Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

to be honest.”
    “And?” I said.
    “He gave me a lot of crap,” Hubble said. “He was telling me to look at it as an opportunity to get out. He was saying I should dump the corporate thing, I should come and do a real job, make some real money, with him. I didn’t know much about him. I knew about the family fortune and the Foundation, obviously, but I’d never met him face to face. But he was clearly a very rich and successful guy. And very, very smart. And there he was, sitting in a private jet, asking me to work with him. Not for him, with him. I was flattered and I was desperate and I was worried and I said yes.”
    “And then?” I said.
    “He called me again the next day,” Hubble said. “He was sending the plane for me. I had to fly down to the Kliner plant in Venezuela to meet with him. So I did. I was only there one day. Didn’t get to see anything. Then he flew me to Jacksonville. I was in the lawyer’s office for a week. After that, it was too late. I couldn’t get out.”
    “Why not?” I asked him.
    “It was a hell of a week,” he said. “It sounds like a short time, right? Just a week. But he did a real job on me. First day, it was all flattery. All temptation. He signed me up to a huge salary, bonuses, whatever I wanted. We went to clubs and hotels and he was spending money like it was out of a faucet. Tuesday, I started work. The actual job was a challenge. It was very difficult after what I’d been doing at the bank. It was so specialized. He wanted cash, of course, but he wanted dollars only. Nothing but singles. I had no idea why. And he wanted records. Very tight books. But I could handle it. And he was a relaxed boss. No pressures, no problems. The problems started Wednesday.”
    “How?” I said.
    “Wednesday, I asked him what was going on,” he said. “And he told me. He just told me exactly what he was doing. But he said now I was doing it too. I was involved. I had to stay quiet. Thursday, I was getting really unhappy. I couldn’t believe it. I told him I wanted out. So he drove me down to some awful place. His son was there. He had two Hispanic guys there with him. There was this other guy chained up in a back room. Kliner said this was a guy who had stepped out of line. He told me to watch carefully. His son just kicked the guy to a pulp. All over the room, right in front of me. Then the Hispanic guys got their knives out and just hacked the poor guy apart. There was blood everywhere. It was horrible. I couldn’t believe it. I threw up all over the place.”
    “Go on,” I said.
    “It was a nightmare,” Hubble said. “I couldn’t sleep that night. I thought I’d never sleep again, any night. Friday morning, we flew home. We sat together on the little jet and he told me what would happen. He said it wouldn’t be just me who got cut up. It would be Charlie too. He was discussing it with me. Which of her nipples would he slice off first? Left or right? Then after we were dead, which of the children would he start with? Lucy or Ben? It was a nightmare. He said they’d nail me to the wall. I was shitting myself. Then we landed and he called Charlie and insisted we go to dinner with him. He told her we were doing business together. Charlie was delighted because Kliner is such a big deal in the county. It was a total nightmare because I had to pretend there was nothing wrong. I hadn’t even told Charlie I’d lost my job. I had to pretend I was still at the bank. And the whole evening that bastard was asking politely after Charlie and the children and smiling at me.”
    We went quiet. I skirted around the southeast corner of Atlanta again, looking for the highway south. The big city glowed and glittered on the right. To the left was the dark empty mass of the rural southeast. I found the highway and accelerated south. Down toward one little dot in that dark empty mass.
    “Then what?” I asked him.
    “I started work at the warehouse,” he said. “That’s where he wanted me.”
    “Doing what?” I said.
    “Managing the supply,” he said. “I had a little office in there, and I had to arrange to get the dollars, and then I’d supervise the loading and shipping.”
    “Sherman Stoller was the driver?” I asked him.
    “Right,” he said. “He was trusted to do the Florida run. I’d send him out with a million dollar bills a week. Sometimes the gatemen did it if Sherman had a day off. But it was usually him. He helped me with the boxes and the loading.