by Jack Fuller
“Data is everything that is the case,” she said.
It surprised him that she made the allusion, but more that she made it ironically. This was a woman of parts.
He handed her the one-pager and started taking her through the bullet points. It was big, big picture stuff, not the valuation model that he would be going into detail about in the larger group. She interrupted him.
“I know the strategic arguments,” she said.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m a plodding sort of a guy. I like to put down footings and a foundation before putting up the walls.”
“And here I thought that behind closed doors you would be dark and daring,” she said.
Yes, maybe a little afraid of her.
“Your reading of the Street and how to make this public when the time comes will be vital,” he said.
Clearly, hearing that was something she needed, because she opened up.
“I’m worried about Brian,” she said.
“He knows how to pace himself,” Rosten said.
“Not that way,” she said. “I’ve seen it happen before. Enough time in the saddle and a CEO begins to think he’s eight feet tall, when it’s only the horse. Ordinary management issues start to bore him. He doesn’t want to listen to cautionary voices, puts off the people who could help him most.”
“Have you told him this?” he said.
“Have you?” she said.
“He’s been in some other place lately,” he said, “but he’s OK.”
“CEO is a progressive disease,” she said.
He turned toward the easel then back to her.
“He’s always been willing to keep really smart people close,” he said. “Look at the way he protected Gunderman.”
“I thought that was your doing.”
“I certainly didn’t object,” he said. “Gunderman sees things nobody else does.”
“Like Fisherman did?” she said.
“Who?” he said.
“Please,” she said. “I do my homework.”
“Nothing about this is similar,” he said. “Not Gunderman, of all people. Not anybody.”
“If it all goes the wrong way . . . ,” she said.
“We won’t let it,” he said.
“We’ll have to throw very tight loops,” she said.
“Do you know what that means?” he said.
“Control,” she said.
“Casting a feather into the wind,” he said.
5
Before he’d had the surgery, it had taken only ten minutes for Dell Lawton to walk from the urologist’s office to the Dome, but now he needed to figure on at least twice that. It had all begun when his PSA had started to rise. Then came the biopsies. He was told to strip below the waist, lie down on his side on a table slick with white paper, knees to his chest, his rectum a bull’s-eye. The probe entered and the spring gun fired darts into him, one after another after another. The procedure left him bleeding for days when he peed, months when he came. In all, he had a half-dozen biopsies, seventy-two darts, before one of them found a cancer cell.
As Lawton left the medical building today, the sun shone in a bright blue winter sky. A little snow remained in shady areas, but the air was so still that the temperature actually felt comfortable, although since going under the knife he couldn’t be sure of such things; it was as if someone with a sense of whimsy had hacked into his internal thermometer and taken control. To questions about this and everything else, Dr. Dick always said that everything was proceeding nicely and then told Lawton he could pull his absorbent underpants back up. In fact, Lawton had to admit that nothing seemed disastrously wrong down there. The pain was all but gone, except when he coughed. He had almost forgotten what the catheter felt like. There was no blood in his urine. The point was that, though nothing was wrong, nothing was right either. He could not remember what it felt like to become stiff. And sometimes he leaked, which left him clammy and so deflated that even a short, parkside walk on a beautiful day could not raise his spirits.
He should have been hustling to give himself some cushion before the meeting with Joyce that he had only learned about when he’d gotten a call while sitting in Dr. Dick’s waiting room. But instead of hurrying, he had to tarry on the sidewalk, trying to catch a second wind and blend in with the tourists. Lawton stood looking up at the mosaic half-sphere atop D&D’s headquarters a block and a half away. The Dome was part of a wall of landmark buildings that stood along Michigan Avenue, the tallest in the city when they were built, a rock face that looked as if it had been made not by man but time.
He had heard several versions of why Thomas Woods Peterson had decided on the peculiar design of his building. One very businesslike variation attributed it to branding, an architectural play on the company’s name. Another had Peterson taking a trip to Turkey and being moved by the grandeur of Byzantium. The version Lawton liked best identified Peterson as a secret Mason with an inclination toward the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, which had built its Medinah Temple some years before Peterson had built his tabernacle to data.
What Lawton liked about the Masonic version of the story was the symbolism—the square and the compass caliper—and the stonemason’s slow, precise craftsmanship. Anyone schooled as an engineer would have felt an affinity. The Dome was a temple to measurement. Building a cathedral and building a great database were similar: stone by stone, bit by bit, each needing to be perfect so that the whole would be steady and durable; the way the work stretched over years, even centuries, with men born and dying to it, believing they were building for eternity. Maintaining the great dome and its thousands of mosaic pieces needed constant effort, just as the computer network did. Before Sam White had retired, he had put millions into restoration. He had spent well beyond safety, and just in time, because Lawton doubted that Joyce was a man to spend a penny on heritage.
What was so urgent that he would have Marcia interrupt somebody at a doctor’s appointment? He probably didn’t even think about it. Your time is his. That’s what being CEO means.
Lawton pressed ahead. When he reached the Dome, he pushed the antique brass crossbar of the revolving door and entered the heat of the grand old lobby. It had its own mosaics high on the walls: French missionaries paddling a canoe down the Chicago River, Abe Lincoln being nominated at the Wigwam convention hall, the Fire, Daniel Burnham at White City. Off in the corner, easy to overlook, was one last image—Thomas Woods Peterson himself, standing in this very lobby, surrounded by these very mosaics, including the one of him standing in the lobby.
Sweat began to roll down Lawton’s back and be absorbed by his underpants. He nodded to Maurice.
“Somebody should dial down the heat,” Lawton said.
“Seems a little cool to me, Mr. Lawton.”
He opened his coat and went to the elevators, his calipers and square all out of whack. They couldn’t fire him for losing his prostate, could they? Not without paying him a bundle. Lose a package, gain a package. What would he say to Barbara Jean? And if she left him, what would he do? An old man in diapers watching CNN all day. But what if Joyce wanted to talk to him about a promotion? He had seen stranger things happen, and there had been rumors that Joyce was thinking of appointing a chief operating officer. With the possibility of a big acquisition and the challenge of integrating two companies, Joyce must be feeling the need to hand off some direct reports. There were no plausible internal candidates for the job except Tom Rosten and himself, though Sandra Harms would certainly see herself in contention, maybe Dick Chase, too, which was preposterous. Any more preposterous than Lawton? Who would pass the baton to a man just out from under the knife?
The elevator came. As the door closed, Lawton took the handkerchief from his back pocket to swab his face. He did not want to be COO. Homeostasis was all he wanted. Steady state, nothing more. As the car rose, his body grew heavy. Then the weight lifted and the door opened. As he started to step out, he almost bumped into Joyce stepping in. The
CEO had a youthful face, but today his metal-rimmed glasses, tight against his barbered temples, looked as though they were keeping his skull from exploding.
“Let’s go to your office,” he said. “She said you were at the doctor’s.”
“I wasn’t in a compromising position.”
Joyce clearly did not want a picture. He pushed the button for Lawton’s floor.
“You’re OK though,” he said.
“Right on schedule, he says,” said Lawton.
When the elevator door opened again, Joyce gestured him out first, as he might a senior citizen. At Charlene’s desk, Lawton draped his coat on the counter for her to hang up.
“Hold the calls,” Joyce told her.
He closed the door behind him and went to the round table and blue upholstered chairs that came with the offices of all executives of Lawton’s rank. Lawton waited for him to choose a place then eased himself down on the opposite side.
“We have a problem,” Joyce said, putting his hands flat. His fingernails were trimmed to the quick. “I believe our database has been compromised.”
“I would have been notified,” said Lawton.
“Well I am notifying you now,” said Joyce.
“Who told you?”
“Citibank.”
“Good God, is it out on the Street?” said Lawton. He had completely lost his square and caliper. It was as if everything, even the walls, were suddenly askew.
“Fortunately, I don’t think Citibank realizes what it knows,” said Joyce. “They sent a boilerplate e-mail.”
“What were they thinking, for God’s sake?”
“It notified me that I had been turned down for an elite Visa card.”
“That’s absurd,” said Lawton. Then he breathed out. “A mix-up in names. I’ll have someone talk to our contacts there and straighten it out.”
“That could be disastrous,” said Joyce.
“It has to be their error.”
“It’s ours,” said Joyce. “When I checked the database, it put my credit score south of destitute. And it isn’t just the score. There are mortgage payments I supposedly missed, credit cards revoked for nonpayment.”
“You’re sure you were looking at the right file?”
“It was like seeing my head on a street beggar’s body,” said Joyce.
Lawton stood, listing. He put a hand on the table edge. He hoped Joyce didn’t notice.
“Let’s check the competition,” he said.
“I already did,” said Joyce. “They were all 100 percent accurate, down to the address of the first home Donna and I bought, and every payment on time.”
“May I look?” Lawton said, moving toward his computer.
“Be my guest.”
Lawton signed on as System Administrator. He glanced over at Joyce, who was staring out the windows at the park or something beyond the park. He was not clipping his nails, not glaring at Lawton to get a move on. He was just standing there. This did not fit the man Lawton knew, any more than the credit score did.
“Your Social Security number would expedite things,” Lawton said.
Joyce gave it.
“Could someone have gotten my password?” Joyce said.
“What do you use?”
“Shannon3. My grandmother’s maiden name.”
“We’ll need to strengthen that,” said Lawton. “Hackers start with common names. But having your password wouldn’t let someone alter the database. Even you don’t have the authority.”
Joyce turned and looked at him.
“No offense,” said Lawton. “Specific need is the protocol.”
The file came up, and Lawton saw that it had been thoroughly trashed.
“I don’t have any idea how they did it,” he said. “It’s one thing to sneak a piece of bad data through. But even if a hacker was able to pose as one of our customers, he would only be able to put in data going back three months. The mess in your file goes back decades. Somebody got all the way in. Did anything unusual happen before the Citibank e-mail?”
“Who would do a thing like this?”
“We’ll need to figure out when the intrusion occurred.”
“The e-mail came on Monday,” Joyce said. “Until then I didn’t have the slightest inkling.”
“The first thing we have to do is to determine how much of the database has been corrupted,” said Lawton. “I should know by close of business. We’ll blitz this thing.”
“A blitz might be just what they want,” said Joyce.
“He’d have to be able to monitor in real time,” said Lawton. “I really can’t believe he could do that.”
“Just how certain are you, Dell?” said Joyce. “As certain as you were that an intrusion was impossible because you would have been notified?”
“If someone is in that deep,” said Lawton, “he could destroy us.”
“In which case running off in a panic will accomplish nothing,” said Joyce, looking out the window again. “Is there any way for you to see when this thing with my file began?”
Joyce seemed impossibly calm, as though danger were Xanax. For Lawton it was a stimulant. He was alive again. If he did not know better, he would have thought that what he felt was desire.
“We can go back step by step,” he said.
“Not we,” said Joyce. “You. No consultants. Just you.”
“And Gunderman,” said Lawton.
“Yes. And Gunderman.”
“I can’t believe this is widespread,” said Lawton. “If it were, people all over the world would be having trouble getting a loan. There would be a spike in error reports.”
“I think it is best,” said Joyce, “to fix our minds on the idea that right now we can believe in absolutely nothing.”
Joyce turned back away from the window, and Lawton saw that what had seemed like calm might have been what believing nothing actually looked like in a man.
“Have you told anyone else?” Lawton said.
“Not even my priest.”
He stood and came around the table. As Lawton started to rise, Joyce put a hand lightly on his shoulder.
“I know this is not coming at a good time for you,” he said.
“Don’t worry about me,” said Lawton as Joyce turned toward the door.
Lawton heard Joyce’s big voice greeting the secretaries. As it faded down the corridor, Charlene appeared in the doorway.
“Are you here for Sara Simons?” she said.
“I’m not here for anybody.”
“Did you want the door closed?”
“Closed door, empty office,” said Lawton. “I’m among the missing.”
“Got it,” she said.
He signed in again as System Administrator, this time using the fob that gave him the synchronized numbers that would permit him to do anything he wanted. First he went to his own file. Credit score right where it should have been. As he scrolled through the data fields, he saw every timely payment of a credit-card bill and mortgage payment, every old address, all perfect. When he reached the field that displayed inquiries by Day and Domes customers, he found the usual array of the banks that filled his mailbox with credit-card offers, insurance companies, brokers, advisory firms. Nothing out of the ordinary, though it did irritate him that the hospital where he’d had his surgery had taken his financial temperature first. There had been no call for that. He was on the hospital’s board. His annual donation was more than the damned surgery cost.
He closed his eyes and tried to center himself. It took several steps to get in a position to page back into the database’s history on Joyce’s account. He would need to be prepared with some explanation for why he was doing this, since it would show up on the logs, which even he did not have the authority to revise. He would not be able to put it the way he felt it—that someone had come between him and a thing he cared for, that when he looked at the screen now, the screen was looking back.
6
Sara Simons had a light day, no sales c
all, just the lunch. It was not something she looked forward to, but she did not like the slush or the salt on the sidewalk either. Still she walked. She always did. Along the way she passed the Standard Club, which stood at the intersection of her father’s anxiety and pride.
It had been founded in the late 19th Century by Jewish immigrants, most from Germany, who had gone on to prosper as the city rebuilt after the Great Fire. Such importance did the club place on the great tradition of giving that it had taken her father a month to put together the financial information he was required to disclose in the vetting process. By then, he was a wreck.
“I should have done better than 10 percent,” he said, dropping his pen to the desk upon signing the application. “Even the goyim tithe.”
“It’ll be all right, Daddy,” she said. “You are a very generous man.”
“If they look at last year, it’s better,” he said. “But they ask for five years for a reason.”
“They’ll look at everything,” she said. “They’ll look at Mommy’s death and Grandpa’s hospital bills. You did tell them, didn’t you?”
“The men in the club,” he said, “their families have all been here forever. They’ll think I’m a schnorrer just off the boat.”
“You weren’t on the boat, Daddy,” she said. “They’ll see that you’re natural born.”
“What kind of thing is that?” he said. “My parents were unnatural?”
The immigration clerk had turned Simonowicz to Simons. In the records on Ellis Island, Simons had found the book and seen that an anonymous agent of the United States government had added a little grace note to almost every name he had Anglicized. An “s” here, a “son” there. Simons thought she would like a man who would do a thing like that. She wished she knew his name.
“They’ll understand, Daddy,” she said. “There were no Jews on the Mayflower.”
“Their families came in the next ship,” he said. “And I bet it wasn’t steerage.”
“What I mean is that you won’t be the first peddler’s son to dine at the Standard Club,” she said.
“Look at me,” he said. He had long since shed the more distancing garb of orthodoxy but still stuck to black and white. He assimilated no further than to join a very conservative congregation. “I am neither this nor that,” he said.