Джозеф Файндер - The Switch

Once inside, he heard the constant low tone from the burglar alarm and he flipped on a light, found the keypad, and immediately punched in the code to shut it off. Then he turned off the light. There were a few high windows, visible from the street, and he didn’t want to give away so easily that someone was here. The truth was, he didn’t know what to look for. He sold coffee, for God’s sake. He wasn’t a spy. Apparently they weren’t staking out the office, or at least not in the middle of the night. That told him something. They were expecting him to keep traditional hours.

Or maybe they weren’t looking for him, not in that way. The guys from Homeland Security who came by the office earlier in the day: maybe that’s all they were, agents from Homeland Security. Glorified cops. Not from some deep-secret agency of the government. Maybe he was overreacting to Lanny’s death. He refused to believe it was a suicide, no matter what the evidence said.

Problem was, he couldn’t be certain.

He decided he would act as if they were looking for him; he’d take measures, be careful.

He had an urgent, simple task now.

Faint blue-gray light filtered in through the windows, barely enough for him to navigate his way to his own office, his desk. There he stood, thinking, for a beat, his finger on the switch to his desk lamp. His office (smaller than his sales director’s) wasn’t near a window, but the light would still be visible through the windows that faced Mayfield Street. Better not to put it on.

He sat in his desk chair, closed his eyes briefly, then opened them, his eyes slowly acclimating to the dark. There was enough available light to see the keyboard on his computer. He logged in, moved some files onto his Dropbox, then sat still for a minute, wondering if it was safe.

At the far end of the warehouse there was a rustle.

He waited, still, listening. Nothing for fifteen seconds or so and then, again, an unmistakable rustling sound. Like paper rustling. Maybe it was nothing.

Or maybe it was someone, or something, moving at the far end of the warehouse.

That was also possible.

He got up noiselessly from his desk chair, walked slowly and quietly out of his office, and began advancing along the carpet. Underneath, the old floorboards squeaked intermittently, but not loudly. He stopped, listened for twenty seconds or so, heard nothing. Still, he advanced farther along the carpet to the entrance to the adjoining warehouse.

He stood in the entrance, at one end of the warehouse, and listened again. He felt his heart rate accelerate.

This time he heard it again, that furtive rustle. He looked around the warehouse, the shadows, the hulking shapes, the rows of shelving that held bags of green coffee, the big old roaster, the worktables. He could probably traverse the floor blindfolded.

The floors in here were poured concrete. They were quieter. They didn’t squeak when he walked. But now he realized he was a moving shadow in this vast space, immediately identifiable as a person to anyone whose eyes had adjusted to the light the way his had.

Was it paranoid to wonder, or maybe half wonder, whether someone was waiting in the warehouse with a handgun? Maybe so; maybe he was being crazy. They came to get Lanny because he was about to report a story they didn’t want made public. But why go after Tanner? Maybe to grab him and somehow compel him to turn over the laptop. That wasn’t beyond the realm of plausibility. Not at all.

He walked farther along the floor, heard the rustling, stopped. Turned his head and cocked his ear. Heard it again. Turned his head toward the sound.

A rat scurried along the packing table.

He made a mental note to have that table cleaned first thing tomorrow and bring in the exterminator again.

He went to the kitchen and opened the cabinet drawer, then dialed the combination of the safe.

The laptop was there. He slipped it into his gym bag.

Returning to his office, he put his iPhone in the top drawer of his desk. Then he spent another ten minutes or so gathering things and then slipped carefully out the building’s side door.

Sarah’s Fiat was parked a few blocks away, near a playground. The street was dim and narrow, and no one was around. It was residential — wooden three-deckers, tiny yards, their cars parked on thin slices of driveway.

He knew he was being overcautious. There was no reason to believe he was being followed or watched. But there was no downside to being extremely careful, taking extra measures. If they made for a longer return “home” — to the house for sale in Chestnut Hill — so what?

He started the car. At a slow and steady pace, he drove down the street and took a right onto the main drag here, Western Avenue, a broad two-way street. Cars were parked along one side. He passed a car wash, a couple of half-empty lots, a few auto-body places (“Collision Specialists!”), a used-car dealer. A lot of auto-related enterprises on this stretch, he noticed. On the right, a bank. Then a gas station. A couple of freestanding, modest wooden houses in disrepair.

No one behind him.

He turned into the no-name gas station, which was on a corner, cut through the lot, and turned onto the side street. A detour, probably unnecessary. He circled around the block, took a right and then another right onto Market Street. He went straight for several blocks, at moderate speed, down the nearly abandoned street. He stopped at a red light, even though the intersection was empty in all directions. In his rearview mirror he saw a car approaching behind him, a black Suburban. Behind the wheel was a blank-faced young crew-cut man, probably just returned from a late-night shift. Probably a limo driver just returned from dropping off a wealthy customer on Cape Cod. Tanner was glad he didn’t have to work at night, even though some people didn’t mind it, maybe even preferred the night shift. As the CEO of Tanner Roast, his hours were his own. No doubt he worked longer hours than most people had to. But he owned his own business; that was the key part.

And then he remembered that everything was on the bubble, in flux, and he felt tense.

He’d driven through three intersections and made a couple of turns, and he checked his rearview and saw that the crew-cut guy driving the Suburban was still behind him. Then he noticed that there was another crew-cut guy in the Suburban, in the passenger’s seat. These weren’t limo drivers.

He felt the paranoia start to creep over him with an almost physical sensation, coming up his neck from his shoulders.

He hadn’t made any extra turns, nothing designed to flush out a follower. He’d allowed himself to drift a bit mentally and so had let down his guard. He saw a sign for a Dunkin’ Donuts and took a sudden right immediately after it, without putting on his turn signal.

The Suburban did too, swerving wildly with a loud metallic squeal, staying right behind him, and there was no question now the driver was following him.

For a moment he panicked, thinking he might have turned into a dead end, but then he came to a small intersection, where he turned left, accelerating as he did, scraping into the side of a parked car.

He’d damaged Sarah’s car. “Shit.”

He stepped on the gas, and the Fiat responded immediately, the car bucking as it shot forward. He turned left again, the Suburban just behind. Then he accelerated some more, cutting the wheel to the right, up and over the curb, the car jolting as it dropped to the pavement of Market Street again. For at least a block ahead he could see no cars.

So he floored it. The Suburban was a lumbering truck, more powerful than the Fiat for sure, a great American-made beast.

Only at the last minute did he see, on his right, a car door suddenly open, right into his path. He reacted at once, spinning the wheel to the left, but it was an instant too late.