A Man of Lies, page 6
“You are no doubt a busy man, and so I will keep this brief,” he says. “You have come into possession of something of mine, and I would like it back.”
I give him my best blank stare. “I have?”
He smiles, and his eyes flick to my side. I follow his gaze to see another grim-faced man watching us from twenty feet away. Benny is about thirty feet in the other direction. Too far for me to reach before he could draw and fire. The third man lengthens the odds even further. I’m not planning on trying to fight, but I let Holzmann see me doing the calculations. It’s what he expects of me.
“Do not worry,” he says, resting a hand on my forearm. “There is no reason that this should be anything other than a mutually beneficial situation. I don’t care how you came to have my key. All I care about is getting it back.”
I transfer the coffee to my left hand and reach into my pocket. Holzmann doesn’t respond, but Benny tenses in my peripheral vision. I stop moving, and Holzmann waves Benny off. Slowly, I draw my hand out with my keychain.
“All these are mine,” I say as I look at the keys. “Apartment. Car. Mailbox.”
Holzmann gives me a tight smile and pushes the keys away. “Not one of those. This is a special key. A small metal device. I believe you won it last night in a game of cards?”
I let my eyes widen slightly. Now we’re on the same page. But then I frown. “Mmm,” I say. Noncommittal. “That maybe rings a bell.”
Holzmann’s face darkens. “Do not mistake my politeness for patience. One must always be polite in diplomacy, even in declarations of war.”
Benny has taken a step closer.
I swallow. “Declarations—is this—” I look at the ground. Let him think he won the negotiation. I’ve pushed back just hard enough that he feels like he worked for the victory.
“Only if you want it to be.” Holzmann pats my arm comfortingly. “War is not profitable for anyone but the gravediggers. But this is the wonderful thing about this country, is it not? Everyone is here to profit. So let us a find a way for us both to be enriched. You have my key, and I desire it back. Would you say fifty thousand dollars is a fair price?”
The coffee falls from my hand, my fingers rendered temporarily senseless by the number. “Shit,” I say, hopping back as the hot drink splashes my feet. Benny tenses at the sudden movement, but I keep my hands visible. “Did I get you?” I squat down to wipe the coffee off myself.
Holzmann chuckles. “I take it this number is acceptable to you?”
“Yes,” I say. “Very. I don’t have the thing with me.”
“How prudent. Shall we reconvene here in, say, three hours to handle the exchange?”
The money from Brock’s bounty was nice, but not worth all of this. Fifty thousand dollars, though? That’s getting closer to what I’ll need.
Holzmann and his men leave first, with the Hyundai that tailed me falling into line behind their Mercedes SUV. Once they’re out of sight, I hurry back to my apartment. I have only three hours to get ready. It’s not much time.
The first thing I do is check on my fake keys. The aluminum isn’t yet thick enough that I’d trust it. They need a bit longer. That’s fine.
The apartment I’m renting is a moderately sized one-bedroom in a converted factory downtown. In two years, the city hopes, the building will be filled with tech bros and kombucha drinkers, but for now most of my neighbors are call-center drones who moved to the big city to escape dying farms. The gentrifiers are content to stick to Old Market and Midtown.
My desk, where I’ve been making the fake keys, sits next to a window that opens onto the fire escape. I’ve got a small table by the kitchen—such as it is, with just a microwave and a two-burner stove built into the counter—and a couch and armchair set up in front of a TV. A stack of free weights stands against the interior wall.
In the coat closet, a bank of monitors shows the feed from security cameras I hung at the building’s front door, in the hallway, over the alley behind my unit, and inside the apartment itself. I can see it from anywhere in the apartment except the bathroom and one corner of the bedroom, and I can, if needed, close the closet door to conceal it from any visitors.
I’ve done my best to decorate the place in keeping with my persona. I put some boxing posters up on the cinder block walls with sticky tack and hung some sweaty socks and towels on the backs of the chairs around my table.
After cleaning my gear off the desk and putting out a layer of haphazardly arranged mail, I check in on the keys again. They’ll have to do. I hide one of them behind a poster where I chipped off the front of a cinder block. The second one I glue into the hollow center of a novelty top hat keychain, which I hook onto my own keys.
I had gotten the key off Richard without incident, and the trail I left for Holzmann had worked beautifully. He’s on the line for fifty grand. And fifty grand would be nice. But I can get more. I need to get more. Fifty thousand dollars won’t be enough to get away from Scarpello. Maybe he’d accept it and let me spend the rest of my life working off the remainder, but I can’t go back to that.
Holzmann thought he was going to get this key last night, and I delayed his gratification. This has left him frustrated. I am going to make him desperate. I am going to make him beg me to end his misery. He will offer whatever amount is necessary to stop the destruction that I wreak.
I don’t know the details yet, but I’m not worried. I have three hours to figure it out. What I need is an agent of chaos, somebody fearless and wild to throw Holzmann’s entire organization into disarray. Somebody who’ll do exactly what I ask of them without ever realizing that they’re working for me. And the perfect candidate is about to present herself.
CHAPTER 13 Cass Mullen, 11:38 A.M.
Cass hates Vic’s van. The thing fucking screams criminal. The only thing that could make the white panel monstrosity more conspicuous would be an airbrushed scene of wizards and pegasuses on the side. Pegasuses? Pegasi? It doesn’t fucking matter. She’d almost prefer that. It would be trashy, but people wouldn’t want to call the cops if they saw it parked on their corner. Instead, they’re in this lightly rusted, white box with tinted windows and a real hey-kid-you-want-some-candy vibe.
At least Vic keeps the interior clean. The seats up front are well vacuumed, and the floors are free of trash. The benches in the back have been stripped out and replaced with a futon. Polyester sheets, printed to look like batik silks, line the walls.
“Everybody ready?” she asks. “We do this fast. Don’t give him a chance to think it through. Get the key and get out.”
They’re parked outside the building where Richard said this guy lives. It doesn’t look like much. One of the many interchangeable low-rise apartment buildings that cover the city.
“What’s the plan?” Jonny Boy asks, gathering up the wrappers from his breakfast. They’d grabbed some drive-through on their way over. Vic didn’t want anyone eating in the van, but his desire to placate Jonny Boy’s hungry whining proved stronger than his need to keep his sanctum free of the smell of grease.
“I just fucking told you the plan,” Cass says.
If she had a halfway decent crew, then she’d be done with petty jobs like this, but she can’t get a real crew without a real score, and she’ll never get a real score working with these amateurs. But they are what she has, and she’ll be damned if she lets their weakness hold her back.
She pops the glove compartment and pulls out the Hellcat they keep there. The tiny pistol is comically small, but it shoots fine, and with twelve rounds to play with, even someone as incompetent as Jonny Boy is bound to hit their target.
“Let’s go,” she says. “I’ll run point. Vic, you’re backing me up. Jonny Boy, you’re the wild card.”
“What about the shotgun?” Vic points to the long storage crate he has bolted to the wall across from the futon. Inside is a change of clothes, a pack of condoms, a couple bottles of knock-off Gatorade, and an AR-style semiautomatic 12-gauge. Whatever the Hellcat lacks in intimidation factor, the military-looking weapon more than makes up for.
“Leave it,” Cass says, getting out of the van. “We won’t need it. There’s three of us and one of him.”
As they walk to the front door, Cass gets herself ready for what they’re going to do. It doesn’t take much to find the anger she needs to threaten violence. Still, though, she is a bit nervous. She gets nervous before any job. Not about her own performance, but about her boys’. Vic and Jonny Boy are always a question mark.
Vic can be relied on to do what he’s told. He is more dog than man, enthusiastic and eager to please, loyal to a fault, and willing to protect his packmates with deadly force. But he also lacks all ambition for a life beyond the one he has. He has his crew. He gets three meals a day, a warm place to sleep, and the occasional tumble in her bed. What more could he want?
Jonny Boy—sweet fucking Jonny Boy—is a different story. If she hadn’t known him since middle school, the two of them finding mutual commiseration from the bullies that made her life hell before she learned to bite back, she’d have left his dead weight behind years ago. Plus, Vic likes having him around, and the bastard is a bull in a fight once you get him riled up. When he starts throwing that mass around, it’s gonna do some damage.
They’d left Richard at her place. The poor fucker needed the rest, Cass had said. She hasn’t told Vic and Jonny Boy yet, but they aren’t bringing the key back to Richard. Cass is done dealing with middle management. If she wants to get anywhere in this city, then she needs to stop working for little shits like Richard Sands. As soon as she gets the key, she’s heading straight to Holzmann to sell it to him directly. Once he knows that Cass is the sort of person who gets shit done, she can get into the big leagues.
“Do we need masks?” Jonny Boy asks as they get close to the building.
“No, Jonny Boy,” she says. “We don’t need masks. You two fuckers want to roll up on this guy in broad daylight with masks on and shotguns out? How the fuck you think that’s gonna look?”
Jonny Boy just shrugs.
“How’s it gonna look?” Vic asks.
“It’s gonna look like a fucking robbery,” she says.
Jonny Boy is quiet a moment longer. Cass can see him struggling. He wants to ask her something else, but he doesn’t want to get yelled at again. Cass takes pity on him. Never say she isn’t a merciful boss.
“Yes, Jonny Boy,” she says. “It is a fucking robbery. But that doesn’t mean it has to look like one. We go in, we politely ask for the key back, and we go on our way.”
“And our money?” Vic asks. “What about the five grand?”
“Oh, that?” Cass smiles at her boys. “We fucking take that.”
Barrett Rye is listed on the front door. Unit 204. She hits the button by his name.
“Got a delivery for Rye,” she says, and the door buzzes open. She uses her sleeve to wipe the button down and open the door, then follows Vic and Jonny Boy into the building.
“You take this,” she says to Jonny Boy, holding the gun out to him.
“Come on, you know I hate those,” he says.
“You want to get paid, don’t you?”
“I’ll take it,” Vic says, reaching for the little pistol.
“No,” Cass says. “Jonny Boy gets the gun. He’s the wild card. A wild card is scarier with a gun.”
“Fine,” Jonny Boy relents, taking the pistol and wedging it into his waistband. “I don’t want to hurt the guy, though.”
“You won’t have to. Just do your fucking job.”
CHAPTER 14 Cass Mullen, 11:45 A.M.
It’s a small building with only six apartments on the top floor. Unit 204 is at the end of the hall. With a final glance at her boys to make sure they’re ready, Cass gives the door a pound.
“Barrett Rye!” she calls. “Open up!”
She hears the deadbolt slide back and the security chain release and is already stepping forward as the door opens. She’s used to being one of the shorter people in a room, but she’s not ready to be below the guy’s sternum as she pushes into his apartment. He’s the sort of tall that can make an NBA player look small, and he’s ripped to boot.
Dirty towels hang over his bedroom door. Mail sits in piles on the table. Right in the center of the table is an envelope with cash spilling out of it. This might be even easier than she’d anticipated.
“Who are you?” Barrett asks, sounding like he’s straining every cell in his brain to form the question. As he follows Cass into the apartment, Jonny Boy and Vic file in behind him.
Jonny Boy heads straight for the kitchen. “Oh, you know this guy has a stocked fridge,” he says. As the wild card, Jonny Boy’s task is to keep the target off balance. Cass will talk, Vic will look scary. Jonny Boy just needs to be unpredictable.
Cass pulls out a chair at the table and sits down. She learned that from The Godfather. Marlon Brando sits through that whole movie, and he’s scary as fuck. Why? Because he’s the boss. He doesn’t need to stand up, and neither does she. Vic posts up behind her, and she looks up at Barrett Rye.
Barrett, for his part, looks confused. Confused about who they are. About why they’re there. About what Jonny Boy is doing digging through his fridge. Cass watches the gears turn and grind.
“Holzmann said I had three hours,” Barrett says, glancing at a clock.
Cass and Vic share a look. This guy is supposed to be a civilian, so how does he know Holzmann?
“Oh, fuck yeah,” Jonny Boy calls from the kitchen, pulling out a brick of something wrapped in deli paper. “Smoked turkey! Thin-sliced, too.”
If this Barrett guy knows Holzmann, then they can’t just rob him. She needs to figure out who he is and how he’s connected. Clearly he’s muscle of some kind, but is he a trusted agent? Is he just a nobody? How badly did Richard fuck them on this?
“He sent you to pick up the key, right?” Barrett asks, trying to fill the silence. “I just met him this morning. He was gonna buy it from me. He was supposed to give me three hours.”
It’s always nice when the idiots answer your questions without you having to ask them.
“That’s how Holzmann is,” Cass says with the knowing shrug of the lackey. “He gets impatient.”
Barrett nods and leaves to get the key for them. With his back to her, she reaches for the envelope of cash on the table. She has a hand on it when he stops. She’s just let go when he spins on a heel to look back at her.
“You got my money?” he asks. It takes her a moment to realize he’s asking about the payment he has been promised by Holzmann.
“Yeah,” she says. “You got the key?”
Barrett’s brow furrows as he looks from Cass to Vic to Jonny Boy. None of them are carrying anything. “Where’s the cash?” he asks.
Cass grabs a pen and a scrap of junk mail off the table. She scribbles some random numbers down. “Your money,” she says, waving the paper in the air.
Barrett’s brow furrows further. “That doesn’t look like any fifty thousand I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s a new system Holzmann is using,” she says. “This is a bank account with your money in it. Can’t be traced. We get the key, you get the digits.”
She can see Barrett thinking it over, deciding whether or not he buys the lie.
“You’re out of mayo,” Jonny Boy calls from the kitchen. Barrett’s confusion clears, saved from the complexities of bank accounts by something concrete and present.
“There’s more in the cabinet,” Barrett says. “Left of the fridge.”
Cass listens to Jonny Boy rummaging through the cabinets as Barrett takes a step toward her. Barrett reaches for the paper, but she pulls it back. “Show us the key, then you get paid.”
Barrett eyes the paper. Cass can see his pulse in the veins along his neck. He’s close enough that he could easily grab it. Hell, he could grab her, but she’s got Vic beside her, and Barrett might have fifty pounds of muscle and a foot of height on him, but Vic can hold his fucking own.
As Barrett’s eyes slide over her other shoulder, she knows that Jonny Boy has come back to join them as well. She can hear him chewing the wet sandwich he’s made, the mayo slurping between folds of turkey slices and the flaps of his lips. But he also will have left one hand free—he knows the drill—resting too casually on the grip of the Hellcat.
“Just give us the key,” she says. “I want to pay you as badly as you want to get paid. We’ve all got shit to do today.”
Barrett looks from her to the paper to the gun. “I should call Holzmann,” he says, taking a slow step away from her.
She comes to her feet, holding the paper out again. “That would be a mistake,” she says. “Just hand over the key.”
Jonny Boy puts his sandwich down behind her. She knows he’s twisting his baby face into the fiercest grimace he can muster. Vic pops his knuckles.
“Can I ask you something?” Barrett asks. He’s stalling now. Trying to find a way out. “Do you know what’s in the safe?”
“It doesn’t fucking matter,” Cass says. The question of the safe and its contents is a problem for another time. Right now, she needs to get the key and get out.
“I know. I’m just curious. It’s not like I’d be able to do anything about it.”
“So just give me the fucking key,” Cass says, but what she’s thinking is that he’s right. There isn’t anything he could do about the safe. No matter how big he is, he’s still just one guy. A whole crew, though? For the right prize, who knows what a crew could pull off.
“Last chance to do this as friends,” she says.
There is a fulcrum around which every situation rotates. A point which has, to one side, the weight of all that came before and, on the other, the potential of all that will come after. Cass watches as Barrett passes that point, his expression hardens, and the outcome becomes fixed.
So be it.
Vic launches himself around the table, leading with a shoulder, hoping to bowl the big man over. Barrett absorbs the full force of Vic’s momentum. He rocks back on his feet, but doesn’t fall. As Vic starts showering blows into his sides, Barrett wraps both arms around Vic and lifts him into the air. With a grunt, he drives Vic back, slamming him into the wall.
