by Lee Child
“Oh, I —”
“Everything we did was perfectly legal. By the book.”
“I keep hearing that.”
“Your boss had run the company into the ground. What you don’t get is, we saved the place. If we hadn’t come along to fix it, the entire operation would have gone under, and nobody would be working anymore.”
“Fulmont was doing fine until you called the debt.”
“That was entirely within our rights.”
“That was ruthless and unnecessary — except to give you an opening to loot the place.” A waiter appeared, looking confused.
“Excuse me, sir, are you joining the party? And the lady … ?”
“We’re fine,” Valiant said.
“Ah, shall I bring out the first course?”
“I’ll let you know when.”
“Very good.” He slipped away, still frowning.
“You can’t fix everything,” said Joe. “Not completely. I know that. But at an absolute minimum, you need to give the pension back.”
“Oh, go to hell.” Valiant’s patience had begun to wear.
“It’s only six million dollars. Last year you boasted about earning, what, nine billion? You can afford it.”
“It was all legal. There’s no obligation.”
“Legal.” Joe sighed. “What you did — it was wrong.”
He didn’t get anywhere. Valiant sat obstinate for another minute, disregarding him. When the waiter came back again, with the maître d’ for support, Joe stood up.
“Thanks for the time, Mr. Valiant,” he said.
“If I ever see you again, you’re going to jail.”
“Beeker,” said Joe. “With three e’s. You need some time to think it over, that’s okay. Let’s say, by Wednesday? A public announcement. I’ll be waiting.”
“Fuck you.”
Joe nodded. “Wednesday,” he said again, and left.
NOTHING HAPPENED, EXCEPT that Valiant hired some bodyguards. They were at his house — Joe followed the Gallardo one evening, an hour’s drive out of the city and into horse country, to see a blacked-out SUV waiting at the gate. In the morning the bodyguards arrived early at the office, and when Valiant went out for lunch, Joe saw at least one musclehead nearby the entire time.
On the other hand, they didn’t actually drive with him. The sports car was a two-seater, hardly built for six-foot linebackers carrying automatic weapons. Joe thought about this, and he followed Valiant to and from his house for a few more days.
At a distance — a great distance. He wasn’t going to be accused of stalking.
Thursday afternoon, Joe stopped waiting for Valiant’s announcement and started thinking about plan B. He had to borrow a phone book from the desk guy at the motel — the room didn’t have one, and pay phones seemed to have disappeared from the city. He’d never find this particular kind of shop back home, but Manhattan didn’t disappoint: three choices in Midtown alone, and more in the boroughs.
New Yorkers seemed to like spying on one another.
“THE LENS IS easy,” said the clerk. He gestured at a glass case alongside the counter, its shelves crammed with glinting electronics. “You need wireless?”
“I don’t think so.” Joe remembered the combat radio he’d humped through Vietnam, twenty-three pounds of steel and plastic knobs. The equipment here would fit inside a pencil. “I can wear the recorder on my belt or something, connect it under my shirt.”
“Sure. Pin-wire mike too — put it separate, different buttonhole or something, makes it harder to catch.”
“You sure it can record everything someone says to me? Video too?”
“So long as you’re facing them. The exact orientation doesn’t matter much. A lens like this” — he held up a tiny crystal bead, two thin leads trailing away — “has a seventy-degree field of view. Looks a bit like a fishbowl on playback, but you’ll see everything.”
“Good.” Joe pulled out his wallet.
As the clerk settled the components into a plastic bag, he said, “I ought to tell you, the courts don’t accept this sort of thing.”
“Excuse me?”
“If you’re planning to catch someone, go undercover? It’s not admissible. I’m just saying.”
“Oh, that’s not what this is about.” Joe took the bag. “We’re way beyond a court of law.”
ON FRIDAY HE started late, checking out of the Rest-a-Way at noon and eating a full lunch at a diner off 280. By three o’clock he was in Connecticut, the truck parked in Old Ridgefork’s municipal lot. The town was small and charming, with pottery shops and coffee boutiques on the renovated main street. Joe walked a few blocks north, to the edge of the town center, and sat on a park bench near a stoplight where Bluff Street crossed Main.
Late sunlight slanted across trees and Victorians. Children’s shouts drifted from a playground a block away. Traffic was light but steady, a stream of cars headed mostly east. Old Ridgefork sat on one of the commuter arteries into Fairfield County, as Joe had determined from careful study of a state map.
Valiant had driven this way all three times Joe had tailed him home.
He sat for ninety-five minutes, and then he saw the Gallardo coming through town, a few blocks away.
Joe stood and began to walk along the sidewalk to the street corner, his back to Valiant. He could hear the car — the sort of whiny rumble that came from overpriced, overpowered Italian engines — and paced himself accordingly. When the Lamborghini was still a block behind him, Joe hit the pedestrian-crosswalk button, and the light turned red just in time to halt Valiant at the intersection.
Two feet away.
Joe turned, leaned over, and put his hand through the open passenger window to unclick the lock latch. In one smooth motion, he opened the door, slid in, and slammed it shut behind him.
“Hey, Prince,” he said. “Light’s green, you can go.”
Valiant recovered, snarled, and twisted in his seat, reaching across in a lunge that was half punch, half grab. Joe pulled out his .45 and pointed it at Valiant’s face.
“Settle down or I’ll shoot you,” Joe said.
Valiant froze.
“My service weapon.” Joe held the Model 1911 comfortably, with his elbow against the door, keeping as far from Valiant as possible. “I wasn’t supposed to take it, but no one was paying attention on those MAC flights forty years ago. New ammunition, of course.”
“You’re over the line.”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.” Joe considered the handgun. “I suppose I really could go to prison for this.”
“You will!”
“Maybe.” Joe looked back at Valiant. “See, that’s the difference between you and me — I own up to my responsibilities.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I told you — the light’s green. Start driving.”
Valiant glared another moment, then put the car into gear and started up the road.
“Turn up here,” said Joe. “Yes, there, on Valley Road. No need to bother anyone behind us.”
They followed the winding road up a hill, soon leaving the scattering of houses that marked the edge of Old Ridgefork proper. Fall foliage had just started to turn, and the trees glowed in the setting sun. As they ascended, Joe could see a lake sparkling in the distance. “Slow down,” he said. “Around this bend . . . yup, there it is. Pull in.”
They stopped at a roadside historic marker — a faded metal sign standing on a wide verge so cars could pull over. The road was deserted. Valiant killed the engine at Joe’s direction, and in the quiet they could hear birds and crickets.
“You rich assholes,” said Joe. “Playing Wall Street games. Hundreds of us, you ruined our lives, and that was just at Fulmont. I figure you have thousands and thousands to answer for, all the deals you’ve done.”
“I told you, we followed every single law, every single regulation.” Valiant didn’t look at the pistol.
“That’s kind of not the point, which you stil
l don’t seem to understand.”
“We kept that business alive.”
“By screwing every single guy who worked there.”
“At least they’re working.”
“Is that why you did it?”
“What?”
“To put us all on minimum wage? Take away our retirement? Force us to work until we die?”
Valiant breathed hard. “Why are you doing this?”
“I just want to understand.”
“Understand?”
“You.”
Cool forest air drifted through the open window, bringing a smell of earth and fallen leaves. Far away, the sound of traffic on the state road was barely audible.
“Was it just money?” Joe said. “I really want to know. You can’t possibly need another million dollars.”
Valiant said nothing for a long moment.
“Well?” Joe moved his pistol slightly, bringing it back into the conversation.
“You just want me to explain myself?” Valiant seemed uncertain. “That’s all?”
“If I wanted revenge, I’d have shot you already.” Joe shrugged. “I thought about it. But what’s the point?”
“So put the gun away!”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Joe said. “Self-defense cuts both ways.”
Not actually true, but Valiant nodded.
A minute later he was talking, talking, talking.
“You worked at Fulmont a long time, didn’t you? The rolling line, right? Not just pressing buttons, turning cranks. You think I don’t know anything about the industry, but you’re wrong. I study every detail before I make a deal. Everything. So I know about your job. It takes skill. Years, maybe, to get good at it.”
Joe raised an eyebrow.
“That’s the reason Fulmont’s not in Mexico,” said Valiant. “Or Indonesia, or Poland. Skills. You guys know what you’re doing, and that can’t be yanked up and dumped in some cheap, overpopulated free-trade zone.”
“Thanks.”
“Not my point. Look, you were good at your job, I bet. Spend years learning a craft, there’s satisfaction in performing it. Real satisfaction. Doing a job and doing it well — that’s what makes people happy.”
Joe stared at him. “So why —”
“Because what I do is, I make deals.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
Valiant shook his head. “I find value to unlock, synergies to realize. Ways to bring people together, so everyone comes out ahead. And I’m good at it, just like you’re good at the milling press.”
“Good at destroying lives?”
“Good at two-plus-two-equals-five. Seeing possibilities where no one else does and bringing them to life.”
Not a single car had passed by. The sun was descending into a bank of purple.
“But you walk away with seven figures,” said Joe. “And I have to eat day-old bread and government cheese.”
Valiant frowned. “That’s not my fault. That’s how the world works. You make strap steel. I create billions of dollars of value. Billions! Of course I get paid more.”
They fell silent. Valiant looked away. Time passed.
“I should tell you,” Joe said finally. “You’re on tape.”
“Huh?” Valiant swung back.
Joe kept the gun steady but used his left hand to pull the camera lens from concealment in his shirt placket. He held it up, thin wires dangling.
“All recorded, picture and sound both.”
“So what?” Valiant grimaced. “Take it to some prosecutor, he’ll just laugh. I keep telling you, there’s nothing illegal going on here!”
“I know.” Joe let the lens fall. “I was thinking I’d put it on the internet. YouTube? Get some attention on what you’ve done. What you are.”
After a moment, Valiant’s face cleared. “Go ahead,” he said. “Sure, post it. My lawyers can get a takedown notice in an hour. And even if they don’t, who cares?”
“The rest of the world cares.”
“I don’t think so.” Somehow he’d recovered every last sniff of self-confidence.
“You want yourself seen like this?”
“Sure.” Valiant laughed. “All you’ll be doing, really, is proving that I know how to find a bargain — and capitalize on it.”
“That’s . . .” Joe’s voice trailed away.
“It’s like free advertising. Asshole.”
They sat silent, eyeing each other.
“So,” Valiant said. “Now what?”
Joe wondered how he’d ended up here. He looked out the windshield, unable to hold Valiant’s smirking gaze.
The setting sun pierced the cloud bank, and golden light dappled the trees below them. Joe sighed.
“I’m not sure.” The 1911 was heavy in his hand.
“Well, I don’t care. Do what you want.”
Joe turned back. “Okay,” he said.
He raised the pistol and shot Valiant in the heart.
“THE FBI TALKED to me,” said Stokey. “And the state police. Even the DA — and I voted for him last year.”
“Me too.” Joe closed the iron firebox, adjusted its damper, and checked the thermometer poking out from the smokehouse planking. “Down in the courthouse. They took over the whole second floor, it felt like.”
Hardwood smoke drifted from blackened vents. They were in Stokey’s backyard, where he’d built the little smokehouse twenty years before.
“I told them you went up there.” Stokey shifted uncomfortably. It was the first time he’d brought up the subject directly. “To see Valiant. You told me you were going.”
“You did the right thing,” Joe said. “I did tell you that, and I went to New York. Of course you had to tell them the truth.”
“They’re convinced you did it.” Stokey looked at Joe square. “That you killed Valiant.”
“Lots of guys wanted to.”
The October morning was cool and overcast. Joe had shot a deer the day before — in season, permit and everything — and what hadn’t been frozen, he and Stokey were turning into sausage and jerky.
“Did you?” Having finally asked, Stokey wasn’t letting it go.
“They don’t seem to have any evidence,” said Joe. “Whoever did it, he probably walked away all bloody, but if he burned the clothing and got rid of the gun, there’s no connection.”
“But eyewitnesses —”
“Saw a man in a dark jacket and a hat. Worthless.”
The wood smoke was sharp and clean. A couple dogs from the neighborhood had shown up and were now sitting out by the road, watching with keen attention.
Stokey gave up. “You taking your old job back?”
Joe studied the smoke rising, drifting slowly into the gray sky.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “That wouldn’t be right.”
THE HOTLINE
BY DREDA SAY MITCHELL
Rukshana Malik wasn’t angry when she was passed over for promotion at the London bank where she worked. It was true that Sarah, the successful candidate, wasn’t as well qualified. It was also true that she was a bit younger, but Rukshana didn’t want to draw any conclusions from that. After the selection process was over, her manager had given her a debriefing in which he explained that it had been a very close thing and that Rukshana still had a very bright future with the company — after all, she was only twenty-nine. He also suggested that the next time a position came up, she should go to him so he could prep her with some interview practice. Rukshana liked Jeff; he was a great boss. So she was disappointed and a bit puzzled, but she wasn’t angry.
Her family was, though. They suspected that the reason she hadn’t been given the promotion was that she was a Muslim who wore a headscarf. Her sister, Farah, asked, “This girl who got the job, what does she look like?”
“Well, she’s young and blond . . .”
“And very good-looking, I imagine?”
“I suppose.”
“Oh, wake up, Rocky.” Fara
h waved her hands in the air. She was wearing her pale blue soft leather gloves with the fancy fringe at the end and the three white buttons on the tops, one of her newest fashion accessories.
“It’s not like that; they have strict policies on race, religion, gender, and the rest of it.”
Her sister sighed and shook her head with pity. Sometimes it was easy for her to forget that Rukshana was the older of the two, and an outsider could be forgiven for not realizing they were related at all. Farah wore her faith lightly, dressed in Western clothes, and was a party girl with dark brown eyes that flashed and sparkled like her gold jewelry.
The following week, Rukshana was called away from her desk to see a guy from Personnel. As soon as he told her that she was a highly valued member of the staff and a key member of the team, she knew what was coming, and sure enough she was right. He went on, “Unfortunately, in today’s harsh financial climate, tough decisions have to be taken . . .”
Rukshana was let go, but she still wasn’t angry. She was handed a letter that included a nice payoff and a glowing reference, and all her coworkers said that they were sorry to see her leave. But she was nonetheless let go. She was in tears as she cleared her desk and didn’t see an angry Jeff appear from his office.
“Is this true, what I’ve heard?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“This is outrageous. I’m going up to Personnel, they’re not getting away this.” He started walking toward the elevator.
She grabbed his arm and dragged him back. “Please, don’t. It’s all right, honestly.”
“I don’t care.”
He stormed off, and she didn’t see him again before she left. Farah was equally angry when Rukshana told her what had happened. “You should sue the bastards.”
“For what?”
“Like Marlon Brando said in The Wild One, ‘Whaddya got?’ There’s race, religion, gender — sue them for all three. Make them pay. Drag their arses through the courts, embarrass them in public, chuck dirt at them, and make them wish they’d never heard your name.”
“It’s not worth it.”
Farah was genuinely baffled. “What’s the matter with you, Rocky? Why aren’t you angry? I’d be fizzing if people treated me like that.”