No Way Back (27 page)

‘The money.’

Another long silence. ‘Why not?’

Why not, indeed? I’m not sure what to answer. Before this morning, when I had a mere suspicion of illegal activity at Tao, I was just a bystander – maybe a bystander who was
encouraged to look the other way – but still a bystander. By accepting this money, I become something else. An accomplice. Two million dollars in my bank account. Exactly half of the amount
missing from the company’s coffers.

‘Listen, partner,’ Tad says. His choice of word chills me.
Partner
. ‘Here’s what you have to understand. You’re a businessman. I’m a businessman.
It’s all business. In business, there’s give and there’s take. I’m going to give to you, and you’re going to take.’

‘Tad—’

‘Listen,’ he snaps. ‘I’m not finished.’ More gently: ‘Now, after this gig is over, there’ll be other companies. Bigger companies. That’s
what’s great about your line of work, Jimmy – the supply of human weakness is unlimited. There’s always more garbage for you to clean up! And, after Tao, you’ll have a track
record. You’ll get bigger jobs. More important jobs. I’ll help you get them. For now, just keep quiet and make everyone happy.’

‘Who is everyone?’ I ask, suddenly emboldened. ‘Who? You and who else?’

‘My partners,’ Tad says.

‘Who are your partners?’

‘You know,’ Tad says quietly, with a chill in his voice.

I have met the three other partners at Tad’s venture-capital firm, Bedrock Ventures. I have pitched all three of them my cockamamie business ideas, have sat in board meetings with them,
and have – when things were going badly – requested desperate lunch appointments. There’s Steve Burnham, a software entrepreneur and MIT grad, who made two hundred million dollars
selling a piece-of-shit start-up to Yahoo, exactly one year before Yahoo shut down the unit and wrote it off as worthless. There’s Biram Sanjay, the ex-BCG consultant, whose area of
specialization, as far as I can tell, based on my interaction with him, is to show up at board meetings, draw four squares on a whiteboard, and tell CEOs that they ought to ‘move to the upper
right quadrant’. There’s Tench Worthington, nicknamed (behind his back, of course) Tench Worth-a-Ton – Harvard undergrad and MBA, lineage back to the
Mayflower
, nose like
a Roman statue – whose function at Bedrock Ventures is that of a skeleton key: he opens a lot of doors – at endowments, state pensions, family offices – and convinces important
people to sign cheques.

Each of Tad’s partners is insufferable in a different way – and none is a person I want to spend an hour with. But not one is a criminal. Not a single one would sign up for this
plan: to drain cash from Bedrock’s investments, and have it flow into the pockets of Tad and myself. After all, the cash is
their
cash. The money I now possess came from them.

‘Tad,’ I ask again, ‘who do you work for?’

‘Too many questions, hotshot.’ A pause. ‘Dangerous questions.
N’est-ce pas
?’

‘Tad—’

‘Listen, my friend. Men like you, how many chances do you think you’re going to get? Two? Three? Five? What number are you on, anyway?’

‘Maybe ten.’

‘“Maybe ten,”’ he mimics me, using a pansy voice. ‘Try maybe twelve or thirteen. And this is it, Jimmy. Last stop on the Loser Express. Guess what, buddy? You
don’t have the luxury of picking your gigs. Take what you get. And that means taking the people who come with it. Me, my partners, the whole ball of wax. We’re a package.’

‘I’m just asking who they are.’

‘And I’m just telling you to stop asking. Now, listen, I have to go. I have an appointment. A manicure, if you can believe that. Does that make me gay? I hope, sincerely hope, you
stop being so curious. This isn’t a game, Jimmy. The people we’re talking about – they aren’t Silicon Valley people. They haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid. They don’t
buy into the “Let’s ask lots of questions and see if we can do better by questioning all our assumptions” bullshit. These people do not like questions. So don’t ask
them.’

‘Is that what happened to Charles Adams?’

‘Goddamn it, Jimmy!’ he yells. ‘I tell you to stop asking questions, and what do you do? You ask another question. Now, remember what I told you.’

‘Not to ask questions.’

‘No, you misogynistic pig. To buy your wife a Mercedes. If you’re in doubt about the colour, try black. It’ll go great with Libby’s hair.’

‘All right, Tad.’

‘
Ciao
, hotshot.’

Before I can say
ciao
, the line is dead, and he’s gone.

Have you ever done this?

Have you ever pulled into the driveway of your house, in a brand new Mercedes SL550 Roadster, with the top down, after spending exactly thirty-two minutes at a dealership negotiating the
car’s purchase – that negotiation consisting exactly of this: asking the sticker price of the car, nodding dumb agreement, and writing a personal cheque for the entire six-figure
amount?

If you have never done this, you should try it sometime. It is nice to see how the other part of humanity lives. By ‘the other part of humanity’, I mean the insanely rich, or the
seriously criminal, or those who reside in the intersection between the two – the place where I now curiously find myself.

I park this new Mercedes in the driveway, cut the motor, and use my cell to call Libby. ‘I have a surprise for you,’ I tell her. ‘Come outside.’

Soon the door opens, and Libby walks onto the porch. When she sees the car, she staggers back, maybe in surprise. Or maybe it’s just the heat – it’s only three p.m., and the
sun is high and incandescent.

‘What in the world?’ she says, although of course she knows exactly what in the world.

She trundles down the stairs. I climb out of the car, leaving the door open. ‘For you.’

‘Me?’

‘My way of saying thank you... for putting up with me. All my trouble. All my shit.’

‘Oh, Jimmy,’ she says, ‘you don’t have to thank me.’ I notice she doesn’t disagree about the trouble and shit part – just the thanks.

One week has passed since that night in the restaurant, and since Tad’s phone call. Things have been quiet since then – quiet at work, and even quieter at home: no anger, no conflict
– just a numbness, as if the house where Libby and I live is bathed in a mist of anaesthesia.

Libby touches my arm and slides into the car, and the leather seat crinkles under her cotton sundress, and she wraps her slender fingers around the hand-stitched steering wheel.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmurs. She pushes back into the seat, looks at herself in the mirror. Casually, an afterthought: ‘How did you pay for it?’

‘A bonus from Tad.’

She glances at me, sidelong. ‘What kind of bonus?’

A Jimmy-should-keep-his-mouth-shut bonus
, I think silently. But out loud I say, ‘Retention.’

‘Does that mean he’s happy?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Good.’ She gets out of the car and closes the door. It makes a solid hundred-grand
thunk
. ‘Keep them happy, Jimmy. It’s so important to keep them
happy.’

She gives a quick, almost imperceptible glance across the street, to our neighbour’s house. Just for an instant. Or maybe I’m imagining it, because now she’s looking at me
again, squinting into the sun and staring into my face. She squeezes my hand – a gesture of charity, not gratitude – and rises to her toes, and gives me a chaste peck on the cheek.
‘It was nice of you,’ she says, ‘to buy this for me.’

‘I love you.’

She says nothing.

I go on, ‘I just want everything to be normal again. That’s all I want for you and me, Libby. A normal life.’

‘A normal life?’ she repeats dully. Her lips twist into one of her mean little smiles, which usually indicates a waspish comment about to come. Maybe something like: If you wanted a
normal life, you shouldn’t have left your son alone to drown while you got high.

But whatever she is thinking, she does not say. She just walks silently to the house.

I stay behind. Something bothers me. When she’s on the porch, I call to her, ‘Libby?’

She turns.

I say: ‘You said “
them
”.’

Her face is blank.

‘You said keep
them
happy. Who did you mean by “them”?’

A queer look – both puzzled and annoyed. ‘Tad,’ she says. ‘Tad and... Bedrock Ventures.’

No
, I think.
That is not what you meant.

‘Come inside, Jimmy,’ she says. ‘Let me cook you dinner. A normal dinner. So that we can be normal together. That’s what we want, isn’t it?’

And then she’s gone.

I’m not sure how long I stand there, in the driveway, in the sun, thinking about my wife, and her moods, and her mysteries.

When I told Lance, the salesman at the Mercedes showroom, that the new car would be a gift for my wife – meant as a surprise – he laughed and winked and said, ‘You’re
going to be a lucky man tonight!’ I just shook my head and told him, ‘You don’t know Libby.’

No one knows Libby, including me. Maybe not even Libby herself. She’s a Chinese puzzle box, intricate and beautiful, full of secrets. She never reacts the way I expect. When I let our son
drown, she claims to forgive me. When I try to love her, she pushes me away. I understand her no better today than I did eleven years ago, the night we first met.

I stand in the driveway, pondering this. I’m in no hurry to go inside, to return to her. Out here, it might be a hundred degrees, something close to hell, but at least I don’t have
to bear that look from my wife. I hear footsteps behind me.

I turn to see Special Agent Tom Mitchell walking up the drive, looking preposterously crisp and cool in a linen shirt and a knitted cotton tie, despite the heat. His sleeves are rolled; his
white suit jacket is slung casually over his shoulder. The only thing he needs to complete the look of a Southern dandy is a straw hat and a mint julep.

‘Whoooeee,’ he says, half whistling, as he circles the Mercedes, staring lustfully. ‘Now
that
is one fine automobile.’ With this last word, his transformation
into plantation owner is complete: auto-
MO
-beel. ‘That a new car, Mr Thane?’

‘Brand new,’ I say.

‘Cost a pretty penny, I bet.’ He’s still circling the car, shark-like, examining it from every angle.

‘It’s a gift for my wife.’

‘That right?’ he says. He purses his lips. ‘She must be a special lady.’

He stands on his toes and peers into the car, as if that special lady might be right there, chopped up into pieces on the floor.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘I thought I’d stop by,’ he says, looking at me, smiling. ‘I wanted to see how things are going. From the looks of it, not bad.’

He glances at my house, and the wraparound porch, and the fence hiding what must be a swimming pool. I see the gears turning: he’s trying to figure out how much all this is worth, and how
I afford it.

‘Can’t complain,’ I say. ‘What can I do for you, Agent Mitchell?’

‘Do you remember that name I mentioned to you, last time we spoke?’

‘What name is that?’

‘Ghol Gedrosian.’

I do remember, of course. The name sounded strange and foreign, back when I first heard it, weeks ago, in the boardroom at Tao. Today it seems less strange, less foreign. Indeed, I
wouldn’t be surprised if this was the name of one of Tad Billups’s partners. One of his silent partners. And so, I suppose, one of my partners.

‘No,’ I lie. ‘I don’t remember that name.’

‘You sure now?’ He stares at me. ‘
Ghol Gedrosian
.’ He says it again, quite slowly – enunciating each syllable – studying my reaction as he repeats
it. ‘Remember?’

‘Maybe,’ I say, uncertainly. ‘Maybe.’

‘You
do
remember.’ His voice is gentle, but there’s a hint of accusation.

‘Maybe,’ I repeat. ‘What about him?’

‘Well, now. I need to find him. I was hoping you could help.’

As ridiculous as this sounds to me – Jimmy Thane helping an FBI agent to find someone he’s never met – I don’t laugh. Not out loud. One of the things you learn in
business – something they don’t teach you when you study for your MBA, but which you figure out pretty fast in the real world – is to be polite and agreeable to any government
official who harasses you. No matter how lowly, no matter how uneducated, no matter how unimportant they may seem, always remember that they have the power to destroy you. To ruin you utterly and
completely. So be humble. And give them whatever they ask for.

‘Help you find him?’ I repeat, as if he’s talking about a misplaced set of car keys. ‘Sure. I’d like to help you any way I can. Maybe first, you can tell me who he
is.’

‘Who he is?’ Mitchell smiles. But it’s a strange smile – a smile completely without pleasure – the kind of smile you make when you talk admiringly about the
perfection of nature’s predators, or when you describe a senseless tragedy at an elementary school, or when you express grim hopelessness about the permanence of evil in the world. That kind
of smile. ‘Maybe I should tell you a little story,’ Agent Mitchell says.

I try to keep a delighted expression planted on my face, as if nothing could please me more. A story! While standing here in my driveway! Under the beating sun! While it’s a hundred
degrees! ‘Yes, please.’

‘There was a DA out in California – out in San Joaquin, your neck of the woods, I believe. His name was Bob Callahan. You recall the name?’

‘No.’

‘One day, Mr Callahan wondered why so much methamphetamine was flooding into his county. It was destroying the town where he lived, Mr Thane. The town where he brought up his children,
where he went to church. They’re rural out there, and mostly poor. Every other man was selling it or using it or making it. And no one was willing to put a stop to it. It was as if everyone
in charge agreed to look the other way. Everyone except for Mr Callahan. So he started asking questions. He found out that all the meth in the valley was being supplied by just one man – a
Russian – some two-bit asshole. But no one could even tell Callahan the guy’s name. He had different names depending on who you asked. Carl Gadossan. Ghulla Gadrosan. No one could say
for sure. Some people said he was Russian. Others said Chechen. Others Armenian. No one knew what he looked like, or where he lived, or who he was. He was... ’ He stops. Thinks about it.
‘Well, he was a ghost,’ he says. ‘Even the people that worked for him didn’t know shit about him. They took their orders from other people, who took their orders from
someone else. He was a clever man, this little chicken-shit meth dealer. Hiding in shadows. Not quite real.’