Clawback

by Mike Cooper

  “Come on in, Ganderson!” I stood to one side of the door, near the dais, out of through-fire range. “I finally found my backup pistol. Let’s see how good you are face to face.”

  Pause.

  “I don’t believe you.” He kept his voice down.

  “Then walk through the door.”

  “You’re a dead man, Silas!”

  We stood in the standoff for a long moment. I don’t know what Ganderson was doing—reloading again, if he had any sense. For myself, I was frantically going through my pockets. Knife? Pen? Piece of fucking string? No, absolutely nothing—I was purely weaponless.

  Except for five cheap cellphones.

  “Police will be coming up the stairs any second.” I took out one of the phones, punching at the keypad. “When they see you standing out there? Holding a gun and yelling threats? You are the fucking dead man.”

  “They’re taking their time.” His voice sounded reasonable, barely audible through the door. “You know how the protocols work. We’ve got all night.”

  In fact, true. ESU hated running in blind and unprepared, with so many innocent bystanders waiting around to be shot accidentally. The commanders would have to argue it out for at least ten or fifteen minutes. “It’s your gamble,” I said, “not mine.” I finished with the first phone and pulled out the second. I held my fingers over the top, trying to dampen the beeps. “How long are you going to jerk off out there?”

  “If you had a gun you’d have used it already, Silas.” He was trying to convince himself.

  “You never gave me time to get to my ankle holster.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Your call, asshole.”

  I was on the fourth phone now.

  “What happened to Saxon?” Ganderson’s voice was almost conversational. “Did you kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Because maybe you’re the one who should be worried about the police, not me. What are they going to think about you?”

  He was throwing my own tactic back at me, trying to start a dialogue, hoping to put me off guard.

  Which meant he’d be blasting through the door any second.

  “I gave my lawyer all the details!” I shouted. “Recordings, video, witnessed affidavits—if I die, your entire cabal goes down with me!”

  Then I ran. Ganderson said something, but I wasn’t paying attention. To the first exhibitor booth—in, out, on to the next. Then to an opposite corner. Back—

  “You’re lying, Silas!” And he kicked open the door.

  He came through in a combat roll, the .45 held close, sliding along the wall and leaping for the scanty cover of a folded table. What I could see of it, in the dim light, was nicely done. If I’d had a weapon of any sort, he’d be dead, of course, but I would have had to work for it.

  No matter. I dropped off the fourth phone and slipped into my own hiding place, under the dais. I held the last phone close, concealing the glow from its tiny screen.

  Silence.

  The door drifted shut on its closer, darkening the room again.

  Ganderson shifted, crouched, began to examine the surroundings visible from his position. A red beam sprang into life, from his handgun, and switched back and forth around the room.

  The laser.

  “All right,” Ganderson said. “You’re hiding.”

  I kept quiet.

  “It won’t make any difference. I have firepower. You have nothing. I’m going to walk through here, booth by booth, and as soon as I find you, I’m going to start shooting.”

  “Are you sure you can find me?” I said, into my hands, which I’d cupped over the last cellphone……and my scratchy voice seemed to come out of nowhere, emerging from four other phones. All on speaker. Volume at maximum. All four connected in a single conference call. In fact, slight transmission delays, as the signal bounced among different carriers and different towers, created an odd false-echo effect, disembodying my words even more.

  Ganderson spun around, the laser beam swinging wildly across the partitions and tables near him.

  “You have no idea where I am.”

  BLAM!

  He fired once, blindly. I winced as the round tore into the wall about ten feet above the dais. Lucky guess.

  “Tell me one thing,” I said. “Why did you even hire me?”

  “You’re dead.” His voice was almost a snarl. “Terry Plank will be dead soon enough. Too bad you’re going in backward order, but the story will hold.”

  Okay, I’m slow. Real slow.

  “Son of a bitch.” I finally, finally understood. “You set me up.”

  BLAM!

  Missed by a mile that time, but almost knocked out phone number two. He was figuring it out.

  “You wanted me close to the investigation not so I could solve the murders, but to start implicating me in the assassinations.”

  BLAM!

  Ganderson—angrier, or more confident he had my number, or both—strode through the room, turning his head side to side as I talked.

  “While meanwhile,” I said, despite that, “you go on minting profit on trades ahead of each event. So let me ask—where’s your money on Plank? Is he going to die or not?”

  Ganderson stopped, ducked down and came up with phone number four, which I’d laid on the table in a corner of one booth.

  “Tricky, Silas,” he said, then tossed it in the air. As the phone fell, he raised his pistol, the red beam jagging like lightning, and shot it dead center.

  From only about a yard, yes, but it was moving. The muzzle flash left afterimages dancing in my field of vision.

  “Seven point five,” I said. “Moderate difficulty, dramatic execution.”

  “I hear you,” Ganderson said, and walked straight to phone number one, balanced on the top edge of a partition twenty feet away. This time he simply dropped the phone to the carpet and stomped it with his heel.

  “Who else is in it?” I asked. “Is there a whole gang involved? Or just you and Saxon? Oh, by the way, if you didn’t see—Saxon’s down. Dead, maybe. Took a round right in the chest, and emergency services are having trouble getting into the ballroom at the moment.”

  He paused. “Silas, you batfucker!—you are a pain in the ass.”

  “No, I’d—”

  “A straightforward deal, and you’ve screwed up every single step of the way. One little thing! Have you done even one little thing the way I asked you to? No!”

  Another satisfied client. “Oh well.”

  By now Ganderson had indentified phone number three, on a stack of chairs off in the other direction. He headed directly toward it, head cocked slightly to track the sound’s origin.

  This route took him right past the dais.

  It would be nice to say I’d planned it all out—the bread-crumb trail of cellphone speakers, a subtle hiding spot, an improvised weapon at hand. But I won’t even try to pretend. Unfortunately often, it comes down to plain dumb luck.

  When Ganderson passed in front of me, I’d already pulled myself into a tight ball of potential energy: feet flat on the floor, back braced against the floor of the dais. It was held together cheaply, with some bent-pipe legs and plastic bolts. The moment I saw his shoes, I lunged upward, putting every last bit of frustration, irritation and pent-up rage into it.

  The rear plastic ties snapped. The floorboard—an eight-by-four piece of plywood—rotated up and out, hinged by unbroken connections along the front edge of the dais. The momentum of my furious shove spun the wood like an enormous riverboat paddle: up, around and down. Down hard. Smashing down.

  Right onto Ganderson.

  Not his head. He was too tall for that. But the edge of the plywood caught his shoulder and raked his entire arm. As I followed through, I sprawled onto the board, hammering it all the way to the floor. It scraped down Ganderson’s side, dislodged the pistol from his hand, crushed his foot, and knocked him to his knees.

  “Aauugggh!” He sounded hurt.

  I tried to stand,
lost my balance on the tipping plywood sheet and fell again. I grabbed at Ganderson and took him all the way down with me. The angle may have broken his ankle, which was still trapped under the edge of the board. He certainly screamed, even louder.

  The .45 was missing. I couldn’t take any chances.

  “Asshole,” I said, and with two kenpo power strikes, broke both his collarbones.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “I never asked,” said Johnny, as we drove through the dark tunnels of the Northeast Kingdom at dusk. “Did he pay your bill?”

  “Ganderson? Hah!”

  “Chiseler.”

  “Well, I got about half, in progress payments, before everything blew up. And I’m not giving it back—I did what I was hired for, after all.”

  “I guess small claims is out.”

  I smiled.

  An hour past sunset—which wasn’t that late, this far north in Vermont—impenetrable forest crowded the remote county road on either side. Peak fall foliage had come and gone, and most of the leaves had fallen. The blacktop twisted and curved, uphill and down, yellow warning signs reflecting our headlights. We hadn’t seen another vehicle since Drakes Mill, seven miles back.

  “I appreciate your helping drive,” I said. “In case I forgot to mention.”

  “Oh, I always take a vacation around now.”

  “Late October? In northern New England?”

  “One tires of the same old Riviera beaches year after year.”

  We were getting close. I examined the map one more time. Paper, not GPS—this wasn’t the sort of trip where I wanted even the faintest electronic trail.

  “You have to give him points for style.” Johnny, the permanent contrarian. “Sets up a foolproof scheme, whacks a few Masters of Doom, starts banking 5x returns—and then hires you, just to goose the publicity.”

  “Not publicity. Or not only. He was already planning ahead. I was the fall guy.”

  “Which makes a little more sense, I suppose. Kind of underestimated you, though, huh?”

  “Yeah.” And I have to admit, it was that part that rankled the most. I thought I had a solid reputation, but Ganderson treated me like a Fishkill loser on parole—like a wino you’d hand a gun to, point at the bank branch, and say the getaway car would be around the corner. What the fuck did Ganderson think would happen? I was smarter than that!

  Wasn’t I?

  “Don’t worry about it.” Johnny sounded like he was reading my mind, but it wasn’t too hard because I’d been repeating the same complaint since we’d left the city. “He was a vastly overpaid investment banker. Those guys think they can tell the sun when to set. If you’re bothered by pathological overconfidence, you need to find another set of clients.”

  “The problem is, they pay the best.” I sighed. “Even worse, though, they’re all apparently armed to the teeth now. I still can’t believe the shootout at the conference. It was like an Afghan wedding in there.”

  “It wasn’t all random, is what I heard.”

  “Huh?”

  “Once the guns were out, people realized they could start settling scores.”

  “No way.” I had to laugh. “Really?”

  “You know—old grudges, resentments over past deals, that sort of thing. I think the whole event was cathartic for everyone.”

  We slowed to a stop at an unmarked crossroads. I checked my notes.

  “Go right. Two-point-eight miles.”

  Johnny glanced at the odometer and got us moving again. “And Hayden, never part of it. That’s still hard to believe.”

  “He was a thief and an embezzler, and he tried to kill me more than once.”

  “But not connected to Ganderson.”

  “Nope. Just another hard-charging dealmaker. Not much more than business as usual.”

  I opened my window, breathing the cold night air. It had that early-frost smell, the snap of winter. We passed an unlit sign, something about firewood and beer.

  “How’s Clara?” Johnny asked.

  “Out of the hospital.” They’d only kept her for a day. “Hammering the blogosphere. Callouts all over the internet. She writes really well, did you know that? I mean, digging up dirt, that’s one thing—but her stories are just great to read. That job offer from CNBC ought to be arriving any day now.”

  “You haven’t talked to her?”

  “Can’t.” I looked out at the dark forest around us. “She doesn’t need the kind of trouble I’ve got stuck all over me.”

  The headlights illuminated the trees and brush along the road, creating a tunnel effect. The car ran almost silent on the smooth pavement.

  “Did you ever call up your brother?” Johnny asked.

  Dave. “No.” I’d thought about it, but after all the near-death excitement, the possibility of family I never knew I had was a straw too many to deal with. “Someday I will.”

  A minute later Johnny coasted, braked and stopped. A slight widening of the dirt verge was the only indication we’d arrived. He popped the trunk release and we stepped out into the night, closing both doors to turn off the dome light.

  At the car’s rear I pulled out my small pack. I was still carrying an extra water bottle, which I drank off and dropped into the trunk before slamming the lid.

  “This is the ass end of nowhere,” said Johnny.

  “That’s the point.”

  “You’ll be lost in two hundred yards, fall into a pitch black gulley, break both legs and die of exposure right before the bears eat you.”

  “Me and D. B. Cooper.” I laughed—not much, but a real honest laugh. “Go make some money, Johnny. I’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah.” He hesitated. “Do you think…are you coming back, Silas?”

  The serious questions always come at the end.

  “Don’t know.”

  I inhaled. Pine needles, rock, a bit of rain. It wasn’t a Central Asian desert or the jungly forests around Fort Bragg. Still less the clamorous asphalt and lights and crowds of Fifth Avenue. But it felt good.

  Almost like home.

  “This time was different,” I said slowly. “Too much. Too much killing, too much money. I’m having a little trouble getting straight about it all.”

  “You will.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Look, it’s like this.” Johnny seemed to be trying to find the right words. “You know how long a security is held, on average? Buy to sell?”

  “Twenty seconds.” I did know, in fact. “But it’s all those high-frequency millisecond trades.”

  “Things change,” said Johnny. “Nothing lasts.”

  Even Johnny’s philosophical metaphors come straight from the market screen. But the heart was there.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I understand that. I’ll be all right.”

  “Okay.” He nodded. “Hope to see you, though. That’s all.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “You, too.” We shook hands, just like we were parting after a quick lunch at Delaney’s. He got back in the car, turned it around, and drove off without looking back.

  In the silence I stood for a few moments, adapting to the solitude and the darkness. Then I found a place to sit, ten feet from the road, against a maple thickly grown over with soft, earthy moss.

  The moon would be up in an hour. After that, I’d be able to see clearly enough, and I’d start the night’s trek. The Canadian border was only four miles from here, following the long watershed of the Vossen River. I’d get wet once or twice, depending on how much rain had filled the forest streams recently. Then another twenty miles of woods and occasional farmland—abandoned and overgrown homesteads, for the most part—to Stanville-Ost in Quebec, with its clapboard-fronted main street, stone church and bus station. From there, I could go anywhere.

  So long as I avoided the marijuana fields, back country meth labs, and—on the U.S. side—occasional gun-toting hermits, I’d be fine.

  I’d hiked the entire distance twice and back, last year, keeping the landmark
s and hazards clear in my memory. I was already anticipating the coffee at Stanville-Ost’s single breakfast diner. I’d sleep on the bus, the deep contented sleep of someone tired from honest exercise.

  This wasn’t the only bolt-hole I’d prepared over the years. After picking up the emergency cash and ID from my Brownsville cache, I could have gone in any of six or seven different directions. I chose Canada because I liked autumn in the woods, and because the northern border was still fairly easy.

  I had to disappear. Didn’t matter I was on the side of the angels. There were enough bodies and blown-up buildings and missing millions to keep a federal cross-jurisdictional task force in business for years—and vast teams of lawyers busy in civil court for another decade after that. I’d have to cut deals, submit to depositions, testify and bargain with prosecutors, police, clients and bagmen. I’d never get my life back.

  Nor could I just keep a low profile until it all blew over. I’d told Clara not to perjure herself—even if she’d tried, she’d trip up eventually, and then they’d have us both. Not to mention Rondo and everyone else I’d run across in the last week. My life was going to be picked over and reported in the most mind-numbing bureaucratic detail imaginable.

  I had no choice but to leave.

  At seven-eighteen the moon appeared, glowing through skeletal, leafless tree branches to the east. I got to my feet, pulled on the pack and stepped away, deeper into the forest.

  Silas Cade was gone. I was just a nameless accountant now, fading into the woods.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  EVENT RISK

  Greed, Guts and Glory—

  Commentary from Clara Dawson

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  Final Payout for Turncoat Financier

  Posted 07:18 Mar 11

  According to NYPDBeat, Quint Ganderson died this morning, shot down on the driveway of the Greenwich estate where he’d been serving mansion arrest while awaiting trial.

  Last fall, of course, Ganderson allegedly masterminded his notorious first-thing-kill-all-the-bankers scheme. As the body count piled up, observers noticed that the dead investment managers all had stunningly poor records, having lost hundreds of millions of dollars for their clients in lousy trades and wrongheaded bets.