Kingdom come, p.1
Kingdom Come, page 1
Kingdom Come
Tim Green
Grand Central Publishing (2007)
Rating: ★★★★☆
Tags: Fiction, Suspense, Thrillers, Suspense Fiction, Fiction - Espionage, Thriller, Murder, Crime Thriller, American Mystery Suspense Fiction, Adventure, Family, Revenge, Family-owned business enterprises
Fictionttt Suspensettt Thrillersttt Suspense Fictionttt Fiction - Espionagettt Thrillerttt Murderttt Crime Thrillerttt American Mystery Suspense Fictionttt Adventurettt Familyttt Revengettt Family-owned business enterprisesttt
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SUMMARY:
Bob King is a self-made billionaire who parlayed a rusty backhoe into the 27th spot on Forbes list. Now, his corporation is a multi-billion dollar construction company that instills greed and competition among friends, including his son Scott and his two best friends, Thane and Ben. But instead of handing over the companys crown, Bob reveals a massive public offering that will make him CEO for life. Thanes wife, Jessica, is furious and goads him into a conspiracy to kill Bob. When the board of directors makes Thane CEO, Ben investigates the truthand Thane realizes that he can only be safe if his old friend is also dead.
Kingdom Come
Book Jacket
Rating:
Tags: Fiction, suspense, Thrillers, Suspense fiction, Fiction - Espionage, thriller, Murder, Crime & Thriller, American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, Adventure, Family, Revenge, Family-owned business enterprises
SUMMARY: Bob King is a self-made billionaire who parlayed a rusty backhoe into the 27th spot on Forbes list. Now, his corporation is a multi-billion dollar construction company that instills greed and competition among friends, including his son Scott and his two best friends, Thane and Ben. But instead of handing over the companys crown, Bob reveals a massive public offering that will make him CEO for life. Thanes wife, Jessica, is furious and goads him into a conspiracy to kill Bob. When the board of directors makes Thane CEO, Ben investigates the truthand Thane realizes that he can only be safe if his old friend is also dead.
Kingdom Come
Tim Green
WARNER BOOKS
NEW YORK BOSTON
Copyright (c) 2006 by Tim Green
All rights reserved.
Warner Books
Time Warner Book Group
1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
Visit our website at www.twbg.com
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition: April 2006
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN-13: 978-0-446-57742-7
ISBN-10: 0-446-57742-1
For Illyssa, because,
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
--SHAKESPEARE (SONNET 43)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With each book I write, there are many people who help with essential steps along the way, and I would like to thank them.
Esther Newberg, the world's greatest agent and my dear friend, for her wisdom. Ace Atkins, my dependable, brilliant, and talented friend, for his careful reading and fantastic ideas. Jamie Raab, my publisher and editor, who polished this story with unmatched insight and creativity. And the women who worked with her, Frances Jalet-Miller and Kristen Weber, as well as all my friends at Warner Books: Larry Kirshbaum, who's no longer with the company but who, along with Rick Wolff, gave me my chance; Maureen Egan; Chris Barba and the best sales team in the world; Emi Battaglia; Karen Torres; Martha Otis; Paul Kirschner; Flag Tonuzi; Jim Spivey; Mari Okuda; Fred Chase; and Tina Andreadis, who we'll all miss.
My parents, Dick and Judy Green, who taught me to read and to love books and who spent many hours scouring this manuscript so that it shines.
A special thanks to former FBI agent John Gamel, who helped me navigate the inner workings of the FBI and kindly took my calls at all hours of the day.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. My good friends Mike Allen, Tim McCarthy, Bucky Lainhart, Darlene Baker, and Scott Congel inspired me as I was creating the characters called Mike Allen; Tim McCarthy; Darlene Baker; Bucky, his wife, Judy, and their son, Russell; and the Scott King character and his wife, Emily. But all of the other characters, including in particular James King, are completely fictitious and the product of my imagination. Scott Congel's real father, Bob Congel, is in fact a close personal friend who has treated me and my family like part of his, with great kindness and generosity. He is no closer to the James King character than I am to Thane Coder. So any resemblance of these characters to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental. In addition, some real locations and actual events are mentioned, but they, too, are used fictitiously.
Stars, hide your fires:
Let not light see my black and deep desires:
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
Which the eye fears; when it is done, to see.
--Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 4, lines 50-53
1
"Most people would have done what I did," I say.
"That's an interesting statement," the shrink says. "Most people wouldn't kill a man who was like a father to them."
"He wasn't my father."
"I said 'like' a father."
I nod, because that was true.
"I guess, when you think about it," I say, "he gave me things my father never did. But he also took things away. Money. My wife. My child. Things no father would take from his son."
"What do you mean he took them?" the shrink asks. "That's not what really happened, is it? He didn't take your wife."
"Okay. He moved the pieces on the board in a way that they were taken from me. It's all the same."
"And he deserved to die for that? The others too?"
"I don't know if any of them deserved it," I say. "But it happened, and it would have happened that way to most people. All I wanted was to get ahead, to have my wife, my family."
"Do you really think so, Thane?" he says, looking at his notebook. "That most people would have done what you did?"
"I thought you shrinks are supposed to ask about my mother. What's all this father stuff?"
"You didn't kill your mother-figure," he says in his deep rumble of a voice.
"Or my wife."
He raises an eyebrow. "Why do you mention her? Did she deserve what happened?"
I look away and sigh. "In a way. Maybe. I dream about it. Her."
"Freud said dreams are wishes," he says. "Look. Let's just start from the beginning. How about you tell me the story?"
"So you can write a book?" I ask.
"So I can help."
"You think I need help?" I say. "I'm a shell. A couple of weeks and I'm out of here. This is just going through the motions. I'll walk out of here and I won't even be Thane Coder anymore. Mike Jenkins. That's the name they're giving me. They've got me a job in a metal shop. Fifteen dollars an hour and a little two-bedroom box outside Bozeman. You ever been to Montana?"
"You're still a person," he says. "You still need to cope."
Over the past six years, I've seen other guys like this. Other shrinks with dreams of helping those beyond help, or who didn't have what it takes to have an officeful of books and leather furniture. They never really help. They just dredge up the muck that's better off left at the bottom. But there's something about the idea of finally being free that makes me giddy enough to want to talk, even about this.
"How far back?" I ask with a sigh.
"What about the storm?" he says, tapping his pen. "Tell me about that. From what I've seen in your file, that seems to push a button."
On the other side of the brick and bars, I hear the sound of the scum spilling out into the yard below. Hooting in the cold air. Their words drift skyward in smoky puffs. The noise of their obscene banter is muffled by the dirty window of the small square room. I look out and see the wall. At its crest the empty eye of the tower stares down. A guard bent over a book. His rifle nowhere in sight. I think about Jessica, my wife. Pretty dark hair. Sexy in a girlish way. She was a sweet girl. That's how I'd describe her, what she was, even after everything. Even though I blame her. How sick.
How could a prison head doctor understand that?
"I never thought I could kill anyone," I say, then I sigh again because I know I'm going to tell him, even though it won't do either of us any good.
"I don't mean in a rage, or in self-defense, or in a war. I mean killing someone to get what you want. That wasn't me. But even the best of us has that bad side. I'm not saying I was the best, but I wasn't the worst either. I think I was about where most people are. It was the situation."
He's taking notes now, the blue Bic rolling across the yellow paper. One fat finger is constricted by a college ring with an orange stone. The gold inscriptions are flattened and worn. I'm used to the shrinks writing when I talk, but not this way, in big looping letters that list to one side.
"What?" he says.
"Nothing. I loved my wife. Jessica. I loved the men too. The ones I killed. You believe that? But love, hate. Sometimes they're close, right?''
The shrink smiles like I just figured out that the world is round. He grabs his college ring and gives it a twist.
"And, I wanted the money. Real money. Yeah, I know. I had millions coming to me. But the more money you have, the more you want. You own a mansion on the beach in Tortola, you want a private plane to get there. Then your neighbor takes you out on his yacht and you think how nice that'd be. Maybe a chopper to get there q
"You blame that on her, then?" he asks. "This greed."
"I grew up where you didn't try to pass things off on other people," I say. "But you listen, then you figure out how much of it was me and how much her. You'll get it."
I take a deep breath and say: "Six years ago, but it doesn't seem that long. It was a bad night."
"In what way?"
"In the way that after that, it was all downhill," I say. "The weather too, this cold rain and wet snow that fell straight down. The sky was black."
2
I WAS SHIVERING. SLUSH PLASTERED the hair to my head in ropes. Melted snow dripped off my nose into my mouth. I wiped it with the tip of my finger and smelled the dead animal smell of the batting gloves on my hands. My black Windbreaker rubbed quietly against my jeans while the rubber boots that came up almost to my knees squeaked softly.
My truck waited out on the road, outside the boundaries of the ten-thousand-acre hunting preserve, far enough away so that no one would see me come or go. It was a two-and-a-half-mile walk to the lodge. I call it a lodge, but that doesn't give you the real picture.
The place was as big as the man who created it. A monster laid out nearly three hundred feet end to end. Something out of Disney World. Out of scale. Logs as thick as manholes and longer than telephone poles stacked three stories high. The roof, two-inch-thick rough-cut cedar planks, towered above. The main chimney stood fifty feet tall. The foundation boulders were the size of small cars. Inside there was fifty thousand square feet of space with beds for forty people. European antiques, ancient firearms, Remington bronze casts, mounted animal heads, and century-old paintings filled every open space. There was a movie theater, a hot tub room, a catering kitchen, an elevator, and a wine cellar with catacombs like an English castle.
I walked to the bridge and stood where you could see the house across the half-mile-wide man-made lake while a bizarre flash of lightning brightened the sky. There was no thunder, only silence so strong that it hummed in my ears. In that blink of light, I saw a truck left outside next to the dark brown lodge. It looked like a Matchbox toy next to the building. Through the falling slush, a dull yellow glow leaked from the upper windows.
The lodge had been built on a peninsula and I had to go another mile, around the back end of the lake and into the woods guarding the main entrance with only the sound of my squeaking boots to keep me company. A circular cobblestone drive led upward to the main entrance and then back down past a small apple orchard and to an underground parking garage. I trudged up, my boots slapping in the slush, then descended a hidden set of wrought iron stairs that led to a lower level beneath the elevated drive. The space was dank with the smell of wet stone.
The double doors--like all the doors in the lodge--were salvaged from an eleventh-century Persian fortress. They were arched, bound and studded in bronze with bolts and hinges meant to keep invaders out. But this was upstate New York, a rural place where people left the keys in their cars and their front doors unlocked. The security system at the lodge was to protect against stealth, not force. Every entrance electronically monitored by Eye Pass.
Family members and a handful of close friends--I was considered something in between--all had their retina patterns programmed in the system. I punched the button and put my eye to the small opening, staring into the green light until there was a small sharp beep.
The lock clicked and the light on the keypad went from red to green. One muted rumble of thunder rolled overhead as I slipped inside.
When I shut the door, I could hear the blood pulsing in my temples. Water dripped off me onto the stone floor. On the wall I saw my picture, among all the photos from hunts over the years. I was posed between James King and his son Scott. Ben was there too, the four of us with shotguns, a black Lab, and big smiles, a double row of broken mallards beneath our waders. Past the picture wall were racks of camouflage hunting clothes. Jackets, pants, and hats. A wall full of boots. Blaze orange for deer season. Leafy green for turkey. Pale yellow striped with brown cattails for duck. Ahead stood three mounted wolves fighting a moose. Another mount showed a bear doing battle with a bull elk.
A yellow light spilled out from the hot tub room. The sound of the churning water made my stomach queasy. I eased my way close enough so I could peer through the bars in the ancient doors. Plush ruby red towels and steam curling up from the bubbling cobblestone pool, but no one in the tub. I slipped inside and checked the showers.
Empty.
I steadied myself against the rough granite wall and breathed the warm damp air. When the pounding in my head subsided, I headed for the family hunting lockers, looking for the one with "Scott" painted on a wood placard along with a birch tree and a wolverine. I knew the combination. Why wouldn't I?
Scott and I had been good friends since college. He taught me to hunt. The door clicked and swung open. The light went on. The bone-handled knife was on a shelf. Scott traded a pair of jeans for the razor-sharp blade with a Mozambican poacher while he was on a safari. I unsheathed it, eased the door shut, and crept up the back stairs and then through the kitchen and all the way to the third level.
I tiptoed down the wide hallway under the gaze of all those dead animals. The door to the master suite was locked, but I knew how to open it from when Scott and I would sneak girls out to the lodge and take turns as to who got to sleep with their date on the big bed with the coyote pelt comforter. College days long past.
I worked carefully, stopping every few seconds to listen for sounds from within. But then I was in there with the stuffed ducks, the stone fireplace, and the leather furniture. The big cherry bed rested diagonally in the middle of the room with that comforter thrown over the footboard. I looked down at the man who did more to shape my life than my own father.
Silence.
James slept on his back. I blinked and moved my face close to his to be sure it was him even though I knew. It was the first time I'd ever seen the man with his eyes closed and his mouth open wide beneath that round red nose. His brow was lined from years of high stakes, but his thick jowls were slack. The corners of his eyes were creased with sleep and age and tufts of his white mane showed thin and graying against the snowy pillow.
My heart beat fast and hard and my throat felt like it was going to close. My eyes moved off his face. His red and white striped pajamas were held closed by pearly white buttons. I concentrated on the second button from the top while I raised the long blade and a feather pillow from the bed. I forced myself to focus on the stabbing motion of the knife, not murder. Just punching the blade through a pajama top the way you'd stab a piece of rotten fruit with a pencil when you were a kid.
A carnival of thoughts washed through my head. Everything I'd have if I did it. Everything I'd lose if I didn't. It all pointed to Johnny G, the union boss, and the deal he cut, not with me, but with Jessica. If we helped get rid of James, and made it look like his own son had done the deed, then I would control King Corp. I could cut a deal with the union, use their men and their contractors to build Garden State Center.
They'd get their money, I'd get the power of running things, and Jessica and I would get kickbacks. Cash. We agreed to do it, and once you cut a deal with this union, there was no going back. It was my life, or James's. When I got to that realization and it still wasn't enough, I thought of Teague, my infant son. I thought of his shiny white coffin, the size of a small tool chest, and I just did it. I plunged that knife and smothered his rage with the pillow at the same time.
James King jerked back and forth under my full weight, but only for half a minute and that surprised me. I guess I expected something more from a man who had moved so many other men's lives like chess pieces. I took the pillow away slowly. But the bone-handled knife was buried to its hilt and the dark scarlet stain had already spread beyond the pajamas and onto the sheets. 3
I SAID SCOTT TAUGHT ME TO HUNT, but it was the times with James that taught me how to kill. Two weeks before he died, we were out with a banker, Bart Swinson. I didn't usually get into the financing aspect, but Bart was a big college football fan who actually remembered my glory days at Syracuse. James thought it would be a good thing to have me around. The early light was weak, but I could see the smoke of James's breath in the damp dawn air. James adjusted his gun barrel. I knew he was nudging the red dot of his laser-sight just a bit to where the aorta joined the heart. That was the perfect shot.
