Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“She’s beautiful.” Abby’s arched brows, lowered lids, glimmering with contempt.

He nodded, supremely uncomfortable.

“She doesn’t exactly seem like the Nick Conover type, though. Is she an... artist or something?”

“She does some painting. Teaches yoga.”

“Glad you’re dating again.” Abby could not have sounded more inauthentic.

“Yeah, well...”

“Hey, it’s been a year, right?” she said brightly, something cold and hard and lilting in her voice. “You’re allowed to date.” She smiled, victorious, not even bothering to hide it.

Nick couldn’t think of anything to say.

LaTonya was lecturing some poor soul as Audrey approached, wagging her forefinger, her long coral-colored nails — a self-adhesive French manicure kit she’d been hounding Audrey to try — looking like dangerous instruments. She was dressed in an avocado muumuu with big jangly earrings. “That’s right,” she was saying. “I can make a hundred and fifty dollars an hour easy, taking these online surveys. Sitting at home in my pajamas. I get paid for expressing my opinions! ”

When she saw Audrey, she lit up. “And I figured you’d be working,” she said, enfolding Audrey in an immense bosomy hug.

“Don’t tell me Leon’s here too.” LaTonya seemed to have forgotten about her sales pitch, freeing the victim to drift off.

“I don’t know where Leon is,” Audrey confessed. “He wasn’t at home when I stopped in.”

“Mmm hmm, ” LaTonya hummed significantly. “The one thing I know he’s not doing is working.”

“Do you know something you’re not telling me?” Audrey said, embarrassed by the desperation she’d let show.

“About Leon? You think he tells me anything?”

“LaTonya, sister,” Audrey said, moving in close, “I’m worried about him.”

“You do too much worrying about that man. He don’t deserve it.”

“That’s not what I mean. He’s... well, he’s gone too much.”

“Thank your lucky stars for that.”

“We... we haven’t had much of a private life in a very long time,” Audrey forced herself to say.

LaTonya waggled her head. “I don’t think I want to know the gory details about my brother, you know?”

“No, I’m... Something’s going on, LaTonya, you understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”

“His drinking getting even worse?”

“It isn’t that, I don’t think. He’s just been disappearing a lot.”

“Think that bastard is cheating on you, that it?”

Tears sprang to Audrey’s eyes. She compressed her lips, nodded.

“You want me to have a talk with him? I’ll slice his fucking balls off.”

“I’ll handle it, LaTonya.”

“You don’t hesitate to call me in, hear? Lazy bastard don’t know what a good thing he has in you.”

Audrey’s heart broke when Nicholas Conover’s daughter played the first prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier . It wasn’t just that the girl hadn’t played all that well — a number of note fumbles, her technique not very polished, her performance mechanical. Camille had all but stolen the show with the Brahms waltz, had played perfectly and with heart, making Audrey burst with pride. It was what was about to happen to Julia Conover. This little girl, awkward in her dress, had lost her mother, something that should never happen to a child. And now she was about to lose her father.

In just a couple of days her father would be arrested, charged with murder. The only time she’d ever see her remaining parent would be during supervised jail visits, her daddy wearing an orange jumpsuit, behind a bulletproof window. Her life would be upended by a public murder trial; she’d never stop hearing the vicious gossip, she’d cry herself to sleep, and who would tuck her in at night? A paid babysitter? It was too awful to think about.

And then her daddy would be sent away to prison. This beautiful little girl, who wasn’t much of a pianist but radiated sweetness and naïveté: her life was about to change forever. Andrew Stadler may have been the murder victim, but this little girl was a victim too, and it filled Audrey with sorrow and foreboding.

As the teacher, Mrs. Guarini, thanked the audience for coming and invited everyone to stay for refreshments, Audrey turned around and saw Nicholas Conover.

He was holding up a video camera. Next to him sat a beautiful young woman, and next to her Conover’s handsome son, Lucas. Audrey did a double take, recognizing the woman, who just then put her hand on Conover’s neck, stroking it familiarly.

It was Cassie Stadler.

Andrew Stadler’s daughter.

Her mind spun crazily. She didn’t know what to think, what to make of it.

Nicholas Conover, having an affair with the daughter of the man he’d murdered.

She felt as if a whole row of doors had just been flung open.

It had to happen, since the two of them got into work at about the same time.

Nick and Scott had been avoiding each other studiously. Even at meetings where both of them were present, they were publicly cordial yet no longer exchanged small talk, before or after.

But they could hardly avoid each other right now. Nick stood at the elevator bank, waiting, just as Scott approached.

Nick was the first to speak: “’Morning, Scott.”

“’Morning, Nick.”

A long stretch of silence.

Fortunately, someone else came up to them, a woman who worked in Accounts Receivable. She greeted Scott, who was her boss, then shyly said, “Hi” in Nick’s general direction.

The three of them rode up in silence, everyone watching the numbers change. The woman got off on three.

Nick turned to Scott. “So you’ve been busy,” he said. It came out more fiercely than he intended.

Scott shrugged. “Just the usual.”

“The usual include killing new projects like Dashboard?”

A beat, and then: “I tabled it, actually.”

“I didn’t know new product development was in your job description.”

Scott looked momentarily uncertain, as if he were considering ducking the question, but then he said, “Any expenditures of that magnitude concern me.”

The elevator dinged as it reached the executive floor.

“Well,” Scott said with visible relief, “to be continued, I’m sure.”

Nick reached over to the elevator control panel and pressed the emergency stop button, which immediately stopped the doors from opening and also set off an alarm bell that sounded distantly in the elevator shaft.

“What the hell are you—”

“Whose side are you on, Scott?” Nick asked with ferocious calm, crowding Scott into the corner of the elevator. “You think I don’t know what’s going on?”

Nick braced himself for the usual wisecracking evasions. Scott’s face went a deep plum color, his eyes growing, but Nick saw anger in his face, not fear.

He’s not scared of you, Cassie had observed.

“There aren’t any sides here, Nick. It’s not like shirts versus skins.”

“I want you to listen to me closely. You are not to kill or ‘table’ projects, change vendors, or in fact make any changes whatsoever without consulting me, are we clear?”

“Not that simple,” Scott replied levelly, a tic starting in his left eye. “I make decisions all day long—”

The elevator emergency alarm kept ringing.

Nick dropped his voice to a near-whisper. “Who do you think you’re working for? Any decision you make, any order you give, that’s not in your designated area of responsibility will be countermanded — by me. Publicly, if need be. You see, Scott, like it or not, you work for me,” Nick said. “Not for Todd Muldaur, not for Willard Osgood, but for me. Understand?”