Page 20 of The Deeper Game
I slid into the warm and toasty SUV after the last butcher visit and clicked on my seatbelt. Odin started the engine. “Who the fuck knew about all this?”
“I thoughtwewere weird,” I said.
“This is not a profitable avenue,” he said.
It was nearly four when we got back home. Thor was outside standing next to a ladder over the front door. Up on the top was Robert Manning, the A/V security guy, a tank-like forty-something man with military tattoos all over his arms. He wasa former Navy SEAL with blond hair that was always perfectly combed, just long enough to feather back, and it seemed to float around his head in close orbit, as feathered hair sometimes does.
“Just installed one of these in the home of a big star. Can’t tell ya who,” Manning said.
Well, that star was smart. Hiring the guy who installed video monitoring systems and security gate controls for criminals seemed like a good way to go.
Apparently the gates Manning installed were guaranteed to hold up against any vehicle up to a Humvee.You got two Hummers, that’s where the gate goes, he’d said to us when we moved back in here. My guys liked him. Manning didn’t know who they’d been in their other life, and they’d never worked together, but the four of them had a certain camaraderie, a certain understanding that seemed to go beyond the usual fellow criminal bonds. I always thought they smelled military training on each other.
He stepped down from his ladder, wiping his hands on a rag. “Come on inside, I’ll show you the range.”
We followed him into the kitchen. He opened a laptop, punched up a website, and entered a code. “I’ll be sending all this to you. Here’s your number one camera, out front. Number two is in back, and three and four are east and west. Here are the corners. The system stores three days before it records over. Video files are large.” He looked up, furrowed brow. “Sorry to hear about all this, miss.”
I smiled and nodded. Manning always called memiss, and I didn’t much like it. It seemed weird and distancing. In general, I didn’t entirely like Manning, but it could be because I felt he didn’t like me, what with all the distancingmissstuff. He was one of those guys who didn’t really take women seriously. There were a lot of guys like that in the criminal crowd.
“Be sorry for the one who left that package,” Odin said. “They are already dead. They are alreadycrying-g.”
Manning screwed up his lips. “You know, there’s something…last time I was here…”
“What?” Thor asked.
“It wasn’t on your premises, but I saw somebody out there…”
Thor and Odin exchanged glances.
“Who?” Odin asked.
Manning squinted. “I don’t know who. It was really nothing. Last week Thursday, when I was out to upgrade the controls on your gate and switch out the boards. Zeus was in the pool, you three were elsewhere. As I was leaving, turning right just out of the gate, I saw somebody walking out of the woods—not up here, but down past the end of the driveway. From the back. Brown hair, Dodgers cap. Maybe medium height.”
“Somebody was walking out of the woods down there?” Odin said. “You didn’t see fit to say anything?”
“It was just off the road. I assumed he was taking a piss.”
“And you’re just telling us now?”
“Hey—” Manning held up his hands. “Guys take pisses, yeah? I would’ve told you if the guy was dressed as Abe Lincoln or if I thought it was any kind of 5-0 or agency. That’s who you’ve always been looking at as far as trouble. That’s who the gates and cameras are for, according to you yourself. I’m not alerting you to every random guy taking a piss down the road.”
“It’s not his job,” Thor snapped at Odin. “We hire him for surveillance and gates.”
“But you’re thinking about it enough to mention it now,” Odin said.
“It’s one of those things that gets weirder in hindsight,” Manning said. “You know, your subconscious sees it and files it away. Then today when you call about some joker leaving a package, my subconscious says to me, ‘Hey, Robert Manning,you remember the guy in a ball cap? Remember that guy?’And now I’m telling you. But again—” He put his hand on his chest. He really didn’t want to be in trouble with my guys.
“I know,” Thor said. “We don’t mean to get on you.”
I sat there, watching him, not sure what to make of his story. Because, ‘Hey, Robert Manning?’Whose subconscious addresses them by their full name?
“A Dodger’s cap and brown hair,” Odin spat out. “That’s a lot offucking-gguys in this town.”
“But it rules out a lot of guys,” Manning said. “You take all the guys who might know where you four are hiding out with Isis and narrow it down to brown hair and Dodgers fandom…”
“And then narrow it down to those who are stupid enough to threaten Isis,” Odin said.
“Wait—” Thor swore softly under his breath. “Sounds like fucking Bolo.”
