Vengeance: Mystery Writers of America Presents

A long pause. The woman stared hard at Joe, then even harder at Valiant, who hadn’t noticed her returning yet.

“Are you sure?” she said.

“I’m afraid so. But surely, if he’s a good friend of yours —”

“I met him this weekend at a party.” She made up her mind. “Thank you.”

“Oh, no. Really, I’m sorry.”

“Yes.” And she walked straight out of the restaurant.

Joe finished his seltzer, placed the glass on the bar, and went into the dining area.

“Mr. Valiant?” He pulled out the woman’s chair and sat down. “Mind if I join you for a moment?”

“Wha —”

“Don’t worry, your companion won’t be here for a few minutes.”

“Who are you?”

“Joe Beeker.” Joe held out his hand, not expecting Valiant to take it. “I used to work at Fulmont Metal.”

Valiant looked around. Up close, he had presence — fit, strong, clear-eyed, with a haircut and clothes that even Joe could tell cost vast amounts of money. Someone accustomed to watching other people get out of his way.

“You’re interrupting a private dinner,” he said. “Leave now, or the police will haul you away.”

“Yeah?” Joe said. “Do you really want to do that? Because I won’t go quietly. I’ll be hollering about how badly you treated us, stealing the company, stripping the pensions, cheating the suppliers. I’ll bet there are forty cell phones with cameras in here. You’ll be all over the internet in half an hour — and I’ll walk, since I haven’t actually done anything wrong.” He paused. “Unlike you.”

A smile flashed. “You’re trying to threaten me?”

“Me? I just turned sixty-two. I’m a tired old man. I’m not threatening anybody.”

Valiant shrugged. “What do you want?”

“Just to talk for a couple minutes.” Joe looked closely at Valiant’s eyes. “Mostly, I’m wondering, do you understand what you did to us?”

“I —”

“Deep down? Because I don’t think a regular person would have gone there. I think you just don’t realize the suffering you caused in order to make an extra few million bucks for yourself.”

“Just business.” Valiant looked toward the bar, frowning a bit, then drank from his wineglass. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, I —”

“Everything we did was perfectly legal. By the book.”

“I keep hearing that.”

“Your boss had run the company into the ground. What you don’t get is, we saved the place. If we hadn’t come along to fix it, the entire operation would have gone under, and nobody would be working anymore.”

“Fulmont was doing fine until you called the debt.”

“That was entirely within our rights.”

“That was ruthless and unnecessary — except to give you an opening to loot the place.” A waiter appeared, looking confused.

“Excuse me, sir, are you joining the party? And the lady … ?”

“We’re fine,” Valiant said.

“Ah, shall I bring out the first course?”

“I’ll let you know when.”

“Very good.” He slipped away, still frowning.

“You can’t fix everything,” said Joe. “Not completely. I know that. But at an absolute minimum, you need to give the pension back.”

“Oh, go to hell.” Valiant’s patience had begun to wear.

“It’s only six million dollars. Last year you boasted about earning, what, nine billion? You can afford it.”

“It was all legal. There’s no obligation.”

“Legal.” Joe sighed. “What you did — it was wrong.”

He didn’t get anywhere. Valiant sat obstinate for another minute, disregarding him. When the waiter came back again, with the maitre d’ for support, Joe stood up.

“Thanks for the time, Mr. Valiant,” he said.

“If I ever see you again, you’re going to jail.”

“Beeker,” said Joe. “With three e’s. You need some time to think it over, that’s okay. Let’s say, by Wednesday? A public announcement. I’ll be waiting.”

“Fuck you.”

Joe nodded. “Wednesday,” he said again, and left.

NOTHING HAPPENED, EXCEPT that Valiant hired some bodyguards. They were at his house — Joe followed the Gallardo one evening, an hour’s drive out of the city and into horse country, to see a blacked-out SUV waiting at the gate. In the morning the bodyguards arrived early at the office, and when Valiant went out for lunch, Joe saw at least one musclehead nearby the entire time.

On the other hand, they didn’t actually drive with him. The sports car was a two-seater, hardly built for six- foot linebackers carrying automatic weapons. Joe thought about this, and he followed Valiant to and from his house for a few more days.

At a distance — a great distance. He wasn’t going to be accused of stalking.

Thursday afternoon, Joe stopped waiting for Valiant’s announcement and started thinking about plan B. He had to borrow a phone book from the desk guy at the motel — the room didn’t have one, and pay phones seemed to have disappeared from the city. He’d never find this particular kind of shop back home, but Manhattan didn’t disappoint: three choices in Midtown alone, and more in the boroughs.

New Yorkers seemed to like spying on one another.

“THE LENS IS easy,” said the clerk. He gestured at a glass case alongside the counter, its shelves crammed with glinting electronics. “You need wireless?”

“I don’t think so.” Joe remembered the combat radio he’d humped through Vietnam, twenty-three pounds of steel and plastic knobs. The equipment here would fit inside a pencil. “I can wear the recorder on my belt or something, connect it under my shirt.”

“Sure. Pin-wire mike too — put it separate, different buttonhole or something, makes it harder to catch.”

“You sure it can record everything someone says to me? Video too?”

“So long as you’re facing them. The exact orientation doesn’t matter much. A lens like this” — he held up a tiny crystal bead, two thin leads trailing away — “has a seventy-degree field of view. Looks a bit like a fishbowl on playback, but you’ll see everything.”

“Good.” Joe pulled out his wallet.

As the clerk settled the components into a plastic bag, he said, “I ought to tell you, the courts don’t accept this sort of thing.”

“Excuse me?”

“If you’re planning to catch someone, go undercover? It’s not admissible. I’m just saying.”

“Oh, that’s not what this is about.” Joe took the bag. “We’re way beyond a court of law.”

ON FRIDAY HE started late, checking out of the Rest-a-Way at noon and eating a full lunch at a diner off 280. By three o’clock he was in Connecticut, the truck parked in Old Ridgefork’s municipal lot. The town was small and charming, with pottery shops and coffee boutiques on the renovated main street. Joe walked a few blocks north, to the edge of the town center, and sat on a park bench near a stoplight where Bluff Street crossed Main.

Late sunlight slanted across trees and Victorians. Children’s shouts drifted from a playground a block away. Traffic was light but steady, a stream of cars headed mostly east. Old Ridgefork sat on one of the commuter arteries into Fairfield County, as Joe had determined from careful study of a state map.