The Last Hedge

by Green, Carey

  The Last Hedge

  By

  Carey Keith Green

  Copyright © 2012 by Carey Keith Green

  careykeithgreen.com

  carey@careykeithgreen.com

  These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Carey Keith Green.

  Cover art by Jeroen Ten Berge

  www.jeroentenberge.com

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title page

  Chapter 1

  About the author

  Prologue

  Luke seated himself on the red Honda motorcycle just a little before 8 p.m. Ominous clouds had began to gather in the late summer sky, and he began to consider the consequences of a two hour rain-soaked ride back to Manhattan. There were no car rentals open on a Sunday in the small upstate town where his parents lived, and the bus ride, a Greyhound scenic tour through small-town USA, would not reach the city until almost midnight. Luke worked in finance, and because of the recent volatility in the markets, he needed to be fresh and focused for the Monday morning open. He decided to make the ride. His father came out of the house to wish him farewell. They both glanced towards the sky with a bewildered look.

  “You really going to ride that bike all the way back to Manhattan? Stay a little longer; I’m sure it would make your mother feel better.”

  Luke’s mother, Joanne, was only two months removed from the stroke. She was walking, albeit unsteadily, and her speech was returning at a slow pace. The hospitalization had devastated them financially and Luke was now supporting them. It used to be that Luke’s parents said goodbye to Luke together. His father now performed the ceremony solo.

  “I would Dad, but I have to work tomorrow; trouble in the markets.”

  “I know,” his father said with a smile. “I saw it on the T.V..”

  Prior to his mother’s stroke, Luke had rarely seen them much in the last year; he had been too busy with work. He was now trying to come up for a few hours at least every other week though it pained him now, to sit in that small house for hours with nothing to say. His father would sit there smoking Marlboros with his mother propped up in the corner, the evening news blaring in the distance. Luke would usually ride up on Sunday morning and would never spend the night. He had started bringing his laptop, which helped stave off the boredom for at least a few hours, despite the fact that no Internet was available. By Sunday afternoon he was restless. He would often find an excuse to wander into town, to buy some item that his parents surely did not need. By 5 p.m., he was almost certainly looking at his watch. By seven, it was inevitably time to leave.

  “Why don’t you take our car?” his father asked.

  Luke looked at him with a sidelong glance. His father’s car, a mid-nineties Buick, was his father’s sole form of transportation. He felt guilty that he had not bought his parents a new car, despite having paid most of their bills for the last year. Without the car, they would be completely shut off from the outside world. Luke shook his head as he mouthed the word “no.”

  “Nah, I can make it. I need to get home.”

  “Maybe you should think about buying a car. I’m sure you can afford one.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Luke had said.

  Luke’s parents hadn’t visited him since he last left home seven years ago, gone tp Stanford, moved to Manhattan and become a star trader. To them, he was the same old Luke, small-town genius made good on Wall Street. He was still riding the same motorcycle he had ridden since high school. They shook hands once more and Luke rode off.

  Open air. Freedom. Though the climb up was arduous; the ride from the top of the mountain where his parents lived to the valley down below was approximately ten miles of unmitigated joy. The old bike was not what she once was, but the ride down was still exhilarating.

  Luke was a 5’5”, 170 pound block of chiseled muscle. His dark, stringy hair stuck to his head like bark on a tree trunk, and he wore a cheesy moustache that made him look more like a bad actor, rather than a hedge fund trader.

  As he eased into the ride, he was already beginning to focus on the upcoming workweek and the problems ahead, the daily grind of the Wall Street bulls. His trading book at work had begun to show strange inconsistencies, and he spent some time that weekend analyzing the results. Most of the trades were generated by a computer algorithm, but lately they had begun to appear in trade sizes and amounts that were oddly erratic. He had analyzed the computer program looking for an anomaly, and had come across varying and contradictory data.

  As he pondered these facts, he remembered that he had left his laptop charging in his parents’ kitchen. There was no turning back to retrieve the laptop. A light mist began to fall as he made his way down towards Breakers Pike, a high mountain pass looking over the valley. Luckily he had decided to wear his leather jacket, which served as potent protection from the elements. A mile or so into the ride, a serious rain had begun to fall against a darkening sky; a twilight effect that was almost electric. The road was already beginning to slick, and Luke eased off the throttle to compensate for the road’s condition. He was already worried about the glare beginning to form on the visor of his helmet, when he looked into his mirror to check his visibility. That was when he noticed the three cars trailing behind him.

  The cars had their headlights on high beams. One could go for hours without seeing one car on these roads; seeing three in close proximity was downright surprising. It was even more unusual that the cars were accelerating into the downhill grade. They were closing the distance between themselves and Luke as they made their way towards the bottom of the canyon.

  Luke noticed the first car was a Mercedes; he could tell from the distinctive shape of the grill and slope of the hood. The other cars, because of the rain and the first car in front, he could not see. He swerved violently to his right as the first car raced to within feet of his tires.

  “Asshole! What are you doing?” Luke screamed at the car but could not see the driver. He accelerated quickly to create space. The first car then pulled in front of him, while the second car pulled parallel, wedging him in. Soon, both vehicles began to slow down, and Luke also. The third car then pulled in behind him, sealing the wedge and forcing Luke to stop. Luke threw his helmet to the ground violently as he got off the bike.

  Two men from the first car came towards Luke quickly. Wally was tall and solid, built with the care and construction of a brick shithouse. Eldridge, his boss, was at least a foot shorter and a hundred pounds heavier/ It had been decades since he had seen a leafy green diet. Both men moved towards Luke, with Wally in the lead.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Luke shouted as the two men approached.

  “Hello, Luke,” Eldridge said, “We’ve been looking for you. You have a nice weekend with the folks?”

  “How do you know who I am?”

  “That is not important. You have something for us, don’t you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Wally,” the man said, looking at his accomplice. “Search his bag.” Wally moved towards Luke, and reached for his backpack. With his quick reflexes, Luke slapped the man’s hand away.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Luke screamed. “Get the fuck away from me!”

  Wally looked at his boss. His boss turned towards Luke with a reflexive smile.

  “Luke,” the man said with his hands raised open towards the sky. �
��We were hoping you’d be more cooperative.”

  Wally wheeled quickly and placed his left foot square in Luke’s stomach. Luke folded and was soon on the ground, reeling for air. Wally took an agile step forward and stood over Luke, gloating with delight. He bent down, took Luke’s backpack and began searching through it. The first man came over and stood over Luke.

  “No need to get violent, Luke.”

  Luke mustered his breath and spat in the man’s face. The man stood up straight and removed a handkerchief from his breast pocket. He turned towards Wally who was busy emptying the contents of Luke’s bag onto the highway.

  “Anything there?” “Not yet.”

  Luke began to climb slowly to his feet.

  “Why the fuck did he kick me?”

  “All you had to do was cooperate. We aren’t looking for any trouble, but if you want it, we’re willing to give it to you.”

  Wally walked towards the two men. The bag was empty. He was shaking his head as he spoke. “Nothing,” was all that he said.

  “Not good, Luke.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You’ve been sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. We want the data you put on the USB flash drive.”

  “I don’t have it on me.”

  “Then where is it?”

  “Up my ass, fucker!” Wally stepped forward, putting his nose directly in Luke’s face.

  “Come on, pretty boy,” Wally said, his bad teeth shining, “the boss is talking to you.”

  It took less than a second for Luke’s knee to reach Wally’s groin. Wally took two steps backward as he absorbed the pain. Wally recoiled but for only one second. In an instant, he was coming at Luke again, the full force of his strength and rage contained in a single punch. His recovery had caught Luke off guard, and left him unprepared for the massive blow to his forehead. Luke’s feet gave away under the slick pavement, sending him reeling towards his own motorcycle. He fell backwards, tumbling into his bike. His head snapped quickly off of the bike’s bright chrome engine, and then bounced violently off of the highway pavement.

  Wally and Eldridge looked at each other as they kneeled down towards Luke’s body. Wally put his hand underneath Luke’s chin.

  “How is he?” Eldridge asked.

  “I think he’s dead.” Wally said as he stood over the body.

  “Mary, sweet mother of Jesus.” Eldridge said under his breath. He stood up, and made a waving motion towards one of the other cars. Two men emerged from the car, moving with the haste of bill collectors; one towards the body, the other towards the motorcycle.

  “So what do we do now?” Wally asked.

  “We leave him here,” Eldridge said. He turned towards the two men, non-descript automatons in dark suits and black shades. “You two: mop up. Run the bike off the cliff. Make it look like an accident. Wally, we’re done.” Wally and Eldridge walked briskly towards the first car. In seconds they were gone. The third car quickly followed them down the mountain.

  The remaining two men went to work. One adjusted the scene: the placement of Luke’s helmet and the sprawl of the body. The other man got into the Mercedes and began to ram it against the bike. It took less than three tries before he had broken the guardrail and forced the bike down the mountain. Within ten minutes, they were gone.

  Chapter 1

  The lights were still on in the Silverlight Gallery though the bills had not been paid in months. From the street, Dylan looked through the large glass windows of the gallery. It was empty as usual, save for one customer who was chatting with Samantha in front of a large canvas. Samantha hurried towards him when he walked through the gallery door.

  “Steve’s in the back,” she said, speaking as she walked towards him, her arms swinging at her side. Samantha was tiny, a cornucopia of energy disguised as a woman. Her short brown hair was usually done in a bob, and she cut it weekly with scissors and a mirror.

  “He’s here already?”

  “Yes, and you have to deal with him, because I have a customer.”

  “Who is not going to buy a thing.”

  “You have to try. Get the meeting started. I’ll pop in, in a few.” Before he could respond, Samantha had turned and started walking towards the customer.

  Dylan was tall and muscular, without being extreme in either category. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and favored custom-made suits. His head was bald, with an easygoing face. A mischievous smile was frequently seen on his lips, though his persona often matched the seriousness of his job.. Dylan was known for his quick temper and did not tolerate fools. He was fiercely protective of his friends and colleagues. The life of the city had hardened him, had burnished him, but he still had not lost that twinkle in his eyes.

  “Great. I’ll deal with it then,” Dylan said to himself, as he made his way towards the small room in the back of the gallery that served as their office.

  The gallery was on the corner of Prince and Greene, and at the time they had felt lucky to find such an attractive space. There were several other galleries on the block, but none of them were corner spaces with windows on both sides. The space was ideal for their purposes: a smaller scale gallery with an intimate feel. Samantha had spotted it one Sunday while window shopping and had immediately texted Dylan on his cell phone. He had met her later that evening, and together they had stood on a street corner staring through an empty store window in the freezing cold. Dylan liked it as much as she did, although he was nervous about the potential rent price because their budget was razor-thin. Soho wasn’t exactly Bohemian anymore. They wrote down the realtor’s number and called it the next morning.

  When Dylan entered, Steve was reading an art magazine from the rack near Samantha’s desk.

  “Hi, Steve.”

  “Dylan, it’s always a pleasure.” Steve stood up to shake Dylan’s hand. His tie was already loosened as he sat down in the chair.

  Steve was in his forties, laid-back in spectacles and pinstripes: a tax lawyer. They got along well. If Dylan hadn’t owed him so much money, they might have been friends.

  “So,” Steve said, a sly smile coming over his face, “What’s new with you and Silverlight Gallery?”

  “Not much. The economy sucks.”

  “Tell me about it,” Steve said, spontaneously putting his feet up on the on the desk. “I’m knee deep in it at work.”

  “In and out of work,” Dylan said.

  “And the job search?”

  “I’m getting close.”

  “How long have you been out now?”

  “Seven months. It’s not easy in this economy.”

  “I bet. You still haven’t explained what happened at the other place.”

  Dylan shrugged. Steve had been trying to pry an explanation out of him for months, but Dylan remained silent.

  “It doesn’t matter now, Steve.”

  “Yeah, I guess not. So,” Steve asked, “what do you want to do here?”

  “We need more time.”

  Steve laughed. “You make me feel like I am in the movie Groundhog’s Day. I went through this with the restaurant people: Dave and Gina, the beautiful socialite and the brilliant doctor. All their fancy rich friends were going to help make them a three-star restaurant. You know how much they took me for? Over two hundred grand.”

  “Ouch. I had no idea it was that much.”

  “I’m still adding it up. Then you two came along: The brilliant artist turned gallery owner, and the Wall Street whiz backing her. I thought it was going to be so different.”

  “So did we,” Dylan said with a laugh. “But there’s more to life than money, my friend.”

  “Spoken like an out-of-work banker.”

  “Very true.”

  Dylan got up from the desk and went to the corner of the room where a painting rested upon an easel. It was a blackand-white sketch of a woman done in stencil. The woman’s finely drawn hair was being blown by the wind. She seemed to be standing on an empty beach.

  “Do you lik
e this painting, Steve? Would you buy this piece of art?”

  “I don’t know if I’d buy it, but I might like it if I saw it somewhere. Who painted it? One of your artists?”

  “I did.”

  “You paint?”

  “No, I connected the dots. Of course I painted it.”

  “I didn’t know you had an artistic side.”

  “I keep trying to hide it. My parents were artists.”

  “So you are going back to your artistic roots? I thought math was your thing.”

  “Math, music and art: all variations on the same basic skills. But now I only dabble.”

  “Maybe you can hang it out front with a million dollar price tag. Maybe some insanely rich blind art collector might come in. You never know.”

  “I sincerely doubt it.”

  “So do I,” Steve said, as he sighed. “So what’s the next step?”

  “You know my situation: I’m good for the money, but I’m just not liquid. My investments are in the tank right now, so I can’t sell stock. And because I’m not working, I can’t re-finance the apartment. And not working in this city is a cash pit. So, as soon as I get this job, I can re-finance with the bank and get some liquidity into this place.”

  “You’re going to take money from your apartment to help with this gallery? Dylan, you’re a bright guy. How did you wind up in a mess like this?”

  “It looked good on paper. Cat and I did tons of research.”

  “You call her Cat?”

  “Forget I said that.”

  “May I call her Cat?”

  “You don’t work at the gallery.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s a great girl. But her sales skills are lacking. I watched her not sell a painting to someone who was interested in buying.”

  Dylan remembered the situation. A drunk investment banker and his girlfriend had stumbled into the gallery from the bar next door. The girl had been a rail-thin blonde of dubious Eastern-European origin, and the young knight’s act of chivalry had been an attempt to buy her an expensive painting. Unbeknownst to him, the painting had been done by Rafael Armedia, a young Argentine painter Samantha had been nurturing for over a year. His paintings had been heating up in a few galleries in L.A., and Samantha was stockpiling the works to later make a killing. The killing had not happened, and the banker had offered Samantha a cool five thousand on the spot for a painting she was selling for 10K. Neither budged, and the banker and the girl had headed off to the club.