Searing Lies (Love, Power & Sin)

by Marie Astor

  “You went to Columbia also?”

  “I did: class of two thousand.”

  He is seven years older than me, Janet’s mind did an involuntary calculation. “It’s always a pleasure to meet fellow Columbia alum.”

  “Indeed. And I hope that we’ll be seeing quite a bit of each other.” Tom’s eyes lingered on Janet a second too long for a casual glance, and she was not quite sure how to respond.

  “Well, should we get seated?” Lisa tapped her foot. “I’m starving.”

  “Forgive me, I seem to be forgetting myself.” Tom nodded at the restaurant hostess who had been lurking in the background, careful not to interrupt their conversation.

  “Please follow me.” With gazelle-like grace, the hostess glided across the floor.

  Her head cocked, Lisa sashayed after the hostess. Tom stepped aside, letting Janet go in front of him, and she could not help a warm, giddy feeling spreading in her chest. She certainly did not intend to get involved with Tom Wyman, but it sure felt nice to be the center of his attention.

  “So, Janet, tell me more about yourself,” said Tom after they had ordered lunch.

  “I’m not sure where to begin. I’m afraid I’m not that interesting.” Janet lowered her eyes, breaking away from Tom’s gaze. His eyes were like two black olives: dark, glistening, and unsettlingly sharp.

  “Why, Janie, as usual, your modesty is getting the best of you!” Lisa pursed her lips. “Tom, do you know that Janie has spent the last four years at the DA’s office?”

  “Oh?” Tom’s eyebrows shot up high. “What an interesting career choice. And may I ask what division you were in?”

  “I was in the Investigation Division.” When Janet spoke of her former occupation as Assistant District Attorney, most people were either impressed or terrified – the latter were usually employed in the financial industry. There was one memorable occasion when Janet had mentioned her employment while being flirted with by a handsome financial type during happy hour, which resulted in the guy’s falling off his bar stool and promptly vacating the bar premises. But then there were plenty of occasions when her choice of occupation elicited accolades and admiration – those were mostly from members of senior citizen communities who were frequent victims of financial rogues whom Janet so diligently tried to catch. In either case, most people never went as far as inquiring about the specifics of her job, which made Tom’s pointed question surprising.

  “Very impressive. I hear it requires a special transfer to get into Investigation, correct?”

  “Yes.” Janet nodded. “I started with the DA right after law school. My first assignment was with the Trial Division, but I asked to be moved into Investigations, and my supervisor agreed to recommend me.”

  “No doubt for exceptional performance.”

  Janet blushed, unaccustomed to such keen interest in her work. “Well, I did contribute to several important cases.”

  Tom’s pointed gaze travelled from Janet to Lisa. “Well, Lisa, it sounds like you hired a first-rate sleuth: a qualification that is bound to be an asset for employment with Bostoff Securities.”

  Just as Tom finished his convoluted compliment, a waiter approached the table, carrying a bottle of wine.

  “I believe this calls for a toast. Here’s to the latest addition to Bostoff Securities.” Tom raised his glass.

  “I’m so glad you’re here, Janie.” Lisa raised her glass.

  Janet eyed the wine hesitantly. Alcohol during lunch would most certainly be frowned upon at the DA’s office, but she was no longer at the DA’s office, and it was time to put her former employer behind her.

  “Relax,” Lisa jeered, “it’s all right to have a sip with your boss.”

  Janet picked up her glass.

  “Welcome to the family, Janet.” Tom’s glass clinked against Janet’s and Lisa’s. “Forgive me if I sound too forward, Janet, but I do so much work for Bostoff Securities that I feel a part of the team.”

  “Thank you, Tom.” Janet smiled. Perhaps she was being too guarded after all. This Tom Wyman was bound to be a decent fellow if he called his employer ‘family.’

  The rest of the lunch was spent in gastronomical exploration as the waiter brought out one intricate dish after another. By the end of the two-hour meal, Janet felt the waistline of her skirt pinching. There was one good thing to be said about having a limited budget: it prevented one from overindulging, and if four-course lunches were de rigueur at Bostoff Securities, she would have to acquire formidable self-restraint.

  “Ah, I’m stuffed.” Lisa leaned back in her chair, and Janet noticed that Lisa’s plate looked like it had been barely touched, while Janet’s was swept clean.

  Tom checked his watch. “Wow, it’s after two o’clock. I hate to break up the party, ladies, but I’ve got to get back to the office. I am, after all, working on billable hours.” Tom grinned.

  “Please, Tom.” Lisa waved her hand. “With the bill you sent me last month, I think you’ve fulfilled your quota for the rest of the year.”

  “In the words of Hank Bostoff, there’s no such thing as too much money.”

  “Yes.” Lisa nodded. “I’m constantly reminded of it by Jon. Hank Bostoff is the founder of the firm – he is the CEO,” Lisa explained for Janet’s benefit. “You haven’t met him because he only interviews the most senior people. I might as well tell you about all the big wigs. Jonathan Bostoff is Hank’s elder son. He is the company president.”

  “Paul Bostoff is Hank’s younger son and the company’s COO, and Lisa’s soon-to-be fiancé,” Tom explained.

  “Please, Tom, don’t jinx it!” Lisa smiled coyly. “But, getting back to business, Tom, it would be great if you could give Janet an overview of Bostoff Securities’ business. Do you think you could do that?”

  “Certainly,” Tom replied. “It will be my pleasure. Shall we say eleven o’clock tomorrow?”

  Lisa reached for her purse and leaned over to whisper into Janet’s ear, “See, he likes you.”

  “Eleven is fine.” Janet nodded. If Lisa wanted to play matchmaker, Janet had no choice but to play along. She needed this job.

  Chapter 2

  Dennis Walker surveyed the contents of his closet and reluctantly pushed away his tailored suits. His current persona as Dean Snider, Chief IT Analyst at Bostoff Securities, did not allow for dapper attire. Instead, Dennis reached for a brown Men’s Wearhouse suit in size forty two regular, while Dennis normally wore forty long. Next followed a shirt of swamp green Dennis had also acquired at Men’s Wearhouse and a mousy gray tie of fabric so stiff that it virtually would stand if one were to lay the tie down on the side. The one thing Dennis refused to give up was his shoes. His feet, after all, were important – he only had one pair for his entire lifetime, so he reached for a discreet pair of Johnston and Murphy’s. Last came a pair of glasses. The lenses were plain plastic, but their purpose was not to correct Dennis’s twenty-twenty vision, but to obscure the blue-gray of his eyes. It was a known fact that people rarely noted eye color behind corrective lenses. For the finishing touch Dennis slouched his shoulders and stuck out his neck. When he looked in the mirror, the transformation was complete: the suave charmer Dennis Walker had been replaced by a nerdy computer geek.

  When Dennis had proposed his candidacy for the assignment at Bostoff Securities, his boss had shrugged him off as too good-looking and too suave. In the past, Dennis had impersonated traders, lawyers, company executives, and even aspiring political candidates. Any time an assignment required balls and charisma, Dennis was the ‘go to’ man. Without a doubt, those had been Dennis’s preferred roles, but the Bostoff investigation promised to be a career-making case, and Dennis was a careerist. Sure, he liked catching the bad guys, but he liked being recognized for his achievements even more. His boss was dead set on assigning the job to Peter Laskin. At thirty-five, Laskin was already balding, and the frames he wore had thick corrective lenses in them. Laskin, a forensic accountant by training, was a genius behind the
desk, but his last assignment in the field had been over five years ago, and all it took was one hiccup – one slip – for a case to go down the drain. So Dennis took it upon himself to save the day. Not without much struggle, he abandoned his bi-weekly visits to his favorite hair stylist, opting for a local barbershop instead. He purchased the most horrible suit he could find on the sale rack at Men’s Wearhouse, ordered a pair of glasses with fake lenses in them, and worked on slouching and sticking out his neck. When, two weeks later, Dennis showed up in all his geek glory on the doorstep of his boss’s office, the Bostoff case was his and so was the office pool – to Laskin’s relief, Dennis had won the bet. Now he had to prove that he deserved the assignment.

  ***

  The next morning, Janet left for work in much better spirits than the day before. All in all, Bostoff Securities was shaping up to be a far better gig than she had expected. Lisa Foley was still Lisa Foley, but yesterday’s lunch with Tom Wyman proved that now Janet was much better equipped to handle her high school friend than when she was a teenager. Despite Lisa’s efforts to steal the limelight, Tom’s attention did not stray from Janet throughout the meal, and while Janet intended keeping her interactions with Tom Wyman on a strictly professional level, she would be a liar to deny that her scheduled meeting with Tom this morning did not contribute to her uplifted spirits.

  At a quarter to nine, Janet was approaching the Bostoff Securities building. Midtown was mayhem compared to downtown, but her commute from Second Avenue and Ninetieth Street had been shortened by twenty minutes. Tempted by the sight of pastries in the nearby coffee shop window, Janet made a quick stop to grab breakfast to go. After all, she had skipped dinner last night, which, considering the huge lunch she had indulged in, was no great sacrifice, but it was still better than nothing. This morning she would allow herself to indulge in hazelnut coffee with extra half and half and a croissant, but tomorrow it would be yogurt or oatmeal.

  Janet entered the marble lobby of Bostoff Securities and pressed her floor button. The elevator doors opened, and she gingerly stepped out, straining to recall the shortcut to her office Lisa had shown her the day before. The details were fuzzy now. After a moment’s hesitation, she walked through one of the doors. As Janet made her way through the double doors, she heard a loud buzz of human, mostly male, voices. A few moments later, she found herself smack in the middle of the trading floor. Seemingly endless rows of desks with stacked-up computer monitors stretched the entire length of the room, which had to be the size of ten basketball courts – or maybe it was five basketball courts – she could not tell exactly. Everywhere there were men dressed in slacks and collared shirts with their sleeves rolled up. Some wore ties and had their suit jackets flung over the backs of their chairs. The average age had to be between twenty-five to thirty, and the atmosphere was that of startling chaos: jokes and yells flying across the room, feet being put up on desks, and paper being thrown on the floor. Janet straightened her back, doing her best to look as though she belonged. “Must not show fear,” a line she had heard a wild animal trainer utter on the Discovery channel popped into her mind. The advice seemed applicable now, as the floor of Bostoff Securities was very much a jungle. Janet kept making her way down the trading floor aisle for several more agonizing minutes when she finally saw another set of doors. Fighting the urge to lunge for the door handle, she steadily opened the door and found herself in the corridor that Lisa had shown her the day before. A few steps to the right was the door to Janet’s office.

  The corridor was empty, and abandoning all restraint, Janet rushed inside her office and shut the door behind her. The offices at Bostoff Securities were sturdy: there was none of the see-through flimsiness of glass, but the reassuring impenetrability of solid wood. Glad of the privacy, Janet pressed her back against the door and took deep breaths. Calm down, she thought, you’re going to be working with these people and you can’t run for cover every time you need to get something done.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m almost done here,” a male voice made Janet drop her purse on the floor. At least it was not her breakfast, which she was still clutching in her hand. Janet picked up her purse and touched her pinned up hair for reassurance. Whenever she was in distress, her neat hairdo was always a source of comfort.

  “I was running late,” she blurted out, immediately regretting her words. This was, after all, her office.

  “First day, huh?” The bespectacled man sitting behind Janet’s desk smiled at her, and she could not help noticing that he had really lovely blue-gray eyes.

  “Second day, actually,” Janet replied curtly, wondering how best to broach the subject of the unknown stranger taking over her office.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, this is very clumsy of me. I’m Dean, Dean Snider, IT.” The man jumped to his feet, sticking out his hand for a handshake. “I was just sent in to set up your computer, so I assumed that today is your first day.”

  Janet placed her purse on her desk and shook Dean’s hand, sneaking a better look at him. He was wearing clothes that were too short for his height and slouching when he should be standing up tall, but this goofiness rendered him an unlikely kind of charm.

  “Yesterday was more of an orientation than hands-on work,” Janet improvised a description of her work, which, honestly speaking, had not involved any work at all.

  “Well, that’s no skin off anyone’s nose.” Dean grinned. “One thing I found in this place is that work will always be here for you the next day. Sometimes it helps to take a breather and reassess things.”

  Sensing Dean’s glance lingering on her, Janet looked up. She was not used to IT specialists giving work advice to lawyers.

  Dean squinted at the computer monitor. “I’m all done here. Your email is up and running, and so is the rest of your computer. Have a good one – don’t work too hard.”

  Once the door behind the IT support guy closed, Janet settled in her chair. This had certainly been an eventful morning. She reached for her by now lukewarm coffee and took a sip. Then she took a bite of her croissant, but could take no pleasure in either one. For reasons unknown to her, the IT guy’s remark was humming in her head. What was his name? Dean, Dean Snider, that’s right. “Sometimes it helps to take a breather and reassess things.” No doubt Dean was simply making small talk, but something in his tone made Janet uneasy.

  Janet dumped the rest of her croissant into the garbage bin and opened the orientation package she had received the day before. She had meant to look at it yesterday, but had been too woozy from the wine-laced lunch with Lisa and Tom. At the top of the pile were five different non-disclosure agreements. According to the terms and conditions of her employment at Bostoff Securities, she was virtually prohibited from mentioning anything other than her title and the fact that she worked at Bostoff. This was odd to say the least. At the DA’s office she had worked on confidential investigations, but she never had to sign such elaborate disclosures before. Perplexed, Janet put the forms aside. She would have a word with Lisa about them later.

  Remembering her appointment with Tom Wyman, Janet checked her watch. It was ten thirty a.m., and she was due to see Tom at eleven. She grabbed her handbag and headed for the ladies’ room. Yes, it was silly, but she wanted to touch up her makeup for Tom. Not that she was interested in him: he was a colleague, but that did not mean that she couldn’t enjoy Tom’s attention.

  Janet examined her reflection in the ladies’ room mirror. Today she had opted for a less conservative outfit of a navy pencil skirt and silk blouse with a bow-tie detail. The 1980’s inspired combination was very much in style at the moment. Janet had to admit that she was pleased with what she saw: the skirt ended just at the knee, exposing her favorite part of her legs: her calves, which were elongated by her three-inch heels. The pointy-toed black patent leather Mary Janes were not the most comfortable shoes in her closet, but they were by far the most flattering. The blue-green pattern of the blouse brought out her green eyes, and the bow-tie detail accentuated the s
lightly lower than average neckline, while her neatly put up chestnut hair provided the necessary counterweight to make her outfit office-appropriate. She looked like a sexy librarian, minus the glasses. If Janet knew anything about men, she was certain that Tom Wyman would be intrigued. She quickly reapplied her lipstick and dusted a light coat of powder over her face. She did not need any blush since her cheeks were already pink with anticipation.

  At a quarter to eleven, Janet was back at her desk. For reasons beyond the powers of her common sense, her heart was palpitating with expectation. Her reaction was absurd, and she was the first to admit it. But right now her mind had the rationale and the clarity of that of an oversexed teenager, and she was powerless to control it. Yet again Lisa had prevailed – thanks to her meddling, a business meeting had acquired romantic connotations, fraught with nerve-wracking anticipations of a date, which Janet very well knew her meeting with Tom was not. Yet she could not help acting as though it were… But then it was dishonest to lay the blame entirely on Lisa, for Janet knew full well the underlying cause of her flustered state – after being backstabbed and dumped by her boyfriend of almost five years, her confidence was not what it used to be, and say what she might about keeping her relationship with Tom Wyman purely professional, she could not deny that the attention of this handsome and successful man would be a welcome poultice for her bruised ego.

  A knock on her office door made Janet jump up in her seat. She looked at her watch. It was eleven o’clock on the dot. “Janet?”

  “Hi, Tom.” Janet slowly looked up from her computer screen. She might have spent the last hour agonizing over her meeting with Tom, but he did not need to know that: to him, she was a busy lawyer in a leading securities firm. So what if her computer monitor merely had her email screen? Thankfully, even a man as suave as Tom Wyman did not possess x-ray vision.