His recollection bordered on freaky. He started with interesting but not outlandish things, such as that the television was a Samsung, and that the clock radio's display was green. It then went on to borderline amazing, as he noted that the toothpaste tube visible in the bathroom had a pink label, and that the gel inside was dark red. By the end though, it was almost totally insane, as he recalled things like a stray hair I had laid on the pillowcase, and how it was on the opposite side of a crease that I had caused by running my hand across the upper corner of the pillow. He even saw things that I had missed, like the light tea stain on the carpet next to the window, so faint that I had to go back into the room and look more closely, as it hadn't shown up on the digital photos I took.
Mark's ability to gather information was just as sharp when it came to business and facts. He'd read the newspaper, and make connections between stories that sounded almost paranoid, but they would either turn out to have connections later, and would affect the investments he moved around in response to his connections. Sometimes these connections were so subtle even he couldn't put a name to them, and they were gut feelings. So when Mark told me he had a gut feeling, I didn't discount it in the least.
Mark pulled up the spreadsheet of the hacked companies he'd stolen from the Confederation servers a few nights before, and then next to it my final list of candidate companies for our next round of investments. He blinked a few times, then tapped a few controls. It took the computer less than a second for words on both windows to flash bright blue. "I thought so," Mark said as he tapped the screen.
"Pressman Contractors," I said, reading the screen over his shoulder. "HVAC company. I remember the portfolio, actually. Good ROI, small, ticked all the right boxes."
"Except for one," Mark said, sighing. "They're a front for the Confederation. It's not unexpected, I didn't know every company that fronted the Confederation and there was bound to be some that matched everything else we're looking for. It's the biggest problem with the Confederation."
"They're a Hydra, with more heads than we know about," I said. "What about Owen Lynch?"
"Lynch's power is more concentrated, and more narrowly focused. Taking him down is different in that he isn't worried about money or traditional things like that. He just wants control and power. Which kind of makes sense. I mean, seriously, after the first couple of million, what is more money to a man like him? If you can buy three Ferraris, who cares about being able to buy a Bentley as well? He uses his money like we are, using it to finance power. The Confederation though, with so many players, has to care about money more, and has more little things like this."
"So what are we going to do?" I asked. Mark clicked on the file on Pressman Contractors, reading what he had gathered. "What is Pressman?"
"On one hand, they're a pretty typical money laundering front, using construction contracts to filter Confederation money in and out of circulation. They've got the receipts here to back that up, the bank transfers and other stuff. This is full of second level connections that I'm going to need weeks to fully analyze, with all these companies. But there are a few other things here that concern me."
"How so?" I asked, looking over his shoulder still at the spreadsheet on the screen. It looked a lot like a normal accounting spreadsheet to me.
"This accounting code," Mark said, tapping one of the cells, "is the same one that Sal Giordano used with me when he hired me out for contracts. I don't think that Pressman has another hitman working for it, I knew that group very well. It pays to know the men who might be putting a bullet in your back. But that doesn't mean that there isn't some other sort of Confederation operative working for Pressman."
"Like what?" I asked, finally taking a seat and looking at the screen, my imagination whirling.
"Oh, there are all sorts of different operatives. A place like this would be a good place to stash an arsonist, a bomber, drug maker, burglar, spy, quite a few different jobs. They'd have access to buildings, deeper than a lot of others go, and they don't look out of place carrying tools and weird bundles of stuff."
I shook my head in amazement. "And you knew the Confederation had these sorts of men."
"And more, my love. Why else am I taking so many precautions with our own actions?" Mark replied. "Well, we know what we have to do now."
"What's that?" I asked, as Mark shut down the computer and unplugged it from its monitor and keyboard.
"We have to go down there, see if we can get eyes on someone, maybe figure out what is going on. You think Sophie Warbird and Marcus Smiley might be up for a weekend visit to our most recent potential investment?"
"Why not wait until Monday?" I asked as he sat back. We faced each other, and I could tell that Mark was nervous. "Come on, talk to me."
"I'm concerned that the Confederation may be making the same connections that I'm sure Owen Lynch is doing," Mark replied after a moment. "They know that coming after Marcus Smiley directly creates too much danger to their operations, but by putting out these sorts of poisoned pills, these land mines if you can think of it that way, they can derail us without risk of exposing themselves. I want to go down there today for two reasons.
“First, they won't know we're coming, so they can't be prepared. If we call Tabby and go down there Monday, they'll know it and be prepared, giving us a whole dog and pony show that will surely be ninety-nine percent bullshit. We go down there today, and we might learn something."