Company Man (34 page)

Eddie lived in a small condominium complex called Pebble Creek. It had been built about half a dozen years ago, and consisted of four five-story buildings—stained wood, red brick, big windows—set on a big square of grass and gravel. Each of the condos had its own white-trellised balcony, where residents had put out things like folding chairs and trees in pots. It was a look Nick had heard described as neo-Prairie. No creek anywhere, but plenty of pebbles around the parking lot. There were homey-looking office parks that looked like this—the Conovers' pediatric dentist was located in one—and some people might have found Pebble Creek a little officey-looking for a home. Eddie wouldn't have been one of them.

“Be it ever so humble,” Eddie said as he let Nick in. He was wearing black jeans and a gray knit shirt that was furred from one too many tumbles in the dryer. “Welcome to the Edward J. Rinaldi fuck pad.”

Nick had never visited Eddie at his home before, but he wasn't surprised at what he saw. A lot of glass, a lot of chrome. Blue-gray carpeting. Black lacquered furniture and booze cabinet, big mirrors on the wall behind it. The biggest things in the room were two big flat Magnapan speakers, in silver, standing at either side of a black sofa like shoji screens. Everything more or less matched. In the bedroom,
Eddie showed off an immense waterbed that he said got so much use he'd had to replace the liner three times already.

“So what do you know?” Eddie said, walking Nick into the area of his living room he no doubt called his “entertainment center,” though maybe he had a more colorful name for it.

“Well,” Nick said, “I know that ‘J' was the last letter added to the alphabet.”

“No shit? How did they get by without it? Jacking off. Jheri Curl. Jism. Jesus. Jock straps. You got all the basics of civilization right there.” Eddie opened the drinks cabinet, twisted open a bottle of Scotch. “Not to mention J & B. And Jameson's. What'll you have?”

“I'm okay,” Nick said.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, settling into a chair covered in fake silver-gray suede, and putting his feet on the glass coffee table, next to a couple of books titled
Beyer on Speed
and
Play Poker Like the Pros
. “I think maybe you are.”

“What makes you say that?” Nick sat on the adjoining sofa, which was covered in the same fake suede.

“'Cause, Nicky, I got something for you. Figured you wouldn't mind coming over to my place to look at a couple of e-mails our boy Scotty deleted a couple of weeks ago. I guess he figures if you delete something it's gone, poof. Doesn't realize all e-mail's archived on the server. So who's Martin Lai?”

“Martin Lai. He's our manager for Asia Pacific, out of Hong Kong. In charge of accounting. Truly the deadliest, most stultifyingly dull guy you're ever going to meet. Human ether.”

“Well, check it out.” He handed Nick a couple of pages.

And then, Scott's immediate reply:

When Nick looked up, he said, “Ten million bucks? What's it for?”

“I don't know, but it looks to me like Scotty-Boy's being a little reckless. Playing fast and loose, huh?”

“It does, doesn't it?”

“Not like you.”

“Huh?”

“
You're
not being reckless at all, right?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“What
you're
doing, man, is a fuck of a lot stupider than whatever Scott McNally's up to. You better check yourself before you wreck yourself, bro, or we're both going to the slammer. And don't think I'm going to take the rap for you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Eddie's gaze bore down on him relentlessly. “You want to explain what the fuck you're doing layin' pipe with Stadler's daughter?”

Nick was speechless for a moment. “Are you
spying
on
me, Eddie? That's how you knew where I was going that day, in the rain, isn't it? You have no business monitoring my e-mail or my phone lines—”

“It's like we're on a road trip together, Nick. We gotta be taking the same turns. You need to be watching the speed limit, observing all traffic signs. And right here, see, there's no Merge sign. Sign says
DO NOT ENTER
. Are you hearing me? Because it's real important that you do.” Eddie locked eyes with him. “Do you realize how unbelievably fucking
reckless
you're being?”

“It's totally none of your business, Eddie.”

Eddie stretched, raised his arms and put his hands behind his head. Under his arms, sweat stains blackened his gray shirt. “See, that's where you're wrong, buddy. It's very much my business. Because if this keeps up, we could both be making license plates in the shithouse, and I promise you, that's not going to happen.”

“This is out of bounds. You lay off her.”

“I wish you'd lay off her too. You tell me you're getting rim jobs from the local Brownie troop, I could give a shit. You tell me you're setting up a crystal-meth lab in your basement, I could give a flying fuck. But this thing involves the two of us. You let that piece of ass into your life—for whatever freaky, fucked-up reasons of your own—and you are jeopardizing both of us. What the fuck do you
think
she's after?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“News flash,” Eddie said in a low voice. “You wasted her old man.”

The blood left Nick's face. He was groping for words, but none came.

“You really don't get it, do you? Cops think you might've had something to do with it. Let's say the cops talk to her, maybe let on their suspicions, let it slip, see if she knows anything, right? So this little girl figures she gets close to you—I'm just spitballing here—and maybe she finds something out. Something that could help bring you down. Who the hell knows what? Maybe her thing isn't really getting
into your pants. Maybe it's about getting into your
head
.”

“That's bullshit. I don't believe it,” Nick said. It felt as if his guts had furled into a small hard ball.

That time at Town Grounds.

God, someone who'd do something like that to your family.

I'd want to kill him
.

“Believe it,” Eddie said. “Entertain the goddamn possibility.” He drained his glass, exhaled with a loud alcohol wheeze. “The ass you save could be your own.”

“I'm not going to sit here and listen to this,” Nick said, his face burning. He stood up, went to the door, but stopped halfway there and turned back around. “You know, Eddie, I'm not so sure you're in any position to be giving lectures about recklessness.”

Eddie was staring at him defiantly, an ugly grin on his face.

Nick went on, “I don't think you really leveled with me about why you left the Grand Rapids police.”

Eddie's eyes narrowed to slits. “I already told you about that bullshit charge.”

“You didn't tell me you were drummed out for pilfering.”

“Oh, Christ. Sounds like the kinda thing Cleopatra Jones might have told you. You going to believe her, or me?”

Nick pursed his lips. “I don't know, Eddie. I'm beginning to think I believe her.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said acidly. “You would, wouldn't you?”

“You didn't say it wasn't true.”

“Did I cut corners? Sure. But that's it. You can't believe everything you hear. People talk some crazy shit.”

Audrey's desk phone rang, and she checked the caller ID to make sure it wasn't poor Mrs. Dorsey again. But it was a 616 area code, which meant Grand Rapids, and so she picked it up.

A woman was calling from the Michigan State Police crime lab who identified herself as an IBIS technician named Susan Calloway. She was soft-spoken but authoritative-sounding, her voice arid, devoid of any warmth or personality. She gave the case number she was calling about—it was the Stadler homicide—and said, “The reason I'm calling, Detective, is that I believe you asked us to see if we could match the bullet in your case with any others, correct?”

“That's correct.”

“Well, it seems we got a warm hit on IBIS.”

Audrey knew a fair amount about the Integrated Ballistics Identification System. She knew it was a computerized database of archived digital images of fired bullets and cartridges that linked police and FBI crime labs across the country. It was sort of like AFIS, the fingerprint-matching network, only the fingerprints here were photographs of bullets and casings.

“A warm hit?” Audrey said. That term she hadn't heard before, though.

“I mean a possible hit,” the woman said, her bland voice
betraying the tiniest hint of annoyance. “To me, it looks quite similar to a bullet recovered in a no-gun case in Grand Rapids about five, six years ago. Six years ago, to be precise.”

“What kind of case?”

“The file class is 0900-01.”

That was the Michigan state police offense code for a homicide. So the gun used to kill Stadler had been used six years earlier in another homicide, in Grand Rapids. That could be significant—or it could mean almost nothing. Guns were bought and sold on the black market all the time.

“Really? What do we know about the case?”

“Not much, Detective, I'm sorry to say. I have only the submitting agency's case number, which won't do you much good. But I've already called over there and asked them to bring over the bullet in question so I can do the comparison.”

“Thank you.”

“And as to the question you're probably about to ask—how long will this take?—the answer is, as soon as I get the bullet from the GR PD.”

“Well, I wasn't going to ask that,” Audrey said. She thought: Only because it would rankle if I
did
ask. If you had no juice with these firearms examiners, you'd better be as sweet as pie. “But I appreciate the information.”

Interesting, she thought. Very interesting.

She took a stroll across the squad room and over to Forensic Services, where she found Kevin Lenehan slumped over his desk, arms folded, a dim shadowy tape playing on a TV monitor, numbers racing across the top of the screen.

She put a hand on his shoulder, and he jolted awake.

“Hey,” she said, “you don't want to miss the guy in the Nike Air sneakers and the Raiders jacket.”

“I hate my life,” he said.

“You're too good for this kind of work,” she said.

“Tell that to my manager.”

“Where is she?”

“Maternity leave. Noyce's my manager these days. Aren't you tight with him?”

“I wouldn't say that. Kevin, listen. Could you take an
other look at my recorder? I mean, unofficially and off the books and all that?”

“When? In my voluminous spare time?”

“I'll owe you one.”

“No offense, but that doesn't really work on me.”

“Then how about out of the goodness of your heart?”

“Not much there,” he said.

“Kevin.”

He blinked. “Let's say, hypothetically now, that I had ten minutes for a coffee break that I decided to spend chasing the great white whale out of a personal obsession. What would I be looking for anyway?”

“I just tried Fairfield,” Marge said over the intercom, “but Todd's assistant said he's out of the office for the day, so I left a message.”

“Can you try his cell? You have the number, right?”

“Of course.”

Of course she did. She never lost a phone number, never misplaced an address, could pull up a name from her file in a matter of seconds without fail. God, she was the best.

There was a certain etiquette to making phone calls, which she appreciated. If she called Todd's office and he was there, she'd put Nick on before Todd picked up. That was how it worked. Nick had always hated the telephone brinksmanship, where someone's assistant would call Marge, be put through to Nick, and then the assistant would say, “I have Mr. Smith,” and Nick would say, “Okay, thanks,” and then Mr. Smith would get on, as if he were too busy even to suffer a few seconds of being on hold. It was demeaning. Nick had devised his own way around that. He'd instructed Marge to tell the assistant, “Put Mr. Smith on, please, and I'll get Mr. Conover.” That usually worked. So when Marge placed calls for him, he didn't like to play Mr. Smith's game. Todd picked up his own cell phone, of course—who didn't?—so Nick dialed the call himself.

Todd answered right away.

“Todd, it's Nick Conover.”

“Oh, hey, man.” No background noise. Nick wondered whether Todd actually was in his office anyway.

“Todd, we've got some funny things going on around here, and we need to talk.”

“Hey, that's what I'm here for.” Like he was a shrink or something.

“Two massive deals just fell through because they each, separately, heard that we're planning to shift all manufacturing to China.”

“Yeah?”

“Any truth to it?”

“I can't be responsible for gossip, Nick.”

“Of course. But I'm asking you now, flat out—man to man—if it's true.” Man to toad, he thought. Man to weasel. “If you guys are even exploring the idea.”

“Well, you know how I feel about this, and I've let you know. I think we're eroding our profit margins by continuing to operate these old factories in Michigan like it's nineteen fifty-nine or something. The world's changed. It's a global economy.”

“Right,” Nick said. “We've been through all that, and I've made it clear that the day Stratton stops making its own stuff is the day we're no longer Stratton. I'm not going to be the guy who shuts down our factories.”

“I hear you,” Todd said testily.

“I've already laid off half the company as you guys asked me to. It was the most painful thing I've ever done. But turning Stratton into some kind of virtual company, a little sales office with all the manufacturing done eight thousand miles away—that's not going to happen on
my
watch.”

“I hear you,” Todd said again. “What are you calling for?”

“Let me repeat the question, because I don't think I heard your answer. Is there any truth to these reports that you guys are negotiating to move our manufacturing offshore, Todd?”

“No,” he said quickly.

“Not even preliminary talks?”

“No.”

Nick didn't know what else to say. Either he was telling the truth, or he was lying, and if he was willing to lie so baldly, well, what the hell could Nick do about it anyway? He thought about mentioning all the back-and-forth e-mail between Todd and Scott, the encrypted documents—but he didn't want Todd to know he was having his security director keep a close watch. He didn't want to shut one of the few windows he had into what was really going on.

“Then maybe you can explain to me why you've got Scott going to China on some secret mission, like Henry fucking
Kissinger,
without even telling me.”

A few seconds of silence. “News to me,” Todd finally said. “Ask him.”

“Scott said he went to China to explore the options. He didn't do that for you? Because if he did, I want you to understand something. That's not the way it works around here, Todd.”

“He doesn't report to me, Nick.”

“Exactly. I don't want to be undermined.”

“I don't want that either.”

“The job's tough enough without having to worry about whether my chief financial officer's taking secret flights to the Orient on Cathay Pacific.”

Todd chuckled politely. “It's a tough job, and it takes a lot out of you.” The timbre of his voice suddenly changed, as if he'd just thought of something. “You know, I understand your family's been through some rough times, death of your wife, all that. If you need to spend more time with them, we're here to help. You want to take a little sabbatical, a little break, might be a good thing. You could probably
use
a vacation. Be good for you.”

“I'm fine, Todd,” Nick said.
Not so easy, Todd
. “Going to work every day—that's what keeps me going.”

“Good to hear it,” Todd said. “Good to hear it.”