Robert Bennett - The Company Man

“Detective Garvey, I presume.”

“Yes,” she said, uneasy. “I know you said you wanted to keep this in-house, sir, and away from the police investigation, but-”

“That I did.”

“Yes, but when something that concrete comes along you have to check it. Our orders were to check everything, if I recall. And Detective Garvey is an honorable officer.”

Evans laughed. “My dear, I hadn’t planned on going so far as to suggest Mr. Garvey was a danger to anything.”

“Oh. You hadn’t?”

“No. On the contrary, Mr. Garvey is one of the most trustworthy men I’ve ever met. No, no, what I’m worried about is you.” He took off his glasses and began polishing them on his tie, watching her sadly.

“Me, sir?”

“Yes. Miss Fairbanks, you know we brought you here to, well, to stabilize Mr. Hayes’s investigations. To bring them to heel. What you did the other day damaged your reputation with your superiors. With my superiors. Those above even Brightly. They no longer know if they can trust you, you see. And that worries me. You are a promising young lady. It would be terrible if your career were to become irreparably damaged after coming so far. And we need you.”

He put his glasses back on and stared out the window as the building faces slipped by. “Our company has accomplished very great things in its time,” he said. “Very great. But the greatest things are still to come. They are still being made. I can personally attest to that, and I know only of a handful of them. And all of them, all of them are being made right here, here in this city. And yet here is where we find the most opposition. In our home. Where we have brought wealth and industry. These are grave times for us, my dear. We are building the frame around which the future will be constructed, and yet here at the height of our powers everything threatens to collapse. But I still believe we can do good. I do. Do you believe this?”

Samantha hesitated.

“Go on, my dear,” he said. “You can be frank. I may be a sentimentalist, but I’m no fanatic or idealist, or anything so distasteful.”

“I don’t know,” she said finally. “I don’t know anymore. When I first heard of where I was being sent I was overjoyed. But now that I’m here and I’ve seen these places… I don’t know. It’s not what I thought it would be.”

He nodded, his face tired. “I know. I felt the same way.”

“You did?”

“Why, yes. No reasonable person could feel different. But I find it difficult to think of another way this city could have been built, another way we could have made what we made. It’s said by men far smarter than I that the most efficient way to organize progress is through business, to harness our own desires, and… and, well. I don’t know what to say. There are casualties, I suppose. Effects. Like the slums. Like the unions. But tell me of a way that we could hire everyone we wanted and pay them all what they wanted and not handicap our own goals, our own dreams? I know that sounds cliched, that those are arguments you’re sure to have heard before. Patronizing ones as well, arguments anyone can poke holes in. I thought so, too. But after being here and seeing what we can make, they stopped being so cliched to me. I spent all four of my years here trying to think of a way to reconcile them. I’ve given up.”

“Four years?” Samantha asked, surprised.

“Yes,” said Evans.

“You’ve only been here four years?”

He smiled. “How long did you think I’ve lived here?”

“I don’t know, sir. Longer than that.”

“I guess you think I’ve spent a lifetime here. I mean, I’ve been longer with the company, more than forty years. But no. I’ve only been at the heart of things for four.”

He reached below his seat and pulled out a small silver tray and two small glasses with a little bottle of gin. He poured himself one and sipped a little, then drank the rest in one gulp. He offered her a glass, apologizing as he did as though he would never wish to watch a lady drink, then replaced the set when she refused.

“I believe that was one of Mr. Hayes’s innovations,” he admitted. “The traveling bar.” He paused and considered something. “Do you know how I came to be here, Miss Fairbanks?”

She shook her head.

“I am here for the same reason you are here, really,” he said. “My transfer took place a little over four years ago, as I said. Through Brightly, actually. I was in Pakistan. Far, far away. Working as McNaughton’s chief negotiator for mining claims in the mountains. I was a civilized man in what I thought was an uncivilized land. I had gone there looking for adventure but found more bargaining and more talk and more money. Same as always. Business as always. Then one day I got a telegram. Emergency telegram, with the executive emergency access code at the end. Had to dig out the rule book to even figure out what that meant. It was from some man I’d never heard of, man by the name of Brightly. Said to get in the saddle and head due east, to Nalpur.

“So I did. I rode and I rode and I rode all day, to Nalpur, and there I was summoned to the town prison. Nasty place. Most of it was underground, the cells were pits with bars over them. It was like a crypt. And inside I found at least a dozen men in suits, like they had come right out of New York or Chicago or Evesden. McNaughton men, you see.

“I was directed to Brightly, in the back. I’d not heard of him before, but he was quite enthusiastic to see me. I asked him exactly what his position was and he smiled and told me he operated under a lot of different hats, but the hat of the day was Personnel and Acquisitions and he was here to get a man and he needed some executive backup. My backup, he said. Said I was the premier agent in the region and, somehow, I had negotiated for jurisdiction over our own employees in the country. Like we were our own nation. I didn’t recall that but I went along with it and asked what sort of employee we were here to get. And he said, ‘A man of talents and knowledge.’ Just that, and he said I was to hire him. This seemed strange, he wasn’t our boy yet so how could we have jurisdiction, but Brightly waved that aside and said all I needed to do was interview the fellow. I balked and he said, ‘No, no. No, no. He’s a harmless little thing, an Englishman, civilized and sophisticated like you or me.’ And he showed him to me. Took me to one of the cells and had me look in.

“There was a table in the middle, and at the table was this little man. A towheaded little man with an immense beard and his hands and ankles all done up in chains. Slight as a blade of grass and still as a monk. And for some reason, I felt sad for the little prisoner. He seemed so alone. So alone in that awful place.

“So I said I would do it. Brightly congratulated me and gave me this enormous interview file. I said it would take hours to get through and he said that was fine, fine, just fine. And he smiled at me. I remember that.

“I went in there and I sat down with the little man and, well, I started talking. Hullo, I’m Jim, you seem to be in a difficult situation and I’m here to help, so on and so forth. Just like bargaining with any of the locals, you see. And for a long while the little man didn’t speak. Just stared at me, dead-eyed. Eyes like glaciers. Only way I could get him to talk was by offering him a cigarette. He almost ate the thing, he was so happy to have it. And then we started our discussion.

“I asked him what he was here for. And he said, ‘Robbery.’ And I said, ‘Oh, and you’re innocent, of course,’ and he said, ‘No.’ And I looked at him. Let him think it over. I asked, ‘You’re guilty of robbery?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’ I asked him who he had robbed and what he had stolen. He said he had stolen fifteen cases of pistol rounds from a McNaughton shipment. Us. He had robbed us. He had stolen our goods to sell to some warlord or another, and he didn’t give a damn, it seemed. That was a bit of a nasty shock. I couldn’t imagine why we would want such a man. But, well, I recovered and we went along.