Brian Haig - PrivateSector

“Quit exaggerating.”

“Twenty times over.”

“If his ass is attached to such a gold mine, why’s he swapping?”

He replied, “Turn to page six, fifth line down.” I did, and he continued, “R amp;D expenditures-forty percent of his revenue. Jason’s in a race. He has to get the inventions and patents that can deliver videophones before his competitors. See his problem?”

“He has to stay in business long enough.”

“And telecom CEOs are dropping like flies. Global Crossing, WorldCom, Qwest, and those are just the big ones. They miss a few growth targets, their stock tanks, the banks lower their credit ratings, then the lawyers show up for the Chapter 11 filings and stockholder lawsuits.”

“And it’s these swaps keeping Morris afloat?”

“You just got your business degree. Listen, I have to run. I just bought a new yacht and I’m dying to try it out.”

It’s great having a successful brother. Really.

So, what did I have? Jason Morris’s business survival depended on a shady company that meets his lawyers in secretive, out-of-the-way places, that brings along a bunch of unsavory-looking goons, that dictates the terms of contracts. And the executives of that same consortium completely clam up when I ask them to name their holdings.

All of which added up to what?

A scene from The Godfather popped into my head, a corrupt old man with his daggerlike finger in Jason Morris’s chest as he droned on about the deal he couldn’t refuse, while Jason dreamed of the day he could buy and sell everybody on the Forbes 400 list.

Money, money, money-the root of all evil. Money tied to ego, the root of the most sublime evil.

My answering machine held three calls from Cy Berger. He kept asking me to call him back as soon as it was convenient, and I assumed by that he meant convenient for me. But I didn’t care what he meant; I’d call when I was ready. And I wasn’t. Not yet.

Aside from my other growing problems, the firm was threatening me and Janet with charges serious enough to merit disbarment and even jail. But the firm needed my signature on the audit, which was leverage, albeit limited leverage. There surely was a plan B, which probably involved drafting some compliant associate to sign the audit. But there was a roomful of accountants who had witnessed my daily involvement in the audit, and legal niceties had to be met, so the compliant associate would have to go back and review every aspect of the process, and the timeline would no doubt slip beyond Friday. At the moment, I was a far more convenient solution, bordering on becoming completely inconvenient.

So I called Cy, and we exchanged a few phony pleasantries before he got around to it, asking almost nonchalantly, “So Sean, we had a difficult morning, didn’t we?”

No, we didn’t have a difficult morning, and it was so asinine to suggest otherwise that I decided not to reply.

The pause lasted long enough for Cy to realize that this tack would go nowhere. Finally, he said, “Well, I believe the ball’s in your court.”

“You mean, what will it take for me to sign the audit?”

“I’m going to be blunt here. That’s what we’re wondering.”

“I’m innocent and I want to clear my name.”

“Fair enough. Harold told you, you’ll have that chance.”

“And Hal implied it would be a kangaroo court.”

After a moment, he said, “Hal is very protective of the firm. He has a tendency to be melodramatic.”

“Is that a fancy word for being an asshole?”

He chuckled. “It will be fair, Sean.” He then promised, “You have my word on this.”

“But that still poses a problem, doesn’t it?”

“What problem?”

“I need to get into your server to prove my innocence.”

“Oh… I see you what you mean.”

“And I’ll need one of your computer people to guide me through the database.”

“Even if I could allow that, it’s too late. We need to get that audit into Defense tomorrow.”

“No problem. I’ll work all night.”

After a considerable pause, he said, “All right. But Hal has to be there.”

“Wrong. Hal will get a printout from the server in the morning. Remember, the server sees all and remembers all.”

He realized that my request was a small price to pay and said, “Fair enough.”

So I walked out of the paneled elevator an hour later and entered the seventh floor, where, with the notable exception of Mr. Piggy-eyes, the firm’s entire administrative staff was crammed into a sprawling cube farm. Cy had told me that a computer expert named Cheryl would be waiting, and indeed, a skinny black woman of about forty was seated beside the water cooler, her nose stuffed inside the latest issue of Glamour. She did not look like a computer nerd, she looked like an overstressed, worn-down sub-urban mom, but I suppose they come in all flavors.

I introduced myself and she immediately complained, “I got a little boy bein’ watched by my mama and don’t want to be doin’ this all night.”

“If you’re good, you won’t.”

“I’m good.” She sized me up and asked, “So… what you wanta see?”

I explained that Lisa Morrow’s active files had been wiped clean, and I needed to see if there was a record of her messages magnetically lingering in the wiry bowels of the server.

“ ’Course there is,” she informed me, and we then worked our way through the cube maze and eventually squeezed ourselves into her office carrel.

Cheryl fell into her chair, typed a few commands into her computer, then pointed at a chair and ordered, “Sit. And keep your mouth shut. I don’t like being bothered when I’m workin’.”

Fine by me. I moved a stack of manuals off the chair, laid them on the floor, and sat. Cheryl was already typing commands and long lines of incomprehensible code were flashing incessantly across the screen. She was really grumpy.

She asked, “What you say her name was?”

“Morrow… Lisa Morrow.”

She nodded. “She the blond chick from the Army used to work upstairs?”

“Yup.”

“Heard she died.”

“She was murdered, actually.”

“Uh-huh. I heard she was good folk.” She studied her screen and said, “What you wanta look at?”

“Lisa’s e-mail going back, say, three months.”

She continued typing. “Everything’s kept going back two years.”

I watched what she was doing. In a way, I envy people who understand how the byzantine machine works, and in a larger way I don’t. Most programmers are weird. When I was a kid we were told not to sit too close to the TV, or hair would grow on our palms-but maybe I’ve got my warnings confused. It strikes me today’s mommies should warn their kids that too much time on your computer turns you into a dimwit.

She finally said, “Shit, shit, shit. Would ya look at this.”

“What?”

“A firewall ’round her file.” I suppose I looked a bit clueless, because she added, “Code protection. Single-layered, but it’s a good one, very complex.”

“What’s that mean?”

“That somebody don’t want us lookin’.”

I studied the screen. “No way to get past it?”

“Hack past it.”

“Yeah? How do we do that?”

“ We don’t.” She spun around in her chair and faced me. “The server administrator can fix it… tomorrow.”

Some voice in the back of my brain made me ask, “And that would be who?”

“Mr. Merriweather.”

Wasn’t that a surprise? Actually, it wasn’t; so I took a gamble and asked, “He a pal of yours?”

“That fatassed moron? He got no friends on this floor.”

That news was no surprise either. I said, “Cheryl, it’s very possible something in that database will embarrass Merriweather, maybe even get him fired. But tomorrow morning, he’ll know from the server printouts that we tried to enter Lisa’s file, and he might find a way to block us forever.”