The Accident

by Chris Pavone

  “Trey Freeley. So nice of you to take my call.”

  The lawyer chuckles. Both men know that Freeley is more than happy to field a brief call and charge a hundred dollars for it.

  “Listen, Trey, one of my editors has a submission that might be tricky, legally.”

  “Mm-hmmmmm.” Freeley’s drawl seems most pronounced when what’s coming out of his mouth aren’t actual words; he moans and grumbles with a thick accent. “What seems to be the problem?” As if he’s a physician.

  “Well, the project is an unauthorized biography of Charlie Wolfe. It includes some pretty explosive revelations. Or, rather, allegations, I guess is more accurate.”

  “I see.” Long pause. “And who wrote this?”

  “It’s anonymous.”

  Freeley is silent for another beat. “Who’s the literary agent?”

  “It’s a woman named Isabel Reed.”

  Freeley doesn’t respond.

  “She’s with Atlantic Talent Management,” Brad continues. “You know her?”

  “Yes.” The lawyer sounds suspicious, or angry, or something not quite right. Freeley is not a monosyllabic type of guy. “If you don’t mind me askin’, McNally, which one of your editors received this?”

  Brad is too mired in his own worries to wonder why the hell the lawyer would ask. “Jeff Fielder got the submission.”

  “Mmmm.” Brad can hear the heavy man’s labored breathing on the other end of the line. “Listen, McNally, we should talk in person. I can come up to New York later.”

  Brad’s first, brief instinct is to worry about the cost of such a trip, but then he realizes that if the lawyer is willing to hop on Acela at a moment’s notice, the billable hours are the least of his problems.

  “Could we grab a drink?”

  Brad stands at the unfamiliar machine, a relatively new expenditure that he doesn’t remember approving. He stares at the little gray screen, considering his options, wondering whether he needs to actively choose anything here, or if he can forge ahead unthinking. He tries it, simply puts the stack of paper into the feeder tray, hits the giant green button, the one screaming “Push me!” The thing starts operating as it should, duplicating pages. Thank God. He can avoid the humiliation of asking someone to show him how to use the photocopier.

  He walks away from the cluster of grand rooms that formed the original offices of McNally Publishing at its founding, before any Sons were involved. Nearly a century later, and Brad knows he’ll have to sell the company to whoever will be crazy enough to buy. His father also knows it, sitting on his veranda on the Vineyard, trying to enjoy the twilight of his life. Though neither has explicitly admitted it to the other, each knows that the other knows.

  But if he’s going to have to sell this venerable firm, first he’s going to try to do some good in this world, using the position he still has, however temporarily.

  He walks down the hall and around a corner, then steps down into what he thinks of as the new wing, even though it’s now twenty years old. The farthest reaches of the new wing is known as the Lost Corridor, a long warren of cubbyholes and makeshift workspaces and supply closets and restrooms and the fireproofed vaulted rooms that are jammed with FireKing file cabinets that hold artwork, contracts, and other irreplaceable pieces of paper or film.

  The Lost Corridor is where Chester Dumont and his people toil: the copy editors, proofreaders, fact-checkers, indexers, and production editors who collectively read and revise the tens of millions of words per year that are turned into the McNally & Sons’ 150 books. At the very end of the corridor, past a large pool of freelance stations, is Chester’s office. Every square foot of wall space is lined with floor-to-ceiling steel storage, twelve-inch-deep sagging shelves packed with stacks of in-process books, as well as a comprehensive collection of reference materials. Off to the side of his desk is a podium-style stand for Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary; beneath are the 1961 Third Edition and the 1934 Second. Chester is leaning over this massive volume, peering at the gossamer-thin paper through half-moon glasses that sit low on his substantial nose, when he hears a polite rap on his open door.

  “One moment, please,” he says reflexively, without looking up, finishing his tiny task of research. Then, satisfied with his new understanding of the rhombicosidodecahedron, he turns to the door, and sees Bradford. Chester is pretty sure that the publisher has never before visited his office. And Chester has been with McNally & Sons for thirty years.

  “Mr. McNally,” he says, “what a surprise.” Chester’s habit, which he realizes everybody thinks is pretentious, is to use formality. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  The publisher is standing in the doorway, seemingly unsure of whether to enter. As always, Bradford is wearing a suit, this one a chalk-striped charcoal affair that looks like flannel, and a shirt in what’s called French blue with English-style club collar, and an embroidered navy-and-purple necktie knotted in a well-executed half-Windsor. Alan Flusser’s Style and the Man, Chester knows, is the most thorough reference on men’s attire.

  “Hi, Chester,” his boss’s boss says. “May I come in?”

  “Of course.” Chester walks around his gunmetal-gray desk. “Have a seat?”

  The publisher makes his way through the stacks of reference books and manuscripts that litter the floor. He sits in the soft leather Brno chair, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1929–30, a pair of the few surviving relics of the 1952 overhaul of the office furniture. The chunky illustrated book 1000 Chairs sits just over Chester’s right shoulder.

  “Look, Chester, I need a little fact-checking.” Brad taps the small stack of paper.

  “Very well, Mr. McNally. I’ll have one of the freelancers take care of this soonest.” He knows that Doris is about to finish proofing an astoundingly ahead-of-schedule novel. That work can be put aside for the day. Hell, that work can be put aside for four months. Chester starts leafing through the pages.

  “I’m sorry, Chester, but I need you to do this yourself. And I need it done today.”

  Chester glances at the man who signs his paycheck—eighty-two thousand dollars a year. Thank God he never moved out of his rent-controlled Turtle Bay hovel.

  “What is this?”

  “Part of a submission.”

  “And what is it you’d like me to check?”

  “Anything that can be verified.” The publisher rises. “By the end of the day, please.”

  Chester takes a long slow breath, and starts plotting out a reorganization of the rest of his day, now that this giant crater has been blown into the middle of it.

  “Oh, and Chester? This is strictly embargoed. Not a single word, to anyone.”

  CHAPTER 28

  The pavement changes at exit 66, the relatively new black surface giving way to the old gray, rougher, louder, a stronger vibration in the steering wheel of the brand-new Mercedes that they’d collected from the garage around the corner from Judy’s house. While they were waiting at the bottom of the ramp, Jeff noticed the rate list: $675 per month for a car, plus parking tax of 18.75 percent. Aka $800 a month. For a parking spot.

  “You know how to drive, right?” Isabel asked.

  “Yeah.”

  The shiny silver car came screeching around a corner, a wiry guy opening the driver’s door while the vehicle was still moving, stepping out smoothly, taking Isabel’s five-dollar tip with a quick “Thank you Miss,” scurrying back into the bowels to collect someone else’s hundred-thousand-dollar car, for minimum wage.

  “You drive,” she said. “I need some sleep.”

  Jeff sank into the soft leather, adjusted the mirrors and his seat, glanced around the dash. Then he pulled out tentatively into the thick snarl of a weekday traffic jam. A hundred yards ahead, a disheveled wild-haired man was standing in the center of an intersection, attempting to direct traffic with no authority whatsoever other than his will to be in charge of some little piece of the world, to preside over something, anything, however irrelevant.


  Jeff stole a glance at Isabel, collapsed in her seat, staring out the side window, apparently lost in thought. He wondered what her plan really was. He knew that she wasn’t telling him the whole truth.

  In a sudden burst of multi-vehicle movement, the car was sprung free of the jam, and Jeff accelerated through the intersection, then cruised across a comparatively empty street—“Take the next right, Jeffrey” and “Turn up there”—and then they were ascending a ramp onto the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge, climbing into the blue sky, on a single narrow lane that seemed to be cantilevered out over the river. This was the scariest roadway he’d ever driven, and it was already the scariest day of his life.

  “I really think we have to go to the police,” he said. He felt he needed to object, again, to their course of action.

  “No.”

  “Why?” He knew what her answer would be. And he didn’t even want the police. But he needed to go through the motions of the argument. “I’m terrified, Isabel.”

  “Mmm.” A sound of agreement, but not of commitment. “Jeffrey?” she asked, lowering the window. A warm wind flooded into the car. “May I have your phone?”

  Jeff doesn’t drive frequently—he has never in his life owned a car—so he was wildly uncomfortable at the wheel of this luxury car borrowed from a famous woman on this insanely narrow and shockingly exposed roadway high above the East River. So he reached into his pocket and handed the device to Isabel without looking at the phone, or her, keeping his eyes glued ahead. Which is why he didn’t exactly see the thing fly out the window; he was just vaguely aware of her arm motion.

  “Did you just throw my phone out the window?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because cell phones are homing devices. Even when they’re not bugged.”

  His stomach was in freefall, plummeting with the sinking SIM card on its way to the bottom of the East River, along with its irretrievable, irreplaceable data.

  “You could’ve just removed the battery,” he said sullenly.

  “Sorry.” She turned from the window, now closed again, to face Jeff. “It was just a phone, right?”

  Ninety minutes later, Jeff looks over at the passenger seat, at his companion, sleeping. Her hair has cascaded over the right side of her face, and her mouth is open, her jaw hanging a bit crooked. Her breathing is deep, her chest rising and falling with a slow, even rhythm.

  He nudges her upper arm. “Isabel”—quietly—“were here.”

  She doesn’t budge, doesn’t stir, doesn’t alter the rhythm of her breathing.

  He looks back at the road, sees the exit looming. The traffic had thinned over the length of the Long Island Expressway, from the urban blight in Queens—the housing complexes and cut-rate motels, the crumbling community centers and seedy shopping plazas—to the dense sub-urbanity of Nassau County, then the thinning throughout Suffolk, till the unpopulated stretch of the Pine Barrens, the turnoffs to the Hamptons, and finally the sign that Isabel had mentioned, before she fell asleep: EXPRESSWAY ENDS 4 MILES.

  “Hey, Isabel,” he says, less quietly. “We just passed the sign.”

  “Mmm.” She moves her mouth and shifts her weight, but doesn’t open her eyes.

  He rests his hand on her upper arm, soft and warm under the smooth blouse. He squeezes. “Isabel, wake up.”

  She opens her eyes, blinks. “What?” Confused.

  “We just passed the expressway-ends sign. A minute ago.”

  She rubs her eyes, licks her lips. This is a vision he wants to imprint on memory: the sight of the woman he loves, waking up.

  “At the bottom of the ramp, turn left,” she says. “There’s a gas station. Stop there.”

  Jeff pulls the car into the station, but stops short of the pumps.

  “What’s the problem?” she asks.

  He looks over at her. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Now? Fill up the tank.”

  Jeff looks at the dashboard. “But we don’t need gas.”

  Isabel unbuckles her seat belt. “Sure we do,” she says. “We just don’t need a lot of it.” She hands him a credit card, one of Judy’s that she was willing to lend—give—to her suddenly erratic literary agent. “I’m going to the restroom.”

  Jeff stands at the pump, barely remembering how this works. He inserts the nozzle, squeezes its trigger, stares at the reflection of himself in the rear window. His satchel is there behind the glass, in the backseat. But Isabel has taken her handbag to the bathroom.

  CHAPTER 29

  Hayden deplanes with his small duffel over his shoulder, puts on his sunglasses to shield against the bright glare of the summer-solstice sun reflected from the vast expanse of light-gray asphalt, the long row of hangars.

  A black SUV speeds through a gate in the chain-link fence that separates the airfield from the rest of the military base, and comes to a halt in front of him. The driver’s window lowers, and a young man turns to him, at first unfamiliar because of the wrap-around sunglasses, but then Hayden recognizes him. “Hello Tyler,” he says. Hayden had just met this guy a few months ago; he’s from the musclehead school. Not so much an agent as an enforcer, which is probably what’s needed here.

  “Hello Mr. Gray.”

  Hayden sees another youngish operative in the passenger seat.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Colby, sir.”

  “That your first name or last?”

  “Colby Manfield, sir.”

  Staffing here in the homeland was a delicate challenge. Hayden needed to secure a lot of bodies for all this surveillance, both electronic and physical, with techs and a mobile command unit in New York City, and teams of floaters on standby to keep track of other personnel tendrils—such as the publisher, or the lawyer in DC, and that poor girl this morning—who might present problems, not to mention possible players in other locations, such as Los Angeles, where that inconvenient sub-rights director is creating Lord knows what mischief. It was a lot of people Hayden needed on this operation, in a territory that’s not his own, on a mission that’s not exactly legal. Not remotely legal.

  In the end, the most efficacious thing had been for Hayden to sub out to private contractors for his stateside needs. After 9/11, the personnel landscape had changed dramatically, with paramilitary organizations proliferating, merging with one another, going out of business, renaming themselves, redefining their scopes of operations, obfuscating their ownership and mandates and recordkeeping. There are plenty of crew-cut guys looking for work in America, guys who pride themselves on their discretion, on the sacrosanct honor of sworn secrecy, on an unwavering conviction that the right to security outweighs the right to privacy, at least where other people are concerned. Or if not on any of these principles, on the much more straightforward consideration of cash.

  A boom era for mercenaries.

  And here’s the result, sitting in the front of the big black truck, into whose back Hayden hoists himself. He wonders what type of satisfactory explanation he’ll need to produce for these thugs. But he knows it doesn’t really matter, and he doesn’t need to tell them much. These guys will do simply what they’re told—that’s who they are, that’s what they’re for. And afterward Hayden will probably kill them.

  “Tell me what’s happening,” he says.

  The driver accelerates while the man in the passenger seat turns to look at his boss. “The agent and the editor have borrowed a car from Judy Thompson.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “A television personality, and book author, and who knows what else. They went to see Thompson at her East Side house. Reed admitted she was terrified and wanted someplace to hide; said that someone had murdered her assistant. So she asked for Thompson’s beach house, and her car, as well as cash and a credit card. They just used this plastic to buy gas along the route from New York City to that destination, which is in Amagansett. The Hamptons.”

  Hayden looks at his watch, trying to orient
himself to the change of time, change of continent. He’s on a military base in New Jersey, which is a very different place from where he woke up this morning. “How far of a drive for us?”

  “Too long. Three and a half hours. Maybe four. So we’re not driving.” The guy points ahead, at a helicopter in the distance. “There’s a base in Westhampton. Close enough.”

  “Good. What else?”

  “There’s that woman on her way to Los Angeles, the subsidiary-rights director.”

  “We have a team in position?”

  “Yes, waiting near the rental-car facility.”

  “And dare I ask?”

  “The plan is for a carjacking gone awry, on the stretch between the facility and the freeway. Two cars, one coming from either direction.”

  Hayden envisages the screeching tires, the ski masks, the tat-tat-tat of the 9-millimeters, the blood splattered across the front seat and the dashboard and the windows.

  He hates this. It’s one thing to kill a lone girl in New York City, by mistake. It’s another to start shooting up Los Angeles, on purpose. Opening fire on civilians in the United States of America. Hunting down innocent Americans to mete out their undeserved comeuppance to his unexpected corruption. What a fucking disaster.

  “Do you have the item?” he asks the front seat.

  “Yes sir.” The passenger-seat goon reaches down, retrieves a canvas bag, passes it over the back of the seat.

  Hayden pulls the stack of paper from the bag. The Accident. He knows immediately what the title refers to, and his stomach does a somersault. There goes any hope that this manuscript might be benign.

  His phone rings, a 202 number, Washington. “Hello.”

  “Good afternoon. This is Trey Freeley.”

  “Oh hello. How can I help you?”

  “Do you remember that matter we discussed? The manuscript.”

  “Of course.”

  “It has landed, with exactly the person I expected it would.”