Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“Christ,” said Nick. “He’s sixteen years old.”

“And he’s going to be seventeen. And then eighteen. And that’s going to be rough too.”

“A year ago you wouldn’t have recognized him. He was this totally straight, popular athlete.”

“Just like his dad.”

“Yeah, well. My mom didn’t die when I was fifteen.”

“What makes it worse is if you can’t talk about it.”

“He’s a kid. It’s hard for him to talk about stuff like that.”

Cassie looked at him.

“What?”

“I wasn’t just talking about Lucas,” she said quietly. “I was talking about you.”

A deep breath. “You like metaphors? Here’s one. You know the cartoon coyote that’s always racing off the edge of the cliff?”

“Yes, Nick. Wile E. Coyote. An odd role model for the CEO of Acme Industries, I’d have thought.”

“And he’s in midair, but his legs are still pumping and he’s moving along fine. But then — he looks down, and he sinks like a stone. Moral of the story? Never fucking look down .”

“Beautiful,” Cassie said, her voice as astringent as witch hazel. “Just beautiful.” Her eyes flashed. “Have you noticed that Lucas can’t even look at you? And you can barely look at him. Now why is that?”

“If you bring up those Black Forest porcupines again, I’m out of here.”

“He’s lost his mom, and he desperately needs to bond with his father. But you’re not around, and when you are, you’re not there . You’re not exactly verbally expressive, right? He needs you to be the healer, but you can’t do it — you don’t know how. And the more isolated he feels, the more he turns on you, and the angrier you get.”

“The armchair psychologist,” Nick said. “Another one of your imaginative ‘readings.’ Nice guess, though.”

“No,” she said. “Not a guess. He pretty much told me.”

“He told you? I can’t even imagine that.”

“He was stoned, Nick. He was stoned, and he started to cry, and it came out.”

“He was stoned? In your presence?”

“Lit up a nice fat doobie,” Cassie said, with a half-smile. “We shared it. And we had a long talk. I wish you could have heard him. He has a lot on his mind. A lot he hasn’t been able to say to you. A lot you need to hear.”

“You smoked marijuana with my son? ”

“Yes.”

“That is incredibly irresponsible. How could you do that?”

“Whoa, Daddy, you’re missing the big picture here.”

“Lucas has a problem with this shit. You were supposed to help him. Not encourage him, goddammit. He looks up to you!”

“I told him to lay off the weed, at least on school nights. I think he’s going to.”

“Goddammit! You haven’t got a clue, have you? I don’t care what kind of a fucked-up childhood you had. This is my son you’re dealing with. A sixteen-year-old boy with a drug problem. What part of this isn’t registering?”

“Nick, be careful,” she said, in a low, husky voice. Her face was turning a deep red, but her expression remained oddly fixed, a stone mask. “We had a very open and honest conversation, Luke and I. He told me all kinds of things.” Now she turned to look at him with hooded eyes.

Nick was torn between fury and fear, wanting to lay into her for what she’d done, getting high with Lucas — and yet frightened of what she might have found out from Lucas.

Lucas, who might — or might not — have heard shots one night.

Who might — or might not — have overheard his father and Eddie discussing what had really happened that night.

“Like what?” he managed to say.

“All kinds of things,” she whispered darkly.

Nick closed his eyes, waited for his heart to stop hammering. When he opened them again, she was gone.

Audrey’s e-mail icon was bouncing, and she saw it was Kevin Lenehan, the electronics tech.

She walked right over there, almost ran.

“What’s the best restaurant in town, would you say?” Kevin said.

“I don’t know. Terra, maybe? I’ve never been there.”

“How about Taco Gordito?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because you owe me dinner. I told you the recording on this baby started at three-eighteen in the morning on Wednesday the sixteenth, right? After the sequence you’re so interested in?”

“What’d you find?”

“The hard drive’s partitioned into two sections, right? One for the digital images, the other for the software that drives the thing.” He turned to his computer monitor, moved the mouse around and clicked on something. “Very cool system, by the way. Internet-based.”

“Meaning?”

“Your guy had the ability to monitor his cameras from his office.”

“What does that tell you?”

“Nothing. I’m just saying. Anyway, look at this.”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s a long list of numbers.”

“Not a techie, huh? Your husband has to program the VCR for you?”

“He can’t either.”

“Same with me. No one can. So, look. This is the log of all recorded content.”

“Is that the fifteenth?”

“You got it. This log says that the recording actually started on Tuesday the fifteenth at four minutes after noon, right? Not like fifteen hours later.”

“So you found more video?”

“I wish. No, you’re not following me. Someone must have gone in and reformatted the section of the hard drive where the recordings are made, then started the whole machine over, recycled it, so it just looked like it started from scratch at three-whatever in the morning on Wednesday. But the log here tells us that the system was initiated fifteen hours earlier. I mean, it’s saying there’s recorded content going back to like noon that day. Only, when you click on the files, it says ‘File not found.’”

“Deleted?”

“You got it.”

Audrey stared at the screen. “You’re sure of this.”

“Am I sure the box started recording at noon the day before? Yeah, sure as shit.”

“No. Sure you can’t retrieve the recording.”

“It’s, like, so gone.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Hey, you look, like, disappointed. I thought you’d be thrilled. You want proof part of the video was erased, you got it right here.”

“You ever read the book Fortunately when you were a kid?”

“My mom plopped me down in front of One Life to Live and General Hospital . Everything I learned about life I learned from soap operas. That’s why I’m single.”

“I must have read it a thousand times. There’s a boy named Ned, and he’s invited to a surprise party, but unfortunately the party’s a thousand miles away. Fortunately a friend lends him an airplane, but unfortunately the motor explodes.”

“Ouch. I hate when that happens.”

“Fortunately there’s a parachute in the airplane.”

“But unfortunately he’s horribly burned over ninety percent of his body and he’s unable to open the chute? See how my mind works.”

“This case is like that. Fortunately, unfortunately.”

“That pretty much describes my sex life,” Kevin said. “Fortunately the girl goes home with Kevin. Unfortunately she turns out to be a radical feminist lesbian who only wants him to teach her how to use Photoshop.”

“Thanks, Kevin,” Audrey got up from the stool. “Lunch at Taco Gordito’s on me.”

“Dinner,” Kevin said firmly. “That’s the deal.”

Nick’s cell phone rang just as he was pulling into the parking lot, almost half an hour later than usual this morning.

It was Victoria Zander, the Senior Vice President for Workplace Research, calling from Milan. “Nick,” she said, “I’m at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan, and I’m so upset I can barely speak.”