Chester Stone waited in his own office suite more than an hour, and then he called downstairs and had the finance director contact the bank and check on the operating account. It showed a one-point-one-million-dollar credit, wired in fifty minutes ago from the Cayman office of a Bahamas-owned trust company.
‘It’s there,’ the finance guy said. ‘You did the trick, chief.’
Stone gripped the phone and wondered exactly what trick he had done.
‘I’m coming down,’ he said. ‘I want to go over the figures.’
“The figures are good,’ the finance guy said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘I’m coming down anyway,’ Stone said.
He rode the elevator two floors down and joined the finance guy in his plush inner office. Entered the password and called up the secret spreadsheet. Then the finance guy took over and typed in the new balance available in the operating account. The software ran the calculation and came up exactly level, six weeks into the future.
‘See?’ the guy said. ‘Bingo.’
‘What about the interest payment?’ Stone asked.
‘Eleven grand a week, six weeks? Kind of steep, isn’t it?’
‘Can we pay it?’
The guy nodded confidently. ‘Sure we can. We owe two suppliers seventy-three grand. We got it, ready to go. If we lose the invoices, get them to re-submit, we free that cash up for a spell.’
He tapped the screen and indicated a provision against received invoices.
‘Seventy-three grand, minus eleven a week for six weeks, gives us seven grand spare. We should go out to dinner a couple of times.’
‘Run it again, OK?’ Stone said. ‘Double check.’
The guy gave him a look, but he ran it again. He took out the one-point-one, ended up in the red, put it back in again, and ended up balanced. He cancelled
the provision against the invoices, subtracted eleven thousand every seven days, and ended the six-week period with an operating surplus of seven thousand dollars.
‘Close,’ he said. ‘But the right side of close.’
‘How do we repay the principal?’ Stone asked. ‘We need one-point-one million available at the end of the six weeks.’
‘No problem,’ the guy said. ‘I’ve got it all figured. We’ll have it in time.’
‘Show me, OK?’
‘OK, see here?’ He was tapping the screen on a different line, where payments due in from customers were listed. ‘These two wholesalers owe us exactly one-point-one-seven-three’, which exactly matches the principal plus the lost invoices, and it’s due exactly six weeks from now.’
‘Will they pay on time?’
The guy shrugged. ‘Well, they always have.’
Stone stared at the screen. His eyes moved up and down, left and right.
‘Run it all again. Triple-check.’
‘Don’t sweat it, chief. It adds up.’
‘Just do it, OK?’
The guy nodded. It was Stone’s company, after all. He ran it again, the whole calculation, beginning to end, and it came out just the same. Hobie’s one-point-one disappeared as the blizzard of pay checks cleared, the two suppliers went hungry, the interest got paid, the payments came in from the wholesalers, Hobie got his one-point-one back, the suppliers got paid late, and the sheet ended up showing the same trivial seven-thousand-dollar surplus in their favour.
‘Don’t sweat it,’ the guy said again. ‘It works out.’
Stone was staring at the screen, wondering if that spare seven grand would buy Marilyn a trip to Europe. Probably not. Not a six-week trip, anyway. And it would alert her. It would worry her. She’d ask him why he was making her go. And he’d have to tell her. She was very smart. Smart enough to get it out of him, one way or another. And then she would refuse to go to Europe, and she would end up lying awake every night for six weeks, too.
The suitcase was still there, lying on the front lawn. There was a bullet hole punched in one end. No exit hole. The bullet must have gone through the leather, through the sturdy plywood carcass, and burned to a stop against the packed paper inside. Reacher smiled and carried it back to join Jodie over at the garage.
They left the jeep on the blacktop apron and went in the same way they had come out. Closed up the roller door and walked through to the breezeway. Locked the inside door behind them with the green key and walked through to the kitchen. Locked that door behind them and stepped past Jodie’s abandoned garment bag in the hallway. Reacher carried the suitcase into the living room. More space and more light there than in the den.