Since We Fell

by Dennis Lehane

Brian did objectives and strategies and remedies.

“A complaint that’s not looking for a solution is a disease that’s not looking for a cure.”

the stars arrayed themselves in clusters, as if seeking the protection of the herd, and she felt them not as celestial things, as gods or the servants of gods, but as castoffs, exiles, lost in the vast ink sky.

In some time continuum, we’re all dead as soon as we’re born. By that logic, she was long dead somewhere, looking back through the portals of time at this very moment and smiling at all the fuss Corporeal Rachel was putting herself through.

We are not special. We are lit from within by a single candle flame, and when that flame is blown out and all light leaves our eyes, it is the same as if we never existed at all. We don’t own our life, we rent

She returned to the bedroom and packed a backpack with hiking boots, several pairs of warm socks, a heavy wool coat. She took a gym bag with her into the kitchen and added one carving knife, one paring knife, a flashlight and batteries, half a dozen power bars, several bottles of water, and the contents of the fruit bowl on the counter. She left the bag and the backpack by the door and returned to the bedroom. She changed into cargo pants, a thermal long-sleeved T-shirt, a black hoodie. She tied her hair back into a ponytail and covered it with a Newbury Comics ball cap. She opened the floor safe in his closet and removed the cash there and took it and the gun into the bathroom and placed them on the counter

She walked around the building, walked along St. James, and at one point she saw a dozen Rachels reflected and re-reflected in the panes. They formed a disjointed ribbon, like a chain of Rachel dolls cut from construction paper.

“Any idea where he’d go if he didn’t want to be found?” “That cabin he has in Maine.” “Baker Lake.” He nodded.

Because I wanted to feel safe.

Who doesn't? Isn't that a universal need?

“Where should I start?” he said. “Where can you?” “Oh, it’s easy. You came in during the late innings. I put this in motion a long time ago.” “And what is ‘this’?” “In the parlance of my business, it’s a salting scam.”

“About five years ago, I came across a bankrupt mine for sale in Papua New Guinea, so I formed a corporation, and I bought the mine.”

“So we bought the mine. And simultaneously, Caleb created a consulting company, with an entirely fictitious but quite believable deep history in Latin America, generations of it, if you didn’t look too closely. Three years later, that company, Borgeau Engineering, undertook an ‘independent’ study of the mine.

Which by that point, we’d salted.” “What’s salting?” “You sprinkle a mine with gold in places that are easier to access—but not too easy—than others. The idea is one of extrapolation—if x percentage of gold is found here, then one can assume the totality of the mine is sitting on y percentage. That’s what our independent consultants—” “Borgeau Engineering.” He tipped an imaginary cap to her. “That’s what they ascertained—that we were sitting on resources worth up to four hundred million troy ounces of gold as opposed to four million.” “Which would drive your stock up.” “If we had stock, but we didn’t. No, what it would do was make us a potential threat to any competitors in the region.” “Vitterman.” “You have been doing your research.”

got a loan from a VC concern called Cotter-McCann.”

“But,” she said, “word around the campfire is that Cotter-McCann is predatory.” “Very,” he confirmed. “So they were going to eat up your little mine and all its profits anyway.” “Yup.” “But there wouldn’t be any profits.”

“How much was the loan for?” she asked. He smiled. “Seventy million.” “In cash?” She had to force herself to keep her voice low. He nodded. “And another four hundred and fifty million in stock options.” “But the options are worthless.” “Sí.”

So Brian got $70 million (as a loan) from Cottar-McCann on a more or less worthless mine in Papua New Guinea

“All you’ve been after from the beginning was the seventy million.” “Yup.” “And you got that seventy million?”

“The hitch is that the moment we wired the money out of the account in Rhode Island, we were on a clock.

But how did Cottar-McCann know where the money was? If it was a business loan, how would Cottar-McCann have access to the bank account of Brian's corporation, Alden Minerals, Ltd.? Also, couldn’t they have formed another fake company that they would have a legitimate reason for transferring the money to?

We made two mistakes—we underestimated just how fast they’d notice the wire because we had no way of knowing they had someone on the payroll in Homeland who flagged it for an SAR.” “Which is?” “Suspicious Activity Report. We knew we’d get flagged, but there’s normally a delay between the flagging and the payer hearing about it.”

Homeland Security???

we didn’t count on them putting a tracker on my car.

Now that's just STUPID on Brian's part!!

I didn’t expect Cotter-McCann to bite down hard on the hook for, shit, three months. Six? I was hoping for six. But they fucking bit early because they’re aggressive and greedy and they want what they want on their timetable, no one else’s. I didn’t expect them to put the money into our account and hire an independent consulting firm to double-check the mine on the same day.

entered Woonsocket at sundown. It was a faded, cauterized mill town with hopeful pockets of gentrification that couldn’t compensate for the air of abandonment.

It had happened before she was born, this wholesale discarding of American industry, this switch from a culture that made things of value to a culture that consumed things of dubious merit.

“I do not know,” she said with her usual stop-and-start cadence. And then, quite smoothly: “Probably because I’ve never been to Japan.” A wholly transformed Haya stared back at Rachel suddenly, a Haya marinated in cunning and curdled wisdom. “You’re not Japanese?” “I’m from fucking San Pedro,” Haya whispered,

Everyone except Rachel is an actor.