Lago shrugged. “Whoever feels like answering the phone? It doesn’t ring much anymore.”

Great.

“Why didn’t they pass the budget?” Curran asked.

“Because Bob Carver wanted to raid his pension fund.” Lago gulped his coffee and grimaced at the taste.

Bob Carver had been in for about fifteen years, and he was one of the rare breed of mercenary who played well with others. He was part of a four-person crew known as the Four Horsemen and they took the larger, more difficult jobs. Half of the Assembly consisted of admins and the other half of mercs, and Bob Carver was chief personnel officer and the mercs’ leader. Before my father decided to take an active interest in my existence, I functioned as the third part of that triangle, representing the Pack’s interests. I didn’t think I made that much difference, but it must’ve been just enough to keep the tide of crazy at bay, because in my absence the Guild had clearly gone off the rails.

Curran kept looking at Lago, listening and waiting. Lago gulped more coffee. “It works like this: if you last twenty years in the Guild, you get a pension. You start paying into it from your first job. Not much money, like five percent, but at the end of twenty years it adds up. If you die before your twenty years are up, you’re screwed. Whatever you paid into the pension fund stays there. Your family gets the death benefit, but that’s it. I don’t know what the hell Bob needed the money for, but he wanted to borrow against his contribution.”

“That’s illegal,” Curran said. “And stupid. If everyone raids the pension fund, there will be no pension fund.”

Lago winked at me. “I like him. But yeah, you’re right. That’s basically what Mark said. Mark’s our operations manager. Bob really needs the money, I guess, because he got a bunch of mercs on his side and hammered enough votes to stop the budget. He says he won’t back down until they give him his money.”

Awesome. Just awesome.

I leaned closer. “Lago, do you know Eduardo Ortego? Big guy, dark hair, looks like he can run through walls?”

“I’ve seen him around.”

“Did he have a beef with anyone?”

“Sure. You remember Christian Heyward?”

“Big guy? African American with the bulldog?”

“That’s the one.”

The Christian Heyward I remembered was a genuinely nice family man, who had a very low tolerance for bullshit. He came in with his American Bulldog, did his gigs, and went home to his wife and kids. “He had a problem with Eduardo?”