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The phrases fake news and sue your ass to hell and half of Georgia spilling from his mouth were nothing more than default sounds. Reflex. The overwhelming thought pounding inside Ped Garland’s head was saddlebags.
If Kate Hunter had been less selective regarding his reading list in Hays State, she would have discovered the book he borrowed – and read – the most was a novel by Tom Wolfe called A Man in Full. There was this scene, Wolfe called it a workout session. The main character – another larger-than-life self-made man from Atlanta – was so humiliated by loan officers from the bank that sweat spread from under his arms to join up at the sternum. Like saddlebags on a horse.
Ped looked past Mr. Scott, past the dumbstruck faces of the fair weathers who minutes earlier had been groveling to circle the wagons around their man but were now throwing him under the bus, to the journalist Bullard. The workout artiste, humiliating him not with debt columns, demands to sell the Gulfstream, but with the camera of a fucking iPhone.
The saddlebags were forming.
*****
Bec Corelli was not one for clichés, but if Jay’s video of the stash at Mahurangi was the final piece of the puzzle, his shot of the Montoya brothers bound, gagged, and surrounded by mountains of cocaine was the cherry on the top.
Superintendent Hansen had cleared the meeting room, was ordering officers back to Mahurangi, as Bec put the finishing touches to the package.
Wide-eyed café customers were pressed three-deep against the glass.
Bec trimmed the last clip, adjusted the fade-to-black to match the end music, then clicked the video connection to full-screen mode.
Mike hadn’t stopped smiling.
‘We done?’
‘We’re done.’
‘Let’s do this.’
