The Switch

75

The house had been on the market for almost a year. According to Sarah, no one bothered to show it anymore. It was an ugly little wood-frame hovel on a spectacular piece of land, right on the ocean, northeast of Boston. It was vastly overpriced, something to do with a brother and sister who had jointly inherited it and were at a standoff about whether to sell it or not. No one had lived in it since the original owner, the mother, had died, two years ago.

It also smelled bad, like a dead animal. Maybe a mouse had died somewhere inside the walls. He opened all the windows to let it air out, to let the bracing sea air in.

He had several hours to kill, and he knew he should grab sleep when he could. But for a long while he was too revved up. He needed to distract himself from what was about to happen: there was simply nothing more he could do about it. So he thought about Blake Gifford and City Roast, and he decided to make a call to his sales director.

“Karen,” he said, “I need you to listen really carefully to what I’m about to tell you. I want you to call the Lockwood Hotels Group in California and offer them the following deal.”

“But Lockwood isn’t bidding their coffee out. City Roast has it—”

“Just listen,” he said.

She did. When Tanner was finished, Karen said, “But... we’d lose money on that!”

“I don’t care. Do it.”

“Michael, that’s crazy. In six months we’d go bankrupt.”

“Just do it,” Tanner said, “and text me when it’s done.”

He ended the call. Then he called Sal Persico, his roaster, to see whether he’d done the errand.

Sal had met Tanner at the tattoo place in Allston and had taken the tracker to the last house for sale Tanner had stayed in, the mansion in Chestnut Hill.

The NSA would probably figure Tanner was staying at a friend’s house. If Tanner was right, anyway, that he’d found a tracker and removed it. Because if he was right, and he’d temporarily disappeared from the NSA’s radar screen, that would explain why they hadn’t yet grabbed him. He needed more time to get them what they wanted. It was a low-trust situation. He’d have to have something solid to hand Earle or they’d just lock him up. Or worse.

It wouldn’t be much longer.

He was about to call Sal when his burner phone emitted a musical sound. He’d received a text message.

It was from his sales director. It said only, Done.

He called Sal and asked him how it was going. “You’re all set,” Sal said.

“Thanks. And I’m sorry to bother you with this at night.”

“Not a bother at all,” Sal said.

He finished making calls about an hour later. Then the burner rang: it was Lucy Turton. “There’s a guy who’s, like, desperate to reach you.”

“It’s after business hours.”

“Not in California.”

“Who is it?”

“Blake Gifford with City Roast.”

“Ah.”

“Is it something I can handle, or...?

“Did he leave a number?”

Tanner had disappeared, but Will had an idea about how to find him.

He’d been thinking about when he first made contact with the NSA, a couple of days ago. The NSA had been keeping close tabs on Michael Tanner’s whereabouts when he was on the run, but they were puzzled. They couldn’t see a pattern in where he was staying. He didn’t stay at his home or office, of course, or with his wife — they were separated — or even with any known friends, relatives, or associates. Basically, he was staying at a succession of unoccupied houses in the Boston area.

When Will heard that, he had smiled to himself and said nothing. He guessed immediately what it meant. Tanner’s wife, like Will’s mother, was a real estate agent. She sold houses. Tanner, with the help of his wife, was being clever.

He was staying in unoccupied houses for sale. Where else could he spend the night without using his credit card?

Twenty minutes later, Will was sitting at his laptop in a Starbucks, browsing through house listings. He’d called his mother at the dentist’s office and asked for her ID number to use MLS, the database of houses for sale. She still sold houses and was delighted to help. She’d been campaigning for Will to move his new family out of a condo and into a real house anyway.

He scanned the list of unoccupied houses for sale in the Boston area. But there were too many; he needed to narrow down the search.

Michael Tanner was probably going to do what frightened mammals do: seek solitude. Seek safety through isolation. He wouldn’t want to stay in an apartment in the city, nor a house that had neighbors nearby. Instead, he would want... Yes, here we were.

A house for sale on a secluded bluff in Nahant. In the photo the house looked lonely, all by itself on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean.

Nahant was a small resort town north and east of Boston, located on an island on a spit of land that jutted into the Atlantic. About a half an hour drive away.

It was perfect.

Tanner called Blake Gifford in Santa Barbara, California.

Gifford answered the phone after the first ring, and he did not sound friendly, barking: “Dude!”

“I got a message you called.”

“Hey, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal, I don’t think you quite know what you’re doing. That’s some crazy-ass deal you made.”

“Which deal is that?”

“You know damn well what I’m talking about. Lockwood, dude. I’m saying this as a friend: you’re gonna screw your company six ways to Sunday if you take on an obligation like that. No way can you sell him beans at that price and stay in business. I mean, it’s totally—”

“It’s totally kamikaze,” Tanner said. He’d offered Lockwood Hotels a price so low they couldn’t resist switching coffee providers. They’d dumped City Roast and signed with Tanner Roast. Gifford had just lost his biggest customer.

“Exactly!”

“And I’m flying my little plane right into your ship, so I hope you’re a real good swimmer, Blake.”

“Just to sabotage my IPO?”

“Yeah, it’s a shame about that, isn’t it?” Tanner knew that the Lockwood Hotels Group represented fifteen percent of City Roast’s revenue. He knew this from the form S-1 he’d asked Karen to get. He also knew that, until that moment, City Roast was growing thirty percent a year. Which made the initial public offering worth 550 million dollars. Trend lines were everything for stock analysts, and the trend was now bad.

Very bad.

Now, without Lockwood Hotels’ business, the IPO would fall apart for sure. Their year-to-date business would plummet. Whatever they’d priced their stock at would suddenly be way too high. It would be a disaster.

Gifford used a colorful expletive. Then he added, “You’ll go bankrupt.”

“I may, but I don’t care if it means screwing you, you son of a bitch.”

Gifford used another expletive.

“Also,” Tanner said, “you’re not going to have much time to tape your TV show. You’ll be spending all of the next two or three years fighting off lawsuits from your investors.” Lots of people who might lose money in the IPO would go after Gifford, sue him for millions. All these big, scary investment banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. He smiled. “Enjoy explaining your new trend line to the boys at Goldman Sachs. But, hey — it’s just business. Nothing personal.”

“All right!” Gifford roared. “You can have your damned Four Seasons back.”

“I’ll await a call from Liam.”

“What the hell’s gotten into you?”

“You kill my dog, I kill your cat,” Tanner said, smiling. A weird expression that one was: he wondered if people actually did that sort of thing.

“This isn’t like you, Michael!”

“It is now,” Tanner said. He hung up. He grinned. Then he called his office manager.

“Lucy,” he said. “Tell Connie Hunt to pack up her cubicle.”

He was pretty sure he’d just saved his company.

He wanted to call Sarah and tell her, but he couldn’t risk it. Someone might be listening.

For a long while, he sat outside in a rusty lawn chair, staring at the sea, listening to the crash of the surf. It was lulling. He was exhausted.

He went inside, stretched out on the sofa in the front sitting room, and quickly fell asleep. He had vivid dreams about being chased on foot by someone driving a car.

He heard a man’s voice. In his dream someone was yelling at him, and he didn’t understand what the man was saying.

Then he realized that the man’s voice was in the room where he’d been sleeping. He jolted awake.

“Get up.”

A man was standing in the middle of the room, in shadows, illuminated faintly from behind by moonlight.

Will Abbott had found him.

He was pointing a gun at Tanner.