COOPER LAMB drove north on I-95 toward Center City with Victor slumped comfortably in the passenger seat, right knee propped up on the dash.
As a rule, Victor refused to drive. When he was barely a teen, Victor had hacked his way into an insurance company’s servers, read a bunch of mortality tables, and vowed never to sit behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. When told that he was taking the same risk by being a passenger, Victor merely shrugged and said that it was up to God.
This would seem like a complication, but Victor was very skilled at using public transportation—without paying—to reach every corner of the city. Victor almost always beat Lamb to any given destination.
“I presume you were listening to my chat with the Sables. Did I rattle them?”
Victor shrugged. “The hillbilly crack was kind of cheap.”
“I was dealing with vulgar men.”
Again, Victor shrugged. It was his favorite form of personal communication, which drove Cooper a little nuts. He liked to joke that if Victor ever wrote a tell-all memoir, it would be about three pages long.
“Anyway, you promised me a surprise,” Cooper said.
Victor reached between them and handed his boss a thick black binder bursting with pages. “Here’s my report.”
Cooper grabbed it, weighed its heft. “How did you find time to do all of this?”
“The business office has a good laser printer. And, yeah, I might have raided their supply closet a little.”
“Nobody questioned you?”
“I’m a Latino dude in khakis and an off-white polo shirt futzing around with office equipment. No one batted an eye.”
“God bless the bigots.” Cooper placed the binder in his lap and used his right hand to awkwardly thumb through. It contained a dizzying array of invoices, e-mails, and tax documents.
“Keep your eyes on the road,” Victor warned.
“It’s going to take me all day to read this.”
“The first five pages are a summary.”
Cooper thumbed backward. “So they are.”
“But let me just tell you what’s in there. Basically, the team is a mess from the top down.”
“Tell me about the top.”
“Business operations are a joke. There’s, like, no oversight. The Sables are tax evaders, gamblers, extortionists, and con artists. They try to screw anything that moves, and I mean that literally. It’s amazing the business side of this team hasn’t already imploded.”
“Yeah, they don’t seem to be guys who bother with the little things,” Cooper said. “Business ethics, sound accounting practices, personal hygiene…”
“Boss, you don’t know the half of it. You’ll find the rest in the report.”
“What about the players?”
“There are summaries of dozens of quashed lawsuits and NDAs in the files. But to sum it up: These guys are spoiled brats. Most of them, anyway. Nobody’s telling them no, and when they get into trouble, the team’s lawyers keep everything quiet. They employ very good lawyers. And lots of them.”
Lamb continued to flip through the binder until he reached a short transcript at the very end. “What’s this part?”
“I’d seriously appreciate it if you focused on the wheel, boss.”
“This looks like a transcript of—”
“Your interview with the Sables, yeah.”
“Transcribed in real time and printed a minute later? You’re incredible, Victor.”
“If I’m so incredible, maybe keep your eyes on the road so I don’t die.”
“For you, my friend, anything.”