Company Man (19 page)

Nick took them into one of the conference rooms. Talking at his home base was out of the question, given the way anyone, including Marjorie, could listen in.

He took the lead. He sat at the head of the table. The moment the two homicide detectives sat, he began speaking. He adopted a calm, authoritative tone, brisk but cordial. He was the head of a major corporation with a million things going on, and these two cops were here without an appointment, without even giving him the courtesy of a heads-up call. Yet he didn't want to diminish the importance of what they were doing. They were investigating the murder of a Stratton employee. He wanted them to feel that he took this seriously. It was a delicate balancing act.

He was scared shitless. He didn't like the fact that they'd just shown up at his workplace. There was something aggressive, almost accusatory about that. He wanted to let them know, through his tone and his attitude, that he didn't appreciate this, while at the same time communicating his respect for their mission.

“Detectives,” he said, “I can spare maybe five minutes. You've caught me on my busiest day.”

“Thanks for seeing us,” said the black woman. The blond man blinked a few times, like a Komodo dragon admiring a delicious-looking goat, but said nothing. Nick could tell that
he was going to be trouble. The black woman was sweetly apologetic, an obvious pushover. The blond man—Busbee? Bugbee?—was the one to watch.

“I wish you'd called my office and made an appointment. I'd be happy to talk to you at greater length another time.”

“This shouldn't take that long,” said the blond man.

“Tell me what I can do for you,” Nick said.

“Mr. Conover, as you know, an employee of the Stratton Company was found dead last week,” said the black woman. She was quite pretty, and there was something serene about her.

“Yes,” Nick said. “Andrew Stadler. A terrible tragedy.”

“Did you know Mr. Stadler?” she went on.

Nick shook his head. “No, unfortunately. We have five thousand employees—as many as ten thousand two years ago, before we had to let so many people go—and I can't possibly get to know everyone. Though I wish I could.” He smiled wistfully.

“Yet you went to his funeral,” she pointed out.

“Of course.”

“You always go to the funerals of Stratton employees?” said the blond detective.

“Not always. When I can, though. I don't always feel welcome, not anymore. But I feel it's the least I can do.”

“You never met Mr. Stadler, is that right?” the black woman said.

“Right.”

“You were aware of his…situation, though, isn't that right?” she continued.

“His situation?”

“His personal troubles.”

“I heard later that he'd been hospitalized, but plenty of people have mental illness and aren't violent.”

“Oh?” the black detective said quickly. “How did you know he'd been hospitalized? Did you see his personnel file?”

“Didn't I read it in the newspaper?”

“There wasn't anything in the paper about that,” said the blond man.

“Must've been,” Nick said. There
had
been something in the paper, hadn't there? “Said something about a ‘troubled emotional history' or something, right?”

“Nothing about hospitalization,” the blond man said firmly.

“Someone must have mentioned it to me, then.”

“Your corporate security director, Edward Rinaldi?”

“Possibly. But I don't recall.”

“I see,” the black woman said, jotting something down.

“Mr. Conover, did Edward Rinaldi tell you he thought Andrew Stadler was the guy who killed your dog?” the blond cop asked.

Nick squinted, as if trying to recall. He remembered asking Eddie about this.

Told her you didn't even know who the guy was. Pretty much true.

“I never even heard the name,”
Nick had said.
“Right? You tell her otherwise?”

“Exactly. Told her you're a busy guy, I do my job, you don't get involved.”

“Eddie didn't mention any names to me,” Nick said.

“Is that right?” the woman said, sounding surprised.

Nick nodded. “To be honest, it's been a rough year. I'm the head of a company that's had to let half its employees go. There's a lot of anger out there, understandably.”

“You're not the most popular man in town,” she suggested.

“That's putting it mildly. I've gotten angry letters from downsized employees, really heartbreaking letters.”

“Threats?” she asked.

“Could be, but I wouldn't know about them.”

“How could you not know about threats?” the male cop said.

“I'm not the first to open my mail here. If I get a threatening letter, it goes right to Security—I never see it.”

“You don't want to know?” he said. “Me, I'd want to know.”

“Not me. Not unless I need to know for some reason. The less I know, the better.”

“Really?” said the blond man.

“Really. I don't like to go around feeling paranoid. There's no point in it.”

“Did Mr. Rinaldi tell you why he was looking into Mr. Stadler's background?” the black woman persisted.

“No. I didn't even know he was.”

“He didn't tell you later he'd been looking into Stadler?” she persisted.

“Nope. He never told me anything about Stadler. I mean, I had no idea—
have
no idea—what Eddie was looking into. He does his job and I do mine.”

“Mr. Rinaldi never even mentioned Stadler's name to you?” the woman said.

“Not that I recall, no.”

“I'm confused,” she said. “I thought you just said Mr. Rinaldi might have told you about Andrew Stadler's hospitalization. Which would sort of require him to mention Stadler's name, right?”

Nick felt the tiniest trickle of sweat run slowly down his earlobe. “After the news of Stadler's death came out, Eddie may have mentioned his name to me in passing. But I really don't recall.”

“Hmm,” the woman said. A few seconds of silence went by.

Nick ignored the sweat trickle, not wanting to call attention to it by brushing it away.

“Mr. Conover,” said the blond man, “your house has been broken into a bunch of times in the last year, right? Since the layoffs began?”

“Several times, yes.”

“By the same person?”

“It's hard to say. But I'd guess, yeah, the same person.”

“There was graffiti and such?”

“Graffiti spray-painted inside my house, on the walls.”

“What kind of graffiti?” the black detective asked.

“‘No hiding place.'”

“That's what they wrote?”

“Right.”

“Did you receive any death threats?”

“No. Ever since the layoffs started, two years ago, I've gotten occasional threatening phone calls, but nothing quite that specific.”

“Well, your family dog was killed,” said the blond detective. “That's sort of a death threat, wouldn't you say?”

Nick considered for a moment. “Possibly. Whatever it was, it was a sick, depraved thing to do.” He worried that he'd just gone too far: had be just betrayed his anger? Yet how else would he be expected to react? He noticed that the black woman wrote something down in her notebook.

“The Fenwick police have any idea who did this?” the guy said.

“No idea.”

“Does Mr. Rinaldi get involved in your personal security, outside the corporation?” the black detective asked.

“Informally, yeah,” Nick said. “Sometimes. After this last incident, I asked him to put in a new security system.”

“So you must have discussed the incident with him,” she said.

Nick hesitated, a beat too long. What did Eddie tell them, exactly? Did Eddie tell them he came over to the house after Barney was slaughtered? He wished he'd talked to Eddie longer, found out everything he'd said. Shit. “A bit. I asked his advice, sure.” He waited for the inevitable next question—inevitable to him, at least: did Eddie Rinaldi come to his house after Barney had been discovered in the pool? And what was the right answer?

Instead, the black detective said, “Mr. Conover, how long ago did you move into Fenwicke Estates?”

“About a year ago.”

“After all the layoffs were announced?” she went on.

“About a year after.”

“Why?”

Nick paused. “My wife insisted.”

“Why was that?”

“She was concerned.”

“About what?”

“That our family might be threatened.”

“What made her so concerned?”

“Instinct, mostly. She knew there were a few people who might want to do us harm.”

“So you did hear about threats,” the black woman said. “But you just said you didn't know about any—you didn't
want
to know about them.”

Nick folded his hands on the table. He was feeling increasingly frantic, trapped like some cornered animal, and he knew the only way to respond was to sound both reasonable and blunt. “Did I hear about specific threats? No. Did I hear that there
were
threats—that a few isolated fringe cases might have it in for me and my family? Sure. People talk. Rumors spread. I wasn't going to wait to see if there was any basis in these rumors. And I can tell you my wife sure as hell wasn't going to wait.”

The two detectives seemed to accept his answer. “Before you moved to your new house, Mr. Conover, did you have any break-ins?”

“Not till we moved to Fenwicke Estates.”

The blond detective smiled. “Guess the…
gated community
…didn't give you much protection, huh?” He put a surly spin on the words “gated community,” made no attempt to conceal a note of smugness.

“Just takes longer to get in and out of,” Nick admitted.

The blond guy chuckled, shook his head. “Costs a lot more, though, I bet.”

“There you go.”

“But you can afford it.”

Nick shrugged. “Wasn't my idea to move there. It was my wife's.”

“Your wife,” said the black woman. “She—she passed away last year, isn't that right?”

“That's right.”

“Nothing suspicious about her death, was there?”

A pause. “No, nothing suspicious,” Nick said slowly. “She was killed in a car accident.”

“You were driving?” she asked.

“She was driving.”

“Nothing—was alcohol involved?”

“The other driver, yeah,” Nick said. “A semi. He'd been drinking.”

“But not you.”

“No,” he said. “Not me.” He compressed his lips, then looked at his watch. “I'm afraid—”

The blond guy stood up. “Thanks for taking the time.”

But the black woman remained seated. “Just a couple more things, sir?”

“Can we continue this some other time?” Nick said.

“Just—just another minute, if you don't mind. We don't want to leave any stone unturned. Do you own any guns, Mr. Conover?”

“Guns?” Nick shook his head. He hoped his face hadn't reddened.

“No handguns at all?”

“Nope. Sorry.”

“Thank you. And last Tuesday night, where were you?”

“At home. I haven't traveled anywhere in ten days or so.”

“What time did you go to sleep, do you remember?”

“Last Tuesday?”

“A week ago.”

Nick thought a moment. “I went out for dinner Wednesday night. Tuesday I was at home.”

“Do you remember what time you went to sleep?”

“I can't—well, I'm normally asleep by eleven, eleven-thirty.”

“So you'd say by eleven-thirty you were in bed?”

“That sounds about right.” She was smart, Nick realized. Smarter, he saw now, than the blond guy, who was all posture and attitude.

“Sleep through the night?”

“Sure.”
Jesus,
he thought. What was she implying?

“Okay, great,” she said. She got up. “That's all we need. We appreciate your taking the time to talk to us.”

Nick rose, shook their hands. “Anytime,” he said. “Just next time, give me some notice.”

“We will,” the black woman said. She stopped, appeared to hesitate. “I'm sorry to take up your time, Mr. Conover. But you know, our victims aren't just victims—they're human beings. Whatever their problems, whatever their difficulties, a man is dead. Someone who mattered to someone. We're all beloved by someone, you know.”

“I'd like to think so,” Nick said.

As soon as Nick showed the two homicide cops to the elevator, he returned to the boardroom, hoping to catch Todd Muldaur, but the room was empty. Todd and the others had left. He returned to his office area—hell, his
cubicle
—taking an indirect route, past Scott's area.

“Afternoon, Gloria,” he said to Scott's admin, a small, hypercompetent woman with a broad face and blond hair cut in bangs. “Scott in?”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Conover. Scott's right—”

“Hey, Nick,” Scott said, emerging from behind his panel. “Man, that was a rough ride today, huh?”

“Tell me about it,” Nick said blandly. He kept on going, toward Scott's desk, to the round table where Scott held his conferences.

“That put root canals in a whole new perspective,” Scott said. He began lifting piles of papers off the round table, moving them to a credenza next to his desk. “So what'd you think of that new guy, Finegold?”

“Seems nice enough,” Nick said guardedly, standing at the table, waiting for Scott to finish clearing away the papers.

“That guy's rolling in it, you know. I mean, totally loaded. You know he hired that boy band 'N Sync to play at his daughter's bat mitzvah a couple of years back, when they were still hot?”

“He's a hot spare,” Nick said.

“A what?”

“A hot spare. Disk drive fails, you swap it with a spare, all ready to go. Plug-'n'-play. Ready to go.”

“Dan? Oh—no, I'm sure they're just trying to strengthen the bench. Is that the right sports term? He's a great guy, actually—tell you a funny story, when he was at—”

“I had to learn about Atlas McKenzie from
Todd
?” Nick broke in. “What the hell's up with that?”

Scott's face colored; he examined the tabletop. “I told you, I got the call from Hardwick on my way over to dinner,” he said. “I tried you on your cell, but I guess it was off.”

“You didn't leave a message.”

“Well, it's—it wasn't the sort of thing you want to leave in a voice mail, you know—”

“And you didn't e-mail me? You didn't call me this morning before the board meeting? You let me find out from
Todd
fucking
Muldaur?
”

Scott's hands flew up, palms out. “I didn't have a chance—”

“And you didn't have a
chance
to tell me they wanted to put you on the board?” Nick said.

Scott stared at the white Formica tabletop as if he'd just seen something alarming there. “I didn't,” he began, falteringly.

“
Don't
tell me you didn't know that was going to happen. Why the hell didn't you mention it to me? You couldn't reach me on my cell, that it?”

“It—it wasn't my place, Nick,” Scott said. He looked up at last, face gone burgundy, eyes watering. His voice was meek but his expression was fierce.

“Not your place? The fuck are you telling me? You knew they were going to put you on the board and it wasn't your place to tell me that? You kept their little secret, embarrassed me in front of the board?”

“Hey, come on, Nick, calm down,” Scott said. “All right? It was complicated—I mean, maybe I should have said
something, in retrospect, but Todd wanted me to keep it—Nick, you should take it up with Todd.”

Nick got up. “Yeah,” he said. “I just might do that.”

Don't fuck with me,
he thought. Almost said it, but at the last second something stopped him.

 

As he returned to his desk, Marge stopped him, holding up an envelope.

“This just came in from HR,” she said. “That check you requested.”

“Thanks,” he said, taking the envelope as he resumed walking.

“Nick,” she said.

He stopped, turned around.

“That check—for Cassie Stadler?”

“Yeah?”

“That's a lot of money. It's for her dad's severance pay, isn't it? Which he lost when he quit?”

Nick nodded.

“The company isn't obligated to pay that, right?”

“No, it's not.”

“But it's the right thing to do. It's—that's nice, Nick.” There were tears in her eyes.

Nick nodded again, returned to his desk. He immediately picked up his handset and called Todd Muldaur's cell phone. It rang three times, four, and just as Nick was about to hang up, Todd's voice came on. “This is Todd.”

It sounded like a prerecorded voice-mail message, so Nick waited a second before saying, “Todd, it's Nick Conover.”

“Oh, hey, Nick, there you are. You bolted before I had a chance to say goodbye, dude.”

“Todd, are you trying to squeeze me out?”

A beat. “What makes you say that?”

“Come on, man. What happened in there, in the board meeting. Bring in Finegold, your hot spare, putting Scott on the board without giving me a heads-up. The monthly board
meetings, the weekly financials. Changing the rules of the game like that. Taking away my ability to change my team the way I see fit. What, you think I'm an idiot?”

“Nick, we don't need to squeeze you out,” Todd said, his voice gone steely. “If we wanted you gone, you'd be gone.”

“Not without a pretty damned huge payday.”

“A rounding error at Fairfield Partners, buddy.”

“Five million bucks is a rounding error to you guys?”

“Nick, I meant what I said. We want to bring more to the table. Strengthen the team.”

“You don't trust me to run the company, you should just come out with it.”

Todd said something, but the signal started to break up “…the way,” he was saying.

“Say again?” Nick said. “I lost you there.”

“I said, we trust you, Nick. We just don't want you getting in the way.”

“In the
way
?”

“We need to make sure you're responsive, Nick. That's all. We want to make sure you're on board.”

“Oh,
I'm
on board,” Nick said, deliberately ambiguous, insinuating. He didn't know what that was supposed to mean, exactly, except that he hoped it sounded vaguely threatening.

“Excellent,” Todd said. His voice got all crackly again as the signal weakened. A fragment: “…to hear.”

“Say again?” Nick said.

“Man, do you guys have, like, one cell tower out here in cow town? I swear, the reception
sucks
. All right, I better go. I'm losing you.” Then the line went dead.

For a long time, Nick stared at the long blue Stratton check he'd had the treasurer's office cut for Cassie Stadler: a payoff, pure and simple. Andrew Stadler had quit before being laid off; legally, he wasn't entitled to any severance. But what was legal, and what the courts might decide—if Cassie Stadler decided to press the issue—were two separate things. Better to pre-empt, he'd decided. Be generous. Show
her that her father's employer meant well, that Stratton was willing to go above and beyond what it was required to do.

That was all there was to it, he told himself.

Keep the woman happy. No one wanted a lawsuit.

And he remembered what that black woman detective had said as she left. “We're all beloved by someone,” she'd said. She had a point. As crazy, as deranged as Andrew Stadler was, he'd been loved by his daughter.

He hit the intercom button. “Marge,” he said. “I need you to call Cassie Stadler for me.”

“I believe she's living in her father's house,” came Marge's voice over the speakerphone.

“Right. Tell her I want to stop by. I have something for her.”