Chapter 138: Take Care of My Dog. I'll Do the Dirty Work.
Taylor had returned to the room by the time the conversation reached the short-selling report.
The three of them worked through it the way financial professionals worked through things — quickly, with the specific economy of people who understood that every minute of conversation represented a position not yet taken. Taylor sat at the secondary screen, pulling research threads, while Bobby stood at the window and articulated the structure of the argument.
The initial framing Bobby proposed was grounded in Greer's death — the operational head of Decima Technologies, confirmed deceased in the Rome obituaries, whose absence created a demonstrable leadership vacuum at a company whose flagship product required continuous technical direction. Standard corporate governance risk. Clean. Defensible.
Taylor looked up from the screen.
"It's not wrong," Taylor said. "But it's thin. The Southern District is going to look at any significant short position we take against Decima and they're going to look at it hard. A single executive death reads as opportunistic rather than analytical. We need the argument to be structural, not incidental."
Bobby turned from the window.
"The AI angle," he said. "Samaritan's privacy implications. There's been independent research flagging authentication concerns in their architecture for over a year. Security researchers, academic papers, open source analysis. If we build the report around the systemic technical risks rather than the personnel question, we're synthesizing publicly available expert opinion." He looked at Taylor. "That's analysis, not intelligence."
Taylor considered this. "The Vigilance organization published significant documentation on Samaritan's surveillance capacity before they went dark. Their servers are still accessible. That's citable as public record."
"The public concern argument," Bobby said. "A technology company whose flagship product faces documented privacy concerns, organized public opposition, and uncertain federal authorization — that's a legitimate analytical basis for a negative position." He paused. "The argument writes itself if the research supports it."
"It does," Taylor said. "The question is whether the research supports a position large enough to matter."
Bobby looked at David, who had been sitting quietly through the entire exchange with the specific quality of someone who is learning rapidly and has decided that interrupting would slow the process.
"Mr. David," Bobby said. "You've been patient. What do you think of the report we're building?"
David set down his second cup of coffee.
"It's not wrong," he said. "But the framing is still reactive. You're building a case around things that have already happened — Greer's death, existing privacy concerns, documented technical questions. That's a story about a company with problems." He paused. "The better story is a company whose future has been foreclosed. The distinction matters for the position size." He looked at Bobby directly. "What would make the short report genuinely compelling isn't the historical case. It's the forward-looking one. Specifically — what happens to Decima's federal authorization trajectory when the relevant decision-makers have already moved against it?"
Bobby's expression sharpened.
"You're describing someone on record opposing the authorization," he said carefully.
"I'm describing a situation where the information already exists and is verifiable," David said. "The Undersecretary of Homeland Security rejected Samaritan's permanent deployment authorization in a formal departmental meeting. That rejection is a matter of record within the relevant committee structure." He paused. "And Frank Underwood, the House Majority Whip, has stated his position on Samaritan's authorization to multiple members of his caucus. His position is that a surveillance AI controlled by a private company represents a fundamental conflict with congressional oversight authority, and that the Democratic caucus he leads will oppose permanent authorization." He looked at Bobby. "Those aren't secrets. They're positions that haven't been reported yet because the reporters haven't had the right conversations with the right people." He paused. "If your report synthesizes those positions from authoritative sourcing, the SEC can review every line of it and find legitimate journalistic foundation for each claim."
Taylor had stopped typing.
Bobby was looking at David with the specific expression of someone who has just received information that requires recategorization of the person who delivered it.
"How do you have those positions?" Bobby said. Not aggressively — the genuine question of someone trying to understand the architecture of what they're being offered.
David reached into his jacket and produced his phone. He opened two video files and set the phone on the desk, sliding it across.
"The first is the Undersecretary's departmental meeting," he said. "The second is Underwood, in a setting where he was speaking candidly. Both are unedited. Both are verifiable." He paused. "Before you ask — the recordings were obtained through methods that have no connection to either man's official office or their communications staff. The Machine accessed the relevant systems directly. Neither recording constitutes intercepted official communication in the legal sense." He looked at Bobby steadily. "Your attorneys can review the acquisition chain. The content is accurate."
Bobby picked up the phone.
He watched the first video with the focused attention of someone reading a document that has significant implications. The Undersecretary's departmental rejection was explicit — formal language, the specific register of an official position being stated for the record. He watched the second video.
Frank Underwood on a comfortable sofa, speaking with the relaxed candor of a man who had decided the audience was trustworthy. The House Majority Whip's position on Samaritan: categorical opposition to permanent authorization, contempt for a president he believed capable of trading national security infrastructure for private benefit, the specific cold anger of someone who had been excluded from a deal he felt entitled to participate in.
Bobby handed the phone to Taylor without comment.
Taylor watched both videos and said nothing for a moment.
Then: "If we pixelate the faces and describe them as sources rather than identified individuals, we're in standard investigative journalism territory. The content is the news. The identity of the source is protected." Taylor looked at Bobby. "The report cites documented positions from senior federal officials speaking candidly about Samaritan's authorization prospects. That's a legitimate analytical foundation for a short position of any size."
Bobby looked at David.
"You walked in here with this," Bobby said. It was not quite an accusation. More the observation of someone who has just realized that the conversation they thought was exploratory had actually been linear the entire time.
"I walked in here knowing what the report needed," David said. "I wanted to hear how you'd build it without the videos first, because I needed to know whether you were thinking about this correctly before I gave you the rest of it." He paused. "You were."
Taylor said: "The Underwood footage. The last section — he references something called the Human Purge Plan. And he implies the President has been offered sufficient consideration to support it."
"Yes," David said.
"That's not in the short-selling report," Taylor said.
"No," David agreed. "That's a separate matter. One thing at a time."
Bobby was quiet for a moment. He looked at the phone, then at the city through the window, then at David.
"You edited what you showed me," Bobby said.
"I showed you what's relevant to the Decima position," David said. "The rest of it I'm handling through a different channel." He looked at Bobby directly. "You're a trader. You understand that different information belongs in different positions. The Decima short is one position. The Purge bill is another. They're connected but they're not the same trade."
Bobby absorbed this.
He crossed to his desk and sat down.
"Taylor," he said. "Get the research team started on the public record synthesis. Everything we can cite openly — the security researchers, the academic papers, the Vigilance documentation, the congressional committee record on Samaritan. Build the foundation. I'll review the draft before close of business."
Taylor left without ceremony, already on a phone, the specific energy of someone who had been given a clear task and was moving on it.
Bobby looked at David.
"The agreement," Bobby said. "Written or verbal?"
"Verbal," David said. "Between two people who understand that a written agreement creates paper that neither of us wants to explain." He paused. "You know what I can do. You've seen the machine demonstration. You've seen the videos. You know that the information channel I'm describing is real and that the alternative to a productive relationship with me is a considerably less comfortable arrangement." He looked at Bobby steadily. "I'm not threatening you. I'm being honest about the landscape." He paused. "In return, you get continuous intelligence, freedom from the High Table's protection fee arrangement, and first position on every market-relevant development we identify." He picked up the gold coin from the edge of the desk where Bobby had left it and held it up. "The High Table's authority in your life ends when the High Table ends. We're working on that. In the meantime, you're working with us rather than paying them." He set the coin back down. "That's the trade."
Bobby looked at the coin.
He looked at David.
"The protection fee," Bobby said. "Axe Capital has been paying it for eleven years. Seven figures annually. To an organization that has never provided anything except the assurance that they wouldn't kill me." He paused. "You're telling me that organization no longer has the people to collect it."
"The Camorra Family's senior leadership was substantially addressed forty-eight hours ago," David said. "The organization has no operational head, no succession, and no senior management to authorize collection of anything." He paused. "What remains is regional infrastructure in the process of determining its own future. None of them have the standing to enforce legacy arrangements." He looked at Bobby. "The fee is over. What comes next is what we're agreeing to right now."
Bobby was quiet for a long moment.
He stood up and extended his hand.
David shook it.
"Don't disappoint me," Bobby said.
"I won't," David said. "Harold Finch will contact your technology team within twenty-four hours. He'll work out the operational details of the information channel — the specific protocols, the communication architecture, the verification system." He paused. "One thing to know about Harold: he is the most careful person you will ever work with. Whatever he tells you about the system's limitations is accurate. Don't try to push past them." He moved toward the door. "The report needs to be out before the market opens tomorrow."
"It will be," Bobby said.
David walked out.
Frank was parked on the street outside — the specific positioning of someone who had been waiting in a vehicle in a city for long enough that he'd found the spot that made departure easiest and had been prepared to leave from it for the past hour.
He looked at David through the passenger window.
"How'd it go?" Frank said.
"Option two," David said, getting in.
Frank pulled into traffic with the easy confidence of someone who had driven in New York long enough to have developed opinions about it.
"Where to?" Frank said.
"John's house," David said.
Frank glanced at him. "His house burned down."
"I know," David said. "That's where he is."
The ruins of John's brownstone had the specific quality of a structure that had been destroyed deliberately rather than accidentally — the RPG damage was visible in the pattern of the collapse, the specific geometry of a shaped charge that had been aimed rather than placed. What remained was the outer walls and the kind of interior debris that preserved the shape of a life without preserving the life itself.
John was sitting in what had been the living room, on a section of floor that was still structurally sound, with Andy beside him. The dog had the compact, focused quality of a pit bull that had been through enough that ambient chaos no longer registered as alarming — he sat with his flank against John's leg and watched Frank and then David come through the wreckage with the calm attention of a dog that had calibrated its threat assessment to a very specific register.
John had heard Frank approaching. He hadn't heard David.
He registered this — the specific significance of someone moving through debris without producing the sound that debris produced when someone moved through it — and filed it in the category he'd been building for David since the catacomb tunnel in Rome.
He looked at them both.
"Santino's dead," John said. It was acknowledgment, not conversation.
"Yes," David said.
"The bounty doesn't die with him," John said. "It was deposited through the Continental's clearing system before he issued it. Seventy million is sitting in an account that pays out to whoever produces the result. Santino being gone doesn't change the payout structure." He looked at his hands. "Every Killer in the network who wants seventy million is still pointed at me. Which is most of them." He paused. "I can't move freely. I can't engage on your behalf. I can't do anything useful to you in the current situation." He looked at David. "So why are you here?"
"The earpiece," David said.
John was quiet for a moment.
He reached into his jacket pocket and held it up. He'd kept it since Rome — hadn't put it in since the museum, but hadn't discarded it either.
"I know what it does," John said. "I felt the difference in the museum. Having the complete picture." He paused. "I've been operating without it for thirty years. Every engagement I've survived, every position I've held, every person I've gotten through — I did it without knowing everything. I did it by being better than the information." He looked at the earpiece. "With that in, it's different. The environment becomes legible in a way it isn't otherwise." He paused. "Which changes what's possible."
"Yes," David said.
"Which is why you gave it to me before the museum," John said. "You wanted me to feel the difference before I had to make a decision about working with you."
"Yes," David said.
John set the earpiece on the debris beside him.
He looked at the ruins of the room — the shape of a home that had been built around a person and a life and a future that had all ended at different points and for different reasons.
He looked at Andy.
"Decima Technologies," David said. "Their operational infrastructure in New York. We're running a financial operation that will produce a window — the company's institutional backing is collapsing, the Samaritan virus is propagating through their authentication system, and the market is about to receive information that revalues the company at near zero." He paused. "In that window, the physical infrastructure still exists. The servers, the personnel, the operational capacity — all of it is still present in New York even as the financial and technical architecture collapses around it." He looked at John. "I need someone to address the physical layer."
John looked at him with the expression he used when someone had described a task in terms that made it sound manageable and he was assessing the gap between the description and the reality.
"All of them," John said.
"The operational staff who know what Samaritan is and what it does," David said. "Not the administrative support, not the building services. The technical team, the intelligence analysts, the operational security personnel. The people who understand what they've been building and who would rebuild it given the opportunity and the resources." He paused. "That's the layer that needs to be addressed."
John was quiet.
"And after this," he said. He said it the way he'd said it to the Bowery King — not quite a question, not quite a statement, the specific formulation of someone who knows the answer but needs to hear it said out loud.
"The bounty doesn't disappear until the system that issued it disappears," David said. "That's what we're working toward. The Camorra Family's collapse is the first weight on the structure. Decima going dark is the second. The High Table losing two seats in the same sequence produces the contradictions we've been building toward." He paused. "John. The retirement you want isn't available in the current configuration of the world you live in. I can't give you what doesn't exist yet." He looked at John steadily. "What I can give you is the machine's guidance, a secure base, and the knowledge that every operation you run with us moves the endgame forward." He paused. "And after the endgame — you get to decide what comes next. That's not a Marker. That's not an obligation. That's just the deal."
John was quiet for a long time.
He reached down and put his hand on Andy's head. The dog's ears came forward. John looked at the ruins of the room.
"When I came back here," he said, "I thought about Helen. About what she would have said about all of this." He paused. "She would have told me I was being an idiot for sitting in a burned-down building feeling sorry for myself when there was work that needed doing." He almost smiled. "She was usually right about that kind of thing."
He picked up the earpiece.
He looked at David.
"One condition," John said.
"Go ahead," David said.
John looked at Andy.
"Take care of my dog," he said. "While I'm working. Someone I trust, somewhere he's safe." He paused. "He's been through enough."
David looked at Andy.
Andy looked back at David with the calm assessment of a dog that had decided its judgment of people was reliable and was applying it.
"Caesar," David said.
Frank looked at him.
"Caesar is at Walter's scrapyard," David said. "He's been asking about medical ethics and what comes next. He's going to need something to do while he figures that out." He looked at Andy. "A dog is something to do."
Frank said: "You're going to give a cognitively enhanced chimpanzee a pit bull to look after."
"Caesar will appreciate the responsibility," David said. "And Andy will appreciate the company." He looked at John. "Walter's facility is secure. The Machine monitors it continuously. Andy will be safe there."
John looked at the dog for a long moment.
Then he stood up — managing the inventory of current injuries with the practiced economy of someone who had stopped treating pain as a signal and started treating it as information — and put the earpiece in his jacket pocket.
He reached down and scratched Andy's ears once, with the deliberate care of someone performing a ritual.
"When do we start?" he said.
"Tomorrow morning," David said. "Tonight you sleep somewhere that isn't a burned building. The Continental is still available to you until the excommunication is formally processed — Winston hasn't issued the paperwork yet, which gives you forty-eight hours of sanctuary." He paused. "Use them."
John looked at the ruins one more time.
Then he walked out through the debris the same way he walked through everything — forward, without looking back, the dog following at his heel with the quiet loyalty of something that had decided this was the direction and was committed to it.
Frank watched them go.
"Caesar's going to love that dog," Frank said.
"Yes," David said.
"How do you know?"
David looked at the ruins of the room — the shape of a life that had been destroyed and was in the process of becoming the foundation of something else.
"Caesar asked Walter for reading material on medical ethics," David said. "He's thinking about what it means to have a responsibility to something outside himself. That's a mind that's ready for a dog." He paused. "And Andy's been following John Wick through the most dangerous city in America. He's ready for anything."
Frank considered this.
"You think about everything," Frank said.
"I try," David said.
They walked out through the ruins and into the New York afternoon, which was doing what New York afternoons did — running at full capacity, indifferent to the several simultaneous operations converging toward resolution within its geography, each of them moving at the pace that the work required.
The Machine was running.
The short report was being written.
The Samaritan virus was propagating.
And John Wick was walking through New York with a pit bull and an earpiece, pointed at Decima Technologies, with the complete tactical picture of everything around him delivered in real time to the ear canal of the most capable person David had ever personally encountered.
The High Table's countdown was running.
David checked his phone.
Harold: Machine confirms Samaritan node authentication beginning to fragment. Estimated forty percent degradation. Decima's internal monitoring has not yet identified the cause.
David: Timeline?
Harold: Full fragmentation in thirty-one hours. Shaw's physical delivery would accelerate to six.
David typed: Shaw goes tomorrow morning. Same window as John. Coordinate with Root on the camera feeds.
He put the phone in his pocket.
Frank opened the car door.
"Where now?" Frank said.
"The base," David said. "There's a conversation I've been putting off."
Frank pulled into traffic.
"Which conversation?" Frank said.
"Caesar," David said. "He's been waiting long enough."
End of Chapter 138
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