Central Business District
New Orleans, Acadiana
TIME WAS RUNNING OUT for Joseph Wells. At eight a.m. he would become an outlaw and the hunt to capture him, dead or alive, would begin. A sensible man with a healthy instinct for self-preservation would be well on his way out of town by now. Instead, thirty-eight year old Joseph Wells sat inside an upscale restaurant, ordered his third cup of coffee, and waited anxiously for his insurance agent to arrive.
Joseph pulled back his coat cuff and spun his watch to see its face. The Jaeger-LeCoultre Master had been a gift from his former employer; the simple inscription on its caseback Joseph’s engraved invitation to Mount Olympus.
Joseph,
It is a far greater thing to be trusted than to be loved.
—Lester
As he quickly discovered, no good thing ever lasts. He was cast from the mountaintop and stripped of a life in paradise. Now the watch and the bespoke Henry Poole suit on his back were all that remained of the many fine things he once owned.
It was seven twenty-eight a.m. Where the hell was Ari? They should have met at the offices of Orleans Risk & Casualty, or Citadel HQ, but Ari had insisted they meet here, at this exposed public place, because he wanted to eat breakfast first. That fat bastard.
Joseph gulped down his coffee and surveyed the packed dining room over the rim of his mug, at once eager for a friendly face yet inclined to remain anonymous. His eyes settled on a woman seated alone near the restaurant’s main entrance, appearing to study her menu. Joseph recognized her. He didn’t know her, but he’d definitely seen her before. Two days ago, at a grocer’s market on Baronne, he’d noticed her among the baked goods squeezing a loaf of sourdough. Then yesterday in Lafayette Square, she’d paralleled him on St. Charles as he walked along the plaza on his way to the gym. Now, here she was again.
The longer Joseph observed the woman, the more unsettled he became. The subtle head shake that deterred waitstaff and the tactical utility of her attire shined a spotlight on her amid the throngs of tailored professionals networking over coffee and omelets. Her sage canvas pants, black polyester polo, and low-profile hiking shoes might be in vogue at the food stalls on Decatur, but not inside Le Pavillon Bijoux during corporate feeding time.
There! Her eyes settled on him for the briefest instant. Or did he only imagine it because he was already staring at her? He scanned across the dining room and spied a man loitering at the newsstand, near the side entrance. His loose windbreaker and denim jeans revealed broad shoulders and a narrow waist—a boxer’s build.
Joseph checked his watch again, then thumbed his earpiece and dialed Ari, who picked up on the second ring.
“I’m almost there, I swear. Two minutes.”
“They know where I am,” Joseph said under his breath. Ari stayed silent. “Did you hear me?”
“Yes, I heard you. How do you know?”
“There’s a woman here. I think she’s been following me.” Something outside the restaurant caught Joseph’s attention. “Wait, hold on.”
Through the plate-glass window, across the street, he watched a car creep up to the curb just around the corner. Rooftop light bar, red fenders, black hood. His over-caffeinated heart hammered in his chest. He turned to check on the boxer and found him looking back across the dining room, nodding to the woman. Joseph hunched down in his seat.
“They’re here.”
“It’s way too early for that. Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m fucking sure!” he hissed. “They’ve got the exits blocked and a Sentinel cruiser just pulled up.”
Ari’s voice was placid, calming. ”Okay, relax. You’re fine. I’ll send Citadel to pick you up right now.”
A quartet of elderly women entered the restaurant through the side entrance, blocking the boxer behind a tall glass door.
“It’s too late for that. I’ve gotta get out of here.” Joseph stood up from the table on rubbery legs and crossed as casually as he could in front of the hostess station, angling toward a vestibule with a restroom sign hanging above it. He suppressed an urge to run when he noticed the woman stand to follow.
"And go where? Right now, you’re safe. Just stay put, I’m on my way.”
“No, you fucked me, Ari. I shouldn’t even be here.”
Joseph passed through the vestibule and turned left down a dim narrow hallway to the men’s room. As he pushed through the heavy swinging door, the woman rounded the corner. With a trembling hand, he pulled the door closed and twisted the lock. The latch caught the bare edge of the strike plate. One solid kick and the door would open.
"Don’t put this on me. I begged you to take their deal.”
Joseph surveyed the restroom. A pair of toilet stalls with louvered doors lined the back wall. To his left, a cobalt-glazed urinal and, next to it, a large bowl sink. No window. Pinpricks of heat flushed his skin and his breathing accelerated.
“And I told you, I don’t trust it. Find me something else.”
"There is nothing else.”
Joseph lifted his eyes. A drop ceiling. Balanced delicately on a toilet seat, he punched a tile out of its frame. Dust and mineral fibers rained down onto his face. “Ugh."
"What’s going on? Where are you?"
Joseph spat something awful out of his mouth. “I’m trapped in the bathroom. That woman’s right outside.” He looked through the hole in the ceiling. The top of the bathroom wall was nearly level with the drop ceiling frame and dim light glowed on the other side.
"Good, stay in there. I’m messaging Citadel right now."
“Right.”
The flush valve sticking out of the toilet provided a few extra inches, sufficient boost to grip the top of the wall. A short hop and Joseph muscled up far enough to rest his belly on top of the wall and peer over the side. It was a utility closet. Copper pipes overhead made a ninety-degree turn down into the room and terminated at a bulky water heater. If he could swing his leg over, he might be able to step down on top of it.
The door crashed open behind him and the boxer rushed into the bathroom. He lunged for Joseph’s dangling feet.
In a panic, Joseph churned his legs and pulled himself headfirst over the wall. His arms windmilled and he grasped for anything to break his fall. He caught the corner of a cheap wire rack loaded with cleaning supplies and tore it clean off the wall. Down he went, landing hard on the ground as cans and bottles clattered around him.
“He went over!” came a shout from the bathroom.
"What was that?" Ari asked.
Laying in a daze, Joseph groaned. He’d tumbled head over and landed on his back, legs and arms tangled up among wire shelving.
“I fell,” he said as he unfolded and extricated himself, checking that nothing was broken.
"Fell where? I told you to stay put!"
Joseph stood and pressed his ear against the closet door. He heard muffled conversation and the rattling of ceramic plates. He was near the kitchen. He cracked open the door and peeked out. Directly across from the closet were a set of double doors for receiving deliveries. He stepped from the closet and into a small pass-through area between the walk-in refrigerator and the kitchen.
“He’s going out the back!”
Joseph whipped his head around to see the woman and the boxer barrel past stunned kitchen staff as they weaved their way between stainless steel prep tables.
“Look out!” The woman body-checked a waiter hard into the wall and went to the ground with him. The full tray he carried tipped out of his hand, sending mugs of hot coffee crashing to the floor. The boxer hurdled over the two prone bodies and landed in the liquid. His feet flew out and he flipped backwards, slamming his head against the terracotta tiles with a sickening thunk.
Ari’s booming voice cut through the commotion. ”What the hell is going on?"
Joseph dashed forward and slammed through the double doors, stumbling out onto a small loading dock as two more Sentinel cruisers screamed past with their sirens blaring, headed toward the front of the restaurant. He ran in the opposite direction, down a shallow ramp and onto a narrow side street as tires squealed behind him. “Jesus, they’re everywhere! What do I do!”
"We gotta get you somewhere, fast. Tell me exactly where you are.”
Joseph clocked the blue and white street sign as he sprinted by.
"Okay, make your next right and head toward Canal. I’ve got a friend nearby who can help.”
A delicate structure called the nucleus accumbens sits in the command center of the brain’s reward system. Stimulate it just so and your arm hairs dance on mounds of goose flesh and chills wash over your body. You experience a frisson.
For Maxim Galloway, it happened every time his Nemonik created a new memory. The surgical technician at Virtex had somehow mislaid one of the hundreds of neural nanowires that crisscrossed his temporal lobe and hijacked the function of his hippocampus. Might be a case for malpractice in there he figured, but a minor inconvenience given the benefits of automatic insight. In a flash of cognition, Galloway remembered something new.
>> Aristotle Webb called
An instant later, his cellular implant issued a pleasant tone and his tripad illuminated. He inched aside a plate loaded with small donuts and spied Ari’s name peeking from the message notification tray. What the hell does that deadbeat want now? he wondered and toyed with letting it go to the message service. Then again, maybe he finally had that money he owed.
“Morning, Ari. How do?”
High def audio from Galloway’s cochlear stims provided stunning fidelity and sound localization, creating the illusion that the portly managing partner of Orleans Risk and Casualty was standing on the other side of his desk.
“Galloway! Where you at, man?”
Home or office? Galloway glanced at the marine clock tick-tocking on the sideboard. Seven thirty-five in the morning. No, too early for client business.
“Home, of course,” he said and popped one of the donuts into his mouth.
Home was a two-room executive suite at The Hotel Grunewald, a moldering high-rise tenement squatting on the shoreline of the murky Tulane Basin. Despite its shabby condition, the hotel retained a small measure of its former glamour and refinement, which suited Galloway just fine. Room service encouraged his indolent lifestyle—which some called lazy but he considered a practical luxury—and it also served a convenient host to the worldwide headquarters of Metis Intelligence Service, of which he was the proprietor and sole employee.
"That’s great to hear. I really need your help, pal. I’m sending someone to your place.”
Partially chewed crumbs caught in his throat and he swallowed hard to force them down. “Wait, what are you talking about? When?”
"He should be there any minute.”
Galloway scoured the paper-strewn desktop for a napkin or tissue and, finding neither, wiped his sugary fingertips across his bare flat stomach. For someone who existed on an almost-exclusively room service diet, he managed to stay remarkably lean.
“I’m awful busy right now, Ari. Can you send them later? You know lunchtime works best for me.”
Frantic pounding at the door caused a pair of zesty Bellocq prints to dance on the wall.
“Are you in there? Open the door!” someone shouted from the hallway.
"It can’t wait. We’re on a deadline.”
Galloway stared at his unfinished breakfast and cursed himself for taking the call. He stood and smacked crumbs from his plaid boxer shorts.
“Hold on a minute!” he yelled at the door, but acknowledgment only encouraged more pounding. “Which of your little cretins did you dispatch to my home at this ungodly hour?” he asked as he stalked away to the bedroom to put on some pants.
"Good kid. His name’s Joseph, Joseph Wells.”
“Don’t know him. What’s he do for you when he ain’t raising a ruckus?”
Clothes laid neatly arranged at the foot of the bed and he quickly shimmied into a pair of fitted khakis and shrugged on a light blue polo, skipping the shoes and belt.
"Joe doesn’t work for me. He’s one of my executive protection clients.”
“Then I’m confused,” Galloway said, hurrying to answer the door before someone called about the noise. “If he’s your client, why ain’t he banging on your door?”
"Someone’s after him to serve a writ of seizure. The fool refuses to sign his restitution agreement.”
Galloway froze with his hand on the door lever. “Did you send a criminal to my home?”
Ari’s amused snort sounded calculated to disarm. “No way, man. White collar.”
“Mm-hmm, white collar what?” Galloway narrowed his eyes at the small brass plate where his peephole used to be and he reminded himself again to call the facilities guy about it.
"It was a business thing between him and another guy. Nothing you need to worry about.”
“I think you’re full of shit, Ari. Who’s after him?”
Ari hesitated. “Sentinel.”
Galloway snatched his hand back as if burned on a hot skillet handle. “For chrissake, Ari! Do they know where he’s at right now?”
"It’s a good bet they do.”
The pounding grew louder and more insistent. “I can hear you in there! For God’s sake, let me in!”
“How much time you got?” Galloway asked. He wasn’t about to invite hot trouble into his home. Better for Ari to dump the guy into a cab and send him somewhere else.
"No, I’m talking to him right now. Hey, grab me a cruller while you’re up, will you?" Ari murmured to someone in his office. ”I missed that, Galloway. What’d you say?"
“How much time, Ari?” he repeated, raising his voice.
"Not much. His grace period expires at eight.”
Galloway coughed out a laugh. “Are you high on gasoline or something? That’s no time at all. What the hell do you even expect me to do?”
“Galloway!” A sharp bang, like Ari’s beefy palm slamming down on his heavy steel desk, made Galloway flinch. “I don’t have time for your coonass, chanky-chank bullshit right now. Will you please let him inside?”
Galloway backed away from the door, shaking his head. “No. This ain’t part of our arrangement. My business don’t include harboring your fugitives.”
He almost felt the hot wind blasting from Ari’s nasal passage.
“Joe’s not a fugitive.” When no response came, Ari pressed on. “He called me from Le Pavillon in a panic, climbing out a bathroom window with Sentinel agents on his tail. You’re the only friend in the area I can trust with this. That’s the God’s-honest truth. I’m begging you man, please help me out. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
“Your promises don’t pay the rent, Ari. You know what does? Money!” Galloway blurted out and then bit down on his tongue. Several seconds passed before his stims transmitted Ari’s response.
"I don’t even know what to say to that. Tell me what I did wrong, because I don’t understand why you’d say that to me after all the years we’ve worked together? Is it really about the money or are you just done with me now?"
The sound quality was exceptional. He’d never been shamed in HD audio before. It was like a rebuke from a chubby Jiminy Cricket.
“I didn’t say...you know that ain’t what I meant,” he sputtered. “It’s, well, you’re calling at such an unseemly hour. And you interrupted my breakfast too, by the way. I just don’t appreciate this kind of unprofessionalism is all I’m trying to say.”
Ari breathed a long sigh. “Hey, I can respect that, man,” he said and Galloway was momentarily relieved. “And I accept your apology.”
“Pardon?”
"I already dispatched a team from Citadel to help you out, so stop worrying. And listen, Joe’s a huge liability for me so all I want you to do is sit on him until Citadel gets there and takes control. Don’t let him out of your sight. You’re the best, Galloway. I’ll get back to you.”
The line went dead.
Galloway stared at the empty space before him, wondering what the hell just happened, while the pounding on his door continued unabated like a second line drum cadence. Against every rational impulse, he snatched open the door and Joseph Wells, who’d been leaning against it, fell at his feet gasping for breath. A pair of surveillance nanodrones, fat as June bugs, hovered in the hallway behind him. Their glittering pinhole-cameras eyes provided a clear view into the room for the Sentinel agents who monitored them.
“What the hell took you so long?” Joseph managed between gasps.
“You must be Mr. Wells.”
“No shit, guy. Ari said you were expecting me.”
Of course, he did. Galloway swatted at the bots buzzing about but they were too fast. Tiny wings, flicking at hundreds of cycles per second, propelled them away to a safe distance just beyond his reach.
“You’re swarming with bugs, son,” he said and then looked down. “Are you just gonna lay there like an idiot or what?” he snapped.
Joseph took the offered hand and Galloway hauled him up into the suite. The last thing the drones transmitted before the door slammed shut was a stone-faced Galloway extending his middle finger.
Joseph pushed past him to the nearest window and pulled back the heavy drapes to check the street.
“How long before Citadel gets here? Did you call hotel security yet?” An antique rotary phone on the desk rang and he snapped his head around. “Who’s that?”
Galloway leaned against the desk and folded his arms. “Don’t worry about any of that. How about you explain what’s going on? What kind of animal beats on a man’s door like that?”
Joseph Wells wasn’t at all the manner of fugitive he expected; tall and well-dressed in a tailored blue suit. Despite his sweaty, blood-shot, and flustered state he was strikingly handsome. Flushed with adrenaline, Joseph stepped away from the window and mopped sweat from his face with a shaking hand, his nostrils flared and eyes wide.
“What are you talking about? Explain what?”
Galloway shrugged. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
“You don’t know,” Joseph muttered and then he was on the move. He bounced around the small hotel suite, peeking into open doorways and closing curtain gaps. “Is there another way out of here?”
“No, why would there be?”
Joseph looked back. “Because Sentinel’s coming for me,” he said with an edge of scorn before resuming his search. “They’ll be here any minute.”
“Okay, that part I already know.”
“Then why’d you even ask?” he said under his breath.
When Joseph finished his reconnoiter of the suite, he returned to the parlor displeased with the verdict.
“You realize we’re trapped up here, right? You need to call security and barricade the goddamned building!” His eyes flicked to the door and he looked fully prepared to defenestrate himself if he heard so much as a footstep outside.
Galloway held up his hands and said, “Let me start again. Why is Sentinel after you?”
Joseph’s frustration with Galloway’s questions reached an abrupt crescendo.
“It doesn’t matter why! Ari said to come here and you’d help me, and right now the help I need is protection and transportation the hell out of Acadiana. That’s everything you need to know!” He swiped the air to underscore just how settled the matter was.
Galloway stood impassive and waited as the clock tick-tocked and the phone rang on.
“Are you ever going to answer that damned phone or what?”
Galloway hesitated another beat, then picked up the handset and brought it to his ear.
"Good morning, Mr. Galloway. I’m sorry to disturb you, but we’ve received complaints about the noise. Is everything all right?" It was Janet De Luca from the concierge desk.
“Yes, dear. I’m sorry for the disturbance but everything’s fine now, thank you.” Galloway cradled the phone and paced across the parlor.
"A gentleman raced through the lobby but didn’t stop to give his name. It’s he a guest of yours?"
So much for hotel security. Galloway regarded Joseph, frazzled and deranged, and said, “Yes, I suppose he is. Sorry for not informing you earlier but Mr. Smith’s visit was a last minute arrangement.”
"Mr. Smith...of course. If there’s nothing else, then...”
“There is, actually. I’m expecting a few more guests shortly. Associates of Mr. Smith. When they arrive, please inform them we’ll be receiving them in the Roosevelt Lounge.”
"Certainly. How many are you expecting?"
“Couldn’t say. Three, four, maybe more. You’ll know when they arrive.”
"Shall I have banquet services arrange for coffee and tea?"
Galloway considered the offer. “Coffee would be wonderful. Thank you, Janet.” He hung up the phone and turned to Joseph. “Satisfied?”
“I really hope you’re not being serious. Is that your plan? Serve them coffee?”
Galloway slammed the phone down on his desk hard enough to make its mechanical ringer sing.
“Hey, listen to me, son. I don’t know what Ari promised you, and frankly I don’t care, but I was told to keep you right here till Citadel arrives and that’s precisely what I intend to do.”
Joseph opened his mouth to object but a withering glare quashed it. He slumped down onto a burnished leather sofa behind him instead.
“Good. Now, since we ain’t got nothing to do but sit tight and wait, how about you tell me what’s going on and maybe I can figure out a way to fix it.”
Joseph clasped his hands behind his neck and hung his head. His stress-induced agitation drained away and a petulant resignation settled in its place.
“What’s the point? You can’t fix this. No one can.”
“Try me.”
Joseph looked at him with large dark eyes and said, “Sentinel’s coming with a writ to haul me away to a place called Falconhead and I can’t let them take me.”
“Why not?”
“Because...I’ll be killed,” he croaked. His tone was no longer hostile and had lost its frustrated edge. All that remained was fear and exhaustion.
Galloway tsked. “Come on, now. Are you talking about that old Metairie club they converted into an internment center? I heard that place was nice,” he offered but Joseph shook his head.
“No, no, you’re not listening to me. It’s all bullshit. There is no Falconhead. At least, I don’t think it exists. He’s just using it to trap me. He told me I was gonna get what’s coming to me.” Joseph pushed himself to his feet. “Coming here was a mistake. I have to go.”
“Hold up, who told you that?”
Joseph locked eyes. “Chief Les.”
“Oh...”
It was a business thing between him and another guy. Nothing for you to worry about.
Chief Les was “Big Chief” Lester Lineer, a man Galloway had never met in person but whom, through various business dealings with Ari over the years, he knew well enough by reputation. The imposing head of Black Eagle Legion, one of Acadiana’s oldest and most respected business syndicates, was a notoriously ruthless and unforgiving man.
“What the hell did you do to Lester?”
Joseph stared, his face stricken, before turning away from Galloway’s judging expression.
“Oh man,” he breathed.
He wandered to the window, slowing when he reached a gap in the curtains. He absently drew them aside. Galloway waited as Joseph gazed out over the fetid waters of the Tulane Basin and across Lake Pontchartrain, to the edge of Acadiana where the promise of escape beckoned.
May as well be staring at the moon, Galloway thought. Even if Joseph managed to slip through the Sentinel dragnet, it would hardly matter. Chief Les possessed certain traits no one wanted in their pursuer: unlimited resources, supernatural patience, and pathological determination. If so inclined, Lester would track Joseph to the corners of the world.
“Ari never told me your name,” Joseph said.
“It’s Galloway. Maxim Galloway, but everyone just calls me Galloway.”
“Galloway,” he said, trying on the name. “You want to know something, Galloway? My life used to be great. No, better than great. It was perfect. But then my mom got remarried to this real low-life gambler type named Digger Dolan and it all went to shit.
“That’s what he calls himself, you know. Digger. I mean, too perfect, right? Within six months, he’d torched her entire savings at the riverboats. Then he pledged their house–my parents’ house–as collateral on a gambling marker and ran it all the way up to its limit.” Joseph’s face clouded. “When it was all gone, so was he.”
“One day, I get this call from my mom. She’s hysterical. Men are at the house trying to serve her with an eviction order. Digger’s long gone but the juice never stopped running on his marker and now she owes way more than the house is worth. They were threatening to throw her into debtor’s prison!”
“How could they do that? It wasn’t even her debt.”
“She’s an old woman, Galloway. She doesn’t know the law like you do. She was scared and I think that’s what they wanted.” Joseph’s eyes softened and his voice caught a hitch. “She loves that house more than anything. She and my dad rebuilt it from the studs after Kirk. It would’ve killed her to lose it that way. I couldn’t let something like that happen to my mom, could I? Could you?”
When Galloway realized it wasn’t a rhetorical question he shook his head.
“No, of course not. So I did what I had to do. I left work, liquidated everything l possibly could, and paid off the debt.”
Galloway exhaled sharply. “That was an honorable thing you did, son, helping your mama like that. It must’ve been tough.”
Joseph’s breathing stuttered. “More than you know. It destroyed me. A giant hand sweeping away my entire financial future. I was going to be spending my retirement years living at home with my mom on a syndicate pension.”
He let go of the curtain and turned to face Galloway. His eyes were glassy and he used the cuff of his coat to pat them dry.
“Then a couple months ago, a miracle dropped right into my lap. I learned about something at work that would not only restore my losses, but set me up for the rest of my life.”
As Joseph talked, a shiver raced up Galloway’s spine. He’d caught another frisson. The unexpected recollection of a caption printed below an image of a square-jawed young man, standing behind a wooden lectern on a darkened stage.
>> IFGN Conference speaker, Joseph Anthony Wells, SVP Black Eagle Investments, presented at the Ernest N. Morial...
“Let me guess, M&A?” Galloway ventured.
Joseph turned, surprised. “I suppose Ari already told you all of this?”
Galloway shrugged. “No, but this is Acadiana. Everyone’s mated, dated, or related. I do intelligence work for Ari sometimes and OR&C is a member of Black Eagle. Not a lot of dots there to connect.”
“Well, I don’t work there anymore, but you’re right. I was the Chief Investment Officer at Black Eagle Bank.”
It was Galloway’s turn to be surprised. “I’m sorry, but they made you an officer?” he asked and when Joseph tilted his head, Galloway waved his hand. “I mean, you’re...well...”
“White?”
“That too, but I was gonna say ‘quite young.’”
“Sure,” Joseph said and managed a weak smile before turning pensive. “There is something to that, though. The board was dead set against promoting me. They’d never allowed a white person into the c-suite before. Most of those old-timers lost folks in the Christmas Holocaust, so they really don’t trust us. But Lester, he knew my parents from way back, when they first came to Acadiana in the years after. He helped them when a lot of others were trying to push them out of the neighborhood. He even sponsored me into Tulane. Lester told the board, if there’s one peckerwood they should trust, it was me. He said he thought of me as family.” Tears brimmed in his eyes and his voice cracked. “Can you believe that?”
Galloway bobbed his head in commiseration but he sensed a creeping unease. Trust was sacrosanct in Acadiana but the way Joseph talked about the Black Eagle board, and especially Lester, impinged on his deeply held beliefs about duty, honor and integrity. He couldn’t imagine Black Eagle inviting a man like Joseph into their inner circle. It was unprecedented. So what had Joseph done to turn Lester against him? he wondered, and the more he thought about it, the less certain he was that he wanted to know.
“You alright?” Galloway asked, his voice warm and steady.
Joseph collected himself and nodded, wiping his face. “Yeah, thanks.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened at the bank, yeah?”
“Sure. It all had to do with Morning Star. Are you a part of their co-op?”
Galloway gestured to indicate the room. “Hotel living. I haven’t paid a utility bill in twelve years. But I did some work for them a couple years ago, if that counts?”
“Then you may not have heard about the merger. It was a well-kept secret, right up until the end. Only a few people, deep inside Black Eagle’s holy-of-holies, knew anything about it early on and I wasn’t one of them.
“Chief Rody Bannock was poking around our offices and I was reviewing Morning Star financials, but it was all routine. Quarterlies, projections, cost assessments on fuel utilization, things like that. I didn’t think anything of it at first. I assumed it was just another investment opp or an energy futures speculation. Then, one day, Les comes to me and asks me to audit the Wen blockchain—Morning Star’s currency—and I knew, right then and there, they were joining the syndicate.
“This type of merger doesn’t happen very often. Hardly ever, in fact, because of Black Eagle’s policies regarding currency primacy.”
“Currency what?”
“Primacy. Black Eagle Talons are like a reserve currency and they won’t allow a competing currency into the syndicate. All members are bound by the charter and that means they agree to only accept Talons for payment. For Morning Star, it would drive the exchange rate for their Wens to zero and that was my opportunity. I could make a fortune short selling Wen”
Galloway’s stomach churned. “I don’t imagine that’s something Black Eagle would allow, is it?”
“Are you kidding? If they knew what I was doing, I’d have been fired on the spot. Everyone who knew anything about the merger had to re-up their non-disclosures. I mean, if every Black Eagle exec started short selling Wen, well…there would have been a run. No, I needed to do it anonymously and keep my trades small.” He regarded Galloway. “Are you familiar with how futures contracts work?”
Galloway thought for a second. “Buy high, sell low?”
Joseph halted, then blanched. “What? No! Christ, you sound like some of the guys I used to work with. A futures contract is an agreement to buy, or in my case, sell something in the future at a certain price.”
Joseph looked around the room and pointed at the plate of donuts on Galloway’s desk.
“Imagine those donuts over there cost five Talons today. I believe the price will go down to three Talons tomorrow but you think the price will rise to six. I agree to sell you donuts tomorrow at today’s price of five Talons. If I’m right, I make a two Talon profit. If you’re right, you save a Talon.” He lifted his fingers as if preparing to conduct a symphony. “This is the important part: I don’t have to physically own any donuts to make this deal. I can buy them tomorrow when they’re cheaper but our agreement obligates you to buy them from me at today’s five Talon price.”
“Except, in the case of Morning Star, you didn’t just believe the price would go down. You knew it.” Galloway leaned over his desk to pluck a donut from the plate and pointed it at Joseph. “If you’re selling something you know is worthless, how’s that not fraud?” he challenged before stuffing the tiny fritter into his mouth.
Joseph’s face clouded and he opened and closed his mouth several times as he cycled through potential responses. Finally, his eyes steeled and he said, “Whatever you might think of me, Galloway, I’m no thief.”
Galloway held up his hands in mock surrender and spoke through a mouthful of crumbs. “I apologize if that was implied,” he said, then he checked the time on his clock. Joseph noticed the gesture.
“Right. I needed an account in order to trade so I formed a trading company under my mom’s maiden name and sponsored it into the syndicate. Because of the cross-guarantees Black Eagle provides to syndicate members, the exchange offered me a fifty-to-one trading margin.
“I maxed out every line of credit I had and scraped together eighty Talons. A week before the merger, I sold one hundred Wen futures contracts. I was leveraged way up but I stood to clear a profit of over three thousand Talons. All I had to do was wait and pray the price of Wen didn’t go up and I’d never work another day in my life.”
Joseph hesitated then, fighting something back. He pulled back his sweat-soaked brown hair with both hands and took a deep breath. His voice wavered.
“Mom didn’t tell me Digger had returned or that she’d agreed to take him back. Even after all the lies and everything he’d done, she still loves that sonuvabitch. I don’t think she really understood what I was doing with the trade, but she must have known just enough for Digger to piece it together.” His tone grew wistful. “I honestly wish he’d had some money to put down on that deal and just gotten himself a free ride. That would’ve been so much better. Instead, because he was broke and couldn’t hock the house again—I’d made sure of that—he sold the information to Unified National.
“The day before the merger was announced, the price of Wen suddenly jumped. Unified was buying aggressively. Digger, meanwhile, was blasting all over the trading boards about how he’d received information from a,” he air-quoted, “’trusted insider’ at the bank. With Unified buying, the speculators woke up and, just like that, Wen was up fifteen percent.”
Joseph plopped down on the couch and exhaled loudly.
“The exchange marked my contracts to market and issued a margin call. I was way over my trading limit and couldn’t cover, so they liquidated my position. When the dust settled, I owed well over four hundred Talons. There was only eighty in my trading account, so the exchange went after Black Eagle for the rest.”
“That’s what you owe restitution for,” Galloway surmised. “They got a judgment against you for the balance of the margin call.” When Joseph nodded, Galloway furrowed his brow.
Okay, so Ari wasn’t completely full of shit when he called Joseph a huge liability. As Joseph’s insurer, OC&R would have indemnified Black Eagle against losses caused by their client, and four hundred Talons wasn’t exactly a dip into the petty cash drawer. With that kind of cash, you could buy a very large house—or a very small island—in most parts of the world.
But for a syndicate as diversified as the Black Eagle Legion, four hundred Talons was church change. Not something to launch Lester into a murderous rage, even if it was his white protégé who’d perpetrated the crime. Lester didn’t rise to lead the most successful syndicate in Acadiana by being an emotional reactionary. Lester Lineer was a six foot, two hundred thirty pound alligator. Cold-blooded and patient, every thought process measured and every action calculated for maximum impact. There must be something else, something Joseph was holding back, and whatever it was probably explained why he refused to sign his restitution agreement.
As the thought crossed his mind, Galloway caught another frisson. The recollection of an invitation to the Le Moyne de Bienville Social Club President’s Ball from six years ago.
>> Now therefore do I deem it proper to rejoice during your Annual Festivities, in this goodly Crescent City, and upon the greensward of Falconhead, given under my hand this 1st day of February, Jarod Brannock...
“Okay, now that makes sense,” Galloway muttered.
“What does?”
Galloway held up his hand and shook his head. Then as an afterthought, he plucked another donut from the plate and popped it into his mouth. He paced around the parlor and chewed and thought. The jumbled combination of circumstances turned over in his mind until, at last, he saw it. Joseph was in a heap more trouble than he’d realized.
Galloway turned to face him. “I believe I understand your predicament. You stole from Black Eagle, they found you out, and they got a judgment against you. Because of your debts, you can’t afford to pay it and there ain’t no one who’ll lend money to a bankrupt thief such as yourself. The only option you got left is to sign with a restitution agency so you can work it off.”
“No, you’re wrong about that,” he said, stopping Galloway short. “I misappropriated funds but I never stole.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Of course there is! I didn’t steal anything.”
“Son, you broke your oath to defraud your employer and their money ended up in your trading account. Around here, we call that stealing.” Joseph flexed his jaw muscle but he didn’t respond. “Regardless, your gut told you something was off about Falconhead and, for once, your instincts was right.” He leaned forward. “Falconhead ain’t a restitution agency at all. It’s the private estate of Jarod “Rody” Brannock, chief of Morning Star Energy and your old boss Lester’s new syndicate partner. And since even you ain’t dumb enough to let the man you robbed become your jailer, you’re refusing to sign with them.”
Joseph’s eyes widened. “I knew I recognized that name! The President’s Ball!” he said, then his breath caught in his throat. “Jesus, it really is a trap, isn’t it?”
“Sure looks that way.”
Joseph cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “Wait, so you knew about Falconhead too? I thought you didn’t know what was going on.”
“I don’t, but it’s surprising how little that matters most days,” Galloway said, pressing on. “Four hundred Talons is a lot of money, no doubt, but not near enough to provoke this kind of response. It’s overkill, unless...” He shot Joseph an accusing look. “Black Eagle lost more than just your margin call on that deal, didn’t they?”
Joseph was taken aback. “Well, yeah. But none of that had anything to do with me.”
“Why don’t you tell me anyway,” Galloway said, his tone frosty.
“Okay, sure. Remember when I told you Morning Star could no longer accept Wen once they joined the syndicate? Well, anyone still holding it after the deal went through—contractors, customers, vendors, suppliers, workers, pensioners, you name it—they all stood to lose everything. For that reason, Black Eagle pledged to airdrop Talons into every wallet address containing Wen at the current spot rate. In effect, buying up the entire circulating supply. That was the condition demanded by Morning Star.
“Before the merger, the market cap of Wen was around 644,000 Talons but, after Unified’s buying spree, it had spiked to nearly 735,000. Chief Les and the board had to make a tough call. They could back out of the deal and watch the resulting sell-off destroy people’s life savings, or they could move forward at the newly-inflated price, damaging their standing with the syndicate. They chose to move forward and Black Eagle paid a ninety-thousand Talon premium because of what Digger and Unified did.”
Galloway reeled. Not only at the magnitude of the loss, which was staggering, but at Joseph’s total disregard for his role in causing it. His earlier reticence crumbled and he lashed out at Joseph.
“Not because of what they did. Because of what you did! You—you’re unbelievable, son. You despise Digger for preying on your mama and gambling away her estate, but you did exactly the same to Lester. You betrayed his trust and gambled away Black Eagles’ money on a chance to enrich yourself. That makes you no different than that two-bit hustler you hate so much!”
Joseph was stricken but Galloway wasn’t done. “And because Digger bragged about it on social, it didn’t take a genius to connect him with you and your mama. For chrissake, son, no wonder Lester wants you dead. It looks to the world like the two of you conspired with Unified National to swindle your own syndicate.”
“I had nothing to do with that! I’m as much a victim as Black Eagle. I lost everything!”
Joseph tore at the lapels of his coat and choked on his words as tears streamed down his face.
“Look at me! Look at this stupid fucking suit I have to wear every day, praying to God I find a job before I wear it out. I haven’t worked in a month and no one will return my calls or even look me in the eye anymore. I lost my job, my house, my friends. Digger Dolan destroyed my life and now Lester wants to kill me for it? You tell me, Galloway, how the fuck is that fair?”
Galloway was stunned. In that instant, he grasped the depth of Joseph’s denial and self-pity. He truly believed none of it was his fault. The possibility of it had never crossed his mind. Galloway’s tone became reproachful.
“Don’t you understand, son? You betrayed the man who looked after your family, who pledged his reputation on your behalf, and you didn’t think twice about it. You were only ever thinking about yourself.”
Joseph wept. “No…that’s not true…”
Galloway leaned back on his desk and crossed his arms, debating whether to say the next thing on my mind. Better for him to hear it now, he decided.
“I hate to say this, son, but I don’t think the damage is done yet, neither.”
Joseph took a stuttering breath. “W-what do you mean?”
“You said Unified bought up Wen before the merger, yeah? Which means they got Talons from Black Eagle in the swap. You’re the finance guy, so you can probably figure it better than I can, but I bet they wait till just the right moment, when Black Eagle is most vulnerable, and dump all them Talons at once to crash ’em. If I had to guess, Lester figures you cut a side deal with Unified but since he ain’t never gonna be able to prove any of that in court, he’ll find some other way to make sure you pay.”
Joseph was horrified. ”I’d never do that!"
“Maybe so, but we both know there’s a man out there who thinks you did.”
Joseph’s mouth fell open. He clutched his tie and hyperventilated, but Galloway was on to his next thought. “The only thing I can’t figure is why you won’t just sign with someone other than Falconhead? There’s gotta be a dozen agencies who’d jump at the chance to bid your contract. With the right syndicate affiliations, Lester wouldn’t be able to touch you.” He noticed Joseph’s expression and was struck by a disconcerting possibility. “Hold up, now. It ain’t that you won’t sign with someone else. It’s that you can’t. Lester is somehow keeping other bidders away, yeah?”
Joseph nodded his head wildly. “Ari put my contract out for bid on the exchange a week ago but Falconhead was the only taker. No one else will even touch it.”
“If that’s true, son, then you really neck-deep in it. If you don’t sign with Falconhead before your grace period ends, you’ll be outlawed. Either way, you’re gonna end up right where Lester wants you.”
The suffocating inevitability of his fate descended on Joseph like a pall and he doubled over, covering his mouth. “Oh my god…”
As brutal the prospect of internment at Falconhead, to be declared an outlaw was far worse. Outlawry was more than a punishment. It was existence outside the confines and protections of law, a pronouncement of social and civil death. The outlaw was reduced to the status of a wild animal who could be assaulted, tortured, or even killed with impunity. Outlawry was a punishment of last resort, reserved for the most contemptuous, dangerous, and unrepentant of Acadian criminals. Criminals whose continued existence threatened to rend the fabric of civil society.
Or so the theory went.
For most of his life, Galloway considered men like Joseph Wells and Digger Dolan to be the worst sort of criminal. Betrayers of the trust. Only now, in the sudden stillness of his parlor, he struggled to reconcile such a horrific fate with the disconsolate man before him.
In Galloway’s opinion, it wasn’t the thugs roaming dark alleyways who posed the greatest danger to Acadiana. Their threat was obvious to even a child. Far more dangerous was the predator against whom mankind had yet to develop an instinctual aversion. The poised and polished sociopath who insinuated through beguilement and misdirection, gaining your confidence to ravage you in the blind shadows of your trust.
Galloway preferred an authenticity to his lawbreakers. A genuine class of criminal who would find it distasteful, even dishonorable, to cloak his deeds in the mantle of friendship. An honest tradesman who had the decency to look you in the eye while he robbed you. Here was a bandit you could trust and, in Acadiana, trust was the only currency that spent.
Trust had sustained Acadiana during The Great Degression and prevented civility from collapsing into barbarism after the Christmas Holocaust. It also made ”Confiance’" the most sacred word in the Acadian lexicon. It was uttered in every oath, encoded in every crypto, engraved on every note, festooned across galley ledges and balustrades, pledged surety on storefront signs and windows, formed a triad of countless civic mottos, and stood the foundational pillar of every syndicate charter. Trust was both the bedrock upon which Acadian society rested and the capstone at the pinnacle of its culture. For want of trust, Acadiana was lost, and men like Joseph Wells desecrated both.
The phone rang, rousing Galloway back to immediate matters.
“Janet?”
"Mr. Smith’s associates have arrived. There’s quite a few more than we expected and I don’t think they’re interested in coffee.”
“One moment.” He pressed the handset to his chest. “They’re here.”
Joseph pulled back the drapes and looked down onto the street.
“Oh, fuck me. They brought the whole precinct.”
Watching Joseph stare in wide-eyed terror down into the abyss, Galloway couldn’t help but feel a measure of sympathy for the man. Not for what he’d done, which was deplorable, but for the circumstance into which he’d become mired. A simple act of desperate greed had spiraled into a nightmare of consequences far beyond his reckoning or control. What bore down on him now was a perverse union of two normally incompatible aspects of Acadian justice: the restitution bid system and outlawry.
Joseph’s crime was simple theft and the usual course of justice was equally simple: pay it back. Given the amount stolen, Galloway figured he’d spend several years interned while he worked to pay it off. For Lester Lineer, however, nothing about it was simple.
By Lester’s reckoning, Joseph’s betrayal was nothing less than treason against the entire Black Eagle Legion. Even worse, Joseph was a white man who betrayed and humiliated the Black Eagle leadership, a congress of respected black elders. Survivors of the horrors and indignation of the Christmas Holocaust and the deprivations that followed.
Distrust of whites was still widespread in Acadiana; a shameful, but deeply ingrained, cultural scar. The leap of faith it took for them to offer Joseph such a trusted position was extraordinary and, in a single stroke, the greedy fool had justified every fear and negative stereotype they’d ever held.
Galloway imagined himself in Lester’s shoes. His pride and reputation had undoubtedly taken a savage beating and every day Joseph remained above ground compounded the insult. Such a betrayal demanded justice but a judgment on the margin call was all he would ever get. Even if the little bastard had conspired with his enemies, it couldn’t be proved. Due process would only reveal what everyone already knew: two white men, stepfather and stepson, both stood to profit from the same deal. A conspiracy between them could be inferred but never established. It was all circumstantial.
The system had failed and, with that avenue closed to him, Lester was forced to chart a more inventive course. By registering Falconhead Estate as a restitution agency and internment center, and then rigging it so he was the only bidder on Joseph’s restitution contract—Galloway was still trying to figure that one out—he could use the threat of outlawry to force the traitor into his grasp.
Galloway had to hand it to him. It was a clever plan and it was working. But Lester’s imminent victory would bring with it potentially catastrophic consequences by destabilizing the entire restitution bid system.
Victims relied on the system to receive immediate compensation for their losses. In consideration, perpetrators were assured an internment of their choice where they could live in safety while they worked to pay their restitution. For thirty years, this system had kept disputes in Acadiana from flaring into blood feuds or all-out street violence.
If Lester succeeded, if he perverted the system to engineer an extrajudicial death sentence, it would set a dangerous precedent that would not go unnoticed. His method, once revealed, would surely be replicated. In time, the restitution bid system would devolve into a marketplace for revenge where the wealthy could purchase executions for even trivial offenses.
Someone had to stop Lester and Galloway’s thoughts turned to Aristotle Webb. What was he doing to remedy this situation and where the hell was Citadel? It was Ari’s job to get his client into internment and keep him safe. Galloway had no obligation to help Joseph just because he’d been dumped on his doorstep. In fact, helping him could prove a serious hazard to his health. Lester already took it this far. Would one more body matter? Plus, those who aided known outlaws could become outlaws themselves. All excellent reasons to stay the hell out of the situation.
Galloway teetered on a fulcrum, gripped by indecision. Then Joseph turned from the window and met his gaze, his eyes beseeching. His chin quivered and tears streamed down his face. When he spoke, his voice was hardly a whisper.
“I’m scared, Galloway. I don’t want to die. Please…help me.”
Galloway closed his eyes and took a deep steadying breath, then returned the handset to his ear. “Janet dear, I’ve changed my mind. Mr. Smith’s associates are no longer welcome. I’d appreciate it if you kept them off thirteen for as long as possible.”
"I’ll do my best, Mr. Galloway, but these gentlemen look quite determined.”
“Didn’t you say the elevator was down for repairs?”
There was a brief silence as she processed his meaning. ”Yes sir, you are correct. Those cars are disabled, unfortunately."
“You’re wonderful, cher. Thank you,” he said and hung up the phone. “That might buy us a few extra minutes, depending on how fit those Sentinel boys are. At eight o’clock, you’re outlawed and I might not be able to help you. That means we got...,” he checked the clock, “a little over four minutes to find you another bidder.”
Joseph jerked his head back. “Four minutes? For God’s sake, Galloway, why didn’t you tell that woman to barricade the hotel? Isn’t there any security in this place?”
Galloway disappeared into the bedroom. “Did an elderly gentleman in a peaked cap open the door for you when you arrived?” he asked as he rummaged through bureau drawers. When he found the electric clippers, he leaned into the sitting room and tossed them to Joseph, who caught them and stared back.
“What about him?”
Galloway ducked back into the bedroom and rifled through the armoire. “That’s Chauncey. Wonderful man. Eighty-seven years old. Been opening that very door since nineteen ninety-eight and about the closest thing to a security guard this building’s ever had. Now, in my twelve years here at the Grunewald, I’ve seen him chase off all manner of vagrant, but I doubt even a worthy servant such as he would be much of a match against a tactical squadron. In short, Mr. Wells, there will be no barricading of the hotel today.”
Galloway laid his hands on a suit and tie of about the right shade, along with a white button-down shirt, and changed clothes. His cellular toned in his ear.
>>Aristotle Webb called
“Where the hell have you been?” Galloway asked as he fastened shirt buttons.
"The tac team’s in your building.”
“I heard. Where’s Citadel?”
"Outside. They’re there strictly to observe. What’s Joe doing?"
Galloway pulled the blue suit coat over his narrow shoulders and smoothed down the lapel. “Contemplating his mortality. Why ain’t Citadel taking over?”
"Sentinel got there first. Last thing we need right now is a shootout in your lobby."
Damn. “Do you got anything actually useful to tell me?”
"We’re still working on finding another bidder for his contract, but no takers so far."
“Then don’t waste any time talking to me,” Galloway said and disconnected the call.
He hurried back to the sitting room to find Joseph sullen. He stared at the clippers in his hands and mumbled.
“No one’s coming to help. I’m totally fucked.”
Galloway brushed past him and peeked out the window. Several Sentinel patrol cars and their armored BearCat filled up the street but no Citadel vehicles were in sight. Several dozen nanodrones hovered just on the other side of the glass. He yanked the drapes shut and faced Joseph.
“Then it’s your lucky day, because ‘No One’ happens to be my middle name. I’ll do what I can to help you, but right now you gotta plug that in and shave your head.”
Joseph gaped at him. “Why the hell would I do that?”
Galloway stepped back and stretched out his arms. “What do you think of this suit?” Joseph was dumbstruck. “It’s not quite as nice as yours, and the cut’s a little dated but, overall, I’d say the color match is pretty good, yeah?” He stepped forward. “You’re a little taller than me, but not so much. If we ain’t standing next to each other, I doubt you’d ever notice.” Then he swirled his hand over his bald head. “The problem is up here. If I had all the time in the world, I couldn’t never grow hair like yours. So, to make this work, you gonna have to shave yours off.”
Realization, and the faintest glimmer of hope, warmed Joseph’s grim face.
“You want us to look the same!”
“On close inspection, the ruse won’t hold but as long as they can’t tell who’s who, you should be safe. I don’t think they’d risk killing me by accident.”
Joseph looked horrified. “You think they’re here to kill me?”
Galloway laid a hand on his shoulder. “It must’ve occurred to you by now, with all that firepower they got down there, they might not be intending to take you alive.” The color drained from Joseph’s face. “You best get moving, son.”
Joseph hesitated a beat, then hurried to the bathroom. A loud click preceded the angry buzz of vibrating razors. The phone rang.
"I’m sorry, Mr. Galloway, but I’m not able to hold your guests any longer. They’re on their way up."
“Thank you, cher,” he said and hung up.
Two minutes.
He called Ari back. The line opened to a din of loud angry crosstalk. It was bedlam at the offices of Orleans Risk and Casualty.
“Is he dead yet?” Ari asked, shouting over the noise.
“’Course not, but we’re almost out of—”
The call disconnected.
“—time.”
The skin on Galloway’s scalp tightened as nagging intuition crystallized into apprehension.
The sequence of events was clear. The moment Joseph’s grace period ran out, he’d become an outlaw. That would breach his contract with OR&C and his protection policy would terminate. OR&C’s liability to Black Eagle, however, would not. The crime already happened. OR&C was on the hook to pay Black Eagle full restitution, no matter what. If anything happened to Joseph, like him being killed to death by a vengeful Lester, for instance, OR&C would have no way to recoup their losses. They’d be out the full four hundred Talons.
Galloway opened his tripad and scanned it for the contact of the one person in Acadiana who might save Joseph’s life. Someone intimately familiar with the business of punishment.
"Bueno! Old Mint Plantation. How may I direct your call?"
“Don Mario, please. It’s Maxim Galloway.”
"Un momento.”
The Old Mint was a gulag in the Marigny. A prison camp for unfortunate souls who crossed the Trinidados gang and their boss, the Dominican Don, Mario “Molly” Santos. Those who disappeared behind its red brick walls rarely returned. To condemn Joseph to such a dismal fate would be unthinkable but, in this rare instance, the alternatives were worse. Delivering him into the brutal hands of the Trinidados might be his only chance to survive.
Galloway stuffed the tripad into his suit pocket and stepped into the kitchenette. He couldn’t recall ever cooking a meal there but he remembered a fire extinguisher was stashed somewhere under the sink.
Joseph emerged from the bathroom rubbing his head. His hair was clipped to within a millimeter of his scalp. Not perfect but close enough.
“Are you sure this’ll work?” he asked, his dark eyes hopeful and expectant.
Galloway snapped his fingers and pointed to a large built-in cabinet in the parlor.
“No time for that, son. Go in there and catch me two masks.”
Joseph hurried to the cabinet and pulled open the double doors. Inside was an extraordinary collection of Mardi Gras regalia: scepters and canes, banners and flags, hats, capes, beads, and masks in regal hues of gold, purple and green.
“Those two, right there,” Galloway said and then turned his attention back to the call.
“Buenos días, señor Max,” Molly Santos said, his gravelly voice as cold and deep as one of his notorious confinement cells.
“Don Mario, thanks for taking my call. Time is short, so I’ll get right to the crux. I got a contract open for bid—”
"If this about that cabrón, Wells, I already take a look last week. I’m no interested.”
That was a surprise. The Plantation rarely bid on restitution contracts offered on the public exchange. Molly Santos preferred to conduct his business in person, and in private.
Joseph brought the masks: a porcelain jester with a colorful fool’s cap tipped in brass bells, and a black Venetian-style beaked mask fringed in dyed peacock feathers. Galloway took the jester mask and put it on, motioning for Joseph to do the same.
“May I ask why you decided to pass?” Galloway asked as he led Joseph by the arm to the front door.
"He not really my type of client.”
“He’s a rich white couillon, Don Mario. He’s everybody’s type.”
Molly Santos laughed. ”He not rich no more!"
Galloway muted the call and pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher.
“As soon as you open that door, I’m gonna take those little drone buggas out. You just stay right on my tail.”
Joseph nodded. “Okay.”
“Good. Count to three and open the door,” he said and unmuted the call. “You know what I meant. How ’bout we skip to the middle, Don Mario? What did Lester offer you?”
"That culón din’ offer me nothing. He just fuck up the bid. Black Eagle offered a ninety percent discount against the judgment if that Wells guy go to some falcon place. Who can compete with that?"
The marine clock struck the hour and chimed while Joseph counted down.
“One... two... three!”
He yanked open the door and Galloway stepped forward with the fire extinguisher held high. The two nanodrones keeping tabs on the suite had been joined by a third. Galloway squeezed the trigger and doused the hallway in a billowy cloud of fire retardant.
The sticky white particles adhered to the nanodrones’ fragile wings and infiltrated their delicate electro-mechanical actuators. They dropped straight to the floor and tried to crawl away. Galloway tossed the extinguisher aside and stamped his foot, crushing the bots under his heel like fleeing roaches.
“Come on!” he shouted and bolted down the hallway, toward the stairwell with Joseph close behind.
"Who the fuck you think you talking to, blanquito?" Molly growled.
“I wasn’t talking to you, Don Mario. I’m with Mr. Wells right now.”
Molly laughed again. ”Aye, coño, Max! Your boy, he got a huge target on his back. If I was you, I’d turn in that maldito ladrón and collect the fucking bounty."
Galloway pushed open the stairwell door and stumbled out onto the thirteenth-floor landing. He peered over the railing.
“Bounty? What bounty?”
Four floors below, a stream of Sentinel agents, clad in black and red body armor and carrying submachine guns, rushed up to meet them.
“Contact! I’ve got eyes on the target!” The agent’s voice reverberated off the concrete walls. “Target is wearing a clown mask!”
Galloway spun, bells jingling, and pushed Joseph in the opposite direction, upstairs toward the roof.
“Get!”
"It post to the exchange this morning. Sixty Talons, muerto o vivo," Molly said. Dead or alive.
Galloway and Joseph dashed up the stairs and stopped in front of the rooftop door. The stairwell thundered with the sounds of grunting men, clattering tactical gear, and dozens of boots as they stomped and squeaked on the steel stair treads.
Joseph pushed against the door’s panic bar to no effect.
“It’s locked!”
Galloway fumbled for his key card, patted his pockets, and remembered it was still on his nightstand.
“I’m sorry, Don Mario, but I gotta attend to an urgent matter.” He disconnected without waiting for a response and then quickly said, “Call Grunewald concierge.”
Fourteen floors below, a phone rang. Joseph stepped forward and looked over the railing.
“They’re almost here! What do we do?” His voice was shrill and choked with panic.
Someone shouted from below. “The target is now wearing a bird mask! Repeat! A bird mask!”
A familiar voice answered the phone. “Good morning. Hotel Grun—”
“Janet, it’s Galloway. No time to explain. Unlock the rooftop door, now!”
“Freeze! Don’t move!”
The first members of the tactical team reached the top of the stairs and leveled their submachine guns as more agents piled up behind them. Galloway and Joseph pressed their backs against the door and raised their hands.
For a moment, the stairwell was quiet except for heavy breathing and the soft jingle of Galloway’s bells. An agent keyed his chest mic.
“Command, this is Sentinel Two. We’ve acquired the target...two targets. They’re wearing masks. Please advise.”
A buzz, a click, and the lock on the rooftop door demagnetized.
Galloway and Joseph fell backwards through the doorway and tumbled out onto the black tar roof. Before the Sentinel agents could react, the pneumatic closer pulled the heavy steel door shut with a resolute bang.
Galloway popped to his feet as several hands pounded on the door from the inside.
“Janet, my love, we might very well owe you our lives. Thank you.”
He walked to the edge of the roof and peeked over the low parapet wall. Sentinel personnel surrounded the building and a second team was starting up the fire escape.
“I’ll take dinner instead. Good luck,” she said and ended the call.
Joseph was up as well and paced the perimeter of the roof. The large peacock feathers on his mask fluttered and swayed in the wind.
“We’re trapped. There’s no way down!”
The air was thick with frenetic buzzing. Numerous drones hovered over the building, jockeying for position. Some he recognized as Sentinel’s—several surveillance nanodrones and two large HexaRaptor attack rotorcraft—but the rest were randos. Home-made and off-the-shelf video platforms. Others were watching, hoping to capture a bloodbath in ultra-crystal high def.
A stern voice emanated in stereo from bullhorns mounted to the bottom of the two HexaRaptors.
“Halt! Do not move. The building is surrounded. Sentinel agents are en route to serve a lawful seizure order on the outlaw, Joseph Wells. Remove your masks and lay down. If you do not comply, you will be shot.” Belly-mounted machine guns on both HexaRaptors swung into position to punctuate the demand.
“Leave it on,” Galloway said to Joseph when he reached for his mask. He pointed to a bright yellow parapet crawler at the corner of the roof. A small bosun’s chair, little more than a plank of wood with strips of webbing, rested on a coil of rope next to it.
“See that window washing rig over there? Catch me that rope and chair.”
Joseph started toward the rig but the HexaRaptors tilted in unison and dove to block his way. The screaming whir of two dozen carbon fiber blades nearly drowned out their bullhorns.
“Halt, or you will be shot!”
“Hurry up, son!” Galloway shouted. “They ain’t gonna shoot till they got a positive ID.”
“How do you know that?”
“’Cause we still breathing.”
The simple logic of it was plain enough. Joseph ducked around the twin killers and dashed toward the rig.
Galloway stepped to the edge of the roof, pulled out his tripad, and accessed the Restitution Bid exchange portal. He selected a tab titled Judgments and was presented with a long list of restitution contract offers and bids. He queried the list for the Falconhead bid on Joseph’s contract and opened it.
Four smart contracts accompanied the bid, each set to execute automatically according to predetermined conditions.
The first was the restitution agreement. It would make Joseph a ward of Falconhead Restitution Agency (née Estate) and assign all his assets and earnings to them as trustee until the judgment against him was satisfied. The second was an anonymous call option—or offer to buy—on the Black Eagle judgment, at one-tenth its face value. It would exercise upon execution of the restitution agreement. The third was a repayment agreement between Falconhead and Orleans Risk & Casualty. It reimbursed OR&C for money it paid to Black Eagle because of the theft and executed after the call option exercised.
The final contract was a bond agreement for the bounty Black Eagle posted for Joseph’s capture. The contract paid sixty Talons to whomever appeared on a notarized copy of Joseph’s death certificate (under the heading “Cause of Death”) or executed the restitution agreement as his agent. Muerto o vivo.
Galloway crinkled his forehead as he skimmed through the bid package. He scrolled back to the call option on the Black Eagle judgment. Black Eagle wasn’t offering a ninety percent discount as Molly Santos believed. They were selling their judgment outright for ten cents on the dollar and already had a buyer.
Joseph returned with the rope slung over his shoulder. The suspension chair dangled from one end.
“I got it!” he said and huffed to catch his breath.
An alarming screech of rending metal came from the rooftop door. The steel frame deformed and bulged outward as the Sentinel agents on the other side worked to force it open.
“Double up the rope and tie that free end around my waist,” Galloway said.
Joseph looped the rope around Galloway and used a carabiner on the end to secure it.
“Now what?”
“Now, hold on to that chair and wait till I tell you what to do with it,” Galloway said as his fingers flew over the surface of his tripad.
Joseph gazed up into the dull ashen sky, where more drones had joined the impromptu aerial regatta forming around the Grunewald.
“Before it’s too late,” he said, his voice cracking, “I want to thank you for trying to help me. I know you didn’t have to.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Galloway said without looking up as he rushed to put the finishing touches on the document. With a final tap, he held the tripad out to him and said, “Here, sign this.”
Joseph took it and entered his biocryptic ID. “What is it?”
“Salvation, son.”
Galloway took back the tripad and drafted a simple two-line contract addendum. When he finished, he slipped the device’s lanyard around his wrist and called Ari.
"Galloway! What are you doing, man? You’re all over the net!"
“Where’s Citadel, Ari?”
"What do you mean?"
“They ain’t never showed up.”
"Those fuckers! Are you sure?"
“Of course, I’m sure. They ain’t here because you never called ’em.”
There was a long pause. ”This isn’t your problem. Joe’s policy terminated two minutes ago. He’s not my client anymore, and he’s not yours either. Get your ass out of there before you get yourself killed."
“Is that some kind of threat, Ari?”
"No, it’s not. I’m talking to you as your friend. Walk away from this thing while you still can.”
The rooftop door exploded outward as the magnetic lock failed against the force of the pneumatic pry bar used to break through it. Sentinel agents poured from the stairwell and onto the rooftop, weapons trained on the two masked doppelgangers.
“Don’t you move, motherfuckers!”
“Hands up! Get your hands up!” came more shouts from behind as the second team clambered over the edge of the roof from the fire escape. The HexaRaptors, now with agents in support, swept down to provide cover. Galloway and Joseph stood with their backs to the edge of the roof, surrounded.
“Get down! Get down, now!” the Sentinel agents shouted.
Joseph gripped the chair and shook.
“What do we do?”
“No matter what happens next, son, hold tight to that chair and don’t let go. Now, do what they say and lay down.”
Before Joseph could respond, Galloway turned, stepped up onto the parapet wall, and hurled himself over the edge of the roof.
A mob of bystanders huddled on the street let out a collective roar of screams, cheers and gasps as Galloway flew, arms extended, out into empty space. The trailing end of the rope hissed as it was dragged over the edge of the parapet wall. Ari’s voice rang in his ear.
“Galloway!”
He accelerated in a rush toward the ground until the slack in the rope ran out. The carabiner zipped up the line and cinched the rope tight around his waist, snapping taut like a cracking whip. Galloway folded in half as his angle of descent abruptly changed and the tremendous centripetal force generated by his downward momentum brought him crashing hard against the side of the building, like a human-shaped wrecking ball.
The air in his lungs exploded out of his open mouth in a loud “Oof!” and his hands reflexively flew open. Galloway’s head ricocheted off the plaster and brick wall and the jester mask exploded in a shower of white porcelain shards. With a final bounce, he came to rest against the side of the building and hanged limp from the end of the rope.
The world swirled in photo strobe flashes of red and white. He tried to breathe but couldn’t get air into his lungs. His oxygen-starved brain fired every neuron and flooded his bloodstream with adrenaline. His vision narrowed to a blurry patch.
With the sum of his waning strength, he struggled for one life-saving inhalation. A thin stream of air seeped into his burning lungs and then, like a stubborn balloon, his airway opened. He sucked in a deep gulping breath.
When Galloway’s vision cleared, he stared straight down the exterior wall of the Hotel Grunewald. He tasted blood and a deep laceration burned his tongue. The tripad dangled like a plumb bob from the lanyard around his wrist. The hinge was bent but it still functioned.
He pulled it up into his grasp and the small movement caught the attention of the mass of onlookers below. The fickle mob erupted in a frenzy of cheers, whistles, and claps. The only thing they craved more than a gruesome bloody death, it seemed, was a miraculous save.
Ari hyperventilated in Galloway’s ear as he tried to spit out words between fits of hysterical laughter. He finally assembled a single coherent sentence.
“Holy shit, you’re fucking insane!”
Several drones had followed Galloway over the edge of the roof to record his desperate dive. A nanodrone now hovered a few feet from his face, providing confirmation to Sentinel that the man on the roof was their target.
Joseph was no doubt prone on the ground, hugging the chair to his chest with all his strength. If they did anything to make him let go, Galloway would plummet to his death. Would Sentinel risk the liability, he wondered, or did they already consider him an abettor?
The rope that held him was taut as a piano wire and bit deeply into his sides. It hurt to breathe and he was certain he’d broken some ribs.
Galloway wheezed, and in a raspy voice said, “I know what you did, Ari, and I’m gonna make sure everyone knows about it.”
"What are you talking about?"
“You made a deal to buy the Black Eagle judgment. I couldn’t understand why you were so eager to cut Joseph loose when you carried such a huge liability, but then I saw the contract. Lester offered to sell it to you for a fraction of its value if you agreed to hand him over.”
“You’re full of shit,” Ari spat, but despite the assurance of his denial, his voice wavered.
Galloway’s body heaved upwards and scraped against the Grunewald’s rough-textured facade. The Sentinel agents were hoisting him back up. Less than a minute remained to save Joseph’s life.
“I thought you’d say that, so I attached a rider to the call option and you’re going to sign it.”
“What rider?” he asked, tapping loudly on his tripad.
“It obligates you to sell me the Black Eagle judgment right after the call option exercises.”
"This is bullshit. I’m not signing this."
“If you ain’t the buyer as you claim, nothing happens. My rider simply expires. There ain’t no reason for you not to sign it.”
Galloway passed the eleventh floor. They were bringing him up fast. He had to close the deal now.
"None of it matters. Joseph’s never going to sign with Falconhead. He’s an outlaw now and they have him. Once Lester gets done chopping off his fingers, he’ll never sign anything again."
“You’re wrong, Ari. It matters a great deal because Joseph gave me his power of attorney.”
A multitude of video drones hovered nearby. Galloway beckoned them over and several swooped in. Their tiny, ultra-crystal, high definition camera lenses glittered like polished gemstones, eager to capture whatever crazy thing happened next and broadcast it to unknown thousands tuned in all over the net.
Galloway ignored the pain in his sides and shouted as loudly as possible, “My name’s Maxim Galloway of Metis Intelligence Service. My client, Aristotle Webb of Orleans Risk and Casualty, conspired with Lester Lineer of Black Eagle Legion to—”
"Shut the fuck up!" Ari shouted. ”I’ll sign the damn thing."
Trust truly was the only currency that spent.
Galloway checked his tripad and watched as Joseph’s contract bid updated with the newly-signed contract rider. As he passed by his own thirteenth floor suite, he pressed his thumb against the screen and executed the Falconhead restitution agreement as Joseph’s legal agent.
The order propagated through the blockchain network, triggering a cascading series of events—predetermined conditions, written into the code of the smart contracts.
Orleans Risk and Casualty’s call option exercised at a strike price equal to one-tenth the face value of the Black Eagle judgment. Forty Talons transferred from OR&C to Black Eagle. After confirmation that payment was received, title to the judgment transferred from Black Eagle to OR&C.
The repayment agreement between Falconhead and OR&C executed next.
At roughly the same time, Galloway’s biocryptic ID was compared against his digital signature on the Falconhead restitution agreement, confirming his identity as Joseph’s agent. That released the bond on Joseph’s bounty and sixty Talons transferred from Black Eagle to Metis Intelligence Service.
Next, Galloway’s rider on the call option exercised. Forty Talons transferred from Metis to OR&C. The network confirmed the payment and title to the Black Eagle judgment transferred from OR&C to Metis.
Finally, the repayment agreement between Falconhead and OR&C terminated.
In less than a second, Galloway had bought and paid for Joseph’s freedom using Lester’s money.
"That was a slick little move, Galloway. You zeroed my entire liability and it didn’t cost me a dime. I suppose I should thank you for that. I don’t think Lester’s going to be quite so grateful, though. Good luck with that.
“Oh, and before I forget, you’re fired," he said with a hint of admiration in his voice.
The line disconnected.
The Sentinel agents hoisted Galloway the last few feet over the parapet wall and dumped him onto the rooftop. Several men pointed submachine guns at him while an exhausted fed-up sergeant unholstered his pistol and pressed the end of the barrel hard against his temple.
“Don’t even breathe, asshole.”
The jingle of chains drew Galloway’s attention. Joseph hobbled past as Sentinel agents led him away. He was shackled, hand and foot, with a black sack cloth pulled over his head. Galloway took a deep painful breath and spoke in a voice loud enough to carry to the dozens of video drones buzzing overhead.
“Joseph Wells is lawfully in my custody! I demand you release my ward immediately and remove yourselves from this property. Y’all are now trespassing.”
—END—
