Джозеф Файндер - The Switch

It was, Will knew, a game of chess. You sacrificed pieces to avoid checkmate. You always had to take the long view. That was a lesson Will had learned the year he first became Senator Robbins’s chief of staff.

He’d made a trip back home to Greenville to visit his ailing mom. While he was there he got a call from an old friend of his mother’s, Mrs. Karabell. She wanted his help.

She told him that the town was using its powers of eminent domain to take away her flower farm and transfer the property to the Carmichael Corporation, the chemical giant.

Will was outraged and told Mrs. Karabell he’d take care of it.

When he was in grade school, he was a sort of latchkey child — both his parents worked, and his mom sold houses on the side — and he used to hang out a lot at Mrs. Karabell’s house. He didn’t have a lot of friends. Mrs. Karabell was like his second mom. He always did his homework on her kitchen table. There was always a slice of chocolate cake waiting for him, with a glass of cold milk, when he got there. In the winter she made the best hot chocolate Will had ever tasted. He loved Mrs. Karabell.

So when he got back to Washington, he walked into the boss’s office and told her he needed a favor. He needed her to help out Mrs. Karabell’s flower farm.

He would never forget her reply.

Susan Robbins said, “You’re right. I could make a call and save those four acres of petunias. But let me give you the bigger picture. Everything is connected, Will. When I make that call to your town, I’ll save the flowers and earn Mrs. Karabell’s vote — and also the everlasting enmity of the Carmichael Corporation. And you know what’s going to happen?”

Will shook his head, nearly hypnotized by the senator’s direct gaze, her deep blue eyes.

“My next primary, I’m suddenly going to discover that I have a surprisingly impressive, well-funded opponent. Now, I’ll probably defeat him, or her, but then another well-funded opponent will pop up in the general. And who knows if I keep my seat. Maybe I do. My coffers will be depleted, and I’ll be like a bird with a broken wing. A target for all sorts of political opportunists.”

“Okay,” Will said, but the boss was not yet done.

“In two years I’m up for reelection. And I want you to think about all the great things we want to get done, every legislative achievement that we could realize that’s never going to happen because I did a good deed — and then I want you to think about Mrs. Karabell’s four acres of petunias. Do you really want me to make that call, Will?”

The next time Will went back to Greenville, he went to see Mrs. Karabell. Wonderful Mrs. Karabell, with her walker and her breast cancer, who was now ruined. She said, “I don’t understand.”

And Will looked straight at her, unconsciously aping Senator Robbins’s direct gaze. And he lied. He spun some fable. And he felt like crap.

He knew he’d done the right thing. But that didn’t make the shitty feeling go away.

That was the stink of power. Sometimes doing the right thing could make you feel lousy.

Sarah woke him, shaking him by the shoulder.

“Sorry, Tanner, but you have to get up.” He must have dozed off, caffeine notwithstanding. She was naked and had something in her other hand. He could smell coffee.

“What time is it?” He glanced at his watch but his eyes were too unfocused to make out the watch face.

“Six thirty. There’s a seven-thirty showing.”

“Who looks at houses at seven thirty?”

“Extremely serious buyers, I bet.” She handed him an espresso. Her breasts were small and shapely, with light pink areolas, small raised mounds. He remembered a novelist once describing a woman’s breasts as two scoops of the smoothest vanilla and thought that aptly described Sarah’s. “Most of my showings are on weekends.”

“Instant coffee,” he said. “Yum.”

“You didn’t spit it out last time. That’s how I know you like it.”

“Busted.” He grinned, took a sip. His clothes were strewn across the carpet. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For the coffee.” And he grinned again.

Her clothes, too, were arrayed on the floor. She picked up her panties and slipped them on. Then she picked up her bra, black and lacy, clasped it in front of her, and spun it around and into place. “Tanner,” she said, “I’m not going to cash out.”

“Why not?” She was coming back home, he now knew for sure, almost.

She looked at him mischievously, leaned over, and gave him a peck on the lips. “Because I don’t want to lose money,” she said.

“Thanks,” Tanner said with a faux scowl.

“No,” she said. “Because I don’t want to lose you.”

Sarah was out of the house before Tanner, leaving him to straighten the bedclothes on the big inflatable bed and making sure he didn’t have anything in the master bathroom. She’d given him a printout of houses for sale, and next to the first three on the list were scrawled numbers. Codes to their padlocks.

Before he left the house, he peered out the front sitting room window and satisfied himself that there was no one out there waiting for him. There didn’t seem to be.

Then he left through the front door and padlocked the house, looking around as he descended the steps, his gym bag slung over one shoulder. He hadn’t been aware of anyone following him after his escape in Harvard Stadium. No one knew he was here.

He had no car, and without his iPhone — it took him a moment to remember he’d left it in his desk at work — he couldn’t call an Uber. So he walked a few blocks to Beacon Street, where he could flag down a passing cab. But first he got a fried egg sandwich at a deli and a coffee, which tasted burnt. He called Lucy Turton, got her at home, and talked a few minutes, Tanner Roast business. He called Karen, got her in her car on the way to work. He let her vent for a minute or so, then went through a list of potential deals and ones that fell apart and she couldn’t get back together. He thanked her and reassured her, told her everything was going just great.

Then he grabbed a cab.

On the way in to his gym, he bought a bottle of water from the plump Nepalese guy’s fruit stand on Tremont Street.

“Good morning, Ganesh,” he said. “How’s your sister?”

“A gallstone is all it was,” Ganesh replied. “She’s much better.”

“Good.”

He got on the elliptical trainer for an hour. He needed to work out badly, he hadn’t in days, and he thought that maybe a good solid hour of cardio would calm him, make him less jittery.

That it did. When he’d dressed in his street clothes, he put everything back into the locker, including the used workout stuff, and took the gym bag. He clicked the brass combination lock closed and spun the dial.

He came up the steps and pushed open the glass door and came out on Tremont Street.

He felt a little prickle at the back of his head. He was immediately on alert. He didn’t see anyone suspicious, but his subconscious must have picked up something. It was morning rush hour, the street busy with people walking past in either direction. He smelled a passing woman’s perfume.

Then something grabbed his right wrist, and when he whipped around to look, something, or someone, grabbed his left arm too.

Tanner wrenched his left arm free and swung a fist around at whoever had grabbed him. His fist connected hard with a man’s face. He could feel something give way. His knuckles instantly began to throb, but he was sure the other guy’s nose must have hurt a lot more.

Then something stung the back of his neck, like a wasp or a hornet. He winced as he torqued his body around, slammed his right elbow back into whoever had just stung him, and kneed one of his assailants in the groin. But he felt as if he were melting like a stick of butter in the microwave. He could barely summon the strength to fight. He jabbed his fists into his attacker’s abdomen, but he knew it was pointless; he didn’t have the power.