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Tennessee grunted an agreement. “I’ll call you after I check their place.”
The call dropped, and I turned back to the dockmaster. “Apologies for the interruption, Micah. Can you say that again?”
Micah Fitzgerald looked like the epitome of Santa, with plump, rosy cheeks and a white beard to match, but even at sixty-five, the man was still thick with muscle. The authority he’d wielded as a staff sergeant in the Marines worked well in his position. Micah kept my business running and his men in line and loyal to the family. He was invaluable.
He waved at the papers littering his desk. “Porter’s accounts are all wrong. Nothing too major, but there hasn’t been an even drop in months.”
René Porter was a low-level importer, focusing on things like absinthe and fur and game trophies. Essentially, he sold whatever he thought looked interesting. His needs were never consistent, but since we just handled the logistics of shipping, it didn’t matter to me what he brought in. As long as he played by my rules and didn’t bring heat into the city.
“How is that possible? Shouldn’t Grey have been notified after the first drop was short?” Dominic asked from my side.
He’d taken to underboss swimmingly and already had a good grasp of our systems and businesses, but our clients and men were slow to trust.
Micah directed his answer to me. “The drops aren’t short. They’re over.”
Shorts and overages weren’t uncommon. Humans made mistakes, but human error was calculated into the approximate total before clients received their shipments. I never wanted to be on the line for someone’s missing product. But extras of that magnitude were unheard of.
I lifted the manifests from the last month and looked over the numbers. They seemed okay, but I passed them to Grey. Knowing he had the better memory for numbers, I refocused on Micah. “These overages are past the error margin?”
“Every single one.”
“Where is the excess coming from?” Grey asked, making notes on his tablet as he read.
“No clue. The shit Porter’s into isn’t on any other manifests, and his shipments are over before they arrive. I’d assume it’s whoever he gets his product from, but their logs show the expected amount. Somewhere between them and us, he’s getting extras.”
I bit my lip. Where were the overages coming from, and who was paying for them? If it were any other time, I’d say it was a coincidence, but there was no way Cash wasn’t behind it. I just didn’t know how.
I turned to Grey, looking at his forehead instead of his eyes. Ever since opening night, I hadn’t been able to look at him. Not directly. He’d given me space, but I knew time was running out. I had to tell him, get everything in the open.
Just not yet.
“We need a full audit. Every income stream. Call Harris and get them on it. We need to figure out if there’s a cash leak and where.”
Grey nodded, looking away quickly, as if I wouldn’t see the pain in his face. I was hurting him and didn’t know how to stop without destroying what fragile threads we had left. Not for the first time, I wondered if the chasm we balanced on was filled with secrets that would see us drowned.
Dominic cleared his throat. “You said this has been going on the last few months?”
“At least three,” Micah answered.
“That you know of. What if he’s been doing this longer, and we just didn’t realize it because we weren’t looking?”
Grey looked up from his tablet. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, we don’t pay attention to human error. It’s an assumed loss, and so long as the shipments fall within that limit, it’s ignored. We’re only focusing on Porter now because the logs are clearly showing a discrepancy.”
“You think the shipments have been messed with for a while without our knowing.” And we only knew now because Cash wanted us to. He was fucking with us.
“Are you insinuating…?” We all turned to Micah.
I held up a hand. “No one is blaming you or accusing you of anything. We all know you’re the best person for this job, and you do it flawlessly. But people are weak.”
“You think one of my men flipped?” He glared at Dominic, who glared right back.
“I think that finding a single person to bribe on a crew as big as yours isn’t as hard as you’d think. There’s always someone who needs something enough to give up their secrets.”
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. “We need an accounting of the last three months of manifests and orders, and a short list of potential suspects.”
Dominic made a noise, Grey shifted in his seat, and I rolled my eyes at both of them. “Make that the last six months.” They both nodded, and I choked down my laughter. At least they agreed on something.
