The Coaster (20 page)

I clicked on the e-mail. There was an attachment and a short message:

Mr. Patterson:

After crunching the numbers on the new information that was provided, my opinion has changed. As you can see from my attached report, I now strongly recommend pursuing the Sanitol deal. I believe it would be a serious mistake to pass up this kind of opportunity. I will be out of the office for the next few days. If you wish to discuss this further, please contact me next week.

Eric

What the fuck? I opened the attachment and started to scroll ahead to the conclusion. And then kept scrolling and scrolling because this son of a bitch was over two hundred pages of financial gobbledygook. I recognized a few of the terms and might have been able to fake my way through some of the sections if there were diagrams, but the overall concepts were beyond my comprehension and interest. I didn't know what any of this crap meant.

But then again, that's what I had Eric for. He was supposed to understand this stuff. But why the sudden change? Just yesterday, he had told me that the new info from Swanson didn't make any difference. What could have happened in the last twenty-four hours to make him do a complete one-eighty?

Even though he was allegedly unavailable, I called Eric's cell phone. As expected, it went straight to voicemail. When companies provide cell phones to their employees, they think it gives them the right to call them anytime day or night, so employees learn to turn them off when they really don't want to be bothered so their bosses can't ask them why they didn't answer. I doubt this was the first time some know-nothing superior kept badgering Eric at home about his work, although if he came to Bennett Capital straight out of college, I probably
was
his first boss who actually knew nothing.

I eventually abandoned the scrolling and dragged the little bar on the right side of the page down to the bottom. I got to the conclusion of Eric's report, and even I could see he had completely changed his tune. I didn't understand the details, but it was pretty clear that Eric now thought Sanitol was the second coming of some very successful company I didn't invest in when it was trading for pennies a share. This wasn't just a minor change of opinion. Eric had gone from “I'm not really interested in boys” to “Oh my God, there's Justin Bieber!” overnight. It made no sense.

I left my name and number on Eric's voicemail. Operating under my normal business procedures, this would have ended my portion of the interaction. I tried to call him, he didn't answer, I left a message. My work was done.

But somebody who “gets things done” would do more. My wife would find out his home phone and try him there or call some of his coworkers. If she wanted something from someone, she would track the bastard down. I once worked for a senior law partner who would hunt you down all over the office if he wanted to see you. He would open the bathroom door and shout “Patterson, you in there?” at the stalls. I wanted to pull my feet up where he couldn't see them, but I was afraid he'd crawl under the stall and find me. I'd blurt out a meek “Yes, sir. I'll be in your office in five minutes.” The guy was an insufferable prick and I hated to work for him, but I'd hire him in a second if I was in legal trouble. If everybody likes your lawyer, fire him.

I thought about calling Eric's coworkers or his girlfriend, or more likely his mother, in an effort to get ahold of him, but I decided it wouldn't do me any good anyway. He would presumably just say it was all in his report, and I wasn't smart enough to question him about the details. What I really needed to know was what happened to Eric to change things since yesterday. I knew he wasn't in his cubicle. I should just go over there and read his e-mail. Who was going to stop me? But unlike my capable wife or that effective lawyer, I'm not the confrontational type. I needed to look at his computer secretly.

Doesn't a company have a right to look at their employees' e-mails that were sent or received on company computers? Even if true, I didn't exactly run Bennett Capital and I sure didn't want to involve Harriet if I didn't have to. Plus, a technophile like Jacobs would have his computer password protected, so I'd need some kind of administrator status.

The answer to my problems was staring me right in the face. On the bottom right hand corner of my monitor was a sticker that said
Innovative Business Systems
, a little company conveniently run by a close personal friend and frequent drafter off my good fortune.

***

For whatever reason, Kevin Nelson had gotten involved in the computer lab in high school and understood programming. In college, he helped us all pass the computer science classes necessary for our business degrees.

For a nerd, Nellie was a cool guy. He generally used clear tape on his glasses and his tennis shoes often had the correct number of stripes, although I thought his
Dungeons & Dragons
character, Sir Nelsington the Wizard, a level five Paladin, was a little overrated. He drank his share and held his liquor as well as the rest of us, which is to say, not all that well. He fit right in with our mediocre starting rotation when we went out chasing tail.

So, even though I don't really know what his company does, Nellie is my computer guy. When I'm buying a new computer or setting up a wireless network at home, I basically just turn the job over to him.

“Bobby!” He answered his cell phone right away. When I answer my cell phone, I always just say “Hello.” I don't like to broadcast the fact that I check who it is before I answer. Nellie, being of relatively sound mind and body, probably didn't worry about things like that. Plus, nerds aren't self-conscious. Their obliviousness to social custom is what makes them nerds. They're so focused on their particular passions they don't waste time on things like fashion or popularity, which makes them good at what they do.

“Nellie, I need your help.”

“Don't beat around the bush, Bob. Get to the point.”

“I need to take advantage of your unmatched computer skills.”

“Has it occurred to you that I'm running an actual business here?”

“This is a paying gig,” I said. “The trust will pay your hourly rate plus any expenses you have.”

“I don't have an hourly rate.”

“Make one up then. You'd be shocked what the trust pays our attorneys per hour. No matter what we pay you, we'll be getting more bang for our buck than we get from those jackals. Plus this job actually
is
your regular business. Didn't you set up the computer system at Bennett Capital?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Nellie said. “Should I be afraid to ask why you want to know?”

“Maybe a little,” I said. “So you must be set up as an administrator or something so you can get into every part of the system in case you need to change the protocols or update the settings or whatever the hell you do.”

“That's right. I could theoretically have access if necessary for legitimate business purposes. So?”

“I need to look at an employee's e-mail account.”

“That would fall into the category of not necessary or legitimate.”

“It is in this case.”

“I can't just go poking around in people's personal correspondence even if I am the administrator. It's a violation of their privacy rights.”

“It's not private if they sent and received the e-mails on company computers. The Fourth Amendment only protects you against searches if you have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

“Great,” Nellie said. “The one day you happened to show up at law school…”

“I'm an expert on searches,” I said. “The rest of law school didn't apply to me personally, but there was a very real chance I was going to get pulled over with weed in the car or something. I mastered that criminal law shit.”

“I'm glad it's led you to such a lucrative career.”

“If you're a criminal lawyer, you have to defend criminals. The only criminal I want to defend is me.”

“The way things are going, you may get your chance.”

“I need you to do this. It's not illegal and it might be crucial to the future of Bennett Capital.”

“You know I'd do anything for the Bennetts,” Nellie said. “When Sam hired us to set up the network for Bennett Capital, it really put my company on the map. I'd probably be making house calls for the Best Buy Geek Squad if it wasn't for Sam.”

“I guarantee you Sam would have wanted you to look at these e-mails.”

“All right,” Nellie sighed. “I can get in the system remotely from here, but give me a couple of minutes. It's not a matter of just hitting a few keystrokes. I have to look up usernames and passwords and log on through a bunch of doorways set up to keep the bad guys out. In the movies, a fifteen-year-old kid can hack into the National Security Agency in about ten seconds. In real life, these things take some time, even if you know the passwords.”

“Real life sucks.”

“You don't even know what real life is. I'll call you back.”

“Thanks, Nellie. I owe you one.”

“You won't think that after you get my bill.”

***

I “worked” for a while. Fifteen minutes later, Nellie called back.

“Okay, I'm in.” I could hear him typing furiously, like a woman about to tell you the rental car you reserved is unavailable.

“Can you look at all the e-mails for a particular account?”

“Yes, I'm doing it right now. I've always wanted to get a look at your wife's inbox.”

I forgot Nellie could get into Sarah's account. “Yeah, well, if I were you I'd hit ‘Refresh' a lot.”

“Why does she send so many e-mails to her tennis instructor?”

“Knowing Sarah, she's helping him start a new tennis club. If she was fucking him at thirty-five dollars an hour, it would be a lot cheaper.” Of course, I could just look at Sarah's laptop whenever I wanted to, which I don't. My already fragile ego would be even further damaged by confirming that her daily e-mail correspondence dwarfs my annual work product.

“I'm just kidding. I would never look at employee e-mails. The corporate bullshit would drive me insane. Not to mention getting my ass fired.”

“I know you wouldn't.”

“I'm making an exception in this case because you said it was important. But if you do anything that causes Bennett Capital to pull my contract, I'm coming to live at your house when my wife kicks me out.”

“It's a deal. We can sleep in the basement and make popcorn and stay up super-late—”

“Enough. This is serious. Who am I looking for?”

“Eric Jacobs.”

“Okay.
What
am I looking for?”

“E-mail received yesterday afternoon or evening, especially from someone named Swanson.”

More typing. “There's a couple from Swanson. Let's see…the first one says ‘attached is additional information blah blah blah Sanitol blah blah blah.' It's got some pdfs and excel spreadsheets attached that look like some kind of financial information.”

“Okay. What about the next one?”

“This one's shorter. It just says ‘more info to help you make a decision' and has a jpeg attached and a link to what looks like some kind of news article. Hang on.” This time no feverish typing, just a few mouse clicks. “The jpeg is just a picture of a house.”

How is a picture of a house more info? Was Swanson trying to bribe Jacobs? “What do you mean ‘a house'?”

“You know, a place where people live who didn't marry a billionaire's daughter? It's like a mansion, but smaller.”

“I know what a house is. Why is Swanson sending a picture of a house to Jacobs? Is there anything special about it?”

“No, it's just a regular house, nothing fancy, probably three bedrooms, one-car garage. I don't know, I'm not a realtor.”

“Is there an address?”

“Yeah, it's across town. I'll look it up.” I could hear the keys on Nellie's laptop clacking.

“Can you do that? I thought you had to use a reverse directory or something that only cops have.”

“Does your TV only get the '70s channel or something? I guess you're right if Mannix or Baretta is trying to track down a suspect, but here in the twenty-first century you can just Google an address and the name will come up if the address has ever been on the Internet, which most have. Here we are. Wanda Jacobs, sixty-four years old.”

It had to be Jacobs' mother's house. I could feel myself starting to sweat. “What about the link?”

“It's coming up. It's a newspaper story. The headline reads ‘No Suspects in Rape, Murder of Grandmother.' There's a picture of the house where it apparently happened.”

My neck muscles tightened. “Is it the same house?”

“No, it's just kind of similar. Typical, middle-class house, like you might see an old woman living in.” I could hear him scrolling. “Let's see. This crime was a couple of years ago in Pennsylvania. I don't know what the connection is.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “There isn't one.”

“Then why send it to him?”

As a warning:
We know where your mother lives. Bad things sometimes happen to old women who live alone
. “Don't worry about it. Thanks for your help. I owe you one.”

“I'll add it to the list.”

Chapter Twenty-four

Even after Corny hinted that Swanson was behind Sam's death, I still thought of Swanson as just a businessman. Not above a little blackmail or some ham-handed threats, but not running around raping and killing people. Evil, but in a corporate way. A criminal, but a white-collar criminal. Now a more sinister picture was emerging.

For lunch I decided to walk down the street and get a sandwich. As I was about to cross the first intersection, a big black sedan with tinted windows pulled up to the curb and stopped right in front of me. I can't tell one car from another, but it looked like the kind of car a diplomat with a driver would ride around in. Two huge guys in dark suits and sunglasses got out. They looked like pallbearers at an NFL lineman's funeral, the kind of guys who never look right in a suit because their necks are too big. They even had that scary long blond hair like those bad-ass white linebackers on the Packers, the kind of maniacs who still make the tackle even after their helmet gets ripped off. They stopped and stood right in front of me.

The one on my left spoke first. In the NFL, they call the middle linebacker the Mike linebacker. He needs to be stout enough to hold up against the power running game. This one was the slightly larger of the two, so in my mind I named him “Mike.”

“Mr. Swanson wants to see you,” Mike said in a surprisingly high voice undoubtedly caused by his shrunken steroid testicles.

“Of course he does.” I got in the car.

***

I've always managed to defuse potentially volatile situations with words. I may be scared, but I'm not scared to talk. Danger paralyzes my body, not my mouth.

The testosterone twins got in the front. Mike drove. I sat in the back by myself. Apparently they could tell just by looking at me that I wasn't going to try anything. They were right, but I tried to find out what I could.

“So where are we headed?”

The thug in the passenger seat answered. He was a little smaller, so I decided to call him “Will,” which is what NFL coaches call the weak side linebacker, who needs to be more athletic, able to drop into pass coverage. Will had more of a regular voice, but give him a few more years on the juice and his ball sack will look like a two-year-old's just like his partner's. “We're going to see Mr. Swanson.”

“I know.” I smiled. We're all buddies here. “But where is that?”

Mike this time. “You'll find out when we get there.”

“Okay.” Just like the magazines say, girls, if you want to get him talking, ask him about himself. “So, you guys ever play any ball?”

“Ball?” asked Will.

“Ball. You know, American football?”

“High school,” Will said.

“Just high school? I figured you guys for college at least, maybe the NFL.”

Back to Mike. “We were smaller then.” They took turns like it was doubles ping pong.

“I guess some high schools have crappy anabolic steroid programs.” The ones that lose all the time.

“Yeah.” I guess if they were glib, witty conversationalists, it would have broken the stereotype, but stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. Most intellectually curious people have a hard time lifting weights and staring at themselves in the mirror for eight hours a day. Still, I hadn't learned anything, so I kept trying.

“So what do you guys do for Swanson?”

“Whatever needs doing.” I gave up keeping track of who said what. It made no difference.

“So it could be anything?”

The stupid one glanced at the other stupid one. “Mr. Swanson hasn't asked us to do anything yet that we wouldn't do.”

I had a feeling these guys weren't asked to do too much. Drive Swanson around. Glare at people. Show off your hair and your muscles. Don't open your mouth. Let people presume you can handle yourself. Even minor scrutiny would reveal that these guys weren't all that tough. But in this case they just had to be tougher than me.

I decided I wasn't going to learn anything from these idiots. No way Swanson would tell them anything important. Plus, they were about as talkative as my son if you ask him how things went at a school dance.
It was okay. Kinda boring.
But if you ask my daughter the same question, make sure your schedule is clear for the next couple of hours.

***

I stared out the window as we drove. I was hoping for a modern office building, where I might land on a huddle of smokers if I was tossed out the window. But no, we were headed into some kind of industrial park with huge warehouses full of God-knows-what. You can easily picture the place if you're one of those unenlightened souls who still has a television. It was a typical bad-guy-selected meeting place to which the hero has been ordered to “come alone,” but unless you're Dirty Harry, you probably shouldn't agree to the meet.

We pulled up to a nondescript industrial building with no name or other markings indicating ownership. They all looked the same to me. Big, prefabricated (so much easier than fabricating the metal right on-site!) metal buildings with slanted metal roofs. Huge barns, really, like the practice facilities for college football teams. There was a large overhead door, probably used for massive shipments of whatever the hell they were manufacturing or assembling or storing in there. There was also a regular human-sized door next to the overhead door. We went in that one. It wasn't quite NFL linebacker-sized, but by turning sideways, my large blond escorts were able to squeeze through.

The door was metal and heavy, what I think of as a fire door, thick enough to hold back the flames from the inevitable arson after the business goes in the toilet. If it was closed and locked, there was no way I could break through it if I had to get out of here in a hurry.

The space was almost completely empty. It was like going to a New Orleans Costco during Hurricane Katrina. Just about cleaned out. You'll have to come back for your hundred and forty-four rolls of toilet paper and seventy-two-ounce bottle of ketchup another time. There was some scattered junk at the far end. Old furniture, toys, sports equipment. The previous tenant probably didn't have time to grab all their stuff while they were being forced out at gunpoint by Swanson's goons.

***

We went up some steps that led to one of those second-floor offices that stick out from the warehouse wall. They put them up high with big plate-glass windows so the Japanese supervisor can look out and make sure no one leaves the Mitsubishi assembly line to use the bathroom. In most warehouses, no one really stands there, but the workers know someone
could
be watching so they work a little harder than they otherwise would. Whatever they were planning to do in here, I was pretty sure Swanson wouldn't be the guy doing it. He was a “keep your hands clean” kind of guy.

Swanson was sitting behind a beat-up old metal desk looking over some spreadsheets. Because this was a blue-collar work area, he had shed his suit jacket and rolled his sleeves up a quarter of the way to show he was a man of the people. He looked like a politician at a barbecue fund-raiser trying desperately to look like a regular guy, despite his blow-dried anchorman hair, winter tan, and capped teeth. He even had the requisite yellow Live Strong bracelet to show that he was a humanitarian as well as a jock. I wasn't convinced.

Swanson looked up and smiled that phony smile of his at me. “Bob! Thanks for coming to see me.”

“I had a choice?”

He seemed genuinely surprised, almost as if he had normal human thoughts and feelings. “What? Did my associates give you a hard time?”

“No,” I admitted.

“I apologize for their lack of sensitivity. I may have to send these boys back to charm school.” He glared at the two blond monsters, now looking sheepish, like scolded yellow labs if yellow labs lifted a lot of free weights. “Now go downstairs and wait.”

I watched them shuffle meekly out the door and then turned to Swanson. “I've never understood how people like you boss around behemoths like these guys. I always expect the three-hundred-pound nose tackle to snap his puny coach's neck when he's yelling at him.”

“It's called command presence, Bob,” Swanson said. “I may look like a normal successful businessman, but I'm ex-military.”

“In what capacity?”

“I could tell you, but—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, then you'd have to kill me.”

“That's right, I would,” Swanson said and gazed evenly into my eyes until I looked away. “Now sit down, Bob. We need to talk.”

I sat in an office chair with stuffing coming out of holes in what used to be maroon leather. “What are you doing in this shithole, Swanson? Doesn't seem like your style.”

“I forgot that you've never really worked for a living, Bob. You don't actually
make
things in a nice office building. You make things in a place like this, outside of town because of all the noise. Lots of space for moving things in and out, equipment and oil and grease everywhere. Production is a messy business, Bob.”

“So what are you making here? It looks pretty empty to me.”

“We're going to be building our sanitation machines here, Bob. That's what I brought you down here to show you.”

Did this guy ever give up? Swanson was like a honey badger in a fifteen-hundred-dollar suit. If the honey badger got mani-pedis, two-hundred-dollar haircuts, and teeth-whitening treatments.

“I'm not going to change my mind.”

Swanson smiled his usual mirthless smile, which apparently fools adults but undoubtedly frightens small children and animals. “I know you think you won't, Bob. But I also know you're skeptical about our numbers, so I wanted to give you a personal demonstration of the product so you'll know I'm not full of crap.”

That ship had already left port with a full load, but I figured I might as well let him show me and get it over with. I wasn't exactly being held by force, but I didn't think they'd just let me walk out. Plus in this neighborhood, I'd probably stumble onto a ransom exchange. I was likely in more danger outside than I was in here. “Fine. Show me.”

***

Swanson got up from behind the desk and I followed his tasseled reindeer-skin loafers down the metal steps to the warehouse floor. He kept his hands off the railing, as if he was afraid to touch it except through his handkerchief. It was like watching Prince Charles go down a fire escape, but he eventually made it all the way to the bottom.

We walked over to the far diagonal corner of the warehouse. On the cement floor sat a gray metal box about four feet tall and a couple of feet wide and deep. I hadn't even noticed it before because it was so small. It looked like something my lawn guy might use on my yard, not some device that was going to revolutionize the sanitation industry. There was a yellow hose running into it from a faucet in the wall and what looked like your basic green garden hose with one of those spray handles coming out of it. I was more convinced than ever that Swanson was overselling his product.

“This is it?”

“You bet it is,” Swanson said. “All you need is water from a tap and this thing will clean up any mess you can imagine. It's three thousand times the sanitizing power of chlorine, and perfectly safe.”

“Come on. That can't be true.”

Swanson waved over a middle-aged guy in blue coveralls with “Jim” written in cursive on the left chest. “Jim, show my associate here what this baby can do.”

Jim went over to the pile of junk across the warehouse and came back with a can of oil, a can of paint, and a bucket. The scene was similar to the old traveling vacuum salesman bit where he would impress the housewife by dumping various things on her carpet and then vacuuming them up. That's all Swanson really was. A door-to-door Fuller Brush man.

Jim poured thick motor oil all over the floor, then grabbed the hose coming out of the machine and sprayed the oil with it like he was hosing off the deck in his backyard. Within about thirty seconds, the oil was gone. It just disappeared. By the time the water reached the drain about ten feet away, it was perfectly clear.

I didn't say anything. It did seem kind of amazing, but they clean up toxic waste somehow, right? Or they just say they do and then some community downstream from the factory ends up with an unusually large number of Siamese twins.

Next Jim poured bright yellow paint all over the floor. Same result. No trace of paint anywhere when he was finished with the hose. Swanson looked at me for some kind of reaction but I just shrugged. Swanson nodded at Jim. He picked up the bucket. I could see that it was full to the brim with blood. Some kind of animal blood, I hoped.

“You guys heading over to Carrie's prom later, Swanson?”

“Pay attention, Bob.” Jim poured blood everywhere. The smell was sickening. Just seeing it spreading on the floor was horrific to me, which I'm sure was at least part of the point of this ridiculous exercise.
This could be your blood, Bob.
To complete the effect, Swanson took out a sharp knife and dipped it in the puddle. Blood dripped off of it like a horror movie poster.

Jim came over and rinsed off the knife and then the floor. The blood washed away just like everything else and the smell was gone.

“That's not even the best part, Bob. Watch this.” Swanson took out a plastic spray bottle, like you might use to water a plant or get the cat off the couch.

I knew he wanted me to ask but I couldn't help myself. “What's that?”

“You ever watch those crime shows? CSI or whatever?”

“I don't own a television.”

Swanson raised an eyebrow but continued. “Anyway, this is Luminol. When you spray it over an area that's had blood on it, it emits a blue glow. Even if there are just minute traces. The crime scene techs use it all the time on those shows. They almost always find something. It's virtually impossible to get rid of every trace of blood. Until now.”