Chapter 12 - The Green Bay Syndicate
The torrential downpour battered the rusted corrugated roof of the Peninsula Holdings Group corporate headquarters on the southern edge of Green Bay.
Inside the lavish third-floor corner office, Victor Vance stared at the dead satellite handset on his mahogany desk with eyes hollowed by impending ruin.
He was forty-four, impeccably groomed in a tailor-made charcoal suit, but beneath the veneer of high-end commercial real estate, his empire was built on predatory usury and blood.
On the monitor before him, the private ledger showed Julian Mercer’s delinquent debt highlighted in pulsing red: two hundred and twelve thousand dollars in unsecured gambling loans and failed logistics fraud.
Julian had pledged Clara Mercer’s Door County lakefront acreage as collateral, producing a certified copy of a quitclaim deed that Victor knew was forged from the start.
Victor had not cared about the forgery; his private title company had routinely laundered falsified transfers through shell LLCs across the Upper Midwest for nearly a decade.
He reached for his scotch glass with a trembling hand, the amber liquid sloshing over his manicured fingers as the cold reality of Evelyn’s voice echoed in his memory.
If Kenneth Vance had truly surrendered the Gary operations to the Chicago authorities, the chain of custody for the digitalis compound would lead directly to Victor’s personal wire transfers.
Victor had financed the pharmaceutical equipment Kenneth used, disguising the capital injections as agricultural chemical supplies through a dummy freight company in Sheboygan.
He slammed the crystal glass onto the desk, shattering its base, and lunged toward the tall cherrywood cabinet behind his executive chair.
Inside rested a commercial-grade industrial shredder and a fireproof safe containing seven years of unrecorded promissory notes, off-the-books ledgers, and original forged titles.
His fingers frantically dialed the four-digit combination on the safe’s digital dial, the metallic beep of the keypad mocking his racing pulse.
The heavy safe door swung open, revealing stacks of banded currency, three offshore passports under assumed names, and a black leather-bound binder stamped with the letters *PHG-INTERNAL*.
Victor grabbed the binder and threw it into the feed tray of the shredder, his thumb slamming down on the continuous reverse switch.
The steel teeth groaned as they gripped the thick cardstock of the Door County fraudulent deeds, chewing the corners into thin, illegible confetti.
Before the first page could pass completely through the blades, the electricity throughout the entire commercial complex died with a sharp, concussive pop.
The shredder ground to an abrupt, silent halt, leaving half of Julian Mercer’s signed transfer agreement jammed squarely in the rollers.
Victor gasped, spinning around in the sudden darkness, illuminated only by the rhythmic sweeps of headlights turning into the office park’s flooded driveway below.
He pressed his face against the floor-to-ceiling glass, his breath fogging the cold pane as his stomach dropped into a bottomless abyss.
Four unmarked black utility vehicles and three Wisconsin State Patrol cruisers had completely blocked the gates of the perimeter fence.
Tactical officers dressed in gray tactical gear and carrying battering rams were already moving in coordinated teams toward the glass lobby doors on the ground level.
Below the cruisers, stepping out of an unmarked squad car from the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, was Detective Miller from Chicago, holding a blue folder under his rain poncho.
Victor backed away from the window, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird inside an iron cage.
He sprinted toward the executive suite’s private rear exit that led to the service stairwell behind the elevator bank.
He hit the steel panic bar with both hands, throwing the fire door open and plunging down the concrete steps two at a time into the damp subterranean parking garage.
The concrete basement was humid and smelled of engine oil and exhaust, lit only by flickering emergency exit signs.
Victor reached his silver Mercedes sedan, jamming his electronic key fob toward the driver’s side door handle.
“Step away from the vehicle, Victor Vance!” a booming voice echoed through the concrete pillars of the garage.
Two uniformed Brown County deputies stepped out from behind a concrete support beam, their service weapons raised and locked on his chest.
Victor froze, his car keys slipping from his sweat-slicked fingers and clattering loudly against the oil-stained pavement.
“I am a licensed Wisconsin real estate broker!” Victor shouted, his voice cracking into a high-pitched plea as he backed toward the wall.
“This is an unlawful harassment campaign by competitors!”
From the shadows of the stairwell behind him, Detective Miller walked slowly into view, flipping open a gold Chicago Police shield pinned beside a signed multi-state warrant.
“You’re done brokering, Victor,” Miller said, his boots clicking with deliberate, unhurried cadence against the concrete.
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“Kenneth Vance gave us the wire transfer receipts forty minutes ago, and your contractor Hank just gave the Door County Sheriff the coordinates of your private safe.”
Victor sank down against the damp cinderblock wall, the cold water of the garage floor soaking into his bespoke trousers as the steel handcuffs clicked firmly around his wrists.
