The Switch

82

Six months later

The guy on the speakerphone was the head of a company that supplied glass bottles for Tanner Cold Brew, which had really taken off and was now distributed throughout the Northeast. Orders had been insane. A national distribution deal was in the works. They needed a lot more amber Boston round glass bottles all of a sudden.

The guy on the phone knew that Tanner Roast had an urgent need for bottles. That was probably why he was being so intransigent on the price. Normally, Tanner wouldn’t get involved in negotiations on supplies, but Ken Jones refused to budge. So his new production manager had called in Tanner, who called Ken Jones directly.

“I gotta ask myself,” Jones was saying on speaker, “can I cover my expenses at that price point?”

Tanner picked the phone up. “You’re asking the wrong question, Jonesie. Question you should be asking is, do you ever want to do business with us in the future?”

The guy sighed loudly. “We’ll make it work.”

“Good,” said Tanner. “We’re back in business.”

Then Sal Persico knocked on the doorjamb to Tanner’s office with his left hand. His right arm and shoulder were still stiff. His right hand was especially stiff in the morning. The bullet had gone through the clavicle, the top of the shoulder, just missing the dome of the lung and the subclavian artery. It had left a large divot in the trapezius muscle, the exit wound. Only recently had he stopped wearing the sling. The doctors told him it might take a year before he regained full use of his arm.

“We’re ready,” he said.

The morning cupping was on. It was Costa Rican day.

“Be right there,” said Tanner.

He’d been reading résumés. Actually, he was supposed to be reading résumés. There were a lot to read, and six new employees to hire, including another roaster and an assistant sales manager. Plus he was looking at larger office/warehouse spaces. They’d already outgrown the old space. They were moving a lot of coffee, and the one that seemed to be the biggest seller was their new, light roast, the Lanny Roast.

Business had taken off after the Four Seasons deal went public. That had generated a number of major copycat hospitality accounts that wanted the same coffee as you found at Four Seasons hotels.

Instead of reading résumés, though, Tanner found himself distracted by a news article about how the National Security Agency’s budget was about to double, to twenty billion dollars. The biggest proponent for that increase, according to the reporter, was Senator Susan Robbins, chairman of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

He wondered for a second about whatever had happened to her laptop. Maybe it was reformatted and being used by some drug dealer, someone sketchy. Or maybe it was at the bottom of a pile of scrap metal at a dump somewhere.

Another knock at his doorjamb. “I’m coming,” he said, but then he saw that it was Sarah. He beckoned her in and got up.

His phone buzzed, and he heard Lucy’s voice. “It’s that biz-dev guy from Starbucks again.”

“Tell him I’m in a meeting.”

“Again?”

“Isn’t he bound to get the point? I mean, I’ve already told his boss I don’t want to sell. I gotta go.” He came around and gave Sarah a kiss.

“There’s a bid on Brattle Street,” she said. “I think we should counter with the asking.”

She was talking about the big clapboard house on Brattle Street in Cambridge they’d made an offer on. It had just gone on the market. She’d been on a hot streak for three months, since selling that mansion in Chestnut Hill he’d stayed in to a Russian oligarch. Sarah had always considered their South End house too damned vertical, too many stairs to climb.

“It’s a lot of house,” Tanner said. “Six bedrooms.”

“We each get a study, and there’s a guest room, and... room for expansion.”

Tanner smiled. They’d talked. “I’m liking the idea of expansion.”

Sarah’s face lit up, and she threw her arms around him. She came in for a kiss. Tanner glanced at the laptop on his desk, then reached one hand over and pulled it shut.