Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

Eddie Rinaldi, she thought. “Then it would have recorded over the part I’m interested in?”

“Right. Records over the oldest part first.”

“Do you have the ability to bring it back?”

“Like, unerase it? Maybe someone does. That’s kind of beyond what I know how to do. The State, maybe?”

“The State would mean six months at least.”

“At least. And who knows if they can do it? I don’t even know if it can be done.”

“Kevin, do you think it’s worth looking at again?”

“For what, though?”

“See if you can figure anything else about it. Such as whether you can find any traces. Anything that proves the recording was recycled over or deleted or whatever.”

Kevin waggled his head from one side to the other. “Take a fair amount of time.”

“But you’re good. And you’re fast.”

“And I’m also way behind on my other work. I’ve got a boatload of vid-caps to do for Sergeant Noyce and Detective Johnson.”

“That serial robber case.”

“Yeah. Plus Noyce wants me to watch like two days’ worth of tape from a store robbery, looking for a guy in a black Raiders jacket with white Nike Air shoes.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Eye-crossing fun. He wants it done—”

“Yesterday. Oh yes, I know Jack.”

“I mean, you want to talk to Noyce, get him to move you up in the queue, go ahead. But I gotta do what they tell me to do, you know?”

The next morning was jam-packed with complicated, if tedious, paperwork, which Nick was actually grateful for. It kept his mind off what was happening, kept him from obsessing over what the cops might have found in the house. And that fragment of a shell casing had ruined his sleep last night. He’d tossed and turned, alternating between blank terror and a steady, pulsing anxiety.

There was a bunch of stuff from the corporate counsel’s office outlining the patent lawsuit they wanted to file against one of Stratton’s chief competitors, Knoll. Stephanie Alstrom’s staff insisted that Knoll had basically ripped off a patented Stratton design for an ergonomic keyboard tray.

Stratton filed dozens of these complaints every year; Knoll probably did too. Kept the corporate attorneys employed. The legal department salivated at the prospect of litigation; Nick preferred arbitration, pretty much down the line. It kept the out-of-pocket costs down, and even if Stratton won the ruling, Knoll would have already figured out a workaround that would pass legal muster. Go after Knoll in a public courtroom, and you blow all confidentiality — your secrets are laid out there for every other competitor to rip off. Then there’d be subpoenas all over the place; Stratton would have to hand over all sorts of secret design documents. Forget it. Plus, in Nick’s experience, the awarded damages rarely added up to much once you subtracted your legal expenses. He scrawled ARB on the top sheet.

After an hour of sitting at his home base, going over this sort of crap, Nick’s shoulders were already starting to ache. The truth was, home base wasn’t feeling especially homey these days. His eyes settled on one of the family photographs. Laura, the kids, Barney. Two down, three to go, he thought. The curse of the House of Conover.

He remembered a line he’d seen quoted somewhere: Maybe this world is another planet’s hell. There had to be a bunch of corollaries to that. He had made someone else’s world a hell, and someone had made his world a hell. Supply-chain management for human suffering.

An instant-message from Marjorie popped up, even though she was sitting not ten feet away, on the other side of the panel. She didn’t want to break his concentration — she knew how fragile it tended to be.

The usual for lunch today, right?

Oh, right. Nick remembered: the regular weekly lunch with Scott. Which was just about the last thing he felt like doing.

He wanted to confront Scott, tell him to get the fuck out and go back home to McKinsey. But he couldn’t, not yet. Not until he got to the bottom of what exactly was going on. And the truth was, he no longer had the power to fire Scott if he wanted to. Which right now he very much did.

He typed:

OK, thanks.

He noticed that there was an e-mail in his in-box from Cassie; he could tell from the subject line.

He hadn’t given her his e-mail address, hadn’t gotten an e-mail from her before, and he hesitated before clicking on it:

From:ChakraGrrl@hotmail.com

To:Nconover@Strattoninc.com

Subject:From Cassie

Nick — Where’s my grocery delivery boy been? Free for lunch today? Come over between 12:30 and 1? I’ll supply the sandwiches.

C.

He felt his spirits lift at once, and he hit Reply:

I’m there.

“Marge,” he said into the intercom, “change in plans. Tell Scott I’m not going to be able to make lunch today, okay?”

“Okay. Want me to give a reason?”

Nick paused. “No.”

On the way to the elevator he passed Scott, who was coming out of the men’s room. “Got your message,” Scott said. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine. Just got really hectic all of a sudden.”

“You’ll do anything to avoid talking numbers,” Scott said with a grin.

“You got me figured out,” Nick said, grinning right back as he headed for the elevator bank. A couple of women from Payroll got in on the floor below, smiled shyly at him. One of them said, “Hey, Mr. Conover.”

He said, “Hey, Wanda. Hey, Barb.” They both seemed surprised, and pleased, that he knew their names. But Nick made it a point to know as many Stratton employees by name as possible; he knew how good it was for morale. And there’s fewer and fewer of them all the time, he thought mordantly. Makes it easier .

When the elevator stopped at the third floor, Eddie got in, said, “It’s the big dog.”

Something awfully disrespectful about that, especially in front of other employees. “Eddie,” Nick said.

“Had a feeling you were headed out to, uh, ‘lunch,’” Eddie said. The way he dropped little quotation marks around the word “lunch” was unnerving. Does he know where I’m going? How could he? And then Nick remembered that he’d asked Eddie to start looking closely at Scott’s e-mail. He wondered whether Eddie had taken that as an opportunity to look at Nick’s e-mail too. If true, that would be outrageous — but how the hell could he prevent Eddie from doing it? He was the goddamned security director.

Nick just gave him a stony look, which would be missed by Wanda and Barb from Payroll.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Eddie said. He was carrying an umbrella.

Nick nodded.

They walked together, silently, through the main lobby, past the waterfall that some feng shui expert had insisted they put there to repair a “blocked energy feeling” at the entrance. Nick had thought that was complete and utter bullshit, but he went along with it anyway, the way he’d always avoided stepping on cracks in the sidewalk so as not to break his mother’s back. Anyway, the waterfall looked good there, that was the main thing.

Nick could see through the big glass doors that it was raining. That explained the umbrella, but had Eddie planned to go out for lunch, or did he “happen” to run into Nick in the elevator — by design? Nick wondered but said nothing. He considered, too, asking Eddie about what Detective Rhimes had told him — that Eddie had left the Grand Rapids police force “under a cloud of suspicion.” But he didn’t know why she’d told him that. Was she trying to put a wedge between the two men? If so, that was a clever way to do it. If Eddie had lied to him about why he’d left police work, what else might he have lied about?