More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II

SURVEILLANCE

The knocking on the door not only woke Jake Muller from an afternoon nap but it told him immediately who his visitor was.

Not a polite single rap, not a friendly Morse code but a repeated slamming of the brass knocker. Three times, four, six…

Oh, man, not again.

Rolling his solid body from the couch, Muller paused for a moment to slip into a slightly higher level of wakefulness. It was five p.m. and he’d been gardening all day — until about an hour ago when a Dutch beer and the warmth of a May afternoon had lulled him to sleep. He now flicked on the pole lamp and walked unsteadily to the door, pulled it open.

The slim man in a blue suit and sporting thick, well-crafted politician’s hair brushed past Muller and strode into the living room. Behind him was an older, burlier man in tweedy brown.

“Detective,” Muller muttered to the man in blue.

Lieutenant William Carnegie didn’t reply. He sat on the couch as if he’d just stepped away from it for a trip to the bathroom.

“Who’re you?” Muller asked the other one bluntly.

“Sergeant Hager.”

“You don’t need to see his ID, Jake, do you?” Carnegie said.

Muller yawned. He’d wanted the couch but the cop was sitting stiffly in the middle of it so he took the uncomfortable chair instead. Hager didn’t sit down. He crossed his arms and looked around the dim room then let his vision settle on Muller’s faded blue jeans, dusty white socks and a T-shirt advertising a local clam dive. His gardening clothes.

Yawning again and brushing his short, sandy hair into place, Muller asked, “You’re not here to arrest me, right? Because you would’ve done that already. So, what do you want?”

Carnegie’s trim hand disappeared into his trim suit jacket and returned with a notebook, which he consulted. “Just wanted to let you know, Jake — we found out about your bank accounts at West Coast Federal in Portland.”

“And how’d you do that? You have a court order?”

“You don’t need a court order for some things.”

Sitting back, Muller wondered if they’d put some kind of tap on his computer — that was how he’d set up the accounts last week. Annandale’s Major Crimes Division, he’d learned, was very high tech; he’d been under intense surveillance in the past several months.

Living in a fishbowl….

He noticed that the tweedy cop was surveying the inside of Muller’s modest bungalow.

“No, Sergeant Haver—”

“Hager.”

“—I don’t look like I’m living in luxury, if that’s what you were observing. Because I’m not. Tell me, did you work the Anco case?”

The sergeant didn’t need the glance from his boss to know to keep mum.

Muller continued, “But you do know that the burglar netted five hundred thousand and change. Now if — like Detective Carnegie here thinks — I was the one who stole the money, wouldn’t I be living in something a little nicer than this?”

“Not if you were smart,” the sergeant muttered and decided to sit down.

“Not if I were smart,” Muller repeated and laughed.

Detective Carnegie looked around the dim living room and added, “This, we figure, is sort of a safe house. You probably have some real nice places overseas.”

“I wish.”

“Well, don’t we all agree that you’re not your typical Annandale resident?”

In fact Jake Muller was a bit of an oddball in this wealthy Southern California town. He’d suddenly appeared here about six months ago to oversee some businesses deals in the area. He was single, traveled a lot, had a vague career (he owned companies that bought and sold other companies was how he explained it). He made good money but had picked for his residence this modest house, which, as they’d just established, was nowhere close to luxurious.

So when Detective William Carnegie’s clever police computer compiled a list of everyone who’d moved to town not long before the Anco Armored Delivery heist four months ago, Muller earned suspect status. And as the cop began to look more closely at Muller, the evidence got better and better. He had no alibi for the hours of the heist. The tire treads on the getaway car were similar to those on Muller’s Lexus. Carnegie also found that Muller had a degree in electrical engineering; the burglar in the Anco case had dismantled a sophisticated alarm system to get into the cash storage room.

Even better, though, from Carnegie’s point of view, was the fact that Muller had a record: a juvenile conviction for grand theft auto and an arrest ten years ago on some complicated money laundering scheme at a company he was doing business with. Though the charges against Muller were dropped, Carnegie believed he was let go only on a technicality. Oh, he knew in his heart that Muller was behind the Anco theft and he went after the businessman zealously — with the same energy that had made him a celebrity among the citizens of Annandale. Since Carnegie had been appointed head of Major Crimes, two years ago, robberies, drug sales and gang activities had dropped by half. Annandale had the lowest crime rate of any town in the area. He was also well liked among prosecutors — he made airtight cases against his suspects.

But on the Anco case he stumbled. Just after he’d arrested Jake Muller last month a witness came forward and said the man seen leaving the Anco grounds just after the robbery didn’t look at all like Muller. Carnegie asserted that a smart perp like Muller would use a disguise for the getaway. But a state’s attorney decided there was no case against him and ordered the businessman released.

Carnegie fumed at the embarrassment and the blot on his record. So when no other leads panned out the detective returned to Muller with renewed fervor. He kept digging into the businessman’s life and slowly began shoring up the case with circumstantial evidence: Muller frequently played golf on a course next to Anco headquarters — the perfect place for staking out the company — and he owned an acetylene torch that was powerful enough to cut through the loading dock door at Anco. The detective used this information to bully his captain into beefing up surveillance on Muller.

Hence, the interrupted nap today with the stop-the-presses information about Muller’s accounts.

“So what about the Portland money, Jake?”

“What about it?”

“Where’d the money come from?”

“I stole the crown jewels. No, wait, it was the Great Northfield Train Robbery. Okay, I lied. I knocked over a casino in Vegas.”

William Carnegie sighed and momentarily lowered his lids, which ended with perfect, delicate lashes.

The businessman asked, “What about that other suspect? The highway worker? You were going to check him out.”

Around the time of the heist a man in a public works jumpsuit was seen pulling a suitcase from some bushes near the Anco main gate. A passing driver thought this looked suspicious and noted the license plate of the public works truck, relaying the information to the Highway Patrol. The truck, which had been stolen a week before in Bakersfield, was later found abandoned at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport.

Muller’s lawyer had contended that this man was the robber and that Carnegie should pursue him.

“Didn’t have any luck finding him,” the Annandale detective said.

“You mean,” Muller grumbled, “that it was a long shot, he’s out of the jurisdiction and it’s a hell of a lot easier to roust me than it is to find the real thief.” He snapped, “Goddamn it, Carnegie, the only thing I’ve ever done wrong in my life was listening to a couple of buddies I shouldn’t have when I was seventeen. We borrowed—”

“‘Borrowed’?”

“—a car for two hours and we paid the price. I just don’t get why you’re riding me like this.”

But in truth Muller knew the answer to that perfectly well. In his long and varied career, he’d met a number of men and women like self-disciplined William Carnegie. They were machines powered by mindless ambition to take down whoever they believed was their competitor or enemy. They were different from people like Muller himself, who are ambitious, yes, but whose excitement comes from the game itself. The Carnegies of the world were ruled solely by their need to win; the process was nothing to them.

“Can you prove the funds came from a legitimate source?” the sergeant asked formally.

Muller looked at Carnegie. “What happened to your other assistant, Detective? What was his name? Carl? I liked him. He didn’t last too long.”

Carnegie had gone through two assistants in the time he’d been after Jake Muller. He supposed that though the citizenry and the reporters were impressed with the obsessive-compulsive cop he’d make his coworkers’ lives miserable.

“Okay,” the detective said. “If you’re not going to talk that’s just the way it is. Oh, but I should let you know: We’ve got some information we’re looking at right now. It’s very interesting.”

“Ah, more of your surveillance?”

“Maybe.”

“And what exactly did you find?”

“Let’s just call it interesting.”

Muller said, “‘Interesting.’ You said that twice. Hey, you want a beer? You, Sergeant?”

Carnegie answered for both of them. “No.”

Muller fetched a Heineken from the kitchen. He continued. “So what you’re saying is that after you’ve gone over this interesting information you’ll have enough evidence to arrest me for real this time. But if I confess it’ll go a lot easier. Right?”

“Come on, Jake. Nobody was hurt at Anco. You’ll do, what, five years. You’re a young guy. It’d be a church social for you.”

Muller nodded for a moment, drank a good bit of beer. Then said seriously, “But if I confessed, then I’d have to give the money back, right?”

Carnegie froze for a moment. Then he smiled. “I’m not going to stop until I nail you, Jake. You know that.” He said to the sergeant, “Let’s go. This’s a waste of time.”

“At last there’s something we agree on,” Muller offered and closed the door after them.

The next day, William Carnegie, wearing a perfectly pressed gray suit, white shirt and striped red tie, strode into the watch room of the Annandale police station, Hager behind him.

He nodded at the eight officers sitting in the cheap fiberglass chairs. The men and women fell silent as the detective surveyed his troops.

Coffee was sipped, pencils tapped, pads doodled upon.

Watches glanced at.

“We’re going to make a push on the case. I went to see Muller yesterday. I lit a fire under him and it had an effect: Last night I was monitoring his email and he made a wire transfer of fifty thousand dollars from a bank in Portland to a bank in Lyon, France. I’m convinced he’s getting ready to flee the jurisdiction.”

Carnegie had managed to get level-two surveillance on Muller. This high-tech approach to investigations involved establishing real-time links to his online service provider and the computers at Muller’s credit card companies, banks, cell phone service and the like. Anytime that Muller made a purchase, went online, made a call, withdrew cash and so on, the officers on the Anco team would know almost instantly.

“Big Brother’s going to be watching everything our boy’s doing.”

“Who?” asked one of the younger cops.

“1984?” Carnegie responded, astonished that the man hadn’t heard of the novel. “The book?” he asked sarcastically. When the officer continued to stare blankly he added, “Big Brother was the government. It watched everything the citizens did.” He nodded at a nearby dusty computer terminal and then turned back to the officers. “You, me, and Big Brother — we’re closing the net on Muller.” Noting the stifled grins, he wished he’d been a bit less dramatic. But, damn it, didn’t they realize that Annandale had become the laughingstock of Southern California law enforcers for not closing the Anco case? The CHP, LAPD and even the cops in small towns nearby couldn’t believe that Annandale Police, despite having the biggest per capita budget of any town in Orange County, hadn’t collared a single perp in the heist.

Carnegie divided the group into three teams and assigned them to shifts at the computer workstations, with orders to relay to him instantly everything that Muller did.

As he was walking back to his office to look further at Muller’s wire transfer to France he heard a voice. “Hey, Dad?”

He turned to see his son striding down the corridor toward him, dressed in his typical seventeen-year-old’s uniform: earrings, shabby Tomb Raider T-shirt and pants so baggy they looked like they’d fall off at any moment. And the hair: spiked up and dyed a garish yellow. Still, Billy was an above-average student and nothing like the troublemakers that Carnegie dealt with in an official capacity.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked. It was early May. School should be in session, shouldn’t it?

“It’s parent-teacher day, remember? You and Mom’re supposed to meet Mr. Gibson at ten. I came by to make sure you’d be there.”

Damn… Carnegie’d forgotten about the meeting. And he was supposed to have a conference call with two investigators in France about Muller’s wire transfer. That was set for nine-forty-five. If he postponed it, the French policemen wouldn’t be available later because of the time difference and the call would have to be delayed until tomorrow.

“I’ve got it on my calendar,” the detective said absently; something had begun to nag at his thoughts. What was it? He added to his son, “I just might be a little late.”

“Dad, it’s important,” Billy said.

“I’ll be there.”

Then the thought that been buzzing around Carnegie’s consciousness settled. “Billy, are you still taking French?”

His son blinked. “Yeah, you signed my report card, don’t you remember?”

“Who’s your teacher?”

“Mrs. Vandell.”

“Is she at school now?”

“I guess. Yeah, probably. Why?”

“I need her to help me with a conference call. You go on home now. Tell your mother I’ll be at the meeting as soon as I can.”

Carnegie left the boy standing in the middle of the hallway and jogged to his office, so excited about the brainstorm of using the French teacher to help him translate that he nearly collided with a workman hunched over one of the potted plants in the corridor, trimming leaves.

“Sorry,” he called and hurried into his office. He phoned Billy’s French teacher and — when he told her how important the case was — she reluctantly agreed to help him translate. The conference call went off as scheduled and the woman’s translation efforts were a huge help; without his brainstorm to use the woman he couldn’t have communicated with the two officers at all. Still, the investigators in France reported that they’d found no impropriety in Muller’s investments or financial dealings. He paid taxes and had never run into any trouble with the gendarmes.

Carnegie asked if they had tapped his phone and were monitoring his online and banking activities.

There was a pause and then one of the officers responded. Billy’s French teacher translated, “They say, ‘We are not so high tech as you. We prefer to catch criminals the old-fashioned way.’” They did agree to alert their customs agents to check Muller’s luggage carefully the next time he was in the country.

Carnegie thanked the two men and the teacher then hung up

We prefer to catch criminals the old-fashioned way.…

Which is why we’ll get him and you won’t, thought the detective as he spun around in his chair and began staring intently at Big Brother’s computer monitor once again.

Jake Muller stepped out of the department store in downtown Annandale, following the young man he’d noticed in the jewelry department.

The boy kept his head down and walked quickly away from the store.

When they were passing an alleyway Muller suddenly jogged forward, grabbed the skinny kid by the arm and pulled him into the shadows.

“Jesus,” he whispered in shock.

Muller pinned him up against the wall. “Don’t think about running.” A glance toward the boy’s pockets. “And don’t think about anything else.”

“I don’t—” the boy said with a quivering voice, “I don’t have a gun or anything.”

“What’s your name?”

“I—”

“Name?” Muller barked.

“Sam. Sam Phillips. Like, whatta you want?”

“Give me the watch.”

The boy sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Give it to me. You don’t want me to have to take it off you.” Muller outweighed the boy by fifty pounds.

The kid reached into his pocket and handed him the Seiko that Muller had seen him lift off the counter at the store. Muller took it.

“Who’re you? Security? A cop?”

Muller eyed him carefully and then pocketed the watch. “You were clumsy. If the guard hadn’t been taking a leak he would’ve caught you.”

“What guard?”

“That’s my point. The little guy in the ratty jacket and dirty jeans.”

“He was a security guard?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you spot him?”

Muller said grimly, “Let’s say I’ve had my share of run-ins with guys like that.”

The boy looked up for a moment, examined Muller then resumed his study of the asphalt in the alley. “How’d you spot me?”

“Wasn’t hard. You were skulking around the store like you’d already been busted.”

“You gonna shake me down or something?”

Muller looked up and down the street cautiously. Then he said, “I need somebody to help me with this thing I’ve got going tomorrow.”

“Why me?” the boy asked.

“There’re some people who’d like to set me up.”

“Cops?”

“Just… some people.” Muller nodded at the watch. “But since I spotted you boost that, I know you’re not working for anybody.”

“Whatta I have to do?”

“It’s easy. I need a driver. A half hour’s work.”

Part scared, part excited. “Like, how much?”

“I’ll pay you five hundred.”

Another examination of the scenery. “For a half hour?”

Muller nodded.

“Damn. Five hundred?”

“That’s right.”

“What’re we doing?” he asked, a little cautious now. “I mean, exactly.”

“I’ve got to… pick up a few things at this place — a house on Tremont. I need you to park in the alley behind the house while I go inside for a few minutes.”

The kid grinned. “So, you going to ’jack some stuff? This’s a heist, right?”

Muller shushed him. “Even if it was, you think I’d say it out loud?”

“Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” The boy squinted then said, “Hey, there’s this friend of mine? And we’ve got a connection. He’s getting us some good stuff. I mean, way sweet. We can turn it around in a week. You come in with a thousand or two, he’ll give us a better discount. You can double your money. You interested?”

“Drugs?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t ever go near ’em. And you shouldn’t either. They’ll screw up your life. Remember that…. Meet me tomorrow, okay?”

“When?”

“Noon. The corner of Seventh and Maple. Starbucks.”

“I guess.”

“Don’t guess. Be there.” Muller started to walk away.

“If this works out you think maybe there’d be some more work for me?”

“I might be away for a while. But, yeah, maybe. If you handle it right.”

“I do a good job, mister. Hey, what’s your name?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

The kid nodded. “That’s cool. Sure…. One other thing? What about the watch?”

“I’ll dispose of the evidence for you.”

After the kid was gone Muller walked slowly to the mouth of the alley and peeked out. No sign of Carnegie’s surveillance team. He’d been careful to lose them but they had this almost magical ability to appear from nowhere and nail him with their Big Ear mikes and telephoto lenses.

Pulling on his Oakland baseball cap and lowering his head, he stepped out of the alley and walked down the sidewalk fast, as if satellites were tracking his position from ten thousand miles in space.

The next morning William Carnegie was late coming into the office.

Since he’d screwed up by missing the parent-teacher meeting yesterday he’d forced himself to have breakfast with his wife and Billy.

When he walked into the police station at nine-thirty Sergeant Hager told him, “Muller’s been doing some shopping you ought to know about.”

“What?”

“He left his house an hour ago. Our boys tailed him to the mall. They lost him but not long after that we got a charge notice from one of his credit card companies. At Books ’N’ Java he bought six books. We don’t know exactly what they were but the product code from the store listed them as travel books. Then he left the mall and spent thirty-eight dollars for two boxes of nine-millimeter ammunition at Tyler’s Gun Shop.”

“Jesus. I always figured him for a shooter. The guards at Anco’re lucky they didn’t hear him breaking in; he would’ve taken them out. I know it…. Did the surveillance team pick him up again?”

“Nope. They went back to his house to wait.”

“Got something else,” called a young policewoman nearby. “He charged forty-four dollars’ worth of tools at Home Depot.”

Carnegie mused, “So, he’s armed and sounds like he’s planning another heist. Then he’s going to flee the state.” Gazing at one of the computer screens, he asked absently, “What’re you going after this time, Muller? A business, a house?”

Hager’s phone rang. He answered and listened. “That was the babysitter in front of Muller’s. He’s back home. Only something funny. He was on foot. He must’ve parked up the street someplace.” He listened some more. “They say there’s a painting truck in his driveway. Maybe that’s why.”

“No. He’s up to something. I don’t trust anything that man does.”

“Got another notice!” one officer called. “He just went online….” The police had no court order allowing them to view the content of what Muller downloaded, though they could observe the sites he was connected to. “Okay. He’s on the Anderson & Cross website.”

“The burglar alarm company?” Carnegie asked, his heart pounding with excitement.

“Yep.”

A few minutes later the officer called, “Now he’s checking out Travel-Central dot com.”

A service that lets you make airline reservations online.

“Tell surveillance we’ll let them know as soon as he goes off-line. They should be ready to move. I’ve got a feeling this’s going to happen fast.”

We’ve got you now, Carnegie thought. Then he laughed and looked at the computers affectionately.

Big Brother Is Watching You.…

In the passenger seat of his car Jake Muller nodded toward a high fence in an alleyway behind Tremont Street. “Sam, pull over there.”

The car braked slowly to a stop.

“That’s it, huh?” the nervous kid asked.

Nodding toward a white house on the other side of the fence.

“Yep. Now, listen. If a cop comes by just drive off slow. Go around the block but turn left at the street. Got that? Stay off Tremont, whatever you do.”

The boy asked uneasily, “You think somebody’ll come by?”

“Let’s hope not.” Muller took the tools he’d just bought that morning out of the trunk, looked up and down the alley then walked through the gate in the fence and disappeared around the side of the house.

Muller returned ten minutes later. He hurried through the gate, carrying a heavy box and a small shopping bag. He disappeared again and returned with several more boxes. He loaded everything in the back of the car and wiped sweat from his forehead. He dropped hard into the passenger’s seat. “Let’s get outta here.”

“Where’re the tools?”

“I left ’em back there. What’re you waiting for? Go.”

The kid hit the accelerator and the car jumped into the middle of the alley.

Soon they were on the freeway and Muller gave directions to a cheap motel on the far side of town, the Starlight Lodge. There Muller climbed out. He walked into the lobby and registered for two nights. He returned to the car. “Room 129. He said it’s around the side in the back.”

They found the spot, parked and climbed out. Muller handed the boy the room key. He opened the door and together they carried the boxes and the shopping bag inside.

“Kinda lame,” the kid said, looking around.

“I won’t be here that long.”

Muller turned his back and opened the grocery bag. He extracted five one-hundred-dollar bills and handed them over. He added another twenty. “You’ll have to take a cab back downtown.”

“Man, looks like a good haul.” Nodding at the bag of money.

Muller said nothing. He stuffed the bag into a suitcase, locked it and slipped it under the bed.

The kid pocketed the bills.

“You did a good job today, Sam. Thanks.”

“How’ll I find you, mister? I mean, if you want to hire me again?”

“I’ll leave a message at the Starbucks.”

“Yeah. Good.”

Muller glanced at his watch. He emptied his pockets on the dresser. “Now I gotta shower and go meet some people.”

They shook hands. The boy left and Muller swung the door shut after him.

In the bathroom he turned the shower on full, the water hot. He leaned against the wobbly basin and watched the steam roll out of the stall like stormy clouds and wondered where his life was about to go.

“There’s something screwy,” Sergeant Hager called out.

“What?”

“A glitch of some kind.” He nodded at one computer. “Muller’s still online at his house. See? Only we just got an advisory from National Bank’s credit card computer. Somebody using Muller’s card got a room at the Starlight Lodge on Simpson about forty-five minutes ago. There’s gotta be a mistake. He—”

“Oh, Christ,” Carnegie spat out. “There’s no mistake. Muller left his computer on so we’d think he was home. That’s why he parked the car around the corner. So our men wouldn’t see him leave. He snuck through a side yard or out the back.” Carnegie grabbed the phone and raged at the surveillance team that their subject had gotten away from him. He ordered them to check to make sure. He slammed the receiver down and a moment later a sheepish officer called back to confirm that the painters said Muller had left over an hour ago.

The detective sighed. “So while we were napping he knocked over the next target. I don’t believe it. I just—”

“He just made another charge,” a cop called. “Eighteen gallons of gas at the Mobil Station on Lorenzo and Principale.

“Tanked it up.” Carnegie nodded, considering this. “Maybe he’s going to drive up to San Francisco to catch a flight. Or Arizona or Las Vegas, for that matter.” Walking to the wall map, the detective stuck pins in the locations Hager had mentioned. He was calmer now. Muller may have guessed they’d be monitoring his online activity but obviously didn’t know the extent of their surveillance.

“Get a county unmarked to tail him.”

“Detective, just got a report from the speed pass main computer,” one of the officers across the room called. “Muller turned onto the four-oh-eight at Stanton Road four minutes ago. He entered at the northbound tollboth.”

The little box on your windshield that automatically paid tolls on highways, bridges and tunnels could report exactly when and where you used it.

Another pin was stabbed into the map.

Hager directed the pursuing officers to that interchange.

Fifteen minutes later, the cop monitoring the speed pass computer called out once again, “He just turned off the tollway. At Markham Road. The eastbound tollbooth.”

Eastbound into the Markham neighborhood? Carnegie reflected. Well, that made sense. This was a tough part of town, populated by rednecks and bikers living in ramshackle bungalows and trailers. If Muller had an accomplice Markham would be a good source for that sort of muscle. And nearby was the desert, with thousands of square miles to hide the Anco loot.

“Still no visual yet,” Hager said, listening on his phone to the pursuing officers.

“Damn. We’re going to lose him.”

But then another officer called, “I just got a ping from Muller’s cell phone company — he’s turned on the phone and’s making a call. They’re tracing it…” A moment later he called out, “Okay. He’s headed northbound on La Ciena.”

Another blue-tipped pin in the map.

Hager relayed this information to the county cops. Then he listened and gave a laugh. “They’ve got the car!.. Muller’s pulling into the Desert Rose trailer park…. Okay…. He’s parking at one of the trailers…. Getting out…. He’s talking to a white male, thirties, shaved head, tattoos…. The male’s nodding toward a shed on the back of the property…. They’re walking back there together…. They’re getting a package out of the shed…. Now they’re going inside.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Carnegie announced. “Tell ’em to stay out of sight. We’ll be there in twenty minutes. Advise us if the suspect starts to leave.”

As he started for the door, he said a silent prayer, thanking both the Lord — and Big Brother — for their help.

The drive took closer to forty minutes but Jake Muller’s car was still parked in front of the rusty, lopsided trailer.

The officers on the scene reported that the robber and his bald accomplice were still inside, presumably planning their escape from the jurisdiction.

The four police cars from headquarters were parked several trailers away and nine Annandale cops, three armed with shotguns, were crouching behind sheds and weeds and rusty autos. Everybody kept low, mindful that Muller was armed.

Carnegie and Hager eased forward toward the trailer. They had to handle the situation carefully. Unless they could catch a glimpse of the Anco payroll money through the door or window, or unless Muller carried it outside in plain view, they had no probable cause to arrest him. They circled the place but couldn’t see in; the door was closed and the curtains drawn.

Hell, Carnegie thought, discouraged. Maybe they could—

But then fate intervened.

“Smell that?” Carnegie asked in a whisper.

Hager frowned. “What?”

“Coming from inside.”

The sergeant inhaled deeply. “Pot or hash,” he said, nodding.

This would give them probable cause to enter.

“Let’s do it,” Hager whispered. And he gestured for the other officers to join him.

One of the tactical cops asked if he should do the kick-in but Carnegie shook his head. “Nope. He’s mine.” He took off his suit jacket and strapped on a bulletproof vest then drew his automatic pistol.

Gazing at the other officers, he mouthed, Ready?

They nodded.

The detective held up three fingers, then bent them down one at a time.

One… two…

“Go!”

He shouldered open the door and rushed into the trailer, the other officers right behind him.

“Freeze, freeze, police!” he shouted, looking around, squinting to see better in the dim light.

The first thing he noticed was a large plastic bag of pot sitting by the doorway.

The second thing was that the tattooed man’s visitor wasn’t Jake Muller at all; it was Carnegie’s own son, Billy.

The detective stormed into the Annandale police station, flanked by Sergeant Hager. Behind them was another officer, escorting the sullen, handcuffed boy.

The owner of the trailer — a biker with a history of drug offenses — had been taken down the hall to Narcotics and the kilo of weed booked into evidence.

Carnegie had ordered Billy to tell them what was going on but he’d clammed up and refused to say a word. A search of the property and of Muller’s car had yielded no evidence of the Anco loot. He’d gotten a frosty reaction from the Orange County troopers who’d been tailing Muller’s car when Carnegie had raged at them about misidentifying his son as the businessman. (“Don’t recall you ever bothered to put his picture out on the wire, Detective,” one of them reminded.)

Carnegie now barked to one of the officers sitting at a computer screen, “Get me Jake Muller.”

“You don’t have to,” an officer said. “He’s right over there.”

Muller was sitting across from the desk sergeant. He rose and looked in astonishment at Carnegie and his son. He pointed to the boy and said sourly, “So they got you already, Sam. That was fast. I just filled out the complaint five minutes ago.”

“Sam?” Carnegie asked.

“Yeah, Sam Phillips,” Muller said.

“His name’s Billy. He’s my son,” Carnegie muttered. The boy’s middle name was Samuel, and Phillips was the maiden name of the detective’s wife.

“Your son?” Muller asked, eyes wide in disbelief. He then glanced at what one officer was carrying — an evidence box containing the suitcase, wallet, keys and cell phone that had been found in Muller’s car. “You recovered everything,” he said. “How’s my car? Did he wreck it?”

Hager started to tell him that his car was fine but Carnegie waved his hand to silence the big cop. “Okay, what the hell is going on?” he asked Muller. “What’d you have to do with my boy?”

Angry, Muller said, “Hey, this kid robbed me. I was just trying to do him a favor. I had no idea he was your son.”

“Favor?”

Muller eyed the boy up and down. “Yesterday I saw him steal a watch from Maxwell’s, over on Harrison Street.”

Carnegie turned a cold eye on his son, who continued to keep his head down.

“I followed him and made him give me the watch. I felt bad for him. He seemed like he was having a tough time of it. I hired him to help me out for an hour or so. I just wanted to show him there were people out there who’d pay good money for legitimate work.”

“What’d you do with the watch?” Carnegie asked.

Muller looked indignant. “Returned it to the shop. What’d you think? I’d keep stolen merchandise?”

The detective glanced at his son and demanded, “What did he hire you to do?”

When the boy said nothing Muller explained. “I paid him to watch my car while I moved a few things out of my house.”

“Your house?” the boy asked in shock. “On Tremont?”

To his father Muller said, “That’s right. I moved into a motel for a few days — I’m having my house painted and I can’t sleep with the paint fumes.”

The truck in Muller’s driveway, Carnegie recalled.

“I couldn’t use the front door,” Muller added angrily, “because I’m sick of those goons of yours tailing me every time I leave the house. I hired your son to stay with the car in the alley; it’s a tow zone back there. You can’t leave your car unattended even for five minutes. I dropped off some tools I bought this morning and picked up a few things I needed and we drove to the motel.” Muller shook his head. “I gave him the key to open the door and I forgot to get it when he left. He came back when I was in the shower and ripped me off. My car, my cell phone, money, wallet, the suitcase.” In disgust he added, “Hell, and here I gave him all that money. And practically begged him to get his act together and stay clear of drugs.”

“He told you that?” Carnegie asked.

The boy nodded reluctantly.

His father sighed and nodded at the suitcase. “What’s in there?”

Muller shrugged, picked up his keys and unlocked and opened the case.

Carnegie supposed that the businessman wouldn’t be so cooperative if it contained the Anco loot but he still felt a burst of delight when he noticed that the paper bag inside was filled with cash.

His excitement faded, though, when he saw it held only about three or four hundred dollars, mostly wadded-up ones and fives.

“Household money,” Muller explained. “I didn’t want to leave it in the house. Not with the painters there.”

Carnegie contemptuously tossed the bag into the case and angrily slammed the lid. “Jesus.”

“You thought it was the Anco money?”

Carnegie looked at the computer terminals around them, cursors blinking passively.

Goddamn Big Brother…. The best surveillance money can buy. And look what had happened.

The detective’s voice cracked with emotion as he said, “You followed my son! You hired the painters so you could get away without being seen, you bought the bullets, the tools…. And what the hell were you doing looking at burglar alarm websites?”

“Comparative shopping,” Muller answered reasonably. “I’m buying an alarm system for the house.”

“This is all a setup! You—”

The businessman silenced him by glancing at Carnegie’s fellow officers, who were looking at their boss with mixed expressions of concern and distaste over his paranoid ranting. Muller nodded toward Carnegie’s office. “How ’bout you and I go in there? Have a chat.”

Inside, Muller swung the door shut and turned to face the glowering detective. “Here’s the situation, Detective. I’m the only prosecuting witness in the larceny and auto theft case against your son. That’s a felony and if I decide to press charges he’ll do some serious time, particularly since I suspect you found him in the company of some not-so-savory friends when he was busted. Then there’s also the little matter of Dad’s career trajectory after his son’s arrest hits the papers.”

“You want a deal?”

“Yeah, I want a deal. I’m sick of this delusion crap of yours, Carnegie. I’m a legitimate businessman. I didn’t steal the Anco payroll. I’m not a thief and never have been.”

He eyed the detective carefully then reached into his pocket and handed Carnegie a slip of paper.

“What’s this?”

“The number of a Coastal Air flight six months ago — the afternoon of the Anco robbery.”

“How’d you get this?”

“My companies do some business with the airlines. I pulled some strings and the head of security at Coastal got me that number. One of the passengers in first class on that flight paid cash for a one-way ticket from John Wayne Airport to Chicago four hours after the Anco robbery. He had no checked baggage. Only carry-on. They wouldn’t give me the passenger’s name but that shouldn’t be too tough for a hardworking cop like you to track down.”

Carnegie stared at the paper. “The guy from the Department of Public Works? The one the witness saw with that suitcase near Anco?”

“Maybe it’s a coincidence, Detective. But I know I didn’t steal the money. Maybe he did.”

The paper disappeared into Carnegie’s pocket. “What do you want?”

“Drop me as a suspect. Cut out all the surveillance. I want my life back. And I want a letter signed by you stating that the evidence proves I’m not guilty.”

“That won’t mean anything in court.”

“But it’ll look pretty bad if anybody decides to come after me again.”

“Bad for my job, you mean.”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

After a moment Carnegie muttered, “How long’ve you been planning this out?”

Muller said nothing. But he reflected: Not that long, actually. He’d started thinking about it just after the two cops had interrupted his nap the other day.

He’d wire-transferred some money to one of his banks in France from an investment account to fuel the cops’ belief that he was getting ready to flee the country (the French accounts were completely legit; only a fool would hide loot in Europe).

Then he’d done some surveillance of his own, low-tech though it was. He’d pulled on overalls, glasses and a hat and snuck into police headquarters, armed with a watering can and clippers to tend to the plants he’d noticed inside the station the first time he was arrested. He’d spent a half hour on his knees, his head down, clipping and watering, in the hallway outside the watch room, where he’d learned the extent of the police’s electronic invasion of his life. He’d heard too the exchange between Billy Carnegie and the detective — a classic example of an uninvolved father and a troubled, angry son.

Muller smiled to himself now, recalling that after the meeting Carnegie had been so focused on the case that, when he nearly tripped over Muller in the corridor, the cop had never noticed who the gardener was.

He’d then followed Billy for a few hours until he caught him palming the watch. Then he tricked the boy into helping him. He’d hired the painters to do some interior touch-up — to give him the excuse to park his car elsewhere and to check into the motel. Then, using their surveillance against them, he’d fooled the cops into believing he was indeed the Anco burglar and was getting ready to do one last heist and flee the state by buying the travel books, the bullets and the tools and logging on to the alarm and travel agency websites. At the motel he’d tempted Billy Carnegie into stealing the suitcase, credit cards, phone and car — everything that would let the cops track the kid and nail him red-handed.

He now said to Carnegie, “I’m sorry, Detective. But you didn’t leave me any choice. You just weren’t ever going to believe that I’m innocent.”

“You used my son.”

Muller shrugged. “No harm done. Look on the good side — his first bust and he picked a victim who’s willing to drop the charges. Anybody else, he wouldn’t’ve been so lucky.”

Carnegie glanced through the blinds at his son, standing forlorn by Hager’s desk.

“He’s savable, Detective,” Muller said. “If you want to save him…. So, do we have a deal?”

A disgusted sigh was followed by a disgusted nod.

Outside the police station, Muller tossed the suitcase into the back of his car, which had been towed to the station by a police truck.

He drove back to his house and walked inside. The workmen had apparently just finished and the smell of paint was strong. He went through the ground floor, opening windows to air the place out.

Strolling into his garden, he surveyed the huge pile of mulch, whose spreading had been postponed because of his interrupted nap. The businessman glanced at his watch. He had some phone calls to make but decided to put them off for another day; he was in the mood to garden. He changed clothes, went into the garage and picked up a glistening new shovel, part of his purchases that morning at Home Depot. He began meticulously spreading the black and brown mulch throughout the large garden.

After an hour of work he paused for a beer. Sitting under a maple tree, sipping the Heineken, he surveyed the empty street in front of his house — where Carnegie had stationed the surveillance team for the past few months. Man, it felt good not to be spied on any longer.

His eyes then slid to a small rock sitting halfway between a row of corn stalks and some tomato vines. Three feet beneath it was a bag containing the $543,300 from Anco Security, which he’d buried there the afternoon of the robbery just before he’d ditched the public works uniform and driven the stolen truck to Orange County Airport for the flight to Chicago under a false name — a precautionary trip, in case he needed to lead investigators off on a false trail, as it turned out he’d had to do, thanks to compulsive Detective Carnegie.

Jake Muller planned all of his heists out to the finest of details; this was why he’d never been caught after nearly fifteen years as a thief.

He’d wanted to send the cash to his bagman in Miami for months — Muller hated it when heist money wasn’t earning interest — but with Carnegie breathing down his neck he hadn’t dared. Should he dig it up now and send it off?

No, he decided; it was best to wait till dark.

Besides, the weather was warm, the sky was clear and there was nothing like gardening on a beautiful spring day. Muller finished his beer, picked up the shovel and returned to the pile of pungent mulch.