Chapter 5 - The Master Lease
Harrison Sterling turned back to Marcus. "Call Arthur. Put him on speaker."
Marcus pulled a secondary encrypted handset from his overcoat pocket, tapped a single digit, and held it aloft between his thumb and forefinger. The connection chirped once, followed by the immediate, breathless voice of Arthur Vance—a man whose name was carved into the cornerstones of half the commercial banks in the Loop.
"Harrison? Good God, Harrison, where have you been?!" Arthur Vance's voice crackled through the speaker, high and frantic. "The board has been in an emergency session since seven this morning! The brokers in London said you walked out of the Drake Hotel without your security detail—"
"I was having lunch, Arthur," Harrison said, his voice flat as a frozen canal.
"Lunch? Where?"
"At your café in Union Station," Harrison replied. "The one with the yellow ties and the seven-dollar coffee."
A beat of dead silence hung over the line. Even the distant rattle of the luggage carts seemed to fade into the background.
"Harrison... what are you talking about?"
"Your nephew just terminated an employee, Arthur. A young man named Jake Mercer. He fired him because Jake gave me half a turkey sandwich while I was sitting on the floor shivering."
"He... what?"
Harrison took two steps toward Gordon, his heavy boots crunching faintly over the salt grains on the floor. Gordon backed up until his shoulder blades hit the mahogany trim of his counter, his eyes darting frantically toward the station doors where the two black Suburbans idle menacingly outside.
"Your nephew informed me," Harrison continued, his tone conversational, "that company protocols do not permit the feeding of derelicts within five feet of the executive macchiato lounge. He cited the operational manual. He mentioned that the company compactor is the only authorized destination for unused calories."
"Harrison, please, Gordon is an idiot, he’s young, he doesn't know who—"
"He knew who Jake was," Harrison interrupted, the coldness in his voice dropping the temperature of the arcade by ten degrees. "Jake was a boy with nineteen dollars in his pocket who hadn't eaten since dawn, working a double shift to pay for his mother’s medicine in Cicero. Your nephew knew that, Arthur. And he fired him anyway, because Jake believed that keeping an old man from freezing to death was more important than the Grand Track Experience."
Harrison looked down at his watch—a battered steel military diver's watch that had survived thirty years of North Sea oil platforms.
"It is twelve-fifteen, Arthur."
"Harrison, wait, we can fix this, I’ll fire Gordon right now, I’ll make the boy the regional manager—"
"Under Section 9 of the Chicago Terminal Master Operating Lease," Harrison said, ignoring the pleading voice coming from the speaker, "the primary leaseholder retains the absolute right to terminate all commercial subleases without notice in the event of gross moral negligence, public endangerment, or willful degradation of the station's historical charter. As of twelve-sixteen, Midwest Transit Hospitality is evicted from this terminal."
"Harrison, you can't! That’s thirty million dollars in infrastructure—"
"You have six hours to clear your inventory from all twenty-two locations, Arthur. If your trucks are still on the Canal Street loading dock at six o'clock, my security team will seize the dry goods and deliver them to the Pacific Garden Mission."
Harrison nodded once to Marcus.
Marcus tapped the screen. The call vanished into the digital ether.
Gordon Vance had slid down the mahogany counter until he was sitting on the floor, his yellow tie crooked, his hands flat against the travertine, his mouth opening and closing like a fish on a pier.
Harrison didn't look down at him. He turned his full attention back to Jake, who stood with his canvas jacket bunched in his fists, his face completely pale beneath the yellow lights.
"Jake," Harrison said gently.
May you like
"Sir... I... I don't know what to say," Jake whispered.
"You don't have to say anything, son," Harrison said, extending his hand. "We have an appointment on Wacker Drive. My attorney is waiting, and we have a great deal of family business to discuss."
