Robert Bennett - The Company Man

“I didn’t want any interruptions,” said Brightly, his voice fruity and jovial as though they were discussing news at the club.

“Or perhaps so I wouldn’t hear what they were thinking?” asked Hayes.

Brightly’s easy smile didn’t twitch a bit. But then, however much Hayes needled, it almost never did. Brightly was an impenetrable wall of a man, physically and spiritually. He was six feet tall with bulky shoulders and the build of a powerful man happily gone to seed. He was somewhere in his early fifties, but his head was crowned with leonine, prematurely white hair. He always had the smile of a boy just leaving grade school, wickedly delighted at the way the world was perpetually coming to his favor, which perhaps for Brightly it was. Hayes knew very little about him, but he’d heard he’d cut his teeth in Africa during the Boer Wars, when his salesmanship to the Boer Republics had pushed the war in their favor. At least until Britain put up a better bid, and it all went to pieces for them. It was supposedly after Britain annexed the Republics that Brightly orchestrated McNaughton’s unspoken alliance with the British Empire. After all, it was said, since McNaughton was clearly going to be the dominant empire of the coming years, they might as well learn a few tricks from an old hand. Some even said Brightly had sold arms to the Boers just to get Her Majesty’s attention and attract a bid.

“Nonsense,” said Brightly. “Our secrets are, naturally, your secrets. You’re company, after all. So what can I do for you?” As Hayes came before him, Brightly checked his watch once more.

“I want to know what we’re doing with the unions,” said Hayes.

“With the unions?” said Brightly, faintly confused. “That’s obvious. We’re investigating sabotage and propaganda.”

“Yes, yes,” said Hayes. “But we’re not arresting any of them. I went to Payroll today. All of the men we identified as saboteurs are still working. Still coming in for their shifts. We’re still paying them, for God’s sake. Doesn’t seem to add up.”

“That assumes we’re doing simple addition,” said Brightly. “You’re thinking too small.”

“Am I? Then please, broaden my mind.”

“Hm. How far would you say the union infiltration goes, Hayes?” asked Brightly cheerily. “How far do you know, for sure?”

Hayes shrugged.

“Exactly,” said Brightly. “We don’t know. Or at least we don’t know much. You just have a few thugs.”

“A few killers.”

“Killers, yes, but thugs all the same. They’re superficial, low-level. So why flush them out so early, when we know so little, and our product so far is so meager? Why startle them by arresting just a few violent brutes, when we’d much rather have bigger fish on the line?”

Hayes thinned his eyes. “You’re talking about Tazz.”

“Time!” called Brightly, still smiling. Then he abruptly turned and walked away from Hayes to the far corner of the room without saying another word. He stood there with his back to him, silently looking at his watch in the palm of one hand.

Hayes did not follow. Instead he grimaced, and then silently counted off a full minute while Brightly did the same. Once it was done Hayes followed him to the corner of the room.

“So we’re not making any arrests until we’ve got Mickey Tazz, is that it?” he asked.

“Tazz, or whoever,” said Brightly. He checked his watch again. “We just don’t know. And until we know, we won’t make arrests, now will we?”

“It’s still not safe,” said Hayes. “Leaving saboteurs working at your plants. They’ve killed, you know.”

“I’m aware,” said Brightly mildly.

“They may kill again.”

“Precautions have been taken,” said Brightly. “We’re keeping our eyes on them. They won’t be doing any more damage.”

“You’re keeping your eyes on them, but not too close because you don’t want them spooked?” said Hayes. “Christ. You know that’ll never work.”

Brightly smiled placidly. “I think I’ll judge what works and what doesn’t. We need to know everything we can. There may be other groups of them, committing crimes we can’t see. Hidden pockets in other plants. If we eliminate one, we leave others still functioning. Or maybe doing worse damage, since they’d know we’re onto them.”

“If you want me to find out if there are any others, let me grill the ones we’ve identified. I can work them over and find out everything they know. You haven’t even let us bring in Naylor or anyone else connected.”

“That’s assuming they know anything,” said Brightly sternly. “And you know we’re not going to let you do that. Not after Ferguson.” He sighed a little as though disappointed. “You know, this is not normal procedure. You honestly shouldn’t be going above Evans’s head on this.”

“Evans doesn’t know what you’re doing either,” said Hayes. “And Evans can’t give me what I want.”

“And what’s that?”

“To go after Tazz directly, on my own,” said Hayes.

“Time!” said Brightly, snapping his watch shut. Then he lumbered away back down to the front of the room.

Hayes opened his mouth to say something, but refrained. He stared at the ground at his feet as Brightly took the steps up to stand on the edge of the stage, humming to himself with his back to Hayes. Hayes counted off another sixty seconds, then crossed the auditorium and followed him up the steps.

Brightly turned to face him as he approached. “Now, Hayes, you know we can’t let you do that.”

“Why not? It’s Tazz you’re after, that’s obvious enough.”

“Is it?” said Brightly. “Are you sure it’s Tazz we’re after? Tazz seems a politician to me. A rabble-rouser, albeit a secretive one. There may be other, nastier men who do his ugly thinking for him. Tazz, after all, probably has to stay clean.”

“I can ferret them out, regardless of who they are,” said Hayes. “I just need…”

“Need what?”

“Need more rope,” said Hayes. “And I need to be on my own.”

“On your own?” said Brightly merrily. “You mean without Miss Fairbanks?”

“Yes. She’s not bad, but she’s… She’s slowing me down.”

“Is she? From my perspective you’re doing better than you’ve ever done before. Rather than your usual erratic bursts of product, Hayes, you’re delivering small payloads of gold every day. Do you know that? Have you even been paying attention to what’s going on?”

“Yes, I have. We’ve turned Securities into a sausage factory. We’re too timid.”

“You mistake sloppiness for action,” said Brightly. “Miss Fairbanks, while lacking your formidable talents, is an invaluable compass for your investigation. And the little woman’s no fool herself, you know that. Do you know we’ve been allowing her to select your interview subjects for you for the past week? And you’ve been bringing home kills, each time. You’ve seen that, haven’t you?”

“I haven’t,” said Hayes stubbornly. “I don’t know what happens when I report something. No one tells me anything anymore. And no one tells her, either. No one even told her what I could do.”

“Time,” said Brightly, looking at his watch. He did another about-face and walked down the steps and up to the edge of the auditorium. Hayes watched him go, frowning, and began counting seconds for the third time.

Whenever he spoke to Brightly, which was very rarely, the conversation was always conducted this way. That, or it was extremely short. Brightly was well aware of the limits of Hayes’s abilities, and he’d always been very careful to prevent Hayes from overhearing anything he shouldn’t. So every four minutes Brightly would interrupt their discussions to move outside Hayes’s vaguely defined range, and then wait a full minute to continue the conversation again. Yet for some reason Brightly never felt comfortable shouting across a large room. He felt it was improper, and refused to consider it. And so rather than their continuing the conversation as they marched across the large auditorium, Brightly would turn his back and pretend Hayes wasn’t there at all, and they’d both stand in silence while Hayes’s slippery grasp on his errant thoughts faded.