Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

He’d ask Eddie. Not yet, though.

Outside, Eddie opened the big golf umbrella and held it up for Nick. When they’d walked a good distance away from the building, Eddie said, “Foxy Brown better watch her ass.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, man. Cleopatra Jones. Sheba baby.”

“I’m in a hurry, Eddie. It’s been fun free-associating with you.”

Eddie gripped Nick’s shoulder. “Your black lady detective, man. The one who’s trying to roast our nuts over the fire.” The rain thrummed loudly on the umbrella. “The Negro lady who’s got it in for you because you fucking laid off her husband, ” he said ferociously, drawing out the words.

“You’re kidding me.”

“Think I’d joke about something like that? About something that should get her fucking thrown off the case?”

“Who’s her husband?”

“Some fucking nobody, man, worked on the shop floor spraying paint or whatever. Point is, Stratton laid him off, and now his wife’s coming to collect your scalp.” He shook his head. “And I say that ain’t right.”

“She shouldn’t be investigating us,” Nick said. “That’s outrageous.”

“That’s what I say. Bitch gets disqualified.”

“How do we do that?”

“Leave it to me.” His smile was almost a leer. “Meanwhile, I got some interesting stuff on your man Scott.”

Nick looked at him questioningly.

“You asked me to poke into his e-mail and shit.”

“What’d you get?”

“You know what Scott’s been doing just about every weekend for the last two months?”

“Burning hamburgers,” Nick said. “I was just over there last Saturday.”

“Not last Saturday, but almost every other weekend. He’s been flying to Boston. Think he’s visiting his sick Aunt Gertrude?”

“He’s getting the corporate discount through the travel office,” Nick said.

Eddie nodded. “I guess he figures you don’t look at travel expenses — not your job.”

“I do have a company to run. Run into the ground, some would say.”

“Plus a shitload of phone calls back and forth between him and that guy Todd Muldaur at Fairfield Equity Partners. Kinda doubt it’s all social chitchat, right?”

“Any idea what they’re talking about?”

“Nah, that’s just phone records. Voice mails I can hack into, but Scotty-boy’s a good camper. Deletes all voice mails when he’s done listening to them. Him and Todd-O e-mail each other, but it’s all kinda generic stuff like you’d expect — you know, here’s the monthly numbers, or shit like that. Scotty must know e-mails aren’t safe. Maybe that’s why, when he’s got something he wants to keep quiet, he uses encryption.”

“Encryption?”

“You got it. My techs intercepted a couple dozen encrypted documents coming and going between Scotty and Todd-O.”

Nick couldn’t think of any possible reason why Scott would be sending or receiving encrypted documents. Then again, he couldn’t think of a reason why Scott would make a secret trip to China either.

“What are they about?”

“Don’t know yet, seeing as how they’re encrypted. But my guys are crackerjacks. They’ll get ’em open for me. Let you know the second they do.”

“Okay.” They’d reached Nick’s Suburban, and he pressed the remote to unlock it.

“Cool. Enjoy your” — Eddie cleared his throat — “lunch.”

“You implying something, Eddie?”

“No umbrella or raincoat?” Eddie said. “Don’t you have a nice view out of your office? You musta seen it was raining.”

“I was too busy working.”

“Well, you don’t want to go out without protection,” Eddie said with a wink. “Not where you’re going.”

And he walked off.

When he arrived at Cassie’s, the rain had turned into a full-fledged downpour. He parked in her driveway and raced to the front door, rang the bell, stood there getting soaked. No answer; he rang again.

No answer. He rang a third time, looked at his watch. It was 12:40, so he was on time. She’d said between 12:30 and 1:00. Of course, that was ambiguous; maybe she’d wanted him to specify a time.

Drenched, shivering from the cold rain, he knocked on the door and then rang again. He’d have to change his clothes back at the office, where he kept a spare set. It wasn’t exactly cool for the CEO of Stratton to walk around headquarters looking like a drowned rat.

Finally he turned the knob and was surprised when it opened. He went in, called, “Cassie?”

No answer.

He walked into the kitchen. “Cassie, it’s Nick. You here?”

Nothing.

He went to the living room, but she wasn’t there either. In the back of his mind he worried. She seemed a little fragile, and her father had just died, and who the hell knew what she might do to herself?

“Cassie,” he shouted, louder still. She wasn’t downstairs. The blinds were drawn in the living room. He opened a slat and looked out, but she wasn’t out there either.

Nervous, he went upstairs, calling her name. The second floor was even darker and dingier than the downstairs. No wonder she didn’t want him going up here. Two doors on either side of a short hallway, and two at both ends. None of the doors was closed. He started at the room at the far end of the hall. It was a bedroom, furnished with not much more than a full-size bed and a dresser. The bed was made. The room had the look and smell of vacancy, as if no one had been in here for a long time. He assumed it was Andrew Stadler’s room. He left and went into the room at the other end of the hall, where a sloppily unmade bed, a discarded pair of jeans turned inside out on the floor, and the odor of patchouli and cigarettes told him it was Cassie’s.

“Cassie,” he called again as he tried another room. It smelled strongly of paint, and he knew even before he entered that this was the room Cassie was using as her studio. Sure enough, there was a half-finished canvas on an easel, a weird-looking picture, a woman surrounded by bright strokes of orange and yellow. Other canvases leaned against the walls, and all of them seemed to be variations on the same bizarre image of a black-haired young woman, naked, her mouth contorted in a scream. It looked a little like that famous painting by Edvard Munch, The Scream . In each one, the woman was surrounded by concentric strokes of yellow and orange, like a sunset, or maybe fire. They were disturbing paintings, actually, but she was pretty good, Nick thought, even if he didn’t know much about art.

Well, she wasn’t here either, which meant that something really was wrong, or they’d somehow gotten their signals crossed in the couple of hours since he’d sent his e-mail. Maybe she’d changed her mind, or had to go out, and had e-mailed back to tell him that, and the e-mail never arrived. That happened.

He tried the last door, but this was a bathroom. He took a much-needed piss, then took a bath towel and began blotting his shirt and pants. He put the towel back on the rod, and then, before he left, he took a peek in the mirror-fronted medicine cabinet, hating himself for snooping.

Apart from the usual cosmetics and women’s products, he found a couple of brown plastic pharmacy bottles labeled Zyprexa and lithium. He knew lithium was for manic-depressives, but he didn’t know what the other one was. He saw Andrew Stadler’s name printed on the labels.

Her dad’s meds, he thought. Still hasn’t thrown them out.

“They’re not all his, you know.”

Cassie’s voice made him jump. He reddened instantly.

“That lithium — that’s mine,” she said. “I hate it. Makes me fat and gives me acne. It’s like being a teenager all over again.” She waved an unopened pack of cigarettes at him, and he realized at once where she’d been.