'There's records of withholding, I can give you a list of employees and
approximate salaries.' More clicks, another scrolling list, 'That and a few odd bits of equipment they depreciate. Not much else, sorry.'
Nohar was looking at the names scrolling across one of the screens. He was hoping he might glimpse a name he'd know. No luck on that score.
'The main thing I want to know is how they were paying Binder—'
Bobby shrugged. 'Public database at the Board of Elections, no sweat. But there's a solid limit on the amount of individual and corporate contributions, even for a Senate race. I can itemize the public record, but all the illegal shit ain't gonna be there.'
The blue trail began snaking its way through the net.
Bobby had just raised another question in Nohar's mind. The cops had at least one look at the finance records that told them that the three million was in Johnson's possession. However, Smith said all the money was from MLI—and that wasn't legal. Nothing in the police report he'd read had mentioned it. From the campaign end of things, the money had to have looked legitimate—to the cops at least.
More names were scrolling past Nohar on the last screen. Again, Nohar watched it for names he knew— and, suddenly, he got lucky. Nohar stared in widening fascination at the scroll. It was almost too fast to read at all. He was only picking up about every tenth name, but that was enough.
Except for the label on it, he was looking at a copy of MLI's employee list. Bobby stopped clicking and in the periphery of NOFORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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har's vision, the blue line faded. The room was silent for a moment. The only noises were the slow creaking of the ceiling fans, the buzz from the holographic bell jar, and the high-frequency whine of the monitors.
'What do you see?'
Nohar was smiling. 'Can you cross-reference the MLI employee list with the Binder contributors?'
'Sure thing, compare and hold the intersections.' Tap, tap, tap.
'Why don't you have a voice interface on this thing?'
'Silly waste of memory. My terminal smokes about twenty megahertz faster than anything else because I don't bother with the voice. Besides, some of the shit
I pull with this thing is best conducted in silence-Bingo!'
A third list was scrolling by on the last monitor. 'Hell, I missed that. Good thing you were paying attention. The intersection set is the entire MLI payroll. Every single one of MLI's employees made a contribution close to the limit. ...'
Bobby had stopped talking. Nohar was beginning to smell anger off his friend. 'What is it?'
'The contributions from Midwest Lapidary cover sixty-five percent of Binder's treasury. These guys own Binder. I knew he was corrupt, but this—'
Now it made sense. Binder's finance records held the key—but it now made even less sense for MLI to be behind the killing. Their investment in Binder was incredible. MLI was probably going to lose all that hard-bought influence. Then, Nohar remembered what Smith had said— MLI's connection with Binder was to be severed. That was right before the attempt on Stephie. He still didn't believe in coincidence, and sever was a sinister verb. Nohar wondered if the other people in the Binder campaign were all right.
'You've got a rat's nest of innuendo here.'
Nohar looked at the three lists. Only the last portion 274
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of each was shown on their screens. On the left was the list from the public contribution records. In the center was the withholding list from the County Auditor. To the right was the list of the names that intersected the two other lists. Something bothered him—
'How many people are on the withholding list?'
'Eight thousand, one hundred, and ninety-two.'
The employee list had finished with an endless list of T's—Tracy, Trapman, Trevor, Troy, Trumbull, Trust, Tsoravitch . . .
'This alphabetical?'
'Yes, you seeing something?'
'There's something about this list of names. It seems unnatural somehow. I can't put my finger on it.'
Bobby hit the keys again. 'Perhaps if I ran some pattern-analysis software on it—'
A brief summary replaced the list on the screen. Bobby read a couple of times. 'Blow my mind! There are— get this—exactly 512 names for sixteen letters of the alphabet. 512 starting with A, 512 starting with B, same thing for C, D, E, F, but no G's, 512 H's, 512 I's, no J's or K's. There's L, M, N, O, P, no Q's, R through T, then nothing till the end of the alphabet. Talk abut unnatural patterns—'
'It'sail fake.'
CHAPTER 16
Nohar stayed with Bobby until it was nearly noon. After Bobby had found those unnatural patterns, he had started dumping tax and credit info on individual employees. All the employees they had checked had no credit record and overpaid their taxes. None of them took more than the standard deduction, no investments, no losses, no dependents. The credit record was an anomaly, since the employees they had checked had all been homeowners without a single mortgage among them.
One of MLI's employees was named Kathy Tsoravitch. She allegedly lived in Shaker Heights. Her address gave Nohar something to check, to see just how phony the MLI employee list was.
The Tory was still waiting for him when he left Budget Surplus. The cabby had been leaning back and listening to the news, looked like it was going to be a profitable day for her. Nohar got in the back.
' *Kay, where to now? Back to 'hio city?'
'No, Shaker-'
She shrugged and started off east. She was a talker, and started going off on recent news events. The Zip- head attacks, a bomb on the Shoreway, and so on. Nohar let her, al! her passengers probably got the same treatment.
When they pulled up outside an empty-looking one-femily brick house, there was still thirty dollars left on the meter. Nohar added another twenty and told her to wait.
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Nohar got out and quickly walked up the driveway to get away from immediate observation. He wasn't dressed for the neighborhood. The clothes made him look like a hood.
The back of the house was as closed up as the front. Shades were pulled at every window. There wasn't the ubiquitous ozone smell by the empty garage. It hadn't been used in a while. The backyard had withered in the summer sun. It was too yellow for Shaker Heights.
Nohar stood in front of the back door of the house. The lock was a clunky one with a non-optical keypad. The door probably led to the kitchen, but he couldn't tell because a set of Venetian blinds blocked his view. He tried the door. It was locked.
He stepped back and raised his foot to kick it in, and he had an inspiration. He lowered his foot and typed in zeros—five of them, enough to fill the display—and the enter key. The keys were full-traverse and a little reluctant to move, but Nohar managed to force them to register.
In response to the dipshit combination, the deadbolt chunked home.
It made a perverse sort of sense that someone on the MLI payroll never bothered to reprogram the dead-bolt combination when it came from the factory. He opened the door and went inside Kathy Tsorav-itch's house.
The door did lead to the the kitchen—a pretty damn empty kitchen. He let the door close behind him as he surveyed the nearly empty room. No furniture
except the counters, no stove, no micro, no fridge, not even light spots on the linoleum tile floor to show
