Cutting Edge (2002)

by Clancy, Tom - Power Plays 06

  What he did remember clearly was that Nanaine had always kept the scale against her bedroom wall in the modest settler’s house where he was raised from the age of ten, after losing both his natural parents between June and October of 1955—his father to a bewildering freak accident, then his mother in a way that was even more inexplicable to him. Jus’ must’ve got a special prov’d’nce again’ ’em, was a phrase he’d often heard muttered among his schoolmates and their families . . . the first time from a distant relative at Cecilia Thibodeau’s wake. Then and later, it had been hard for him to disagree. If going from fatherless to orphaned in a single horrible season wasn’t smoking-gun evidence of that special prov’d’nce—of Rollie getting FUBARed from a rear position, as his boys in the 101st Air Cav might have put it—what else in the wide world would qualify?

  The scale’s heavy iron upright and platform base were lilac colored, Nanaine Adele having concealed its basic physician’s white under a paint job of her own lively and eccentric preference—a coat of paint that was now chipped, faded, and flecked with rust from top to bottom. Thibodeau had thought about stripping it a time or two, restoring the scale to its original condition. A lilac scale in his office surely did nothing to convey an impression of red-blooded Cajun manliness, and he sometimes felt foolish when he pictured himself on it. Lilac was a dainty color. As Nanaine Adele had been a dainty little bit of a woman. But it had been her favorite shade of purple, favorite flower, beloved fragrance of spring. She had even worn bonnets of homespun, hand-dyed lilac cotton to church on Sunday mornings.

  Thibodeau had let the scale remain as it was. And if that cast doubts on his masculinity, well, he owed no explanations to anyone and was sure he’d never left any questions in the minds of vulnerable or designing ladies. On the contrary, another expression to circulate around Thibodeau in the Caillou Bay town where he had grown up (this when he was a teenager) had been le cœur comme un artichaud. Meaning his heart was like an artichoke . . . a leaf to spare for every pretty girl around.

  Thibodeau hadn’t argued that one either. Enough dark-haired, sultry-eyed darlings had been enthusiastic takers at the fais do-dos, village dances, that went on from sun-down to sunup, with the main entertainment occurring in the dark, fenced yard behind the barn where the band played loud.

  Rollie Thibodeau’s sentimental attachments were few but strong, and he’d held onto only a handful of keep-sakes from back home. Some black-and-white family photos dulled by time’s wasting touch. Paper flowers his mother had worn on her wedding dress, their colors also diminished. A carton of gear his father had used for fishing shellfish while he threaded among the swamps and marshes in his twelve-foot dugout canoe: tall, wooden oyster tongs, rope nets, a tangle of crab line, the bucket in which he brought home his daily catch, one of the traps he would set on the muddy shore along his route to snare muskrats—“swamp rats” he’d called the nasty furballs, though their hides must have fetched a fair rate at market. There was an assortment of other boxed remembrances. And, of course, the Detecto doctor’s scale. During his tour as a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol commander in Nam, Thibodeau had rented storage space for the items in Baton Rouge, where they were kept until his return to the States.

  After he was done with the war, and the war done with him, Thibodeau moved around a lot, inside and outside the country. For almost two decades he had capitalized on his elite military background by teaching classes on self-defense and firearms use, occasionally handling personal security, hiring out his services to clients ranging from business executives and Hollywood stars to European and Arab royals. Meanwhile, his boxed up this’s and that’s had gathered dust in one warehouse or another. Since 1995 or so, right about when Megan Breen roped him into UpLink International’s developing security force with a pointed inquiry—If you’ve got the ability to do something constructive with your life, why spend the rest of it watching to see that nobody pulls the diapers off spoiled princes and princesses?—everything had been stashed away in a cheap concrete storage unit about the size of a walk-in closet at the head of a dreary, unfrequented parking lot a dozen miles outside Los Angeles.

  Everything except Nanaine Adele’s rusty, peeling lilac-colored scale.

  Even before UpLink, that scale had gone wherever he did. Thibodeau wasn’t sure why. In his opinion, rearview mirrors were supposed to help guide people forward on the highway of life, not inspect their balky hairs and crooked neckties at its rest stops. He hadn’t been back to Louisiana since breast cancer got Nanaine Adele in 1989, and wasn’t about to waste a minute longing for Acadia. The relics of the past that Thibodeau held close to him were the useful ones, which was probably the main reason he’d made the scale his constant traveling companion. It was a symbol more than anything else, he guessed. A reminder that the only memories worth carrying around were those that made riding out the present, and maybe the future, a little smoother.

  Besides, the damn thing was just plain reliable.

  Though never preoccupied with his weight, Thibodeau had kept an occasional eye on it, and always managed to stay in good shape despite the limitless pleasure he took from beer drinking and hearty eating. At six feet, four inches tall, he was the bearer of a wide-boned, chockablock physique, and had sustained a steady-as-she-goes 235 pounds for most of his adult life, packing virtually every last ounce of it in slabs of muscle hardened by regular and diligent workouts.

  All that had changed about two years ago, when he’d been sucker punched by a submachine gun round while defending an UpLink facility in Brazil against a terrorist hit . . . a bullet that had gone deep into his stomach, hung a left through his large intestine, and then plowed into his spleen, turning it to mincemeat before finally butting up against the back of his rib cage. There was also plenty of hemorrhaging, and a partial lung collapse to stop the ER personnel who received him from getting too blasé about their task.

  For several months after he was shot, Thibodeau’s weakened condition had precluded strenuous exercise. Resistance training wasn’t worth a thought—in fact, he’d had days when simply raising himself out of bed, or from a chair to a standing position, was a torment. And by the time Thibodeau was at last able to get back into the gym, he’d recognized that his body might never regain all of its lost trunkish strength. There was getting shot, and there was getting gut shot. And more often than not gut shot had a way of leaving you permanently damaged goods . . . special prov’d’nce strikes again.

  While on the mend, Thibodeau had been coaxed into accepting what was intended to be seen as a major promotion at UpLink, and gotten a big pay hike consistent with its added responsibilities. He supposed he should have been grateful. That he was wrong to feel privately indignant about a legitimate career advancement. Still, Rollie Thibodeau was nobody’s fool, and understood that his physical deficits had factored into the offer. To what degree, he didn’t know. And maybe didn’t care to guess. Why bother? He had been convinced it was made partly because Megan and Pete Nimec had wanted to remove him from active field duties he could no longer handle with 100 percent effectiveness . . . and nothing would un-convince him.

  Specifically, he would become the administrative overseer of a newly created two-man post dubbed Global Field Supervisor, Security Operations.

  They could take the man out of the field, but they couldn’t take the field out of his job description, he had told himself.

  That smidgeon of gallows humor had given him zero consolation.

  Now Thibodeau stood on the platform of his Detecto and frowned—a deep, disgusted frown that pulled the corners of his mouth far down his bearded face. The beard was a couple of years old and neatly trimmed. Over the past six months he had let it fill out to hide his jowly cheeks and the heavy dewlaps under his chin. For a while after his shooting he’d held at his usual 235 pounds in spite of the changes he saw in the mirror—but that was a deceptive measure. Thibodeau’s muscles had lost weight as they shrank and deteriorated through disuse, even as the extra calories f
rom his unmodified consumption of food and drink turned to fat. This had equalized things on the scale, and he had grown thicker, looser, and chunkier everywhere on his body without putting on so much as an ounce.

  The problem was that it got harder to burn off fat as you lost muscle tone, and it would continue piling on unless you dieted, exercised, or got into a disciplined health routine that combined the two. Thibodeau hadn’t. And he’d gained from his 235. The weight had crept up on him slowly, seemed to wrap itself around him like a huge silent slug. The warning signs had been present, of course. His vanishing jaw line, his thickening waist. But as long as he’d hovered within range of that 235 mark, they also had been dismissible. Thibodeau had felt his slacks—and undershorts, to give frankness its due—start to pinch and grab in all the critically, uncomfortably wrong spots. Felt his shirt tighten at the belly, its sleeves constricting around his shoulders and arms. If gradual upward nudges of the scale’s lower indicator slide from 236 to 237, 240, and even 245 pounds balanced it, that seemed to fall well within his personal tolerance zone. Especially when he could lower his measured weight by 2, 3, sometimes a notch below 3½ of those apparent pounds by removing his shoes, his shirt, his shoes and shirt, and maybe some other articles of clothing if necessary—say after a few days of hearty banqueting, for instance.

  Another trick Thibodeau had discovered was to step off the scale and recheck that the arrow on the beam and its frame met exactly. If they didn’t, it could throw off his weight reading by a quarter pound or more, and he’d have to fiddle with its balance knob to make an adjustment. And although it distressed him when he’d needed to bump the upper indicator to its 250-pound poise on the bar while standing almost naked on the platform, he’d extended his rather malleable tolerance zone by reassuring himself that he would soon do something to trim down—cut out the andouille sausages and cornbread, switch to a lighter brew, keep his hands from reaching for the refrigerator door late at night.

  Soon being one of those dangerous words with a value that was impossible to calculate, and therefore notoriously wide open to interpretation.

  According to the scale’s measurement beam, Thibodeau was now up to 299¼ pounds. Less than 1 pound shy of the boldly engraved and enameled number 300 on the beam. A tremendous increase of 54 pounds in eighteen months.

  That was 299¼ pounds, with every last stitch of clothing except for his socks and boxers stripped off, flung in a large pile on the chair behind him.

  “Gone an’ turned myself into un ouaouaron,” Thibodeau said in a low growl, using a Cajun word for bullfrog that reflected the cultural penchant for onomatopoeia, mimicking the sounds made by the creatures at dawn and dusk. “A fuckin’ ouaouaron,” he repeated, inserting a colorful modifier of his own fancy.

  He did not know why he’d chosen this particular morning to take his weight. Having acknowledged the need to drop excess ballast, Thibodeau had gotten onto the scale infrequently over the past couple of months to avoid the comedown of reading premature and discouraging numbers. The truth was, he hadn’t yet gotten full-swing into his diet. Hadn’t really decided which foods would be the best to cut back on or investigated which kinds of beer would be light-bodied, palatable replacements for his favorite malt. He’d been too busy with work, and these decisions took careful forethought. Nobody who rushed into them was ever going to buy a winning ticket.

  So why the scale? Thibodeau wondered. Why today? Why climb aboard now, when Tom Ricci, joint holder of the global field supervisor slot, its buck rapid deployment man—and one of Thibodeau’s least favorite people in the world—was due for his briefing on the security upgrades implemented here at SanJo HQ while he’d been away on his solo safari for le Chat Sauvage? Why the hell do it knowing he was in for certain disappointment . . . and for that matter embarrassment, unless he got off its platform and back into his uniform tout de suite?

  Thibodeau stood there on the scale another few minutes, looking down at his sadly fallen build. He had fussed all he could with its knob and indicator slides. He was wearing little more than air. And the measurement beam had gone on hanging in perfect, balanced suspension at 299¼ pounds.

  Not that he needed a numeric reading to appreciate the indignities he’d inflicted upon himself. It was evident from the bare, bulging pillow of flesh into which his once-taut stomach had grown, the soft rolls of flab above the hips too kindly known as “love handles,” and, most depressingly for Thibodeau, the pads of adipose tissue over his breastbone that showed early evidence of transforming into what were sometimes—in a much too crass and unkind fashion—referred to as “man titties.”

  But he’d killed enough time inspecting himself. More than enough. Ricci would be on his way over from his office down the hall, and Thibodeau damned well wanted to be back inside his pants before he showed up.

  His lips still pulled into a scowl, he got off the scale to put on his clothes, disconcerted by the loud, banging rattle of its beam and platform bearings as they were relieved of his prodigious weight.

  Thibodeau was trying to stuff the middle button of his shirt through its hole when he heard three sharp, brisk knocks at his door.

  Tom Ricci, man of action. Predictably right on schedule.

  “Un instant,” Thibodeau called out, working in the recalcitrant button. “Wait just a minute—”

  Ricci gave the door another quick knock, then took hold of the outer doorknob and let himself in.

  Again, predictably.

  His shirttails out over the open waistband of his pants, Thibodeau looked at him with an annoyance he made no attempt to conceal . . . and a sudden flush of embarrassment that he was hoping could be hidden.

  “Thought I asked you to hang on,” he said.

  Ricci stood inside the entry, turned the dial of his wristwatch toward Thibodeau.

  “Don’t have a spasm on me,” he said. “We’ve got an appointment.”

  Thibodeau regarded him another moment, disconcerted. Then he inhaled, holding in the breath—and his stomach—as he tucked, zipped, and hooked himself into his uniform slacks.

  “Okay,” he said on his exhale. He nodded toward his desk. “Grab a seat an’ we’ll talk.”

  Julia Gordian felt convinced Vivian was a shoo-in for adoption. There was still the cat test ahead, true, but she wasn’t too worried. That was pretty much a guaranteed cinch.

  She stood looking out the window of the In the Money Shop at the introduction and walking area next to the center’s dusty parking lot, where Viv, a one-and-a-half-year-old grey whose career as a racer had ended after she’d broken the wrong way out of the gate in two of her first three starts, was being strolled around on a leash by her prospective rescuers, a seemingly nice enough family named the Wurmans—mother, father, and eight-or nine-year-old son—from up around Fremont. The dogs were always brought out to the people who came to look at them, as opposed to the people entering the kennels, which was how it usually worked at animal shelters. This was because, in addition to being weak and malnourished, some of the new arrivals had not yet gotten their vaccinations, were susceptible to canine diseases for which human beings might be unwitting carriers, and were therefore segregated until Rob Howell had gotten them checked out by his regular vet and approved as ready for placement. A small handful of visitors would complain about the policy, wanting to have their pick of all the greyhounds on hand, but Rob tended to send that type on their way as politely as he could—his position being that anybody who couldn’t find a dog to love among the half dozen or so he was willing to show as available candidates wasn’t qualified for greyhound ownership.

  Julia supposed Rob’s criteria were about the same as those a child-care worker would apply to couples interested in adopting a baby . . . although she’d actually had to wonder a couple of times if his rules weren’t even more stringently set and enforced.

  “You have to start the screening process the minute people leave their car,” he’d told her on her first day at work. “Look for a good fit, and
don’t let your eagerness to place the dogs affect your judgment. Watch how folks act, listen to what they say, get a feel for the vibes they send out to the dogs, and the vibes the dogs send out to them. Much as I want permanent homes for our greys, they’re better off as tenants with us than in a bad home where they aren’t getting proper care.”

  Watching from behind the shop’s sales counter, elbows propped on it beside the cash register, Julia had seen encouraging signs that the Wurman-Vivian vibe exchange was tuned to a harmonious cosmic bonding frequency. Vivian’s leash was now in the hands of Papa Wurman, who was smiling over at Mama Wurman, who was beaming right back at him as an excited Junior Wurman crouched beside the dog and gently stroked her sides. Viv, meanwhile, was relishing the attention. A good fit? They appeared to be striking up the very music of the spheres.

  Julia realized she’d been humming a melody to herself, recognized it as the chorus to the old Broadway song “Matchmaker,” and was starting to wonder how that archaic musical strain had managed to surface from the junk bin of her post-Boomer memory storehouse when her cell phone suddenly began to tweedle.

  She pulled it from the belt case clipped to her jeans, glanced at the Caller ID number on its display, and smiled as she fingered the TALK button.

  “Yente’s Canine Dating Service, open sunrise to sunset,” she said. “To Life!”

  A hesitant, “Excuse me?” at the other end.

  Julia chuckled. Roger Gordian. A biz whiz without parallel, but more than a little humor impaired.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said. “Don’t hang up, you’ve got the right number.”

  “Oh,” Gordian replied. “For a second there I thought you said . . .”

  “Just amusing myself. My boss is out back feeding the dogs, and I’m waiting to give my maiden cat test. He wants me to get the experience. We really should have given it to Viv . . . she’s one of our sweetest greys . . . before a family showed up and fell in love with her, but somebody got their signals crossed. Either they never told Rob they had a cat during their phone interview, or he forgot to make note of it, it’s been so crazy around here we can’t be sure. Either way I’ve got to deal with it.”