AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Monday was shapingup to be very Monday, and I was not a happy camper. Dan had called to give me an update on the MFM situation—they seemed to be increasing in numbers, but there seemed to be fewer incidents with extreme violence. I’d asked him about the Landa case.
“What do you fucking think?” he’d snapped back, immediately turning sour.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.
After Dan hung up, I’d started doing what little digging I could on my own, although I hadn’t really gotten much of anywhere. From what I could find, Vito Landa was a dedicated member of the Democratic Party, liked to pose with people while canvassing for various people and causes—he’d done some flyering and sign-posting for various House of Delegates candidates, had worked on a campaign for a recent successful school board member, and was now—or had been—part of the campaign team for Julian Vidal.
So Landa working for Vidal made plenty of sense.
What didn’t make sense was why the Ordo was targeting some random campaign staffer. There had to be more to it than that, but Landa’s social media wasn’t giving me any clues.
He liked bowling and Jell-O shots and going to Texas beach in the summer. He’d gone to California last year on vacation and took a selfie on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He had a group of about four regular friends, all around his same age, who liked to go to movies, hang out, and meet up for Friday Cheers to listen to music when the weather wasn’t too hot.
A normal fucking life.
Snuffed out by a disappearing bullet for no fucking reason that I could figure beyond the fact that he’d had a briefcase that the Ordo had stolen.
I pulled out the file folder that Doc had put together from Ward’s séance with Landa. In it was a list of the things that were supposedly in the briefcase, but it was a general list, because Landa hadn’t looked closely at everything and he couldn’t remember the details of what he had looked at.
Canvas polling results.
A schedule for meet-and-greets.
The invitation list for the election night party.
That wasn’t the kind of shit that people killed for.
A list of possible campaign donors.
Maybe that, depending on who wasonsaid list. If it had ties to the Culhua, maybe the Ordo wanted it so that they could hunt down someone else.
A list of donations.
That was likely more sensitive information—actual donors, people whose names were actually connected to Vidal, as well as how much they wanted him to win, quantified into a dollar amount. Like the list of potential donors, people on that list who were also Culhua might be valuable information.
But in either case, the Ordo would have also needed to know which donors were also Culhua… Unless they already knew who was Culhua, and the question was whether or not the Culhua member was politically active…
I put my forehead on my desk and let out a small groan.
After a few breaths, I pulled myself back together and went back to the folder.
Julian’s list.This was followed in the file by a parenthetical note:Landa wasn’t sure what this was, but it was a list of names, some duplicates of the donor and potential donor lists.
That had to be it. We had no fucking clue what Vidal was making the listfor, of course, but if he had a specific, special list, then that had to be what the Ordo was after. At least if we were assuming the briefcase didn’t have some weird spy shit like a secret backing or extra pocket where Landa had hid a hit list or something equally clandestine and nefarious. But I didn’t get that vibe from him. So it probably was Julian’s list.
The questions now were what the listwasand why the Ordo was so desperate to get it that they would kill a campaign staffer—someone who would be quickly missed and who had a tie to a public figure. Killing him was risky.
Apparently they thought that Julian having that list—or Julian’s allies having that list—was worth that risk.
I wanted the list.
Since the Ordo had it, I was right back where I fucking started, trying to find the last members of the Ordo in Virginia.
And then I frowned down at the file.
I understood how a twenty-something would end up working on the campaign of a future mayor. What I didn’t understand was why said twenty-something would be trusted with a briefcase containing the lists that Landa told Ward were in that case. Since Ward would have known if he were lying, there was something more to Vito Landa than I’d been able to unearth. Some reason why Julian Vidal would trusthimover one of his other, more senior staffers.
I spent another three hours trying to find something,anythinguseful on Landa.
