“You mean like the FBI?”
He frowns. “Don’t be smart, kid.”
“I told you I didn’t talk to no one. You can believe me or not — that’s your problem. Do I look like some undercover agent?”
“Good point,” he says. “You look like a street punk. But you haven’t exactly acted like one, and you don’t talk like one.”
“I had your BlackBerry. There are newspapers. I can read.”
He nods. “Apparently. But I can’t help wondering if you’re some kind of Greenpeace troublemaker or something. Someone with a simplistic and overly emotional take on business in general and mining in particular.”
You shrug. It almost feels like a compliment.
“Does that shrug mean you are or are not affiliated with some such organization?” he demands, as if he were the prosecutor in some TV drama.
“What if I am?” you say. But seeing the look on his face, you decide that playing cocky is not going to help. Your shoulders slump. “No,” you say. “Do you see anyone around coming to my rescue?”
“No,” he says. “No rescuers and no media so far, which is how I want it to stay. So you just fell into this thing, is that what happened?”
You nod. “Tank chucked the key thing, and I took a look in the room, found your BlackBerry, and checked it out. There were a lot of people pissed off at you.”
The Moon chuckles, leans against the fireplace.
“Yes, well . . .” says Niven, raising an eyebrow at the Moon. Then he turns his courthouse eyes on you again. “So you find my phone, which is when you make contact with my daughter.”
“Yes, sir.”
He settles back on the sofa, his arms crossed as if he’s trying to figure out how badly he’s going to hurt you. You are the little piece of grit that got into his fancy machine here and maybe could bring it screeching to a halt, if you were to tell the right people what you know. Somehow you’ve got to make him believe you have that power, right? God, no, boy — think again! What you want to do is the opposite: try to convince him you wouldn’t have a clue what to do with what you know.
“So, let’s see where we are,” says Jack. “You ran away from home last May; you’re living on the street; you’re a thief —”
“Who says I’m a thief ?”
“Five hundred and sixty dollars says you’re a thief, though why you left anything in the wallet, I’ll never know. We have our contacts in Toronto, Brent.”
“Yeah, right. Your lawyer.”
“My lawyer knows nothing about this. He passes on information about the investigation to my office, and one of my associates passes on that information to me.”
The Snake. He means the Snake.
“Anyway, my point is that you need money. And what I have to try and establish is how much will keep you quiet and whether I can trust you to keep quiet.”
Money? They’re thinking of giving you money?
Jack is looking at you, and there’s a sly grin on his face, like he read you dead to right. “I’m a businessman, Brent,” he says. “Businessmen trade in all kinds of commodities. And silence, non-action, compliance — these are just commodities as far as I’m concerned. Or, to be more accurate, goods and services.”
“Maybe you need to say that more simple,” says Wallace.
“No, I get it,” you say.
“Clever lad,” says Jack. “So let’s say if I were to give you a thousand dollars. Would that do the trick?”
Did he say a thousand dollars? “You mean to keep me from blabbing?”
He nods. “And could I be sure you wouldn’t try to blackmail me later? Threaten to take your intriguing little story to the press, see if you could double dip, so to speak?”
Your head is still reeling from the fact they’re not going to kill you, so a thousand bucks catches you right off-guard. But your brain is quick, Blink — too quick for its own good — and you can’t help wondering whether there is more here. Much more. Hell, he’s just about told you there is.
His smile is not pleasant. He can see right through you.
“Let’s play a game,” he says. “You’ve spent your thousand dollars, and now you can’t help wanting more. Stands to reason. It’s human nature. So how do you go about collecting?”
You shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Humor me.”
Wallace puts a new log on the fire. You look at the blaze. “I’d go to the press, like you said.”
“What press?”
“I don’t know. The Sun? No, the Globe and Mail.”
“What would you take them? They’d want proof of some kind. What have you got to show them?”
You stare at nothing, like you’re trying to conjure an idea out of the air.
“Nothing,” you say.
“The correct answer,” says Jack Niven. “Nothing but a crazy story.”
“I could bring them here,” you say. “Show them this place.”
“And?”
“The wall in the kitchen, where the video was shot.”
Jack claps his hands. “Nice try,” he says. “Assuming you could convince anyone to drive up here. Oh, and the wall would be painted when you got here, right? Maybe even done up in some tongue-and-groove paneling. So try something else.”
You scratch your head. You’re not sure what he’s playing at. And now you’re wondering if he’s even going to bother giving you the money, since what he’s saying is that no one will believe you, anyway. So you’ve got to earn the thousand dollars. Is that what this is about?
“The cops are looking for me. That proves I was in the hotel.”
“So go to the cops. But they’re certainly not going to pay you anything, because extortion is against the law.”
“No, I mean, I’d go to the newspaper or, like, the TV, and they’d know I was the guy the cops were looking for.”
Jack is already wagging his head. “You’re underage. The police cannot release the name of a minor to the press. It took a lot for my lawyer to find it out. Oh, and by the way, if you did go to the cops, you’d be arrested for petty larceny and mischief, not to mention obstruction of justice.”
“What?”
“Playing hide-and-seek with the police with my BlackBerry in the middle of a serious investigation. Dumping it in the pocket of an innocent victim.”
“Ha!” you say. “You obviously don’t know my stepfather.”
“A stupid move,” he says. “Vindictive. That’s what got you in this mess. Revenge.”
He’s right. You throw up your hands. “Okay. So what am I supposed to say?”
Niven looks pleased with himself, but he gets serious again quickly. “I just want you to know that you have fallen down a very deep mine shaft, Brent. So you’re best bet is to scramble back out as fast as you can. And if a thousand dollars will make the trip worthwhile, then I’m willing to give it to you. I am willing to buy your silence. But I don’t want any second-guessing on your part. Do I make myself clear?”
You nod right away. The mention of the money means it’s still on the table, and that’s a lot better than being tossed into the lake with a rock chained to your feet. Or into a mine shaft.
“I get it,” you say.
“And I can trust you?”
“Yeah.”
“And by silence, I mean you can talk to no one about this. Not my daughter, not anyone.”
His hands are pressed together, and he’s staring at you over the tips of his fingers. You don’t like it when people look at you like that. You want to look away, but you know you can’t. He has to believe you. Everything depends on him believing in you. So you hold his gaze, and it comes over you that this feels like the moment in your mother’s place when Stepdaddy was drunk that time and he had a poker and you stared him down. Not that you really did. What you really did was freeze. But he didn’t know that. And it gave him that extra minute or two to come to whatever senses he still had in his bourbon-addled brain. So you learned something from that. You nod.
�
�Okay,” says Niven. Then he picks up his briefcase from where it sits on the floor, the big black one he was carrying Wednesday morning in the hotel. He clicks it open and pulls out a little bundle of money. He riffles the edges with his finger and then tosses the bundle over the coffee table. You trap it between your chest and your folded hands. You were never very good at catch.
A bundle of twenties.
“Thanks,” you say.
He’s busy clicking his briefcase shut, placing it at his feet. He glances at you as if your thanks aren’t worth much to him.
“You still have to earn that money,” he says, leaning back on the couch.
“By keeping quiet.”
“Precisely. And to make sure you do, I want you to stay here, as our guest, for a few days.” Just like Tank said, but you don’t like the sound of it. “This is not negotiable,” he adds, his voice hard.
You look down at the money. You look back at him. “Why are you doing this?” The words are out of your mouth before you can stop yourself.
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Okay, but a minute ago you were saying I had what it takes to be a businessman, right? So?”
Niven rolls his eyes. Wallace chuckles. “Hey, boss, maybe if you explain it a bit, it’ll help him keep his promise.”
Niven glares at Wallace, then leans back in his chair. “Okay.” He puts his hands together again. “There are these people who want to take over my company.”
“That’s what Alyson said.”
“Do not mention my daughter’s name,” he says. “Do you hear me?” He might as well add something about being a scumbag again, because that’s the look on his face. He can’t stand the idea that you even spoke to her.
You nod. “There was something in the paper about a takeover.”
“Right. A hostile takeover,” says Niven. He loses the angry glare, and his eyes start to shine as if he’s thinking about Goliath, even as he’s carving himself a slingshot. “Let me tell you about a hostile takeover. This big mining conglomerate from Japan called ANS has been secretly buying up as many QVD stocks as they can, hoping to gain control. They get the shareholders they can’t actually buy out to come on their side by promising them a big dividend — a good return on their investment.”
“And this — what you’re doing — is supposed to stop them?”
“In a word, yes,” he says. “The Millsap Lake standoff is only a battle. I’m prepared to lose that, but I’m hanging on to the company.” He runs his hands through his hair and chuckles. “Why I’m explaining any of this to you, I do not know.”
“I’m listening,” you say. In fact, you’re leaning forward in your chair, your elbows on your knees, like it was Granda telling one of his fanciful stories.
Niven throws a glance at Wallace. “A future entrepreneur,” he says. “Well, I guess you’ve got the basic training for going into business,” he adds.
“I’m serious,” you say. “I mean, I read some of this stuff on your BlackBerry and in the newspapers, but I can’t figure out how losing the . . . the claim? Yeah, the land claim. How is losing forty-eight million a good thing?”
Jack raises an eyebrow as if he’s wondering whether there’s more to you than he figured. You like that look in his eyes. You earned that.
“We may not even lose that battle — the Millsap Lake fiasco — if we can convince the government to take the land off our hands. Oh, we won’t get what we want, but we could get enough to write off our losses. The government looks pretty stupid right now, the way they’ve handled this, so they might play ball. That way, they can sweep it under the rug. My shareholders may not be pleased, but I can handle that, as long as I can squash this takeover bid.”
Jack isn’t looking at you anymore. He’s reopened his laptop and is reading something on the screen. Multitasking. Mumbling.
“This mining conglomerate,” he says, as if you asked a question. “They only want my company so they can strip it of its assets and then flush it down the toilet. Right now, however, QVD does not look very appetizing to them. They weren’t all that concerned about the standoff: the picketers, the lunatic fringe. They’re used to that kind of localized nuisance. But the media surrounding my kidnapping is not good for them. You could say that SPOIL has spoiled ANS’s opportunity. I love that!” he says enthusiastically. “See what I’m saying? See how it goes?”
You sort of think you do. You nod.
“Good for you, Brent. We’ll make a businessman of you yet.” He squeezes the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. He’s tired. The discussion is over. And it’s really only then that you finally and totally get it. There is no SPOIL. Or Jack Niven is SPOIL. The whole thing is a fantasy to scare off this big Japanese operation.
“Enough,” says Jack Niven. “Kiddy time is over. I’ve got a long night ahead, and this discussion is not on the agenda.” He looks at you.
“Three days,” he says. “Deal?”
You don’t like the sound of it. Three days locked up, with Tank out there planning to crucify you? But then you’ve got the money, and you don’t really have any choice.
“Do we have a deal?” he says again, his patience at an end.
“Okay,” you say.
“Good,” says Niven. Then he glances at Wallace, who gets up, like he’s your nursemaid and its time to get the child out of the parent’s sight.
“I’ll take you to your room,” says Wallace.
You climb out of the chair, your legs stiff and your battered body aching. Wallace shows you to the stairs. You riffle through the money in your hands as you climb slowly up toward the darkened second floor. You count again, enjoying the crispness of the new bills. But then something makes you look closer. You stop climbing. You start adding it up.
“Got a problem, Brent?”
It’s Niven looking up at you from the sofa below.
“There isn’t a thousand here,” you say.
“That didn’t take you long,” says Niven.
“But you said —”
“I’d give you a thousand dollars to keep your mouth shut? Exactly. And I’m a man of my word. I think you’ll find that the bundle you have in your hot little hands is equal to four hundred and forty dollars. You’ve already spent the other five hundred and sixty. Is my math correct?”
“But —”
“Good night, Brent.”
You swallow hard. You don’t move. Then you feel Wallace’s firm hand on your lower back, and you start the climb again. The stairs are steep.
As you reach the landing, the rain starts.
Kitty’s job, as she sees it, is to know the lay of the land, to learn as much as she can. Her main job for now is not to get caught.
Following the strains of distant music, she finds a trail behind the shed that follows the shore of the lake to a small cabin ten minutes’ walk from the lodge. Tank is there, sitting in a screened-in porch with his feet up, drinking a beer, listening to heavy metal on a boom box, and staring out at the water.
She makes her way back along the trail mostly by feel, through the last of the daylight. He won’t be foolish enough to take such a narrow and uneven trail without a flashlight, she suspects, but she decides to make his journey difficult and as memorable as possible, littering the trail with bits of off-cut lumber she finds behind the shed. Some of the wood has nails in it.
She has already pocketed the key to the ATV, which Tank left in the ignition. It’s a Kawasaki; she has driven one of these things before, but she familiarizes herself with the model, sitting astride it, feeling where everything is. She practices inserting the key into the ignition in the dark.
It has occurred to her that they might try to leave. If they have even the slightest suspicion that anyone might follow Brent here, they might decamp. She doesn’t want that. The van is old, but the license plates are up-to-date, so presumably it’s active. So her next job is to make sure the van is disabled. The door is locked, unfortunately, and there are
no keys handy. So she finds another piece of wood with a good-size spike in it and lets the air out of all four tires.
This is a big decision. One flat would not arouse suspicion. Four flats means that Blink has a confederate. They might threaten to kill him if she doesn’t give herself up. But if they could fix the flat and take off, then he would be gone anyway.
This is purgatory, all right. And that boy she robbed this morning and then caught up with — he isn’t just a boy. Not anymore. She can’t quite put it into words, but Blink is a gift. A chance for . . . for something — she’s not sure what. But without him, there is nothing.
The sound of the four tires hissing seems incredibly loud up close, but the wind has picked up, as have the waves, so she doubts anyone else can hear it.
The rain comes by the time she finally makes her way to the back of the lodge. She had watched the big man come up behind Blink and nab him. There is no way she is going to allow herself to be trapped in the same way. She has no idea where the other two are right now, though she expects they’re in the lodge. But there is still that fourth man, who could be anywhere. So she waits a long time. The rain comes, and she still waits, curled up as tight as she can in the far corner near the bush. Her eyes close from time to time, only to snap open when she realizes she has drifted off. At one point she falls deeper into sleep — deep enough for half-dreams. She sees herself holding a baby. She wakes with a start, but the baby doesn’t quite dissolve.
The rain picks up. If there is someone on guard anywhere near here, she hopes the rain will drive him inside. No one comes.
She finds her way to the window nearest the bush and peers in. There is just the businessman sitting on a couch, talking on a cell phone, his face lit by firelight. His expression is serious. Then she hears footsteps inside the house and sees the big man enter the room from a staircase, she figures by the sound of it, which is just out of her vision.
He speaks to Niven, who holds up his hand to stop him, while he finishes his call. She cannot make out what is said but watches the businessman close up his laptop and put it away.
Niven places various papers in a briefcase. He seems to be clearing up. The cell rings again, but the big guy, the Moon, takes the call and nods several times. Then he talks to Niven, who nods and then swears. She’s not sure — she can’t actually hear him, but it looks as if he’s swearing. Then he rubs his hands through his hair.
Blink & Caution Page 21