Power Play

by Joseph Finder

  Russell sidled up to her, his head down. "Cheryl," he said softly, "Hammond Aerospace has cash reserves of almost four billion dollars. I just read it in your notebook over there."

  "But those funds are tied up, impossible to access-"

  "You know what it said, Cheryl? Said 'cash and marketable securities.' I'm no money guy, Cheryl, but doesn't that mean it's liquid?"

  "Look," said Ron Slattery, turning around to look at Russell, "even if we could somehow access that kind of money, how the hell do you think you're going to get it? Cash, unmarked bills, all that?" His slash of a mouth twisted into a sneer. "I don't even know where the nearest bank is."

  "Turn around, Ron," Russell said.

  Slattery wheeled around quickly.

  "Now, you see, Ron, you're talking down to me, and I don't like that. Obviously I'm not talking about stacks of bills. I'm talking about a couple of keystrokes on the computer. Click click click. Electronic funds transfers and all that. Takes a few seconds. I do know a thing or two."

  "Not as much as you seem to think you do," Slattery said.

  Russell gave a sly smile.

  "We have controls in place," Slattery said. "Security codes and PIN numbers and callback arrangements. Things you can't even begin to imagine."

  "Thing is, I don't need to imagine it, Ron. I've got you right here to explain it all to me."

  "And which account do you imagine this hundred million dollars would go into? Your checking account? Or your savings account? Do you have any idea how fast you'll have the FBI up your ass?"

  "What I hear, the government doesn't do so good with offshore banks, Ron."

  Slattery was quiet for a few seconds. "You have an offshore account," he said. A statement, not a question.

  "Anything can be arranged," Russell said. "If you know the right people."

  "Please." Slattery smiled. "Setting up an offshore account is a complicated legal process that can take days, if not weeks. And it's certainly not something you can do from here."

  "Ronny, you ever heard of something called the Internet?"

  Slattery's smile began to fade.

  "These days, Ronny, all you need's a laptop. There's websites out there that wanna sell you ready-made shell companies, incorporated in the Seychelles and Mauritius, places like that. Couple hundred bucks. You pay an extra fee, you can get the whole thing done in a day." He shook his head. "You mean I know more about this stuff than a professional money guy like you?"

  "Well, be that as it may," Slattery said, "it's all theoretical anyway. We don't have the authority to move money like that."

  "You don't?" Russell took a folded piece of paper from a pocket in his vest and held it up. "Says here you folks are the 'Executive Management Team' of Hammond Aerospace. CEO, CFO, Treasurer, Controller, blah-blah-blah. All the top guys in the company. You're all here. You telling me you guys-and gal, excuse me-don't have the 'authority' to transfer corporate funds? I don't buy it."

  Slattery shook his head. His bald pate had begun to flush.

  "Russell." It was Upton Barlow.

  Russell turned. "Yes, Upton?"

  "What you're really asking for is ransom, isn't that right?"

  "Ransom? I don't know whether I'd call it that, Upton. I'm just looking to make a business deal here. Call it a transaction."

  "Well, call it ransom," said Barlow, "and all you've got to do is call our headquarters in Los Angeles and make a demand. We have kidnap-and-ransom insurance. The company will have no choice but to pay you the money, then you can be on your way, simple as that. Everybody wins. Except maybe Lloyds of London."

  Ali and I exchanged glances again. She seemed to be as astonished as me that one of our own would actually suggest a ransom. But then, as I knew well, fear could do strange things to people.

  "Well, Upton, I do appreciate the suggestion," Russell said pensively, as if he were a fellow executive helping to hash out the details of some complicated marketing strategy. "But kidnap-for-ransom, as I see it, is for amateurs. Or banditos in Mexico or Colombia. That might work in some foreign country where you've got the cops in on it with you, taking a piece of the action. But it never works here."

  "But the difference is, we want to cooperate with you," Barlow said.

  What an idiot, I thought.

  Ali rolled her eyes.

  "Sorry, Upton, but I won't play that game," he said. "I don't really feel like having this beautiful old fishing lodge turned into-what was it?-Waco or Ruby Ridge. You think I want me and my buddies trapped in here with SWAT teams all around, shouting at us through megaphones, using us for sniper practice, helicopters circling and all that? Uh-uh. No way, Josй. That's for idiots, Upton, and I'm not an idiot."

  Barlow seemed momentarily stymied.

  "No need for all that drama," Russell went on. "Not when we got all the players here who can make our little deal happen."

  "I told you, we can't do that!" Cheryl said.

  "Now, see, Cheryl, I'm not talking to you. You and Ronald, you seem to be the naysayers around here." He raised his voice, addressing all of us at once. "Okay, kiddies, here's the deal. I'm gonna make a call to an old buddy of mine-a guy who knows how all this stuff works. Meanwhile, Upton, why don't you and your Executive Management Team have a little powwow. A little…offsite, right? Figure out how you guys are gonna get me that money. Hey, Buck, do you think you guys can clear your schedule for a couple of days?"

  "Shee-et, I dunno, I'm a busy guy," Buck said. He was using his redneck Deliverance accent again. It must have been some inside joke among the hunters, or whatever they were. "Hain't even finished worming the hogs."

  "Want something done, ask a busy man to do it," Russell said. "So why don't you and Wayne check your Filofaxes and see if you can block out a little time for me, could you, please?"

  Buck cackled. "Soon's I finish cooking the roadkill beef jerky, boss."

  "When you're done searching everybody, I want you to tie 'em all up at the wrists. Hands in front of 'em so they can use the john if they have to." He took out his walkie-talkie and pressed the transmit button. "Verne, you and Travis bring the staff in here, please."

  "Roger," a voice said.

  "There's no need to tie anybody up," Cheryl said. "Honestly-where the hell do you think we're going to go?"

  "Well, Cheryl," said Russell, "you sound very reasonable, the way I'd expect a CEO to sound. But you folks might be here a little while, see, and I never like to take chances." He had the pleasant, confident voice of an airline pilot announcing that we'd just encountered a little "heavy weather" and telling us not to worry about it. "All right, boys and girls, my buddies here will take good care of you. By the time I get back, I'm hoping and expecting we'll all be ready to rock 'n' roll." He smiled and nodded. "Gonna be a kinda carrot-and-stick approach, whatever you want to call it. You cooperate, we do our deal, and me and my buddies pack up and move on."

  "What's the stick?" asked Slattery.

  "You," said Russell. "We'll start with you. Thanks for volunteering." He was talking to all of us now, his eyes hooded, nonchalant. "You folks give me any problems, I'm going to kill my little friend Ronald. Call it a penalty for nonperformance, isn't that what you guys say? So I'm hoping you guys do some real creative thinking, okay?"

  Slattery went pale as Russell stowed his walkie-talkie, then gazed around the immense room for a few seconds. "I want everyone on the floor where we can see 'em," he ordered his men.

  "What do you want us to tie 'em up with?" said Buck.

  "Jesus." Russell shook his head. "They're supposed to be doing something called 'ropes courses' tomorrow, whatever the hell that is. Just a wild guess, here, but I'm thinking it might involve rope, Bucky, what do you think?"

  Buck gave Russell a look of irritation.

  "Well, there you go," Russell said, pointing at the big wooden reel of climbing rope that Bo Lampack had held up at dinner. "And listen, Buck. Pay careful attention to that young guy." He jabbed a thumb in my direction. "
I get a bad feeling about him."

  29

  Watch out for this guy, Glover," the guard said, smiling.

  My first day at the Glenview Residential Center. Juvie. My home for the next eighteen months.

  "Yeah, I see what you mean," said the second guard. "Better warn Estevez. He's gonna shit in his pants."

  Their laughter rang in the cinder-block hallway. The first one said something in a low voice to the second, something I didn't catch. Handed him a clipboard with forms on it. The intake forms I'd had to sign at the bottom of every page.

  I looked around, dazed. But watchful: Everything here looked strange, yet familiar. The walls painted a sickly institutional green, the ancient linoleum tiles on the floor, black squares alternating with white, scratched and grooved yet waxed and buffed to a high sheen.

  Floor's probably polished by the kids, I thought. The other prisoners.

  That sharp, high smell of pine disinfectant everywhere, which would forever summon a cataract of bad memories.

  The first guard-I never caught his name-had brought me over from the main administration building, a beautiful redbrick Georgian manor house. With its rolling, manicured two-hundred-acre campus, the place could have been some New England college, or at least as I imagined a college would look.

  Except for the discreet sign on the lawn: GLENVIEW RESIDENTIAL CENTER. And the chain-link fence topped by concertina wire. And the guard towers.

  I'd been fingerprinted, stripped naked, made to sit on a bench for an hour. Pictures were taken. They sheared off my long hair, gave me a buzz cut. I was issued a set of prison clothes: khaki pants with an elastic waistband, red T-shirt, dark blue sneakers. Everything had my name already stenciled on it. They'd been expecting me.

  Glover, the chief guard of D Unit, was a burly blond guy around forty, pale as an albino, white eyelashes. And, I was convinced, bourbon on his breath.

  He said only, "Tough guy," and escorted me to the dayroom to meet the other kids.

  They stared as I entered. My age, but not my size. Most of them were bigger, tougher-looking: kids sent up from the boroughs of New York City, gangbangers with gang tattoos.

  I looked away, scared shitless.

  First mistake, I soon learned. Inside juvie, someone stares at you, and you fail to meet his eyes, they assume you're weak, scared, an easy mark.

  Glover took me to my room. In the hall on the way a kid about twice my size "accidentally" bumped into me.

  I said, "Hey," and stiff-armed him.

  The kid smashed a fist into my face. I tasted blood, fell over backwards, cracked my head on the floor. The kid kicked me in the stomach.

  Glover stood, watching. Other kids began to gather, laughing excitedly, cheering like spectators at a prizefight.

  The kid kicked me in the head. I tried to shield my face with my arms. Desperately looked at Glover, expecting him to stop the assault. He was smiling, his arms folded across his big gut.

  I tried getting up to fight back, but the big kid kept kicking and punching until I could barely see: Blood trickled into my eyes.

  "Okay, Estevez," Glover finally said. "I think that'll do it."

  The other kids complained but began clearing out. Glover watched me struggle to my feet. "That's Estevez," he explained, matter-of-fact. The walls swam around me. "He's the captain of D Unit."

  He led me down the hall to my room. "Welcome," he said.

  The steel door clanged behind him as he left.

  30

  The manager, Paul, and his son, Ryan, were the first to enter the great room. Both of them were grim-faced. Paul's face was bruised, and he was limping. The reading glasses around his neck were bent, the lenses shattered. He must have put up a struggle. His lodge: He felt protective. Behind him followed the rest of the hotel's staff-the waiters who'd served us dinner, a pudgy guy with a mustache and glasses I recognized as the handyman, the two Bulgarian girls who did the cleaning, a few others who I assumed were kitchen staff. Then Bo Lampack, a long red welt across his forehead and right cheek.

  Behind them came two men with guns. One was like a younger version of Russell, only not as tall and with a weight lifter's build. Prison muscles, I thought. Instead of Russell's long hair, his head was shaved. Had to be his brother. He was in his mid-twenties, with intense greenish eyes. His face was soft, almost feminine, but that delicacy was counteracted by a fierce scowl. The edges of what appeared to be an immense tattoo peeked out of the crew-neck collar of his shirt and ran a few inches up his neck.

  The other, probably fifteen years older, was scrawny and mangy-looking, with dirt-colored hair that stuck up everywhere on his head. His face was pitted with pockmarks and cross-hatched with scars that were particularly dense below his left eye, which was glass. Under his good, right eye, three teardrops were tattooed. That was prison code, I knew, meaning that he'd killed three fellow inmates while he was inside. His glass eye told me he'd also lost a fight or two.

  Hugo Lummis saw the two scary-looking guys. He slowly removed the watch from his pocket and placed it on the table.

  Russell briefed the two of them. The young guy he called Travis; the older jailbird was Verne. Then, taking a compact satellite phone from a black nylon sling, he went out the front door.

  Verne, the one-eyed man, took turns with the hunters I now knew as Wayne and Buck cutting lengths of rope, frisking and tying people up, then moving them one by one over to the wall on either side of the immense stone fireplace.

  "Palms together like you're praying," Verne ordered Cheryl. He wrapped a six-foot piece of rope several times around her wrists.

  She winced. "That's way too tight."

  But Verne kept going. He moved with quick, jerky motions, blinked a lot. He seemed to be on speed or something.

  Even before Verne got to me, I could smell him. He gave off a nasty funk of alcohol and cigarettes and bad hygiene. I gave him a blank look, neither friendly nor confrontational.

  He gave an alligator smile. His teeth were grayish brown, with tiny black flecks. Meth mouth, I realized. The guy was a tweaker, a methamphetamine addict. "Much rather be frisking that babe down the end," he said as he set to work patting me down. He didn't seem to be a professional, but he knew what he was doing.

  I said nothing.

  "Save the best for last," he said to Buck, and they both leered at Ali.

  The steak knife I'd concealed in my shoe had become uncomfortable, even a little painful. I wondered whether there was a visible lump in the shoe leather, but I didn't dare look down and draw his attention to it.

  On the one hand, I was relieved that I hadn't left the knife in my pocket, where Verne would have found it right away. But now I wished it were someplace I could get to more easily. As Verne's hands ran down my chest and back, I held my breath so I didn't heave from the smell. My eyes scanned the dining table. The closest steak knife was in front of Cheryl, just a few feet away, but as soon as I made a grab for it, Buck-standing behind me with his revolver at the ready-would kill me. He wouldn't hesitate.

  And even if I managed to grab the knife and use it on him, it was still only a knife. A knife at a gunfight, as the old saying goes.

  Verne felt each of my pockets and seemed satisfied that they were empty. I didn't have a choice but to let him tie me up.

  Now his hands moved down my pant legs, down to my feet.

  I held my breath.

  All he had to do was to slip his fingers into the tops of my shoes, and he'd discover the knife handle.

  And then, if Russell's threat was serious, Buck would shoot. I didn't feel like finding out if Russell meant it.

  What had I been thinking?

  Once my hands were tied, the knife wouldn't do me any good. It was useless to me. I'd risked my life for nothing.

  Verne's hands grasped my ankles. I looked down. His fingernails were dirty.

  I tensed. A few drops of sweat trickled down my neck, coursed down my back, under my shirt.

  "See that guy over t
here?" I said.

  "Huh?" He looked up at me. "Don't try anything."

  "The silver-haired guy with the bloody face. He needs to be taken care of."

  He sliced a long piece of rope into smaller sections, using a serious-looking tactical knife. "I look like a doctor to you?"

  "You guys don't want to lose him. Then you'll be facing a manslaughter charge on top of everything else."

  He shrugged.

  "I know first aid," I said. "Let me take a look at him before you tie me up."

  "Uh-uh."

  "Your friend Buck has a gun pointed at me. I don't have a weapon, and I'm not stupid."

  "Let him," Buck said. "I'll keep watch."

  "Thank you," I said.

  Bodine was sitting with his legs folded. His face was battered and swollen. He looked up at me, humiliated and angry, like a whipped dog. I sat down on the floor next to him. "How're you feeling?" I said.

  He didn't look at me. "You don't want to know."

  "Mind if I take a look?"

  "Lost a couple of teeth," he said, pushing out his lower lip with his tongue. I gingerly felt his face, under his eyes. He winced. "Jesus, Landry, watch it."

  "You might have a broken cheekbone," I said. "Maybe a fracture."

  "Yeah? So what am I going to do about it now?" he said bitterly.

  "Take some Tylenol. Or whatever pain meds we have."

  "Not going to happen with these assholes," he said quietly.

  "We can try. You think your nose might be broken?"

  "Feels like it."

  "If we can get some Kleenex or some toilet paper, you should stuff some up your nose. Just to stop the blood flow."

  He didn't say anything.

  "You got a headache?"

  "Wicked."

  "What about your vision?"

  "What about it?"

  "You seeing double?"

  "How'd you know?"

  "That means he might have fractured the-I forget what it's called, the bone around the eye. The orbit, I think. Anyway, your vision should go back to normal in a day or so. You're going to be okay, but we've got to get you medical attention."