by Mike Binder
Adam was in no mood: he couldn’t make small talk if he tried, so he didn’t.
“I don’t need a tour, or a drink, Mr. Heaton. That’s not what I’m here for. Let’s get to it, okay?”
Heaton chuckled. “I’ve got your blood flowing, haven’t I? I like that. Good for me. Come into the study. We’ll show each other our goods and have a drink and the tour afterwards.”
Heaton went inside as Adam followed across a highly polished marble foyer, past a massive stairwell that hugged the wall tight and coiled its way up toward a second-floor landing. They finally made it through the back hallway, into a wood-paneled study. The overly cushioned den was finely made up with expensive sofas and chairs, a Victorian-era pool table, and a ninety-inch flat-screen TV. There was a quietly subdued bar built in across the back wall.
Heaton immediately went to work making himself a drink. Adam just stared at him, waiting to unload. Heaton giggled and offered one up again. Adam declined with another version of his longest face. Heaton pointed to a set of chairs, took his drink, and followed Adam over.
“You’re sore about the call girl? Is this it?”
“I’m sore about so many things, I’m not sure where to begin. Let me say up front, whatever it is you have me here to do, whatever ‘job’ you have for me, I’m not in. You understand? Not interested.”
“Yes, you are. Trust me, you are, but go ahead.”
“No, Mr. Heaton, Sir fucking Heaton, I’m not! Not in the slightest. You drugged me, had me thrown in jail, got me right out, all for what? To scare me? You didn’t scare me. You just made me realize who you are.”
“No, now, no, I have to stop you. Right there.” Heaton leaned forward and grabbed a cigar from a box on the table between them. “The point wasn’t for you to realize who I am. The point was for me to realize who you were. I liked that you didn’t want to cheat on your wife. It was cute. It gave me a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling.”
“Don’t be an asshole. I mean it. I’m not here to play cute with you. You may have all the money in the world, but it doesn’t give you the right—”
Heaton cut him off. “Okay, come on. Yes, it was a little show of power. May have even been over the top, Tatum, but you’re a cop, a son of a cop. I knew you wouldn’t scare too easily. I was showing off, okay? I was setting the stage.”
“Setting it for what? What is it that you want from me?”
Heaton cut his cigar, lit it, and looked Adam in the eye.
“I want you to leave something at Number 10 for me after our conference, something that I may not be willing to take the blame for having left behind myself. In short, I want you to be the fall guy if it goes bad. I want to be able to blame you, the nut job from America that even once went so far off the rails as attempted murder on the governor of Michigan.”
Adam was surprised, blown away, even. He didn’t expect Heaton to come out and be so honest about his intentions. Not that Adam hadn’t, somewhere in the back of his mind, even mildly suspected such a scenario had brought him to London—he just didn’t think Heaton would be this bold and up front about it.
“There’s a brief—it’s about five hundred pages long—in a thick, forty-pound binder like this one here.” Heaton pointed to a wieldy, leather-bound folder on the table next to the box of cigars. He reached over and slid it toward Adam. Heaton motioned for him to pick it up. Adam did. He leafed through the pages of numbers and figures. He had seen a binder like this before, back in Barry Saffron’s office in Chicago: it was a dossier spelling out the company’s course of action to take over an expansive pension system. This was obviously one of the more detailed ones he’d seen.
“It’s one of fifteen we’ve presented to the civil service. It’s the only one that matters. It’s the bible of the system we’d create. The new law would be written based exactly on what’s in here. Precisely. They have one exactly like this already at Number 10. There’s only one difference between the one in your hand and the one we’ve submitted to them, the one that has been okayed by the chancellor, the Treasury, and the minister of pensions for government workers. Turn to page 657.”
Adam turned to page 657. It was just a lot of figures, a spreadsheet. He couldn’t see anything worth looking at, only a sea of numbers.
“The one at Number 10 has a flaw.”
“A flaw?”
“It’s off. We messed up. It has what might be seen as a statistical error. If we say nothing, it’s fine. That will be how the money flows for the length of the agreement. This is how the Treasury will write the law. Twenty-five years.” He shrugged and sipped his drink.
“If we live with our error it will only cost us a billion and half dollars a year. No problem, right? Forty billion dollars over the course of the deal.” He chuckled. Adam tried to see where the error was. Nothing jumped out at him.
“Trust me, Adam, several top people have been fired over this. I don’t take it lightly. This is four and a half years in the making.”
“Why can’t you just tell them you made an error? Tell them you want to amend it?” Heaton chuckled even more at that remark.
“Obviously you’ve never dealt with Lassiter and Turnbull. They’ll stick it right to me. That, plus the fact that it’s done. The conference at ‘10’ is a formality. Turnbull’s signed off. It’s a Lassiter deal, this one. If I have to go back in and make changes of any kind, that iron ass Georgia will send me straight back to the drawing boards and she’ll enjoy doing it. It’ll be another four and a half years if it’s a month.”
Adam followed it through in his mind, nodded when he had it. Heaton watched him closely.
“So, you want to sneak in a new ‘bible’? Hope no one ever notices the difference? A new one with the right figure, so the law is written up in your favor? I make the switch, take the old one when I leave?”
Heaton nodded. “A new one with the new figure. The correct figure anyway. We’re not doing anything wrong. We’re fixing a mistake. No more.” Adam just looked at him. It all seemed to make sense.
“And if for some reason the switch is uncovered? If it all goes bad? You blame the American. The ‘nut job.’ The mixed-up ex-cop who you hired as a favor for a childhood friend. The one that famously went bonkers in Michigan. He did it. The American. It was his error, and he made the switch at the meeting.”
“You got it, Adam. Right on the money.”
“Yeah. I got it. I’m the fall guy.”
“You would be the fall guy. Yes.” Adam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Heaton pressed on.
“Number one: it won’t go badly. No one will ever notice the change, not even Georgia Turnbull. She has plenty more on her mind, I’m sure of that.”
“If they do? If it’s spotted?”
“They then have a case for fraud.”
“Exactly.”
“When we leave Number 10, you will get a fifteen-year contract starting at one million pounds a year. It will have no escape clause: if we fire you for any reason, you will be paid in full. Fifteen million pounds. If things were to go awry, which they won’t, you will be long home in Chicago, and you would then of course be fired immediately, your contract settled. As per the contract, we will be responsible for all legal bills, and we will start a long, drawn-out legal battle with the British courts that would conceivably take them a good ten years to prosecute—a battle that I will have many tools at my hands to use to help force an ultimate settlement, of which I will bear the full costs.”
“So in a worst-case scenario, I walk away with fifteen million pounds? You blame an errant employee for the whole thing while accepting all of the responsibility.”
“And in a best case, you have a job for fifteen years and you work for us and learn the business. You grow with the firm as a key man that I personally look out for.”
“Sounds great. I’m not interested.” He got up and walked out. Heaton shook his head and giggled lightly as he quickly followed.
“You want the tour before you go? A drink? Ci
gar? Come on, you can say no. Don’t be rude. Don’t just run off.” They arrived at the front door. Peet was waiting in the Mercedes. Adam stopped.
“Look, David, Sir David, Heaton, whatever…”
“Call me what you want. I’m not particular about that.”
“Okay, how about ‘shithead’? Does ‘shithead’ work?”
“It works if you say yes. Of course it does.” Heaton was once again enjoying the back-and-forth, thriving on the heat coming off of Adam’s forehead.
“I don’t think you realize the toll it took on my life the last time I was talked into doing something else that absolutely ‘couldn’t possibly’ go bad. I don’t have it in me to do it again.”
“The difference between that last escapade and this one is me. I don’t think there was anyone in that prior debacle you took part in in Michigan with the resources that I have, was there?”
“No, there was no one in that group quite as charming as you are.”
“Oh, look at me. Now I’m blushing.”
“Heaton, I know that you’re not a man who’s going to take no easily. I know that’s what the thing with the hooker was about. I get it. You have moves. I’m not your guy, though. If you want to find someone else, I’ll never say a word to anyone. You can find another fall guy and give him my fifteen mil. If you fuck with me, though, you’ll be fucking with my family, with my marriage. If you do that, we’ll have a problem. I promise I won’t let that happen to me again. Do you understand?” He leaned forward and got right into Sir David’s space. Heaton just let loose the same cocky grin he was famous for flashing.
“I do. Of course. Your communication skills are excellent.”
“Great. Have a good night.”
Adam turned and walked out to the Mercedes. Heaton nodded to Peet to take him back to the Millennium. He watched them pull off the grounds of the mansion. Harris walked out onto the motor court porch.
“How did it go?”
“Went very well, actually.”
“Did you give him the bullshit story? About the clerical error? About switching the binders?”
“I did. Figured it was best. He wasn’t going to go for the truth. He’s not quite ready yet for the truth.”
“So he bought it? The ‘numbers error’ story?”
“Yes. He bought it. It played out perfectly.”
“Is he in?”
Heaton turned to the burly redhead and smiled as he answered. “Yes. Of course he’s in. He has no choice.”
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING Adam and Kate and the kids went over to Shoreditch to have lunch with Beauregard and Tiffany and their two children. Gordon was to put the kids in a taxi and have them meet at the McCalisters’ flat so that Adam and Kate could walk for a bit, cutting through Soho before catching a separate cab over to Shoreditch. It seemed to Kate like a complete waste of time and money, but Adam needed the forty minutes of fresh air that hoofing through Soho toward Covent Garden would take; he also needed the time alone to tell Kate what had been happening and how he thought it was best for them all to leave England right away. He was actually hoping that there would be enough time. He knew it wasn’t going to be an easy sell, especially when he factored in that he didn’t dare tell her anything about the battered call girl, his arrest, or the sudden release from the police station.
Unfortunately for him, the discussion didn’t go as smoothly as planned.
“What could you possibly be talking about? No! I don’t want to go home. We’ve just gotten here, Adam. I thought you were doing well. You’ve obviously hit it off with Heaton and that lot; they wouldn’t have kept you out all night if they didn’t enjoy your company. He wouldn’t keep calling you to these meetings. My father says he’s very taken by you.”
“Yes, but why? Have you asked yourself that, Kate? Why is he so taken with me? Why am I involved in this big meeting at 10 Downing Street? Aren’t you curious? I have the least experience of anyone at the company. What’s going on? What’s he got planned for me? I’m curious what you think the answer to that is.”
“What’s going on is that my father has stuck out his neck and Heaton has agreed to bring you along on a key project, out of loyalty to my father; and you, out of some, I guess, either insecurity or resentment against Gordon, can only see it all as mysteriously contrived. It’s very sad.”
Adam could understand why Kate was seeing it the way she did. He was tempted to tell her about the whorehouse and the prison cell, but was leery to do so, as any mention of him in a prison cell would only bring on bad memories and a deeper level of argument. Kate was upset already; he didn’t see an upside to pushing his luck.
“You didn’t want to come here in the first place, and now you want to go home because you’re a victim of some odd conspiracy that Sir David Heaton, one of the most powerful men in the whole world, wants to invite upon you. It’s absurd.”
They came through the top of Great Marlborough Street, cut into the small, cramped backstreets of the top of Soho, crossing down through Soho Square. There was a lot of sun and a nice breeze in the air; hordes of the locals were out sunning themselves in the park, prepping themselves for serious burns on their pale faces that had all just weathered through a long, lightless winter. They were everywhere, the sun-starved, sandwich-chewing light worshippers, wherever they tried to step, requiring them to weave in and off of the path and forcing Kate to keep her voice down as she scolded Adam.
“I don’t see why you can’t enjoy this? A free trip? A chance to impress your boss, a legend, mind you, a national treasure, and a chance for me to be home, to relax, to show the kids London, to see my old friends? What about that doesn’t fit your plan?”
They walked on a bit in silence. He didn’t plan on saying what he said next. It just came out. Maybe he wanted Kate on the defensive for a change, or maybe he really wanted an answer.
“Is part of your plan here to look up Richard Lyle?”
She stopped cold, turned, and looked at him. “Why would you ask that?”
There was no holding back now. He had successfully changed the subject and the goal was to keep it off himself, at least for a little while.
“Because I got into your Facebook account and I saw that you e-mailed him. Told him how much you would love to see him while you were here.”
She was surprised that he had that information, stunned, but only for a quick whiff. She was off her back feet almost instantly with a response she played perfectly, a volley that allowed her to hide behind the elephant that was always in the room.
“I thought you weren’t allowed to be on the Internet, Adam. Wasn’t that one of the key settlements to having your charges dropped? You were also not supposed to be drinking. From the way my father tells it, from the smell of our sheets this morning, there’s been a lot of drinking.”
“The drinking wasn’t part of the settlement. Just staying off the Internet. I haven’t been drinking only because it’s something that had been making you uncomfortable.”
“And now apparently you’re not all that interested in my being comfortable?”
She was good. Damn good. One of the best. He always thought she should have been a lawyer. They walked on, crossing over Charing Cross. The Richard Lyle thing had been left for dead back at Greek Street, not to be brought up again for a while. His whole life had been like this since his arrest in Michigan. He never had the upper hand. Any argument, any spat, anything Kate did wrong, it always somehow came back to the fact that Adam had lost his shit with a bunch of idiotic drunken union assholes and tried to frighten the governor by breaking into the mansion and trashing his office: the single dumbest thing he or, for that matter, any husband ever did in the history of marriage.
She could theoretically go fuck this guy Lyle, he thought; he had so thoroughly lost the right to complain when he joined an asinine union plot against the hated conservative governor. Every union member in the state was in arms: the protest in Lansing against the union wages bill was the
largest attended in the state capital’s history. Union men from all over Michigan and the Midwest drove to Lansing to rant and rave and flash signs and yell at the top of their lungs. The difference between him and all the other husbands there that day was that they got into their cars and drove home. They didn’t stay in Lansing. They didn’t drink and smoke and conspire lunacy. They didn’t break into the governor’s mansion in a misplaced attempt to mess with his head. To trash the neophyte governor’s office and leave spray-painted epitaphs that spoke to the importance of having police well paid and available to protect the citizens. They didn’t buy into an ill-informed guarantee that the governor was out of state and wouldn’t be around when Adam broke the back door open with a crowbar. A “weapon” that turned the politically charged crime into an “attempted murder.”
The husbands who went home that weekend still got to go toe-to-toe when their wives would e-mail and flirt with their ex-boyfriends.
The sad truth of that night in the governor’s office is that the idea was never to hurt anyone. The governor wasn’t even scheduled to be home. It was only meant to let him know how serious the workers were that he was messing around with, to let him know how vulnerable he was, how easily he could be gotten to. Only meant to make a point. Adam always thought that the only point that was made in that ridiculous drunken plot was how vulnerable his marriage was.
“Can I tell you what I think, Adam?” They had been walking silently together for a long block up Charing Cross.
“Yes, of course, go on.”
“I think that you should be more than happy to do whatever it is that Sir David Heaton and his group ask of you. I think you should thank your stars for my father. I think you should just relax and enjoy yourself here in London and, for God’s sake, let me and the kids have a little bit of a vacation without another round of your drama scurrying us up onto a plane and straight out of England.”
She walked on ahead of him as he mumbled a pathetic version of the time-honored, “Yes, honey, whatever you say, dear.” Once they made it through Earlham Street into the center of Fielding Court, he’d had his fill of “fresh air,” so they caught a taxi over to Shoreditch.
