Read No Accident Online

Authors: Dan Webb

Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Private Investigators, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Murder, #Thrillers, #Legal

No Accident (6 page)

BOOK: No Accident
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Beto took a long swig of whiskey and fingered his meager stack of chips. All his winnings were gone. A couple hundred dollars was all he had left. But Juanita was still there. He pulled her by the waist up to the edge of the table and told her to watch his drink while he went to the can.

The bathroom was opposite the entrance to the club. Beto locked the door behind him and, without lifting the toilet seat, wearily emptied his bladder. There was a little window above the toilet that let out onto an alley, and Beto noted with dismay that it was getting light out. On top of this miserable night, now he had to go into work. Liberty Industries would fire him if he missed another day, which would have been fine if he’d kept all his winnings . . .

He thought again about the girl he’d been flirting with and this time felt nothing. She’d get a slap, maybe a broken tooth. And what the big boy held back from her, he and his friends would unload on Beto, whenever Beto finally stepped out of the club.

Beto zipped up his pants and stood with his hands on his hips. After gauging how far up the window was, he sighed, knocked the toilet lid down with one foot, stepped up onto the back of the toilet and lifted the sash. It would be tight, and his clothes would be ruined, but he would save himself some broken bones. Beto prayed for a little more luck as he hoisted his head and shoulders through the narrow window frame. He pulled his body through by wiggling from side to side on his belly like a salamander. The alley into which he emerged was blessedly empty. Beto stood up, looked left, then right, and ran.

Juanita would be all right. She could make a new friend. She was bad luck anyway.

 

8

Luke Hubbard hated earnings calls. As far as he was concerned, investors and analysts were ignorant sheep, and he would have preferred to ignore them. Let them read the annual report if they wanted to know how the company was doing.

But Luke’s vision for Liberty Industries included quick growth. That meant continual capital infusions from investors. That meant that he had to pretend to care about what they wanted. And if what they wanted was a quarterly call to summarize results they could read for themselves, read from a script that the lawyers drafted as tightly as a church liturgy; and if his chief financial officer did most of the talking; and if follow-up questions from investors were strictly limited, then fine, he’d indulge them. It took an hour four times a year, and Luke could spend much of that time sending emails from his smartphone.

Luke took his smartphone and, with great effort, ignored the flashing red light that announced new email messages waiting for him. Instead, he opened an application called “Bird’s Eye,” and looked at a silent video feed of the interior of his wife’s office at Liberty Industries. Crash Bailey had installed it overnight; Luke wouldn’t have trusted anyone else for the job. The camera was working beautifully. Sheila wasn’t there right now. That was annoying. Luke wanted to spy on her, to see her act out the frustration he was causing her. Maybe she was out at a long lunch, maybe a job interview—he could hope, anyway. Here they were, getting divorced, and she was still working away in Liberty’s human resources department, with her soon-to-be ex-husband as her boss. Was she just a glutton for punishment?
Or does she stick around to keep an eye on me?
Luke wondered. That would be ironic, because here he was watching her, or at least watching her empty office.

“Welcome to the Libe
rty Industries Q4 earnings call . . .”

A woman’s voice made Luke remember where he was. It was the call moderator delivering her dreary introduction. Her voice emerged from a speakerphone in the conference room where Luke sat with his CFO. Her voice was
un
sexy. Why weren’t women sexy anymore? Luke thought about Petra, his mistress. He thought about her fishnet stockings and her long, strong legs. Then he felt a physical response and forced himself to stop thinking about that. He thought about revenue recognition instead.

His CFO waved at him to get his attention; Luke was up. Luke listlessly took a sheet of paper that had his lines and began reading in a sonorant baritone.

“This was a strong quarter to end a milestone year. Our alternative energy products are really starting to see traction, and we have a lot of exciting new clean tech ideas that we hope to bring to market within the next year. Meanwhile, our legacy fossil fuels segment led us to record revenues this year and continues to provide funds for further research and judicious acquisitions. Now I’ll turn the call over to our CFO, Jim Branford, for a more detailed discussion of this quarter’s financial results. Jim?”

God
, Luke thought,
this call is so dull I’m even boring myself
. He couldn’t help thinking of all the real work he could be doing if he weren’t wasting time on this conference call. Another peek at the Sheila-cam showed she was still not at her desk. If Luke didn’t already have other plans to make her life miserable, he would have fired her for that. He wanted to see her squirm. He wanted another misery fix, like when he’d had a secret microphone installed in her office—
thanks again, Crash
—and listened to the desperation in Sheila’s voice as she called lawyer after lawyer all across Los Angeles, trying to find someone to represent her in the divorce. “What do you mean, you have a conflict?” she asked again and again, as curt and indignant as if she were snapping at a bellhop. Then the lawyer on the other end would say something like, “I can’t give more details than that,” and would offer his regrets and a recommendation for another lawyer she might try. But guess what? Luke had already visited the next lawyer, too, told the lawyer all his dirty laundry, and created yet another conflict. Luke loved remembering that. He couldn’t wait to do battle with Sheila in court. He would bring the biggest guns of the L.A. bar, and she would bring . . . well, who knew what the hell she would bring, but it wouldn’t be a fair fight.

Jim had finished his spiel for investors, and the moderator started into the queue of questions from analysts. For Jim’s benefit, Luke pointed to his smartphone to indicate that he would be paying attention to his email rather than the questions. Jim nodded energetically: he would answer the investors’ questions and not bother Luke unless necessary. Jim was in his forties, but still as enthusiastic and as eager to please as a puppy.

Luke turned to his email.
The past ten years, it had felt like sending emails took up most of Luke’s waking hours, and too many of the hours he should have been sleeping. And just when he finished answering one email, another two or three came in.

Luke thought of his smartphone like the world’s tiniest newborn baby. Instead of crying it flashed a little red light, and it needed his hands on it constantly to give it peace. Sheila had never borne him a child, and now they were splitting up, so Luke’s life basically consisted of his job, more of his job, his mistress and his smartphone. They would have to stand in for the nuclear family he was supposed to have at this stage of his life. Today, each email was mor
e exasperating than the last: . . . 
Blix needs our answer on the Corcola investment
 . . .
an accounting clerk we fired in Peru called the compliance hotline, said the manager there is taking kickbacks
 . . .
the supplier says the drill parts won’t be ready
 . . . He paid his people a lot of money. Couldn’t they figure out some of this stuff on their own?

The first few questions from investors were anodyne requests for clarification about accounting details, asked by research analysts who all sounded about twenty-one years old. Right up Jim’s alley.

“The next question is from Ray McLean at Vertigo Capital,” the moderator announced in a robotic monotone. Luke’s shoulders tensed, and he saw Jim waving to get his attention. Luke instantly forgot about his email inbox. Vertigo Capital was a notorious activist hedge fund. If they were nosing around on his earnings calls, the next step could be an approach to his board of directors. That could lead to meddling with his strategic plans or worse.
These cowboys just love to replace management teams
, Luke thought. He wondered what their play would be.

“Luke, can you provide some color around the impact on revenue of the insurance proceeds that Jim mentioned?”

“Well, they increased revenue,
Ray
,” Luke said. Stupid question. And Luke resented that some asshole he had never met would address him by his first name, but such was the custom.

“Thanks,” Ray said. “Just one follow-up.”

Luke made a throat-slashing sign at Jim, but the questioner continued before Jim could react to cut off the questions.

“Can you tell us how recent distractions in the news have affected management’s focus?”

What bullshit
, Luke thought. “Management is
not
distracted.”

With that, Luke stood up and walked out, leaving Jim to handle the rest of the call. He headed to the basement gym to burn off some steam.

Recent distractions
—everyone on the call knew it was an oblique reference to Luke and Sheila’s pending divorce. The couple was active on the philanthropic scene, and because of their wealth and glamour the local tabloids had decided that their personal problems were interesting. Luke didn’t know this little shit Ray McLean, but he knew the type, all right—young, arrogant and richer than he deserved to be. Luke imagined Ray sitting in an office in Manhattan somewhere, grinning as he toyed with Luke on the earnings call, asking questions that seemed innocent but that were meant to send Luke a threatening message.
Two can play that little game
, Luke thought. He decided he would send Crash Bailey on a trip to New York with a message for Mr. Ray McLean. Crash was good at delivering messages.

In the gym, Luke looked again at his video feed of Sheila’s office. Still gone. Luke wished she would stay gone. He started jogging on a treadmill. He imagined how good it would feel to fire her; he wouldn’t even do it in person, she’d just show up to work one day and her electronic passcard wouldn’t work anymore and an intern would meet her with a box full of her personal effects
—but only half of them.
I’d love to get a video feed of that
, he thought.

Then he let go of his little fantasy
—as if he could fire her in the middle of divorce proceedings without sparking a legal firestorm.
What will it take to get rid of that harpy?
Luke wondered.

He nearly stumbled off the treadmill when he saw his wife on television. She was standing among a swarm of bald children. Their drab scalps bobbed about her waist like a cluster of grounded party balloons. When Luke turned up the volume he heard her telling a reporter what a shame it was that her husband cancelled a grant he had pledged in their name to a local children’s hospital.

You bitch
, he thought.
We both agreed to rescind the gift, and now you throw the fucking cancer kids at me?

The sensors on the treadmill handles showed his heart rate spiking. Luke forced himself to calm down. Sheila had some sort of scheme in mind. But what?

* * *

“No one here deserves to be here. No one deserves cancer.”

The pretty young television reporter nodded attentively as Sheila Hubbard answered the question: where does your passion come from?

“Every time I look at these kids, I realize how blessed I am.” Sheila said.

“How blessed we all are,” the reporter said.

“Yes. That’s why I got involved and joined the board.”

The two women were walking side-by-side down a bright, tiled hall at the Children’s Oncology Institute. The walls were adorned with large framed pieces of colorful juvenile art. In front of them a cameraman walked backward, filming them.

Sheila led the reporter down a side hall and pulled back a heavy sheet of plastic draping to reveal a large, unfinished chamber. Before entering they each pulled their hair back and donned orange plastic hardhats. Sheila’s voice echoed off the concrete floor as she described the features that would be built there.

“The genomic diagnostic lab will go here,” she said. She stretched her arms toward a dusty corner of the room partially enclosed by a drywall barrier. She moved on immediately. The heels of her shoes clicked loudly on the concrete floor and the reporter and the cameraman hustled to keep up. Sheila stopped in front of an array of upright wooden beams that framed a series of planned interior walls.

“These will be the private rooms,” she said, and stepped through a future wall into a future room. She looked around and inhaled deeply, notwithstanding the dust. “We’ll be done with crowding. There will be room for family. There will be privacy. We’ll even have facilities for pets to stay overnight.”

“Pets are very therapeutic,” the reporter said.

Back in the children’s playroom, the two women continued their conversation. Sheila’s thick blonde hair showed no hint of having been matted under a hardhat minutes before. Children played on the floor at their feet.

“For children for whom life itself is . . . precarious,” Sheila said, “this new wing will be something solid, something permanent.”

“But it takes money,” the reporter said.

“All worthwhile things do.”

“Let’s talk about that for a minute,” the reporter said. “There’s been some controversy around the fundraising for this new wing.” Sheila nodded ruefully, and the reporter continued. “At the beginning of the fundraising campaign, you and your husband, a business executive who also sits on the hospital’s board, made what the hospital called a ‘signature gift,’ and it was substantial
—five million dollars. All to great fanfare. Then, a month ago, you quietly withdrew the gift. Why?”

Sheila wore a subdued smile as she listened to the reporter’s long question, and she responded with pleasant equanimity. “My name was on the gift, Carla, but it wasn’t my money, or my decision.”

The reporter hurried in with a follow-up question. “People have speculated that the gift was announced simply to draw in other gifts, then withdrawn when the money wasn’t needed. ‘Priming the pump,’ they’ve called it.” The reporter stared intently at Sheila.

“I guess gossip wouldn’t be gossip if it wasn’t hurtful,” Sheila said. “And besides, it’s untrue the gift was withdrawn because it was no longer needed. We still need money to finish this project. People withdraw gifts all the time for reasons no more mysterious than simple selfishness.”

“Is that why your husband withdrew the gift—selfishness?”

“As you know, my husband and I are separated, and I’m not going to speculate on his state of mind,” Sheila said. Then she added, “but I think the facts speak for themselves.”

Sheila looked out over the sunlit room with a knitted brow. “I came to this room a year ago. The room was full of children, just like it is now. Some of those children aren’t here anymore.” Sheila stared at something beyond the wall in front of her. “I told the children then that we would build a new wing so that Children’s Oncology would be the leading center in the country for the research and treatment of cancers affecting children.” Sheila turned and looked straight into the camera. “I have a long memory, and I’m going to keep my promise.”

BOOK: No Accident
5.73Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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