And dangerous.
‘We’re in a public place,’ he says. ‘What can they do?’
‘They can wait. We’re not going to stay here all day, are we?’
‘And when we leave?’
‘Whatever. Neither of us will get very far.’
‘That’s insane.’
Szymanski leans forward. ‘Have you not been listening to this conversation? Have you not been listening to yourself?’
Jimmy looks at him. ‘Haven’t you?’ He leans forward as well. ‘This is a two-way street.’
‘Not as far as they’re concerned.’ Szymanski yanks up the side of his jacket to the table and partially opens it. With his eyes, he indicates, down here, look.
Jimmy looks. What he sees is the barrel of a handgun.
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘This is the only way I’m getting out of here.’
Jimmy shakes his head. ‘Yeah, but not alive. If you take that out, you won’t stand a chance.’ He pauses, then whispers, ‘Look, there is another way.’
‘What other way?’ Impatient, unconvinced.
Jimmy hesitates. He nods his head in the direction of the guy two places behind them and makes a face that says, nah, not if he’s listening in.
It takes a moment for Szymanski to catch on, but when he does – and to Jimmy’s shock – he gets out of the booth, stands up and strides back to where the other guy is sitting. With his back to the rest of the coffee shop, careful to conceal what he’s doing – not that anyone is paying attention – Szymanski takes out his gun, holding it discreetly, and whispers to the guy, ‘Get the fuck out of here. Right now.’
The guy doesn’t react for a second, then he gives an almost imperceptible nod.
This surely indicates that he isn’t what Szymanski might call – or what Jimmy imagines Szymanski might call – a civilian.
After a moment, the guy gets out of the booth, leaves a five-dollar bill on the table, picks up his newspaper and walks out of the coffee shop.
Szymanski returns to his place, sits down, and raises his eyebrows.
OK?
OK.
Jimmy breathes in. ‘Er… so, first thing, can you prove definitively that you were a Gideon contractor, and that you worked in Congo?’
Szymanski takes a moment to answer. Maybe he’s deciding whether or not he’s offended by the question, or if he’s going to dignify it with a response. Jimmy doesn’t know. But eventually, Szymanski says, ‘Fuck, yeah. There’s a paper trail. Pay cheques from Gideon, the contract I signed, my fucking passport. Plus, I’ve got a ton of pictures on my phone.’ He shrugs, dismissing it. ‘Was I there? Yeah, of course I was there.’
‘OK,’ Jimmy says. ‘Good. Now.’ He slides over to the edge of the booth. ’You order some refills. I’m going to take a piss and make a quick phone call.’
‘Where’s he going? Fuck.’
Rundle punches the back of the driver’s seat in front of him.
Beside him, Ribcoff is pressing one hand against his ear and holding the other one out, forefinger raised, looking for quiet.
‘He… he what? Jesus…’
He brings his hand down and turns to Rundle. ‘Szymanski has a Beretta M9.’ He shakes his head. ‘This is fucked.’
‘It was fucked already, Don. Gun or no gun. One Beretta M9 isn’t going to make any difference now.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you… you’ve got to go in there and take him out, take them both out.’
‘But we don’t -’
‘Or at least take Szymanski out, Jesus, while he’s on his own, like you said. I mean, look.’ He points. ‘The guy is just sitting there.’
‘Clark, he has a gun. There are people in there.’
Rundle dismisses this with a flick of his hand. ‘People.’
‘Oh, so, what, you’ve got no problem getting into a firefight in a coffee shop on Third Avenue? That’s OK with you, yeah?’
Rundle explodes. ‘For fuck’s sake, Don, you heard them in there. I have to explain it to you?’ He punches the seat in front of him again. ‘There’s no turning back here. For either of us.’
Rundle knows this is easy to say, and saying it even provides him with some tiny measure of relief, but he does mean it. What route back from this could there possibly be? The weight of responsibility sits on him now like a boulder. In its distinguished, nearly 150-year history, the BRX Mining and Engineering Corporation has never once had to defend its name in court or in the press. For generations the company has been fiercely protective of its privacy and its reputation. And now, what? Clark Rundle comes along and allows it to be dragged through the mud?
The dissolute scion of a once-great family.
Rundle shakes his head. That last part is bullshit and he knows it, but still…
If it was just a little bit of corporate malfeasance, they could bring in the lawyers, tie things up for years with depositions and injunctions and all sorts of shit, but this? Allegations of, at best, collusion in two multiple homicides? To say nothing of the link to a discredited presidential campaign?
He glances left. ‘Oh great, he’s back.’
They both watch as Jimmy Gilroy sits into the booth again opposite Tom Szymanski, and then as the waitress arrives and refills their cups.
‘That was a chance there, Don, and we blew it. Who knows if we’ll get another one.’
‘We didn’t blow anything, Clark. Jesus Christ, we have to be careful.’
‘Careful? Please. Get me a gun and I’ll go in there and shoot those two bastards myself. I swear to God, I’m serious. Careful.’
Ribcoff exhales wearily, but says nothing.
‘Because you know what, Don? They will destroy us. In a fucking heartbeat. And whatever about us? BRX, I mean? Whatever degree of culpability we’re shown to have? You guys? Gideon? You personally? You’re going to jail for the rest of your fucking life.’
Ribcoff waits a beat, then snaps his laptop closed. He tosses it beside him and reaches for the door. ‘Give me a minute,’ he says. ‘I’ll be back.’ He opens the door and gets out.
Rundle turns and watches him scurry back up Fifty-fifth Street. He stops halfway and gets into a parked SUV.
Across the street in the coffee shop Tom Szymanski and Jimmy Gilroy are chatting away. Gilroy seems to be writing stuff down, taking notes. What’s he doing, conducting an interview?
Rundle looks away, stares ahead.
Degree of culpability.
Where did he get that one from? Too many billed hours spent in the company of lawyers, he suspects. With many more such hours in prospect, hundreds of them probably, Rundle feels a sudden wave of nausea. What might be beyond those hundreds of hours he can’t even contemplate. Because they’ll be bad enough in themselves, tedious, contentious, humiliating in the extreme.
And the weird thing is, in anticipating this humiliation the one clear, disapproving face he sees looking back at him is not Eve’s, or Daisy’s, or J.J.’s, or James Vaughan’s even – it’s the old man’s.
Not the Henry C. of legend either – the commanding presence, the head of the table, the chairman of the board. No, consistent with the same horrorshow logic unfolding here, it’s the Henry C. of that Saturday afternoon in the house out in Connecticut, in the study, when his heart failed him and he couldn’t reach his medication over there on the desk – couldn’t move, while his son Clark just stood in front of him and watched, not raising a hand to help, waiting, as he had been for many years… the chairmanship now within his grasp, his turn, his crack of the whip.