More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II

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