Harlan Coben - Home

“I always wanted to see that,” Myron said.

“Pardon?”

“ Matilda. ”

“Now doesn’t seem the time.”

“I was joking.”

“Yes, I know. Your humor is your defense mechanism. It’s a very engaging personality quirk.” Win started to cross the street. “And the show is eh.”

“Wait, you saw it?”

Win kept walking.

“You saw a musical without me?”

“Here we are.”

“You hate musicals. I even had to drag you to see Rent. ”

Win didn’t reply. Seven Dials was, per the name, seven roads converging clocklike, producing seven corners around a circle. There was a sundial column maybe three stories high in the middle of the circle. One corner housed the Cambridge Theatre. A small pub called the Crown was wedged on another. That was where Win entered now.

The Crown was old-school, complete with a polished bar and dark wood paneling and, despite having about three feet of throwing space, a dartboard. The place was cozy and cramped and packed with standing patrons. Win caught the barman’s eye. The bartender nodded, bodies parted, space cleared, and suddenly there were two stools open. Two pints of Fuller’s London Pride awaited them on beer coasters.

Win sat on one stool, Myron on the other. Win raised his stein. “Cheers, mate.”

They clinked mugs. Two minutes later, the barman threw down two orders of fish and chips. The smell made Myron’s stomach rumble with joy.

“I thought this place didn’t serve food,” Myron noted.

“It doesn’t.”

“You’re a beautiful man, Win.”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

They enjoyed the dinner and drinks. Whatever else Win had to say could wait. Somewhere along the way, they finished the fish and chips and ordered a second round. There was a rugby match on the television. Myron didn’t know much about rugby, but he still watched the screen.

“So our friend Fat Gandhi,” Win said. “He saw your documentary on ESPN?”

“Yes.” Myron turned toward him. “Have you seen it?”

“Of course.”

Dumb question.

“I’m curious, though,” Win said, “about your reaction.”

Myron shrugged into his beer mug. “I thought it was accurate enough.”

“You gave them an interview.”

“Yep.”

“You never did that before. Talked about the injury.”

“True.”

“You wouldn’t even watch replays of what happened.”

“True.”

It had been too overwhelming to watch. Normal, right? Your dream, your life goal, everything you ever wanted-it’s there, in your grasp at the age of twenty-two, and snap, lights out, buh-bye, it’s over, nada mas.

“I didn’t see the point,” Myron said.

“And now?”

Myron took a deep swill of the ale. “They kept saying that this injury ‘defined’ me.”

“At one point, it did.”

“Exactly. At one point. But not anymore. Now I could finally watch Burt Wesson slam into me, and I felt little more than a ping. The stupid narrator. He kept saying the injury”-Myron made quote marks with his fingers-“‘destroyed my life.’ But now I know it was just a fork in the road. All those guys I started out with, all those superstars who made it and had successful NBA careers-they’re all retired now. The light went out for them too.”

“But in the meantime,” Win said, “they scored boatloads of chicks.”

“Well, yes, there’s that.”

“And the light didn’t snap off for them. It dimmed.”

“Slowly,” Myron said.

“Yes.”

“Maybe that makes it harder.”

“How so?”

“You rip off the bandage all at once versus slowly peeling it away.”

Win took a sip of his beer. “Fair point.”

“I could also add the cliché about being thrown into the deep end. The suddenness forced me to act. It made me go to law school. It made me become a sports agent.”

“It didn’t ‘make’ you,” Win said.

“No?”

“You were always a competitive-nay, overly ambitious-son of a bitch.”

Myron smiled at that and raised his mug. “Cheers, mate.”

Win again clinked his glass, cleared his throat, and said, “ Der mentsh trakht un got lakht. ”

“Wow,” Myron said.

“I taught myself the Yiddish,” said the blond-haired, blue-eyed Anglo-Saxon. “It does wonders when I hit on Jewish chicks.”

Der mentsh trakht un got lakht. Translation: Man plans and God laughs.

Man, it was good to be back with Win.

They both went quiet for a moment. They were both thinking the same thing.

“Maybe the injury isn’t such a big deal anymore,” Myron said, “because I know there are a lot of worse things in life.”

Win nodded. “Patrick and Rhys.”

“What do you know about cybercurrency?”

“Ransoms are sometimes paid with it, but with all the recent antilaundering laws now, it is extraordinarily difficult. My expert says that you have to buy the currency, put it in some kind of online wallet, and then transfer it to them. It’s part of the dark web.”

“Do you understand what that means?”

“I told you. I’m an expert in nearly anything.”

Myron waited.

“But no, I don’t have a clue.”

“We may be getting old.”

Win’s phone buzzed. He checked it. “I’m getting information on our friend Fat Gandhi from a constable friend.”

“And?”

“His real name is Chris Alan Weeks.”

“For real?”

“Age twenty-nine. The authorities know about him, but according to this, he mostly works on the dark web.”

“That term again.”

“He dabbles in prostitution, sexual slavery, robbery, blackmail…”

“Dabbles?”

“My term, not theirs. And… ah, no surprise. He’s into computer hacking. His syndicate operates several online money scams.”

“You mean like a Nigerian prince wants to give you all his money?”

“A tad more sophisticated, I’m afraid. Fat Gandhi-I prefer his nom de plume if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t.”

“Fat Gandhi is good with computers. He matriculated and graduated from Oxford. As we both know, law enforcement hates referring to criminals as ‘geniuses’ or ‘masterminds’-but our cherubic friend seems pretty close to being both. Hmm.”

“What?”

“Fat Gandhi also has a reputation for being-and this is their phraseology-‘creatively violent.’”

Win stopped and smiled.

“He sounds a bit like you,” Myron said.

“Ergo my smile.”

“Is he into kidnapping?”

“Human trafficking is slavery for the purposes of sexual exploitation. By definition, that’s kidnapping.” Win held up a hand before Myron could interrupt. “But if you mean grabbing wealthy children for the purpose of making them sexual slaves, no, there is no indication he does that. Plus, Fat Gandhi would have been nineteen when the kidnappings occurred. By all accounts he was studying at Oxford at that time.”

“So any theories about how Patrick and Rhys ended up with him?”

Win shrugged. “Several. The original kidnapper sold them off. The boys could have changed hands dozens of times over the past ten years. He may not be their first predator.”

“Ugh.”

“Yes, ugh. It could be that Patrick and Rhys were somehow runaways living on the streets. A parasite like Fat Gandhi gets them that way too. Offers them work. Helps them get strung out and thus hooked on drugs, so that they have to earn. There are a dozen ways it could have gone down.”

“None of them good,” Myron said.

“None that I can think of, no. But as we’ve learned, people, especially the young, are resilient. Right now, we concentrate on rescuing them.”

Myron stared in his beer. “You saw Patrick on the street.”