face. It was his bad arm. He turned the knob with his other hand. The door opened and they stepped inside.
The house felt vacant around them, the only sounds that of their shoes on the tile floor and the high-pitched beeping of the alarm ’ s warning signal. Toombakis approached the panel. His hands moved like rising doves as he tried several sizes of bit drivers on the screws holding it in place. He dropped the drivers that didn ’ t fit onto the floor with a clatter. When he found the right one, he pumped hard and popped off the alarm plate within seconds.
Paul bent and collected the discarded bit drivers, glancing up to see exposed wires behind the panel. The alarm ’ s beeping sounded increasingly insistent with the panel off, but he wondered whether it was his imagination. Toombakis worked, clamping off wires, to restore the alarm ’ s circuit. The time seemed to be growing extremely long, well over half a minute, and Paul braced himself for the alarm ’ s scream when Toombakis placed a last clip, raised his hands like a rodeo roper after tying off a calf, and stepped back in a new, complete silence. He gingerly tipped the hanging panel out of the way so they could see the light was now a steady green.
“Take care of the panel, then let yourself out. And thanks,” Behr said, offering a hand to Toombakis, who nodded. “You can forget about that thing,” Behr added.
The statement seemed to brighten Toombakis ’ s dark eyes a bit. “Don ’ t worry, I won ’ t forget that other thing,” he said.
Behr nodded and said to Paul, “Come on.”
“Are you going to try and open it?” Paul asked.
They had moved slowly about the house, through rooms that were furnished well if sparsely. Couches were dark leather, the rugs and walls of standard solid colors. The home was conscientiously decorated, but by a man. The living room was dominated by a big-screen television, DVD player, and stereo all rigged up with surround sound. They looked briefly through Riggi ’ s music and movie collection. It was mundane, certainly not depraved, and consisted largely of classic rock: Seger, the Who, the Stones, and up through Guns N ’ Roses. The films were mostly dramas: The Godfather series, Scarface, Wall Street, and everything by Tarantino.
“It ’ s not a real safe,” Behr said as they stared at the wall safe, hidden behind some dress shirts on hangers that they ’ d pushed aside.
“No?” Paul asked. They were in the main bedroom closet, a huge, neatly made California king bed visible in the room beyond the doorway.
“It ’ s real, but it ’ s not for actual valuables, know what I mean? A guy like this, careful, puts a safe in the master closet? I don ’ t think so. That ’ s the first place anybody looks.” It was true, it was the first place they had looked upon entering the bedroom.
Behr tried the handle. “Just for good measure,” he said. The safe didn ’ t open. “Cheap box like this, burglars just rip it out of the wall, take it home and work on it there.” He straightened the shirts to their original positions. They moved through the bedroom and master bath and a few guest bedrooms; one held old furniture, stereo equipment, and golf clubs, the others just beds.
“Let ’ s go downstairs and check the study,” Behr said. As they moved down the stairs, they heard the sound of a door opening. Paul froze, his heart rate jumping by a hundred beats. “Toombakis,” Behr said in reminder. They heard the door shut. Paul nodded and they continued on.
The study walls were covered by bookshelves that held mostly nonfiction bestsellers and a few coffee table — size histories of European car manufacturers: Mercedes, Porsche, and Maserati. A blotter covered with indeterminate notes, dates, and phone numbers topped the dark wooden desk. There was another television, VCR, and DVD player in a cabinet. There were prints of African animals framed on the wall that didn ’ t hold bookshelves: an elephant, zebras watering, and a lion on a kill. Behr sat for a while behind the desk in a new-looking burgundy leather chair, then began going through the drawers.
He pulled out a ledger-size checkbook and opened it on the desk. It showed a healthy mid-five-figure balance. He combed through other drawers and came up with statements from a few brokerage firms. Behr held them up for Paul to see; they showed low to middling six-figure balances.
“He ’ s doing real well,” Behr muttered to himself.
Paul checked out the titles in the bookshelves while Behr replaced the documents and leaned back in the chair. He glanced over his shoulder at the window and a look of puzzlement came over his face. He looked at a wall holding bookshelves, then the door. He stood and moved around the room, trying to assess its dimensions. He left the room, peeked around in the living room, and then reappeared in the study, his brow knit in thought.
“What?” Paul wondered.
“This room.”
“What about it?”
“It ’ s too small. Look.” Behr pointed to the window and then the bookshelves. “This is the side of the house, right? The living room shares a common wall, so it should end here.”
“The bookshelves are built-ins,” Paul said, not quite understanding the layout in his mind but feeling the thread of the thing and urging his brain to catch up.
“But they ’ re not that deep,” Behr said.
“Yeah. They should end there, not here,” Paul said, pointing to a space beyond the shelves. “Could it…?” His question hung in the air as he was unable to fully ask it.
“I’ve seen this before,” Behr said, facing the bookshelves and pulling on them. Nothing happened. He pushed on the front of the woodwork as well. Still nothing. He pushed harder, throwing his shoulder into it, and there was a click. Behr stepped back, pulling the front of the bookshelves again, but this time they hinged out and swung free. Behr and Paul looked at each other. There was a space between the bookshelves and the outer wall of the house, perhaps two feet deep, and in it a series of three two-drawer file cabinets.
Behr crouched, Paul fell in next to him, and they tried the drawers, which were locked.
“Can you pick them?” Paul asked.
“Fuck that,” Behr said, pulling out a Leatherman tool and selecting a blunt blade. He jammed it into the crack between drawer and cabinet and pried. The drawer came open with a pop.
Behr pulled folders out of the drawer and began thumbing through the papers inside. Paul moved in close to read over Behr ’ s shoulder, trying not to block the light. The documents were both handwritten and typed and consisted mostly of columns of initials and numbers. There was a clear pattern to it, which Paul struggled to make sense of.
“It looks like records.”
“Yeah, I have ’ em as records, too. It ’ s written in some basic code.” Behr jiggled a few of the other cabinets. “Maybe there ’ s a key to it in one of these drawers.” The drawers were still locked and Behr must not have wanted to waste time with them. Instead they turned the pages and began to intuit the system.
“These have got to be initials,” Paul said, and Behr nodded.
“Dates,” Behr offered, and it seemed to make sense.
“And these?” Paul wondered, a sick feeling coming to his stomach.
“That ’ s the money,” Behr said in a low voice, just a shade from completely sure. “Two-part payments. The lower numbers look like some kind of monthly accounting.”
They sifted through a few more folders when Paul fell back a few steps.
“Oh, god,” he uttered.
“What ’ s wrong?” Behr asked.
“Bottom of the page,” Paul said. The letters “JG” were there, in lowercase. Behr glanced at it, then back at him, a current of knowing and confirmation flowing between them. That ’ s when they heard the garage door open.
Riggi inspected the alarm panel and saw a few slight gouges in the plastic near the screws holding it in place. He did his best to remember whether they had always been there or not. Then he recognized a difference in the usual energy of his house. He felt a presence, a stirring within it, and realized someone was there. A feeling of indignation welled deep within him, a black territorial violence, and he headed deeper into the house. He heard a footstep, a depression of weight on a floorboard coming from the study, and went toward it. I ’ m gonna crack whoever ’ s in my place went through his head. He moved through the kitchen, glancing toward the knife block and considering whether to take one. His gun was in the safe upstairs. If he faced an armed man or men, the knife wouldn ’ t do him a damned bit of good. He decided he ’ d take them barehanded.
He passed through the other side of the kitchen and moved into the foyer and saw them. Two figures, one
