He heard the front door open, and a few moments later Will Valentine poked his head into the kitchen.
“Locust Group?” he said.
“What about it?” asked Devine, perking up. “Did you find stuff?”
Valentine sat down next to him and opened his laptop. “They own shitload of stuff. I mean shitload.”
“I know of three different places in the city alone.”
“Three! Dude, give me fuckin’ break.” He hit a key on his laptop and screen after screen of line items associated with properties and other assets flashed across it.
“Wait a minute, that’s all Locust?” exclaimed Devine.
“I have computer stop count at one hundred forty-one thousand three hundred and twelve different properties, assets, and businesses. In fifty-seven countries, but most of it in America. That is tip of iceberg. It is serious shit. In all fifty states. And they are buried deep, so nobody will find out. I track Locust Group through shell companies, consortiums, SPACs, investment funds, tax shelters, CBOs, derivatives, debt funds. They own whole fuckin’ towns in Idaho and Wyoming and Montana and Alabama and Arkansas and other places. And they own whole blocks in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, and other big cities. Gold and silver mines, uranium, chemical, and manufacturing plants, oil refineries. They own sports teams and TV and radio stations and newspapers and streaming platforms, social media sites and a whole shitload of other stuff. Never seen anything like it, dude. I mean, not even Putin is this fuckin’ big, and never in my life did I think I would ever say that.”
“How much asset value are we talking about?”
“Shit, maybe forty trillion.”
Devine gaped. “How far back do some of the transactions go?”
“I find slew of them back over fifteen years.”
“Okay, that fits with other things I’ve found out.”
“What is going on, Travis?”
“Money laundering, probably. For example, your buddy Putin and his friends have dirty money to get rid of. Money they steal from the Russian people. Right?”
“Shit, yes. Putin is so rich he makes Bezos and Musk look poor. But he say he is not rich, and nobody disagrees with him because they get shot or poisoned or put in prison.”
“So, the dirty money comes over here and it’s used to buy all sorts of assets. Then instead of dirty money, you own a house or a building or a company or a chunk of the Dow Jones, whatever. That’s why they call it money laundering.”
Valentine nodded. “I know this! Clean money, dude. That is name of game.”
“But it’s not just about owning assets. With radio and TV and newspapers and online streaming platforms and social media sites, and owning whole towns and city blocks, they can manipulate and control everything. From cradle to grave.”
“Dude, that is not good. That is Russia.”
“Can you send me all that stuff? I’ve got someone I want to show it to.”
Valentine looked at him curiously as he did this. “You are not what you want us to think?”
“Are you?”
“Just a hacker, dude.”
“A good one.”
“Take you long enough to say, asshole.” But he tacked on a grin to this. Valentine opened the fridge, grabbed a beer, and walked off, while Devine stared down at his hands, thinking. Something Valentine had said had stuck in his head and had made him think of Cowl’s own words from that old interview with the Journal: A partnership can be simply an idea or a perspective.
He grabbed his laptop from his room and plugged in the name Anne Comely, running it through a popular site on the internet that he had used before, but then only for fun.
There was nothing fun about the exercise this time.
It didn’t take long for the program to kick out what Devine knew was the exact right answer.
An anagram for “Anne Comely” was . . . CLEAN MONEY.
CHAPTER
63
DEVINE WOULD NOT BE TAKING the 6:20 in that morning. He knew that as soon as he saw Detectives Shoemaker and Ekman waiting for him at the Mount Kisco train station. Shoemaker tapped out a smoke and both men came forward.
“Pretty early for you guys to be all the way out here.”
“Come on, we’ll drive you to work this morning, Devine, courtesy of NYPD,” said Ekman.
His tone was friendlier, which bothered Devine greatly. Was it just a fa?ade before the hammer came down?
They started off, Devine in the rear seat. He was waiting for the question and it wasn’t long in coming. He just needed to pull off the surprised part.