21. Alexei #2
It’s not fair, and it makes no sense, since it’s me who forced Lars to be the public face of our association.
It’s not like he hasn’t tried, a hundred times, to push me into the limelight.
I’ve never wanted it—or rather, never seen how it would benefit us.
But the fact that it’s my choice has never helped lessen a certain acid sense of deprivation, which I’m ashamed to admit has only gotten worse since Mickey has been on the scene.
It doesn’t help that Lars and Mickey both tend toward a specialization in hardware, rather than software.
Redesigning a military laptop is right in their wheelhouse.
I don’t share their fascination with unscrewing things and rewiring them, just as I don’t get off by hacking into systems. It’s the backend design I love, conceiving ideas and creating the space for them to grow.
“Okay,” I cut him short. “I get that you and Mickey have made a GOAT laptop. Now, why don’t you tell me why I need it?”
“Back down on the jealousy, bitch.” Lars gives me one of his unsettlingly perceptive looks. “You want to step up at Andersson, all you have to do is say the word.”
The toughest part about being partners with the one person who knows you inside and out is that you can’t get away with shit.
“Fuck off.” But I force a grin to take the sting out of my words. “Just talk.”
“Hm.” He gives me a mock stern look. “Well, you need the GOAT because not even the combined skills of your friend Renata, that fucker Mak, and my team have been able to find a way through the labyrinth of Hunter’s campaign funding.
I’m here because Mak suggested, and I agree, that we need your sick criminal brain, not to mention your intimate familiarity with the bodies in the Miami swamp, to work out who the fuck is at the center of this. ”
I’d be lying if I said I don’t feel an almost illicit thrill as he picks up the black case and thumps it down on the bar.
“This is going to take a while,” he says, opening the case and pulling out another laptop. “And I’ve only got forty-eight hours to spare. So strap in, motherfucker. We’ve got work to do.”
The sun is going down, and we’ve moved from the bar to the secure room and back again half a dozen times, when we finally adjourn to the upper deck with a bottle of Graf and the two laptops.
“See what I mean?” Lars paces across the deck, laptop in one hand, fingers of the other moving across the keyboard while he talks. “It’s like chasing a snowflake in a blizzard. As soon as you catch one, it’s gone.”
“No shit.” I’m staring at the screen, my mind whirling.
“There’s literally nothing connecting these corporations, companies, and PACs except a sudden, inexplicable desire to write enormous checks to Hunter’s campaign.
No discernible pattern or political ideology.
It’s like instead of all roads leading to Rome, fucking none of them do. ”
“I like my snowflake metaphor better.”
“You would, you Swedish fuck.”
“Let’s go back to that college campus PAC,” Lars says. “The one with a logo that looks like a cock.”
I give him a dry look. “The Compass Initiative? I think the logo is supposed to be a needle pointing north. You know, like a compass.”
“It looks like a cock,” he insists. “Anyway. How the fuck does a college-based political action committee manage to raise this kind of money? It’s been running for less than a year.”
“More importantly, why have they made Hunter’s daughter their poster girl?
” I bring up Kristi Hunter’s overly made-up face, bleached teeth, and even more bleached blonde hair.
“She seems a strange choice for an initiative that’s pushing faith-based values and traditional gender roles.
That white leather ensemble she’s wearing is the complete opposite, a cross between career-driven girlboss and street hooker. ”
“Isn’t Kristi Hunter the one who faked buying drugs in your club?”
“She might have faked it on that occasion, but according to the Cardenas boys, she’s had her nose buried in a bag of candy every weekend since high school. Probably why she could make the deal look convincing for the cameras.”
I watch a video showing Kristi walking onstage, backed by pyrotechnics and rock music, waving at the crowd like a pop star.
“Welcome to the Compass Initiative!” she cries into the microphone.
“I come to you today in humility—as a lost soul who found her way out of the darkness and is now dedicated to helping you reset your own moral compass.”
“How does she get away with spitting this kind of self-righteous shit in Miami, of all places?” I stare at the screen in bemusement.
“The city’s entire reputation revolves around debauchery.
Everybody is too busy drinking mojitos in the sun, watching strippers, and gambling in back rooms to give a shit about moral compasses.
I should know.” I raise my glass over the top of my screen.
“I’ve made a fortune out of taking their money. ”
“Yes you have, motherfucker.” Lars clinks his glass to mine without looking up. “According to these media reports,” he goes on, scanning them, “Kristi Hunter has become the voice of a new generation.”
“Seriously?” I squint at her face onscreen. “She looks like she walked out of an eighties church revival.”
“Her boyfriend is even worse.” Lars turns his screen around. “Tyler Thorne.”
“Christ.” I take in the image on the screen, unsure whether to laugh or cry. “Did he get lost in a time machine? Is that an actual pocket watch he’s wearing?”
He nods, shaking with laughter. “And a pin-striped waistcoat, under a morning coat. All that’s missing is a top hat. Oh, wait.” He clicks through to another photograph with Thorne holding a brandy snifter and looking very self-important at some college gathering. “There it is.”
Despite his eccentric dress, Tyler Thorne’s face is utterly unsmiling, with the brittle facade of someone who’s studied how to look authoritative—and then somehow fucked it up entirely.
Every hair is precisely placed, but around a soft, almost chubby face in which the deliberate seriousness of his clenched jaw is lost. His narrowed eyes hold the stubborn blankness of someone who has decided what he believes and closed the door to any other possibility.
Although he leans close to Kristi in several photographs, he doesn’t actually touch her in any of them.
“Looks like another YouTube freak who’s never been laid to me.”
“He hasn’t.” Lars starts to laugh as he reads Thorne’s bio. “It’s a point of pride. Apparently he’s waiting for the right woman and a traditional marriage.”
I snort. “I’d say he’ll be waiting a while, with that kind of fashion sense.”
“Bro has some followers, though.” He scrolls through Tyler’s social media, which is filled with him posing at conventions with similarly eccentrically dressed acolytes, who all obviously revere him.
“Our boy Thorne spends all his time screaming online about the moral degeneracy of the modern woman. He and Kristi aren’t actually going out.
They just have a, quote, shared vision.”
Thorne. The name rings a bell somewhere in my memory, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
“I’ll lay my Maybach against your Ducati,” Lars is saying, “that Thorne’s got a hundred fuckboys on speed dial. Nobody dresses that well if they’re straight.”
“Not every well-dressed conservative man takes it up the ass, Lars.”
“If you say so.” He tilts his chin skeptically.
“The annual crashout of gay dating apps during certain political conventions says otherwise. And I should know.” He wiggles his eyebrows at me over his laptop.
“The big checkbooks hiding behind even bigger closets are how I fucked my way to investment in our first project, in case you’ve forgotten. ”
I grin. “It wasn’t exactly a hardship, from memory.”
“Lord, no,” Lars says cheerfully. “I still buy that senator a whiskey every time I’m in Washington.
He’s a sweet old duck, if you can overlook the blatant hypocrisy of his voting record.
But this Tyler Thorne . . .” He shakes his head.
“He’s the dangerous kind of closeted. Back in the Middle Ages, he’d have been wearing a hair shirt and flagellating himself for his impure thoughts. ”
“Maybe. But he’s also packing out auditoriums from Tallahassee to Miami. Check this out.” I click on one of Thorne’s videos. “His event was so big the university couldn’t hold it, so he and Kristi sold out an entire stadium.”
I turn my laptop so Lars can see the video.
“Christ.” He shakes his head in amazement. “Who’d have thought a dweeb like Tyler Thorne could pull that kind of crowd? And don’t even try to tell me they’re not gay as fuck. Look at all those pinstripes, not to mention all the signs with that cock logo pointing upward.”
“You have a one-track mind. It’s a compass needle pointing north, idiot, like I said. And there are plenty of hot cheerleaders in there to balance up the muscle. They’re all Kristi fans, apparently.”
“Whatever,” Lars says dismissively, clicking out of the screen. “Enough closeted conservatives for one day. Why don’t we do something more interesting. Like, for example, talk about why I’ve just sent a horde of my best tech heads to Miami to build a server center?” He raises his eyebrows at me.
“It’s just an idea so far. I haven’t developed the concept properly.” I drum my fingers on the table in mock indecision, like I haven’t been waiting for this moment the entire time Lars has been here.
But the waiting is almost part of the excitement, like saving dessert until after the vegetable dish.
“Like that’s ever stopped us.” Lars is almost salivating with anticipation, and I’m enjoying this far more than I should be.
I meet his eyes. “Keep it to yourself?”
He mimes locking his lips and throwing away the key, which makes me smile.