Tripwire (20 page)

“You’re wearing Mr. Hobie’s jacket,” Tony said. “Would you take it off, please?”

Stone stared at him. Then he glanced down at his jacket. It was his Savile Row. He realized that for the first time in his life, he’d accidentally worn the same thing two days running.

“This is my jacket,” he said.

“No, it’s Mr. Hobie’s.”

Stone shook his head. “I bought it in London. It’s definitely my jacket.”

Tony smiled in the dark.

“You don’t understand, do you?” he said.

“Understand what?” Stone said, blankly.

“That Mr. Hobie owns you now. You’re his. And everything you have is his.”

Stone stared at him. There was silence in the room. Just the faint background noises from the building and the thumping in Stone’s chest.

“So take Mr. Hobie’s jacket off,” Tony said, quietly.

Stone was just staring at him, his mouth opening and closing, no sound coming out of it.

“Take it off,” Tony said. “It’s not your property. You shouldn’t be standing there wearing another man’s jacket.”

His voice was quiet, but there was menace in it. Stone’s face was rigid with shock, but then suddenly his arms were starting to move, like they were outside of his conscious control. He struggled off with the jacket and held it out by the collar, like he was in the menswear department, handing back a garment he’d tried and hadn’t liked.

“On the desk, please,” Tony said.

Stone laid the jacket flat on the desk. He straightened it and felt the fine wool snagging over the rough surface. Tony pulled it closer and went into the pockets, one after the other. He assembled the contents in a small pile in front of him. Balled up the jacket and tossed it casually over the desk onto the left-hand sofa.

He picked up the Mont Blanc fountain pen. Made an appreciative little shape with his mouth and slipped it into his own pocket. Then he picked up the bunch of keys. Fanned them on the desktop and picked through them, one at a time. Selected the car key, and held it up between his finger and thumb.

“Mercedes?”

Stone nodded, blankly.

“Model?”

“500SEL,” Stone muttered.

“New?”

Stone shrugged. “A year old.”

“Color?”

“Dark blue.”

“Where?”

“At my office,” Stone muttered. “In the lot.”

“We’ll pick it up later,” Tony said.

He opened a drawer and dropped the keys into it. Pushed the drawer shut and turned his attention to the wallet. He held it upside down and shook it and raked the contents out with his finger. When it was empty, he tossed it under the desk. Stone heard it clang into a trash can. Tony glanced once at the picture of Marilyn and pitched it after the wallet. Stone heard a fainter clang as the stiff photographic paper hit the metal. Tony stacked the credit cards with three fingers and slid them to one side like a croupier.

“Guy we know will give us a hundred bucks for these,” he said.

Then he riffed the paper money together and sorted it by denomination. Counted it up and clipped it together with a paper clip. Dropped it into the same drawer as the keys.

“What do you guys want?” Stone asked.

Tony looked up at him. “I want you to take Mr. Hobie’s tie off,” he said.

Stone shrugged, helplessly.

“No, seriously, what do you guys want from me?”

“Seventeen-point-one million dollars. That’s what you owe us.”

Stone nodded. “I know. I’ll pay you.”

“When?” Tony asked.

“Well, I’ll need a little time,” Stone said.

Tony nodded. “OK, you’ve got an hour.”

Stone stared at him. “No, I need more than an hour.”

“An hour is all you’ve got.”

“I can’t do it in an hour.”

“I know you can’t,” Tony said. “You can’t do it in an hour, or a day, or a week, or a month, or a year, because you’re a useless piece of shit who couldn’t manage his way out of a wet grocery sack, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“You’re a disgrace, Stone. You took a business your grandfather slaved over and your father built bigger and you flushed it all straight down the toilet, because you’re totally stupid, aren’t you?”

Stone shrugged, blankly. Then he swallowed.

“OK, so I took some hits,” he said. “But what could I do?”

“Take the tie off,” Tony screamed at him.

Stone jumped and flung his hands up. Struggled with the knot.

“Get it off, you piece of shit,” Tony screamed.

He tore it off. Dropped it on the desk. It lay there in a tangle.

“Thank you, Mr. Stone,” Tony said quietly.

“What do you guys want?” Stone whispered.

Tony opened a different drawer and came out with a handwritten sheet of paper. It was yellow and filled with a dense untidy scrawl. Some kind of a list, with figures totaled at the bottom of the page.

“We own thirty-nine percent of your corporation,” he said. “As of this morning. What we want is another twelve percent.”

Stone stared at him. Did the math in his head. “A controlling interest?”

“Exactly,” Tony said. “We hold thirty-nine percent, another twelve gives us fifty-one, which would indeed represent a controlling interest.”

Stone swallowed again and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No, I won’t do that.”

“OK, then we want seventeen-point-one million dollars within the hour.”

Stone just stood there, glancing wildly left and right. The door opened behind him and the thickset man in the expensive suit came in and padded soundlessly across the carpet and stood with his arms folded, behind Tony’s left shoulder.

“The watch, please,” Tony said.

Stone glanced at his left wrist. It was a Rolex. It looked like steel, but it was platinum. He had bought it in Geneva. He unlatched it and handed it over. Tony nodded and dropped it in another drawer.

“Now take Mr. Hobie’s shirt off.”

“You can’t make me give you more stock,” Stone said.

“I think we can. Take the shirt off, OK?”

“Look, I won’t be intimidated,” Stone said, as confidently as he could.

“You’re already intimidated,” Tony said back. “Aren’t you? You’re about to make a mess in Mr. Hobie’s pants. Which would be a bad mistake, by the way, because we’d only make you clean them up.”

Stone said nothing. Just stared at a spot in the air between the two men.

“Twelve percent of the equity,” Tony said gently. “Why not? It’s not worth anything. And you’d still have forty-nine percentleft.”

“I need to speak with my lawyers,” Stone said.

“OK, go ahead.”

Stone looked around the room, desperately. “Where’s the phone?”

“There’s no phone in here,” Tony said. “Mr. Hobie doesn’t like phones.”

“So how?”

“Shout,” Tony said. “Shout real loud, and maybe your lawyers will hear you.”

“What?”

“Shout,” Tony said again. “You’re real slow, aren’t you, Mr. Stone? Put two and two together and draw a conclusion. There’s no phone in here, you can’t leave the room, you want to talk with your lawyers, so you’ll have to shout.”

Stone stared blankly into space.

“Shout, you useless piece of shit,” Tony screamed at him.

“No, I can’t,” Stone said helplessly. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Take the shirt off,” Tony screamed.

Stone shook violently. Hesitated, with his arms halfway in the air.

“Get it off, you piece of shit,” Tony screamed again.

Stone’s hands leapt up and unbuttoned it, all the way down. He tore it off and stood there holding it, shaking in his undershirt.

“Fold it neatly, please,” Tony said. “Mr. Hobie likes his things neat.”

Stone did his best. He shook it out by the collar and folded it in half, and half again. He bent and laid it square on top of the jacket on the sofa.

“Give up the twelve percent,” Tony said.

“No,” Stone said back, clenching his hands.

There was silence. Silence and darkness.

“Efficiency,” Tony said quietly. “That’s what we like here. You should have paid more attention to efficiency, Mr. Stone. Then maybe your business wouldn’t be in the toilet. So what’s the most efficient way for us to do this?”

Stone shrugged, helplessly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then I’ll explain,” Tony said. “We want you to comply. We want your signature on a piece of paper. So how do we get that?”

“You’ll never get it, you bastard,” Stone said. “I’ll go bankrupt first, damn it. Chapter eleven. You won’t get a damn thing from me. Not a thing. You’ll be in court five years, minimum.”

Tony shook his head patiently, like a grade-school teacher hearing the wrong answer for the hundredth time in a long career.

“Do whatever you want,” Stone said to him. “I won’t give you my company.”

“We could hurt you,” Tony said.

Stone’s eyes dropped through the gloom to the desktop. His tie was still lying there, right on top of the rough gouges from the hook.

“Take Mr. Hobie’s pants off,” Tony screamed.

“No, I won’t, damn it,” Stone screamed back.

The guy at Tony’s shoulder reached under his arm. There was a squeak of leather. Stone stared at him, incredulous. The guy came out with a small black handgun. He used one arm and aimed it, eye-level, straight out. He advanced around the desk toward Stone. Nearer and nearer. Stone’s eyes were wide and staring. Fixed on the gun. It was aimed at his face. He was shaking and sweating. The guy was stepping quietly, and the gun was coming closer, and Stone’s eyes were crossing, following it in. The gun came to rest with the muzzle on his forehead. The guy was pressing with it. The muzzle was hard and cold. Stone was shaking. Leaning backward against the pressure. Stumbling, trying to focus on the black blur that was the gun. He never saw the guy’s other hand balling into a fist. Never saw the blow swinging in. It smashed hard into his gut and he went down like a sack, legs folding, squirming and gasping and retching.

“Take the pants off, you piece of shit,” Tony screamed down at him.

The other guy landed a savage kick and Stone yelped and rolled around and around on his back like a turtle, gasping, gagging, wrenching at his belt. He got it loose. Scrabbled for the buttons and the zip. He tore the pants down over his legs. They snagged on his shoes and he wrenched them free and pulled them off inside out.

“Get up, Mr. Stone,” Tony said, quietly.

Stone staggered to his feet and stood, unsteadily, leaning forward, head down, panting, his hands on his knees, his stomach heaving, thin, white hairless legs coming down out of his boxers, ludicrous dark socks and shoes on his feet.

“We could hurt you,” Tony said. “You understand that now, right?”

Stone nodded and gasped. He was pressing both forearms into his gut. Heaving and gagging.

“You understand that, right?” Tony asked again.

Stone forced another nod.

“Say the words, Mr. Stone,” Tony said. “Say we could hurt you.”

“You could hurt me,” Stone gasped.

“But we won’t. That’s not how Mr. Hobie likes things to be done.”

Stone raised a hand and swiped tears from his eyes and looked up, hopefully.

“Mr. Hobie prefers to hurt the wives,” Tony said. “Efficiency, you see? It gets faster results. So at this point, you really need to be thinking about Marilyn.”

THE RENTED TAURUS was much faster than the Bravada had been. On dry June roads, there was no contest. Maybe in the snows of January or the sleet of February he would have appreciated the full-time four-wheel drive, but for a fast trip up the Hudson in June, a regular sedan had it all over a jeep, that was for damn sure. It was low and stable, it rode well, it tracked through the bends like an automobile should. And it was quiet. He had its radio locked onto a powerful city station behind him, and a woman called Wynonna Judd was asking him
why not me?
He felt he shouldn’t be liking Wynonna Judd as much as he was, because if somebody had asked him if he’d enjoy a country vocalist singing plaintively about love, he’d have probably said no he wouldn’t, based on his preconceptions. But she had a hell of a voice, and the number had a hell of a guitar part. And the lyric was getting to him, because he was imagining it was Jodie singing to him, not Wynonna Judd. She was singing
why not me when you’re growing old? Why not me?
He started singing along with it, his rough bass rumble underneath the soaring contralto, and by the time the number faded and the commercial started, he was figuring if he ever had a house and a stereo like other people did, he’d buy the record.
Why not me?

He was heading north on Route 9, and he had a Hertz map open beside him which went up far enough to show him Brighton was halfway between Peekskill and Poughkeepsie, over to the west, right on the Hudson. He had the old couple’s address beside it, written on a sheet from a medical pad from McBannerman’s office. He had the Taurus moving at a steady sixty-five, fast enough to get him there, slow enough to get him there unmolested by the traffic cops, who he assumed were hiding out around every wooded comer, waiting to boost their municipal revenues with their radar guns and their books of blank tickets.

It took him an hour to get level with Garrison again, and he figured he would head on north to a big highway he remembered swinging away west over the river toward New-burgh. He should be able to come off that road just short of the Hudson and fall on Brighton from above. Then it was just a question of hunting down the address, which might not be easy.

But it was easy, because the road that dropped him south into Brighton from the east-west highway was labeled with the same name as was in the second line of the old folks’ address. He cruised south, watching for mailboxes and house numbers. Then it started to get harder. The mailboxes were grouped in sixes, clustered hundreds of yards apart, standing on their own, with no obvious connection to any particular houses. In fact, there were very few houses visible at all. It seemed like they were all up little rural tracks, gravel and patched blacktop, running off left and right into the woods like tunnels.

He found the right mailbox. It was set on a wooden post that the weather was rotting and the frost heave was canting forward. Vigorous green vines and thorny creepers were twisting up around it. It was a large-size box, dull green, with the house number painted on the side in faded but immaculate freehand script. The door was hanging open, because the box was completely stuffed with mail. He took it all out and squared it on the passenger seat beside him. Squeaked the door closed and saw a name painted on the front in the same faded neat hand: Hobie.