Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“The name came up, that’s all. Now, what do you know about Stratton Asia Ventures?”

She wrinkled her brow. “Not much. A subsidiary corporation Scott set up. He never ran it by my office.”

“Is that unusual?”

“We review all sorts of contracts, but we don’t go after people and insist on it. I assumed he was using local counsel in Hong Kong.”

“Check this out, would you?” Nick handed her the e-mail from Scott to Martin Lai in Hong Kong, which Scott had tried to delete.

“Ten million dollars wired to an account in Macau,” Nick said as she looked it over. “What does that tell you?”

She looked at Nick, looked down quickly. “I don’t know what you’re asking me.”

“Can you think of a circumstance in which ten million dollars would be wired to a numbered account in Macau?”

She flushed. “I don’t want to be casting aspersions. I really don’t want to guess.”

“I’m asking you to, Steph.”

“Between you and me?”

“Please. Not to be repeated to anyone.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “One of two things. Macau is one of those money-laundering havens. The banks there are used for hidden accounts by the Chinese leaders, same way deposed third-world dictators use the Caymans.”

“Interesting. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

She was clearly uncomfortable. “Embezzlement — or a bribe. But this is only speculation on my part, Nick.”

“I understand.”

“And not to be repeated.”

“You’re afraid of Scott, aren’t you?”

Stephanie looked down at the table, her eyes darting back and forth, and she said nothing.

“He works for me,” Nick said.

“On paper, I guess,” she said.

“Excuse me?” Her remark felt to Nick like a blow to his solar plexus. It felt like the wind had been knocked out of him.

“The org chart says he’s under you, Nick,” she said hastily. “That’s all I mean.”

“Got something for you,” Eddie said over the phone.

“I’ll meet you in the small conference room on my floor in ten minutes,” Nick said.

Eddie hesitated. “Actually, why don’t you come down to my office?”

“How come?”

“Maybe I’m tired of taking the elevator up there.”

The only thing worse than this kind of idiotic, petty game, Nick thought, was responding to it. “Fine,” he said curtly, and hung up.

“You know how much e-mail Scotty blasts out?” Eddie said, leaning back in his chair. It was a new chair, Nick noticed, one of a premium, super-limited run of Symbiosis chairs upholstered in butter-soft Gucci leather. “He’s like a one-man spam generator or something.”

“Sorry to put you out,” Nick said. He also noticed that Eddie had a new computer with the largest flat-panel monitor he’d ever seen.

“Guy’s a Levitra addict, first off. Gets it over the Internet. I guess he doesn’t want his doc to know — small town and all that.”

“I really don’t care.”

“He also buys sex tapes. Like How to Be a Better Lover. Enhance Your Performance. Sex for Life .”

“Goddammit,” Nick said, “that’s his business, and I don’t want to hear about it. I’m only interested in our business.”

“Our business,” Eddie said. He sat upright, reached over for a thick manila folder, and set it down in front of Nick with a thud. “Here’s something that’s very much our business. Do you even know the first fucking thing about Cassie Stadler?”

“We’re back to that?” Nick snapped. “You stay out of my goddamned e-mails, or—”

Eddie looked up suddenly, his eyes locked with Nick’s. “Or what?”

Nick shook his head, didn’t reply.

“That’s right. We’re joined at the hip now, big guy. I got job security, you understand?”

Nick’s heart thrummed, and he bit his lower lip.

“Now,” Eddie said, a lilt to his voice. “I’m not reading your fucking e-mails. I don’t need to. You forget I can watch your house on my computer.”

“Watch my house? ” Nick shook his head. “Huh?”

Eddie shrugged. “Your security cameras transmit over the Internet to the company server, you know that. I can see who’s coming and going. And I can see this babe coming and going a lot .”

“You do not have permission to spy on me, you hear me?”

“Couple of weeks ago you were begging for my help. Someday soon you’ll thank me. You know this chick spent eight months in a psycho ward?”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “Only it was six months, and it wasn’t a ‘psycho ward.’ She was hospitalized for depression after a bunch of college friends of hers were killed in an accident. So what?”

“You know that for the last six years, there’s no record of any FICA payments on this broad? Meaning that she didn’t have a job? Don’t you think that’s strange?”

“I’m not hiring her to be vice president of human resources. In fact, I’m not hiring her at all. She’s been a yoga teacher. How many yoga teachers make regular Social Security payments, anyway?”

“I’m not done yet. Get this: ‘Cassie’ isn’t even her real name.”

Nick furrowed his brow.

Eddie smiled. “Helen. Her name is Helen Stadler. Cassie — that’s not on her birth certificate. Not a legal name change. Totally made up.”

“So what? What’s your point?”

“I got a feeling about her,” Eddie said. “Something about her ain’t correct. We talked about this already, but let me say it again: I don’t care how sweet the snatch. It ain’t worth the risk.”

“All I asked you to do was to find out what Scott McNally was up to.”

After a few seconds of sullen silence, Eddie handed Nick another folder.

“So, those encrypted documents my guys found?”

“Yeah?”

“My guys cracked ’em all. It’s really just one document, bunch of different drafts, went back and forth between Scotty and some lawyer in Chicago.”

“Randall Enright.”

Eddie cocked his head. “That’s right.”

“What is it?”

“Fuck if I know. Legal bullshit.”

Nick started to page through the documents. Many of them were labeled DRAFT ONLY and REDLINE. The sheets were dense with legal jargon and stippled with numbers, the demon spawn of a lawyer and an accountant.

“Maybe he’s selling company secrets,” Eddie said.

Nick shook his head. “Not our Scott. Huh-uh. He’s not selling company secrets.”

“No?”

“No,” Nick said, once again short of breath. “He’s selling the company.”

“Why do you trust me?” said Stephanie Alstrom. They met in one of the smaller conference rooms on her floor. There was just no damned privacy in this company, Nick realized. Everyone knew who was meeting with whom; everyone could listen in.

“What do you mean?”

“Scott’s stabbing you in the back, and you hired him too.”

“Instinct, I guess. Why, are you working against me too?”

“No,” she smiled. Nick had never seen her smile before, and it wrinkled her face strangely. “I just guess I should feel flattered.”

“Well,” Nick said, “my instinct has failed me before. But you can’t be distrustful of everyone.”

“Good point,” she said, putting on a pair of half-glasses. “So, you know what you’ve got here, right?”

“A Definitive Purchase Agreement,” Nick said. He’d looked over hundreds of contracts like this in his career, and even though the legalese froze his brain, he’d learned to hack his way through the dense underbrush to uncover the key points. “Fairfield Equity Partners is selling us to some Hong Kong — based firm called Pacific Rim Investors.”