No Way Back (34 page)

When it doesn’t come, I peer through a crack in my fingers. He’s kneeling beside me, looking concerned, as if he happened to wander by and find me here. ‘Are you hurt?’
he asks gently. ‘Can you sit up?’

I do. My ribs ache. The blond man sticks his face just inches from mine, so close that I am able to study the scar on his cheek. ‘Do you know that he has given you a gift, Mr
Thane?’

‘The money?’

‘More than the money. Your house, your job, your wife. Everything a man could want.’

‘Libby?’ I say, surprised.

‘He has given her to you. Have you enjoyed her?’

‘Actually... ’ I start. But then I think better of it.

‘Everything you have, was once his. Everything you have, he can take away. Even your life. Do you understand?’

I nod.

‘Say it. Say you understand.’

‘I understand.’

‘You must accept his gifts,’ he says, ‘and be grateful for them.’

‘Yes.’

‘Say it.’

‘I accept his gifts. I am grateful for them.’

‘His power is vast. More vast than you can imagine.’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Say it.’

‘His power is vast. More vast than I can imagine.’

‘That’s right.’ He nods. He stands. He stares at me. ‘Look at you. Pathetic. Fat. Disgusting. Weak. Yet he wants to protect you.’

‘Protect me?’

He slides his knife back into its sheath. ‘Vanderbeek will not bother you again,’ he says. ‘Obviously.’

‘Obviously.’

‘And as for you,’ he says. ‘There must be no more investigating. No more questions. No more thinking. Do you understand these words? No more thinking, Mr Thane.’ He taps
my forehead with his huge thumb, to demonstrate where my thinking must not take place. ‘Thinking is for dead men.’

‘I’m not a big fan of thinking,’ I admit.

‘No more going to widow’s houses. No more asking your little secretary for secret files. Do you understand what I tell you?’

To help me understand what he tells me, he gives me one last kick in the ribs, a hard one, and I hear a crack as his toe connects with bone, and I fall backwards, and I yell, ‘Oh shit!
Fuck! Please stop.’

‘Did that hurt?’ he asks.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. This makes me happy. Go back to work. If you see me ever again, it means I’ve come to kill you.’

I go back to work.

It hurts when I breathe, but at least there’s no blood, and Amanda barely looks at me as I limp into the reception area, and head back to my office.

I’m vaguely aware that this is how Charles Adams behaved during his final days on the planet – taking meetings with scary men, slinking back to his office, shutting his door and
hiding within.

I shut my door. I collapse into my chair.

‘He wants to protect you
,’ the blond man said. I touch my ribs. They do not feel protected, not at this moment, and I pull my shirt from my pants, and stare at the purplish
black bruises that have appeared on my chest. I press one. It hurts. No, I do not feel protected.

But he did not kill me. Maybe that is Ghol Gedrosian’s idea of protection. Not killing you.

I open my desk drawer, remove the business card belonging to Agent Tom Mitchell. I study it carefully, as if the telephone numbers and street address are ancient runes that require deciphering
– answers to long asked, never answered, questions. I stare at the telephone on my desk. For exactly three seconds, I consider lifting the receiver, and calling Agent Mitchell. I would tell
him about Dom Vanderbeek, and the corpse in the house, and how I work for a Russian mobster, and how I’ve been paid millions of dollars to look the other way while Ghol Gedrosian steals money
from the company that I supposedly run.

But of course I don’t. I don’t tell him these things. I don’t pick up the phone.

I slide Agent Mitchell’s card into my wallet. Again I think back to the story he told me, of the DA in California, and what happened to him, and his children. I know that if I pick up the
phone, the same will happen to me. That’s what the blond man meant:
If you see me ever again, it means I’ve come to kill you.

If I pick up the phone, I
will
see the blond man again. Maybe tonight, in my house, leaning over my bed, when I open my eyes for the last time. Or maybe at Tao, this afternoon, in
reception, seated on a chair like a photocopier salesman, waiting for me to leave the office. Or maybe in my car, as I pull out of my driveway tomorrow morning.

Somehow, Ghol Gedrosian will know if I lift this phone to speak to the FBI. Just as he knows everything that I’ve done since I’ve come to Florida.

How
did
the blond man know that I drove to Sanibel? I told no one that I was going to the house on 56 Windmere. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision... one that I made when Pete Bland
walked into my office, and shut the door, and told me that I owned that house.

The blond man’s words come back to me:
No more going to widow’s houses. No more asking your little secretary for secret files.

He knew about that too. About my visit to Charles Adams’s widow. About my conversation with Amanda – the conversation that took place right here, in this office, with the door shut,
the two of us alone...

And Dom Vanderbeek, too. It was here that he threatened me –

standing
right here
– in the doorway to my office.

I feel a chill. I’m being watched. I keep my body very still. My eyes glide around the room. Searching.

Searching.

He hears everything
, Mrs Adams told me.
He has ears
.

The ravings of a mad woman.

Or was it something else?

I rise from my chair, slowly, trying to make the gesture seem natural, as if I’m just stretching my legs. I glance casually at the ceiling, the smoke detector, the coat hook behind the
door, the power outlets in the wall. A hundred places to hide a listening device. A thousand spots to bury a microphone.

But it’s not buried, is it? It’s not hidden. It’s right here. Right in front of me.

From my desk, I lift the photograph with the ornate silver frame. The photograph of me and Libby and Satan. The frame that’s so heavy and peculiar and large.

I stare at it – one final time – that curious photo, which has always seemed so wrong to me – doctored, perhaps – or staged. I lay it on the floor, and I lift my shoe,
and I slam down my heel. The glass shatters.

I kneel beside it. The metal frame has cracked, not being solid metal at all. Poking from the hidden compartment are black wires, which are attached to something that looks very much like a
microphone, and a camera, and a thin metal antenna.

Now I recall that morning long ago, when I first arrived at Tao, how Libby insisted that I bring this photograph – this particular one – to the office. ‘Because it has us
together,’ she explained, and I believed her. As I have believed Libby for so many years.

Now everything makes sense: her meanness, her sulking. Her standing beside me, despite the fact that she so certainly hates me.

She works for Tad Billups. She has always worked for Tad.

Maybe she is sleeping with him, too. That would explain a great deal. My wife, and my best friend, fucking, and plotting against me.

And then, a thought comes. It arrives uninvited, and it surprises me with its clarity and its pureness.

It is:
You deserve it, Jimmy.

Everything you’ve got, you had coming. Everything you have, you deserve.

Each time I have spoken to Tad Billups on the telephone since I arrived in Florida, I have been on the receiving end of his call to me.

Now it’s my turn to play offence, my turn to surprise him. I’m not even sure what I’m going to say to him – ‘How do you like fucking my wife?’ perhaps –
or maybe nothing of the kind. I’m not worried. I’ll know what to say to my old friend as soon as I hear his voice.

I peck around my computer for his office telephone number and I dial. The receptionist who answers has that smoky, heard-it-all-before voice that venture capital firms love to use as
gatekeepers: sexy, yes; friendly, a bit – but not
too
friendly; always a hint of wariness – thanks for your call, but who the hell
are
you exactly?

‘Hello, thank you for calling Bedrock Ventures. This is Alicia speaking. How may I direct your call?’

‘Tad Billups, please.’

A long silence. Finally: ‘Who’s calling?’

‘Jimmy Thane.’

Another silence. Which leads me to think I need to add more detail. Like who I am. ‘Alicia, I’m Jim Thane from Tao Software. I’m sure you know that I am the CEO at one of your
portfolio companies.’ My voice is meant to convey certainty, and seriousness, and more than a hint of impatience. ‘Let me talk to Tad please.’

Another pause, as if I’ve just announced that I am calling from Planet Mars, on behalf of General Mixilplc, to discuss recalibrating the cosmic ray gun.

Finally, after what seems like for ever, the smoky voice responds, ‘Please hold.’

She is replaced by music – the Beatles’ ‘Penny Lane’, reimagined as muzak on a pan flute. After a minute, the music stops abruptly, and a male voice comes on the
line.

‘This is Tench. Who am I speaking to?’

Tench Worth-a-Ton – Tad’s partner. Every venture capital firm has a Tench, a man who can speak the language of the wealthy nincompoops whose money they need to finagle. You
can’t send a dark-skinned Indian or a mysterious Chinaman into a family office in the deep woods of Akron – even if it is these exotic specimens who will actually manage the money on
behalf of the fourth-generation steel barons of Ohio.

You need a Tench. Every firm does. Dumb as a wall, but with blood that goes back to the Mayflower, and a Yale degree, and a Harvard MBA. And a mean forehand in squash.

‘Tench?’ I say, trying to lather up some enthusiasm for the bastard. ‘It’s me, Jimmy.’

‘Jimmy?’ As if he has no idea who I am.

‘Jimmy Thane. Tad there?’

‘Tad?’

Jesus, I think to myself, I’m trying to reach the man who’s cuckolding me, and Tench wants to play Twenty Questions.

‘Yeah,
Tad
. Tad Billups. I asked your receptionist to connect me. I’m not sure why she put me through to you. How ya’ doing, Tench?’

‘
Who
is this?’

‘Jimmy Thane.’

At the other end of the phone, there’s a noise, a sudden explosion of breath. It sounds suspiciously like a laugh. A laugh of disbelief.

I continue nevertheless. ‘That’s right. CEO of Tao Software. It’s part of your portfolio, Tench. I’m sure you’re aware of that.’

This last statement is meant as a joke – or at least is as much sarcasm as I can muster, given the circumstances – because even the laziest VC knows every company in his portfolio,
knows it intimately, just as he knows every single entrepreneur working at these portfolio companies – working for
him
, effectively. These entrepreneurs, after all, are entrusted
with a large portion of the VC’s net worth, and are trying to make that VC rich.

But Tench Worthington does not treat my statement as a joke. In fact, he is silent for a long time. I’m about to ask him if he’s still on the line, when he finally says, ‘Jimmy
Thane, the
drunk
?’

If I weren’t sitting down, securely in my chair, I’d reel backwards across the room. Instead, I feel merely light-headed, as if something in the world has changed, something
fundamental, like the direction the earth rotates around the sun, or whether it does so at all. But I say, agreeably, ‘Drunk, sure. And don’t forget about the womanizing and the coke,
Tench. So will you get Tad on the phone for me?’

‘Jimmy, what are you saying? Where are you?’

‘Jesus Christ, you piece of shit,’ I say, finally losing all patience. ‘I’m in fucking East Buttfuck, Florida, you asshole. I’m sweating my ass off for your
cheating double-crossing partner, and it’s one hundred fucking degrees. Are you telling me he hasn’t even bothered to let you know that I’m working for you?’

‘Jimmy Thane,’ he says, in quiet wonder, half to himself. ‘I never thought I’d hear from you. Not after what happened.’ He clears his throat. ‘Jimmy, we wrote
off Tao Software last year. Dead loss. Goose eggs. We decided to shut the company down. Is this some kind of – I don’t know – some kind of joke?’

‘Fuck you, Tench,’ I say, and only after I say it do I realize I’m not joking. Not a bit. ‘Put your cocksucker partner on the phone. Put Tad on.’

‘Tad,’ he says, as if the name is interesting, worth repeating. ‘Tad, Tad, Tad. Well, here’s the thing, Jimmy.’

‘What’s the thing, Tench?’

‘The thing is, Tad took a voluntary leave of absence. It was a long time ago. Early last year. He hasn’t been with Bedrock since 09. You know, after the incident, everyone thought it
might be best.’

‘What incident?’

‘I’m sure you heard. About the babysitter? The girl that got strangled with her own underwear?’

‘No.’

‘Well, until a court decides, we won’t know for sure. But we all mutually agreed that, until a jury makes a determination about guilt or innocence... ’

‘What jury? What the fuck are you talking about? Where is Tad? He fucking
hired
me.’

‘I don’t know, Jimmy. I haven’t spoken to Tad in over a year. He doesn’t work here. He hasn’t worked here for a long time. And he never will. And I can assure you,
no one at my firm would ever hire you. Not to run anything. Not to run around the block.’ He pauses, then adds: ‘No offence.’

‘None taken, asshole.’

‘But if I see him,’ Tench says, ‘which I doubt I will, since I don’t plan on visiting prison, should I tell him you called?’

It’s raining when I arrive home.

It started softly – just a few drops on the windshield as I pulled out of the office parking lot – but by the time I step from my car, in the driveway, it’s steady and
threatening more. I look up. Just past noon, but the sky is black. Water spatters the gravel at my feet, kicking up the smell of hot summer dust. In the distance, a grumble of thunder.