Steve Gannon - Kane

“I anticipated that,” snapped Carns. An understatement. In truth, he had thought of almost nothing else over the past weeks. In futures trading, especially with a position as heavily leveraged as Carns’s, the specter of financial collapse always loomed on the horizon. Of course, if that happened Hall would lose his share of the profits as well, but it was Carns’s money at risk. And more than anything, Carns hated being in someone else’s power.

“How much time do you need?” Hall demanded.

Carns glanced at the cattle chart. All red for the past five weeks and still falling. “Two or three days,” he answered, deciding not to reveal that he’d already begun closing out his contracts. The more time he had to scale out, the less probability of causing a price jump.

“I can hold off for two additional days. No more.”

“Fine. You indicated that you had another reason for calling?”

“I did a little investigating, Victor. I was astounded to learn that you took a larger position than we originally discussed. A much larger portion.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you do. Does five thousand contracts ring a bell?”

Carns said nothing, realizing that Hall’s sources at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and contacts with various brokers on the floor must be far more extensive than he had thought.

“You’ve substantially increased our risk,” Hall continued, his tone hardening. “As a result, my cut just got bigger. More risk; more reward. I want half. And that’s on all five thousand contracts.”

“I don’t believe I heard you correctly.”

“I think you did.”

Carns paused, remembering the recorded line on which Hall had first called.

A warning? Had Hall recorded other conversations as well?

“Half, Victor. That’s nonnegotiable.”

“Or else what?”

“You don’t want to know the answer to that. Be here in two weeks with my share.” Without another word, Hall broke the connection.

Furious, Carns replaced the receiver and pressed his thumbs to his temples, attempting to relieve the crippling throb that had begun pounding behind his left eye. Groaning, he rose and crossed to the kitchen. He took a small vial from the cupboard, shook out two tablets, and swallowed them. From experience he knew that the prescription drug wouldn’t eliminate the pain, but he hoped it would take off the edge until he could get to something that might.

Carns returned to his desk. Referring to the cattle-futures chart on his center screen, he checked the market one last time. Satisfied, he activated his trade-line recorder, lifted the phone, and contacted his representative in the cattle pit. Speaking quietly, he placed buy orders to cover his “short” position, spreading them out over the next two days.

After time-stamping his trade tickets, Carns again let his thoughts drift. Over the past several weeks, with every downward tick in the market, he’d done the math. Nonetheless, he did it again, manipulating the numbers in his head. Even with the inevitable upward jog that closing out his contracts would precipitate, he would average at least an eleven-and-a-half-point move on five thousand contracts, times four hundred dollars per point per contract.

Twenty-three million dollars.

Less commissions, of course.

And Hall’s cut.

Abruptly, Carns rose from his desk and left the office. Near the end of the corridor he took a stairway down to a large basement, stopping at the foot of the stairs. To his right lay a pistol firing range; to his left, the blank metal surfaces of two fireproof doors. The room behind one housed a state-of-the-art darkroom, little used now with the advent of digital cameras. With the exception of Carns, no one had ever viewed the interior of the other room. Carns hesitated, then turned on his heel and walked to the firing range.

Years before, during early months of construction, Carns had hatched the idea of installing a private shooting facility beneath his house. Subsequently he’d had the foundation contractor lay seventy-five yards of large concrete drainage pipe, burying it under the hillside between the mansion’s basement and the northern property line of the estate. Complete with lights and an overhead pulley system with orange track markers, the four-foot-diameter underground shaft allowed Carns to run targets out to preset distances, all the way to a pile of sand in a vault at the far end. It was simple, effective, and soundproof.

Carns entered his shooting room and moved to a gun cabinet against the back wall. After sliding out a middle drawer, he selected two handguns-a. 22-caliber High Standard ISU Olympic target pistol, and a. 45-caliber Colt Combat Elite MK IV automatic-grabbing boxes of ammunition for each. Next he stepped to the maw of the waist-high tunnel. Smelling a must of earth and mildew wafting from the interior, he placed his pistols on a sighting bench, donned ear protection, and cranked a human-shaped Alco paper target out to the twenty-five-foot marker.

For the next twenty minutes Carns shot steadily from a two-handed combat stance, firing two rounds to the body, one to the head-alternating pistols and distances, replacing targets as necessary. He got “good paper” on most, at twenty-five feet clustering all his rapid-fire shots within the black inner-target partitions, most shots at fifty feet, and over sixty percent at seventy-five. After finishing, he returned his pistols to the cabinet. Although his high-tech ear protection had all but blocked the sound of his firing, his headache was worse. He realized that he needed something else to help him relax, and it wasn’t shooting.

Carns exited the gun range and walked to the opposite end of the hall. There he ducked into the darkroom and opened a cabinet beneath one of the stainless-steel sinks. Groping the inside surface of the cabinet face, his fingers closed on a key. Key in hand, he returned to the hallway and inserted the key into the deadbolt lock on the second door. The metal-clad portal swung inward.

With mounting anticipation, Carns stepped inside, the soothing darkness of his secret room enveloping him like a blanket. He fumbled with a switch on the wall. A single lamp came on across the chamber.

Carns glanced around the windowless space, his heart now beginning to race with excitement. Black soundproofing panels covered nearly every visible inch of wall and ceiling, lending the twelve-by-twenty-foot enclosure a surreal, cavelike appearance. On the right, facing a gigantic TV screen flanked by twin bookcases, sat a leather chair. Beside it was a wooden table with sound and viewing remote-control units, along with a carousel slide projector. Above, a rolled up projection screen lay within a ceiling recess, bracketed by a number of surround-sound speakers. Straight ahead, at the far end of the room, the doors of a mirrored closet shimmered like quicksilver.

Carns moved to the nearest bookcase. Its middle shelves held a stereo, tape deck, VCR, and DVD player. The upper and lower levels contained hundreds of video and audio tapes from the past-relics he’d hadn’t yet transferred to digital-each labeled in Carns’s crabbed cursive. He started to select an ancient videocassette, one of his favorites, then changed his mind. After moving to the other bookshelf, he perused racks of chronologically arranged slide carousels and DVD discs. Still not finding what he wanted, he trailed his index finger over a library of audiocassettes, finally selecting one from the top shelf.

Smiling, Carns flipped on the stereo, slipped the tape into the playback slot, and pushed the rewind button. As a soft whirring emanated from the unit, he glanced toward the closet.

Costume party?

No. Today, only sound, he decided.

The simplest pleasures are often the most satisfying.