"The phrase, 'Win first, fight later,' can be summed up in the two words, 'Win beforehand.'"
She knew her boss was canny; she'd never pegged him for being wise. Or prescient. But it all falls down pretty much exactly as Perry predicted; with Locke Alliance and JMV out of commission, Docklands shares drop like a stone.
She's anticipated this too; but not the downpour, not the deluge. The day it's all due to happen she makes sure she's in the office before the 8 am start of trade. By 7.30 the phones start ringing – she knows that the stringers down at Market Hall, the main stock-trading floor, will be prepping their initial reports. By 7.45, every soul in the office is clustered around the television, and people are making notes already, in between answering calls and watching the tickertape spooling across the bottom of the screen. Perry stands in front with the remote, bites his bottom lip and barks out occasional orders. Chloe stands in the back and holds her breath.
But not for long. At 0800, the timer on the wall clicks over and things click into overdrive. Numbers, numbers – it's all numbers, and they're rising with every second. The talking head above the tickertape starts slow, but his second comment is about Docklands and Lexcorp. It all sounds so innocuous, but a ripple of murmur gallops through the gathered staff, and Chloe can feel it happening, feel it all around her, in the air, not physically present inside the Planet's office, but inside the gestalt of the Metropolis community. The balance of power moving, the world shifting subtly as they all watch the screen…
And in the last-minute window of real estate opportunity, Lexcorp has swept down, a falcon diving out of the blue sky, to begin an eleventh-hour buy-out of gargantuan proportions. Numbers rise, continue to climb, until well after various staff members are ordered back to their desks to begin reports, well after Chloe loses track of the math of share prices, dividends, blink-of-an-eye buys and sells.
By the time shares hit their zenith – at eight and a half times their original price – Lexcorp has seventy-three percent ownership. Harrison has maintained his existing shares and profited hugely by the association. Chloe, biting her thumbnail, stands with Jeff Linden and Perry as the tv displays the results. She listens to snippets of early reports from Market Hall, and stands, in fact, for another two and a half hours until the market caps trade, before all hell breaks loose. She and Perry share a look at the final figures, both of them sighing out tension – until she realises, really, what those figures amount to.
Lexcorp has earned itself a cool 7.2 billion.
Chloe's not sure what's more staggering – the dollar balance, or the fact that it's all been collected in a bare three hours of trade.
"God."
That's about all she can say. God. She knows Lex is a billionaire, but this is the first time she's understood what that means. Billionaire – not just a measly one billion, but billions, and one billion equals a hundred thousand million, and one million equals so many hundreds of thousands, and one thousand –
She draws a shaky breath. Perry just cocks an eyebrow at her.
"And it's still just land, Sullivan. They haven't even started building on it yet."
There's no rejoinder to that; Perry's not expecting any. He glances at Chloe and Jeff in turn.
"Sullivan – you got the end-of-trade business community dissection. Jeff – gimme the full profile on Luthor. This paper goes to print at noon."
That's an afternoon edition – Perry wants to catch the post-work commuters. It'll mean a mad scramble, and Chloe actually shares a quick look with Jeff, until Perry catches them and his voice rises.
"Well, that's what they're paying us for, isn't it? C'mon people, get to work!"
And like a hurricane blast he whirls away, leaving them blowing and shaking and scurrying off in his wake.
oOo
"It is a good viewpoint to see the world as a dream. When you have something like a nightmare, you will wake up and tell yourself that it is only a dream. It is said that the world we live in is not a bit different from this."
C'mon people…
She and Jeff share the front page, to his intense irritation, but she doesn't care that he demands his byline run ahead of hers, because she gets to spend the latter part of the evening waltzing around her apartment with the subject of Linden's scrutiny. Watching Lex's eyes spark, seeing him laugh, full-throated, as he spins her around, dipping her over his arm before pulling her up for a kiss, is better than any consolation prize.
The celebrations go on for the better part of the night, but she doesn't have the heart to settle him down, not when he's like this – exultant, warm, generous. Large of gesture and emotion, and she curls in under his arm, presses her ear to his chest, feels the thud beneath the skin and feels like her own heart is about to burst.
She can't remember the last time she was this happy.
So four hours and an excess of champagne later, she's blurry-eyed at the office and totally taken off-guard when Perry grabs her arm in the hallway.
"Here – my office."
"What –"
"Wait."
He closes the door behind them as he steers her into the middle of his mess. Then he's rifling through papers on his desk, which gives her a chance to sit, but she's still gaping with confusion when he turns back to her. The notes he thrusts into her hands are white noise.
"Chloe, you need to see this. I've been checking the numbers – here, look, and here. Do you see it?"
She blinks at the mess of paper in her lap.
"Well, maybe if I knew what I was looking at…"
"Shit – sorry. Ah man…"
Perry starts pacing, scratching through his hair with one hand. Now she's getting worried, watching his agitation.
"Damnit. Fine print – how many times have I told myself to check the fine print…" he mutters, then quickly returns to fix her with a stare. "Look, bear with me for a second, okay? It'll take me a minute to explain it all."
She sits back, flabbergasted.
"An explanation sounds good."
"Okay…" Perry pulls over a chair. Now they're both hunkered over the numbers sheets. "It took me a while to figure all this out because we've been going at it bass-ackwards. But I think I've got it now."
"Pardon me?"
"Honey, walk the garden path with me a while. We've all been getting ourselves worked up about Docklands, and who owned what, and when Luthor was going to make his move, right?"
She nods her head dumbly. Perry's eyes are like black pinpricks.
"Well, we've been missing the whole point. The question was never when. The question was how."
He takes the paperwork, shuffles it until he finds what he wants.
"Okay. Here's his listings – we know what he's got on the books, roughly. And here – thanks to you, we know he's just bought up a significant interest in the Casino. Now look –"
Perry's finger is pointing to numbers, scanning down lists of assets, dividends, profits, interest percentages. To Chloe, it all looks and feels like a dull blur.
"What, exactly, am I supposed to be –"
Perry's finger jabs, his eyes burn.
"Jesus, Chloe, look. Here's his net worth. Here's his net interest and profits. There's his assets. What has he sold off lately? Nothing. Nothing that would pad his bankroll enough to let him afford the kind of investments he's just made down at the pier."
He stops so suddenly she feels the air jerk out of her lungs. He stares at her, and his voice is deadly quiet.
"Where's the money coming from, Chloe?"
She blinks at him in the silence. Air is having trouble returning. For a whole second, she can't think at all.
"It's…it's…" She fights to marshal herself. "Christ, Perry, he's one of the richest men on the east coast – I mean, his father –"
"Uh-uh." Perry is shaking his head. "Ghost of Luthors past. Lex got the assets, but most of Lionel's profits were seized by the state, and the rest was frozen up in the legal wrangle. Lex has been pouring a small fortune into trying to get back what he thinks his father owes him, but he hasn't got his hands on it all yet."
The ball is back in her court, but she's still struggling for higher brain functions.
"So…so he's got something off-shore…" Perry shakes his head again; she's blinking furiously. "…or he's got a backer or something…"
Tension in her shoulders as she looks at Perry's face, and damnit, why didn't she think about this, but it doesn't matter now because her editor is focussed on her, intent, cobra pre-strike. Then he sits back in his chair, which is maybe more disconcerting, because she knows what's coming next.
"I want to know where that money is coming from, Chloe. If Luthor has a backer, I want to know who it is. And if he doesn't have a backer…I want to know why."
There's a hollow jittering inside her, like when she got her first big break, but it's nothing to do with excitement now. She's still having trouble breathing. Perry's face, lined and grooved and worn, suddenly looks like it's made of cast-iron. His next words are a whisper.
"Is there a problem?" He leans in just the slightest bit. "Do we have a conflict of interest?"
She can only stare. He knows, and of course he fucking knows, from things he's said before, it's obvious, but this is Perry, of the mutual appreciation and the fellow-junkie club, and Jesus Christ he wasn't kidding about the line of fire because now he's putting her right in the middle of it. Fuck. And she's suddenly thinking this is some kind of test – of loyalty? of resolve? – but it doesn't matter –
"No," she says shakily.
"Are you sure? Because if there's –"
There's a sense of sinking, and she has to clear her throat, her voice still coming out a little hoarse, but she speaks quickly.
"I'm on it."
Automatic responses kick in and she's nodding. Standing up, using her legs like a reflex, out into the corridor where she wanders past crew-members, some of them still grinning and talking loud from the triumphs of the previous day, down to her desk, where she can finally stop, sit, exhale. And there's no respite, no time for head-in-your-hands, because she's starting to coalesce, crystallize, and focus is returning now, and she sits for five full minutes while things clear in the viewfinder…
Locke and JMV dispatched to corporate graveyard.
Harrison – the buddy factor.
Useful for the buy-out but…no. Not enough cash there.
Cash.
Think, damnit.
The money.
Where's the money coming fr-
And five minutes later she's on the phone. By noon she's in a bar off Sutherland, with a needle-thin man who has blonde hair, and a very neat suit, and a slight shake in his hands as he lifts his glass.
She asks very few questions, lets Nathan Rourke do all the talking for nearly an hour, and then finally he's saying 'I really wish we could have had this conversation over dinner' and he almost makes it sound flirtatious except for the fear in his voice. She's nodding, agreeing, her face white and her guts churning, and she just wants to get away from this place as fast as she can, far away, just walking and walking, running, disturbing the pigeons on the curb, bolting up the street, gasping, heedless of alley-mouths and noon-day shadows because Metropolis is full of them, and this is no city to which she belongs.
oOo
'The word gen means 'illusion' or 'apparition'. In India a man who uses conjury is called genjutsushi ('a master of illusion technique'). Everything in this world is but a marionette show. Thus we use the word gen.'
The park is quiet, and she sits on a bench there for a couple of hours, just watching the pigeons and the grass, watching the way people move as the day recedes, and she would have been happy to sit there a little longer but the light was fading and her bladder became demanding, so she ends up going to a hotel bar. Downs the first shot quickly, orders something slower, longs for cigarettes. Sits. Thinks. Watches the evaporation rings on the table-top. There aren't that many – it's a plush hotel, and the ultra-efficient waiter keeps wiping them away.
Now it's eight-thirty, and through sheer inevitability she turns her cell back on. It doesn't take long – there's time to watch the candle-behind-glass flicker, time to look out the vast clear windows and see cab lights travel two blocks at ground level.
Trill.
Pick up.
"Hi," she says softly.
She's half-expecting some sort of furious exclamation, a frantic inquisition. But his voice is low, hard and extremely controlled – it's kind of shocking.
"Come to the penthouse. Where are you now?"
"I'm…I'm at the Wyndham."
"I'll send a car. Be out front in ten minutes."
Click.
She sits with her ear to the phone and bites on her bottom lip, staring into space, listening to buzz for almost half the time it takes the limo to arrive.
The transitions from the hotel to the limo to the penthouse are a series of sensations: warm hotel, cold outside air, vacant humming car interior, chilly wind whipping in front of the penthouse, the dulled neutral foyer. The place is only half-lit after the end of the working day. Her boot heels sound loud on the varnished floor, and the limo driver walks her to the elevator, in spite of the fact that she knows the way. Standing in the elevator on the way up she feels like she's inside a big zero-g bubble, like if she let go of the handrail she would rise up, weightless, a loose collection of atoms.
But that's not going to happen. The elevator pings.
It only takes a second to spot him. He's sunk into a corner of his terracotta suede sofa, with one leg along its length and the other knee drawn up. He's resting a glass of scotch on his kneecap, and watching the liquid change colour as it warms.
She walks over, dumps her bag, and scoops the second glass up off the coffee table. Stands in front of him, and he watches her drain off half the booze before looking at his eyes. When he speaks, it's in a very soft even tone.
"Are you alright?"
"You didn't tell me. Why didn't you tell me, Lex?"
She's taken aback by how her voice is shaking, too quiet. But there's no chance to finish her scotch and take the edge off because he's replying.
"You didn't need to know." He hesitates, then amends. "I didn't want you to know."
"Well I know now." Quavering, wry.
He just nods. Then his mouth turns up sadly at the side.
"You're a good reporter, Chloe."
She can't help it, bursts out laughing. Hard, too raucous.
"Oh, Jesus…" She hiccups, sniffs and turns her head. "Oh god, this is great…"
She slumps down onto the other end of the sofa as he pulls his leg aside. Wipes at her eyes quickly with one hand, then sculls the rest of her scotch. He's propped up now, watching her reactions. Maybe the laughing scared him, because when he meets her eyes again he says the most ridiculous thing ever.
"I'm sorry, Chloe."
She closes her eyes and presses a palm to her forehead.
"Shut up a second, Lex."
Not caring how it makes him feel, because that'll be all aftermath. What she's trying to deal with is the picture, cleared now in her brain, and figuring out exactly where to find him in it. The picture is of him, though, so it's not so much a matter of finding him but rather confirming the positions of all his features. She settles her glass on the table, clears her throat, and starts ticking off things on her fingers.
"Okay, so you get rid of Locke and JMV. Which as far as the city is concerned is probably just a case of better the devil you know, so it doesn't really matter, does it?"
She's not looking at him. He'll pick it up, she's sure. Continuing on.
"And you already had Harrison in pocket, so that was easy. Nate already helped you out at the trial, so Harrison must really owe you big time for you to call in another favour… I'm still a little fuzzy on the details though – was it keeping Nate out of trouble or something?"
She finally skewers his gaze for an answer. He stares hard, licks his lips before replying.
"I made sure he got through rehab."
Chloe nods knowledgeably.
"Of course. Sure, that makes sense." She knows she's being ruthless, but she doesn't care. "Okay, so that's Harrison. But Walter wasn't really financial enough to beef you up for the buy-out, and Lionel's cash is all still locked up in the Caymans, so…"
All this has obviously pushed a button or something because Lex stands abruptly, taking their glasses to the bar nearby. The bottle on the counter loses another two doubles by the time he turns around. It makes sense at this point for him to speak first.
"It was right from the beginning – when Fortuna first bought up the casino and Owens needed backers, I bought in."
Chloe nods again. This has answered one question, so now she just waits. Lex takes a hit of alcohol before going on.
"And no – I didn't know about the porn until one of the accountants broke and told me. That came later, and by the time I found out it was well up and running. It doesn't take long for the pedophiles to start swarming when it comes to that stuff."
He has such an ill-concealed look of revulsion on his face that Chloe can only swallow and stop. But she has to press on, and because he volunteered so much her tone levels off, less scathing by a few degrees.
"So, when Owens got busted you just took over the rest of what you already owned – a quick rub with the lemon, and the invisible ink turned to black, is that it? Somehow you managed to hide your part of the operation from the cops – but hey, that was probably the easy part. And Owens had been kicking over a share of the cash-cleaning business to you for long enough to bankroll the buy-up…" She stares, then can't help it. Closes her eyes and shakes her head. "Jesus, Lex. All those little kids…"
It's like a pain in her heart. She's rubbing her breastbone now, feeling the ache building in her head. When she opens her eyes, he's leaning on the bar, holding his glass so tightly that his knuckles are white, staring at her. And the way he looks, the edge of indignation and anger, is so out of place that something moves in her, clicks into place…
Stop. Blink. Stare.
"Oh, fuck. It was you. Anonymous phone call, my ass – it was –"
"Well what the fuck did you expect me to do?" His voice is a contained explosion in the quiet hollow of the room. Then the calm face, the neutral face, struggles and returns. "Jesus. It was a fucking impossible situation anyway. Owens had gone behind my back, and his 'side interests' were a liability. The phone call was the only sensible solution. And no, I didn't make the call myself if that's what you're thinking."
He drinks to settle himself, then as she watches there's a snap. His face contorts, he turns, and her eyes go large when his scotch glass rockets out of his hand, the force of his throw sending it as far as the marble fireplace. Sound of glass shattering.
"FUCK."
Now he's standing with his face in his hands, and Chloe feels like her world is falling to pieces around her, because this is not normal, this is not Lex, this is not like him at all and so something is terribly, horribly wrong.
"God…" Her words come out soft as she stands and steps tentatively closer, hands reaching a little. "Jesus – Lex, it's okay… C'mon, it's alright…"
When she touches his shoulder he's trembling. Trying not to respond in kind she edges in, but can't take her measure until he releases his hands. And his face is white, and his eyes are hollow, ghostly, as he straightens. She tries reasoning, consoling, even though she doesn't know why.
"Hey, it's okay… I mean, I know about it, but we'll handle it. When Rourke told me about it all I was freaked out, y'know? But I'm fine now, and we can –"
He meets her gaze blearily.
"Rourke is dead."
Chloe freezes.
"What?"
Lex sighs out.
"Rourke is dead. I'm not the only casino shareholder, Chloe. People are protecting their business now. Rourke spoke to a reporter - that made him an expendable asset. And it makes you a target. They don't know about us, and I'm not sure that it would matter if they did. I've gotta get you out of the country."
The blood leaves her face so fast it feels like dying. She has to swallow before she can stammer out a breathless word.
"How much time?"
"About twelve hours, at the outside."
She staggers, but he catches her. Now it's him holding her shoulders.
oOo