Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

He glanced at the caller ID, saw that it was Eddie Rinaldi. He picked it up from the cradle, not wanting Julia to hear whatever Eddie had to say over the speakers. She was sitting in the backseat of the Suburban, poring over the Wizard of Oz program in the darkness. She still had the green zinc-oxide face makeup on, and Nick could see a bedtime struggle ahead when he made her clean it off.

“Hey, Eddie,” he said.

“There you are. You had the phone off?”

“I was watching Julia’s school play.”

“Okay,” he said. Eddie, who had no kids, no plans to have any, and no interest in them, never asked about his kids beyond the bare minimum required. “I was thinking of dropping by.”

“Can’t it wait?”

A pause. “I think not. We should talk. Only take five minutes, maybe.”

“There a problem?” Nick was suddenly on edge.

“No, no. No problem. Just, we should talk.”

Eddie sprawled in the easy chair in Nick’s study, legs splayed wide as if he owned the place.

“A homicide detective came to talk to me,” he said casually.

Nick felt his insides go cold. He leaned forward in his desk chair. Here they sat, just a few feet from where it had happened. “What the fuck?” he said.

Eddie shrugged, no big deal. “Standard operating procedure. Routine shit.”

“Routine?”

“She’s just covering all the bases. Got to, sloppy if she didn’t.”

“It’s a woman.” Nick focused on the anomaly, avoiding the main issue: a homicide detective was on the case, already?

“Negro lady.” Eddie could have put it much more crudely. His racism was no secret to anyone, but maybe he’d learned over the years that it wasn’t socially acceptable, not even around his old buddies. Or maybe he didn’t want to antagonize Nick at the moment.

“I didn’t know the Fenwick police had any.”

“I didn’t either.”

A long silence in which Nick could hear the ticking of the clock. A silver clock, engraved FENWICK CITIZEN OF THE YEAR, awarded to him three years ago. When everything was going great. “What’d she want?”

“What do you think? She wanted to ask about Stadler.”

“What about Stadler?”

“You know, what you’d expect. Did he make any threats, whatever.”

Eddie was being evasive, and Nick didn’t like it. Something didn’t sit right. “Why was she talking to you?”

“Hey, man, I’m the security director, remember?”

“No. There has to be some more specific reason she went to talk to you. What are you leaving out, Eddie?”

“Leaving out? I’m leaving nothing out, buddy. I mean, look, she knew I asked some guys on the job about Stadler.”

So that was it. By doing his background check on Stadler, he’d in effect tipped his hand to the police. “Shit.”

“Come on. I never talked to the guy.”

“No,” Nick said, one hand cupping his chin. “You call the cops, asking about some downsized employee who slaughtered your boss’s dog, then the guy turns up dead a couple days later. This doesn’t look good.”

Eddie shook his head, rolling his eyes in contempt. “Like this is, what, the Mafia or something? Get real. The guy goes off the deep end, doing sick shit, matter of time before he pisses off the wrong guy.”

“Yeah.”

“In the dog pound, I mean, come on. Look, they got nothing tying Stadler to me — or to you.”

“Then what was she asking about?”

“Ah, she wanted to know if you’d ever talked to Stadler, had any contact with the guy. Told her you probably didn’t even know who the guy was. Pretty much true.”

Nick inhaled slowly, tried to calm himself, held his breath. “And if I did? What’s the assumption here, that I went after the guy, killed him?” Nick heard the aggrieved tone in his own voice, as if he were actually starting to believe himself innocent.

“Nah, she’s just looking for scraps. Anyway, don’t worry, I handled her fine. Believe me, she left knowing she’s barking up the wrong tree.”

“How do you know?”

“I can tell, come on. Get serious here, Nick. The CEO of Stratton murdered one of his employees? I don’t think so. No one’s going to believe that for a second.”

Nick was silent for a long while. “I hope so.”

“I just wanted to keep you in the loop. In case she comes to talk to you.”

Nick, his chest tightening, said, “She said she was going to?”

“No, but she might. Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“I’d never even heard the name,” Nick said. “Right? You tell her otherwise?”

“Exactly. Told her you’re a busy guy, I do my job, you don’t get involved.”

“Right.”

“So you figured maybe some downsized employee went wacko, killed your dog, but you called the cops, figured they’d handle it, you had no idea who it mighta been.”

“Right.”

“Guy turns up dead, mighta been the same guy, mighta been different, you have no idea. Like that.”

Nick nodded, rehearsing the answer in his mind, turning it over and over, poking at the soft spots. “There’s nothing tying me to this thing?” he said after a few moments.

A long silence. Eddie replied with a kind of smoldering indignation. “I did my job, Nick, you clear?”

“I don’t doubt it. I’m asking you to think like a cop. Like a homicide cop.”

“That’s how I think, man. Like a cop.”

“No prints, nothing like that, on the... body? Fibers, DNA, whatever?”

“Nick, I told you, we’re not going to talk about this.”

“We are now. I want to know.”

“The body was clean, Nick,” Eddie said. “Okay? Clean as a whistle. Clean as I could get it in the time we had.”

“What about the gun?”

“What about it?”

“What’d you do with it? You don’t still have it, do you?”

“Like I’m a stupid fuck? Come on, man.”

“Then where is it?”

Eddie let out a puff of air, made a sound like pah . “Bottom of the river, you really want to know.” Fenwick, like so many towns in Michigan, was built on the shores of one of the many waterways leading into Lake Michigan.

“Shell casings too?”

“Yup.”

“And if it turns up?”

“You realize how unlikely that is?”

“I’m saying.”

“Even if they do find it, they got no way to connect it to me.”

“Why not? It’s your gun.”

“It’s a goddamned drop gun, Nick.”

“A what?”

“A throw-down. A piece I picked up at a scene in GR. Some crack dealer, who the hell knows where he got it? Point is, there’s no record anywhere. No paperwork, no purchase permit, nothing. Clean.”

Nick had heard of cops picking up guns they found at crime scenes, keeping them, but he knew you weren’t supposed to do that, and it made him nervous to hear Eddie admit to it. If he did that, what else did he do?

“You sure?” Nick said.

“Sure as shit.”

“What about the security cameras?”

Eddie nodded. “Hey, I’m a pro, right? Took care of that too.”

“How?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“I need to know. My own fucking security cameras recorded me killing the guy.”

Eddie closed his eyes, shook his head in irritation. “I reformatted the hard drive on the digital video recorder. That night’s gone. Never happened. System started recording next day — makes sense, right? Since we just put it in the day before.”

“Not a trace?”

“Nada. Hey, don’t worry about it. The lady comes to talk to you, you cooperate, tell her everything you know, which is a big fat zero, right?” Eddie gave his dry cackle.

“Right. I know she talked to you?”

Eddie shrugged. “Play it either way. Let’s say, no, I didn’t get around to it. Got nothing to do with you, right?”