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The inner office was very large. Walls had been removed. It was dark. One wall was all windows, but they were covered with vertical blinds, open no more than narrow slits. There was a big desk. Facing it were three sofas completing a square. There were lamp tables at each end of each sofa. A huge square coffee table in the middle, brass and glass, standing on a rug. The whole thing looked like a living room display in a store window.
There was a man behind the desk. Stone started the long walk in toward him. He dodged between the sofas and crabbed around the coffee table. Approached the desk. Stuck out his right hand.
"Mr. Hobie?" he said. "I'm Chester Stone. "
The man behind the desk was burned. He had scar tissue all the way down one side of his face. It was scaly, like a reptile's skin. Stone stared away from it in horror, but he was still seeing it in the comer of his eye. It was textured like an overcooked chicken's foot, but it was unnaturally pink. There was no hair growing where it ran up over the scalp. Then there were crude tufts, shading into proper hair on the other side. Th
e hair was gray. The scars were hard and lumpy, but the skin on the unburned side was soft and lined. The guy was maybe fifty or fifty-five. He was sitting there, his chair pushed in close to the desk, his hands down in his lap. Stone was standing there, forcing himself not to look away, his right hand stuck out over the desk.
It was a very awkward moment. There is nothing more awkward than standing there ready to shake hands while the gesture is ignored. Foolish to keep standing there like that, but somehow worse to pull your hand back. So he kept it extended, waiting. Then the man moved. He used his left hand to push back from the desk. Brought his right hand up to meet Stone's. But it wasn't a hand. It was a glittering metal hook. It started way up under his cuff. Not an artificial hand, not a clever prosthetic device, just a simple hook, the shape of a capital letter J, forged from shiny stainless steel and polished like a sculpture. Stone nearly went to grasp it anyway, but then he pulled back and froze. The man smiled a brief generous smile with the mobile half of his face. Like it meant nothing to him at all.
"They call me Hook Hobie," he said.
He sat there with his face rigid and the hook held up like an object for examination. Stone swallowed and tried to recover his composure. Wondered if he should offer his left hand instead. He knew some people did that. His great-uncle had had a stroke. The last ten years of his life, he always shook left-handed.
"Take a seat," Hook Hobie said.
Stone nodded gratefully and backed away. Sat on the end of the sofa. It put him sideways on, but he was happy just to be doing something. Hobie looked at him and laid his arm on the desktop. The hook hit the wood with a quiet metallic sound.
"You want to borrow money," he said.
The burned side of his face did not move at all. It was thick and hard like a crocodile's back. Stone felt his stomach going acid and he looked straight down at the coffee table. Then he nodded and ran his palms over the knees of his trousers. Nodded again, and tried to remember his script.
"I need to bridge a gap," he said. "Six weeks, one-point-one million. "
"Bank?" Hobie asked.
Stone stared at the floor. The tabletop was glass, and there was a patterned rug under it. He shrugged wisely, as if he were including a hundred fine points of arcane business strategy in a single gesture, communicating with a man he wouldn't dream of insulting by suggesting he was in any way ignorant of any of them.
"I prefer not to," he said. "We have an existing loan package, of course, but I beat them down to a hell of a favorable rate based on the premise that it was all fixed-amount, fixed-term stuff, with no rolling component. You'll appreciate that I don't want to upset those arrangements for such a trivial amount. "
Hobie moved his right arm. The hook dragged over the wood.
"Bullshit, Mr. Stone," he said quietly.
Stone made no reply. He was listening to the hook.
"Were you in the service?" Hobie asked him.
"Excuse me?"
"Were you drafted? Vietnam?"
Stone swallowed. The burns, and the hook.
"I missed out," he said. "Deferred, for college. I was very keen to go, of course, but the war was over by the time I graduated. "
Hobie nodded, slowly.
"I went," he said. "And one of the things I learned over there was the value of intelligence gathering. It's a lesson I apply in my business. "
There was silence in the dark office. Stone nodded. Moved his head and stared at the edge of the desk. Changed the script.
"OK," he said. "Can't blame me for trying to put a brave face on it, right?"
"You're in relatively deep shit," Hobie said. "You're actually paying your bank top points, and they'll say no to any further funds. But you're doing a reasonably good job of digging yourself out from under. You're nearly out of the woods. "
"Nearly," Stone agreed. "Six weeks and one-point-one million away, is all. "
"I specialize," Hobie said. "Everybody specializes. My arena is cases exactly like yours. Fundamentally sound enterprises, with temporary and limited exposure problems. Problems that can't be solved by the banks, because they specialize, too, in other arenas, such as being dumb and unimaginative as shit. "
He moved the hook again, scraping it across the oak.
"My charges are reasonable," he said. "I'm not a loan shark. We're not talking about hundreds-of-percent interest here. I could see my way to advancing you one-point-one, say six percent to cover the six weeks. "
Stone ran his palms over his thighs again. Six percent for six weeks? Equivalent to an annual rate of what? Nearly 52 percent. Borrow one-point-one million now, pay it all back plus sixty-six thousand dollars in interest six weeks from now. Eleven thousand dollars a week. Not quite a loan shark's terms. Not too far away, either. But at least the guy was saying yes.
"What about security?" Stone asked.
"I'll take an equity position," Hobie said.
Stone forced himself to raise his head and look at him. He figured this was some kind of a test. He swallowed hard. Figured he was so close, honesty was the best policy.
"The stock's worth nothing," he said quietly.
Hobie nodded his terrible head, like he was pleased with the reply.
"Right now it isn't," he said. "But it will be worth something soon, right?"
"Only after your exposure is terminated," Stone said. "Catch-22, right? The stock only goes back up after I repay you. When I'm out of the woods. "
"So I'll benefit then," Hobie said. "I'm not talking about a temporary transfer. I' m going to take an equity position, and I'm going to keep it. "
"Keep it?" Stone said. He couldn't keep the surprise out of his voice. Fifty-two percent interest and a gift of stock?
"I always do," Hobie said. "It's a sentimental thing. I like to have a little part of all the businesses I help. Most people are glad to make the arrangement. "
Stone swallowed. Looked away. Examined his options. Shrugged.
"Sure," he said. "I guess that's OK. "
Hobie reached to his left and rolled open a drawer. Pulled out a printed form. Slid it across to the front of the desk.
"I prepared this," he said.
Stone crouched forward off the sofa and picked it up. It was a loan agreement, one-point-one million, six weeks, 6 percent, and a standard stock-transfer protocol. For a chunk that was worth a million dollars not long ago, and might be again, very soon. He blinked.
"Can't do it any other way," Hobie said. "Like I told you, I specialize. I know this comer of the market. You won't get better anyplace else. Fact is, you won't get a damn thing anyplace else. "
Hobie was six feet away behind the desk, but Stone felt he was right next to him on the sofa with his awful face jammed in his and the glittering hook ripping through his guts. He nodded, just a faint silent movement of his head, and went into his coat for his fat Mont Blanc fountain pen. Stretched forward and signed in both places against the cold hard glass of the coffee table. Hobie watched him, and nodded in turn.
"I assume you want the money in your operating account?" he asked. "Where the other banks won't see it?"
Stone nodded again, in a daze.
"That would be good," he said.
Hobie made a note. "It'll be there in an hour. "
"Thank you," Stone said. It seemed appropriate.
"So now I'm the one who's exposed," Hobie said. "Six weeks, no real security. Not a nice feeling at all. "
"There won't be a problem," Stone said, looking down.
Hobie nodded.
"I'm sure there won't," he said. He leaned forward and pressed the intercom in front of him. Stone heard a buzzer sounding faintly outside in the anteroom.
"The Stone dossier, please," Hobie said into the microphone.
There was silence for a moment, and then the door opened. The male receptionist walked over to the desk. He was carrying a thin green file. He bent and placed it in front
of Hobie. Walked back out and closed the door quietly. Hobie used his hook to push the file over to the front edge of the desk.
"Take a look," he said.
Stone crouched forward and took the file. Opened it up. There were photographs in it. Several big eight-by-tens, in glossy black and white. The first photograph was of his house. Clearly taken from inside a car stopped at the end of his driveway. The second was of his wife. Marilyn. Shot with a long lens as she walked in the flower garden. The third was of Marilyn coming out of her beauty parlor in town. A grainy, long-lens image. Covert, like a surveillance photograph. The fourth picture was a close-up of the license plate of her BMW.
The fifth photograph was also of Marilyn. Taken at night through their bedroom window. She was dressed in a bathrobe. Her hair was down, and it looked damp. Stone stared at it. To get that picture, the photographer had been standing on their back lawn. His vision blurred and his ears hummed with silence. Then he shuffled the pictures together and closed the file. Put it back on the desk, slowly. Hobie leaned forward and pressed the tip of his hook into the thick paper. He used it to pull the file back toward him. The hook rasped across the wood, loudly in the silence.
"That's my security, Mr. Stone," he said. "But like you just told me, I'm sure there won't be a problem. "
Chester Stone said nothing. Just stood up and threaded his way by all the furniture and over to the door. Through the reception area and into the corridor and into the elevator. Down eighty-eight floors and back outside, where the bright morning sun hit him in the face like a blow.
