Harlan Coben - Home

The thin black man clicked a key.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the leaderboard changed so that the top name read FATGANDHI47.

The men in the room cheered and high-fived one another. That transitioned to backslaps and hugs. Myron and Dog Collar just stood there until the celebrations slowly wound down. The other three men got back behind their computer terminals. Myron could see the reflections from the screens on their glasses. The big monitor in the middle, the one that had been tracking the leaders, turned to black. As it did, the heavyset Indian turned to Myron.

“Welcome.”

Myron glanced at Dog Collar. The kid looked petrified.

Calling the Indian heavyset was being politically correct. He was rotund, with slabs and slabs of skin and a belly like he’d swallowed a bowling ball. His T-shirt couldn’t quite reach his waist and hung out almost like a skirt. His neck fat flowed directly into a smoothly shaved head, so that it looked like one trapezoidal entity. He had a small mustache, wire-rimmed glasses, and a smile that one might mistake for gentle.

“Welcome, Myron Bolitar, to our humble offices.”

“Nice to be here,” Myron said, “Fat Gandhi.”

This pleased him. “Ah yes, yes. You saw the leaderboard?”

“I did.”

He spread his arms, his triceps flapping in the no-breeze. “Does the name not fit?”

“Like a well-tailored sock,” Myron said, even though he had no idea what that meant.

Fat Gandhi turned his gaze toward Dog Collar. The kid withered to the point where Myron felt the need to step in front of him.

“Aren’t you going to ask how I know your name?” Fat Gandhi asked.

“The kid asked for it on the subway,” Myron said. “He also asked me where I was from and where I went to school. I guess you must have been listening in.”

“We were indeed.”

Fat Gandhi offered up another beatific grin, but now-and maybe this was just his imagination-Myron could see the decay behind it.

“Do you think only you can use your phone as a listening device?”

Myron said nothing.

Fat Gandhi snapped his fingers. A map appeared on the big screen. There were blinking blue dots all over it. “All of my employees carry such phones. We can use them as listening devices, as GPSs, to page. We can keep track of all our employees at all times.” He pointed at the blue dots on the screen. “When we get a match on one of our apps-let us say one of our clients has a desire for a malnourished white male with a studded dog collar…”

The kid started to shake.

“… we know where such an employee is and can arrange a meeting at any time. We can also listen in if we wish. We can discover if there is any danger. Or”-and now the smile looked positively predatory-“we can see if we are being cheated.”

The kid reached into his shoe, pulled out the five hundred pounds, and held it out toward Fat Gandhi. Fat Gandhi didn’t take it. The kid put the money on one of the desks. Then he actually slid behind Myron. Myron let him.

Fat Gandhi turned toward the map. He spread his hands again. The other men in the room kept their heads down and typed.

“This is our nerve center.”

Nerve center, Myron thought. This guy should be petting a hairless cat. He sounded like a Bond villain.

He looked over his shoulder at Myron. “Do you know why I don’t fear telling you all this?”

“Is it my trusting face? That’s come in handy tonight.”

“No.” He spun back toward Myron. “It’s because there is nothing you could really do. You’ve noticed the security. Sure, the authorities could eventually get in, maybe whoever is on the other end of your smartphone even. By the way, one of my men is driving around with your phone. Just to make it all the more fun, no?”

“Sounds like big laughs.”

“But here is the thing, Myron. May I call you Myron?”

“Sure. Should I call you Fat?”

“Ha-ha. I like you, Myron Bolitar.”

“Great.”

“Myron, you may have noticed that we have no hard drives in here. Everything-all of the information on our clients, our employees, our dealings-is kept in a cloud. So if someone comes in, we press a button, and voilà”-Fat Gandhi snapped his fingers-“there is nothing to be found.”

“Clever.”

“I tell you this not to boast.”

“Oh?”

“I want you to understand with whom you are dealing before we do business. Just as it is my responsibility to know who I am dealing with.”

He snapped his fingers again.

When the screen came back on, Myron almost groaned out loud.

“Once we heard your name, it didn’t take long to learn much more.” Fat Gandhi pointed to the screen. Someone had paused the video on the title:

THE COLLISION: THE MYRON BOLITAR STORY

“We’ve been watching your documentary, Myron. It’s very moving.”

If you were a sports fan of a certain age, you knew the “legend” of Myron Bolitar, former first-round draft pick of the Boston Celtics. If you were not, or if you were younger or foreign like these guys, well, thanks to a recent sports documentary on ESPN called The Collision going viral, you still knew more than you should.

Fat Gandhi snapped his fingers again, and the video started playing.

“Yeah,” Myron said, “I’ve already seen it.”

“Oh, come, come. Don’t be so modest.”

The documentary started off optimistically enough: tinkling music, bright sunshine, cheers from the crowd. Somehow they had gotten clips of Myron playing AAU ball as a sixth grader. Then it moved on. Myron Bolitar had been a high school basketball superstar from Livingston, New Jersey. During his years at Duke University, his legend grew. He was a consensus All-American, a two-time NCAA champion, and even College Player of the Year.

The tinkling music swelled.

When the Boston Celtics picked him in the first round of the NBA draft, Myron’s dreams, it seemed, had all come true.

And then, as the documentary voice-over of doom intoned, “Tragedy struck…”

Sudden stop on the tinkling music. Cue something more ominous.

“Tragedy struck” in the third quarter of Myron’s very first preseason game, the first-and last-time he would don the green Celtics uniform number 34. The Celtics were playing the Washington Bullets. Up until that point, Myron’s debut had lived up to the hype. He had eighteen points. He was fitting in, clicking on all cylinders, lost in the sweet, sweaty bliss he found only on a basketball court, and then…

The Collision filmmakers must have shown the “horrific” replay two dozen times from a variety of angles. They showed it at regular speed. They showed it in slow motion. They showed it from Myron’s vantage point, from above, from courtside. Didn’t matter. The result was always the same.

Rookie Myron Bolitar had his head turned when Big Burt Wesson, a journeyman power forward, blindsided him. Myron’s knee twisted in a way neither God nor anatomy ever intended. Even from a distance you could actually hear a nauseating sound like a wet snap.

Bye-bye, career.

“Watching this,” Fat Gandhi said with an exaggerated pout, “made us sad.” He looked around. “Didn’t it, lads?”

Everyone, even Dog Collar, quickly mimicked the pout. They all then stared at Myron.

“Yeah, I’m over it.”

“Are you?”

“Man plans and God laughs,” Myron said.

Fat Gandhi smiled. “I like that one. Is that an American expression?”

“Yiddish.”

“Ah. In Hindi, we say knowledge is bigger than debate. You see? So first, we learned your name. Then we watched your documentary, we broke into your email-”

“You what?”

“There was nothing very interesting, but we haven’t finished. We also checked your phone records. Your mobile phone received a call from an untraceable number whilst in New York City fewer than twenty-four hours ago. The call originated from London.” He put out his hands, palms up. “And now you are here. With us.”