Joseph Finder - Power Play

"Are we talking eating disorder here?"

"Nah, it goes with the breed."

She gave me a playful punch, but it landed hard. A strong girl. "So, you're still working for Mike Zorn."

"Of course."

"Yeah," she said, "you wouldn't want to move up or anything. Since a promotion is a kind of change, huh?"

"He's a nice guy. It's a good job."

"I bet you still have that junky old Jeep, don't you?"

"Still drives great."

"Probably didn't even replace that front right quarter panel, did you?"

"Doesn't affect the ride," I said.

"Looks like crap, though."

"Not from behind the steering wheel."

She smiled, conceded the point. Then she said, "You never congratulated me, by the way. On my new job."

I arched my eyebrows. I can do that. I haven't had Botox.

"Right," she said. "I'd forgotten about Jake-speak. No need to say what you know I know you know, right? Like, obviously you're happy for me, why should you say it out loud? Why waste words?"

"Talk's overrated," I said. "Of course I'm happy for you."

We fell silent for a few seconds. "Is this going to be-I don't know, complicated for us?"

"Complicated? You mean, you and me?"

I nodded.

"Because we used to sleep together?"

"Oh, right-we did, didn't we?"

"I don't think it'll be complicated, do you?"

I shook my head. Of course it would. How could it not? "Not at all," I said. "So, do we know each other?"

"Huh?"

"When we run into each other next couple of days. Are we supposed to pretend that we've never met?"

She dipped her head as if thinking. "Maybe we've seen each other around. But we don't know each other's names. We've never been introduced."

"Gotcha."

We sat there for a few seconds in silence. I didn't want to leave. I liked being around her. Looking at her. Being in her presence. Inhaling her smell. Then she stood up. "I should get back to work. I have to go over Cheryl's remarks with her. So, just be careful leaving here, okay?"

I nodded, got up, and went over to the door. I opened it slowly, just a crack. I looked out, saw no one in the hall. Then I slipped out-and saw a couple of guys standing a few feet away at the top of the landing, whispering. On the other side of the door, where I hadn't seen them.

I recognized both of them, though I'd never met either. One was the corporate controller, John Danziger. He was tall and lean and broad-shouldered, around forty, with thinning blond hair and gray-blue eyes. He looked like an all-American preppy jock from an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. The other was the treasurer, Alan Grogan, around the same age and height, but slighter of build. He had thick, wavy dark brown hair touched with gray, hazel green eyes, a wide mouth, a sharp chin, and a prominent, aquiline nose.

As soon as Danziger noticed me, he stopped whispering. Grogan turned around, gave me a sharp look, and the two men parted abruptly, without another word, walking in separate directions.

Very strange.

The door to the Vancouver Room was open. The walls and ceiling were unpainted, rough-hewn pine boards; the floorboards, smooth wideboard pine. All the furniture-the two large beds, armoire, and desk-was rustic and looked handmade. Big puffy down comforters on the beds. A window overlooked the ocean.

Geoffrey Latimer was already in there, unpacking. He looked up as I entered. He looked around fifty. He had warm, sincere brown eyes, the trusting eyes of a child. Graying light brown hair, perfectly Brylcreemed and combed into place and parted on the side. His face was reddened and chafed, like he had psoriasis or something. "I don't believe we've met," he said. "Geoff Latimer."

He shook my hand, his grip firm and dry. His fingernails looked bitten. He was a worrier.

Latimer was thin and wore chinos and a navy-and-gray-striped golf shirt. His clothes looked like they came from the men's department at Sears. He also gave off the faint whiff of Old Spice, which reminded me, unpleasantly, of my father.

"Jake Landry. I'm filling in for Mike Zorn."

He nodded. "Those are big shoes to fill."

"Do my best."

"Just don't let the turkeys get you down."

"How so?"

"They're just middle-aged frat boys."

I gave him a blank look.

"Lummis and Bross and those guys. They're bullies, that's all. Take it with a grain of salt."

I was surprised he'd even noticed. "It's no big deal," I said.

He turned back to his suitcase, working methodically, like a surgeon, transferring impeccably folded clothes from a battered old suitcase to dresser drawers. Even his T-shirts and boxer shorts were folded into little squares.

"You'll see the same posturing when it comes to the silly team-building exercises," he said. "Those guys are always competing with each other. Who can climb higher or pull harder, that kind of thing. They don't want you showing them up."

"Show them up how?"

"Outdoing them. Climbing higher or pulling harder. You can't win either way. But you seem to take it well."

I smiled. Latimer was shrewder and more insightful than I'd expected. I knew he was coordinating the internal corporate investigation, but I wasn't sure whether he knew that I'd been told about it. Or that I'd been asked to help. So I decided I'd better not let on that I knew about it. Maybe wait for him to bring it up.

I unzipped my suitcase and started unpacking, too. My clothes were a jumbled mess. I'd tossed them in there in about five minutes. We unpacked in silence for a while. I noticed him take a handful of syringes out of the suitcase, an orange plastic kit, a couple of vials of something, and put them all in a dresser drawer. I didn't say anything. Either he was a heroin addict or a diabetic. Diabetic seemed a little more likely.

He looked over at me. "That all you brought?"

I nodded.

"Travel light, huh?" Latimer said.

What?" Ali said. "I travel light."

She'd started unpacking a duffel bag. Not her usual small overnight bag-a change of clothes, a toothbrush, the mysterious arsenal of cosmetics-but things that signified a longer stay.

"Not as light as usual," I said, keeping my tone casual.

She stopped, a couple of pairs of silk panties in her right hand. "Hey, Landry, correct me if I'm wrong here. But aren't you the one who keeps telling me to just move in?"

"Ah, okay." Spoken with more conviction this time. I gave her an encouraging, if forced, smile.

"Just the essentials," she said, putting the panties in an empty drawer in my dresser, patting them in place. "So I don't have to keep lugging all my stuff around, like a Gypsy."

"Great."

Her back was turned to me now, but she heard it in my voice. "You don't want me here, Landry, just say the word."

"Oh, come on," I said.

Later, in bed, her legs twined around mine: "How come you never talk about your childhood?"

"There's nothing to talk about," I said.

"Landry."

"It's not interesting."

"I'm interested."

"I'm not."

She made a quiet hmmph sound. "You're hiding something, aren't you?"

A jolt in my stomach, maybe more like a little twinge. I turned, a bit too quickly. Saw the playful gleam in her eye. "I'm in the Witness Protection Program."

"Mafia informer," she said, nodding sagely.

"Drug cartel," I said.

She ran her fingers along the bridge of my nose, down my lips, tracing a straight line to my chin. "The plastic surgeon did a nice job."

"Good enough for government work."

"Of course, for all I know, you really are in the Witness Protection Program." Her eyes told me she was no longer joking. "Given how little you talk about yourself. I feel like I don't know any more about you than what's on the surface."

"Maybe that's all there is." I started feeling uncomfortable. "Isn't it almost time for my dog show?"