Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“And I don’t recall your seeking my help or guidance when you decided to lay off five thousand workers, dragging the Stratton name through the mud,” she went on. “And after Milton worked so hard to make it a byword for what was best about Fenwick. That was part of his legacy, too, Nicholas.”

“Dorothy, you voted to approve the layoffs.”

“Oh, as if I could stop that train in its tracks! But please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not complaining. We sold the firm. Almost all of it belongs to Fairfield Partners. And so we must be very businesslike about the whole thing.”

“With all respect, Dorothy, aren’t you bothered by the idea of Stratton being owned by... by the Chinese government? The Communist Chinese?”

Dorothy Devries shot him a wintry look. “Please. Coming from you? Business is business. My family made good money when we sold to Fairfield, and we stand to make quite a bit more when they sell it to this consortium.”

“But for God’s sake—?” He saw something in her face. “You knew all about it, didn’t you?”

She refused to reply. “Nicholas, I didn’t give you Milton’s job in order for you to dismantle his company, believe it or not. But you did. You cheesed it up with all that Office of the Future eyewash. You got rid of what was real, what was solid, and replaced it with gilt and papier mâchè. Milton would have been appalled. Though I suppose I really can’t judge you without judging myself, can I? I’m the one who gave you the keys to the corner office.”

“Yes,” Nick said, finally. “And why did you?”

Dorothy sat silent for a while. “As you might imagine,” she said with a drawn smile, “I’ve often asked myself the same thing.”

Audrey had promised to keep Noyce in the loop, that was the thing. Strictly speaking, she knew she had the right to go right to the prosecutor’s office and request an arrest warrant for Conover and Rinaldi without even telling Noyce. She knew that. But it wasn’t right to exclude him. It was a matter of courtesy to keep Noyce updated. She’d told him about the gun match as soon as she found out, and there was no reason to start keeping him in the dark now. It would infuriate him, but worse, it would hurt his feelings, and she wasn’t about to do that.

Music was playing softly in Noyce’s office as she entered. Audrey recognized Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo,” a trumpet solo.

“Is that Louis?” she asked.

Noyce nodded, absorbed. “Ellington and Armstrong recorded this in one take. Unbelievable.”

“Sure is.”

“The Duke was great at composing under deadline pressure, you know. The night before a recording date, he’s waiting for his mother to finish cooking dinner, and he goes to his piano, and in fifteen minutes he knocks off a piece he calls ‘Dreamy Blues.’ Next night his band plays it over the radio, broadcasting from the Cotton Club. Later he renames it ‘Mood Indigo.’” Noyce shook his head, waited for the song to end, and then clicked off the CD player. “What can I do you for?”

“I think we’ve got enough to arrest Conover and Rinaldi.”

Noyce’s eyes widened as she explained, then just as quickly narrowed. “Audrey, let me take you out for ice cream.”

“I’m trying not to eat—”

“Well, you can watch. I’ve been thinking about one of those chocolate-dipped strawberry sundaes at the Dairy Queen.”

Noyce tucked into a boat-sized dish of soft-serve vanilla ice cream smothered in syrupy strawberries, while Audrey tried to avert her eyes, because it looked too good, and her will was weak when it came to desserts, especially in the midafternoon.

“You don’t want your butt out there for false arrest, Aud,” he said, a strawberry smear at the side of his mouth. “You realize who you’re dealing with, don’t you?”

“You think Nicholas Conover’s all that powerful?”

“He’s a wealthy and powerful guy, but more to the point, he now works for a holding company in Boston that’s going to be intent on protecting their investment. And if that means suing the police department in the town of Fenwick, Michigan, they’ve got the resources to do it. That means they sue you. And us.”

“That could work the other way too,” she pointed out. Her stomach was growling, and her mouth kept filling with saliva. “The holding company could get nervous about having a CEO charged with first-degree murder and jettison him.”

Noyce didn’t look up from his ice cream. “You willing to take that chance?”

“If I have a genuine belief that Conover and Rinaldi were involved in a homicide, and I got a prosecutor to back me up on it, how is that false arrest?”

“It just means more of us in the soup. Plus, I can tell you, you’re not going to get a prosecutor to write a warrant unless he’s sure he can win the case. And I worry that we’re still thin on the ground here.”

“But look at what we’ve got, Jack—”

He looked up. “Well, let’s take a look at it, Aud. What’s your most damaging lead? The gun? So you’ve got Rinaldi on some case in Grand Rapids, and the same gun in that one turns up here.”

“Which is no coincidence. Rinaldi had a reputation as a bad cop.”

“Now, you’ve got to be careful there. That’s hearsay. Cops are always gossiping, stabbing each other in the back, you know that better than anyone.” He sighed. “No one’s going to let you run with that. If you want to say he took the gun, fine — but you don’t have any proof of that.”

“No, but—”

“Look at it through the eyes of a defense attorney. The same gun used in Grand Rapids turned up here? Well, you think that’s the first time a gun was used in Grand Rapids and here? Where do you think our drug dealers get their guns? Flint, Lansing, Detroit, Grand Rapids. They’ve got to come from somewhere.”

Audrey fell silent, watching him spoon the soft-serve, careful to catch a dollop of strawberry goo in each spoonful.

“Far more likely, in fact,” Noyce went on, “is that some shitbird in Fenwick bought a piece from some other shitbird in GR. Pardon my French, Audrey.”

“But the hydroseed stuff — the soil match—”

“That’s an awfully slender reed to hang a first-degree murder on, don’t you think?”

She felt increasingly desperate. “The cell phone call Conover lied about—”

“Again, maybe he really did get the day wrong. Audrey, I’m just being devil’s advocate here, okay?”

“But Conover’s own security system — the video for that night was erased, and we can prove it.”

“You can prove it was erased, or you can prove the tape recycled? There’s quite a difference.”

Noyce had clearly been talking to Kevin Lenehan. “You have a point,” she conceded.

“Then there’s the fact that both you and Bugbee canvassed Conover’s neighbors, and not one of them heard a shot that night.”

“Jack, you know how far apart the houses are in Fenwicke Estates? Plus, a three-eighty isn’t all that loud.”

“Audrey. You’ve got no blood, no weapon, no footprints, no witnesses. What do you have?”

“Motive and opportunity. A stalker with a history of violence and a handgun who was stalking the CEO of Stratton—”

“Unarmed, as far as we know.”

“Even worse for Conover if Stadler was unarmed.”

“And you yourself told me the guy had no prior history of violence. ‘Gentle as a lamb,’ wasn’t that the phrase you used? Audrey, listen. If you had a solid case against these guys, no one would be happier than me. I’d love to take ’em down for this murder, you kidding me? But I don’t want us to fuck it up. I don’t want us to go off half-cocked.”