got Mayor Cunningham properly sauced and he spilled the beans about everything.”
“He talked about this Abacus?” Ghost asked.
“In detail,” Ian added, swanning into the room, Bruce in his wake. Ian held out hand to his bodyguard, and had a memory stick placed in his palm. “This is our lunch conversation,” he said, handing it over to Ghost. “You should find it very enlightening.”
“But the short answer,” Fox said, “is that he got in with them first, and they advised him to take us out. He confessed to distributing the drugs with our patch on the bags, and to stirring up rumors and gossip. He didn’t outright say anything incriminating about Allie Henderson and Nicole Myer, but he was awfully coy”–
“That is to say subtle as a chainsaw,” Ian quipped.
–“about Abacus providing ‘entertainment for every taste.’ He admits on the tape that the whole consulting group thing is a flimsy cover. They service a select clientele of the very wealthy. From all the winking and elbowing, and what he managed to say outright, they can get you anything from blow, to a girl, to a boy, to an exclusive weekend on a private island.”
The enormity of it hit Carter like a physical blow. He swallowed the sudden lump that formed in his throat.
Ghost had been standing, shifting his weight restlessly back and forth, but paused, now, face blanking. After a moment, he eased back to sit on the edge of the table behind him. “Candy said that, according to the fed who gave up his badge, the FBI had been sniffing around a trafficking ring that was made up of several different outlaw groups. Mafia, cartel, overseas interest, New York street gangs. Are you saying you think Abacus is them?”
“Yes,” Fox and Ian said together, and Tenny nodded, hands going in his back pockets.
“It makes sense that they would operate similarly to us,” Fox said. “A legit business to handle the money, and provide cover, and a reason for dealing with one another. This way they don’t have to hide, and it’s easier to fence product if you can use coded messages in advertising and social media than relying on the old-fashioned grapevine.”
Ian’s expression had gone thunderous. “If this is true, they’re operating internationally, and they also see your club as a threat to success.”
“They know we’ll interfere, if we can,” Fox said.
Ghost let out a long, slow breath. “If they’d just left us alone, we would have never known about it.”
“The truly depraved aren’t very good at leaving anyone alone,” Ian said, acidly.
“They’re trying to preempt our involvement,” Fox said, more level-headed. “They have to have heard what went down in London with Symbiote: the Lean Dogs are no longer just yokels on bikes in the public eye. We’re capable, and smart, and ruthless. We attracted their attention first, I’m afraid.”
Ghost spent long moments massaging at his forehead; Carter felt his own tension headache building. “God. Okay. Let’s say all this is true, and not the wildest shit I ever heard. It’s obvious Cunningham is involved. But who else? There could be mayors and governors and department heads all over the country who are on the take. There’s no way to know.”
“Not unless we cut the head off the snake,” Fox said.
Ghost snorted. “Excuse me if the idea of taking on a massive, conjoined crime syndicate based in New York sounds like biting off a helluva lot more than we can chew.”
Fox shrugged.
Ghost stared into the middle distance, fingers drumming on the table edge. “Okay. Let’s start with what we can do. We expose Cunningham, and cut the head off our own little snake.”
Mercy grinned. “I’ll get the machete, boss.”
Thirty-Seven
Three o’clock saw Leah standing at the counter in the office kitchenette, trying to decide if she needed a latte, or just wanted one, when Gabe came bustling over.
“Oh my God.”
Isobel glanced up, in the process of heating water for tea. “What?”
“I turned the radio on, and well, listen.” He had his phone out, open to a radio app, and thumbed up the volume.
“…according to this same source, Mayor Cunningham was hoping to turn public opinion completely against the Lean Dogs MC, and, in his own words, force the Dogs to react – we can only guess with violence. But we’ll let you hear the mayor tell you himself.”
Leah recognized the voice of a local shock jock, Mad Mike, and then she recognized the mayor’s voice: slurred, sloppy, and unlike anything she’d heard on his TV and radio ads. “It’s all