The Switch, page 12
Well, so much for turning to his e-mail in the home office. As soon as he came in the front door Jen carried red-faced Travis over, waited for Will to put down his briefcase, and then handed him their baby.
“You try.”
He held Travis tightly against his chest; the baby liked being swaddled close. But that didn’t stop him from wailing. Sometimes that little creature broke his heart.
“He won’t take a bottle. I tried again.”
“How about you feeding him—you know . . . ?” Jen had only breastfed him; they never used formula. They’d tried, but the baby had refused it.
She shook her head. “I saw the doctor today.”
“What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean, what’s wrong? He won’t stop crying. And you know what he told me? I’m not producing enough milk. Our baby is hungry!”
“Really?”
“We have to supplement with formula. No matter how much he fights it.” She handed him a nursing bottle of white liquid. It was warm in his hand. He slipped the nipple end into Travis’s mouth, mid-cry, and to his surprise Travis latched right on, sucking away greedily. The apartment was suddenly blissfully silent. He felt the little baby’s warmth against his chest. He inhaled Travis’s sweet milky smell and it melted something hard inside him, and he thought: I can’t lose this. This is life itself.
I have so much to lose.
And he thought about what Susan had said. About him being damaged. She was probably right. He was damaged. He wondered whether Jen saw this in him. If she did, if she ever really saw inside of him, she wouldn’t love him. He was sure of that.
“Well,” she said. “Aren’t you the expert.” With no warning, she started crying. “I can’t even do this right. Do you know what it’s like spending all day with him? I’m going out of my mind.”
“You need a break,” he said. “You need to get out of the house.” She was on maternity leave from her corporate law firm and didn’t sound eager to get back to work.
“And how exactly am I going to do that? You know we can’t afford a nanny or an au pair.”
“I keep telling you, my mother would be delighted to help out.”
“Your mother? You’re kidding me.”
“She can move right in upstairs. You’ve got too much to do. Mom’s got too little. It’s win-win. And she loves babies. Why don’t I call her right now?”
“I do not want your mother living here.”
He shrugged, smiled. “She’d be happy to do it. All we have to do is call.”
“No way!”
She wouldn’t complain again, not for a while. The threat of his mother moving in was, to her, too appalling. He felt a pulse of satisfaction: he’d successfully handled the problem. That was what he was good at. Sometimes he felt as if everything would fall apart if he wasn’t there to hold it together. “I have to go out of town tomorrow,” he said. “Just for the day.”
“Chicago?”
He shook his head. “Boston.”
“She giving a speech?”
He didn’t like lying, but he also couldn’t tell her the real reason he had to go to Boston. “Just a fund-raising thing. A donor-cultivation visit.” He looked around. The apartment was a pigsty, but he knew better than to ask her to tidy up.
Will could never admit this to her, but he preferred being at work to being at home. That was the simple truth. At work he was necessary and appreciated. He knew he was helping advance the interests of Senator Susan Robbins. He was sure she was destined for the White House, and he intended to be right there with her. Chief of staff to the first woman president sounded awfully good to him.
But this ongoing nightmare of the missing laptop—it was getting worse and worse, and he feared it might become uncontainable.
Because there were a few scenarios that now seemed likely. Like reading about CHRYSALIS in The Washington Post or The New York Times. And the Justice Department launching an investigation, which would surely lead to him. He could go to prison for what he’d done for Susan.
He didn’t want to think about it, but he had to force himself to do so.
Retrieving that laptop was crucial. It would keep him from going to jail and keep the boss on the path to the White House.
But if he failed—if his trip to Boston was unsuccessful . . .
The possibility scared the hell out of him.
But he was equally scared of what he might have to do.
He flashed on what the Problem Solver had said. I don’t work on a leash, okay? I do what I do. You tell me what you need. You don’t tell me how to get it. I do whatever I deem necessary.
He had to do whatever was necessary.
But how far would he go? What would he do?
Maybe the better question was: What wouldn’t he do? There was so much to lose.
33
Tanner woke at seven in the morning, his eyelids like sandpaper, his head throbbing. He’d barely slept.
Yesterday had been a blur. Early in the morning, rattled by his attacker’s gruesome death, he had driven around aimlessly in the rain, in a state of near desperation. At one point he’d parked and got out and scanned the front end of the car, by the glare of a streetlamp, terrified he might find visible damage. But he didn’t see any. If there had been blood, the rain had washed it away.
He’d killed a man. It had been in self-defense, but would that be enough to clear him if the police came around asking questions? Was that considered a hit-and-run? Not only had he killed someone, but he had left the scene of a crime. After running through dire scenario after dire scenario, he finally decided that he should just drive back to Carl’s house and say nothing to anyone about what he’d done, what had happened. He could report what had happened to the police and spend the next year of his life dealing with a homicide inquest. On top of everything else. And that was impossible.
• • •
He was exhausted, but he had to go to the office early. A morning meeting had been scheduled at the last minute, some guy who represented a real-estate tycoon with major holdings in restaurants and hotels and who wanted to do business. A deal like that could represent salvation for Tanner Roast. So he had to get to the office and be alert and prepared.
When he was in good form, he was a top-notch salesman, sure. But he wasn’t in good form now, far from it: he was tapped out and scared. He wasn’t thinking clearly. He didn’t trust his own judgment at a time like this.
Karen Wynant intercepted him at the coffee machine. He was pouring out a mug of whatever the coffee of the day was when she approached. She had her contacts in and had put on makeup, lipstick and eyeliner. She was dressed for a sales call.
“You okay?” she said, alarmed.
“How bad do I look?”
“Not so good. Are you sick? The guy’s coming in fifteen minutes—I said I’d say hi, make him some coffee, show him around, and then you two can meet.”
“That’s fine. I can use a little more time to wake up.”
“Seriously, everything okay?”
“I’m fine. What do we know about this guy?”
“His name is Thomas Berlin, and he works for Morton Nathanson, on the hospitality side of his business empire.”
“Any idea what he has in mind?”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t going to turn him away. Egghead’s definitely going with Cortado.”
“Egghead—oh right.” He could barely concentrate. He kept seeing that guy with a giant gun waving at him. He could hear the sound of the impact, of his car colliding with the killer, that thump when he ran the guy over, crushing him. The image and the sound played over and over in his head like a tape loop. He took a sip of coffee and could barely taste it. He was nauseated. His stomach felt filled with sloshing acid. “Any other cheery news to share?”
“Sorry. I wanted you to know when I knew.” She paused. “Is the Four Seasons a done deal? Like, definitely not happening?”
“It’s over. It’s done. Why?”
“Because City Roast hasn’t announced it.”
He nodded. “Ah. I think I know why. Their IPO.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You know they’re filing to go public, right? Well, they’re in the quiet period before the IPO.”
“So?”
“So they’re not allowed to make any announcements material to the . . .” His mind had begun to wander. He heard the thump. “Whatever, whatever. That’s all. After they go public, they’ll announce their new customer.”
“Okay. Do you want me to sit in on your meeting with Berlin?”
He smiled. The concern in her eyes was genuine, almost maternal. He must really look bad.
“Seriously, everything okay?”
“I’ll be okay, I promise.”
When he got to his office, he glanced at himself in the antique Maxwell House mirror on the wall and decided he needed to shave. He pulled an electric shaver out of the bottom drawer of his desk, plugged it in, and ran it around his face.
Now he was starting to feel spasms of anxiety. What if he’d been caught on camera yesterday morning? But the tattooed guy would have thought of this. He would have chosen a spot that wasn’t surveilled. Still . . .
He sat down at his desk and opened his work e-mail, and a while later there was a knock on his open office door. It was Karen with an unprepossessing guy in his late thirties, prematurely balding.
“This is Tom,” Karen said.
“Michael Tanner,” he said, shaking the man’s hand, looking him in the eye. Tom Berlin looked like someone who was used to being in the background, not the foreground. He seemed an odd type to be in sales; not a natural fit.
Karen left, and the man sat in the chair facing Tanner’s desk.
“Can I get you some coffee, or are you all set?”
“I’m good,” the visitor said. His eyes roamed the tight confines of Tanner’s office. “Caffeinated to the gills.”
“With the good stuff, I hope,” Tanner said. “So you work for Mort Nathanson.”
The man glanced around. “Actually, Michael, I don’t work for Mort Nathanson, and my name is not Tom Berlin. I’m sorry for the ruse.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m here under false pretenses,” said the man. “My name is Will Abbott, and I’m the chief of staff to Senator Susan Robbins. And I think you have something of hers.”
34
Tanner Roast was a smaller operation than Will expected—just a modest warehouse space that connected to front offices. A couple of coffee roasters and maybe ten or twenty employees, located in a not-great part of Boston. He’d gone there straight from the airport, via taxi, and arrived twenty minutes early. He’d walked around the urban neighborhood, thinking, and the third time he went by the company’s headquarters, he was buzzed in.
The sales director, a woman named Karen something, greeted him. She was short and sort of arty-looking, with an efficient pageboy hairstyle and a blue raw-silk dress. They’d spoken on the phone yesterday when he told her he worked for Mort Nathanson and was going to be in Boston for meetings and wanted to squeeze in one last-minute appointment, with the head of Tanner Roast. She’d quickly said yes.
He worried about how long he was going to have to keep up the pretense of being in the hospitality industry. How long he could keep it up. He’d done his late-night homework, of course. He could pull off maybe five or ten minutes of coffee-related conversation with Tanner, but maybe that was all he needed.
But that anxiety was nothing compared to what he felt at the prospect of meeting a killer—the guy who must have killed the Problem Solver. Tanner was, had to be, a dangerous guy. To do what he did, to actually run a man over with a car.
And yet, to his surprise, Michael Tanner turned out to be an easygoing alpha male, the sort of guy to whom good things just seemed to happen, the sort of guy he’d always disliked. A guy who seemed to be comfortable in his own skin. Opportunities just threw themselves at him. He was a man who never had to struggle in life. Will didn’t like the guy. He’d met people like that before, particularly in college. Tanner reminded him of Peter Green, the guy he got elected student president, whose campaign he’d managed.
But he didn’t seem like the kind of person who could kill a man in cold blood.
He wondered what the deal was, why Tanner was holding on to the laptop. What he wanted. What his long game was. He didn’t fit the profile of an activist, an agitator. Was he a mercenary? Did he plan to sell the classified documents? Was he in a ring with others?
Why was he refusing to give it back?
“Can I get you some coffee, or are you all set?” Tanner said.
“I’m good. Caffeinated to the gills.”
“With the good stuff, I hope,” Tanner said. “So you work for Mort Nathanson?”
And Will had a sudden realization. It was a clever piece of wisdom that Susan Robbins liked to repeat: Sometimes the best lie of all is the God’s honest truth. Just carefully edited.
He would tell the truth.
He took a breath. “Actually, Michael, I don’t work for Mort Nathanson, and my name is not Tom Berlin. I’m sorry for the ruse.”
Tanner looked shocked, as Will expected he would. “Excuse me?”
“I’m here under false pretenses,” he went on, his heart thumping. “My name is Will Abbott, and I’m the chief of staff to Senator Susan Robbins. And I think you have something of hers. Because we have something of yours.”
He lifted his leather briefcase and unsnapped the latches. Then he pulled out Tanner’s MacBook Air, with an air of ceremony, and placed it on the desk.
Tanner’s eyes narrowed. “You called.”
“I did, yes. That was me. And that was wrong. I made an error in judgment. I totally screwed up. I thought that if you knew the laptop belonged to a senator, you might look through it. And I’m sorry for that.” He pointedly didn’t ask whether Tanner had the laptop. He would assume it, take it for granted without requiring Tanner to confirm it overtly, not give him a chance to deny it, and in the process corner the guy.
Meanwhile he was waiting for the surge of righteous anger, and sure enough it came. “Was it an error in judgment to break into my house looking for it?” Tanner said, raising his voice.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Will said flatly. He’d been prepared for that too. “No one connected to Senator Robbins would authorize something like that.”
“And was it an error in judgment to kill my friend Landon Roth?”
Landon who? “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
“A reporter for The Boston Globe. And a good man.”
Will shrugged, spread his hands, shook his head. “I’m sorry; I don’t know anything about that.” What the hell was he talking about? Someone was killed, someone else? For an instant he thought of the Problem Solver—but no way the guy would have killed someone connected with Tanner without telling Will first, without demanding payment for it. Will had transferred ten thousand dollars from the Robbins Victory Fund to the Problem Solver’s account and reported the expense as a campaign consulting fee. Oppo research, you could call it.
Tanner’s face seemed frozen in an expression of anger mixed with hurt. Will went on: “Let me lay it all out for you, tell you why I’m here. I’m going to put myself entirely at your mercy. Your laptop got accidentally switched with my boss’s, Senator Robbins’s—and I need to get hers back. There’s some sensitive information on it. Classified stuff.”
Slowly, Tanner’s expression began to soften. “Classified?” he said.
Will nodded. “And it would be a big black eye for me, and for the senator, if that got out. And so—I’m putting myself in your hands.” He paused a beat. “Please.”
Tanner now looked as if he was deep in thought. He put his hands together, tented his fingers.
It needed another note, Will thought, a touch more self-recriminatory. “I should have been straight with you from the beginning,” he said. “And for that I apologize.”
“How did you know it was mine? I didn’t put my name on it.”
Will took another breath, not wanting to divulge how nervous he felt. In his best manager’s voice, he said, “We have IT specialists on our staff, and we asked one of them to get into your computer to find out whose it was. We had no choice. Given the circumstances.”
He paused and looked Michael Tanner in the eye. “I have no idea how he did it. But he was able to pull up your name and the fact that you were based in Boston. We put two and two together and located you. I mean, you’re not exactly in hiding.”
Tanner nodded, compressed his lips. Then, without saying anything, he slowly got up, his eyes trained at some point in the distance.
• • •
Tanner’s mind raced. This Abbott guy appeared to be telling the truth. Tanner was fairly good at reading people—as a salesman, he had to be—and Abbott seemed honest and straightforward. The man was pitching; that was obvious—but he was pitching with his heart. He meant it; he was speaking the truth.
Returning the laptop, with its classified documents, was the right move, he’d decided. The senator’s chief of staff was no heavy. He was just an awkward DC staffer wearing a navy blazer that didn’t quite sit right around the shoulders.
• • •
I won, Will realized.
He had done it. His sell job actually worked. The boss’s old saw had turned out to be exactly right. The best lie of all is the God’s honest truth.
