Chapter 34
HAWK
We followed Neo down a spiral staircase into a large underground room. Neo made no effort to turn on the lamps that rested on long library tables, but I spotted a couple of old computer terminals, some filing cabinets, and shelves lined with cardboard file boxes.
We crossed the room in the dark, over carpets whose patterns were only faintly visible, to a large steel door that Neo unlocked with his never-ending key ring.
The smell of wet stone and dirt grew stronger.
Neo reached through the doorway, flipped a switch, and a series of electric torches flickered to life on the walls of a long tunnel that stretched into the darkness.
“What the fuck?” Jagger said behind me.
“The Rooks are having a party,” Neo said, stepping into the tunnel. “If we want to access their records room, this is the easiest way to do it without getting caught. And trust me, we don’t want to get caught.”
I stepped into the tunnel behind Neo and heard Jagger fall in behind, Rock behind him.
“When was this built?” I asked as we walked.
The tunnels under Blackwell Falls were constructed to ferry alcohol during Prohibition, but was far as I knew Aventine hadn’t opened until well after that.
“Fuck if I know,” Neo said.
“You’ve never used them for anything?” Jagger asked.
“We used them to fuck around some when we were in school,” Rock said. “Stage raids on the other houses, steal their mascots, freak out the Queens, shit like that.”
Somehow I had the feeling the original members of Aventine hadn’t used the tunnels to fuck with the girls on campus.
We followed Neo so long I’d started thinking he was fucking with us. We passed more than one door in the tunnel, all of them steel like the door that had led us here from the chamber under the chess room.
The tunnels curved and bent — sometimes they even seemed to double back on each other — but Neo seemed to know where he was going and eventually we stopped talking.
I thought about Cassie while we walked, about the weird turn of events that had Jagger and I here, in the tunnels under Aventine, searching for clues about who killed Cassie’s parents when Cassie hadn’t even won the fucking Hunt.
But I knew why. Had known the second Vigo and I had found Cassie in her shattered car in the ravine on the mountain that I wouldn’t stop looking until I found the fuckers who’d done that to her.
That when I did, I’d make them pay.
What was it about this girl that had me twisting myself into fucking knots for her? That had me thinking about things — wanting things — I’d never once thought I’d wanted? That had me willing to brave the wrath of Bram fucking Montgomery to keep her like a forbidden pet I just couldn’t let go?
“Hear that?” Jagger asked, breaking into my thoughts.
I trained my ears to the sounds beyond the tunnel and picked up the thump of bass.
And this time when we came to a steel door, Neo stopped and removed his keys.
“We should be clear in here,” Neo said. “But keep it down anyway.”
Rock scoffed. “Assholes are already three sheets to the wind. Those Russian fuckers can drink.”
“Better safe than sorry,” Neo said. “I’m not looking to kick up shit with baby Bratva looking to prove themselves to daddy.”
He unlocked the door and we stepped into another underground room.
It was about the same size as the one under the chess room, but the shelves were covered in black binders instead of cardboard file boxes.
Stale cigarette smoke lingered in the air, like it had embedded itself into the underground walls, the rich red carpets underfoot, the leather sofas and chairs.
My eyes were drawn to an enormous woven tapestry of a medieval castle that occupied one entire wall, and I felt suddenly like I’d stepped another world, one where loyalty ran in the blood and tradition was measured in generations.
“I forgot how much this place reeks,” Rock said.
Neo flipped on the table lamp on a long carved table at the center of the room. “Fucking Russians can’t drink without smoking and they’re never without a drink.”
My gaze went to the clunky PC on the wood table, a layer of dust covering the monitor and keyboard.
“Tell me that isn’t our only hope for finding out where that money went,” I said.
I knew my way around a computer, but this one looked like it had last been booted up before I was born.
“I don’t know how they keep their records,” Neo said.
Rock moved to the binders on the shelves. “Let’s check these first, see if we can get the lay of the land.”
Jagger reached for one of the binders but Neo stopped him cold.
“Not you.” Jagger looked offended and Neo removed one of the binders. “No offense but just because we agreed to help you find that money doesn’t mean you’re a member of the family.”
“Sangue oltre la famiglia,” Rock said, flipping through one of the binders.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I asked.
“Family beyond blood,” Neo said at the same time Rock said, “It means you’re an outsider.”
Jagger leaned against the wood table and crossed his ankles. “However you want to help us is cool but I don’t know why we’re here if we’re not supposed to see anything.”
“We’ll let you know when we’re close.”
Neo slammed shut the binder in his hands and picked up another one, quickly flipped through it, then shut it too.
“I’ve got membership records and family pledges,” he said to Rock. “What about you?”
“Charitable donations and payoffs.”
They looked from me to the computer. “Think you can boot up that computer, get around any security?”
“Depends on the security,” I said. “But it doesn’t exactly look advanced.”
“Have at it,” Neo said.
I took the chair in front of the computer and flipped it on. The cursor glowed green, but there was no password protection and I shook my head in disbelief as I moved the mouse.
Neo and Rock were busy with the binders, clearly taking advantage of the opportunity to nose around in the Rooks’ affairs.
Family beyond blood, my ass.
I looked at the system directory to get a feel for the folders, how they were set up and arranged, how the naming system worked.
It wasn’t my forte, mostly because it as boring as fuck, but I forced myself to be methodical, opening each folder, scrolling quickly through its contents, looking for something that might point to the money that was distributed to the Rooks from Aventine’s administrative funds.
“Tell me how it works,” I said, pushing another folder aside and opening a new one. “The money that comes into the school and goes out to the frats.”
Neo closed the binder in his hand and came to lean on the table.
“The university gets money from all kinds of places, some of which I won’t go into.
But you can probably guess how it works: donations from prominent alumni and corporations, state and federal grants, private benefactors, shit like that. ”
“But it doesn’t all stay with in the university coffers,” Jagger said.
“They just want to account for it,” Rock said, his head still bowed to one of the binders. “Or take credit for it.”
“What happens after they account for it?” I asked.
It was easy to follow the conversation while I searched the computer, mostly because I hadn’t found a single thing pointing to the money that had been transferred from Kensington Trust to Aventine and then to the Rooks.
“They distribute it,” Neo said. “The stuff that isn’t earmarked for administrative use anyway.”
“What’s the money for?” Jagger asked
Neo frowned, like the question insulted him.
“Could be any number of things, but imagine an international corporation wants to grease the wheels of the Russian oligarchs. If that were something that ever happened, said international cooperation might find it more discreet to funnel large sums of money through an organization with ties to said Russian oligarchs.”
“Like a fraternity where their kids go to school,” Jagger said.
“If something like that ever happened,” Rock said, “it would be one way to get money into the hands of powerful people without drawing the attention of authorities.”
“Or the IRS,” Neo said drily.
I was only half paying attention now.
Because I’d found something.
“When was that Kensington Trust transfer made to Aventine again?” I asked Jagger.
He gave me the date listed on the bank records Cassie had found in her parents things, and I scrolled through the bank records I’d found in cryptically-named folder.
They started twenty years earlier — I had no idea where the more current records were kept, hopefully on a computer system that didn’t date back to the Paleolithic era — and it took me a while to get to the year Cassie’s parents died.
“What was the total?” I asked, my eyes glued to the screen.
“$586,999,” Jagger said.
He didn’t even have to look at his phone. The guy was a fucking savant when it came to numbers.
“Fuck me,” I said when I saw the number appear in a list of transactions a month after the money from Kensington had been wired to Aventine.
Jagger pushed off the table to look over my shoulder at the computer.
“There it is,” he said. “There it fucking is.”
I don’t know why I was surprised — the Kings had found the transaction in Aventine’s master records — but seeing it in the Rooks’ system made it all real.
The total was right there: $586,999.00 transferred from Aventine to the Rooks.
“Cassie was right along,” Jagger said, his gaze glued to the screen.
“What the fuck is going on exactly?” Rock had set down the binder to look at the screen with Jagger and Neo.
“Someone was hired to kill Bram and Cassie’s parents, but all we knew about the guy who did the hiring was that he was Russian.
” Jagger hesitated and I knew he was thinking about the conversation we’d had with “Dave Jones” at the Last Stop diner.
It was a good fucking thing Jagger left that part out because that shit wasn’t for public consumption.
“We’ve been trying to run down the people behind it ever since, which is why you got our attention when you said the Aventine money went to the Rooks. ”
Every house at Aventine was connected to a criminal enterprise: the Kings’ parents were part of the Italian mafia, the Knights were Irish, the Saints part of the cartels.
And the Rooks: bratva.
Neo and Rock exchanged a look that made my FBI spidey senses tingle.
“You don’t think…” Rock started.
“What?” Jagger asked them.
Neo sighed. “I really don’t want to be pulled into this shit again.”
“If you know something that will help us untangle this shit, please fucking enlighten us,” I said.
Rock shrugged and leveled his blue eyes at me. “Have you considered asking Bram?”