“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 the
re 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.
BORN BAD
Sleep, my child and peace attend thee, all through the night.…
The words of the lullaby looped relentlessly through her mind, as persistent as the clattering Oregon rain on the roof and window.
More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II Page 9