Company Man (42 page)

Marta came to the front hall, holding a dish towel in wet hands. No doubt she'd heard the little double beep of the alarm system when he opened the door. Somewhere in the background were peals of girlish laughter.

“Something wrong?” Nick asked her.

Marta shook her head. “Everything's fine,” she said huffily, her tone implying the exact opposite.

“Is it Luke?”

Marta stiffened. “Miss Stadler invited herself over.”

“Oh,” Nick said. “That's fine.”

Marta shrugged unhappily. It wasn't fine with
her
.

“Is there a problem, then?” Nick asked. What was with this Mrs. Danvers act, anyway?

“It's just getting hard to keep track of who's in the family and who isn't, these days.”

It was an invitation to a heavy conversation; Nick silently declined.

In the family room he found Cassie, in an oversized Stratton T-shirt and black jeans, sitting with Julia, who was wearing an outfit Nick hadn't seen before, a turquoise velour tracksuit. Very J. Lo. The word “Juicy” ran across her butt.

He stood at the threshold and watched, unnoticed.

“There's nothing dirty about it,” Cassie was saying.

“Dirty pillows!” Julia said, in silly mode. “Dirty pillows!”

“You get older, your body changes. Boys seem less yucky. You start to feel more private about your body. Everyone goes through it. It's as natural as granola.”

Julia giggled at that, somehow anxious and pleased at the same time. “I hate granola,” she said.

“The main thing is, don't feel it's something you can't talk about. Don't feel it's some weird, shameful thing, okay? Tits aren't the end of the world. Zits, on the other hand…”

Another burst of giggles, less nervous and more high-spirited.

They were having The Talk. Relief washed over him, mixed with a little jealousy over the intimacy Cassie and Julia seemed to have developed. He'd mentioned to Cassie how much he was dreading the prospect of having the girl-stuff talk with his daughter: in his hands, it would probably have ended in some grisly level of mutual embarrassment. Marta, despite her tight jeans, was prim and embarrassed about talking about sex and had let Nick know that she most emphatically didn't consider it her place to tell Julia about things like periods.

Cassie, though, was talking about it as if it were no big deal, and somehow
making
it no big deal. Something about her low, commonsensical voice was keeping everything real, down-to-earth, and comfortable. Or at least as comfortable as it could be for a giddy, giggly ten-year-old.

“Lot of things change, lot of things don't,” Cassie told Julia. “Just remember, whatever happens to you, you're always going to be your daddy's little girl.”

Nick cleared his throat, then said to Julia, “Hey, baby.”

“Daddy!” She got up and received his hug.

“Where's your brother?”

“He's upstairs working.”

“Good to hear. And where'd you get this outfit?”

“Cassie bought it for me.”

“She did, huh?” A velour tracksuit? It even exposed her tummy. She was ten years old, for Christ's sake.

Cassie looked up, shrugged sheepishly. “
All
the fifth-graders consider me their fashion guru,” she said.

When Julia had left to go to her room, Nick looked at Cassie and shrugged. “Thanks, by the way. I gather you were talking about girl stuff with her. Not easy for her old man to do.”

“She's a sweet pea, Nick. The main thing is that she knows you're always going to be her daddy, and you're always going to love her.”

“Stay for dinner?”

“I can't,” she said.

“Plans?”

“No. I just—you know, what's that they say about guests and fish? They start stinking after—I forget how many days.”

“You think Julia considers you a guest? Or Luke?”

She couldn't hide her smile. “You understand, don't you?”

“Stay. Plus, I could use your take on what's going on at work.”

“You've come to the right place,” she said. “The wisdom tooth of Fenwick, Michigan.”

He told her about his meeting with Dorothy Devries.

“Well, she's not calling the shots anymore,” Cassie said. “You said Todd Muldaur is.”

“That's the problem.”

“The question I always like to ask is: Who's your daddy?”

“Yeah. You and Shaft.”

“So who's Todd Muldaur's daddy?”

A shrug. “Willard Osgood is the chairman of Fairfield Partners. But it sounds like he's become an absentee father.”

“Willard Osgood—the guy with the thick glasses and all that folksy investment advice, right? I read that profile in
Fortune
you showed me. He's the one you've got to go to.”

“For what? I don't see the upside.”

“Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Osgood really think of himself as a father figure? What you're describing doesn't sound like his style.”

“True,” Nick said. “But times change. The face of the future is probably Todd Muldaur.”

“See, that doesn't add up to me. The way it's all been kept under wraps—that's not just about keeping the details away from you. Is it possible they're trying to keep the details away from Daddy too?”

“Hmph. I hadn't thought of that.”

“But it's possible, right?”

“It's possible, yes.”

“So maybe you should go right to Osgood.”

“And what if you're wrong? What if he knows everything that's going on?”

“Consider your options right now. The real question is, What if I'm right?”

Audrey's e-mail icon was bouncing. It was a message from Kevin Lenehan. She opened it immediately, then practically ran to Forensic Services.

“Guess what?” he said.

“You got it. The video.”

“No fucking way. I told you, that's so gone.”

“Then what?”

“This is cool. I noticed this code on here. It backs up to an FTP server on a preset schedule.”

“Can you explain that?”

“Sure. Certain archivable events, ranging from alarm inputs to motion-detector inputs, get automatically sent to an FTP server using the IP address that's preprogrammed in here.”

“Kevin,” she said, mildly exasperated, “that really wasn't much of an explanation, now, was it?”

“The eleven minutes of video you're looking for? That we thought got totally erased? Well, it got erased on the box, here. But it also got sent over the Internet to Stratton's LAN—sorry, the company's computers. There's a backup copy at Stratton. That clear enough?”

Audrey smiled. “Can you get into the Stratton computers from here—on the Internet or something?”

“If I was that good, do you think I'd have a job like this?”

She shrugged.

“But get me into Stratton and I'll know where to look.”

It was an hour drive to the Gerald R. Ford International Airport, then a five-hour flight to Logan Airport, a bustling place that seemed as populous as all of Fenwick. Nick made his way past a Legal Sea Foods restaurant, a WH-Smith bookstore, and a Brookstone gadget center before he reached the escalator to Ground Transportation. Among a flock of livery drivers, he caught the eye of an olive-skinned man in a blue blazer and gray slacks who was holding a card that read
NICHOLAS CONVER
. Close enough.

Fairfield Partners was the anchor tenant of a vast glass-and granite-faced building on Federal Street, in the heart of downtown Boston. Willard Osgood's offices were on the thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth floors. The reception area was all dove-gray velvet and tropical woods, and Nick expected he'd be given plenty of time to study its details, cooling his heels in preparation for his audience with the Great Man. To his surprise, though, the strawberry blond receptionist told him to go right in. Nick wondered whether he was late. His watch told him that he was a few minutes early if anything.

As he walked through the glass door, Nick was immediately met by another blond woman, this one with red plastic-framed glasses. “Mr. Conover,” she said. “Your flight okay?”

“It was,” Nick said.

“Can I get you anything? Water, a soda, coffee?”

“I'm fine,” Nick said, striding to keep up with her power walk.

“I'm sorry Todd's on the road. I'm sure he would have loved to say hi if he knew you were coming in.”

I'm sure he would have, Nick thought. “Well, you might want to check with Mr. Osgood before you tell Todd or anyone else that I was here.”

“Yes, sir,” she said quickly. “Of course.”

The offices of Fairfield Equity Partners were soaring and glass-walled, two floors combined into one. Along the walls, he noticed framed magazine covers featuring Willard Osgood—holding a fishing reel on the cover of
Field & Stream,
wearing a blue suit and yellow tie on
Forbes
. Osgood's square, bespectacled face and pleased-yet-concerned expression were always identical, as if the head had been Photoshopped onto different models.

Finally, she gestured toward a tan leather sofa in what looked like a vast waiting area, and said, “Have a seat. I'll leave you here.”

Nick craned his head around, took in the large glass desk and various fishing trophies on the wall. It took a moment before he figured out he was in Willard Osgood's own office. He looked out the windows on two sides and could see the Boston Harbor in the distance, then some scrubby little islands beyond that.

Moments later, Willard Osgood himself strode in: the square, weathered face, the Coke-bottle glasses—he could have been peeled off one of those magazine covers. Nick stood up and realized that Osgood probably had an inch or two on him.

“Nick Conover,” Osgood said in a booming voice, giving him a friendly bump on the shoulder. “I hope you noticed what kind of chair I've got at my desk.” He pointed to the Stratton Symbiosis chair.

Nick grinned. “You liked it so much you bought the company.”

Osgood raised a shaggy eyebrow. “Did I make the right decision?”

“Hope you still like the chair. It's still a good company.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here in Beantown?”

“I'm here to ask your help solving a problem.”

Osgood's expression vacillated between amusement and perplexity. “Let me put that Stratton chair into service,” he said after a moment, walking over to his desk. Nick took a chair in front of it. “I always think better on my butt.”

Nick started right in. “As I recall, when you came to Fenwick, you told us that your favorite holding period is forever.”

“Ah,” Osgood said, seeming to understand. He blinked a few times, folded his hands on the desk, and then cleared his throat. “Nick, I think I also told you that my rule number one is, never lose money.”

Osgood knew Todd was selling the company, Nick now realized. So maybe Cassie was wrong. Did he know
everything,
though? “Which is a lesson that Todd Muldaur seems to have forgotten, if he ever learned it,” Nick said.

“Todd's had a rough year,” Osgood came right back, sounding a little annoyed. “There are some mighty good explanations for that, though.”

“Yeah, well, ‘Explanations aren't excuses,' as you also like to say.”

Osgood smiled, exposing a blinding row of porcelain veneers. “I see the gospel spreads.”

“But I can't help but wonder whether one of the explanations is that no one's watching the shop. That's what Todd seems to indicate, anyway. He says you've taken to spending a lot of time away from the office. That maybe you've gotten more interested in fly-fishing than in profit margins.”

Osgood's smile almost reached his eyes. “I hope you don't believe that.”

“I don't know what to think.”

“What my lieutenants really mean by that, of course, is that my day has passed. They like to think that, because it means their day has arrived.” Osgood leaned back in his chair, but of course the Stratton Symbiosis chair, being er
gonomic, wouldn't let him tip all the way back like the older chairs would. “Tell you a story, but don't repeat it, okay?”

Nick nodded.

“Couple years ago I took Todd down to Islamorada, Florida, for the annual migration of the tarpon. 'Course, he showed up with his brand-new Sage rod and his Abel reel, and he's got a leather belt on, with a bonefish on the buckle.” He gave a hearty guffaw. “He's a confident fellow—told me he'd done a lot of fly-fishing at some fancy lodge in Alaska, kind of place with gourmet meals and a sauna and the guide does everything for you except wipe your ass. So I graciously allowed him the bow and watched him flail for hours. Poor guy missed shot after shot, got more and more frustrated, his line kept getting wrapped, the flies hitting him on the backside.” He blinked a few times. “Finally I decided I'd had enough fun. I stood up, stripped out ninety feet of line. Soon as I spotted a school of fish approaching, I delivered the fly. The fish ate, and six and a half feet of silver king went airborne. You with me? One school of fish—one shot—one cast—and one fish brought to the side of the boat.”

“Okay,” Nick said, enjoying the tale but wondering what the point was.

“See, I don't think Todd realized that the secret isn't how pricey your equipment or how nice your Ex Officio slacks are. All that counts is
bow time
—just doing it over and over and over again. Takes years of practice. No substitute for it.”

“How do you cook tarpon?”

“Oh, heavens, no, you don't eat it. That's the beauty part. You release it. It's all about the fight.”

“Huh,” Nick said. “Doesn't sound like my kind of sport.”

“From what I understand, hockey's all about the fight too. And you don't even get a fish to show for it.”

“I guess that's one way of looking at it.”

“But anyway, you're right. Todd's made some mistakes. A couple of bold gambles.”

“I believe the phrase ‘sucking wind' might be more accurate.”

Osgood wasn't amused. “I'm well aware of what's happening,” he said brittlely.

“Are you? I wonder.” Nick leaned over and removed a file folder from his briefcase, then slid the folder across the desk. Osgood opened it, tipped his glasses up onto his forehead, and examined the documents. Nick noticed that the horizontal creases on Osgood's forehead were equally spaced and straight, almost as if drawn with a ruler.

Osgood looked up for a moment. “I wish he hadn't done things this way.”

“What way?”

“Keeping you out of the loop. It's not the way I prefer. I like to be a straight shooter. Now I see why you've come to talk to me. I understand why you're upset.”

“Oh, no,” Nick said quickly. “I totally understand why he didn't want me to know. Hell, he knew how opposed I was—am—to a sale like this. Even though I don't have the power to stop it, he was probably afraid I'd kick up a fuss, maybe even take it public. Better to just do the deal without me knowing, he figured, so that by the time I figured it out, it would be a fait accompli. It would be too late.”

“Something like that. But as I say, that's not my way.”

“Todd needed a quick infusion of cash to help bail out the firm, after all his bad bets on semiconductors. And an IPO takes forever. I get it.”

“I told Todd you're a reasonable man, Nick. He should have just leveled with you.”

“Maybe he should have leveled with
you
. Like telling you who the fairy godmother behind ‘Pacific Rim Investors' really is. Though he probably figured that you, with your political beliefs, wouldn't want to hear where the money comes from.” Nick paused. “The P.L.A.”

Osgood blinked owlishly.

“That's the People's Liberation Army,” Nick explained. “The Communist Chinese army.”

“I know who they are,” Osgood said curtly. “Wouldn't have gotten to where I am without doing my homework.”

“You knew this?” Nick said.

“Good Lord, of
course
I knew it. There's nothing illegal about it, my friend.”

“The Communist Chinese,” Nick persisted, hoping the incantation might jangle the old right-winger.

“Oh, for heaven's sake, this is
office furniture
. Not Patriot missiles or nuclear weapons or something. Desks and chairs and file cabinets. I hardly call that selling our enemy the rope they're going to hang us with.”

“But have you actually looked at the numbers on Stratton that Todd provided Pacific Rim Investors?”

Osgood pushed the folder away from him. “I don't micromanage. I don't look over my partners' shoulders. Nick, we're both busy men—”

“You might want to. See, the balance sheet Todd gave them is a fraud. Prepared by my CFO, Scott McNally, who knows a thing or two about how to put lipstick on a pig.”

Another flash of the porcelain Chiclets. “Nick, maybe you've been in the Midwest a bit too long, but that Jimmy Stewart,
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
bit's not going to play here.”

“I'm not talking morality, Willard. I'm talking illegality.”

Osgood waved Nick away with an impatient hand. “There's all kinds of ways of doing the books. Anyway, we've got a no-litigate clause, even if they do get buyer's remorse.”

“You know about that too,” Nick said dully.

Osgood's stare seemed to drill right through him. “Conover, you're wasting your time and mine, trying to backtrack over everything. Horse is out of the barn. Gripe session's over. Now, this it? We done here?” Osgood rose, pressing a button on his intercom. “Rosemary, could you show Mr. Conover out, please?”

But Nick remained in his seat. “I'm not done yet,” he said.