“Look. I understand,” Barrett said. He’d been thinking through these same questions during his hours out on the balcony, and he felt reasonably happy with the answers he’d come up with. Happy enough to share them with Culligan. “Here’s the thing, Jack. You have to view everything in context. The context of the prevailing norms in that time and place. Think about it. George Washington owned slaves, but nobody’s agitating to take his face off the dollar bill or to rename the capital. Because slavery was a cultural norm. Thomas Jefferson wrote all men are created equal, but he owned slaves. Hell, he even fucked his, but he’s still revered as one of our founding fathers. Let’s face it. This whole damn country was founded on slavery. Because that was the culture of that time and place. Well, guess what?” Barrett was feeling expansive. “In pockets of Asia today, slavery is still part of the culture. Multinational corporations like ours are always being told to respect and comply with local standards and traditions, and that’s all we did when we monetized those assets.”

Admittedly this was an ex post facto rationalization. When they’d made the decision, all they’d been thinking about was saving the company and thus their jobs. But why was that so wrong? Factory workers were allowed to fight for their jobs, even when violence sometimes erupted. Why not the workers in the executive suite? “Capitalism depends on the exploitation of capital,” he said. “And that includes human capital.”

Culligan was squinting hard. “I don’t know, Barry—”

“It’s all just a matter of degree. A sliding scale. At one end you might have the men on those fishing boats, and at the other you have a young lawyer working twenty hours a day in hopes of making partner. They’re all being exploited. Minimum-wage workers, unpaid interns, the whole gamut.”

“But those men—held captive on a boat in the middle of the ocean for upward of three years—”

“Yes, yes, it’s deplorable. But keep in mind—if not for those men on those fishing boats, Americans would have to pay twice as much for pet food. Anyway, most of those people, men and women, would have ended up being trafficked even if they’d never come to work at PsT. It’s just a fact of life over there.”

“But not over here. And a lot of those girls ended up—”

“No, that was a mistake. Tony admits he dropped the ball there. But to compensate, he’s doing this next bit at a discount.”

“This next bit being . . . ?”

Barrett didn’t answer. “You’ve still got eyes on her, right?”

Culligan didn’t answer, either. “When’s it gonna happen?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know when or who or where. But I know this.” Barrett slapped Culligan on the knee as the limo pulled up to the terminal. “We’ll all sleep a lot better when it’s done.”

Chapter 29

A manila envelope was propped against my front door when I got home late one evening. Alice dove for it, shook it, sniffed it, and took it out into the street to open. She came back and handed it to me. “Just a document. It’s harmless.”