Tripwire

by Child, Lee

  “OK,” she said. “You’ll pick me up here, about seven o’clock?”

  “That late?”

  “I’m starting late,” she said. “I’ll have to finish late.”

  “Don’t leave the building, OK?”

  He got out on the sidewalk and watched her all the way inside. There was a broad paved area in front of the building. She skipped across it, bare legs flashing and dancing under the dress. She turned and smiled and waved. Pushed sideways through the revolving door, swinging her heavy case. It was a tall building, maybe sixty stories. Probably dozens of suites rented to dozens of separate firms, maybe hundreds. But the situation looked like it might be safe enough. There was a wide reception counter immediately inside the revolving door. A line of security guys sitting behind it, and behind them was a solid glass screen, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, with one opening in it, operated by a buzzer under their counter. Behind the screen were the elevators. No way in, unless the security guys saw fit to let you in. He nodded to himself. It might be safe enough. Maybe. It would depend on the diligence of the doormen. He saw her talking to one of them, head bent, blond hair falling forward. Then she was walking to the door in the screen, waiting, pushing it. She went through to the elevators. Hit a button. A door slid open. She backed in, levering her case over the threshold with both hands. The door slid shut.

  He waited out on the paved area for a minute. Then he hurried across and shouldered in through the revolving door. Strode over to the counter like he did it every day of his life. Picked on the oldest security guy. The oldest ones are usually the most sloppy. The younger ones still entertain hopes of advancement.

  “They want me up at Spencer Gutman,” he said, looking at his watch.

  “Name?” the old guy asked.

  “Lincoln,” Reacher said.

  The guy was grizzled and tired, but he did what he was supposed to do. He picked a clipboard out of a slot and studied it.

  “You got an appointment?”

  “They just paged me,” Reacher said. “Some kind of a big hurry, I guess.”

  “Lincoln, like the car?”

  “Like the president,” Reacher said.

  The old guy nodded and ran a thick finger down a long list of names.

  “You’re not on the list,” he said. “I can’t let you in, without your name on the list.”

  “I work for Costello,” Reacher said. “They need me upstairs, like right now.”

  “I could call them,” the guy said. “Who paged you?”

  Reacher shrugged. “Mr. Spencer, I guess. He’s who I usually see.”

  The guy looked offended. Placed the clipboard back in its slot.

  “Mr. Spencer died ten years ago,” he said. “You want to come in, you get yourself a proper appointment, OK?”

  Reacher nodded. The place was safe enough. He turned on his heel and headed back to the car.

  MARILYN STONE WAITED until Chester’s Mercedes was out of sight and then she ran back to the house and got to work. She was a serious woman, and she knew a possible six-week gap between listing and closing was going to need some serious input.

  Her first call was to the cleaning service. The house was already perfectly clean, but she was going to move some furniture out. She took the view that presenting a house slightly empty of furniture created an impression of spaciousness. It made it seem even larger than it was. And it avoided trapping a potential buyer into preconceptions about what would look good, and what wouldn’t. For instance, the Italian credenza in the hallway was the perfect piece for that hallway, but she didn’t want a potential buyer to think the hallway wouldn’t work any other way. Better to just have nothing there, and let the buyer’s imagination fill the gap, maybe with a piece she already had.

  So if she was going to move furniture out, she needed the cleaning service to attend to the spaces left behind. A slight lack of furniture created a spacious look, but obvious gaps created a sad look. So she called them, and she called the moving and storage people, too, because she was going to have to put the displaced stuff somewhere. Then she called the pool service, and the gardeners. She wanted them there every morning until further notice, for an hour’s work every day. She needed the yard looking absolutely at its best. Even at this end of the market, she knew curb appeal was king.

  Then she tried to remember other stuff she’d read, or things people had told her about. Flowers, of course, in vases, all over the place. She called the florist. She remembered somebody saying saucers of window cleaner neutralized all the little stray smells any house generates. Something to do with the ammonia. She remembered reading that putting a handful of coffee beans in a hot oven made a wonderful welcoming smell. So she put a new packet in her utensil drawer, ready. She figured if she put some in the oven each time Sheryl called to say she was on her way over with clients, that would be timing it about right, in terms of aroma.

  8

  CHESTER STONE’S DAY started out in the normal way. He drove to work at the usual time. The Benz was as soothing as ever. The sun was shining, as it should be in June. The drive into the city was normal. Normal traffic, no more, no less. The usual rose vendors and paper sellers in the toll plazas. The slackening congestion down the length of Manhattan, proving he’d timed it just right, as he usually did. He parked in his normal leased slot under his building and rode the elevator up to his offices. Then his day stopped being normal.

  The place was deserted. It was as if his company had vanished overnight. The staff had all disappeared, instinctively, like rats from a sinking ship. A single phone was trilling on a distant desk. Nobody was sitting there to answer it. The computers were all turned off. The monitor screens were dull gray squares, reflecting the strip lights in the ceiling. His own inner office was always quiet, but now there was a strange hush lying over it. He walked in and heard a sound like a tomb.

  “I’m Chester Stone,” he said into the silence.

  He said it just to be making some noise in the place, but it came out like a croak. There was no echo, because the thick carpeting and the fiberboard walls soaked up the sound like a sponge. His voice just disappeared in the void.

  “Shit,” he said.

  He was angry. Mostly with his secretary. She had been with him a long time. She was the sort of employee he expected to stand up and be loyal, with a shy hand on his shoulder, a gleam in her eye, a promise to stay and beat the odds whatever the hell they were. But she’d done the same thing as all the others. She’d heard the rumors coming out of the finance department, the company was bust, the paychecks would bounce, and she’d dumped some old files out of a carton and boxed up the photos of her damn nephews in their cheap brass frames and her ratty old spider plant from her desk and her junk from her drawers and carried it all home on the subway to her neat little apartment, wherever the hell that was. Her neat little apartment, decorated and furnished with his paychecks from when the times were good. She would be sitting there now, in her bathrobe, drinking coffee slowly, an unexpected morning off, never to return to him, maybe leafing through the vacancies in the back of the newspaper, choosing her next port of call.

  “Shit,” he said again.

  He turned on his heel and barged out through the secretarial pen and back out all the way to the elevator. Rode down to the street and strode out into the sun. Turned west and set out walking fast, in a fury, with his heart thumping. The enormous glittering bulk of the Twin Towers loomed over him. He hurried across the plaza and inside to the elevators. He was sweating. The chill of the lobby air struck through his jacket. He rode the express up to eighty-eight. Stepped out and walked through the narrow corridor and into Hobie’s brass-and-oak lobby for the second time in twenty-four hours.

  The male receptionist was sitting behind his counter. On the other side of the lobby a thickset man in an expensive suit was coming out of a small kitchen, carrying two mugs in one hand. Stone could smell coffee. He could see steam rising and brown froth swirling in the mugs. He glanced betwe
en the two men.

  “I want to see Hobie,” he said.

  They ignored him. The thickset man walked over to the counter and set one of the mugs in front of the receptionist. Then he walked back behind Stone and put himself nearer the lobby door than Stone was. The receptionist leaned forward and rotated the coffee mug, carefully adjusting the angle of the handle until it was presented comfortably to his grasp.

  “I want to see Hobie,” Stone said again, looking straight ahead.

  “My name is Tony,” the receptionist said to him.

  Stone just turned and stared at him, blankly. The guy had a red mark on his forehead, like a fresh bruise. The hair on his temple was newly combed but wet, like he’d pressed a cold cloth to his head.

  “I want to see Hobie,” Stone said for the third time.

  “Mr. Hobie’s not in the office today,” Tony said. “I’ll be dealing with your affairs for the time being. We have matters to discuss, don’t we?”

  “Yes, we do,” Stone said.

  “So shall we go inside?” Tony said, and stood up.

  He nodded to the other guy, who slid around the counter and took up position in the chair. Tony came out and stepped across to the inner door. Held it open and Stone walked through into the same gloom as the day before. The blinds were still closed. Tony padded ahead through the dark to the desk. He walked around it and sat down in Hobie’s chair. The sprung base creaked once in the silence. Stone followed after him. Then he stopped and glanced left and right, wondering where he should sit.

  “You’ll remain standing,” Tony said to him.

  “What?” Stone said back.

  “You’ll remain standing for the duration of the interview.”

  “What?” Stone said again, astonished.

  “Right in front of the desk.”

  Stone just stood there, his mouth clamped shut.

  “Arms by your sides,” Tony said. “Stand straight and don’t slump.”

  He said it calmly, quietly, in a matter-of-fact voice, not moving at all. Then there was silence. Just faint background noises booming elsewhere in the building, and thumping in Stone’s chest. His eyes were adjusting to the gloom. He could see the score marks on the desktop from Hobie’s hook. They made an angry tracery, deep in the wood. The silence was unsettling him. He had absolutely no idea how to react to this. He glanced at the sofa to his left. It was humiliating to stand. Doubly so, when told to by a damn receptionist. He glanced at the sofa to his right. He knew he should fight back. He should just go ahead and sit down on one of the sofas. Just step left or right and sit down. Ignore the guy. Just do it. Just sit down, and show the guy who was boss. Like hitting a winning return or trumping an ace. Sit down, for God’s sake, he told himself. But his legs would not move. It was like he was paralyzed. He stood still, a yard in front of the desk, rigid with outrage and humiliation. And fear.

  “You’re wearing Mr. Hobie’s jacket,” Tony said. “Would you take it off, please?”

  Stone stared at him. Then he glanced down at his jacket. It was his Savile Row. He realized that for the first time in his life, he’d accidentally worn the same thing two days running.

  “This is my jacket,” he said.

  “No, it’s Mr. Hobie’s.”

  Stone shook his head. “I bought it in London. It’s definitely my jacket.”

  Tony smiled in the dark.

  “You don’t understand, do you?” he said.

  “Understand what?” Stone said, blankly.

  “That Mr. Hobie owns you now. You’re his. And everything you have is his.”

  Stone stared at him. There was silence in the room. Just the faint background noises from the building and the thumping in Stone’s chest.

  “So take Mr. Hobie’s jacket off,” Tony said, quietly.

  Stone was just staring at him, his mouth opening and closing, no sound coming out of it.

  “Take it off,” Tony said. “It’s not your property. You shouldn’t be standing there wearing another man’s jacket.”

  His voice was quiet, but there was menace in it. Stone’s face was rigid with shock, but then suddenly his arms were starting to move, like they were outside of his conscious control. He struggled off with the jacket and held it out by the collar, like he was in the menswear department, handing back a garment he’d tried and hadn’t liked.

  “On the desk, please,” Tony said.

  Stone laid the jacket flat on the desk. He straightened it and felt the fine wool snagging over the rough surface. Tony pulled it closer and went into the pockets, one after the other. He assembled the contents in a small pile in front of him. Balled up the jacket and tossed it casually over the desk onto the left-hand sofa.

  He picked up the Mont Blanc fountain pen. Made an appreciative little shape with his mouth and slipped it into his own pocket. Then he picked up the bunch of keys. Fanned them on the desktop and picked through them, one at a time. Selected the car key, and held it up between his finger and thumb.

  “Mercedes?”

  Stone nodded, blankly.

  “Model?”

  “500SEL,” Stone muttered.

  “New?”

  Stone shrugged. “A year old.”

  “Color?”

  “Dark blue.”

  “Where?”

  “At my office,” Stone muttered. “In the lot.”

  “We’ll pick it up later,” Tony said.

  He opened a drawer and dropped the keys into it. Pushed the drawer shut and turned his attention to the wallet. He held it upside down and shook it and raked the contents out with his finger. When it was empty, he tossed it under the desk. Stone heard it clang into a trash can. Tony glanced once at the picture of Marilyn and pitched it after the wallet. Stone heard a fainter clang as the stiff photographic paper hit the metal. Tony stacked the credit cards with three fingers and slid them to one side like a croupier.

  “Guy we know will give us a hundred bucks for these,” he said.

  Then he riffed the paper money together and sorted it by denomination. Counted it up and clipped it together with a paper clip. Dropped it into the same drawer as the keys.

  “What do you guys want?” Stone asked.

  Tony looked up at him. “I want you to take Mr. Hobie’s tie off,” he said.

  Stone shrugged, helplessly.

  “No, seriously, what do you guys want from me?”

  “Seventeen-point-one million dollars. That’s what you owe us.”

  Stone nodded. “I know. I’ll pay you.”

  “When?” Tony asked.

  “Well, I’ll need a little time,” Stone said.

  Tony nodded. “OK, you’ve got an hour.”

  Stone stared at him. “No, I need more than an hour.”

  “An hour is all you’ve got.”

  “I can’t do it in an hour.”

  “I know you can’t,” Tony said. “You can’t do it in an hour, or a day, or a week, or a month, or a year, because you’re a useless piece of shit who couldn’t manage his way out of a wet grocery sack, aren’t you?”

  “What?”

  “You’re a disgrace, Stone. You took a business your grandfather slaved over and your father built bigger and you flushed it all straight down the toilet, because you’re totally stupid, aren’t you?”

  Stone shrugged, blankly. Then he swallowed.

  “OK, so I took some hits,” he said. “But what could I do?”

  “Take the tie off,” Tony screamed at him.

  Stone jumped and flung his hands up. Struggled with the knot.

  “Get it off, you piece of shit,” Tony screamed.

  He tore it off. Dropped it on the desk. It lay there in a tangle.

  “Thank you, Mr. Stone,” Tony said quietly.

  “What do you guys want?” Stone whispered.

  Tony opened a different drawer and came out with a handwritten sheet of paper. It was yellow and filled with a dense untidy scrawl. Some kind of a list, with figures totaled at the bottom of the page.<
br />
  “We own thirty-nine percent of your corporation,” he said. “As of this morning. What we want is another twelve percent.”

  Stone stared at him. Did the math in his head. “A controlling interest?”

  “Exactly,” Tony said. “We hold thirty-nine percent, another twelve gives us fifty-one, which would indeed represent a controlling interest.”

  Stone swallowed again and shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “No, I won’t do that.”

  “OK, then we want seventeen-point-one million dollars within the hour.”

  Stone just stood there, glancing wildly left and right. The door opened behind him and the thickset man in the expensive suit came in and padded soundlessly across the carpet and stood with his arms folded, behind Tony’s left shoulder.

  “The watch, please,” Tony said.

  Stone glanced at his left wrist. It was a Rolex. It looked like steel, but it was platinum. He had bought it in Geneva. He unlatched it and handed it over. Tony nodded and dropped it in another drawer.

  “Now take Mr. Hobie’s shirt off.”

  “You can’t make me give you more stock,” Stone said.

  “I think we can. Take the shirt off, OK?”

  “Look, I won’t be intimidated,” Stone said, as confidently as he could.

  “You’re already intimidated,” Tony said back. “Aren’t you? You’re about to make a mess in Mr. Hobie’s pants. Which would be a bad mistake, by the way, because we’d only make you clean them up.”

  Stone said nothing. Just stared at a spot in the air between the two men.

  “Twelve percent of the equity,” Tony said gently. “Why not? It’s not worth anything. And you’d still have forty-nine percentleft.”

  “I need to speak with my lawyers,” Stone said.

  “OK, go ahead.”

  Stone looked around the room, desperately. “Where’s the phone?”

  “There’s no phone in here,” Tony said. “Mr. Hobie doesn’t like phones.”

  “So how?”

  “Shout,” Tony said. “Shout real loud, and maybe your lawyers will hear you.”