Clawback (30 page)

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean, the anarchists. They’re going to have to seriously ramp up their numbers to make a dent.”

Ganderson didn’t find that funny. But I wasn’t sure I was joking, so call it even.

“Every thumbsucker in America seems to think it’s open season on bankers,” he said. “We’re being dragged behind the pickup truck of public opinion.”

“It’s not so bad.” Actually, I liked that one. What hardworking American, seeing his retirement account mismanaged into toxic waste,
hasn’t
wanted to wrap a chain around some guy in chalk stripes and hitch him up to a flatbed?

“It’s not working, you looking for the assassins,” Ganderson said. “Now we’re going to let
them
come to
you.
”

I finally figured out what we’d been talking about.

“Hey!” I said. “This is a setup, isn’t it? You think Plank’s a staked goat, and you want me there to shoot back when they finally make their move.”

“Not exactly.” He shrugged. “But if it works out that way, I think everyone would be happy.”

I wasn’t even a bodyguard, I was a fucking leg breaker.

And I was angry about it. I realized just how angry when I barely stopped myself from striking Ganderson—right under the sternum, knuckles half folded, a killing blow if done just a fraction too hard.

Ernie’s violent, terrible death, on top of everything else. I desperately needed to find Saxon, beat the truth out of him, and tear my way to the heart of the lunacy.

Ganderson could wait.

The station’s door opened, pushed wide by a tall man in a suit the color of midnight, over brilliant white pinpoint with a blue silk tie that probably cost more than my car. He strode over to Ganderson, no hesitation, not glancing once at the sergeant.

“Good morning, Quint,” he said, and the voice was deep and powerful and perfectly pitched.

“It’s about time.” But Ganderson straightened up. “Let’s go spring my boy, all right?”

“Why I’m here. We just need to go over a few things first.” He looked my way, one eyebrow raised.

Ganderson could take a hint—at least, coming from this guy. “We’re done for now,” he said to me.

I was still working on controlling my adrenal response. Catecholamines had flooded my system.

“Call me when you reach Plank,” I said, jaw tight.

“You got it.” Ganderson made it sound like he was doing me a favor.

The lawyer nodded a dismissal my way, and they walked off.

I guess I knew
my
place.

W
hen I walked out of the station, the sky was lighter but the rain heavier. At seven-thirty the morning rush hour was under way, cars splashing down the street, pedestrians hunched under their umbrellas. The commuters looked sullen—nothing like starting out your workday wet and cold.

I passed by two Starbucks on general principles before finding an independent breakfast place closer to NYU. It was crowded, most of the tables filled, busy and noisy. A waiter pointed me to a two-top near the restroom doors, and I sat down, trying not to drip on the table.

“Coffee?”

“Sure.” I ordered an omelet, extra mushrooms, double toast, oatmeal on the side.

It felt like it was turning into that kind of day.

Ernie’s death continued to weigh on me. I wanted to call Clara, but that wasn’t any kind of conversation to have over the phone, in a public space. Just to hear her voice…but I couldn’t
not
talk about what had happened. Best leave it be for now.

I took my time. Every table probably turned over twice before I finally finished eating, especially the fruit bowl and yogurt. But it was worth it—I had dried out, warmed up and started to come to terms with the violent scene I’d walked into four hours earlier.

I’m sorry, Ernie.

I paid up, thought about but decided against an umbrella from a display that had been opportunistically set up at the register, and stepped back out into the day.

Ganderson’s motives were puzzling, but one thing was clear: I might need some backup.

Under a block of construction scaffolding, rain dripping through two-by-sixes overhead, I called Zeke.

“What do you want?”

“Jeez, is that how you always answer the phone?”

“So?”

“If you’re rude, people won’t want to call. They’ll avoid you.”

He just snorted.

“Yeah, yeah, okay, I get it,” I said. “But someday money is going to call, and you’ll be an asshole, and it’ll go somewhere else.”

“Good riddance. Why are
you
calling?”

“I might have some work. You busy?”

“Are you kidding? After last time?”

“I
said
I was sorry.”

“Naw. I just wish all my jobs could be so fun.”

“You’re the only one who sees it that way.”

“Yeah,” Zeke said. “Listen, I’m working tonight, but—”

“When?”

“Afternoon, then probably late. Celebrity event. Some rich guy’s worried about paparazzi. He wants a few more secret service in the perimeter.”

“Try not to shoot the wrong one.”

“It’s nothing important. You need me? I can skip this.”

“No, no. Just lining up the ducks, in case.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Call anytime.”

“Thanks.”

People pushed past me, between the scaffolding columns and the Jersey barriers along the street’s gutter. Buildings are always being renovated downtown—feels like every single block sometimes. A workman twenty feet from me bent to cut pipe at the back of a truck, his circular saw flaring sparks like an oversize flint toy.

The noise of the saw was painfully loud. I started walking again.

I thought about what Walter had told me last night. When the noise stopped, I switched phones and dialed again.

“What?”

“Johnny, it’s me.”

“I’m in the middle of something.”

Click.

Well, fuck that. I hit redial.

“Don’t hang up!”

“I
said,
I’m in the
middle
of a fucking—goddamn it!”

“Sorry. Listen—”

“I just lost a penny and a half!”

I had no idea what that meant. It was too wide to be the spread
on an individual price. Maybe it was shorthand for 150 thousand dollars.

Or a million and a half.

“So make it back on the next trade,” I said. “This is important.”

“Better be.” He subsided, grumbling.

“Someone famous is about to flee the jurisdiction.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’d they do?”

“Don’t know.”

“How much money?”

“Um—”

God love him, Johnny started laughing. “What the hell
do
you know?”

“It’s a good tip.”

“And utterly useless. Why are you telling me?”

“I was hoping you’d heard something. So I could start connecting dots.”

“The NASDAQ dropped a hundred fifty points at open, then made it all back, plus another fifty. The VIX crossed forty an hour ago. Volume is off the charts.”

“You’re having an exciting day?”

“Good enough. Better than over at Wetherell Stark. One of their options strategists dropped dead at his desk. Massive coronary.”

“Anyone notice?”

“They had one of those portable defibrillators on the wall—you know, like on an airplane? Didn’t help, though.”

“You might want to get one, for your boys.”

“Hah!”

“No, really.”

“Would you give a chainsaw to a five-year-old?”

I could see Johnny’s point. Last year one of his traders, celebrating, had grabbed the fire extinguisher and sprayed half the room. He’d shorted out three keyboards before they wrestled it away from him. The damage somebody could do with four thousand volts didn’t bear imagining.

“Hey, I followed some crumbs on Marlett this morning,” he said. “Once I knew who to look for, it was obvious. The major counterparty on those York Hydro trades was Blacktail Capital.”

“No shit?”

“And they’re implicated on Sills, too. Blacktail bought shares in her fund, which as we mentioned was doing really, really badly. As soon as she was dead, though, the price jumped up. Investors must have figured that
anyone
could do a better job at it—which maybe wasn’t too hard because it was actually trading at less than aggregate book value. Blacktail cleaned up.”

“So that’s it!—every one of these killings was done for profit.”

“Seems clear to me, but I don’t know that a jury would buy it. Or understand it, for that matter. Could have been just luck. And there were other parties in every transaction—Blacktail could be simple coincidence.”

“It’s good enough for me,” I said. “Can you pull together some documentation?”

“Piss off. What am I, your research assistant?”

Okay, I didn’t think he’d go for that. “At least point me in the right direction if I’m going to have to do it myself.”

“I’ll email you something later. After close.”

A ringtone. For a moment, confused, I stared at the phone in my hand, wondering how it could ring if I was talking on it. Then I realized it was coming from a different pocket.

“Gotta go, Johnny.”

“Your mystery absconder? You get a name, call me back.”

“In a heartbeat.”

I hung up, dug out the other one. A horn blared, some asshole driver in a Lexus giving me the finger, and I jumped back onto the curb as he roared past.

“Hello?”

For a moment I only heard random noise—bangs, splintering. Loud. Then, “Silas!”

“Who’s this?”

“They shot everyone and grabbed Clara!” His voice cracked.

“Rondo?” I stopped dead.

“They attacked the
library
!”

“What’s going on?” I was shouting.

“They’ve got—” The call cut off. For a moment I stood, stupidly.

Then I started to run.

T
he athenaeum was twelve blocks up and two over. Call it a half mile.

I dodged a woman carrying an umbrella, rebounded off another man, and landed in the street. Fine. Fewer obstacles.

In ten seconds I came up on the Lexus, slowing for a red light. The street was black with rain. I glanced right, into the cross street, and was momentarily blinded by headlights.

As I passed the Lexus I struck it with one fist, on the roof. The driver looked up, astonished. He swore and accelerated, trying to cut me off, and we all entered the intersection simultaneously. Horns blared on all sides.

A taxi, crossing with the green, slammed into the Lexus, punching it into a spin.

My perceptions went into overdrive, and the cab’s front swung toward me, slow motion. I leaped, on instinct and terror, and hurdled the corner of the hood—just as a third car struck the taxi. Metal crunched. Skidding and small explosions sounded as airbags detonated everywhere.

I landed on my feet and kept going.

At St. Marks I caught the light but was almost clipped by a truck turning left. More horns. A cyclist wanted to play chicken, flying straight toward me, the wrong way down the street. I raised an arm, ready to bodycheck. At the last possible moment, he swerved and hit the curb. For an instant I saw him start to tumble. Then I was past, the first shouts rising from bystanders.

Crossing 15th, a slight downhill, and I moved even faster. Cars, faces, buildings—all fragments, the barest impression.

On the last corner I grabbed a light pole, jerking myself violently left, to make the turn. Halfway down the block I could see the Thatcher’s facade. A fire engine had just pulled up, firefighters hopping down from the cab. A dozen people stood in the street and on the sidewalk. More were drifting in. Sirens approached.

The huge front doors were pushed open partway. Shards of transom glass glittered on the stair.

“Don’t go up there!” A firefighter yelled, but I shoved past, hardly breaking speed, and leaped up the stairs.

Inside was a horror show.

The elderly desk guard had been shot in the face, his body sprawled across the security table, blood spattered over the wall and floor. Across the marble lobby another body lay at the arch leading to the reading room—a patron, perhaps, in heavy tweeds, a book on the floor near his hand. He’d been shot too, twice it looked like. The killer, or one of them—I had no idea how many were inside—had stepped in the blood on his way through the archway. Smeared prints led onward, then faded at the first rug.

I took a couple of seconds to check the guard’s body. Not for signs of life, but to see if he’d been armed.

No luck. My jaw hurt and I realized it was death lock clenched. I forced my face to relax. I needed a weapon, and this was a fucking
library.

Nothing.

I ran to the side door Clara had shown me, the employee stairs. No weapon, no backup, no plan—all I had was speed. I slammed through without stopping and sprinted up.

At the top, another library worker—a young guy, T-shirt, sitting backward against a copy machine in a mess of blood and gore. Gutshot, staring, barely alive.

The copier had taken a bullet too, and whined and groaned as its rollers turned uselessly inside.

“Which way?” I whispered fiercely. “Where did they go?” But the man was past hearing.

I couldn’t stop. Down the hall, which I recognized. The supervisor’s office, still an impossible mess but no one inside. The storage closet, empty.

Lockerby’s restoration room, and signs of a struggle—a bench turned on its side, books and paper and tools scattered everywhere. A puddle of blood, spatters on top of the disarray and a trail leading out the door.

I grabbed a chisel from the worktable and went back out, holding it in a knife fighter’s grip, close to my side. Not much against jacketed hollow points, but better than what I’d had a minute ago.

At the fire door—

I couldn’t help it, I screamed, an involuntary cry of rage.

Kimmie had been thrown sideways, lying in the corner, her blood everywhere. She’d been shot five, six, shit,
many
times, rounds going through her chest and neck and legs. Her eyes were open and dead, and she still held one of Lockerby’s knives in both hands.