Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions (22 page)

“But where are the differences?”

“Look for the yellow Post-It notes,” Jay said. “I think that’s a start. And I want to look at the file from the safety deposit box - that correspondence with the FDA. Maybe that’s what triggered Tom to check out the files.”

“A copy of that file is in my briefcase too, but I’m too tired to go through any more papers. I’m going back to bed.”

Sleep would not come and I dozed on and off for the next couple of hours. My mind kept going back over those files. How did Tommy find out about the differences in the files? What triggered him to go looking? Or who had triggered him? I wondered where Dr. Jordan Francis fit into all of this. And why wasn’t he working at Global Devices anymore? When I dragged my sorry, tired ass out of bed at six o’clock, I decided to make Dr. Francis my priority for the day.

Carrie’s friend Naomi said that the address they had on file at Global Devices for Dr. Francis was on the Upper West Side, near West End Avenue. She was pretty sure he wasn’t living there though because when he left, he told Global Devices that he was moving. They didn’t have a forwarding address.

Carrie told me all this while she stood in front of my desk. “Ask her for the name of Dr. Francis’ boss. I’d like to talk to him or her.”

The next time Carrie was in front of my desk, she was there to tell me that she had Dr. Bill Pritchard on the phone. “He was Dr. Francis’ boss at Global.” I thanked her and picked up the phone.

“Dr. Pritchard. This is Kate Monahan at Phoenix Technologies. I thought it would be a good time for me to introduce myself now that I’ve been here for over a week.” I didn’t want to get to the real reason for my call right up front. I thought I’d test the waters first.

“Yes,” Dr. Pritchard replied. “What can I do for you?” He sounded like a man in a rush.

“Well, I’d like to spend some time with you folks at Global. Get to know you and the people on your team. I understand we’ve been partnering on some pretty important work with you guys.” I knew that although the artificial kidney project was down the tubes, we still had at least two other projects on the go with Global.

“You listen here, Miss,” Pritchard said. “You’ve got some nerve calling here. I’ll tell you the same thing I told Tom Connaught.” He paused for a moment and I thought I could hear him actually seething over the phone. Pritchard’s reedy breathing was coming through loud and clear on the handset. “Phoenix Technologies can take a flying leap. Global Devices will never do business with you again. So stop calling here. The next time you’ll hear from us will be through our lawyers.” And then, not surprisingly, he hung up.

What the hell was that all about, I wondered. “Carrie,” I called out. She came into the office at a trot with her ever-present steno pad, eager to help.

“I need to talk to Natalie Scott. And I need to stop bellowing for you. Sorry about that,” I apologized. “I know you showed me how to use the intercom and I keep forgetting it’s there. Can you ask Ms. Scott if she’s available?”

But Nat Scott was nowhere to be found. Carrie came back and told me that she wasn’t in the office and no one had heard from her.

“Who’s her 2IC?” I asked Carrie.

“Huh?” Carrie responded.

“Sorry. I always forget that not everyone grew up in a military family. 2IC stands for second in command. They used initials for everything in the army. Used acronyms as words and had strange expressions for every-day things.” When I was a kid growing up it was just like being a soldier - we were never “grounded” if we misbehaved, we were CB’d (confined to barracks). When we were learning anything new, we were in “basic”. Each year when we moved on to another grade at school, we were “promoted” and we went up a rank. My dad told everyone affectionately that my mom was his 2IC (yeah, right, mom used to snort). Carrie was giving me a blank stare so I got back on the subject.

“Who looks after the R and D team when Nat isn’t available?”

“I’m not sure,” she told me. “But I can find out.”

“Why not do this. Dig out the file from my meeting the other day with the R and D team. I was given a list of projects that they’re working on. Find out who’s working on the Global Devices projects and that’s who I need to talk to.”

She came back about ten minutes later. “There’s no one working on Global Devices projects,” she told me. “Apparently all work on those projects was stopped. So no one is working on them.”

I felt my blood pressure rising. “That’s ridiculous,” I yelled. “Is that what they told you?” She nodded, mutely. “Which little geek told you that?”

“Rick Williams,” she whispered.

“Get that short little shit down here, right now.” Carrie started beetling out of my office. “And Carrie.” She stopped and turned around with her steno pad clutched to her chest. “Sorry. I wasn’t yelling at you. You know that, right?” She nodded her head. “Okay. So go find me that short little shit.” I heard her giggle as she left the office.

A few minutes later Rick was sitting in one of the chairs in front of my desk. He had his legs crossed and one arm thrown back over the chair in an attempt to look casual. How a man could look casual wearing a short sleeved, white shirt, buttoned to the neck, without a tie, was beyond me. His darting eyes belied his casualness however.

“What’s the status on the Global Devices projects?” I thought I’d dispense with the niceties and get right down to it. My blood pressure was still up there.

“As far as I know,” he said, “there
are
no Global Devices projects.”

I took a deep breath. “And
that
is contrary to what I was told in the meeting last week.” I looked at the project status report I was holding in my hand. “As of last week, there were still two current projects with Global Devices. The Fort Apache project, and the San Carlos project. Those teams are supposedly headed up by Belinda Moffat and Ben Tucker. How do you explain the discrepancy?”

“And
that
is contrary to what I know.” The little shit was mimicking me. “Nat told us in a staff meeting that all contracts with Global had been cancelled.”

“When was that?” I asked.

“A couple of weeks ago?” He shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t remember.”

“Do you remember our meeting last week? When I was introduced to all of you? Do you remember that each of you gave a status on the projects you were heading?”

I wasn’t sure why I was so pissed off. Maybe it was the fact that something was really wrong and I didn’t know what it was. Rick had uncrossed his legs and was hunched over his knees, picking at a hangnail on his thumb. He didn’t respond to me or look up as I harangued him.

“Yeah,” he mumbled. He was examining his thumb now, probably looking for a good chunk of skin to chew on. The man was
really
weird. No doubt he was good at his work though. Like my estate lawyer Dennis Hillary.

“Well Belinda and Dan talked about those projects at that meeting,” I reminded him. “They gave me a status report on each of them. Neither of them had the good manners to mention that they’d been cancelled. What is the matter with you people?” I demanded. “Does everyone on that team have a career death wish? Does everyone in the research and development department feel the need to lie to me?” I was really steamed.

“Here’s what you’re going to do for me Mr. Williams. You are going to go back to your department, and you are going to find the correspondence with Global Devices where it says that the projects have been cancelled. Then, you’ll find Belinda Moffat and Ben Tucker and bring both of them back with you.” I was standing up, leaning forward over my desk when I finished. I wasn’t sure if I sounded like a pissed off grade school teacher or the drill sergeant that I had grown up with (also known as my dad).

Rick stood up and quickly left my office without saying a word. I lit a cigarette and stared out the windows. This was unbelievable. If it was true that Global Devices had cancelled their projects with us, then it would mean we would be showing some losses or less cash on the income statement. I’m not sure how we would account for the work already done if we hadn’t been paid for it. Russell Freeson, our chief financial officer, had not mentioned to me anything about the two cancelled projects, so unless there was a big cover-up going on, someone had made a mistake somewhere on the status of these two projects. After the receptionist, the one person in a company who should be on top of all the news, and the comings and goings, is the chief financial officer.

“Miss Monahan,” I heard Carrie say behind me. I stubbed out my cigarette in the small ashtray on the windowsill and turned around. Carrie was standing there with Belinda Moffat.

chapter thirty-one

“Belinda. Hi. Come on in. Where are Rick and Ben?” I asked her.

“Rick’s gone home with a migraine.” Her voice boomed in my office and I cringed at the sound. Not that I mind
loud
, it was the sound of a fog horn in close quarters that got me. This woman had a
serious
problem and I thought of my great-aunt Irene who used to tell us to “modulate our voices” whenever we got a little rowdy.

“Really?” I said. “And what about Ben? Has he got a migraine too?”

“No ma’am, I’m not sure what his problem is, but he’s not here today.”

Was anybody at work today in that department? Belinda had some papers in her hand which she held out to me. I walked around the desk and took them from her and offered her a seat. The top sheet of paper was a letter from the President & CEO of Global Devices, Dr. Bill Pritchard, the lovely gentlemen I had spoken to earlier that morning.

It was basically a cease and desist letter. We were to cease and desist from doing any more work for Global. And furthermore, Dr. Pritchard demanded that we send back to his company all of the work in progress, source codes, proprietary information of Global’s, working file documentation, test results, blah, blah, blah. We were to send a final invoice for work completed to date, and if we had any problem with any of his demands, we were to call his law firm. He
personally
wanted no further contact with
anyone
at Phoenix. Now I understood why he was a little pissed with me this morning.

I looked up from my reading at Belinda. Lord, if her bottom lip wasn’t quivering.

I held up the letter and waved it at her. “What is this all about?” I asked her.

Then she burst into tears. Well, to be kind,
burst into tears would be the dictionary definition of someone starting to cry. Belinda burst like the Hoover Dam. I swear to God liquid shot out of her nose, mouth and eyes at the same time, and gushed. Within seconds her chin and cheeks were sopping wet with fluids from her nose and her mouth. The tears were coming out of her eyes like a geyser. To top it off, the sounds coming out of her made her sound like a barnyard animal. She was crying, moaning and gasping all at the same time. At a decibel level that would put the rock band
KISS
to shame.

Carrie appeared miraculously with a box of tissues and a tall glass of water. She closed the door behind her as she exited.

Belinda grabbed at the tissue box and pulled out about six which she used to pat down her face. She ungracefully mopped her chin, grabbed several more tissues and blew her nose. Oh. My. God. The sound was fascinating and I wondered if any tug-boats on the East River thought they were hearing a mating call.

I waited while her facial orifices dried up. After a few minutes she gulped a few deep breaths and shuddered a bit. Thankfully, it was over .

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

Belinda nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. For now. I feel so stupid.” Her eyes were bloodshot and the end of her nose was a bright red.

“It’s fine,” I told her.

“No. It’s not fine. I should have done something about this a lot sooner.”

“About what?” I prodded her.

“This whole mess with Global. You know, they’re good people. I’m so proud to work on their projects. They develop medical products. Not like the pharmaceutical companies. Those greedy bastards are just in business to suck out every last cent of usurious profit from sick people before their patents run out and the medicine goes generic. The group at Global are working on some leading-edge medical devices. It’s absolutely breakthrough science.” She had lots of enthusiasm in her voice as she talked about Global. Not so much for the pharmaceutical companies though.

“So why did we get this letter from Dr. Pritchard?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. You have to believe me,” she pleaded. “Nat Scott told us that we were to follow what Dr. Pritchard said in the letter, and return their stuff to them, but we were
not
to tell anyone about it. I asked her how she expected to keep this quiet.” She looked at me expectantly. “You know, we have to do monthly reports on progress against the contract to be able to have invoices generated to bill them for our work. We stop producing against those contracts, no invoices go out. Which means no money coming in. Right?”

I nodded silently. I assumed that’s how it worked. “So someone was bound to start asking questions sooner than later, right?” I nodded again. “You know Miss Monahan, we were doing
good
work on the Fort Apache project. It was true development work. The client had an idea and wanted to know if we could help them make it work. I
love
that part of my job. When I graduated from MIT with my degree, I knew that someday I’d be working on projects that actually helped people.”

She sounded genuinely distressed. I was glad though that she had stopped crying. Belinda took another deep breath and sat up straight in her chair.

“The past few weeks have been hell for me. I’m glad this is out in the open now,” she told me.

“But do you know what caused Global to cancel with us?” I asked her.

She shook her head sadly. “No, and I tried asking Natalie about it. She called me a fat cow, and told me to mind my own business. I told her it
was
my business. My project. I was the team leader and I’m responsible for those staff working on the project. I told her she could call me anything she wants, but we are accountable to the shareholders of this company.”