“Believe it.” Paulette drained her coffee cup and shoved a stray lock of hair back into position.

Miriam whistled tunelessly. “What’s the bottom line?”

“‘The bottom line?’” Paulette looked uncomfortable. “I haven’t counted it, but—”

“Make a guess.”

“I’d say someone is laundering between fifty and a hundred million dollars a year here. Turning dirty cash into clean shares in Proteome Dynamics and Biphase Technologies. Enough to show up in their SEC filings. So your hunch was right.”

“And nobody in Executive Country has asked any questions,” Miriam concluded. “If I was paranoid, I’d say it’s like a conspiracy of silence. Hmm.” She put her mug down. “Paulie. You worked for a law firm. Would you call this…circumstantial?”

“‘Circumstantial?’” Paulette’s expression was almost pitying. “Who’s paying you, the defense? This is enough to get the FBI and the DA muttering about RICO.”

“Yeah, but…” Miriam nodded to herself. “Look, this is heavy. Heavier than usual anyway. I can guarantee you that if we spring this story we’ll get three responses. One will be flowers in our hair, and the other will be a bunch of cease-and-desist letters from attorneys. Freedom of the press is all very well, but a good reputation and improved circulation figures won’t buy us defense lawyers, which is why I want to double-check everything in here before I go upstairs and tell Sandy we want the cover. Because the third response is going to be oh-shit-I-don’t-want-to-believe-this, because our great leader and teacher thinks the sun shines out of Biphase and I think he’s into Proteome too.”

“Who do you take me for?” Paulette pointed at the pile. “That’s primary, Miriam, the wellspring. SEC filings, public accounts, the whole lot. Smoking gun. The summary sheet—” she tugged at a Post-it note gummed to a page a third of the way down the stack—“says it all. I was in here all day yesterday and half the evening—”

“I’m sorry!” Miriam raised her hand. “Hey, really. I had no idea.”

“I kind of lost track of time,” Paulette admitted. She smiled. “It’s not often I get something interesting to dig into. Anyway, if the boss is into these two, I’d think he’d be glad of the warning. Gives him time to pull out his stake before we run the story.”

“Yeah, well.” Miriam stood up. “I think we want to bypass Sandy. This goes to the top.”

“But Sandy needs to know. It’ll mess with his page plan—”

“Yeah, but someone has to call Legal before we run with this. It’s the biggest scoop we’ve had all year. Want to come with me? I think you earned at least half the credit…”