Automobile emissions tests in California? Miriam squinted and turned the page. Failed autos, a chain of repair shops buying them for cash and shipping them south to Mexico and Brazil for stripping or resale. “What’s this got to do with—” she stopped. “Aha!”

“Nondairy creamer, one sweetener,” said Paulie, planting a coffee mug at her left hand.

“This is great stuff,” Miriam muttered, flipping more pages. Company accounts. A chain of repair shops that—“I was hoping you’d find something in the small shareholders. How much are these guys in for?”

“They’re buying about ten, eleven million in shares each year.” Paulette shrugged, then blew across her coffee and pulled a face. “Which is crazy, because their business only turns over about fifteen mill. What kind of business puts eighty percent of its gross into a pension fund? One that bought two hundred and seventy-four autos last year for fifty bucks a shot, shipped them south of the border, and made an average of forty thousand bucks for each one they sold. And the couple of listed owners I phoned didn’t want to talk.”

Miriam looked up suddenly. “You phoned them?” she demanded.

“Yes, I—oh. Relax, I told them I was a dealership in Vegas and I was just doing a background check.”

“‘Background check.’” Miriam snorted. “What if they’ve got caller-ID?”

“You think they’re going to follow it up?” Paulette asked, looking worried.

“Paulie, you’ve got eleven million in cash being laundered through this car dealership and you think they’re not going to sit up and listen if someone starts asking questions about where those beaters are coming from and how come they’re fetching more than a new Lexus south of the border?”

“Oh. Oh shit.”

“Yes. ‘Oh shit’ indeed. How’d you get into the used car trail anyway?”

Paulette shrugged and looked slightly embarrassed. “You asked me to follow up the shareholders for Proteome Dynamics and Biphase Technologies. Pacific Auto Services looked kind of odd to me—why would a car dealership have a pension fund sticking eight digits into cutting-edge proteome research? And there’s another ten like them, too. Small mom-and-pop businesses doing a lot of export down south with seven-or eight-digit stakeholdings. I traced another—flip to the next?”

“Okay. Dallas Used Semiconductors. Buying used IBM mainframe kit? That’s not our—and selling it to—oh shit.”

“Yeah.” Paulie frowned. “I looked up the book value. Whoever’s buying those five-year-old computers down in Argentina is paying ninety percent of the price for new kit in cash greenbacks—they’re the next thing to legal currency down there. But up here, a five-year-old mainframe goes for about two cents on the dollar.”

“And you’re sure all this is going into Proteome and Biphase?” Miriam shook the thick sheaf of paper into shape. “I can’t believe this!”