“I hear you,” Todd said again. “What are you calling for?”
“Let me repeat the question, because I don’t think I heard your answer. Is there any truth to these reports that you guys are negotiating to move our manufacturing offshore, Todd?”
“No,” he said quickly.
“Not even preliminary talks?”
“No.”
Nick didn’t know what else to say. Either he was telling the truth, or he was lying, and if he was willing to lie so baldly, well, what the hell could Nick do about it anyway? He thought about mentioning all the back-and-forth e-mail between Todd and Scott, the encrypted documents—but he didn’t want Todd to know he was having his security director keep a close watch. He didn’t want to shut one of the few windows he had into what was really going on.
“Then maybe you can explain to me why you’ve got Scott going to China on some secret mission, like Henry fucking Kissinger, without even telling me.”
A few seconds of silence. “News to me,” Todd finally said. “Ask him.”
“Scott said he went to China to explore the options. He didn’t do that for you? Because if he did, I want you to understand something. That’s not the way it works around here, Todd.”
“He doesn’t report to me, Nick.”
“Exactly. I don’t want to be undermined.”
“I don’t want that either.”
“The job’s tough enough without having to worry about whether my chief financial officer’s taking secret flights to the Orient on Cathay Pacific.”
Todd chuckled politely. “It’s a tough job, and it takes a lot out of you.” The timbre of his voice suddenly changed, as if he’d just thought of something. “You know, I understand your family’s been through some rough times, death of your wife, all that. If you need to spend more time with them, we’re here to help. You want to take a little sabbatical, a little break, might be a good thing. You could probably use a vacation. Be good for you.”
“I’m fine, Todd,” Nick said. Not so easy, Todd. “Going to work every day—that’s what keeps me going.”
“Good to hear it,” Todd said. “Good to hear it.”
71
Bugbee was gobbling Cheetos out of a small vending machine bag. His fingers—which Audrey had noticed were usually immaculate, the nails neatly clipped—were stained orange.
“Makes sense,” he said through a mouthful of Cheetos. “Rinaldi picked up a piece in Grand Rapids when he was working there.”
“Or here. Those guns travel.”
“Maybe. So where’d he toss it?”
“Any of a million possibilities.” She was hungry, and he wasn’t offering her any, the jerk.
“I forget who the poor slobs were searched the Dumpster, but nothing there.”
“There’s probably hundreds of Dumpsters in town,” Audrey pointed out. “And the dump. And sewer grates, and the lake and the ponds and the rivers. We’re never going to find the gun.”
“Sad but true,” Bugbee said. He crumpled up the empty bag, tossed the wad at the metal trash can against the wall, but the bag unballed in the air and landed on the floor. “Shit.”
“Did you have a chance to talk to the alarm company?”
He nodded. “Fenwick Alarm’s just an office downtown. I don’t know what the hell they do—they install, but not in this case. They don’t even do the monitoring themselves. That’s done by a joint called Central Michigan Monitoring, out of Lansing. They keep all the electronic records.”
“And?”
“Nada. Just confirms what we already know. That Wednesday morning one of the perimeter alarms at Conover’s house got triggered. Alert lasted eleven minutes. Big fucking deal. You got the hard drive—that ought to give up what the cameras recorded, right?”
She explained what she knew about Conover’s digital video recording system. “I’ve asked Lenehan to look again. But Noyce has him doing all kinds of other things ahead of us.”
“Why does that not surprise me?”
“Speaking of cameras, one of us should check out whatever they have at Fenwicke Estates security for that night.”
Bugbee shook his head. “Did already. They use a central station downtown. Nothing special—Stadler climbs a perimeter fence, that’s it.”
“Too bad.”
“I say we poly the guy. Both of those assholes.”
“That’s a tough one. It may be early. We may want to wait until we have more. I know that’s what Noyce would say.”
“Screw Noyce. This is our case, not his. You notice the way he’s been breathing down our necks?”
“Some.”
“He must smell something big about to pop.”
She didn’t know how much to say. “I think it’s more that he wants to make sure we don’t slip up.”
“Slip up? Like we’re rookies?”
Audrey shrugged. “It’s a big case.”
Bugbee said, with a crooked grin, “No shit.”
Audrey responded with a rueful smile as she turned to go back to her cubicle.
“That thing about the shell casing or bullet fragment or whatever,” Bugbee said.
She turned. “What shell casing?”
“That bluff?”
“Yes?”
“Not bad,” Bugbee said.
72
Nick was beyond weary. All the shit that was going on with Todd and Scott, all the crap he didn’t understand: it was draining. And that on top of Eddie and his warnings about Cassie: check yourself before you wreck yourself. And: What do you think she’s after? Could there be something to what Eddie was saying?
Was it possible, he’d begun to wonder, that, on some subconscious level, he wanted to be found out?
And worst of all, so awful he couldn’t stand to think about it, was this fragment of a shell casing the police had discovered on his lawn.
He’d always prided himself on his ability to endure pressure that would crush most other guys. Maybe it was the hockey training, the way you learned to find the serene place inside you and go there when things got tough. He never used to panic. Laura, always on the high-strung side, never got that. She thought he didn’t care, didn’t get it. And he’d just shrug and reply blandly, “What’s the use in panicking? Not going to help.”
But since the murder, everything had changed. His hard shell had cracked or turned porous. Or maybe all the stress of the last few weeks was additive, the worries heaped onto his back until his muscles trembled and spasmed. Any second now he’d collapse to the ground.
But he couldn’t, not yet.
Because whatever Todd and Scott were up to—all this maneuvering, the secret trips and the phone calls and the encrypted document—it had ignited a fuse in him that crackled and sparked.
You want to take a little sabbatical, a little break, might be a good thing.
Like Todd gave a shit about his emotional well-being.
Todd wanted him to take time off. Not resign: that was interesting. If Todd and the boys at Fairfield wanted to get rid of him, they’d have fired him long ago. So why hadn’t they? Was it really the huge payday, the five million bucks they’d have to pay to fire him without cause, that was stopping them? Given how many billions Fairfield had under management?
He tapped at his keyboard and pulled up the corporate directory, clicked on MARTIN LAI. A photo popped up—a fat-faced, phlegmatic-looking guy—along with his direct reports, his e-mail, his phone number.
He glanced at his watch. Thirteen-hour time difference in Hong Kong. Nine-thirty in the morning here meant ten-thirty at night there. He picked up the phone and dialed Martin Lai’s home number. It rang and rang, and then a recorded message came on in Chinese, followed by a few perfunctory words in heavily accented English. “Martin,” he said, “this is Nick Conover. I need to speak to you right away.” He left the usual array of phone numbers.
Then he spoke into the intercom and asked Marge to locate Martin Lai’s cell phone number, which wasn’t on the Stratton intranet. A minute
later, a long number popped up on his screen.
He called it and got a recorded voice again, and he left the same message. He checked Lai’s Meeting Maker, his online corporate schedule, and the man appeared not to be away from Stratton’s Hong Kong office.
Todd’s words kept coming back to him: You want to take a little sabbatical, a little break, might be a good thing.
What the hell were Todd Muldaur and Fairfield Equity Partners up to, really? Who, he wondered, might know?
The answer came to him so swiftly that he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. A “cousin” in the extended Fairfield family, that was who.
He opened his middle desk drawer and found a dog-eared business card that said KENDALL RESTAURANT GROUP, and underneath it, RONNIE KENDALL, CEO.
Ronnie Kendall was a sharp entrepreneur, a quick-witted bantam with an impenetrable Texan accent. He’d started the Kendall Restaurant Group with a little Tex-Mex place in Dallas and turned it into a thriving chain and eventually a prosperous restaurant holding company. It was mostly a chain of Tex-Mex restaurants popular in the Southwest, but his company also owned a cheesecake chain, a barbecued-chicken chain that wasn’t doing so well, a lousy Japanese-food chain where chefs dressed like samurai sliced and flipped your food right at your table, and a “good times” bar-and-grill chain known for its baby back ribs and gargantuan frozen margaritas. Ten years ago he’d sold to Willard Osgood.
Nick had met him at some business conference in Tokyo, and they’d hit it off. Ronnie Kendall turned out to be a big hockey fan and had followed Nick’s college career at Michigan State, amazingly. Nick had confessed he’d eaten at the Japanese restaurant chain that Kendall’s group owned and didn’t much like it, and Kendall had shot right back, “You kidding? Every time I set foot in there I get diarrhea. Never eat there, but people love it. Go figure.”
Nick was put on hold several times before Ronnie Kendall picked up, sounding exuberant as always, speaking a mile a minute. Nick made the mistake of asking how business was, and Ronnie launched into a manic monologue about how the barbecued-chicken chain was expanding in Georgia and South Carolina, and then he somehow shifted into a rant on the low-carb craze. “Man, am I glad that fad is over, huh? That was killing us! The low-carb cheesecake never went over, and the low-carb diet Margaritas—forget it! And then just when we signed up our new celebrity endorser”—he mentioned the name of a famous football player—“and we’d even taped a bunch of fifteen-and thirty-second spots, then out of the blue he gets hit with a rape charge!”
“Ronnie,” Nick finally broke in, “how well do you know Todd Muldaur?”
Ronnie cackled. “I hate the slick bastard and he loves me just the same. But I stay out of his way, and he stays out of mine. He and his MBA buddies were trying to muck around in my business, got so bad I called Willard himself and said, you put a choke collar on your little poodles or I’m gone. I quit. I’m too old and too rich, I don’t need it. Willard must have taken Todd to the woodshed, because he started backing off. ’Course, he had his hands full, what with the chip meltdown.”
“Chip meltdown?”
“Isn’t that what you call them things? Microchips or whatever? Semiconductors, right?”
“Yeah?”
“You read the Journal, right? The semiconductor industry bubble, the way all those private-equity guys overinvested in chips, then the bubble burst?” He cackled again. “Gotta love it, the way all those guys took a bath.”
“Hold on, Ronnie. Fairfield Equity Partners overinvested in microchips?”
“Not the whole of Fairfield, just the funds our boy Todd runs. He made a massive bet on the chip business. Put all his chips on chips, right?”
Nick didn’t join Ronnie’s laughter. “I thought there’s some kind of limit to how much they can invest in one particular sector.”
“Todd’s an arrogant guy, you know that, right? You can smell it on him. He figured when the semiconductor stocks started sinking, he’d pick up a bunch of companies cheap, turn a big fat profit. Well, he’s sure gettin’ his. His funds are sucking wind. Willard Osgood has got to be madder ’n a wet hen. If Todd’s funds collapse, the whole mother ship goes down.”
“Really?”
“I imagine Todd Muldaur should be makin’ nice to you these days. I know Stratton’s going through some hard times, but at least you’re solvent. Compared to some of his other investments, you’re a cash cow. He could take you guys public, make some real money. Of course, given how long that takes, it might be too late for him.”
“That would take a year at least.”
“At least. Why, they talking about spinning you guys off?”
“No. Nothing about that.”
“Well, Fairfield needs what they call a liquidity event, and real soon.”
“Meaning they need cash.”
“You got it.”
“Yeah, well, they’re up to something,” Nick said. “Really pushing hard to cut costs.”
“Forget that. You know what I always say, when your house is on fire, you don’t hold a garage sale.”
“Come again?”
“I mean, Todd’s so deep in the shit that he’s probably desperate to make a quick buck, sell Stratton quick-and-dirty just to save his ass. I were you, I’d watch Todd’s moves real close.”
The instant he hung up, another call came in, this one from Eddie.
“The small conference room on your floor,” Eddie said without preface. “Right now.”
73
Ever since they’d had it out at Eddie’s condo, there had been an acute chill in their already frosty relationship. Eddie no longer joked around as much. He avoided Nick’s eyes. He often seemed to be seething.
But when he entered the conference room, he looked as though he had a secret he couldn’t wait to share. It was a look Nick hadn’t seen in a while.
Eddie closed the conference room door and said, “The piece of shell casing?”
Nick’s voice caught in his throat. He was unable to speak.
“It’s bullshit,” Eddie said.
“What?”
“The cops never found any fragment of a shell casing on your lawn.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“What was it, then?”
“It was bullshit. A pressure tactic. There never was any metal scrap.”
“They lied about it?”
“I wouldn’t get on my high horse if I were you, Nick.”
“You’re certain? How do you know this for sure?”
“I told you. I got sources. It’s a fake-out, dude. Don’t you recognize a fake-out when you see one?”
Nick shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Come on, man. Remember when we were playing Hillsdale in the finals, our senior year, and you made that great deke to your backhand at the blue line before you fired a rocket behind Mallory, sent the game into overtime?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Nick said. “I also remember that we lost.”
74
Nick put his briefcase down in the front hall. Its antique, reclaimed pumpkin-pine flooring—the strip oak that had been there didn’t make the cut, as far as Laura was concerned—glowed in the amber light that spilled from soffits overhead. Without thinking about it, he expected to hear the click click click of Barney’s dog toenails on the wood, the jangle of his collar, and the absence of that happy sound saddened him.
It was almost eight o’clock. The marketing strategy committee meeting had run almost two hours late; he’d called home during a break and told Marta to make dinner for the kids. She’d said that Julia was over at her friend Jessica’s, so it would just be Lucas.
He heard voices from upstairs. Did Lucas have a friend over? Nick walked upstairs, and the murmur resolved into conversation.
It was Cassie’s voice, he realized with surprise. Cassie and Lucas. What was she doing here? The staircase was solidly mortised, no squeaks and creaks like the old house, or like the hou
se he’d grown up in. They hadn’t heard him come up. He felt a prickling sensation as he paused at the top landing and listened. Lucas’s door was open for a change.
“They should have assigned this in physics class,” Lucas was complaining. “Why would a poet know how the world’s going to end anyway?”
“You think the poem is really about how the world is going to end?” Cassie’s husky voice.
He was relieved. Cassie was helping Lucas with his homework, that was all.
“Fire or ice. That’s how the world will end. It’s what he’s saying.”
“Desire and hate,” Cassie said. “The human heart can be a molten thing, and it can be sheathed in ice. Don’t think outer space. Think inner space. Don’t think the world. Think your world. Frost can be an incredibly dark poet, but he’s also a poet of intimacy. So what’s he saying here?”
“Thin line between love and hate, basically.”
“But love and desire aren’t the same, are they? There’s the love of family, but we don’t call that desire. Because desire is about an absence, right? To desire something is to want it, and you always want the thing you don’t have.”
“I guess.”
“Think about Silas, in the last poem they gave you. He’s about to die, and he comes home.”
“Except it’s not his home.”
“In that one, Warren says, ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in.’ One of the most famous lines Frost ever wrote. Is that love or desire? How does his world end?”
Nick, feeling self-conscious, took a few steps down the hall toward his bedroom. Cassie’s voice receded to a singsong murmur, asking something, and Lucas’s adolescent baritone rose in impatience. “Some say this, some say that. You feel, like, Make up your friggin’ mind already.”
Nick stopped again to listen.
Cassie laughed. “What’s the rhythm telling you? The poem’s lines mainly have four beats, right? But not the last lines, about hate: ‘Is also great.’ Two stressed syllables. ‘And would suffice.’ Clear and simple. Like it’s funneling to a point. About the ice of hatred, how potent that is, right?”
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