I’d rung the doorbell of the townhouse when I’d first arrived, pizza box in hand. The house had remained silent. Nobody home. Or maybe the Conlees weren’t answering the door on a lazy Sunday. Or they might be in their backyard, if the row of townhouses had outside patios. No way to tell without watching the place for a while.
A dog park occupied a chunk of the public space across from their home. I claimed a bench at the far side of it.
The townhouse looked like a soft nut. Security wasn’t high on the block. No cameras placed anywhere around the front of Conlee’s home. Any people meandering around the dog park would be nicely shielded by a crop of slim trees. The townhouse bumped right up against its neighbors, so there was no chance anyone might glance out a window and see me. On the downside, there would be no going around back, either. If I went in, I’d have to take the direct approach.
So I watched, and ate slices of thin-crust pepperoni, and stayed alert in case any of the dogs jumped the fence in an attempt to steal my food.
I was so focused on the Conlee place, I missed the blue Camaro until the car was past the townhouse and most of the way down the block.
Holy shit.
It disappeared around the corner. For a full minute I wondered if I’d been mistaken; that this Camaro had been a different rust-spotted muscle car than the one I’d seen at the Dixie Hot Springs cabins. Then it glided back into view. Two men squashed shoulder to shoulder tested the capacity of the Camaro’s front seats. Men with long goatees and neck tattoos peeking out of their collars.
The car stopped at the curb opposite the snug garage that took up the first story of Conlee’s townhouse. The two hulks stayed in their seats. Moments later, a Chevy Tahoe with a wide red stripe down the side of its white paint job turned onto the street. It parked a few cars behind the Camaro. The hulks heaved themselves out of their car. Its shocks eased up half a foot in relief. The doors of the Tahoe opened. I saw the driver first, a disheveled weed with peroxided hair and gray tattoos snaking out of the sleeves of his white T-shirt.
The final man was Jaeger. He waited as the rest came to him. He wore the same black business shirt and work pants that I’d seen before, with a short brown shearling coat and black scarf to ward off the cold.
I’d come to Portland to see if I could confirm Aaron Conlee’s connection to the skinheads, and here they were, all but posing for a photograph. Could I somehow nail them here? Fain was three hours away. And I didn’t have a bone to throw the cops to get them onto Jaeger’s trail. The skinhead leader might be scum, but he wasn’t a person of interest. Not yet.
Jaeger’s group walked quickly across the street and up the stoop to the Conlees’ door, the peroxided prick in the lead. There was a pause. My view of the door was blocked by the broad backs of the two hulks. They were enough alike that they might be cousins, from their shaven heads and goatees to the same olive surplus work jackets and jeans tucked into black leather boots.
I kept my head down. It wasn’t likely that Jaeger would spot and recognize me from across the park, but I’d left the Browning in the truck, not wanting to have a weapon on me when I broke into the Conlee home. A rookie mistake like that turns an easily plea-bargained misdemeanor into mandatory penitentiary time, if I were to be caught somehow. With Jaeger now on the scene, I was second-guessing my decision.
The door opened. As the hulks moved aside I saw Peroxide extract a pick gun from the lock and put it in his pocket. They went inside and shut the door.
Damn. Was Jaeger here for the same reason I was, to toss the house? What could he be looking for? Conlee was already feeding him HaverCorp’s secrets.
The neighborhood continued its day. Kids shrieked as they rode bicycles over the sidewalk curb. A minivan waited at the stop sign, the sound of Billy Preston on an oldies station drifting out its window. I knew the song from Dono’s record collection. “Nothing from Nothing.” The townhouse door remained closed.
A worse possibility occurred to me. The skinheads might be waiting for the Conlees to return to their picture-perfect home. Probably not to have a pleasant coffee while they selected the next armored car on their hit list.
I didn’t know Aaron Conlee, or owe the man anything. He might be as big a piece of shit as the white power thugs that broke into his home. But letting him and maybe his wife walk right into a nightmare wasn’t something I could let happen.
I’d made up my mind to head Conlee off and warn him of the danger if he showed, when the door to the townhouse cracked open. One of the two beefy hulks stuck his bald head out, peered around, retreated back inside. The door swung wide and the bruiser walked down the stoop, followed by Jaeger, and a man I immediately recognized by his glasses as Aaron Conlee. The second hulk and the peroxided guy brought up the rear of their little parade.
Jaeger’s men stuck close to Conlee’s side, almost herding him as the group walked to the red-striped Tahoe. Behind the glasses, Conlee’s high forehead and cheeks were pale.
All five of them got into the Tahoe and drove off.
Had I just witnessed a kidnapping? I wasn’t sure. More certain was the fact that the townhouse was a safer target for a quick search now.
The block was clear. I went straight to Conlee’s garage door. If the peroxided guy had known his stuff, he wouldn’t have risked a full two minutes standing out in the open, struggling to beat the chrome-plated dead bolt Conlee had on his front entrance. Locks on the twist-handles of garage doors are cheap, and easy. I might as well have had a key.
As I lifted the door waist-high, its hinges gave out a soft shuddering groan. I slipped underneath, and the door creaked in a higher pitch as I closed it again. Visible even in the darkness, past a worn-out little Mazda Miata, was the bright white outline of an interior door. I listened. No footsteps running to investigate the sound of the garage opening. I turned the knob and went in.
The garage opened onto the kitchen. Like the exterior of the house, the kitchen’s appliances and countertops had a glossy tasteful modernity. But beyond that the room was a pit. A sour smell hit me before the details sank in. Every countertop was loaded with crusty dishes in precarious stacks. Food in half a dozen colors had dripped on the stove and the floor and even the refrigerator.
Making my way through the attached living room and a spare bedroom revealed a little more of the couple’s lifestyle. The furniture was decent, but a step or two down from the house itself. What art and electronics they owned wouldn’t be worth a thief’s time. Maybe the Conlees had sunk all of their money into buying the house.
Jeans and long-sleeved tees and crumpled boxers garlanded the couch, and soft piles of old socks and shirts lay under the coffee table. Men’s clothes. No similarly discarded yoga pants or bras or anything else obviously feminine.
And those stacks of dirty dishes in the kitchen held a lot of single plates and forks. Maybe Aaron was kicking it solo these days.
I didn’t find any cell phones or computers on the first floor. No obvious signs of neo-Nazi sympathies, either. Not for the first time, I wondered how a computer tech in liberal Portland got connected with ultra-right-wing supremacists.
Ten minutes gone. I’d give myself another ten to hunt through the upstairs before pulling out.
Halfway up, the stairwell made a ninety-degree turn at a small landing, leading to the upper hallway at the top. The master bedroom was the first door on the right. It wasn’t quite as sloppy as the kitchen. At least the tangle of bedsheets wasn’t covered in dried food.
I started going through the nightstand. Started, and stopped, my hand frozen on the drawer pull. I had heard a thump.
Had it come from outside? A squirrel or pine cone landing on the roof? I stood, my breath as motionless as my body.
Thump.
Inside. Definitely inside.
From the bedroom closet.
My heart was choosing a bass beat over treble. I stepped backward, away from the front of the closet. Had someone heard me come in, and hidden there? If he we
re armed and nervous, a bullet could fly right through that stylish white oak.
Thump.
I reached out and turned the knob and yanked the closet open.
It was a woman, bound with wide strips of filament tape and lying on the floor of the walk-in space. From her dark bobbed hair, I recognized her as Aaron Conlee’s wife.
More tape covered the bottom half of her head, like a mockery of a bandit’s mask. Her eyes were wide and terrified. She thrashed, making another thump.
Holy fuck, what had I walked into?
“Hold on,” I said to her. “I’ll help you.”
She thrashed again. Her hair was matted to her skull with sweat.
I could drag her out, but that might make a horrible situation even worse. And I would need my knife to cut the thick loops of tape off her arms and legs. I did not want her to see the knife right now.
Instead, I backed off and sat down on the carpeted floor of the bedroom and tried to project harmlessness. It didn’t feel natural.
“I’m going to untie you,” I said, “and we’re going to call the police. I’ll give you a phone. Can you hold still while I let you loose?”
She nodded, hesitantly at first, then as if she couldn’t stop.
“Okay,” I said. “Turn on your side and we’ll free your hands first.”
After another moment she rolled to let me reach her wrists and held perfectly still while I sliced through the sheaf of sticky tape between her forearms. The tape around her wrists was tighter. Her hands had turned the color of lavender soap, her fingers swollen. A simple silver ring on her wedding finger was half embedded in puffy skin.
When the last of the tape parted, I tensed, half expecting her to lash out or at least yank at the gag. But she stayed on her side, arms still behind her, as I quickly cut the thick loops binding her thighs and calves and ankles.
“Do you want to take the rest off yourself?” I asked. She didn’t respond. I knelt by her head and very carefully parted the tape with the point of the knife behind her ear, where there was at least a fraction of space between the mask and her skin. I was nearly through when I saw that she was weeping. I gently peeled the tape from her face. It pulled at her skin, reluctant to let go. She finally moved, a small turn of the head to let me strip the last of it off.
I backed away again and sat on the carpet.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“Schuyler,” she said, her voice sounding parched.
I held out my phone for her to make the call. A lousy break, but I could always tell the cops that I somehow heard Schuyler banging around from outside, and that the door was unlocked. That story would at least be a hair’s breadth more plausible than claiming I was walking by and got a psychic flash of danger.
“No,” she said. “Don’t call the police.”
“We need the cops. Maybe you need an ambulance, too.” She wasn’t physically hurt that I could see. And she was fully dressed, from a Nordic-patterned turtleneck down to Keds sneakers. That didn’t mean she hadn’t been touched.
She shook her head as violently as she’d been nodding it before. “They’ll kill Aaron.”
“Why did they take him?”
“I can’t tell you. Please, just let me go.”
“You can go. Or I’ll leave,” I corrected. “But without answers I’m calling the cops and telling them what happened here.”
“No!” Schuyler was hastily on her feet, unsteady as a fawn, and tottering into the hanging rack of clothes. Only by striking the rail with her forearm did she catch herself before falling back down again. I stayed seated.
“Is it about Aaron’s work? The information he can get at HaverCorp?” I said.
She froze. “How did you know that?”
“What is it that Jaeger wants?”
“Jaeger,” she said, as if testing the name.
“The older guy with the white mustache and black clothes.”
“He’s insane. He showed up here—” Schuyler trembled and moved past me into the master bathroom. She turned the tap and held her hands underneath the faucet, letting the water run over her reddened fingers. “He said if Aaron didn’t go along quietly, his men would murder me while Aaron watched. That they would use knives, but that I would be alive for a long time to feel it. He said it like he was telling us the weather. Who does that?”
“If you won’t call the cops, then let me help,” I said. “I can protect you.”
Her laugh was a harsh cough. “They’ll kill you.”
I was pretty sure that Jaeger planned to kill the Conlees, too, but I kept that to myself.
“They left you tied up here so Aaron would cooperate. Where are they going?” I said.
“To HaverCorp’s offices, I think. That man—Jaeger—he told Aaron to give him all the deliveries scheduled for next month. He was furious. I could tell that, even if he never did much more than whisper. He has a strange voice. Frightening.”
Schuyler took a long inhale of the steam rising from the sink. A tiny gold cross dangled from around her neck, collecting droplets of mist.
“Jaeger wanted more armored car routes?” I said.
“Everything. Something about losing junk from the last time. I don’t know what he meant.”
“How far away is Aaron’s office?”
“Forty minutes. Why?”
Count on at least seventy round-trip, plus time to pull whatever delivery routes Conlee could dredge out of the databases. That left another hour before Jaeger would return here. I just hoped that Conlee was still walking around by then.
She washed her face in the bathroom mirror. Her shaking had stopped. With her square bones and a prominent nose, she might never have been conventionally pretty, but she carried a frank attractiveness that went beyond that.
“Who are you?” she said. “You’re not with Jaeger.”
“Do I look like a skinhead?”
“I suppose not. But you . . .” She leaned away, perhaps unconsciously.
“Yeah.” I sat down on the counter to give her some space. It wasn’t difficult. The master bathroom had two sinks and a full shower and Jacuzzi tub. “This isn’t Aaron’s first time, right? Handing over intel.”
Schuyler gave me a slow once-over, eyes sharp even through her pinkened corneas.
“That’s what you are.” She cupped a handful of water into her mouth and spat it back out. “One of the general’s.”
The general. Son of a bitch.
“Charles sent you here. I should have realized,” Schuyler said, dashing the water from her fingertips like she wanted to fling me away with it.
“How do you and Aaron know General Macomber?”
She stopped, towel clutched in her hands.
“You really don’t know, do you?” She stared at me in astonishment. “Charles is Aaron’s father.”
“His father,” I said. “Aaron changed his name?”
“His mother changed it for him, when she and Charles were divorced. Aaron grew up here on the West Coast, while his dad was God-knows-where with the Army. But Aaron has never stopped trying to win the great man’s approval,” she said, as bitter as reheated coffee. “He even joined the Army himself right out of high school, desperate to become like you people.”
“It wasn’t enough,” I said.
“He didn’t make it through. Didn’t earn the banner or whatever you call it.”
The scroll, not that Schuyler truly cared.
“That experience nearly destroyed him.” She walked out to the bedroom. “When he and I met, Aaron was out of the Army and out of work. He told me once that he’d rather have been killed in combat than to have failed. I was dumb enough at that age to find those kinds of emotional wounds intriguing.” She folded her arms. “Toxic machismo. He grew out of it, I thought. We both went back to college and got real jobs. We made it work. For a time.”
I’d been right about Conlee’s slovenly housekeeping signaling deeper troubles at home. But I’d been wrong about a whol
e lot more.
Three armored car robberies of cash. One security van heist, to score drugs.
Three scores with no witnesses, no casualties, the guards neatly trussed and blindfolded. A fourth that ended with two guards slaughtered.
Christ, I’d been dense. Not seeing the trees for the forest. Method was everything.
The last job had borne all the signs of rabid, panicky amateurs. The first three? Executed with absolute precision. Military precision.
“When did you move out of this house?” I said to Schuyler.
“A month ago. I only came by this afternoon to pack up some clothes. I left after—” she stopped herself.
“After you learned Aaron was feeding HaverCorp’s secrets to the general.”
Schuyler looked as though she had sipped vinegar. “And how do you know about that, if you’re not one of Charles’s attack dogs?”
“I’m piecing it together,” I said. “My friend is in trouble because he got caught in the middle of the general’s business.”
“He’s not the only fool. I actually bought Aaron’s lie that HaverCorp wanted to hire him badly enough to give him a signing bonus up front. Enough for the down payment on this place.” She waved an arm toward the ten-foot ceiling. “But it was Charles, of course. Playing with people’s lives like toys.”
“How did you find out?”
“Little things. Noticing how much Aaron and Charles had been talking during the past year or two. I thought they’d finally mended fences. But around the times of every call, Aaron would have to go in to work at strange hours. He said it was to monitor some nighttime jobs. HaverCorp keeps their backup data center here, in case anything disastrous happens at their central location in Illinois.”
She sat on the rumpled bed. “And then right after my birthday last month I found a stack of cash Aaron had hidden in the garage. He tried to tell me it was old, or that he’d won it gambling and forgotten about it. Stupid. Him this time, not me.”
Conlee had been giving his father the armored car routes, and Macomber had issued marching orders to Fain and his crew. They had been careful. One job every few months, in different parts of the country. Still, the Feds must have guessed the first three HaverCorp robberies had been the work of one crew, based on the MO. Jaeger’s sticking his nose in and killing those guards may have upended a few official theories.
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