the beginning.
I pick up the last document, the one that’s been nagging at me. There’s this city development officer, whose name is underlined twice. His signature on the shell company contracts and the audit denial. Arrogant fuck didn’t even try to hide it.
I’m near the bottom of the stack when I find the property transfers. Land acquisitions, purchases of defunct commercial properties, zoning changes pushed through in bulk. Renner had flagged them. His handwriting is in the margin with a note:same accounts as infrastructure fund.The stolen money wasn’t just going into offshore holdings. It was also buying real estate.
I read the addresses.
And I stop.
I read it again. 410 Commerce Boulevard. 2200 Franklin Way. 85 Overpass Road. I know these addresses. I know them because I walk past them. I know them because they form the boundary of the Rot—the abandoned Rothwell Galleria and its surrounding blocks. Everything that makes up the world I live in.
