Steve Martini - Double Tap

Havlitz is pushing him out the door.

“I don’t know how long I’ve got. I’ve been filling out applications, looking for another job,” he says. “I don’t know if Chapman’s death had anything to do with the company. That is what you want to know, isn’t it?”

I nod.

I suspect Herman can’t hear a word we’re saying, but from his expression he can tell we’re getting to the nitty-gritty.

“That day in the office, before Havlitz cut you off, you said Chapman kept personal control over the IFS project?”

“Right.”

“She didn’t delegate any of it to anybody else?”

He shakes his head. “She had programmers working on it, of course, a good-sized team, but she was the one who held all the pieces. She was the one who knew how they fit. The final architecture was hers.”

“That sounds like a heavy load if she’s running the company,” I say.

“She had a problem with delegation,” says Klepp. “Whenever there was any problem she grabbed it, tried to fix it herself.”

“So she still wrote software?”

“Sometimes. Not often,” he says. “It got worse after Walt Eagan died. My predecessor at R amp; D. He passed on of cancer last year. Eagan walked on water as far as Chapman was concerned. Part of my problem,” he says. “How do you fill shoes like that?”

“Did Eagan have any part of IFS?”

He shakes his head. “They’d been together since the beginning, the days back in Virginia. Walt oversaw all the other government contracts for software, anything that wasn’t defense. We do stuff on education, motor vehicle licensing, elections, mostly special programs for number crunching ordered up by the states or Congress. Walt had been trying to wrap up a package on elections. Some district boundaries for Congress. When he died, there was a lot of chaos. Things started falling through the cracks.

“Chapman was under a lot of pressure, in part because she wouldn’t let anybody else help. Toward the end, Walt was in a lot of pain. I know he was on a lot of medications. He was trying to work as long as he could. I don’t know why, except that he was devoted to Chapman. But at the end he was making mistakes.

“When he died, I tried to pick up the slack. I told her some of the stuff he’d done, that the numbers didn’t add up. The software was out of sync with the raw census data. I told her it wasn’t a problem, I’d take care of it. She told me to put the file on her desk, she’d do it. The company was heading downhill because the CEO was getting lost in details. She couldn’t let go. It’s the way she was.”

“I was told that toward the end she was having a lot of problems with people at the Pentagon over the IFS program,” I say.

“You mean General Satz?”

“Yes. Did you ever meet him?”

He shakes his head. “She wouldn’t let anybody near him. Especially at the end. Like he had the plague. Chapman seemed almost paranoid about it.”

“Do you have any idea what the problem was between them?”

He shakes his head, shrugs. The music is getting louder. “Shouting matches over the phone, I know. People in the outer office heard little bits. Chapman had a temper and she could lose it. What I was told, Satz coulda heard her yelling in Washington without picking up the phone. It was the morning after one of the networks did a piece on IFS and the threat to personal privacy. They mentioned Isotenics and used some file footage showing Chapman entering the Pentagon for a meeting with some brass. I guess she felt the Defense Department could handle the heat. Nobody was gonna put the Pentagon out of business.

“But a private company like Isotenics, that was another matter. Our stock dropped like a rock after the story. She had her secretary place a call to Satz. I was told he avoided her for two days.” He smiles and takes a drink. “She finally ran him down, screaming about how they were making her and her company look like they were doing nothing but making spyware, like she didn’t know how Satz and Company were gonna use her product. Lady was funny,” he says. “She didn’t care what you did so long as the result was good. But if she got caught in the crosshairs, baby, you better look out.”

“You say there were people in the outer office who overheard-”

“ Harold !”

The music may be loud, but the tone in the voice causes Herman to jump in his seat. When I turn I see the red hair and the fire in her eyes. Karen Rogan is standing on the level just below us, a few feet away, looking through the railing with an expression that could melt iron.

“What are you doing?” she says.

“Karen.” Klepp knows he’s in trouble.

“Have you lost your mind?” she says. “And you. .” She looks at me. “You know something? Harold has a family. If Victor finds out he’s sitting here talking to you, he’s going to get fired. And you’re going to be responsible.”

I can tell by the look on Herman’s face, he’s wondering who opened the door and let the wildcat in.

“We were just having a drink,” I tell her. “Would you like to join us?”

She gives me a look to kill.

“I gotta go,” says Klepp. “Excuse me.” He slides toward Herman, who gets up to let him out.

Karen moves toward the steps and waits for him to come down, then turns to give me one more death stare over her shoulder as they walk away.

“Give me a second.” I leave Herman at the table and head after them. I catch Karen Rogan by the arm as she’s sliding through the crowd. She turns toward me, then jerks her arm out of my hand. Klepp doesn’t seem to notice. He keeps moving toward the door.

She stands on the dance floor looking at me with an expression that says she’d like to hit me.

“Klepp had no idea I was going to be here,” I tell her. “I was just getting deep background.”

“Good for you. You know, Havlitz comes in here all the time. Harold’s career is hanging by a thread. If Victor sees him talking with you, he’s finished. Harold is a nice guy. I don’t want to see him lose his job and, worse, get blackballed in the industry. It’s a very small world,” she says. “Tell me you’re not going to call him as a witness!”

“In case you haven’t noticed, my client’s life is dangling by a thread. I’m afraid I can’t make promises I might not be able to keep.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing.”

She doesn’t believe me.

“He’s having trouble filling Eagan’s shoes. Chapman wouldn’t let him take over and do the work when his boss died. She was a control freak. I don’t think any of this is classified information.” I don’t mention the shouting match between Chapman and Satz over the phone. My guess is that Karen Rogan, being Chapman’s gatekeeper, probably already knows about it. This may have been where Klepp got the information in the first place. “I’ll tell you what I will do. I won’t say anything to anyone about my conversation with him, and if I can avoid it-if I can find the information I’m looking for elsewhere-I won’t call him as a witness.”

She softens just a little around the eyes. “You’ll leave him alone?”

“If I can. Is there any chance that we could have a drink sometime, perhaps over dinner? Somewhere private, out of the way?”

“If you’re thinking I can tell you anything, you’re wrong,” she says.

“You can’t blame me for trying to eat my way up the evidentiary food chain.”

She smiles a kind of bewitching and bemused grin. “If you can spare Harold, I’m sure his family would appreciate it. And so would I.” Then she turns and walks away.

Herman comes up behind me. He has already settled up with the waitress, signed the tab. “I suppose that means our basketball date with Harold is off?” he says.