Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“Thanks,” he said, taking the envelope as he resumed walking.

“Nick,” she said.

He stopped, turned around.

“That check — for Cassie Stadler?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s a lot of money. It’s for her dad’s severance pay, isn’t it? Which he lost when he quit?”

Nick nodded.

“The company isn’t obligated to pay that, right?”

“No, it’s not.”

“But it’s the right thing to do. It’s — that’s nice, Nick.” There were tears in her eyes.

Nick nodded again, returned to his desk. He immediately picked up his handset and called Todd Muldaur’s cell phone. It rang three times, four, and just as Nick was about to hang up, Todd’s voice came on. “This is Todd.”

It sounded like a prerecorded voice-mail message, so Nick waited a second before saying, “Todd, it’s Nick Conover.”

“Oh, hey, Nick, there you are. You bolted before I had a chance to say goodbye, dude.”

“Todd, are you trying to squeeze me out?”

A beat. “What makes you say that?”

“Come on, man. What happened in there, in the board meeting. Bring in Finegold, your hot spare, putting Scott on the board without giving me a heads-up. The monthly board meetings, the weekly financials. Changing the rules of the game like that. Taking away my ability to change my team the way I see fit. What, you think I’m an idiot?”

“Nick, we don’t need to squeeze you out,” Todd said, his voice gone steely. “If we wanted you gone, you’d be gone.”

“Not without a pretty damned huge payday.”

“A rounding error at Fairfield Partners, buddy.”

“Five million bucks is a rounding error to you guys?”

“Nick, I meant what I said. We want to bring more to the table. Strengthen the team.”

“You don’t trust me to run the company, you should just come out with it.”

Todd said something, but the signal started to break up “...the way,” he was saying.

“Say again?” Nick said. “I lost you there.”

“I said, we trust you, Nick. We just don’t want you getting in the way.”

“In the way? ”

“We need to make sure you’re responsive, Nick. That’s all. We want to make sure you’re on board.”

“Oh, I’m on board,” Nick said, deliberately ambiguous, insinuating. He didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, exactly, except that he hoped it sounded vaguely threatening.

“Excellent,” Todd said. His voice got all crackly again as the signal weakened. A fragment: “...to hear.”

“Say again?” Nick said.

“Man, do you guys have, like, one cell tower out here in cow town? I swear, the reception sucks . All right, I better go. I’m losing you.” Then the line went dead.

For a long time, Nick stared at the long blue Stratton check he’d had the treasurer’s office cut for Cassie Stadler: a payoff, pure and simple. Andrew Stadler had quit before being laid off; legally, he wasn’t entitled to any severance. But what was legal, and what the courts might decide — if Cassie Stadler decided to press the issue — were two separate things. Better to pre-empt, he’d decided. Be generous. Show her that her father’s employer meant well, that Stratton was willing to go above and beyond what it was required to do.

That was all there was to it, he told himself.

Keep the woman happy. No one wanted a lawsuit.

And he remembered what that black woman detective had said as she left. “We’re all beloved by someone,” she’d said. She had a point. As crazy, as deranged as Andrew Stadler was, he’d been loved by his daughter.

He hit the intercom button. “Marge,” he said. “I need you to call Cassie Stadler for me.”

“I believe she’s living in her father’s house,” came Marge’s voice over the speakerphone.

“Right. Tell her I want to stop by. I have something for her.”

Sergeant Jack Noyce pulled Audrey into his glass-walled office, which was not much bigger than Audrey’s cubicle. He had it outfitted with an expensive-looking sound system, though, a top-of-the-line DVD player and speakers. Noyce loved his audio equipment, and he loved music. Sometimes Audrey would see him with his headphones on, enjoying music, or listening to the speakers with the office door closed.

As head of the Major Case Team, he had all sorts of administrative responsibilities and more than a dozen cops to supervise, and he spent much of his day in meetings. Music — Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Art Tatum, Charlie Mingus, Thelonious Monk, all the jazz piano greats — seemed to be his only escape.

A piece was playing quietly on Noyce’s stereo, a beautiful and soulful rendition of the ballad “You Go to My Head,” a pianist doing the melody.

“Tommy Flanagan?” Audrey said.

Noyce nodded. “You close your eyes, and you’re back in the Village Vanguard.”

“It’s lovely.”

“Audrey, you haven’t said anything about Bugbee.” His sad eyes, behind thick aviator-framed glasses, shone with concern.

“It’s okay,” she said.

“You’d tell me if it wasn’t, right?”

She laughed. “Only if I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“The practical jokes seem to have stopped.”

“Maybe he got tired of them.”

“Or maybe he’s learned to respect you.”

“You give him way too much credit,” she said with a laugh.

“And you’re the one who’s supposed to believe in the possibility of redemption. Listen, Audrey — you guys went over to Stratton?”

“Now don’t tell me he’s filling you in on every step we take.”

“No. I got a call from the security director at Stratton.”

“Rinaldi.”

“Right. You talked to him, and then you both went over to talk to Nicholas Conover.”

“What’d he call you for?”

“He says you just showed up and waited for Conover outside a board meeting? That true?”

She felt a prickle of defensiveness. “That was my decision. I wanted to avoid any prepared answers, any coordination.”

“I’m not following.” Noyce took off his glasses and began rubbing at them with a little cleaning cloth.

“I’d already talked to Rinaldi, and something didn’t sit right with me. I can’t explain it.”

“You don’t need to. Gut instinct.”

“Right.”

“Which ninety percent of the time doesn’t pan out. But hey.” He smiled. “You take what you get.”

“I didn’t want Rinaldi talking to his boss and getting his story straight.”

“So you just ambushed the CEO outside the boardroom?” Noyce laughed quietly.

“I just thought if we set up a meeting with him in advance, he’d call his security director and say, What’s this about?”

“Still not following. You telling me you think the CEO of Stratton’s got something to do with this case?”

She shook her head. “No, of course not. But there may be some connection. A couple of days before Stadler’s death, there was an incident at Nicholas Conover’s house. Someone slaughtered the family dog and dumped it in the swimming pool.”

Noyce winced. “My God. Was it Stadler?”

“We don’t know. But this was just the latest of a long series of incidents at the Conover house since they moved in, about a year ago. Up till now it’s been graffiti, nothing stolen, no violence. But each time, our uniformed division was notified — and we haven’t done a thing. They didn’t even print the knife that was used to kill the dog. From what I hear, there wasn’t a lot of motivation to do anything about it, given the way people feel about Conover.”

“Well, yeah, but that’s not right.”

“So just before Stadler’s death, Rinaldi got in touch with our uniformed division to ask about this guy Andrew Stadler and find out if he had any priors.”