A Man of Lies, page 8
“Hello?” A man answers Holzmann’s call.
“For the longest time,” Holzmann says, without further greeting or preamble, “I only slept with whores. Do you know why that is, Herr Rye?”
Pickens has to admire the man’s flair for the dramatic.
“I was terrified of being embarrassed,” Holzmann continues when their key salesman, Rye, does not respond. “It is my greatest fear, you know? Public humiliation. The good thing about a whore, Herr Rye, is that she will never leave you sitting in the park with your dick in one hand and a bag of cash in the other.”
There is silence on the line for a moment. “Well fuck you too,” Rye responds. “If you’re gonna gloat, at least make sense.”
“Obscenity is the refuge of little men. Watch your tongue, and give me my key.”
“Your guys already took it.”
Holzmann sits up straighter, a feat that Pickens would have thought impossible a moment before. “I promise you,” he says. “My people did nothing of the sort.”
“Well three of them just left here with your key.”
“Describe them to me,” Holzmann says, the performative anger of his little whore speech giving way to real wrath.
“They were young,” Rye says. “Three kids. Fat guy named Jonny Boy. Pretty guy. There was a woman in charge.”
“The woman,” Benny interrupts. “Was her face messed up?”
“I guess so. Not too bad, but sure.”
“That’s Cassiopeia Mullen,” Benny tells Holzmann. “She’s nobody. A house-burglar with a sloppy crew. Jonny Boy Wright and Vic Velasquez. They’ll all be caught and put away within a year.” Benny pauses, mentally confirming a detail before he continues. “But she has done work with Richard Sands before.”
Holzmann sucks his teeth, processing this new information. Pickens wishes again that he had been allowed to step away. He doesn’t like to get involved with petty local conflicts.
“We’re done,” Rye says, his patience apparently expired. “Whatever this bullshit is, I’m done with it.” The line goes dead, but Holzmann has already moved on. He grabs Pickens by the elbow and starts leading him back toward their car. Benny gestures to his man, Wade, and the two fall in behind them.
“You want me to take her?” Benny asks. “We’re not far from the place she and her crew usually hole up.”
“Check it out, but keep your distance,” Holzmann replies. “Herr Sands did promise he would make things right. If she’s working for him, he’ll come crawling out of the mud with the key. If she’s on her own, then we’ll make her the same offer we did Rye. Don’t move against either of them until I send reinforcements.”
With a salute, Benny tosses the car keys to Wade and departs for his mission. The rest of them start the drive back to Holzmann’s estate.
“Mister Holzmann,” Pickens says, once the Mercedes has left the city. “I understand these delays are beyond your control, but I do need to bring up the details of my fee with you.”
Holzmann turns from the window to consider him. “Of course, Herr Pickens,” he says. “I hired you for an evening’s work, and that has stretched into far more.”
“I have every faith in your ability to get me what I need to complete this job, but the scope of my commission has grown.” Pickens chooses his words carefully, keeping his inflection as level as he can. Nonthreatening. Unassuming. But aware of the value he brings. “For longer-term work like this, I charge a day rate, plus a hazard percentage, as you now have me operating in the field.”
Holzmann’s face is a flat mask. Pickens fights the impulse to keep talking. If he hadn’t spent the last twelve hours with the man, he might be concerned or feel ignored as Holzmann turns to the window, but this is simply how he thinks. When he finishes his private deliberations, he will deliver his answer.
For the next five minutes, Pickens enjoys the blast of cold air coming from the vents. The cream leather seat is cool beneath him. He marvels at the full suits that Holzmann and his men wear. Their only sartorial concession to the heat seems to be the choice of cotton over wool.
Eventually, Holzmann says, “I like you, Herr Pickens. I bear you no ill will for pressing when you have me at a disadvantage. I should be disappointed if you did not. A man must be compensated for his time. Benny will ensure you are paid appropriately.”
When they arrive at the Elkhorn estate, Pickens goes straight to the office at the back of the house where the safe is being stored. He already drilled out as much as he could. The safe is, for all intents and purposes but one, open. All that remains is to throw the handle, retracting the bolts holding the door closed, and open it.
Of course, if he does that now, the contents of the safe will be destroyed. But once he has the key, he can open it in seconds.
Reassured that all is in place, he returns to quietly waiting. From this room, he has a view through a windowed door into the backyard. The men who patrol the grounds use the guesthouse, a few hundred feet away, as a staging ground, and the intervening space is kept open. Pickens does his best to ignore them and their guns, and instead watches the approaching storm cross the sky to meet the sun. Holzmann joins Pickens shortly and spends the afternoon conducting business from here.
At four o’clock, when there is still no word from Richard Sands or Cassiopeia Mullen, Holzmann calls Benny for an update. He’s been staking out Cass’s apartment. Nobody’s been in or out, but he has seen movement behind the curtains. Her opportunity to come to him willingly has passed. Holzmann sends Wade and a few men out to take the woman.
CHAPTER 18 Cass Mullen, 1:24 P.M.
Vic and Jonny Boy want to spend the afternoon in Vic’s grandma’s house, sitting by the algae-filled pool or sleeping on the plastic-wrapped houndstooth furniture beneath paisley walls. It’s a pleasant, three-bedroom place on a quiet street with a walled-in yard. It’s nicer than Cass’s apartment, and it makes her feel claustrophobic. It smells like old lady. When they arrive, she asks Vic why he sold the bed, looking at the yellow rectangle of rug in the corner of his grandma’s bedroom, the only section of carpeting still its original color.
“Abuela died in that bed,” he says, as though that explains it.
“Of a heart attack,” Cass objects. “The bed was fine, and it’s not like she was using it anymore.”
“Goddamn, Cass,” Jonny Boy calls from the kitchen. “The bed wasn’t fine. She’d just died in it. You don’t sleep in the bed someone died in.”
“Oh,” Cass says. “She shit herself, didn’t she? A lot of people shit themselves when they die.”
“It’s just about respect,” Jonny Boy says. He’s cut up an orange and put some cheese and crackers on a plate for them. It’s Kraft singles and store-brand Ritz, but from the smile on the guy’s face you’d think it was a Michelin-star charcuterie. “It’s where she took her final rest.”
Vic grabs some crackers. “Thanks, man,” he says, giving Jonny Boy a squeeze on the shoulder. “It was her bed, you know? It wouldn’t feel right to keep using it. Wherever she is now, I want her to know that I love her. That I miss her. How would it look if I just threw her away and slid into her bed?”
“You took her fucking house, though,” Cass says. “Is that really different?”
Vic has a way of looking at her that used to upset her but now just makes her sad. Like he’s surprised. Surprised not only that she would say something so awful but also that he can still be surprised by that. He should have learned by now that she’s a bitch. She didn’t ask to be born like this. She wishes, sometimes, that she didn’t have these ambitions. Life would be simpler if she were content to accept its bullshit. If she would settle for a boring fuck and start spitting out babies.
But that’s not what she wants. That’s not who she is. And if she has to be a ruthless bitch to get what she wants, then so be it. She came here to figure out a plan. To find some way to turn this key into their fortune. But Cass Mullen isn’t a planner. Cass Mullen is the bad motherfucker who gets shit done.
“We shouldn’t have come here,” she says. “We’ve got fucking work to do.”
“I thought we were gonna go swimming,” Jonny Boy whines, looking toward the back of the house where the nasty green pool is.
“Well we’re fucking not,” she says, grabbing an orange slice on her way to the front door. “Not right now. First we gotta get paid.”
Richard is upset when she calls and tells him to sit tight for a while longer, but he agrees in the end. What other choice does he have?
CHAPTER 19 Peter Van Horn, 3:26 P.M.
Peter can barely hold his eyes open. Only anxiety keeps him going, and that is a poor motivator when what he needs is to sit still. He’s been driving all over the city, and all he wants is to lie down and take a nap. He can’t, though. He has work to do.
Peter’s world turned, overnight, from one where everything had a place and there was a procedure for any situation into a nightmare of contradiction and paradox. Owen Oster was lying about what happened at the U-Store-It. This was a problem. Peter knew he was not the right person to fix this problem. He also knew that nobody else would. His bosses made it clear that they only wanted a scapegoat, and Peter was convenient.
Peter had many questions, and answering questions usually brought him peace, but he didn’t know how to answer any of these. Why was Owen at the storage center? Why had Owen needed him gone when nothing had been stolen from the facility? Why—and he did admit that this question was not new, but it had taken on a new urgency—did a mid-tier self-storage building too cheap to properly light its own hallways shell out for police protection when they could have a mall cop for a third of the price?
Peter had spent his life within the shared set of rules and boundaries that define a functioning society. In exchange for this, he had been repeatedly crushed beneath the heel of an uncaring universe. Society’s strictures are not rules, but a self-inflicted handicap the weak ensconce themselves in, and the strong turn to their advantage. He was done with it.
Amped up on this revelation, he left the precinct, got into his car, and drove to the address registered with the USPS for Barrett Rye. He parked across the street, where he could keep an eye on both the front door and the fire escape hanging from the building’s side.
While waiting, he looked the man up online but couldn’t find a link between Barrett and Owen Oster. Barrett looked like a recent transplant to Omaha. He was a personal trainer whose body itself was all the advertising his services would ever need. He had no clear connections to the police or criminal organizations. There were no friends or family in common between him and Owen. Yet Owen had wanted not only to know where this guy lived but also that nobody else would know he was looking for that information.
Peter didn’t have to wait long before Barrett himself came strolling out the front door. Peter knew from the pictures that Barrett was big, but seeing him in person was something different. The guy certainly had the look of a criminal about him. On top of his sheer size, there was a dullness to his expression that Peter had come to recognize, and his nose had the crooks and bulbs of a man who had been in his fair share of fights. His skin was dark, but not black, with traces, perhaps, of Mongolia. Maybe those huge people from down in Australia. Peter didn’t know enough to say. This didn’t mean he was criminal, Peter quickly pointed out to himself. It was just an observation.
When Barrett was a block or so ahead, Peter pulled into the morning traffic. There was no way to avoid passing him, and Peter was too worried about Barrett getting into a car and driving off to leave his own vehicle and follow on foot. So instead he allowed himself to pass his target and looped around the block to pick him up again. When Barrett turned into the small park by the Kerrey footbridge, Peter parked and watched.
He didn’t recognize the old man Barrett met with, but from the presence of two armed guards, Peter suspected he was organized crime, though he might also be one of Omaha’s wealthy investor class taking his personal security too seriously. Peter wished he had learned a bit more about the criminal players in the city he was protecting, but there had been no reason for him to do so. He spent most days issuing traffic tickets.
As Barrett left the park and the old man got into a Mercedes, Peter was left with a choice. He could continue following Barrett, or he could hope that this old man might lead him to something else of interest.
He flipped a coin, then set off to follow the Mercedes.
It circled the city aimlessly, stopping once at a cafe where the old man had a cup of coffee before returning to the bridge in the early afternoon. Peter watched as the old man went into the park, accompanied by his guards and a young Black man in professional clothing who had been driven out to meet them. Peter wondered why he had actively noted Barrett and the Black man’s skin color, but not that the old man and his guards were all white. One more addition to his list of failings.
They sat on a bench for forty-five minutes before the old man made a phone call. One of the guards left on foot, and everyone else left in the Mercedes. Once again, Peter had a choice to make. Follow the old man who seemed to be in charge of whatever was going on here, or abandon that route to follow the guard. Again, he was being asked to make a critical decision while having absolutely no information.
So he flipped a coin and stayed with the old man.
Which is how he came to be in Elkhorn, watching nothing happen at a gated house. After nearly eight hours in his car, he was forced to relieve himself into a bottle that now sits behind him. He had grabbed some granola bars and a bag of peanuts before beginning his surveillance, but those ran out while the old man was getting his coffee. He would like to run the plates on the Mercedes, but he has nobody at the station he trusts.
He’s not sure how much longer he can keep this up. Hunger or the need for sleep will eventually overtake him. While he spent most of the morning enlivened by his newfound purpose, as the hours wore on, that energy flagged. It’s hard to maintain the thrill of taking action when all he’s doing is sitting in a car, watching an immobile gate.
With each passing minute, that enthusiasm, seemingly summoned from the ether, evanesces just a bit more. What is he doing here? His job is on the line, under threat because he stands accused of abandoning his post, and his reaction had been to walk away from the police station, away from the desk he had been assigned to, to follow a civilian without the faintest shred of evidence because he thought that one officer had used another officer’s credentials to look him up.
He should have gone to Sarge when he saw Owen using Melissa Fulli’s login. He should have called Sarge last night when Owen relieved him, or gotten Owen to put it in writing. He should have done a lot of things, but instead he came here.
This is a fool’s errand. He’ll go back to the station, he decides. The best he can do is beg for Sarge’s mercy. He’ll tell Professional Oversight the truth when he speaks with them, and they’ll sort it out. It shouldn’t be on his shoulders to unravel this mystery. He doesn’t have the skills for this. He’s not the right man for this job.
The anxiety that has been coiling in his chest since he first heard the footsteps in the stairwell begins to unwrap. It is a physical relaxation that begins behind his shoulder blades and spreads down his limbs. He closes his eyes and takes a breath. This is not his responsibility. He just needs to do as he’s told, and the truth will win out.
He holds the breath for a two count, feeling his heart slow. He hadn’t realized it had been beating rapidly, but it was a steady staccato throughout the day. It begins to fade, and he lets the breath go, letting his cares and anxieties go with it.
In. Hold. Relax. Out. Peter Van Horn is filled with the surety of the justice of the universe. He will find a way through this darkness. His diligence will be recognized. All will be well.
CHAPTER 20 Cass Mullen, 4:06 P.M.
They’re back in Vic’s van, parked on the side of the road up the street from Holzmann’s estate in Elkhorn. This is the sort of place they should be. Wide streets. European cars. A house you hire a cleaning service and a gardener to maintain. These lawns aren’t mowed. They’re manicured. A beat-up old Hyundai sits four lots away, standing out almost as much as Vic’s shitty van. Cass feels bad for whatever poor domestic worker goes with the car. From the looks of the storm coming in, they’re gonna have a miserable fucking drive home tonight.
“I don’t see why I couldn’t skim the pool and go for a swim,” Jonny Boy says from the back. “We’re just sitting around. We coulda done that just as well back at Vic’s place.”
“We’re not fucking sitting around,” she says. “We’re staking the place out.”
“Oh. Well, it feels a lot like sitting around.”
“How many houses have we broken into, and you still need me to explain this shit to you? We wait for them to leave or go to sleep, and then we move.”
“I still don’t think we should do this,” Vic says. “Holzmann was gonna pay the big guy fifty Gs for the key. We should just sell it to him.”
“And then he gets what’s in the safe? Fuck that. We’re taking everything.”
“Holzmann will kill us.”
“He won’t have a chance. We’ll get the safe and leave town. Start over somewhere new. We can roll into LA the richest motherfuckers there. How about that, Jonny Boy? Everyone in LA’s got a pool, and you can go to Disney World every day instead of having to drive three hours out to Six Flags.”
“Disneyland,” Jonny Boy says.
“What?”
“Disney World is in Florida. We could go to Disneyland.”
“Fine. You can go to fucking Disneyland,” Cass says. “And Vic, you want to see someone play besides the fucking Huskers, right?”
“I don’t want to go to LA,” Vic says. “I like Omaha. Abuela is buried here.”
Cass has been giving these two too much slack recently. They’re starting to question her, and she can’t have them thinking this is a democracy. “Then you can fucking stay,” she says. “But we’re doing this. Now get ready, both of you.”
“For the longest time,” Holzmann says, without further greeting or preamble, “I only slept with whores. Do you know why that is, Herr Rye?”
Pickens has to admire the man’s flair for the dramatic.
“I was terrified of being embarrassed,” Holzmann continues when their key salesman, Rye, does not respond. “It is my greatest fear, you know? Public humiliation. The good thing about a whore, Herr Rye, is that she will never leave you sitting in the park with your dick in one hand and a bag of cash in the other.”
There is silence on the line for a moment. “Well fuck you too,” Rye responds. “If you’re gonna gloat, at least make sense.”
“Obscenity is the refuge of little men. Watch your tongue, and give me my key.”
“Your guys already took it.”
Holzmann sits up straighter, a feat that Pickens would have thought impossible a moment before. “I promise you,” he says. “My people did nothing of the sort.”
“Well three of them just left here with your key.”
“Describe them to me,” Holzmann says, the performative anger of his little whore speech giving way to real wrath.
“They were young,” Rye says. “Three kids. Fat guy named Jonny Boy. Pretty guy. There was a woman in charge.”
“The woman,” Benny interrupts. “Was her face messed up?”
“I guess so. Not too bad, but sure.”
“That’s Cassiopeia Mullen,” Benny tells Holzmann. “She’s nobody. A house-burglar with a sloppy crew. Jonny Boy Wright and Vic Velasquez. They’ll all be caught and put away within a year.” Benny pauses, mentally confirming a detail before he continues. “But she has done work with Richard Sands before.”
Holzmann sucks his teeth, processing this new information. Pickens wishes again that he had been allowed to step away. He doesn’t like to get involved with petty local conflicts.
“We’re done,” Rye says, his patience apparently expired. “Whatever this bullshit is, I’m done with it.” The line goes dead, but Holzmann has already moved on. He grabs Pickens by the elbow and starts leading him back toward their car. Benny gestures to his man, Wade, and the two fall in behind them.
“You want me to take her?” Benny asks. “We’re not far from the place she and her crew usually hole up.”
“Check it out, but keep your distance,” Holzmann replies. “Herr Sands did promise he would make things right. If she’s working for him, he’ll come crawling out of the mud with the key. If she’s on her own, then we’ll make her the same offer we did Rye. Don’t move against either of them until I send reinforcements.”
With a salute, Benny tosses the car keys to Wade and departs for his mission. The rest of them start the drive back to Holzmann’s estate.
“Mister Holzmann,” Pickens says, once the Mercedes has left the city. “I understand these delays are beyond your control, but I do need to bring up the details of my fee with you.”
Holzmann turns from the window to consider him. “Of course, Herr Pickens,” he says. “I hired you for an evening’s work, and that has stretched into far more.”
“I have every faith in your ability to get me what I need to complete this job, but the scope of my commission has grown.” Pickens chooses his words carefully, keeping his inflection as level as he can. Nonthreatening. Unassuming. But aware of the value he brings. “For longer-term work like this, I charge a day rate, plus a hazard percentage, as you now have me operating in the field.”
Holzmann’s face is a flat mask. Pickens fights the impulse to keep talking. If he hadn’t spent the last twelve hours with the man, he might be concerned or feel ignored as Holzmann turns to the window, but this is simply how he thinks. When he finishes his private deliberations, he will deliver his answer.
For the next five minutes, Pickens enjoys the blast of cold air coming from the vents. The cream leather seat is cool beneath him. He marvels at the full suits that Holzmann and his men wear. Their only sartorial concession to the heat seems to be the choice of cotton over wool.
Eventually, Holzmann says, “I like you, Herr Pickens. I bear you no ill will for pressing when you have me at a disadvantage. I should be disappointed if you did not. A man must be compensated for his time. Benny will ensure you are paid appropriately.”
When they arrive at the Elkhorn estate, Pickens goes straight to the office at the back of the house where the safe is being stored. He already drilled out as much as he could. The safe is, for all intents and purposes but one, open. All that remains is to throw the handle, retracting the bolts holding the door closed, and open it.
Of course, if he does that now, the contents of the safe will be destroyed. But once he has the key, he can open it in seconds.
Reassured that all is in place, he returns to quietly waiting. From this room, he has a view through a windowed door into the backyard. The men who patrol the grounds use the guesthouse, a few hundred feet away, as a staging ground, and the intervening space is kept open. Pickens does his best to ignore them and their guns, and instead watches the approaching storm cross the sky to meet the sun. Holzmann joins Pickens shortly and spends the afternoon conducting business from here.
At four o’clock, when there is still no word from Richard Sands or Cassiopeia Mullen, Holzmann calls Benny for an update. He’s been staking out Cass’s apartment. Nobody’s been in or out, but he has seen movement behind the curtains. Her opportunity to come to him willingly has passed. Holzmann sends Wade and a few men out to take the woman.
CHAPTER 18 Cass Mullen, 1:24 P.M.
Vic and Jonny Boy want to spend the afternoon in Vic’s grandma’s house, sitting by the algae-filled pool or sleeping on the plastic-wrapped houndstooth furniture beneath paisley walls. It’s a pleasant, three-bedroom place on a quiet street with a walled-in yard. It’s nicer than Cass’s apartment, and it makes her feel claustrophobic. It smells like old lady. When they arrive, she asks Vic why he sold the bed, looking at the yellow rectangle of rug in the corner of his grandma’s bedroom, the only section of carpeting still its original color.
“Abuela died in that bed,” he says, as though that explains it.
“Of a heart attack,” Cass objects. “The bed was fine, and it’s not like she was using it anymore.”
“Goddamn, Cass,” Jonny Boy calls from the kitchen. “The bed wasn’t fine. She’d just died in it. You don’t sleep in the bed someone died in.”
“Oh,” Cass says. “She shit herself, didn’t she? A lot of people shit themselves when they die.”
“It’s just about respect,” Jonny Boy says. He’s cut up an orange and put some cheese and crackers on a plate for them. It’s Kraft singles and store-brand Ritz, but from the smile on the guy’s face you’d think it was a Michelin-star charcuterie. “It’s where she took her final rest.”
Vic grabs some crackers. “Thanks, man,” he says, giving Jonny Boy a squeeze on the shoulder. “It was her bed, you know? It wouldn’t feel right to keep using it. Wherever she is now, I want her to know that I love her. That I miss her. How would it look if I just threw her away and slid into her bed?”
“You took her fucking house, though,” Cass says. “Is that really different?”
Vic has a way of looking at her that used to upset her but now just makes her sad. Like he’s surprised. Surprised not only that she would say something so awful but also that he can still be surprised by that. He should have learned by now that she’s a bitch. She didn’t ask to be born like this. She wishes, sometimes, that she didn’t have these ambitions. Life would be simpler if she were content to accept its bullshit. If she would settle for a boring fuck and start spitting out babies.
But that’s not what she wants. That’s not who she is. And if she has to be a ruthless bitch to get what she wants, then so be it. She came here to figure out a plan. To find some way to turn this key into their fortune. But Cass Mullen isn’t a planner. Cass Mullen is the bad motherfucker who gets shit done.
“We shouldn’t have come here,” she says. “We’ve got fucking work to do.”
“I thought we were gonna go swimming,” Jonny Boy whines, looking toward the back of the house where the nasty green pool is.
“Well we’re fucking not,” she says, grabbing an orange slice on her way to the front door. “Not right now. First we gotta get paid.”
Richard is upset when she calls and tells him to sit tight for a while longer, but he agrees in the end. What other choice does he have?
CHAPTER 19 Peter Van Horn, 3:26 P.M.
Peter can barely hold his eyes open. Only anxiety keeps him going, and that is a poor motivator when what he needs is to sit still. He’s been driving all over the city, and all he wants is to lie down and take a nap. He can’t, though. He has work to do.
Peter’s world turned, overnight, from one where everything had a place and there was a procedure for any situation into a nightmare of contradiction and paradox. Owen Oster was lying about what happened at the U-Store-It. This was a problem. Peter knew he was not the right person to fix this problem. He also knew that nobody else would. His bosses made it clear that they only wanted a scapegoat, and Peter was convenient.
Peter had many questions, and answering questions usually brought him peace, but he didn’t know how to answer any of these. Why was Owen at the storage center? Why had Owen needed him gone when nothing had been stolen from the facility? Why—and he did admit that this question was not new, but it had taken on a new urgency—did a mid-tier self-storage building too cheap to properly light its own hallways shell out for police protection when they could have a mall cop for a third of the price?
Peter had spent his life within the shared set of rules and boundaries that define a functioning society. In exchange for this, he had been repeatedly crushed beneath the heel of an uncaring universe. Society’s strictures are not rules, but a self-inflicted handicap the weak ensconce themselves in, and the strong turn to their advantage. He was done with it.
Amped up on this revelation, he left the precinct, got into his car, and drove to the address registered with the USPS for Barrett Rye. He parked across the street, where he could keep an eye on both the front door and the fire escape hanging from the building’s side.
While waiting, he looked the man up online but couldn’t find a link between Barrett and Owen Oster. Barrett looked like a recent transplant to Omaha. He was a personal trainer whose body itself was all the advertising his services would ever need. He had no clear connections to the police or criminal organizations. There were no friends or family in common between him and Owen. Yet Owen had wanted not only to know where this guy lived but also that nobody else would know he was looking for that information.
Peter didn’t have to wait long before Barrett himself came strolling out the front door. Peter knew from the pictures that Barrett was big, but seeing him in person was something different. The guy certainly had the look of a criminal about him. On top of his sheer size, there was a dullness to his expression that Peter had come to recognize, and his nose had the crooks and bulbs of a man who had been in his fair share of fights. His skin was dark, but not black, with traces, perhaps, of Mongolia. Maybe those huge people from down in Australia. Peter didn’t know enough to say. This didn’t mean he was criminal, Peter quickly pointed out to himself. It was just an observation.
When Barrett was a block or so ahead, Peter pulled into the morning traffic. There was no way to avoid passing him, and Peter was too worried about Barrett getting into a car and driving off to leave his own vehicle and follow on foot. So instead he allowed himself to pass his target and looped around the block to pick him up again. When Barrett turned into the small park by the Kerrey footbridge, Peter parked and watched.
He didn’t recognize the old man Barrett met with, but from the presence of two armed guards, Peter suspected he was organized crime, though he might also be one of Omaha’s wealthy investor class taking his personal security too seriously. Peter wished he had learned a bit more about the criminal players in the city he was protecting, but there had been no reason for him to do so. He spent most days issuing traffic tickets.
As Barrett left the park and the old man got into a Mercedes, Peter was left with a choice. He could continue following Barrett, or he could hope that this old man might lead him to something else of interest.
He flipped a coin, then set off to follow the Mercedes.
It circled the city aimlessly, stopping once at a cafe where the old man had a cup of coffee before returning to the bridge in the early afternoon. Peter watched as the old man went into the park, accompanied by his guards and a young Black man in professional clothing who had been driven out to meet them. Peter wondered why he had actively noted Barrett and the Black man’s skin color, but not that the old man and his guards were all white. One more addition to his list of failings.
They sat on a bench for forty-five minutes before the old man made a phone call. One of the guards left on foot, and everyone else left in the Mercedes. Once again, Peter had a choice to make. Follow the old man who seemed to be in charge of whatever was going on here, or abandon that route to follow the guard. Again, he was being asked to make a critical decision while having absolutely no information.
So he flipped a coin and stayed with the old man.
Which is how he came to be in Elkhorn, watching nothing happen at a gated house. After nearly eight hours in his car, he was forced to relieve himself into a bottle that now sits behind him. He had grabbed some granola bars and a bag of peanuts before beginning his surveillance, but those ran out while the old man was getting his coffee. He would like to run the plates on the Mercedes, but he has nobody at the station he trusts.
He’s not sure how much longer he can keep this up. Hunger or the need for sleep will eventually overtake him. While he spent most of the morning enlivened by his newfound purpose, as the hours wore on, that energy flagged. It’s hard to maintain the thrill of taking action when all he’s doing is sitting in a car, watching an immobile gate.
With each passing minute, that enthusiasm, seemingly summoned from the ether, evanesces just a bit more. What is he doing here? His job is on the line, under threat because he stands accused of abandoning his post, and his reaction had been to walk away from the police station, away from the desk he had been assigned to, to follow a civilian without the faintest shred of evidence because he thought that one officer had used another officer’s credentials to look him up.
He should have gone to Sarge when he saw Owen using Melissa Fulli’s login. He should have called Sarge last night when Owen relieved him, or gotten Owen to put it in writing. He should have done a lot of things, but instead he came here.
This is a fool’s errand. He’ll go back to the station, he decides. The best he can do is beg for Sarge’s mercy. He’ll tell Professional Oversight the truth when he speaks with them, and they’ll sort it out. It shouldn’t be on his shoulders to unravel this mystery. He doesn’t have the skills for this. He’s not the right man for this job.
The anxiety that has been coiling in his chest since he first heard the footsteps in the stairwell begins to unwrap. It is a physical relaxation that begins behind his shoulder blades and spreads down his limbs. He closes his eyes and takes a breath. This is not his responsibility. He just needs to do as he’s told, and the truth will win out.
He holds the breath for a two count, feeling his heart slow. He hadn’t realized it had been beating rapidly, but it was a steady staccato throughout the day. It begins to fade, and he lets the breath go, letting his cares and anxieties go with it.
In. Hold. Relax. Out. Peter Van Horn is filled with the surety of the justice of the universe. He will find a way through this darkness. His diligence will be recognized. All will be well.
CHAPTER 20 Cass Mullen, 4:06 P.M.
They’re back in Vic’s van, parked on the side of the road up the street from Holzmann’s estate in Elkhorn. This is the sort of place they should be. Wide streets. European cars. A house you hire a cleaning service and a gardener to maintain. These lawns aren’t mowed. They’re manicured. A beat-up old Hyundai sits four lots away, standing out almost as much as Vic’s shitty van. Cass feels bad for whatever poor domestic worker goes with the car. From the looks of the storm coming in, they’re gonna have a miserable fucking drive home tonight.
“I don’t see why I couldn’t skim the pool and go for a swim,” Jonny Boy says from the back. “We’re just sitting around. We coulda done that just as well back at Vic’s place.”
“We’re not fucking sitting around,” she says. “We’re staking the place out.”
“Oh. Well, it feels a lot like sitting around.”
“How many houses have we broken into, and you still need me to explain this shit to you? We wait for them to leave or go to sleep, and then we move.”
“I still don’t think we should do this,” Vic says. “Holzmann was gonna pay the big guy fifty Gs for the key. We should just sell it to him.”
“And then he gets what’s in the safe? Fuck that. We’re taking everything.”
“Holzmann will kill us.”
“He won’t have a chance. We’ll get the safe and leave town. Start over somewhere new. We can roll into LA the richest motherfuckers there. How about that, Jonny Boy? Everyone in LA’s got a pool, and you can go to Disney World every day instead of having to drive three hours out to Six Flags.”
“Disneyland,” Jonny Boy says.
“What?”
“Disney World is in Florida. We could go to Disneyland.”
“Fine. You can go to fucking Disneyland,” Cass says. “And Vic, you want to see someone play besides the fucking Huskers, right?”
“I don’t want to go to LA,” Vic says. “I like Omaha. Abuela is buried here.”
Cass has been giving these two too much slack recently. They’re starting to question her, and she can’t have them thinking this is a democracy. “Then you can fucking stay,” she says. “But we’re doing this. Now get ready, both of you.”
