The Switch

34

Tanner Roast was a smaller operation than Will expected — just a modest warehouse space that connected to front offices. A couple of coffee roasters and maybe ten or twenty employees, located in a not-great part of Boston. He’d gone there straight from the airport, via taxi, and arrived twenty minutes early. He’d walked around the urban neighborhood, thinking, and the third time he went by the company’s headquarters, he was buzzed in.

The sales director, a woman named Karen something, greeted him. She was short and sort of arty-looking, with an efficient pageboy hairstyle and a blue raw-silk dress. They’d spoken on the phone yesterday when he told her he worked for Mort Nathanson and was going to be in Boston for meetings and wanted to squeeze in one last-minute appointment, with the head of Tanner Roast. She’d quickly said yes.

He worried about how long he was going to have to keep up the pretense of being in the hospitality industry. How long he could keep it up. He’d done his late-night homework, of course. He could pull off maybe five or ten minutes of coffee-related conversation with Tanner, but maybe that was all he needed.

But that anxiety was nothing compared to what he felt at the prospect of meeting a killer — the guy who must have killed the Problem Solver. Tanner was, had to be, a dangerous guy. To do what he did, to actually run a man over with a car.

And yet, to his surprise, Michael Tanner turned out to be an easygoing alpha male, the sort of guy to whom good things just seemed to happen, the sort of guy he’d always disliked. A guy who seemed to be comfortable in his own skin. Opportunities just threw themselves at him. He was a man who never had to struggle in life. Will didn’t like the guy. He’d met people like that before, particularly in college. Tanner reminded him of Peter Green, the guy he got elected student president, whose campaign he’d managed.

But he didn’t seem like the kind of person who could kill a man in cold blood.

He wondered what the deal was, why Tanner was holding on to the laptop. What he wanted. What his long game was. He didn’t fit the profile of an activist, an agitator. Was he a mercenary? Did he plan to sell the classified documents? Was he in a ring with others?

Why was he refusing to give it back?

“Can I get you some coffee, or are you all set?” Tanner said.

“I’m good. Caffeinated to the gills.”

“With the good stuff, I hope,” Tanner said. “So you work for Mort Nathanson?”

And Will had a sudden realization. It was a clever piece of wisdom that Susan Robbins liked to repeat: Sometimes the best lie of all is the God’s honest truth. Just carefully edited.

He would tell the truth.

He took a breath. “Actually, Michael, I don’t work for Mort Nathanson, and my name is not Tom Berlin. I’m sorry for the ruse.”

Tanner looked shocked, as Will expected he would. “Excuse me?”

“I’m here under false pretenses,” he went on, his heart thumping. “My name is Will Abbott, and I’m the chief of staff to Senator Susan Robbins. And I think you have something of hers. Because we have something of yours.”

He lifted his leather briefcase and unsnapped the latches. Then he pulled out Tanner’s MacBook Air, with an air of ceremony, and placed it on the desk.

Tanner’s eyes narrowed. “You called.”

“I did, yes. That was me. And that was wrong. I made an error in judgment. I totally screwed up. I thought that if you knew the laptop belonged to a senator, you might look through it. And I’m sorry for that.” He pointedly didn’t ask whether Tanner had the laptop. He would assume it, take it for granted without requiring Tanner to confirm it overtly, not give him a chance to deny it, and in the process corner the guy.

Meanwhile he was waiting for the surge of righteous anger, and sure enough it came. “Was it an error in judgment to break into my house looking for it?” Tanner said, raising his voice.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Will said flatly. He’d been prepared for that too. “No one connected to Senator Robbins would authorize something like that.”

“And was it an error in judgment to kill my friend Landon Roth?”

Landon who? “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“A reporter for The Boston Globe. And a good man.”

Will shrugged, spread his hands, shook his head. “I’m sorry; I don’t know anything about that.” What the hell was he talking about? Someone was killed, someone else? For an instant he thought of the Problem Solver — but no way the guy would have killed someone connected with Tanner without telling Will first, without demanding payment for it. Will had transferred ten thousand dollars from the Robbins Victory Fund to the Problem Solver’s account and reported the expense as a campaign consulting fee. Oppo research, you could call it.

Tanner’s face seemed frozen in an expression of anger mixed with hurt. Will went on: “Let me lay it all out for you, tell you why I’m here. I’m going to put myself entirely at your mercy. Your laptop got accidentally switched with my boss’s, Senator Robbins’s — and I need to get hers back. There’s some sensitive information on it. Classified stuff.”

Slowly, Tanner’s expression began to soften. “Classified?” he said.

Will nodded. “And it would be a big black eye for me, and for the senator, if that got out. And so — I’m putting myself in your hands.” He paused a beat. “Please.”

Tanner now looked as if he was deep in thought. He put his hands together, tented his fingers.

It needed another note, Will thought, a touch more self-recriminatory. “I should have been straight with you from the beginning,” he said. “And for that I apologize.”

“How did you know it was mine? I didn’t put my name on it.”

Will took another breath, not wanting to divulge how nervous he felt. In his best manager’s voice, he said, “We have IT specialists on our staff, and we asked one of them to get into your computer to find out whose it was. We had no choice. Given the circumstances.”

He paused and looked Michael Tanner in the eye. “I have no idea how he did it. But he was able to pull up your name and the fact that you were based in Boston. We put two and two together and located you. I mean, you’re not exactly in hiding.”

Tanner nodded, compressed his lips. Then, without saying anything, he slowly got up, his eyes trained at some point in the distance.

Tanner’s mind raced. This Abbott guy appeared to be telling the truth. Tanner was fairly good at reading people — as a salesman, he had to be — and Abbott seemed honest and straightforward. The man was pitching; that was obvious — but he was pitching with his heart. He meant it; he was speaking the truth.

Returning the laptop, with its classified documents, was the right move, he’d decided. The senator’s chief of staff was no heavy. He was just an awkward DC staffer wearing a navy blazer that didn’t quite sit right around the shoulders.

I won, Will realized.

He had done it. His sell job actually worked. The boss’s old saw had turned out to be exactly right. The best lie of all is the God’s honest truth.

He bit the inside of his lip but was unable to keep himself from breaking out in a big triumphant smile. He’d done it. He’d manipulated by telling the truth.

When Tanner had left his office, still slowly and deliberately, Will knew he was going to retrieve the boss’s laptop. In a few minutes, Will would finally take possession of the thing.

And then — he’d thought this through a number of times, and there was no choice — Tanner would have to be involved in a traffic accident. As a fatality.

There was just no other way. Will had no choice. He would have to outsource the job to someone reliable. With the Problem Solver dead, that left the Russian guy who’d done the burglary. Arranging a car accident was probably in his skill set. People would say, Oh, Boston drivers...

It would work because it had to work.

Anything else was unthinkable.

As Tanner came around behind the desk, he happened to catch a glimpse of Abbott in the Maxwell House mirror.

Abbott, who thought Will couldn’t see him.

Abbott was smiling.

It was more than just a smile; it was a smirk.

A triumphant smirk, the look of someone who’s just gotten away with something big. Puzzled, Tanner left his office and walked into the adjoining warehouse. There, he stopped in front of the kitchen cabinet, behind which was the safe.

He stared at the cabinet for a moment.

And he realized that he was being bamboozled. He was being led on. Tanner, who could bullshit with the best of them, was being manipulated by a master bullshit artist.

That smile on Abbott’s face — he’d seen that same smile on Blake Gifford. That fangy smile of triumph. The faint quiver of muscles trying to repress it. It was Bugs Bunny knowing that Elmer Fudd’s lunch pail is filled with TNT.

Sal Persico, his genius roaster, was there. “I just brewed a fresh batch of the Colombian, the Villa Maria,” Sal said. “It’s awesome.”

“Perfect,” Tanner said. He’d bought the beans from a finca in the Nariño region, in southeast Colombia, on the border with Ecuador.

He poured out two mugs of coffee and carried them back through the warehouse to his office. Abbott looked up expectantly as he returned. He no doubt expected Tanner to be carrying a laptop.

Tanner set the mug of coffee down on the desk in front of Abbott. “Tell me what you think,” he said. “I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.”