Hazardous Goods (Arcane Transport) (9 page)

“Good.”

We said our goodbyes, and agreed to get together again in a few weeks. When I got to my car, I dropped the file onto the passenger seat and headed over to the hospital for a quick visit with Clay and Harper.

I had a nice surprise at the hospital when I ran into Kara there. I paused at the door, a little hesitant about adding to the crowd, but Harper waved me in.

“Hey.” I shook hands with Clay, who sat propped up in bed. His color was back to normal, and he seemed in good spirits. I mouthed “Hi” and gave Kara my best smile.

“Hey yourself. Kara was just bringing me up to speed on things. Sounds like I’ve left the place in good hands.”

“Well, Kara can take most of the credit for that. She’s the one keeping us from destroying the place.”

“Oh, she did that for me, too. It’s always been that way.”

I took a few minutes to update Clay on my visit with Helen Findlay at Sun, and the drop-in by BOA.

“These BOA guys – what do you think of them?”

I had my own significant reservations, but I wasn’t about to share them with Clay yet.

“Oh, they’ve been around for years. Tend to stay out of our way, but they’ve had some changes at the top in the past year and a half. May see more of them, if they decide to play a more active role. I would cooperate with them, but don’t go out of your way. It’s never been real clear to me where they fit in the overall scheme of things.”

That jibed with what I had seen and heard.

“Any other players I should know about? People who may not have our best interests in mind?”

“Hm.” Clay took a sip of water, glancing at Harper for a moment. “It’s maybe not a bad idea for you to do some reading. Kara, can you pull a few of the reference texts from storage? Also, there are a few file memos, and that history that was written by Charlie Carter.”

“The author?”

“Yes. He wrote a book called
The History of Occultism in Toronto
a few years back. It’s a decent overview of some of the older players, not a bad introduction to some of the basics as well.”

“Hm.” Charlie Carter. Cool. He was one of my favorite authors.
When the Axe Falls
was on my top five list of scary reads.

“That one’s in my office, bookshelf just inside the door.”

“Great. Thanks.”

We chatted for a while longer, and Harper invited me to a barbeque she was hosting the following weekend. Sort of a welcome home party for Clay. It seemed like a good chance for me to meet some of Clay’s customers, colleagues and friends, so I promised to be there.

Soon after that, Clay’s nephew Willis showed up, and Kara and I excused ourselves. On the way down to the main floor Kara confessed that she had taken the subway in, since she hated driving downtown. I offered her a ride home, through I was a little unsure about the whole employer/ employee/boyfriend thing, but figuring I would take things as they came for now. Odds were I would get nowhere, anyways.

“Why thank you.”

“My pleasure.” I eased the door closed behind her and rounded my car to the driver side.

As I settled in and started the engine, I noticed Kara had a file folder in her hand, and was examining its contents under the car’s interior lights.

“Hey! Little nosy, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.” Didn’t stop her from reading. “This from your last company?”

“Yeah.”

“What, is it like a going away thing? ‘Donnie, We’ll miss ya. Donnie, Good luck. Call me once you find a job, so I can leave this hell hole.’”

I snorted. God help me. Not a smile or a chuckle. A snort. I was such a
catch
for a chick.

“Why would they sign an ad, instead of a card?”

Oh boy. “Well, as it happens, that ad was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Or in this case, my boss’ back.”

“Why? It looks fine. A little boring—.”

“Hah. Thanks.” I pulled into traffic and accelerated before a cab climbed up my ass. “Well, there’s a little background first. See, I was with these guys for nine years, straight out of college. Started in a market research position, then worked my way up in Sales and Marketing until I was involved in RFP responses, pitch presentations, product specs, the whole shebang.”

Stopping at a red light I glanced at her to make sure she wasn’t falling asleep, but she seemed genuinely interested.

“So after a few years, I became the number two guy in Marketing, working with a lady I got along real well with. But two years ago, she was replaced by this complete idiot. Guy from San Jose, everyone claimed he was a marketing genius. Jim Hill. From day one, I couldn’t stand him. Drove a massive SUV, dressed to the nines, and treated everyone in the office like shit. Everything we did became a huge project.”

“I put together a spec for our next software release, he tells me it’s unacceptable. So he expands the spec and five months later we cut it back because the development group can’t get the work done in time. I set up meetings with industry analysts for our CEO, and he decides to take the meetings instead, pissing off a bunch of my contacts. I put together a presentation for a sales meeting with a Fortune 500 company, he decides it needs to be completely reworked, and makes me work through Labor Day weekend to get it done. Sales guys hate it and cancel the meeting.”

“What a tool.”

“Oh yeah. And it started getting personal. He fired one of
my
staff, said they were incompetent despite the fact the guy was one of the best graphic designers I’ve ever worked with. Hill hires a lady who used to work for him, moves her up from Boston, pays her nearly twice the salary of
my
designer, then all
she
does is ship out all the work to firms.”

The Gardiner was nice and quiet, so I slipped into the fast lane and ran it up to my customary 125 km per hour (that’s 80 miles per hour, for the metrically impaired).

“I was pretty much on my way out the door by the time we put that campaign together,” I nodded at the file in her lap. “He would have me put together a presentation to the executive team, not bother to read it, then when I presented it he would say the whole thing was garbage. Prick even tried to get me to swallow a salary cut, due to ‘budget’ issues. This is the same budget that was paying for his wife’s car.”

“I was ticked, and so were a lot of other senior people. Problem was, a few of us were doing all of the work. If we decided to stir things up, he was going to have a problem. So he started firing people, knocking them off one at a time. I saw the writing on the wall, so I offered myself up for a package. Would have been nice to see him get his, but I didn’t have the stomach to stay that long.”

“Sounds like you did the right thing.”

“Yeah. Honestly, the whole situation was getting to me. I wasn’t sleeping, started getting headaches all the time. At first he told me I should quit. But I wasn’t going to leave without something. I didn’t have a job to move to. Then people started noticing I was in a bad mood all the time. Didn’t help morale. So he caved.”

“The day after we settled on my package, we both signed off on the Version 3.0 campaign. Web ads, print, a small release party, two trade shows, all set for later in the year. I was gone the next week, and the ad ran the following month.”

“Huh.” She opened the file and scanned the ad again. Then she turned to me, a quizzical look on her face. “I still don’t get it.”

“It’s an inside joke. Read the first two paragraphs.”

Kara examined the page again.

The header indicated it was from the February issue of Software Solutions Magazine. Page 19, full page ad. The top of the page was a photo of several business folk facing a Gantt chart, some convoluted project plan. A diverse, well-dressed and good looking group of executives, all of whom were unemployed actors in real life. Below the image were a few paragraphs of text, followed by the tag line “
TechnoSoft. Get a handle on your projects
.”

The rest was dull marketing speak. She read the first paragraph aloud, then silently mouthed the rest.

When she finished reading, Kara glanced over at me.

“I know, I know. Terrible. But it was the best I could do in the circumstances. OK, now read the first letter in every line, then the last letter in every line.”

“Like a secret message?
Cool
. So, first letter in every line, then – J – i – m – h – i – l – l – i – s – a – n – Jim Hill is an asshole! Ohmigod!”

She had a wonderful bawdy laugh. I loved the counterbalance to her innocent looks.

“Did he figure it out?”

“Not when he approved it. No one did. Not the agency he insisted we use, my staff, the product guys or Hill. But when the ad came out, one of our customers spotted it and called him. Hill called me at home, sounded like he was going to pop a blood vessel.”

“What did he do?”

“What
could
he do? I had already been paid. And I pointed out that it was the first time that particular customer had called him in nearly two years. I think I called it ‘subversive marketing’. He put his lawyers on it, but I heard they couldn’t come up with anything to hang me on.”

“What on earth possessed you to do it?”

“Well, a few of us in marketing used to fool around with acrostics. That’s where you build a code into text. We’d slip something into a presentation. You know, “Hi Ron” or “TGIF”. That kind of thing. See if we could make one of the others crack up in the middle of a pitch. This time, I guess I just got a bit pissed off.”

“Wow. Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

“Never going to happen.”

We chatted all the way, not a single moment of uncomfortable silence. I dropped her off at her apartment building in the Annex, and watched as she passed through Reception and stepped into the elevator.

Nice lady. Too bad about the boyfriend.

It wasn’t until Friday that I had a quiet moment to think some more about the connection between Maxim Legenko and my new friend Niki the Bull. I had just delivered a package in Rosedale, and was heading down Yonge Street (longest street in the world!) to the Financial District, when I realized I was passing the headquarters for Ruscan Industries. Seemed like as good a time as any to stop for lunch, so I turned onto St. Clair and slid the van into a 30 minute parking spot.

A moment later I was seated on a park bench across the street from the Ruscan Building, munching a sausage on a bun and trying not to spill sauerkraut in my lap.

Ruscan’s headquarters were housed in a pre-World War I five story structure. Nestled between a twenty story condo tower and a ten story office building, the Ruscan head office seemed the weak sister at first glance. But as I sat and looked, I noticed some of the fine detailing. Cornice molding framed the tops of the doors and windows. A number of ornamental sculptures, though I didn’t see any gargoyles. Decorative arches over the windows, which were made of that annoying reflective glass. But no cardboard silhouettes of falcons to scare away birds. They probably found a dead or dying bird lying outside the building once a week. Bastards.

Not sure what I expected to see. However it
was
the lunch hour. Maybe I would get lucky and spot someone. Far as I could tell, they did not have an underground garage.

I finished the sausage and missed on my attempted three pointer aimed at a nearby garbage bin when the first signs of activity started outside Ruscan headquarters. A group of secretaries strode out, intent on wasting no time getting to the local Starbucks. As I watched them move together, I mulled whether “group” was the right word. Should it be a flock of secretaries? Maybe a gaggle? Better yet, a
gossip
. Yes, a gossip of secretaries. It’s critical to spend time contemplating such important issues.

A few stragglers followed in the next five minutes. Then I began to see suits. At that point I slouched down, figuring that I shouldn’t make myself too visible if my mugger friend did indeed happen to exit the building.

I was kicking at a pigeon that had spotted a small piece of popcorn resting in front of the bench when out strolled Niki. No question about it, the greaseball himself.

Still displaying that ridiculous pseudo-beard. How on earth did he manage to keep it trimmed to a millimeter in length every day?

Today he wore a huge brown suede shirt with a seventies-length collar spread wide to display his chest. Standard thug black leather coat (though this one could have housed a family of three), and a cigarette that dangled from his lip. Right behind him followed Mr. Maxim Legenko. Lean bordering on thin, hair cut tight to the head in a military style.

Niki stepped to the sidewalk and signaled a limo which had been idling just down the street. As I watched, the limo pulled up and Niki opened the door for his boss, if that’s what Legenko was.

I watched as both men ducked into the car and the limo pulled into traffic.

So it
wasn’t
my imagination. Our thuggish friend had some sort of connection with the Legenkos.

I glanced back at the Ruscan building, the mirrored windows staring back like the eyes of a massive insect. I wasn’t done with this yet.