Chapter Twenty

You point the rifle at his chest.

Ronald Prine stares at you. You see the question come to his face. He doesn't know who you are. He has never seen you before. He is wondering who you are and what you want and which one of his brilliant go-to lines will work for him.

Because life has always worked for him.

You smile. You love this part.

"Take my watch," he says to you. He is rattled, sure, but not as rattled as he should be. There is still the faux bravado of a soft man who has never known tough. This is just a small problem, he thinks, because all his problems up until now have been small, inconsequential. He'll get out of it, he's sure. He always has in the past. For guys like him, things just seem to go right. They live in a delusion of meritocracy. They believe that they have supernatural charisma, charm, and innate talents that separate them from the rest of us mere mortals.

"It's a Vacheron Constantin timepiece," he tells you. "My father bought it in 1974. Do you know how much they go for?"

You shouldn't be enjoying this so much. "Tell me," you say.

"Probably seventy-five grand."

You give a soft, impressed whistle. Then you say, "I'm not here for that."

"Why are you here then?"

"I'm here," you say, "for Jackie Newton."

You watch for a reaction. This, you are sure, will be your favorite part. He doesn't let you down. Bafflement crowds his face. It's not an act, which makes it all the better or worse, depending on where you stand. "Who?"

He really doesn't know her.

Should you tell him?

When Jackie Newton was eight years old, her mother ran off with Gus Deloy, a coworker at the old Circuit City on Bustleton Avenue in Philadelphia. Jackie remembered her mother sitting on a suitcase to close it, the lipstick smeared on her teeth, telling her daughter, "It's best this way, I'm a shit mom," before hurriedly dragging that suitcase along with her dad's old army duffel bag down the cracked front walk and piling it all in the back of Gus's Jeep. She didn't look back as they sped off, but Gus did. He gave Jackie a reluctant half salute, an almost apologetic look on his face. Maybe Jackie's mom would have changed her mind or regretted abandoning her daughter eventually. Maybe she would have come home or asked to see Jackie again. But for three years, there wasn't a word. Then Jackie's dad, Ed Newton, got a call that Mom had died in a car crash in Pasadena.

No word on the fate of half-salute Gus.

It wasn't all bad for Jackie. Ed Newton raised Jackie the best he could. He was a good man, surprisingly gentle and patient with her. She was his whole world. You could see it every time he trudged through the door at the end of his shift. His face lit up when he saw Jackie. The rest of the world? It could go to hell, as far as Ed was concerned. He didn't hate. He just didn't really care. His daughter was his everything, and like the best of fathers, he somehow managed to make her feel that without suffocating her.

Ed Newton worked long hours doing hardwood flooring for TST Construction, mostly on new residential complexes on the outskirts of Philly. He didn't mind hard work. He loved tools and making things with his hands, but his bosses were cheap rat bastards, always trying to cut corners, always trying to squeeze the last bit of juice out of anyone who worked for them.

"It sucks working for someone," Ed Newton oft repeated to his daughter between bites as they sat at the Formica kitchen table. "Be your own boss, Jackie."

That was the dream.

When Jackie was ten, Ed Newton bought her a leathercraft suede tool belt. It was the most beautiful thing Jackie had ever owned. It smelled like pinewood and sawdust. She treated the leather with oils three times a week. She wore it all the time. Even now. Even more than a quarter century after he first gave it to her. When she was eleven, Dad managed to buy a small plot of land outside the Poconos. Every weekend father and daughter would go out there and build Dad's dream hunting-and-fishing cabin. Jackie always wore the tool belt. Ed was a patient teacher, and she was a quick study. They worked mostly in silence. The work was Zen for them both.

The two of them had plans too. One day, Ed said, they'd open their own contracting company. The two of them. They'd work for themselves. They'd be their own bosses.

When she was eighteen, Jackie got a full scholarship to Montgomery County Community College. She took finance courses, something her father encouraged so they could shore up the fiscal side of running a construction firm. Jackie worked various construction jobs after graduation to learn the business inside and out. The hope was that if they scrimped and saved, they'd be able to open their own shop in three to five years.

It took longer than they anticipated.

Ed put a second mortgage on the house in Philadelphia and despite Jackie's protests, he sold the dream cabin they'd built outside the Poconos. By the time they raised enough capital to get a business loan, Jackie was thirty-three, Ed was sixty-two—but a dream delayed is not a dream denied.

One day, Ed Newton burst through the front door with a stack of business cards that read:

Newton and Daughter Construction Services, LLP

Ed Newton

Jackie Newton

General Contracting, Home Remodeling, Flooring

The logo on the upper right-hand corner was a little house with windows as eyes and a wide door as the smile. Jackie had never seen her father so happy, and for the first six months, things went surprisingly well. The Nesbitt Brothers needed last-minute help with a housing development in Bryn Mawr. Newton and Daughter kicked ass on the project, bringing it in under budget. That job got them some good referrals. Other jobs followed. Ed and Jackie hired three full-time staff and leased office space in a warehouse on Castor Avenue.

Newton and Daughter were still small-time with a lowercase s, but they were moving in the right direction.

After a year, their fine work and excellent reputation got on the radar of Ronald Prine, a major Philadelphia real estate mogul. Prine's people invited Ed to put in a bid on hardwood floor work for the new, upscale Prine skyscraper on Arch Street. It was a huge job, too big for them really, but it would be a prestigious get and a chance to put Newton and Daughter on the map.

Ed and Jackie spent two weeks working out the numbers and creating a full PowerPoint presentation for the Prine conglomerate, but their initial bid, according to Prine's people, came in too high. Ed Newton went back to his office. He sharpened his pencil and lowered their bid. Prine's people still balked.

They're smart businessmen, Ed explained to his daughter. That was why conglomerates like Prine's were so successful—they know how to squeeze every dollar. Jackie wasn't so sure. The job was too unwieldy, and now the margins were far too low. She didn't like or trust Prine's people. She had heard stories about smaller contractors like them being stiffed.

But Ed wouldn't hear of it. A prominent job like this would be incredible publicity for them. It would give Newton and Daughter legitimacy that money couldn't buy. If they could break even on something like this, Ed told her—heck, even if they lost a dollar or two—they'd come out ahead.

After lowering their numbers one more time, Newton and Daughter won the bid.

The job was all-consuming. It took everything out of them in every way, but hey, they were playing in the major leagues now. Dad loved that. He walked into O'Malley's Pub with his back a little straighter, his smile a little wider. He got congratulatory slaps on the back from his old coworkers. They wanted to buy him drinks.

Like so many things, it was all good until it wasn't.

First off, Prine was late on the down payment. The money was coming, they were repeatedly told. This was the multinational conglomerate's standard operating procedure, they were assured. Just get started on the job. And so they did. Ed took out another loan to buy the flooring from his favorite sawmill in Hazlehurst, Georgia. A little more expensive but worth it. Ed and Jackie turned down other jobs, good jobs, to focus solely on the Prine skyscraper. It was a hard job with lots of red tape, delays, overruns, cost issues.

In the end, they'd lose money, but the hardwood flooring was top-notch, impeccable. Ed and Jackie took tremendous pride in what they'd done. They'd had their backs to the wall and showed they could play with the big boys.

You can guess the rest, can't you?

Prine stiffed them. Not a little bit. Not a chisel. He simply didn't pay them. When they finished the job and presented the final invoice, Prine ignored it. He didn't even bother to lie, to say the money was coming, to claim it would just be another week. He didn't even offer up the hoary chestnut that the check was in the mail. Ed Newton sent another invoice. Then another. Weeks passed. Then months. Ed and Jackie made phone calls, but no one with any authority would get on the line. They showed up at the office, but security wouldn't allow them on the premises. Left with no other option, Ed and Jackie ended up hiring an attorney appropriately named Richard Fee. Prine ignored the attorney too. More months passed. They eventually had no choice but to sue the Prine Organization. It wasn't David versus Goliath—it was David versus a thousand Goliaths. Prine's lawyers, a massive team of them, swarmed and overwhelmed them. They drowned Ed and Jackie in paperwork. They submitted constant motions. They made outrageous demands on discovery. Ed and Jackie's legal fees started piling up. Richard Fee dropped out once the money ran out. When Ed and Jackie tried to dig in their heels, Prine's people bad-mouthed their work, just straight-up lied about shoddy craftsmanship and needing to redo. Newton and Daughter's reputation was left in tatters. After two more months, Prine finally offered to settle for twenty cents on the dollar. Ed refused.

You know the rest, don't you?

They lost their business. They lost the house. Eventually, to pay off a small percentage of their growing debt, the bankruptcy courts forced them to take a deal that gave them fourteen cents on the dollar. As part of the settlement, Ed and Jackie were forced to sign nondisclosure agreements, so that they couldn't tell anyone what Prine or his organization had done to them.

In April of this year, Ed Newton suffered a debilitating stroke. Maybe it was just his age or a lifetime of not eating right. Maybe it wasn't connected at all to the lawsuit or all the losses. But Jackie didn't believe that. It was Prine. What he had done to her father. What he had done to them.

She fantasized about revenge, but of course, that would never happen.

They moved into a low-income housing development. Jackie ended up working for Ed's old bosses at TST Construction at a reduced hourly rate.

They had nothing. Almost nothing. But one thing Jackie kept:

Her father's hunting rifle.

You—you who learned her story and saw an opportunity in it—have the rifle in your hands now.

You are pointing it at Prine's chest.

"Who are you?" Prine asks. "What do you want?"

You had wanted this mission to go in reverse—kill Jackie, pin it on Prine—but that would have been very difficult. Prine had never even known the woman whose life he had ruined. He didn't even know Jackie's name.

There'd be no motive.

"Look," Prine says to you, "whoever you are, we can make this right. I have a lot of money—"

You pull the trigger.

You anticipated a big recoil, and you got one. The slug blows a giant hole through the rich man's chest. Money does a lot for a man, but it doesn't stop a bullet. Prine is dead before he hits the ground. You drive back to the low-income project in Philadelphia. You have a key to the Newton place. When Jackie left her key at work one day, you took it, duplicated it, and put it back without her ever knowing. You can enter and go as you please now.

And as always, you planned.

That's how you got her father's rifle this morning. That's how you got access to Jackie's dated computer where you could send the Prine Organization emails threatening violence for what they had done to Jackie and her father.

You use the key again now. The TV is on. It always is during the day. You tiptoe past the bedroom where Ed Newton will probably spend his final days.

You found the unloaded rifle in the closet toward the back. You return it there now.

You didn't add a DNA tie-in this time. The rifle and threatening emails and messages should be enough. Jackie might have an alibi—you couldn't cover all the bases, what with the rush to get this done—but you know that's unlikely to sway anyone.

Ironically, if Jackie Newton were rich, if she had Prine's money, this wouldn't be enough. She'd probably get off. She'd hire a team of top lawyers who would buddy up to the right judges and cops and politicians and heck, it might not even go to trial.

Still, Jackie might get lucky. She might have an airtight alibi. She might get assigned a public defender who cared. She may not end up spending the rest of her life in prison.

In short, you are giving Jackie Newton a fighting chance.

And that's something you've never given to anyone else.