by Chris Pavone
The engine strains against the ascent, a high-pitched whine. Stan can’t remember buying this vehicle, or okaying its purchase. He has no idea how much it may have cost. He doesn’t know whether it’s a high-end performance machine of some sort, or a barely functioning insipid toy.
The left side of the vehicle rises along a ridge in the path and then thuds into a boulder and then he can feel it tipping over, to the right, it’s on just two wheels for a half-second before the balance shifts and it’s going over, and Stan is falling out, hitting the hard-pack violently on his thigh and arm, and the ATV comes crashing down on his other side, and he’s pinned there, on a dark mountainside, with what feels like a broken leg and a broken elbow and a dislocated shoulder and a gash in his temple, while the big fat rubber wheels continue to spin and whir, a mockery of movement.
He almost can’t believe how bad this is, and then of course it gets worse.
CHAPTER 48
The author freezes, standing in the entrance to Vanessa’s apartment, the door still wide open to the dim, quiet corridor. This building feels like a business hotel, wall-to-wall charcoal carpets and nickelfinish sconces and uninspired nonrepresentational prints in black metal frames. And he feels like a burglar. Which, come to think of it, he is.
He glances from the pair of men’s shoes to the closed bathroom door. He thinks he can hear the shower running from within.
He turns around, looks behind him into the hall. Maybe he should just leave, wait for this man, this alternate recipient of Vanessa’s ministrations, to leave. The guy is showering, will probably be gone in ten minutes.
But maybe he can’t spare ten minutes. Armed enemies could be flooding the Bahnhof with personnel right this minute, not just guns-for-hire but also local Polizei, or perhaps Interpol agents, or for all he knows goddamned Green Berets, swarming the airport, erecting roadblocks …
His eyes dart around the apartment, flitting over surfaces, shelves, rugs, until his attention lands in the living room. He crosses the space quickly, his feet gliding across the parquet, to the credenza dominated by the flat-screen television next to the dancing green lights of a little black router. He picks up a tall glass candlestick, and yanks out the white taper, and lays the candle silently on the glossy veneer. He hefts the heavy stick in his palm. It’ll do.
The blinds are still drawn in the dark bedroom, the linens strewn around, clothing discarded at the foot of the bed. He picks up the suit jacket, a nice soft pinstriped wool, and glances at the label, size 52.
The shower still seems to be running. He hastily pulls on this other man’s pants, wrinkled white shirt, jacket. The pants are a bit short, but within an acceptable margin of error.
He and Vanessa had never had any conversation about an exclusive relationship; it wasn’t something he felt entitled to request, considering the essential dishonesty of everything about him. But he never realized just how non-exclusive it was.
He pushes down on the brushed-metal lever, releases the catch, opens the bathroom door. The shower is running in the tub behind the opaque curtain, one of those handheld models, the spray hitting the fabric briefly, billowing out, before being aimed somewhere else, more carefully.
He puts down the toilet seat and hops up on it. He reaches to the top of the medicine cabinet, fully extending the arm that’s not holding the candlestick, feeling under the lip of the front of the steel structure, until he finds it, the small screwdriver. He turns to face the wall, still standing on the toilet, and reaches the screwdriver up to the grate that covers the ventilation fan, the air duct. He removes one screw, spinning the tool quickly in his palm, pulling out the little steel cylinder, which slips out of his fingertips, and falls to the floor with a tiny little clank.
Shit. He freezes, staring over his shoulder at the shower curtain, the water still running, no change.
He returns his attention to the second screw, has trouble finding the groove, his nerves catching up with him as the head of the screwdriver slips out once, and again, and a shiver runs down his spine, and he spins around.
“Merde.”
The spigot is still running, a full stream aimed at the tiled wall, splattering. The naked man has pulled aside the curtain, standing there dripping, glaring, trying to figure out what action he should take, how serious this situation is. Sometimes people know when they’re about to die; sometimes they don’t.
“This was a kid” Dave said. “Practically a baby.”
Charlie nodded sympathetically. “And I couldn’t agree more that it was very, very unfortunate. I’m heartbroken too.”
“No. Not like me you’re not.”
“Maybe. But that’s understandable, isn’t it?”
Dave didn’t respond.
“Nevertheless,” Charlie continued, “it’s not like we made that happen.”
“We? There’s no we in this situation. And you did make it happen, Charlie.”
For a few seconds neither man said anything.
“What do you have in mind, Dave? What is it you think we ought to do? What do you want from me?”
“How long has this been going on?”
“What?”
“This … this setting people up.”
Charlie rolled his eyes, like a petulant teenager. “How do you think we’ve managed to get all those scoops, Dave? The exclusives? With a staff that’s a bunch of amateur stringers? But somehow—somehow—we’ve been beating the wire agencies and cable-news networks, the biggest newspapers, for fifteen years? How do you think that has happened? Luck? Skill? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Charlie held out his hands, inviting answers to his rhetorical questions. “You pretend you don’t know anything about the ugly business, Dave. But you do. I know you do. You just choose to ignore it. And you always have. But pretending to not know is not the same as doing something about it. And it’s not the same as not knowing. So get off your high horse, you sanctimonious bastard.”
“I quit.”
“Quit?” Charlie laughed. “You can’t quit. You think you’re a fucking cashier at a 7-Eleven? You’re the goddamned COO of a publicly traded company. You signed an ironclad contract.”
“So?”
“Not to mention a shitload of nondisclosure agreements. Plus you’ve been depositing an awful lot of money into your bank accounts. For a long, long time.”
The previous year had been the final year that Preston Wolfe had cut Dave a forty-thousand-dollar check, as agreed in the Ithaca hotel room twenty-five years earlier, in the middle of a long desperate night. It had once seemed like a lot of money. It had once seemed worth it, a million dollars, to stay silent.
“I own you, Dave. I’ve owned you for your whole life, and I will own you forever. And you better fucking remember it.”
Neither of them had taken a seat, staring at each other across the clean, uncluttered desk of a man who as a rule didn’t handle paper.
“And let’s remember, Dave, that you were the one who came after me.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Freshman year? You glommed on to me in the dorm. You rushed the same frat as me. You asked me to room with you.” He chuckled, a brief ugly noise. Charlie had been subjugating his haughty temper for decades, but sometimes it proved too potent, and bubbled up from below, setting fire to everything in its path. “You were even the one who suggested the dance club, that night. Am I right?”
Dave steeled his jaw.
“And I get that, Dave, I do. Poor Jewish kid from Brooklyn. A guy like me, I must’ve looked pretty damn appealing. To a guy like you.”
Dave struggled to not rise to this bait, staying silent, steaming.
Charlie took a deep breath. “At this moment, Dave, I need you—Wolfe Media needs you—to handle this Asia deal. For us.” The tirade seemed to be over. He would now, as ever, back off. But not all the way. “After that, if you still want to, we can figure out a way for you to, ah, extricate yourself.” Trying to defuse the bomb that
he himself had constructed, then lit the fuse.
Dave had always been smarter than Charlie; they both knew this, had always known it. Plus Dave was the one who understood the logistics and finances in a way that Charlie had never bothered to learn. Charlie needed Dave, more than he’d ever admit.
“Next spring, Dave. Summer, at the latest.”
This was not a winnable argument. Neither man could persuade the other he was more right. Only more strong.
So Dave didn’t say anything. There was no betrayal quite like finding out that a lifelong friendship hadn’t been genuine.
He flexes both arms, the candlestick and the screwdriver, menacing, glowering, trying to look tough, trying to avoid violence. The naked Frenchman seems to consider lunging, but looks dissuaded by the fact that he’s penned into a tall bathtub, plus he’s naked, and weaponless.
“Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?”
What do I want? That’s a good question. The author shakes his head. “Rien.” He gestures vaguely with the candlestick, encouraging this guy to stay put. “Restez là.”
But for how long can he expect this naked Frenchman to do nothing? The guy will call the police as soon as the author walks out the door. Sirens wailing, tires screeching …
“Parlez-vous anglais?”
“A leetle.”
“I don’t want anything from you. Comprenez?”
“Oui.”
“But I need to tie you up.”
The man doesn’t understand this.
“Il faut que …” He trails off; he doesn’t know how to say this in French. He pantomimes, putting his hands in front of him, wrists together as if bound.
Recognition crosses the Frenchman’s face, then something else, a decision, a resolve.
The author is already running through the apartment again in his mind, the spots where he has left fingerprints this morning, last week, whenever.
“Alons-y,” he says, gesturing for the naked man to remove himself from the tub. The author will bind the guy up with the necktie, sitting there on the messy floor of the dark bedroom, surrounded by the evidence of last night’s sex. Or this morning’s. Vanessa is partial to wake-me-ups.
The water is still running, and the Frenchman takes one tall step out of the tub, then another.
“À la chambre,” the author says.
“Oui.”
Wet footsteps slapping on the tile, then silent on the carpet of the hall, turning into the bedroom, the author following with the candlestick in one hand and the screwdriver in the other.
Then the naked man spins around, his right fist flying, coming into flush contact with the author’s left cheek, an explosion of searing pain, seeing stars, nearly blinded, reacting instinctively by swinging the candlestick with maximum velocity, the heavy glass slapping wet naked skin on the upper arm, rearing back to swing again but the Frenchman has dropped to the floor, is scissoring a leg and knocks out the author’s footing, falling on his ass but somehow managing to hold on to both the candlestick and the small screwdriver, which he uses, as the man lunges, to stab him in the stomach, a deep puncture that freezes the man in place, his mouth a perfect O of surprise and pain, and he staggers backward one slow unsteady step, and another, clutching his gut with both hands.
The author stares up in horror. And the worst of the horror is knowing that this isn’t the worst of it, not yet, not by a long shot.
The author leaps to his feet, still holding both improvised weapons, one of which is now bloody. He has never in his life had a fistfight, never took judo or karate or boxing classes, never since childhood hit another person in anger. Never discharged a firearm of any sort, never wielded a nonculinary knife, never until this moment burnished any weapon at any living creature, other than insects.
He once set a mousetrap, which the very first night successfully caught and killed a mouse, tiny and gray, Stuart Little–like. He used kitchen tongs to move the trap, dead mouse and all, into the bag in his garbage can, which he immediately removed and double-bagged and toted down to a basement bin, shutting the lid tightly and retreating to the elevator quickly.
The next time there was a mouse in the apartment, he decided that the two of them, man and mouse, could coexist peacefully together, cohabitate. It’s not as if the mouse was doing him any harm.
Blood is oozing through the fingers of the naked Frenchman, pouring down his abdomen, getting caught in the dense tuft of his pubic hair.
The author swings the candlestick with all his might. At the last moment before impact he closes his eyes, but he can still feel the reverberation in his hand, and he can hear the appalling crack.
He opens his eyes, and sees that he’ll need to swing again, at least once more. And this time he’ll have to keep his goddamned eyes open.
CHAPTER 49
Hayden scans the shoreline of the harbor, the boats bobbing, the pier and docks, the little structure with a flagpole, awnings, outdoor furniture.
He had gotten about halfway through reading the manuscript, then realized he was out of time. So he skipped to the end, read the last few pages, and that’ll have to be that. Half the story. Which is a lot more than none of it.
“Empty that bin, will you?”
“Yes sir,” Tyler says, and upends the big galvanized bucket, ice packs and beer cans and a bag of pretzels.
Hayden struggles to stand up, his legs tired and sore, his pants wrinkled and a little bit wet. He has been wearing the same clothes for an extraordinarily long time, lightweight charcoal slacks, a pale-blue spread-collar dress shirt, dark-chocolate English brogues with crepe rubber soles. His sport jacket is folded in his bag, and he digs it out, rummages through the pockets, finds a Zippo. Hayden has never smoked, but he has always carried a lighter.
He crumples up a few pages of the assistant’s copy of the manuscript, and drops them into the steel bin, and sets the manuscript afire.
They tie up the boat alongside a sign that reads 30 MINUTE DOCKING, and walk away from another stolen mode of transportation. Hayden looks around the marina, at all these choices of other watercraft for later. He spots a beautiful Beneteau—fifty-four feet? more?—which looks a lot like the boat his family sailed every summer from the Cape to Maine, delivering and collecting the smaller children from sleep-away camp, making an adventure out of a chore. He also sees a boat very similar to the one he rented a few summers ago in Mallorca. The perfect craft for a long single-handed sail. Yes, he thinks, that’s the one.
He and Tyler walk up the dock as if they don’t have a care in the world, a couple of fishing buddies, albeit without the tackle. Halfway to land, the wooden dock becomes a concrete jetty, the surface gritty with sand, pebbles, shells dropped by seagulls. Then they’re on a leafy street, dense with houses, flowering shrubs, porch swings, imported station wagons.
Hayden is lost in thought, outlining the steps of his new plan, enumerating the challenges, countering with solutions.
They pass a shuttered ice-cream parlor and a post office and a general store, all quiet, and then a woman walking a little brown dog, slowly. An old dog, like Hayden himself, looking up with rheumy eyes.
“Hi,” the woman says.
“Good evening.”
Hayden realizes they should be making small talk, he and Tyler. Two men on a sidewalk at night should be chatting; silence is suspicious. But he can’t think of a damn thing to say.
It was almost a year ago when they sat in a corner banquette in a room filled with white tablecloths and burgundy upholstery, marble columns supporting the soaring, ornately plastered ceiling, waiters wearing black vests with white aprons.
“So. Things went very badly in Finland,” Hayden said. “I don’t disagree.”
Charlie Wolfe was staring down at his untouched wiener schnitzel, wedges of lemon, a big white plate. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said.
Hayden took a bite of sweet spiny lobster. He had access to plenty of good schnitzel in Munich, but he liked the bouillabaisse here at his fa
vorite Berlin restaurant on Französische Strasse, a short walk from his office at the embassy.
“It’s too dangerous for me, Hayden. To be involved in things like this.”
Hayden put down his fork and knife. Wiped his mouth with the big napkin. “You mean you don’t need me anymore. Now that you’re a billionaire.”
“I’m not a billionaire.”
Now Hayden understood why Charlie wanted to meet in a restaurant. In fifteen years they’d had only one other meal together, a quick lunch in Davos. Otherwise it had been isolated benches in quiet parks to arrange the mutually beneficial scandals.
“But I’ve become too visible. And I want to become more visible. I can’t … you know.”
This was apparently the end of their long symbiotic relationship, a cordial parting smoothed with a nice bottle of Meursault, very much in public.
Hayden nodded. He picked up his fork and knife again, and took another bite of seafood. Swallowed. “I feel like there’s something else. Is there?”
Charlie didn’t answer immediately, mustering courage. “Dave found out about it.”
Hayden squinted. “To what does it refer?”
“The guy in Finland.”
Hayden took a deep breath.
“His kid was in the house, Hayden. When the police burst in, and he started shooting, and the police returned fire … It was a three-year-old boy who got shot. He bled out. While hugging his goddamned teddy bear.”
“I know what happened, Charlie.”
“Well, Dave flipped out. And then some.”
“Is it under control?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“How’d you handle it?”
“Not as well as I should have.”
“Meaning?”
“He was sanctimonious with me, belligerent. And I tried to be accommodating—it’s not like I feel good about the Finnish guy, and his kid—but I lost my temper. I ended up saying some things I shouldn’t have. He was pissed.”
“Is this reparable?”
