Off Message

by A. C. Fuller

  "You absolutely murdered it!" Steph says.

  "It was really great," I say.

  "They killed it," Benjamin adds.

  Malcolm shrugs. "It was fun."

  "Fun?" Steph says. "Video of that shit will be everywhere by the end of the night. Every. Where."

  Malcolm doesn't seem to want to talk about how awesome he is. He looks uncomfortable, which makes me wonder whether Peter fired him yet, and whether he's somehow pissed at me about it. I'm probably being paranoid.

  A drunk guy stumbles up to Benjamin, convinces him they went to high school together, and offers to buy shots for him and Steph. They disappear in the direction of the bar, leaving me alone with Malcolm.

  "So," I say.

  "I know, right?"

  "Right what?"

  He looks at the floor. "I don't know why I said that."

  "People didn't used to say 'right' as much."

  "I know, right?"

  "Right," I say.

  We're not competing in the who's-a-bigger-dork Super Bowl, but if we were we'd be tied heading into the fourth quarter. As confident as he is on stage, right now it's like he's squirming inside.

  I've had two shots of tequila and a beer, so I say what I'm thinking. "Peter and I broke up."

  "I heard."

  "Did he fire you?" His face is blank. "Before...when I heard that argument. He said it was because he was going to fire you and—"

  "He said that?"

  "He did, and I just wanted to say, you should go back to DJing." I gesture to the crowd. "Look at this place. You brought the fire tonight. I think you may have created a new genre here."

  "He didn't fire me. I quit."

  "You what?"

  "I quit working for Peter."

  "Why?"

  "I knew he was cheating on you."

  All I can do for a moment is stare.

  Malcolm puts a hand on my arm, then pulls back. "I'm sorry. That's what we were arguing about that night at the party. I confronted him about it and...wait...he told you he was going to fire me?"

  I nod slowly as the realizations pass through me. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I told him he needed to cut out sleeping with those guys, and that he needed to tell you. I didn't think it was my place to tell you."

  Right now I don't even want to know why he said guys, plural. "I can understand that."

  "It's not the only reason, though. I…"

  He goes quiet as a cheer erupts near the stage. Dolly says, "Goodnight, y'all," and walks off to thunderous applause.

  "What?" I ask as the country music mixtape again fills the room.

  "You know. I didn't want you to think I was telling you because I was trying to break you two up." He smiles shyly. The moment is palpable, tingling with a significance I can't quite place.

  "I get that, but—"

  "I didn't want you to think I was jealous."

  I can't think of what to say. I smile at him and he smiles back. For now, that's enough.

  And it's all we have time for because a plump man in a gray suit steps between us. "Amazing," he shouts. "Dolly wants a word backstage."

  "Mia, this is Tex Moreño, Dolly's tour manager."

  He shakes my hand quickly but doesn't make eye contact, then gives Malcolm's arm a tug. "We gotta get back there."

  "Sorry," Malcolm mouths, turning his head. He's already twenty feet into the crowd, heading toward the door beside the stage.

  "Go," I say, but not loud enough for him to hear.

  21

  I'm on my way out of Baker's Dozen with a bag of food when Steph's Uber pulls up. Without acknowledging my existence, she grabs the bag. "I hope there are biscuits in here."

  She's dressed in one of her green pantsuits, but it's wrinkled and she looks half asleep.

  "Half dozen," I say. "Strawberry butter. Maple butter. Jam."

  "Oh, it's on."

  "Like Donkey Kong."

  "You're a total nerd." She swings open the door to the office.

  "Why do you look like you slept in your clothes? Ten hours ago you were in club attire."

  "Long story, but one you're about to hear."

  At the top of the stairs, I'm surprised that the office lights are on. "Who's here?"

  "Brianna!" Steph calls.

  "Wait, Brianna's here?"

  "I met her here last night after the show."

  "Why?"

  "After Malcolm's set, while you were flirting with him—"

  "I was not."

  "Okay, while he was flirting with you."

  "He was not!" If I admit that Malcolm was flirting with me, she'll slap her hands together, then make some gesture that's meant to indicate sex, all while saying something like, "Malcolm is fine." Then I'll turn red and decide on a life of quiet celibacy just to avoid talking about sex with Steph. I give her a cut-it-out look. "Tell me why you met her here."

  "You'll see in a sec."

  As she says it, Brianna emerges from the bathroom and heads for her laptop on the floor in the center of the office. She's a short, slight woman with straight black hair down to her mid-back. She's also one of Silicon Valley's most sought-after white-hat hackers—someone who performs legal hacks to test security systems and dig up information, usually without breaking the law. We hired her last year to help deal with Thomas Morton's attack on our voting system, but I haven't seen her since.

  She pulls off her headphones when she sees us. "I think I found what you need."

  Converging at her laptop, we sit cross-legged on either side of her on the floor. I hand Steph a biscuit, but she waves it off, engrossed in Brianna's screen. I tear off a small piece and slowly bring it to my mouth as I watch, but I can't tell what I'm looking at.

  "One point seven million," Brianna says.

  "Are you serious?" Steph asks.

  "And another eight hundred grand from CSI."

  Steph slaps the floor. "What the what?"

  I'm confused. When Steph and I talked about Mast at the bar, she said it could wait until tomorrow. I figured we'd be working on it all day. Sometime in the last ten hours she hired a hacker and pursued a line of research that's brand new to me. "Slow down," I say through a mouthful of biscuit. "One point seven million for what? And what's CSI? What's going on?"

  "Last night, while you were flirting—yes, flirting—with Malcolm, and Benjamin was chatting with his buddy, I got curious. Started reading about Mast on my phone. His life, his family. I thought, if I was a company trying to get him money without giving it to him, what would I do? Half the politicians who get busted for accepting bribes never actually accepted bribes, y'know. It's not like they pick up a sack of hundred-dollar bills hidden behind the Lincoln Memorial at midnight. Right? In real life, shit is way more boring. So what would I do? I started with his wife, Janine Mast. She's got an interior design firm based in Biloxi. Medium-sized, nice website. Kind of boring, conservative Southern design style. Mostly they do big corporate offices and condos in Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. I read through some of their newsletters and social media, browsed their site, and I found something. Like a lot of companies, they release public versions of their board meetings minutes, the highlights with all the controversy and bad stuff taken out. In a set of minutes from December 2019, someone mentioned a large contract with a major military contractor in Atlanta. I searched everywhere and couldn't find the name of the contractor, whether Robert Mast was involved, or anything. That's when I thought of Brianna."

  When we hired her last year, we paid Brianna ten thousand dollars a day. I can't imagine what she's charging for an all-nighter after a midnight call from Steph. Or maybe I just don't want to.

  "Steph called and asked me to meet her here. Told me everything she just told you, then asked me to find out who the contractor was, what they paid the design firm, and whether the work was ever done."

  "And you did?" I ask.

  "I did more than that."

  "Please please please tell me you didn't do any
thing illegal working through Ameritocracy servers."

  "I didn't," Brianna says, and her look of deep offense appears genuine. "You'd be surprised at how much information is out there, floating around. If you know what you're looking for, and where to look, it's easy to find."

  "And that's where the one point seven million comes in?" I ask.

  "It took a while because I thought I was looking for defense contractors. As in, companies. Turns out the CEO of Allied Defense Industrials, not the company itself, hired Janine Mast. Paid her one point seven million to redesign his condo in Boca Raton. Arrogant bastard was dumb enough to write it off on his personal taxes. Upgrading his home office."

  "Wait," I say. "How did you get his personal taxes without breaking the law?"

  "I didn't hack them. Millions of tax records get leaked onto the dark web every week. It's not illegal to view them once they've been leaked."

  This comes as a shock. The dark web is a secret internet that doesn't show up in Google searches and is often used for drug deals and hiring hackers, among other things. Like foreign wars and unexpected brain aneurysms, it's something I do my best not to think about as I go about my day. "Are my tax returns up there?"

  "I don't know," Brianna says. "You probably don't make enough money for anyone to care."

  "You can bet on that," I laugh, but it's cold comfort. Irrelevance is not a very good shield, and in any case I think it's one I've lost.

  "Seriously," Brianna says, "there's a database of tens of thousands of tax returns from CEOs, mostly acquired by an anarchist hacker collective and posted just to fuck with people."

  "Illegal to hack them," Steph says, "but once they're out there…"

  "Setting aside the fact that, legal or not, we shouldn't be reading personal tax records, one point seven million sounds like a lot to shell out for interior design."

  Brianna taps her keyboard, which brings up a picture of a condo. Glimmering hardwood floors, spacious layout, and a nice view of a marina. "He bought the condo for nine hundred thousand four years ago. It's seventeen hundred square feet, right on the water."

  Steph grabs half of my biscuit. "Paying twice the purchase price for interior design seems…"

  "Fishy," I say.

  "Very," Brianna adds. "And the CEO sits on the board of FMH."

  "That's the connection to Mast," Steph says, excited. "To this whole thing. Dewey Gunstott tells the CEO to help out Mast and the easiest way is to hire his wife's design firm."

  "Fine, but that's not proof. Maybe he likes expensive couches. Maybe they put in a tank of exotic fish that cost half a million. The payment to his wife's firm could be legitimate. We don't know."

  I pop the last bite of biscuit into my mouth and consider grabbing another. Instead, I pace the office, which is empty except for the three of us and Post-it, who stalks a dangling power cable already covered in shallow claw marks. He has a way of staying nearby during stressful situations, plus a way of destroying things I need, so he's multitasking. "We need more."

  "I wasn't done," Brianna says. "Right before you two got here I got Mast's tax returns."

  "What?" I sit next to her. "In journalism we call that burying the lede."

  "Don't get too excited," Steph says. "It's not his 2019 returns, right Brianna?"

  "No. Either he hasn't filed those, or they haven't leaked yet. But I have his 2017 and 2018 tax returns."

  "Before he entered Ameritocracy," I say.

  "But it shows a pattern." Brianna opens a PDF and points at the screen. "He received huge fees to speak at CSI four times in 2018. Same in 2017."

  "CSI?" I ask.

  "Correctional Systems Incorporated," Steph says. "Largest private prison company in the country They're bankrolling Mast."

  So far this is all pretty vague, and I'm frustrated. I can't help but think of it from a PR standpoint. When we had to kick Thomas Morton out of the competition, we had airtight evidence. Not to mention the fact that he was a former ambassador to the Ukraine who no one had heard of before Ameritocracy. Mast is widely considered an American hero, and we can't call him out in public without overwhelming, incontrovertible proof. Steph's enthusiasm for the investigation does nothing to shake my fears. It's no secret that she deplores everything Mast stands for, which is fine as long as it doesn't threaten her objectivity.

  "So?" I ask. "CSI paid Mast to give a few speeches before he entered Ameritocracy. So what?"

  "Eight payments, all six figures, between 2017 and 2018 to give keynote speeches," Brianna says. "Some for CSI, some at universities and other events, but all sponsored by the company."

  "And I pulled up some of his old appearances on Fox News and CNN," Steph says. "Every single time, within a week or two of his speech, he made appearances advocating tighter marijuana laws. Straight out of 1983, all that 'gateway drug' BS."

  "Okay," I say. "So CSI profits off stricter marijuana laws because it means more prisoners, which earns them more money. They pay Mast to give speeches about it, and he does. Then he goes on TV and makes the same points. All in 2017 and 2018?"

  "Exactly," Brianna says.

  Steph and Brianna seem more excited than the evidence warrants.

  "Don't you see?" Steph says. "Between the payments from FMH, the military contractor CEO dude, and CSI, we have a candidate who's received payments from a huge media company, a major defense contractor, and the largest private prison company in the country. The military-industrial complex banded together to push a candidate with the credibility to further their interests in the White House, whether or not those interests align with the interests of the country. We have—"

  "Not a shred of evidence to prove he violated Ameritocracy rules."

  "Not a shred?" Steph stands, looming over me like a giant in a green pantsuit. "What the hell do you think all that was? You think that if he got those payments in 2017 and 2018, he magically stopped getting them when he entered Ameritocracy? These companies are buying Ameritocracy and—"

  "Nothing you've said proves that," I interrupt.

  Steph closes her eyes as though in pain. "Mia, please. I know what you're thinking, and I know what you're doing." Brianna scooches away from us, like a kid afraid of her parents' fighting. "You're doing that thing where you play the middle because you think I'm biased. But I'm not. Or, if I am it's because I'm biased toward a level playing field. Do I think Mast is a barbaric, antiquated asshole? Yes. Doesn't mean I'm wrong that he's also crooked."

  "I'm not saying you're wrong, and I'm not doing the thing you think I'm doing. Steph, I don't see how we can present this to the world without it looking like Ameritocracy is run by a couple liberal ladies hell-bent on bringing down a conservative war hero. It's not enough that we suspect he violated Ameritocracy rules. Even if what you say is true, it's all legal."

  Steph lowers her voice and speaks slowly. "What we have, combined with what Alex told you, that FMH paid for the book marketing, is proof."

  "It's evidence, not proof. It's not anything solid enough to nail him."

  Brianna steps between us. "If you need proof, I can get the FMH records, just not legally."

  I sigh and look from Brianna to Steph. "Right."

  Steph walks to the window and I fetch a cold cup of coffee from the kitchenette. Steph and I don't fight often, and I don't like how it feels. She's my rock, the one who makes Ameritocracy function, and we need to be on the same page.

  When I return, Brianna and Steph are deep into a discussion about how to get Mast's bank records. I listen for a moment, but when Steph raises the idea that Brianna could pay a friend to hack into Mast's bank, I've heard enough. "Stop! We're not doing that. Steph, what happened to tracking all Mast's reports and campaign stops, nailing him based on his own reporting?"

  "I did that," she says. "Last night. Picked three months at random. His financial records line up perfectly with his public appearances. Whoever's doing his books is earning their paycheck." She goes quiet and walks a circle around me, sighing repeated
ly. Finally, she stops and meets my eyes. "Mia, we have three options. One: present what we have to the public. Two: let Mast get away with it. Three: use less-than-legal means to get the smoking gun evidence I know is out there." She folds her arms.

  "No," I say. "There's a fourth option."

  22

  Bluff. That's the fourth option, and it's why I took an early flight into Washington D.C. Carrying nothing but a sleek black briefcase, I'm armed with printouts of all the evidence Brianna and Steph uncovered. On my phone, I've got additional information they found during the six-hour flight from Seattle.

  Turns out Janine Mast's interior design firm landed dozens of new corporate clients the month before her husband entered Ameritocracy. Brianna used every legal form of research she could think of and determined that, in at least three cases, the firm never did the work it was paid to do. Problem is, we can't prove it without hacking emails and other personal records.

  Taken as a whole, the evidence suggests Mast received at least two million dollars in shady money from half a dozen major corporations. We know for sure that he violated the spirit of the Ameritocracy financing laws. If we had access to his personal financial records, or those of his wife's firm, we could show he violated the letter as well. We don't, so I'm in D.C. for Valentine's Day.

  Mast's house is in the posh Ballston-Virginia Square neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia, one of the richest cities in the country and home to many of the military's top men and women. Only a few miles from the Pentagon and the White House, his modern, three-story colonial sits in a cul-de-sac away from other houses.

  At the end of the walkway, I stop next to an American flag hanging from a pole that juts out from the house at a forty-five-degree angle. The day is cold and windless, the flag perfectly still above the steps that lead to the wide, wrap-around porch. The gravity of what I'm about to do hits me and I'm overcome by a momentary panic. I consider getting the hell out of here.

  Before I can, a blonde woman emerges from the house. "Well, are you coming in, Mia? We do not keep Mr. Mast waiting."

  I recognize her as one of Mast's campaign staffers. She's got a slightly upturned nose, hair pulled back in a ponytail, and like Mast, she's all business. "Brenda, right?" I ask, as she leads me into the house.