Chapter 48 Dick Games #2
They sat opposite once more on the second tier, neither choosing the lower perch. Devine wiped the wooden backing with an iced towel so it wouldn’t burn his back. Evan watched his eyes. Devine did not overtly check Evan’s reaction to his concession to the heat.
Evan’s back was strong. It had endured parachute landings, meat-shuddering impacts, and the heels of the foremost ashiatsu practitioner in Asakusa.
It could contend with a sauna. Reclining, he pressed the flesh of his shoulder blades to the toasted cedar planks, sirloin sizzling on a grill.
He looked at Luke Devine. He paid attention.
Devine blinked once.
Then gave the faintest shake of the head, a microdisplay of admiration, and he said, “The burn wrecks me.”
He was not, then. He was not playing games. Could a seed of trust be planted between them?
Evan studied him in his old-man swim trunks, the lifted whorl of his hair, the thinning more pronounced here in the naked lights of the sauna.
And lowered his guard by one eighth of a standard deviation.
“Well?” Evan said. “RedLite?”
“Public markets can behave irrationally,” Devine said.
“I don’t. At least not when engaging with them.
So. Here’s what I would do.” His features were strong, his personality baked through them, muscled into place by the repetition of a million expressions.
“They’re reeling right now, in a capital squeeze.
My canaries tell me they’re trying to raise another two hundred fifty million, a hundred through selling stock and one fifty through new debt facility.
The latter I can crush with three well-placed phone calls.
As for the former? Since the cyberattack, the stock is down forty-nine percent. Juicy. But there’s more to go.”
He pressed his palms together and stared at the seams of his pinkies.
“I’d short the stock hard—through proxies, of course, to dodge an SEC prostate exam.
I have unlimited money to cover a short squeeze, so we’re defended there.
Next move would be to make the stock tumble harder.
Before the system got cheese-grated, your associate, Ms. Josephine, made sure to grab all RedLite usernames, and the password hashes, which she cracked with stunning efficiency.
That means we already have the identity of every last lotion connoisseur.
The Brain can cross-index which users have died—I’m guessing at least two percent.
I’d leak those names immediately and widely to key movers in the mainstream media and flood every social-media channel with their user information.
That a) minimizes collateral damage for the living, b) terrorizes the other ninety-eight percent, and c) sends investors, users, and stockholders blitzing for the exits.
Recovery looks unlikely, the future is lost, et cetera.
Which means the stock tanks further, if we’re lucky by north of ninety percent. ”
His breathing had quickened, his words picking up the manic patter Evan was accustomed to.
Devine seemed to notice it, too, allowing the briefest of pauses, but words seized him again as they did.
“I’d cash out my shorts, rebuy the stock at two cents on the dollar off the plummet, stake a majority position, fire the board members, insert my lackies, pull the plug, and let the company evaporate. ”
In the heat, Luke’s face had grown shiny red.
He sat perched on planks of cedar like a roasting fish.
“I’d gut the remaining assets and affiliate companies of all prurient content, part the pieces off for Chinese scrap metal.
The now-unemployed board members and C-suiters will already have had their stock positions crushed, but for a chaser I’d take out billboards in their hometowns featuring their close-up photos and highlighting their role in illicit pornographic exploitation.
Then spin up a C4, name it something cutely banal and alliterative, Concerned Citizens for Civility, make an ad buy on local TV stations and flood the home zip codes of top RedLite executive officers with content featuring faces and favorite fetish videos. ”
Devine swiped at the sweat on his brow but did not pause.
“Then I’d earmark another tranche—twenty, thirty million—to fund consumer-advocacy groups to keep whoever’s still standing tied up in litigation for the next half decade.
We steer the narrative publicly, legally, and legislatively so the courts are forced to arrive at a make-an-example gargantuan settlement, after which we funnel the money back to the sexual-exploitation victims so they can rebuild their lives.
I can set all this in motion with two cups of espresso, a phone, and a focused half hour. ”
At last he stopped.
The sand kept trickling through the hourglass.
A lot of it fell.
“God,” Devine said, annoyed, “are you always this … taciturn?”
More sand moved through the glass pinch point.
“That,” Evan said. “Do all that.”
They sat together until the last of the sand trickled through and then sat for a spell after that.