Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“You know where to look?” Audrey asked, worried.

“It was in the settings in the DVR,” replied Kevin. “The folder it was written to, the date and time and everything. No problema .”

Audrey felt a little tremble of anticipation, which she tried to tamp down, tried to reason herself out of. She was sure that the murder of Andrew Stadler would be on this eleven minutes of camera footage. If indeed there was a backup here.

How often in any homicide detective’s career could one hope to come across a piece of evidence like that? A digital image of a murder being committed? It was almost too much to hope for. She didn’t want to allow herself to hope for it, because the disappointment would be crushing.

“Anything I can do to help, Detective?”

She looked up, saw Eddie Rinaldi standing in the doorway, felt her heart do a flip-flop. From where she sat, that angle, Rinaldi seemed tall and broad and powerful. He wore a dark blazer and a black collarless shirt. He was smiling, and his eyes glittered malevolently.

“Mr. Rinaldi,” she said. Even when talking to murder suspects, she tended to be polite, but she refused to be cordial with this man. Something about him she really couldn’t stand. Maybe it was his air of knowingness, his cockiness, the feeling she got that he was enjoying the games he was playing with her.

“So you have a search warrant for the company’s network, that it?”

“You’re welcome to examine it.”

“No, no, no. I don’t doubt you dotted every i and crossed every t . You’re one thorough lady, I can tell.”

“Thank you.”

“Maybe thorough’s a polite way to say it. Obsessed, maybe? Looks like you’re still after my boss’s home security tape.”

“Oh, we have the recorder in our custody.” She considered telling him they knew the tape had been erased, just to see his reaction, but that would be giving him information he shouldn’t have.

Kevin muttered, “Almost there.”

Rinaldi glanced at Kevin curiously, as if he’d only just noticed him. Then he looked back at Audrey. He couldn’t have been more blasé.

“I still don’t get what you’re hoping to find,” Rinaldi said.

“I have a feeling you know,” Audrey said.

“You’re right. I do.”

“Oh?”

“Right. Couple of frames of some crazy old coot hobbling across my boss’s lawn in the middle of the night. But what’s that going to tell you, come right down to it?”

Audrey leaned over to the computer where Kevin was working. He tilted the monitor toward Audrey, who squinted, didn’t see any picture, and then saw the words “ERASED HERE TOO” on a document on the screen.

“Excellent,” Audrey said, nodding. “Good work.” She reached for the keyboard and typed out the words, “PLAY ALONG WITH ME.” Then she said, “Beautiful, Kevin. Can you improve the resolution just a bit?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Sure. I’ve got some great digital-imaging firmware that’ll eliminate the motion artifacts and reduce the dot crawl. A comb filter oughta separate the chrominance from the luminance. A little line doubling and some deinterlacing, and we got a nice clean image. No problem at all on this guy.”

Kevin tapped some more, and the document disappeared before Rinaldi had a chance to look for himself.

But that was the peculiar thing. Eddie Rinaldi never moved from where he stood, never bothered to peer at the monitor. He seemed utterly uninterested.

No, that wasn’t it, Audrey realized.

He was utterly confident. He knew what Kevin had just discovered, that the backup video had been deleted on the Stratton LAN, just as it had been deleted from Conover’s home security recorder.

And his confidence had just given him away.

Nick felt a tiny tremble in his hands. He put them in his lap so Osgood wouldn’t see. “Willard, don’t get me wrong. I have no interest in taking you on. I’d much rather work together with you on this. You want to save the funds Todd’s running, and I want to save the company. We both want to make money.”

Osgood slid his glasses back into place and gave Nick a steely stare as he stood behind his desk. He grunted.

“Now, I don’t know you,” Nick said, “but I can tell you’re not a gambler.” Nick noticed that the blond woman with the red glasses had slipped into the office to usher him out and was hovering in the background, waiting for her cue. He lowered his voice so that the woman couldn’t hear. “So when Scott McNally and Todd Muldaur funnel a ten-million-dollar bribe to a Chinese government official to make sure this deal happens, that’s where I think they’re crossing a line you don’t want to cross.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Osgood put his hands flat on the glass of his desk and leaned forward, intimidatingly.

“They’re putting your company at risk, doing that. Word always leaks out. And then your entire firm will be jeopardized.” Nick opened his arms wide. “All of this. Everything you’ve worked your whole life building. And I wonder whether you think it’s really worth taking such an enormous risk, when there’s another way to get what you want.”

“Rosemary,” Osgood barked. “Excuse us, please. We’ll be another few minutes.” When his secretary had left, he sat down again. “What the hell are you talking about, bribe?”

“Stratton Asia Ventures,” Nick said.

“I don’t know anything about that.”

Was he being straight? Or was he being careful? “It’s all right there in front of you — the last couple of pages in that pile. How do you think Todd was able to get this deal done in a month instead of a year? Call it a deal-sweetener or a kick-back or a bribe — whatever you call it, it’s a clear-cut violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. And it’s the kind of legal exposure that you can’t afford.”

The way Osgood yanked the folder back toward him, Nick realized that this really was news to the man. Osgood shoved his glasses back up on his forehead and hunched over the papers.

A few minutes later, he looked back up. His leathery face seemed to color. He looked thunderstruck. “Jesus,” he said. “Looks like you weren’t the only one kept out of the loop.”

“I had a feeling Todd wasn’t telling you everything,” Nick said.

“This is stupid, is what it is.”

“Desperate men sometimes do stupid things. Frankly, on some level I resent it. My company’s worth a hell of a lot more than what Pacific Rim Investors is paying for it. There’s no need to pay anyone off.”

“God damn it,” Osgood said.

“You may be great with tarpons, Willard, but I think what we’re dealing with here is a snakehead.”

Osgood seemed to be doing a slow burn. “I think my Yale boy just got hisself in over his head.”

“I guess he figured no one was watching the shop...”

Osgood’s pearly Chiclets looked more like a snarl than a smile. “From time to time, someone thinks they can pull one over on the old man. Maybe they’ve been reading too many Parade magazine profiles of me. But they always realize the error of their ways.”

Nick realized then how terrifying Willard Osgood could be once the cornpone mask fell away, a truly formidable opponent.

“A lot of people have been underestimating you too,” Osgood said. “I think I may be one of them. So tell me: What do you have in mind?”

“Daddy!” Julia ran up to Nick as he entered the house. “You’re back!”

“I’m back.” He set down his garment bag, lifted her up, felt a slight twinge in his lower back around the lumbar. Yikes. Can’t be picking her up anymore like she’s an infant. “How’s my baby?”