Hostile Takeover

by McLean, Patrick E.

  "So where's the gold?"

  "I don't know. That's the point."

  "Oh, man, being evil is hard," said Billy as he slumped in defeat. "Wait a minute, you knew there was no gold in Fort Knox and you let me go there anyway?" Billy asked, anger putting the steel back in his spine.

  "No. I thought there was gold there, honest. I'm just not surprised that there wasn't. I mean, you gotta admit, there's a logic to it. And..."

  "And what?"

  Logic to it. Logic. Style to which Dr. Loeb was accustomed! Of course, it made perfect sense. Not only did Topper have the answer to the riddle, he had the answer to his problems.

  "And what?" asked Excelsior, growing impatient.

  Topper came back from a long way away. He held up his index finger and said, "See this is why you need me."

  "What do you know?"

  "I know my cut of this is going to have to be 30%."

  "30%! But…"

  "No buts, flyboy. I am privy to confidential information. I know where the double-secret gold repository is hidden."

  "Yeah, how would you know that?"

  "'Cause I listened when Edwin Windsor told me."

  "Okay. 30%."

  "Okay then, one second." Topper removed his cellphone from inside his jacket pocket and said, "Gotta check on something." He punched in a number and, while the phone was ringing, he walked over the edge of the open window and looked down. Billy followed him like a puppy, "Do you mind, ya crowding me here!" said Topper.

  "You know I have super hearing?" asked Billy.

  "Then go stand over there and listen to a Bon Jovi tribute band playing at a nightclub in South Korea or something"

  "What?"

  "Over there!"

  Billy shuffled off to the far side of the office.

  "Hello?" lied the voice on the other end of phone.

  "Did you kill him yet?" Topper asked Director Smiles.

  "Unfortunately, he has eluded capture," said Smiles.

  "What about that old bastard, Dusty Springfield, Gus, whatever—is he gonna do it or not?"

  "Ah, yes, Gus is no longer with the agency, so I am afraid you are on your own."

  "We had a DEAL!"

  "I'm not empowered to make deals that break the laws of this great nation of ours."

  "Jesus, have you listened to yourself? I mean, are you running for office, or did you get kicked by a donkey or an elephant or something?"

  "I am sure that a criminal of your resourcefulness will find a way to survive."

  "Enh-henh, that deal we made says I'm absolved of all wrongdoing. As pure as a Catholic girl after confession."

  "Perhaps you can show it to your associate, Mr. Windsor."

  "Heh, heh, heh." Topper laughed bitterly as he rolled his eyes, "I tell you what, I’ll cover my ass. You just worry about yourself. 'Cause you're in this too."

  "Best of luck."

  Topper snapped his phone shut. "Predictable." He turned to Billy. "Okay, Flyboy, you ready to be rich?"

  "Yes. Where is the gold?"

  Topper pulled his chin into his neck and looked from side to side like it was the dumbest question anybody had ever asked. "It's stashed in a mini-storage unit in East Jersey. Where else would it be?"

  As Topper watched Billy disappear into the sky, tears welled up in his eyes. Now that his part was played, now that he was at the end of himself, his facade just fell away. He wept. He wept for himself. He wept for Edwin. He wept because he could see no other way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  When Gus slept it was always the same dream. Gus would see old comrades, drinking deeply in the long halls of Valhalla. In the dream, it wasn't strange that standard-issue, olive-drab grunts were bellied up to the same bar as Vikings in pointy helmets. After all, they had all died in battle with a war-cry on their lips.

  Each time the same thing would happen. As one, the entire mead-hall would turn and look at Gus. They recognized him as one who had grown old, one who whimpered in the night when his legs pained him, one who was still trapped in Midgard, world of suffering. There was no flicker of memory in his comrades’ eyes. All that glowed within them was the soft light of pity. Gus had not died in battle. He would not die in battle. The glory and the revels of eternity were lost to him.

  Gus woke in the early morning light. He cursed the day and fumbled for a cigarette. He wanted a good death. After all the scrapes and the close calls and the crazy things he had done, he had earned it a dozen times over. Now it looked like the best he could hope for was to fall asleep with a cigarette in his lips and die while the hotel burned down around him.

  How cruel this modern world was, that duty got in the way of a man's good death. How cruel it was that they had defeated the bad guy, only to have another bad guy spring up. That was always the way. For nearly seven decades, he had gone from one bad guy to another. An endless supply of bad guys, and only one of Gus.

  Now he here he was. Shacked up in a cheap motel, little more than a pile of cinderblocks. Nearly broke, nearly broken, almost dead.

  As soon as Smiles realized that Gus wasn't going to be able to reel Excelsior back in, he cut him loose. Might have been a time when Gus could have pulled a few strings. But all his old connections were too old. They had all retired or died by now. And here he was, facing the light of another day.

  Why was he out here? What was he doing? There was no job. There was no duty. Maybe it was force of habit. Maybe he was just too damn old to do anything else.

  He stubbed the cigarette out on the cheap nightstand. Nah, that wasn't it.

  Gus shifted himself to his wheelchair. Then he rolled on in search of a good death.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  "So the fix was complete. The Cromoglodon was dead. Edwin was powerless. And Billy was off on his errand."

  "To steal gold?"

  "Oh, you coy one, like you don't know. But right then, everything was okay. In fact, if I had gotten a root beer float, I'm pretty sure that would have been it. End of story, everybody lives happily ever after."

  "That's not the end of the story," said the interrogator.

  "Of course that's not the end of the story. Seriously, do you know any story, any true story, that ends like that? Happily ever after, my ass. There are no happy endings. There's dead ends. Some people wind up there in a walker, shitting into a bag. Other people, like me, go screaming into the cul de sac of fate in a car spurting flames... and... and..."

  The interrogator waited a while before he asked, "And what?"

  "Ah, I can't put a pretty face on it anymore."

  "What?"

  "Put a face on it. Be excited. Pretend like my black little heart hasn't been broken in two by what happened. Y'know, I woulda been fine. If I had just stopped there, I woulda been fine. But no. The worst thing imaginable happened. I got everything I ever wanted."

  "I don't understand."

  "Well, of course you wouldn't. I mean look at you. You've never gotten anything you've wanted. Not really. Look at you in your cheap suit and bad shoes with your crappy job and $12 haircut. You don't get paid..."

  From the darkness, the interrogator asked, "How do you know what I'm wearing?"

  "Buddy, I can smell the cheap, quiet desperation on you. It's splashed on like Eau de Suck."

  "Yet, you're the guy in shackles who killed your only friend. Hard to see how it gets more desperate than that."

  "Oh, I didn't kill him. I just betrayed him."

  "If you hadn't betrayed him—"

  "There's a difference," Topper said with an angry light in his eye. "A small difference but a difference. Intent, see. Just like the law. There's a difference.

  "I just wanted... I wanted to show him there was more to life than work. I swear to God, I was just trying to get through to him. Speak a language he could understand. Take him down a couple of pegs, ya know. I never wanted… I wasn't my plan, you see? I just wanted the company. I didn't want him dead."

  "But you knew he would come for re
venge."

  "Oh, absolutely," said Topper, "absolutely. That's why I had to eliminate him. See, it wasn't my fault, it was his fault. Nothing I could do."

  "Sounds to me like you’re rationalizing."

  "Ah, lemme finish telling it and then you make your judgment. Besides, it's easy for you. Edwin Windsor has never been out to get you. It was him or me. And it wasn't going to be me." He gave a dismissive wave. "You wouldn't last five minutes without the protection of a badge."

  From the darkness, the interrogator asked, "How do you know I have a badge?"

  "Why else would we be going through this charade? I mean seriously. You expect me to believe you’re some kind of bizarre hobbyist?"

  "I don't care what you believe. But I do have a question."

  "Oh, I convinced the board to make me CEO."

  "That doesn't sound easy. "

  "That's only because you're not a savvy businessman like me. So, the company is in a state of chaos, right? Naturally, the stockholders and the board want to protect their investment. Nobody knows how bad it is, but Edwin is gone, so the ship is in a storm without a rudder, everybody's panicking. Rumors of mutiny, cries of 'abandon ship,' that kind of thing. So what do they do? Bring in new leadership. A guy with a proven track record, a connection to the company, a seasoned hand for this difficult time."

  "You?" the interrogator asked.

  "No, no. The guy I had shot. So they found another guy. He accidentally got run over by a truck. And then they got the hint. The third guy was me," Topper said with a big smile.

  "They made you CEO?'

  "Yeah, I think they figured the damn thing was going down for the third time, might as well have me go with it. That, or they appointed me and then shorted the stock. But they made a terrible mistake. 'Cause I'm just what the company needed. A people person!"

  "So then what did you do?"

  "Whattaya mean? There was only one play to make. We needed morale."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Even the ugliest place looks better in a blanket of fresh snow. And while nothing could make row upon row of mini-storage units with cinderblock walls and corrugated metal garage doors look good, at least the snow helped to imply an architectural rhythm. Or so Edwin thought as he stood among them.

  As the car that had brought him drove away, the sound of wheels in the snow made Edwin sad. Alone at the end, as was fitting. He didn't have much experience with emotion, so he tried to put it from his mind by walking. Under the arc lights, his tall frame cast a long shadow. A man and his briefcase. The weight of the case pulled him off to his right side, but he didn't seem to notice. He just kept walking through the snow.

  He remembered the first time he had come here. While it was now a storage facility, it had begun as a place he had created for the amusement of Dr. Loeb. Heir to a great fortune, and quite insane, Edwin had separated the boy from what he saw as valuable and wasted capital. In return, Edwin had created a fantasy world in which Eustace Eugene Reilly the 3rd could believe that he was a criminal mastermind.

  And part of that had involved building him a lair. Dr. Loeb had referred to it as his secret lair, but the secret was ill-kept. Especially because Dr. Loeb had insisted on putting up a hand-painted sign that read "Secret Lair." But now the absurdity of it all, here at the bitter end, seemed harmless and sweet to Edwin. Emotion again. He quickened his steps through the snow.

  Of course, Dr. Loeb's sign was gone now. It had replaced by a lighted one that proclaimed, "Self Storage—Affordable Rates!" into the grey twilight of a winter's evening. When Edwin had tired of Loeb, he ordered the extensive underground chambers to be converted into secure document storage for large companies with secrets to keep.

  Edwin was pleased with the simple business plan and its execution. It was the conversion of something useless and wasteful into something productive and worthwhile. When he tired of bothering with Dr. Loeb—an increasingly expensive distraction for the head of a growing insurance company—he had set him free, as it were, with a few million. The last Edwin had heard, Loeb had disappeared into the wilds of Alabama. Edwin did not wish him well, but he didn't wish him harm either. This was closer to affection than Edwin got with most people.

  The surface units were laid out in concentric circles around the central building that served as office and entrance to the underground complex. Edwin wandered through a labyrinth of other people's precious treasures and meaningless junk. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he did not take the shortest, most efficient route to his goal. He wandered through the clean silence and let the precious seconds of his life fall behind him.

  This is a good business, Edwin thought. Not glamorous, but a steady cash flow. Regular hours. A sound model. Efficient, reasonable, sane. In another life, he might have been content with this site. Or perhaps a few thousand of them spreading across the country.

  Edwin's spiraling, uncertain path brought him to the elevator at the center of the complex. He pushed the call button and waited. How strange it all was. For all that he’d struggled to avoid pointless confrontation, silly costumes and, most of all, underground lairs—now he was going to ground in one.

  He had worked all the angles and made all of the possible combinations, and Edwin knew that there was no other way. How little choice was left to him at the end.

  Edwin entered the elevator and set his metal case on the floor. The weight of it contacting the floor caused the metal of the elevator car to boom like a funeral bell. The doors closed and Edwin sank into the cold earth.

  Five stories below the ground, he walked through room after room of files. The sound of his expensive shoes on the polished concrete sounded fateful, ominous, and massive. At the end of a long hallway, he punched a code into a keypad and a heavy metal door slid open. This was the "command center." The hardened concrete walls, the whisper of the 100-year air purifiers, the waiting store of food and water might lead another man to believe he was secure here. Here hope might grow in the dark like some strange mushroom. Perhaps his fate would not find him? Perhaps, if he was quiet and patient, he could wait out the dry months in the desert—live below the earth until the rains of Spring brought new life.

  But Edwin knew that such fantasies would not happen. Long ago, he had ceased to trade in hope.

  He powered up the surveillance equipment and sat in the command chair. It creaked ominously as he turned. What a horrible kind of movie set this was, thought Edwin. A concession to every teenage boy's fantasy of power without consequence, responsibility or logic. He longed for a cup of tea, but not enough to get up and get it himself. He sighed and let his weight settle into the cheap swivel chair.

  The surveillance system beeped at him urgently, as if it expected Edwin to be able to do something to avert the inevitable. Edwin hoped that he wouldn’t have to wait long.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  As Billy flew low over the storage facility, he could see the twin trails of the wheelchair cutting through the snow. Somehow, he knew this meeting with Gus was inevitable.

  He landed so hard the snow was blown outward from around his feet. In front of him was the entrance to Windsor's underground lair. But between himself and the entrance was Gus, sitting in a wheelchair. He was slumped awkwardly across one arm, as if half of his body were sleeping. The force of will seemed drained from his frame, and Billy wouldn't have recognized his old friend, except for the eyes. The old man's eyes were still fierce and undimmed.

  "You're here for Windsor?" Billy asked.

  Gus shook his head. No.

  "You can't have him," Billy said. "He's mine. I'm the hero. I get to get the bad guy. That's how it works."

  "You can have him and welcome. But you ain't no hero and we both know it."

  "C’mon Gus, aren't we both too old for this. I mean, whattaya want from me?"

  "A reckoning."

  "A what?" asked Billy. Of all the crazy shit.

  "You and me boy. One punch each."

  Enough
of this, thought Billy. "If I hit you, you'd die!"

  Gus twisted his head to the side and spit. "Yup."

  "I'm not gonna hit a guy in a wheelchair. Can you imagine what would happen if somebody saw that?"

  "Always about you, ain’t it?" Gus put both hands on the arms of the wheelchair and struggled to rise.

  "Whoa, Gus, did you take your vitamins this morning?"

  "Goddamn it, boy," Gus roared, "you're gonna take me seriously! I been fightin' since I was 19. One way or the other, if there was a scrap or a dust-up or a problem this country faced, I found my way into it. I have served, you chicken shit. SERVED!"

  "And I haven't? Is that your point?"

  "That's not what I'm sayin'. I never expected to live this long. Not by a damn sight. Better men than me have come and gone. And when I look back, I regret a lot of things. But most of all, I regret that I didn't die at their sides. That make any kinda sense to you?"

  Billy looked at him for a long time. Finally he said, "Yeah, I think it does."

  "If you ever loved me..." Gus choked with emotion. "Goddamn it, you Spandex-wearing sissy."

  Billy looked at the old man struggling to stay standing on mutinous legs. He knew that what Gus was asking was more than Gus would ever have done for him. But he went ahead and did it anyway.

  In the blink of an eye, Billy dashed forward and hit him. Not hard enough to crush his chest. Not hard enough to knock him backwards through a wall. Just hard enough to stop the old man's heart.

  Gus staggered backwards and dropped to one knee.

  As Billy watched, he blamed Windsor. Somehow he was behind it all. Billy didn't know how Windsor could have removed the gold from Fort Knox. Or how he could have turned Gus into a husk of man who wanted to die. He just knew that before Windsor, things had been fine. After Windsor, it had all gone to hell.