Page 8 of The Deeper Game (The Kinky Bank Robbers #3)

Chapter Five

After visiting eight butcher shops, we learned one big thing: there are lots of people in Los Angeles buying blood.

Some buy sheep and cow blood, but mostly pig’s blood.

And butchers are happy to supply it; even the supermarket butchers sold it.

Some of them chalked it up to the vampire craze.

Others sold it for theatrical realism or religious ceremonies.

Another thing we learned: they all had the same butcher paper supplier.

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 thought we were 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 was a 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 me miss , 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 distancing miss stuff.

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 already crying-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 of fucking-g guys 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.”

“Who’s Bolo?” I asked.

Odin held up a hand. “What else?” he asked Manning. “Anything else? Shirt? Pants?”

Manning shook his head.

“Could it have been Bolo?” Odin barked. “You know him.”

Manning shrugged.

“Who’s Bolo?” I asked.

“No way. How the fuck would Bolo know we’re here?” Thor asked.

Manning showed Thor empty hands. The universal gesture for, What do I know?

Odin put a hand on my shoulder. “He’s…we’ll tell you.” He eyed Manning. “You can’t say it was or wasn’t Bolo.”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like Bolo’s style.

To skulk. But physically,” Manning said.

“He made only a slight impression. It could be nothing. But you’ve got eyes everywhere now.

Look at this.” He started sliding through screens on the notepad.

We watched the camera views click around.

“Terrible thing, that package. Blood.” He quickly looked at Odin. “We all set?”

Odin slapped him on the back and they walked off together.

“If it’s Bolo, we can handle it,” Thor said.

“How well do you know A/V Robert Manning?” I asked.

“We know him pretty well,” Thor said. “He’s pulled us out of some hot situations. Looked out for us in the past.” He turned to me. “You’re not thinking…”

“No,” I said. “But I don’t like his whole calling me miss stuff. What’s up with that?”

Thor frowned. “It wouldn’t be him. Christ, if it’s him…”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said. “It seems a way to keep me at arm’s length. I would never call my friend’s significant other mister . ‘ Sorry to hear that, mister.’ ”

“He’s always been an ally,” Thor said. “We considered pulling him in on a job once.”

I nodded. That was the highest level of trust, pulling a guy in on a job.

Odin was back.

“Are you one hundred percent on Manning?” Thor asked him.

“ Manning? ” Odin asked.

“She got a weird hit off him,” Thor said.

“Not weird, just…I’m jumpy,” I said. “I’m going to freak out about everybody who isn’t you.”

Odin grabbed a suitcase out of the closet.

Or, I thought it was a suitcase until he opened it up to reveal weapons, silencers, rope, a drill, and some other hardware.

“You two stay here. I’m going to shake the trees for Bolo.

See if I can figure out where he lives and pay him a little visit.

I’ll get Zeus at five and we’ll regroup. ”

“What if it’s not Bolo?” I asked.

“Then he has nothing to worry about. We need to handle this. Thor, get on Bolo’s social media. Isis, keep working on the feather.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s pigeon,” I said, trying not to think about how a drill might figure into paying Bolo a visit.

“Are you one hundred percent sure?” Odin asked.

“No, but seriously? The feather? I don’t need busywork.”

“Are you a trained fucking-g agent? Do you have some fucking-g knowledge we don’t have? Some knowledge that the feather is unimportant?”

“More of a hunch,” I said.

“You will work on the feather,” Odin snapped. “I want to know the species without a doubt. Take it to the university if you must.” Odin left with the case, and Thor and I got iced teas and sat out on the porch, ready to continue our tasks.

“What’s the deal with Bolo?” I asked him. “Who is he?”

Thor put his feet up on the railing. “He’s a guy around the scene. He somehow knew—I don’t know who from or how—that you like to be watched. You know…” Watched while fucking, he meant.

“Wait, he knew this? How would he know such a thing?”

“Not from any of us. Zeus thinks…” He paused here. “Well, we have had some semi-public sex, if you recall. That involved one of us watching. It’s one of the risks that…”

“That makes it fun,” I said, finishing his sentence for him.

But he was right. There had been a few episodes of that.

Car sex. Public park in the middle of the night sex.

Sex in the storage basement at Guvvey’s, the gangster restaurant.

Yes, they knew I liked the danger of getting caught, and they knew I liked one of my guys watching. But not some random guy.

“There’s also the fact that the four of us are a romantic unit.

Some guys don’t respect that. A guy like Bolo, he’d never go up to a man in a traditional couple and ask, ‘ Hey, can I watch you fuck your woman?’ But it’s known that we’re a foursome.

So people make assumptions. It could be simple as that. ”

I nodded. “Even the Gigis had some shit to say about me liking manwiches.”

Thor snorted. “You love manwiches.”

“Only with you guys.”