Charles Stross: The Family Trade

Miriam sighed and rubbed her eyes as she read the first page. Paulie had done her job with terrifying efficiency yet again: Miriam had only worked with her on a couple of investigations before-mostly Miriam’s workload didn’t require the data mining Paulette specialized in-but every single time she’d come away feeling a little dizzy.

Automobile emissions tests in California? Miriam squinted and turned the page. Failed autos, a chain of repair shops buying them for cash and shipping them south to Mexico and Brazil for stripping or resale. “What’s this got to do with-” she stopped. “Aha!”

“Nondairy creamer, one sweetener,” said Paulie, planting a coffee mug at her left hand.

“This is great stuff,” Miriam muttered, flipping more pages. Company accounts. A chain of repair shops that-“I was hoping you’d find something in the small shareholders. How much are these guys in for?”

“They’re buying about ten, eleven million in shares each year.” Paulette shrugged, then blew across her coffee and pulled a face. “Which is crazy, because their business only turns over about fifteen mill. What kind of business puts eighty percent of its gross into a pension fund? One that bought two hundred and seventy-four autos last year for fifty bucks a shot, shipped them south of the border, and made an average of forty thousand bucks for each one they sold. And the couple of listed owners I phoned didn’t want to talk.”

Miriam looked up suddenly. “You phoned them?” she demanded.

“Yes, I-oh. Relax, I told them I was a dealership in Vegas and I was just doing a background check.”

“ ‘Background check.’” Miriam snorted. “What if they’ve got caller-ID?”

“You think they’re going to follow it up?” Paulette asked, looking worried.

“Paulie, you’ve got eleven million in cash being laundered through this car dealership and you think they’re not going to sit up and listen if someone starts asking questions about where those beaters are coming from and how come they’re fetching more than a new Lexus south of the border?”

“Oh. Oh shit.”

“Yes. ‘Oh shit’ indeed. How’d you get into the used car trail anyway?”

Paulette shrugged and looked slightly embarrassed. “You asked me to follow up the shareholders for Proteome Dynamics and Biphase Technologies. Pacific Auto Services looked kind of odd to me-why would a car dealership have a pension fund sticking eight digits into cutting-edge proteome research? And there’s another ten like them, too. Small mom-and-pop businesses doing a lot of export down south with seven-or eight-digit stakeholdings. I traced another-flip to the next?”

“Okay. Dallas Used Semiconductors. Buying used IBM mainframe kit? That’s not our-and selling it to-oh shit.”

“Yeah.” Paulie frowned. “I looked up the book value. Whoever’s buying those five-year-old computers down in Argentina is paying ninety percent of the price for new kit in cash greenbacks-they’re the next thing to legal currency down there. But up here, a five-year-old mainframe goes for about two cents on the dollar.”

“And you’re sure all this is going into Proteome and Biphase?” Miriam shook the thick sheaf of paper into shape. “I can’t believe this!”

“Believe it.” Paulette drained her coffee cup and shoved a stray lock of hair back into position.

Miriam whistled tunelessly. “What’s the bottom line?”

“ ‘The bottom line?’” Paulette looked uncomfortable. “I haven’t counted it, but-”

“Make a guess.”

“I’d say someone is laundering between fifty and a hundred million dollars a year here. Turning dirty cash into clean shares in Proteome Dynamics and Biphase Technologies. Enough to show up in their SEC filings. So your hunch was right.”

“And nobody in Executive Country has asked any questions,” Miriam concluded. “If I was paranoid, I’d say it’s like a conspiracy of silence. Hmm.” She put her mug down. “Paulie. You worked for a law firm. Would you call this… circumstantial?”

“ ‘Circumstantial?’” Paulette’s expression was almost pitying. “Who’s paying you, the defence? This is enough to get the FBI and the DA muttering about RICO.”

“Yeah, but…” Miriam nodded to herself. “Look, this is heavy. Heavier than usual anyway. I can guarantee you that if we spring this story we’ll get three responses. One will be Bowers in our hair, and the other will be a bunch of cease-and-desist letters from attorneys. Freedom of the press is all very well, but a good reputation and improved circulation figures won’t buy us defence lawyers, which is why I want to double-check everything in here before I go upstairs and tell Sandy we want the cover. Because the third response is going to be oh-shit-I-don’t-want-to-believe-this, because our great leader and teacher thinks the sun shines out of Biphase and I think he’s into Proteome too.”

“Who do you take me for?” Paulette pointed at the pile. “That’s primary, Miriam, the wellspring. SEC filings, public accounts, the whole lot. Smoking gun. The summary sheet-” she tugged at a Post-it note gummed to a page a third of the way down the stack-“says it all. I was in here all day yesterday and half the evening-”

“I’m sorry!” Miriam raised her hand. “Hey, really. I had no idea.”

“I kind of lost track of time,” Paulette admitted. She smiled. “It’s not often I get something interesting to dig into. Anyway, if the boss is into these two, I’d think he’d be glad of the warning. Gives him time to pull out his stake before we run the story.”

“Yeah, well.” Miriam stood up. “I think we want to bypass Sandy. This goes to the top.”

“But Sandy needs to know. It’ll mess with his page plan-”

“Yeah, but someone has to call Legal before we run with this. It’s the biggest scoop we’ve had all year. Want to come with me? I think you earned at least half the credit…”

They shared the elevator up to executive row in silence. It was walled in mirrors, reflecting their contrasts: Paulette, a short blonde with disorderly curls and a bright red blouse, and Miriam, a slim five-foot-eight, dressed entirely in black. The business research wonk and the journalist, on their way to see the editorial director. Some Mondays are better than others, thought Miriam. She smiled tightly at Paulette in the mirror and Paulie grinned back: a worried expression, slightly apprehensive.

The Industry Weatherman was mostly owned by a tech venture capital firm who operated out of the top floors of the building, their offices intermingled with those of the magazine’s directors. Two floors up, the corridors featured a better grade of carpet and the walls were genuine partitions covered in oak veneer, rather than fabric-padded cubicles. That was the only difference she could see-that and the fact that some of the occupants were assholes like the people she wrote glowing profiles of for a living. I’ve never met a tech VC who a shark would bite, Miriam thought grumpily. Professional courtesy among killers. The current incumbent of the revolving door office labelled editorial director-officially a vice president-was an often-absent executive by the name of Joe Dixon. Miriam led Paulette to the office and paused for a moment, then knocked on the door, half-hoping to find he wasn’t there.

“Come in.” The door opened in her face, and it was Joe himself, not his secretary. He was over six feet, with expensively waved black hair, wearing his suit jacket over an open-necked dress shirt. He oozed corporate polish: If he’d been ten years older, he could have made a credible movie career as a captain of industry. As it was, Miriam always found herself wondering how he’d climbed into the boardroom so young. He was in his mid-thirties, not much older than she was. “Hi.” He took in Miriam and Paulette standing just behind her and smiled. “What can I do for you?”