by Susan Wolfe
“Our fate is in the hands of that?” Ken asked in disbelief.
“Careful,” Catherine warned, “don’t blow too hard on it. We had trouble finding anything that could work with those troglodyte tapes of yours, and had no idea it would turn into something this huge. We’re afraid any tiny trauma will shut it down and bring all these lawyers to a halt.”
“This looks like a huge effort, Catherine. I’d like to say hi to them if that’s okay.”
“I’m sure they welcome all evidence that somebody knows they exist,” she said as one of the readers touched her arm and handed her a document.
“Hello?” Ken called. Twenty-seven pairs of eyes flicked up and fastened on him. Well, twenty-six. The man with gray eyes was watching Georgia again, his asymmetric smile a little wistful in an open, intelligent face. “I’m Ken Madigan, the General Counsel for Lumina Software. Gee, I’ve never been in a roomful of lawyers that was this quiet.” Laughter. “I came here to see your operations, and I’m very impressed with your efforts, if not the equipment.” The man who was watching her had brown hair that wouldn’t lie flat, evidently, and the sky blue dress shirt that fitted loosely over his lean shoulders had sweat stains under the armpits. Late twenties, she guessed, that slightly asymmetric smile just shy of gorgeous, which made him even more engaging. She smiled faintly back.
“. . . really appreciate your dedication,” Ken was saying. “You could probably all be doing something quite a bit more glamorous than this.”
“Yeah, like brushing our teeth,” one of the lawyers called out, and Ken laughed with them.
“Although,” Ken pointed out, “it might be hard to find something more important to our company. We’re grateful for your efforts, and just nobody sneeze in the direction of that unfortunate server.” They laughed again as they turned back to their screens. He held the door for Georgia and Catherine as they exited the room. She didn’t glance back to see if the man with gray eyes was following her departure.
“We’re preparing another batch of hot email to send over to Zack and Jill,” Catherine said, holding out the document she’d been given. “But you might want to look at this one now.”
Georgia was trying to think of an excuse to ask Catherine the gray-eyed lawyer’s name, when Ken handed her the document. “Well!” he said with gallows cheer, “looks like we have problems in Phoenix.”
“That’s totally awesome about your bonus,” Katie-Ann said. “If I’d known, I’d have made another turkey leg.” She glanced with faint dismay at the plate of steaming tuna casserole that Georgia had just set in front of her on the folding table. The sun was slanting long rays in through the living room window and across the faded red beanbag chair they’d bought from Goodwill.
“Why don’t we have turkey leg tomorrow night, if you have time to make it?” Georgia suggested. “Don’t want to spend this bonus money on daily stuff, but we can forget about saving for a while. We can have meat and vegetables more often, instead of so much pasta.”
“You know what else, Georgia? Could we use the money to bring Blizzard out here?”
“Blizzard!” Blizzard was their white tomcat. “You know we can’t take the slightest chance of letting Johnny and Mama know where we are.”
“I guess. Probably freak him out to be by himself in a crate, anyway. But I really miss him. He used to just hang out and lie on my books all the time. Now I’m stuck here doing way more homework than I used to, and he’d be such good company.” She poked at her casserole without loading it onto her fork.
“Yeah, he’d be great company. Maybe when Daddy gets out, he’ll bring him when he comes to visit.”
“Daddy’s who I miss the most. You think he’ll really get out in six months?”
Georgia poured buttermilk for Katie-Ann and then herself. “No guarantees, but he’s giving it his best shot. Worst case, he’ll be out next September.”
Katie-Ann set her fork down. “Why’d he get caught in the first place? I don’t really get what Robbie did.”
Georgia considered. Where was the harm, really? “Well. You know Robbie was Daddy’s favorite shill for a long time.”
“Yeah. Robbie knew how to pretend he was evaluating a situation ve-ry carefully.” She mugged a thoughtful frown. “Gave the marks confidence.”
“Exactly. So when Daddy decided to expand the business, he let Robbie start running his own scams, with his own shills and everything, just paying Daddy a small percentage.”
“That’s when Daddy started using Lena Mae for his shill.”
“Right. Eat your casserole before it gets cold. Well, one day, Robbie said something that made Lena Mae suspect he was running extra scams on the sly. Turned out Robbie wasn’t just holding out on Daddy’s percentage. He actually had a list of his and Daddy’s old marks, and he was going back and scamming them all over again. It’s called ‘reloading,’ and Daddy was horrified that Robbie could be such a moron.”
“Because the marks were onto them already?” Katie-Ann scooped up a forkful of casserole.
Georgia nodded grimly. “The marks were onto them, and of course they were pissed off. The risk was they’d pretend to be fooled and then run to the police. Which is exactly what happened. Daddy shut the reloading down immediately, but one of the recycled marks had already gone to the police about Robbie and Daddy both for some ancient melon drop.”
Katie-Ann shook her head in disbelief. “All this trouble for a stupid melon drop? So why isn’t Robbie in jail, too?”
“Evidently they couldn’t find him. Daddy and I both thought they’d forget about him fast enough. Not exactly the crime of the century we’re dealing with here.” She shrugged. “For some reason, they’re still interested.”
“Wow, do you think they want him for something worse than Daddy knows about?”
Georgia shrugged again, deeply. “We really just don’t know. I do know Daddy will think twice before he lets some dumb shill go out on his own again.”
“That’s why he wants you to go in with him.”
“Well, that, and he thinks it would just be fun.”
“That’s partly why I’m worried about him, Georgia. Daddy doesn’t cope with boredom very well. I hope he doesn’t get himself in trouble there in that prison.”
“He won’t,” Georgia said with more conviction than she felt. “Daddy knows what’s at stake. Anyway, his first parole hearing is coming up in a few months, and he can focus on that. The ultimate scam. He’s already working up profiles on all the parole board members.”
“Well, Daddy can con the stripes off a skunk, so I guess he’s got as good a chance as anybody.”
“Absolutely. Daddy’s going to be out of jail and causing trouble again in no time.” Katie-Ann was poking her food listlessly. “In the meantime, why don’t I see if the landlord allows cats? Maybe Blizzard would like a nice buddy when he gets here.”
Zack called the meeting to order behind the firmly shut door of the windowless executive conference room early the next morning. Their outside lawyer Jill sat silently, looking rumpled and grim while Ken, Cliff and the rest of the team filed in around her.
“Okay, guys,” Zack said in a slightly hushed voice, “I’m sure you all know the review of Reebuck’s email has turned up two bad deals in Phoenix. Nothing anywhere else. Cliff, you’ve told the auditors?”
“We have. Now they insist we do a full-blown review of Phoenix. They’re making noise about a full review of all the offices under Charlie Reebuck, but I think I’ve persuaded them to just do Phoenix, and then if a third office surfaces we’ll have to do the whole region.”
“Quan,” Zack continued, “you’ve looked at the numbers?”
Quan nodded, raking his thick hair back from his eyes. “Their restored email for the three-year period amounts to another 120,000 emails.” Muffled groans.
“So how many hours of reading will that take?” Ken asked. He was the only person in the room who looked fully alert at this hour, with hornet yellow kidney shapes m
arching in military precision across his red bow tie.
Jill said, “Ken, if I could interject here. I believe it is no longer possible for you to file your 10-Q on time.”
The room went deadly quiet. Now they were all awake.
“We see how hard you’re driving,” she continued, “how committed you are, and we would do anything to help you reach your goals. At some point, though, we’ve got to confront the fact that it isn’t going to happen.” That was why she was here in person. She’d come to take the heat for delivering bad news.
Ken was sitting ramrod straight as usual, and he pulled his thin lips into a determined line. “Why can’t it be done?”
“You heard Quan. You just added another 120,000 emails. Your readers are already going at maximum output, and they’re exhausted. They cannot absorb the Phoenix emails.”
“Then add more readers.”
“Where would you get them?” she objected evenly. “Quan has moved heaven and earth to get the readers you do have. And if you did find more you’d still have to train them, and then it takes a couple of days before they achieve full productivity.”
Ken turned to Quan. “How many more readers would we need to get through these additional 120,000 emails in the next eight days?”
Quan flicked his pen over his notepad. “Assuming full productivity for eight to ten hours a day starting in two days . . . fifteen more readers.”
“We can’t add fifteen more readers to this server,” Jill protested. “It cannot handle the additional volume.”
“So get another server,” Ken said evenly.
“We have another server, and it’s sitting in our delivery bay. The problem is that we have to shut down for at least two days to switch over. That blows your timing right there.” She was determined to persuade him to give up.
“Ken,” Zack added almost gently, “you know how you always accuse me of being an optimist? In this case even I don’t see how we can finish in eight more days. The readers we have can’t do this much longer.”
“Why not?” Georgia objected. “Some people did the entire Civil War.” No reason to get into a whine fest here.
Everybody glanced at Georgia and then back at Zack. A smile flickered at the corners of Ken’s mouth.
“Sad to say, I agree with Zack,” Cliff pressed ahead.
“Okay, guys,” Ken said, leaning over the table and looking at each of them one by one. “I know you’re tired. I also know you realize what’s at stake here. Jill tells us we can expect to lose 25 percent of our market cap the day we announce that we’re not going to file on time.” He pointed a finger for emphasis. “That’s 25 percent for being late, irrespective of whether we end up having to file a restatement. Do you recommend I tell Jean-Claude we’re losing a quarter of the value of our company because we can’t find a way to read some emails?”
Nobody was looking at Ken except Georgia, who struggled not to beam brighter than a lighthouse.
“Believe me,” he continued, “I understand doubt. I understand and embrace despair, as long as we don’t let it slow us down. I don’t know whether we can do this. I know a lot of people are counting on us to do it, and if we don’t do it, I want it to be because it was utterly, completely impossible. And how can we know that unless we give it our best shot?”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence, and then Jill said, “I hear you. We’ll give it everything we’ve got.”
“Thank you, Jill. That’s all I can ask. Zack?”
“I’m in.”
“Finance will go all out,” Cliff confirmed.
“So, if we can’t add more email readers to the server,” Georgia asked, “can we add a midnight shift and run around the clock?”
Jill raised an eyebrow. “Good thought. Let me ask our IT guy.”
“I will locate fifteen more readers ready to be trained at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning,” Quan stated, touching the temples of his rimless glasses.
“I’d like to be one of them,” Georgia offered. Who knew? Maybe that gray-eyed lawyer would show up. She could use another look at that asymmetric smile.
“Me, too.” Zack stuck his hand in the air and grinned at Georgia. “Maybe we’ll get that coveted midnight shift.”
“Me, too,” Ken said. “In fact, I need to let Roy know he really doesn’t have a legal team until this audit is finished.”
“I prefer to avoid having you read email if at all possible, Ken,” Quan countered politely. “We need you to review whatever we find, and handle any crisis that comes up. If I can find twelve outside readers before the end of the day, then Zack, Georgia and I will round out the team.”
“One more thing, Ken,” Jill said. “I hope your board is prepared for the level of expense we’ll incur when we really pull out the stops.”
“They’re fully prepared. Jean-Claude told me, ‘Ken, you will never hear me say this again in my lifetime, but you have no budget constraints here. Your only constraint is to finish on time.’”
Jill’s eyes grew round. “From a former Chief Financial Officer? I’ve heard enough. Let’s go do it.”
“I guess I’m confused,” Katie-Ann said later, as she proudly set a roast chicken surrounded by carrots and potatoes on the card table. “If you’re going to be at a law office from midnight to five every night, when are you going to sleep?” Jill had confirmed the addition of a five-hour nightly graveyard shift, leaving three hours a day to maintain the rickety, retrograde server.
“Haven’t figured that out yet,” Georgia said, helping herself to the glistening, bright carrots. “God, look at this dinner! It’ll be a night or two before I have to sleep, and by then I’ll think of something.”
“But you’ll still be home for dinner?”
“And geometry. Absolutely. You gonna be all right by yourself here at night?”
“You kidding? Alone is way safer than having Reverend Johnny Awknell in the house.”
“Good point. I’ll have my iPhone in case you need me for something.”
“What would I need you for?” Katie-Ann asked breezily with a wave of her hand. “And anyway, it’s only a few days.”
At 3 o’clock in the morning on Day Four of her midnight-to-five shift, Georgia had read just over half of her nightly target of three hundred twenty emails. She rubbed her eye with the heel of her hand, and took a bitter sip of stone cold coffee. Couldn’t conk out now. Just two more hours before the server went offline for its nightly maintenance. She slapped her cheek a few times as quietly as possible, trying not to distract the twenty-three other readers.
Both Zack and Quan were completely lost in concentration. Sartorial standards had sunk to a comfortable new low with this crowd. Zack was wearing cargo shorts and a faded red T-shirt. Even Eddie Fallon (the freckle-faced lawyer with gray eyes) had given up his suit in favor of jeans and an open-necked plaid shirt, which revealed a downright attractive collarbone. He was sitting right across from her now. Any chance she could glimpse those gray eyes through his black eyelashes . . . ?
“Georgia, you need something?” Catherine whispered behind her. Catherine’s eyes were blood-shot, and her blond hair had taken on a flat look that meant it could use a washing.
Georgia waved her hand dismissively and covered her yawn. “I’m fine. My zombie just left me dead for a minute while it ran to the bathroom.” She was rewarded with Eddie’s appreciative snicker and his gray eyes resting on the side of her face. “Don’t you have the 8 o’clock shift today?”
Catherine held up a small zippered bag. “My personal grooming kit. Deodorant. Dental floss. Isn’t this fun? Backpacking without the view.” Catherine was now pulling 36-hour shifts, sleeping in her jeans under her desk during the nightly maintenance.
Georgia acknowledged Eddie with a little smile and went back to reading. The room was completely silent except for the hum of the server and the muffled clicking of keyboards. She was all the way up to two hundred fifty when Quan broke the silence. “Uh-oh.”
Zack rotated
his bleary eyes sideways onto Georgia. “Did Quan just say ‘uh-oh’?”
“I’m afraid he did,” she confirmed with a heavy sigh. “Remember what happened the last time he said ‘uh-oh’?”
“I sure do. But maybe this is a personal ‘uh-oh.’ Uh-oh, I’m out of chewing gum. Uh-oh, my fly is open.”
Quan laughed. “Unfortunately, this is a sincere, professional uh-oh. But I might very well have misunderstood. I’m printing it for you now.”
A moment later he handed an email to Zack and Georgia. It was from someone at Home Depot to Charlie Reebuck:
Charlie,
I have carried your latest proposal to our CEO, and we have a deal. Lumina is obviously very confident that Oracle compatibility will be achieved within the four months we have agreed upon, and that is sufficient for us. I share your optimism that the promised de-installation and refund will be unnecessary.
Best,
Rod
“So Charlie did his own side deal directly,” Georgia concluded, her pulse starting to thud in her ears.
“It seems he did indeed,” Quan confirmed. “And look who it’s copied to.”
The email was copied to Glen Terkes.
CHAPTER 18
“Terkes??” Ken exclaimed the next morning after a moment of shocked silence. “You gotta be kiddin’ me. What are we, four days from filing the Q?” Interesting, Georgia thought, how quickly “Glen” had become “Terkes.” Ken was distancing himself already, and the morning sun was just flashing its first glittery rays between the tops of the eucalyptus trees on the far side of the parking lot.
“Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks,” Zack offered. “Can we tell whether he opened it? Can we tell whether he responded?”