The Switch, page 29
He turned around and left the platform and ran up the nearest exit steps. He had to catch the green line.
As far as he could tell, no one followed him.
Half an hour later he exited the subway aboveground in Allston.
The tattoo parlor was where he remembered it being, on the second floor of a prominent rounded-front building at the busy, windswept intersection of Harvard Avenue and Cambridge Street. The name, Mustang Creations Body Art, was painted in circus-style lettering.
Inside it was surprisingly big and well lit. The walls were lined with framed designs for what Tanner assumed were tattoos. There were wooden cases of body jewelry. In one corner was an ATM. Seated at the counter was an attractive woman of around forty with a head of blond curls.
She was talking to a young black woman who said, “I’m here to get a new nose ring put in.”
“You want an actual hoop? Or just a stud?”
“A stud.”
“A little gem or something?”
When it was his turn, Tanner said, “Is your piercing guy here?”
“Stefan is in and he should be available in about . . . five minutes. Have you decided on what kind of piercing you’re interested in?”
“I want to discuss it with Stefan.”
He sat on a small couch and looked mindlessly through a loose-leaf binder of tattoo photos. He wondered whether the NSA had already grabbed Will Abbott, whether they’d found out by now that he didn’t have the laptop with him. And how soon it would be before they came for Tanner.
The door to a small office came open and a small man, a young guy with a spiky punk haircut and a ring in his nose, emerged. “Michael?”
The piercing room was immaculate and surgical-looking: a hospital bed covered with white paper, a rolling metal table with packaged needles on top, a metal sink.
He introduced himself as Stefan and said, “So what holes of happiness are we putting in you?” He smiled, showing a large gap between his front teeth.
Tanner explained what he wanted.
“I’m not allowed to use a scalpel.”
“But do you have one?”
Stefan said nothing.
Tanner took out a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet. “Can we make this a cash transaction?”
Stefan closed the door and then removed a sterile packaged scalpel from a desk drawer.
Tanner, sitting on the hospital bed, took off his jacket and then his shirt and turned around.
“Pretty bad infection,” Stefan said.
“That’s the spot,” Tanner said.
“This is going to hurt a little. Are you okay with pain?”
“I’ll be okay.”
Stefan deftly sliced a small cut in the infected area on his lower back. Tanner winced. The pain, white-hot, surprised him.
“There is something back here,” Stefan said.
Tanner felt Stefan dig something out of the throbbing wound. Quickly, Stefan placed a small, bloody object on the metal table. “This must be what caused the infection. What do you think it is?”
A GPS tracker. A micro-transponder. “Who knows.”
Stefan’s eyes widened. “Whoa. How’d it get there, man?”
“I don’t know,” Tanner said. But he had an idea. He remembered when Earle’s men grabbed him and he fought back and broke one of the guy’s noses. They’d jabbed him with something, some kind of tranquilizer that had knocked him right out. That was when they’d done it, inserted the GPS chip or whatever it was.
Tanner picked it up. It was a cylinder, not much longer than an inch, made of some kind of light-colored metal. This explained how the Theta team always seemed to know where he was, even though they weren’t nearby. He didn’t know how it worked, but it must have sent out a signal they were able to track.
“What do you want me to do with it?” asked Stefan.
75
The house had been on the market for almost a year. According to Sarah, no one bothered to show it anymore. It was an ugly little wood-frame hovel on a spectacular piece of land, right on the ocean, northeast of Boston. It was vastly overpriced, something to do with a brother and sister who had jointly inherited it and were at a standoff about whether to sell it or not. No one had lived in it since the original owner, the mother, had died, two years ago.
It also smelled bad, like a dead animal. Maybe a mouse had died somewhere inside the walls. He opened all the windows to let it air out, to let the bracing sea air in.
He had several hours to kill, and he knew he should grab sleep when he could. But for a long while he was too revved up. He needed to distract himself from what was about to happen: there was simply nothing more he could do about it. So he thought about Blake Gifford and City Roast, and he decided to make a call to his sales director.
“Karen,” he said, “I need you to listen really carefully to what I’m about to tell you. I want you to call the Lockwood Hotels Group in California and offer them the following deal.”
“But Lockwood isn’t bidding their coffee out. City Roast has it—”
“Just listen,” he said.
She did. When Tanner was finished, Karen said, “But . . . we’d lose money on that!”
“I don’t care. Do it.”
“Michael, that’s crazy. In six months we’d go bankrupt.”
“Just do it,” Tanner said, “and text me when it’s done.”
He ended the call. Then he called Sal Persico, his roaster, to see whether he’d done the errand.
Sal had met Tanner at the tattoo place in Allston and had taken the tracker to the last house for sale Tanner had stayed in, the mansion in Chestnut Hill.
The NSA would probably figure Tanner was staying at a friend’s house. If Tanner was right, anyway, that he’d found a tracker and removed it. Because if he was right, and he’d temporarily disappeared from the NSA’s radar screen, that would explain why they hadn’t yet grabbed him. He needed more time to get them what they wanted. It was a low-trust situation. He’d have to have something solid to hand Earle or they’d just lock him up. Or worse.
It wouldn’t be much longer.
He was about to call Sal when his burner phone emitted a musical sound. He’d received a text message.
It was from his sales director. It said only, Done.
He called Sal and asked him how it was going. “You’re all set,” Sal said.
“Thanks. And I’m sorry to bother you with this at night.”
“Not a bother at all,” Sal said.
He finished making calls about an hour later. Then the burner rang: it was Lucy Turton. “There’s a guy who’s, like, desperate to reach you.”
“It’s after business hours.”
“Not in California.”
“Who is it?”
“Blake Gifford with City Roast.”
“Ah.”
“Is it something I can handle, or . . . ?
“Did he leave a number?”
• • •
Tanner had disappeared, but Will had an idea about how to find him.
He’d been thinking about when he first made contact with the NSA, a couple of days ago. The NSA had been keeping close tabs on Michael Tanner’s whereabouts when he was on the run, but they were puzzled. They couldn’t see a pattern in where he was staying. He didn’t stay at his home or office, of course, or with his wife—they were separated—or even with any known friends, relatives, or associates. Basically, he was staying at a succession of unoccupied houses in the Boston area.
When Will heard that, he had smiled to himself and said nothing. He guessed immediately what it meant. Tanner’s wife, like Will’s mother, was a real estate agent. She sold houses. Tanner, with the help of his wife, was being clever.
He was staying in unoccupied houses for sale. Where else could he spend the night without using his credit card?
Twenty minutes later, Will was sitting at his laptop in a Starbucks, browsing through house listings. He’d called his mother at the dentist’s office and asked for her ID number to use MLS, the database of houses for sale. She still sold houses and was delighted to help. She’d been campaigning for Will to move his new family out of a condo and into a real house anyway.
He scanned the list of unoccupied houses for sale in the Boston area. But there were too many; he needed to narrow down the search.
Michael Tanner was probably going to do what frightened mammals do: seek solitude. Seek safety through isolation. He wouldn’t want to stay in an apartment in the city, nor a house that had neighbors nearby. Instead, he would want . . . Yes, here we were.
A house for sale on a secluded bluff in Nahant. In the photo the house looked lonely, all by itself on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean.
Nahant was a small resort town north and east of Boston, located on an island on a spit of land that jutted into the Atlantic. About a half an hour drive away.
It was perfect.
• • •
Tanner called Blake Gifford in Santa Barbara, California.
Gifford answered the phone after the first ring, and he did not sound friendly, barking: “Dude!”
“I got a message you called.”
“Hey, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal, I don’t think you quite know what you’re doing. That’s some crazy-ass deal you made.”
“Which deal is that?”
“You know damn well what I’m talking about. Lockwood, dude. I’m saying this as a friend: you’re gonna screw your company six ways to Sunday if you take on an obligation like that. No way can you sell him beans at that price and stay in business. I mean, it’s totally—”
“It’s totally kamikaze,” Tanner said. He’d offered Lockwood Hotels a price so low they couldn’t resist switching coffee providers. They’d dumped City Roast and signed with Tanner Roast. Gifford had just lost his biggest customer.
“Exactly!”
“And I’m flying my little plane right into your ship, so I hope you’re a real good swimmer, Blake.”
“Just to sabotage my IPO?”
“Yeah, it’s a shame about that, isn’t it?” Tanner knew that the Lockwood Hotels Group represented fifteen percent of City Roast’s revenue. He knew this from the form S-1 he’d asked Karen to get. He also knew that, until that moment, City Roast was growing thirty percent a year. Which made the initial public offering worth 550 million dollars. Trend lines were everything for stock analysts, and the trend was now bad.
Very bad.
Now, without Lockwood Hotels’ business, the IPO would fall apart for sure. Their year-to-date business would plummet. Whatever they’d priced their stock at would suddenly be way too high. It would be a disaster.
Gifford used a colorful expletive. Then he added, “You’ll go bankrupt.”
“I may, but I don’t care if it means screwing you, you son of a bitch.”
Gifford used another expletive.
“Also,” Tanner said, “you’re not going to have much time to tape your TV show. You’ll be spending all of the next two or three years fighting off lawsuits from your investors.” Lots of people who might lose money in the IPO would go after Gifford, sue him for millions. All these big, scary investment banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. He smiled. “Enjoy explaining your new trend line to the boys at Goldman Sachs. But, hey—it’s just business. Nothing personal.”
“All right!” Gifford roared. “You can have your damned Four Seasons back.”
“I’ll await a call from Liam.”
“What the hell’s gotten into you?”
“You kill my dog, I kill your cat,” Tanner said, smiling. A weird expression that one was: he wondered if people actually did that sort of thing.
“This isn’t like you, Michael!”
“It is now,” Tanner said. He hung up. He grinned. Then he called his office manager.
“Lucy,” he said. “Tell Connie Hunt to pack up her cubicle.”
• • •
He was pretty sure he’d just saved his company.
He wanted to call Sarah and tell her, but he couldn’t risk it. Someone might be listening.
For a long while, he sat outside in a rusty lawn chair, staring at the sea, listening to the crash of the surf. It was lulling. He was exhausted.
He went inside, stretched out on the sofa in the front sitting room, and quickly fell asleep. He had vivid dreams about being chased on foot by someone driving a car.
He heard a man’s voice. In his dream someone was yelling at him, and he didn’t understand what the man was saying.
Then he realized that the man’s voice was in the room where he’d been sleeping. He jolted awake.
“Get up.”
A man was standing in the middle of the room, in shadows, illuminated faintly from behind by moonlight.
Will Abbott had found him.
He was pointing a gun at Tanner.
76
Move it,” Will said, a little louder.
Tanner sat up abruptly and stood up. Was he about to jump at him? No. Will kept the gun leveled to make sure he didn’t do anything.
“How the hell did you find me?” Tanner said.
“Hands in the air.”
Tanner obediently put them up. “Look,” he said, “I already told you, I don’t know where the hell that laptop is. It’s gone!”
“No,” said Will. “It’s not lost or stolen. Don’t bullshit me. Where’d you hide it?”
“Put the damned gun down.”
“Where is it?”
Tanner inhaled and exhaled noisily. He looked tired, defeated. “Okay,” he said quietly. “This is not worth my life. I just need a guarantee that my wife and I are protected.”
Finally. Will almost smiled. “Excuse me,” he said. “Who’s got the gun?”
Tanner shook his head. “I need a guarantee.”
“If it’s the senator’s laptop and you maintain absolute silence on what you saw, we’re good. Where is it?”
“It’s in my office.”
“Wrong. The NSA already broke into your safe.”
“I didn’t put it there. That would have been too obvious. It’s hiding in plain sight.”
“Where?”
“On the desk of one of my employees.”
“Which one?”
“Sal Persico, the name is.”
“All right,” said Will, “you’re taking me to your office. Move it.”
“Why do you need me there?” Tanner said. “Here’s the keys.”
Will shook his head, kept the gun leveled at Tanner, and made sure he stayed a comfortable distance away. “Let’s go.”
Tanner looked athletic. He looked like someone who would do something crazy, like try to grab the gun off him.
When Arthur Collins had loaned him the gun, he’d told Will it was a Philippine knockoff of a 1911. It didn’t have any serial numbers cast into it. Therefore untraceable. Will had bought some ammunition off of Arthur, a handful of .45 cartridges, as big as thumbs. If he needed more, he knew he could buy ammo without a license anywhere in Virginia. But he had a feeling he wouldn’t need any more after tonight.
He thought about the .45 cartridges loaded in the pistol.
A bullet that big and powerful would tear an immense hole in a person.
77
Will’s rented Toyota was parked right in front of the house. Once Tanner had gotten in behind the steering wheel, Will came around and got into the front seat. “I’ve got the fob,” Will said. “This car is push to start.”
Tanner pushed the starter and the car came quietly to life. He drove in silence. After a few minutes, he said, “So how did you find me?”
“You’re not the only one who knows the tricks. Like I said, my mother sold houses.”
Tanner remembered Will mentioning that on the train ride to Boston. His mother sold houses on the side. To keep them afloat.
“Is that right?”
“This is going to be very simple. You’ll hand me the laptop, I verify it’s the senator’s, I take it, and I’m gone. It’s over.”
“Am I supposed to believe you’d fire that gun at me?”
“Try me and find out.”
Tanner half smiled. After a minute or so, he said, looking straight ahead, “You’d kill for a laptop? Really? For a laptop?”
“‘Kill for a laptop’?” Will said. “That’s not the way to think about it. “Would I kill to protect the country? Would I kill to protect a future where a truly remarkable woman has a decent shot at the Oval Office? Kill to protect a transformative political career that could mean so much more than either of our lives? Are you telling me there’s nothing you’d kill for?”
Tanner said nothing.
“If you don’t have that, that one thing you’d kill for, or die for—your life is meaningless,” Will said.
But Tanner kept staring at the road and said nothing.
• • •
This was not a game, Will thought. Not a sport. This was serious business.
Will found himself thinking about Peter Green, the student president at Miami of Ohio he’d gotten elected. He’d had to resort to certain measures back then too. Otherwise it would have been a squeaker—no, actually Peter would have probably lost, based on his own informal polling—had it not been for those certain measures.
Thanks to his clerical job at the admissions department, he had access to his classmates’ folders. One day, during the election campaign, he pulled the admissions folder of Jake Califano, Peter Green’s opponent, where he learned that Jake had been suspended for a semester at Groton because of a disputed, hushed-up rape accusation. He made a furtive copy and offered it as a leak to The Miami Student. But they wouldn’t run it, so he told a few people, and of course the rumor spread. In a matter of days, everyone knew about it. He didn’t ask Peter’s permission to do this, because frankly, Peter didn’t take the campaign as seriously as Will did. But somehow the word got around to Peter, about how Will had tried to slip the damaging information to the student newspaper. And Peter tracked him down at the dining hall, clapped a hand on his shoulder, and said, “We’ve gotta talk.”
