Hard Landing

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I was hoping my phone would stop ringing by the time I'd found my key and opened the door to my hotel room. No such luck.

"Hello?"

"God, what's the matter with you? You sound like you're on your last legs."

It was Matt. I dropped down on the bed and just kept going until I was horizontal. My left hamstring- a constant reminder of an old running injury-was throbbing, my neck was stiff, and the rest of my muscles were tightening so rapidly I'd be lucky if I didn't fossilize right there, staring up at the spackled ceiling. 'My bag room blew up today. The union planted a bomb to send me a message."

"Back here we use e-mail for that."

Usually Matt could make me laugh, but not tonight. There wasn't much that could make me happy tonight. I found the remote and turned on the TV, leaving the sound off, so I could see if I'd made the late news. Then I dropped my shoes on the floor and shimmied on my back closer to the middle of the bed so I could elevate my feet. "Obviously, you've already heard."

"It would be hard not to. That's all anyone's been talking about around here. Your name is on everyone's lips."

I knew Matt was right, and that was not a good thing. You never wanted to be a topic of conversation around headquarters, especially after the story had time to marinate into a juicy rumor. For the first time since I'd been in Boston, I wondered what Bill thought about my situation. I worried about what he was being told, and I really, really wanted his advice. Or maybe I just wanted someone to talk to, someone to be there for me the way he used to. That was one of the things I missed most of all.

"Tell me you're calling because you have my files, Matt."

"The archivist can't find them. He's still looking."

"That seems odd."

"You wouldn't say that if you'd seen the archives. It's a big warehouse filled with thousands of boxes and one poor guy who's supposed to keep track of everything. I'm surprised he ever finds anything. Which brings me to my next question. Do you want the other thing she asked for, the invoices? Because if you do, I have to go to a separate-"

"Ellen asked for invoices?"

"She wanted copies of the actual invoices to go along with the purchase price adjustment schedule. I suppose you want hard copies, too."

"As opposed to what?"

"Fish."

I sat up so abruptly I had to wait for the blood to rush back into my head. "Did you say fish?"

"Fish, feesh-whatever you want to call it-the microfiche is here in the building."

Microfiche? How was I supposed to have figured that one out?

"But she didn't want the fish. She said she needed the hard copies, which are over in Accounting. If you want those, too, I have to put in a separate request."

"Hang on, Matt."

Ellen's stuff was starting to get mixed up with my own. I stood in the middle of the room in my stocking feet and tried to divine the location of that page from her calendar, the one Dan had given me at the house for safekeeping. Where exactly had I put it to keep it safe? Briefcase? No. Table stacked high with things I didn't know where else to put? No. The box on the floor…? Yes.

The page with the fish reference was mixed in with the mail. "1016.96A. Is that the reference on the microfiche?"

"I don't know. I told her to call Accounting, but that doesn't sound like their filing system. Usually they have a date embedded in there somewhere, and besides, I just told you she wanted hard copies, not fiche."

"Oh, yeah. You did say that."

"Thank you."

The moment of enthusiasm passed. I sank back down on the bed and took off my pantyhose, which wasn't easy with one hand holding the phone. "What would hard copies have that microfiche wouldn't?"

"Signatures. I assumed she wanted to see who approved payment of the invoices. That's all that pre-purchase schedule is-a list of invoices."

"Invoices." I said it almost to myself. "Like Crescent Security."

"What is that?"

"A local vendor. It keeps turning up in Ellen's things. I found a copy of an old invoice, and she had a check stub from Crescent stuck in her merger file. What would a local vendor in Boston have to do with the merger?"

"If it was a Nor'easter vendor, nothing. Majestic and Nor'easter were two separate entities before the merger. Separate management, separate accounting, separate operations."

Without my pantyhose on, I could think better and I remembered the conversation with Kevin. "But there is something that linked Boston to the merger. It's the IBG contract, the last one before the deal. From what I understand, the failure of that contract triggered the sale of Nor'easter."

"That wasn't just Boston. That was a company-wide IBG vote, and I'm going to have to go soon or I'm going to be late for my condo association meeting."

"But it's true, isn't it? If the contract had passed, there wouldn't have been a deal."

"Very true. In essence, the Nor'easter board rolled the dice and put the future of the company into the hands of the IBG."

"And they lost."

"No, they won. At the time Nor'easter's largest shareholder was a group of venture capitalists. They'd already sucked all the cash out of the business and were looking to bail out. They figured the union would vote down the contract proposal, which meant the VC's could cash out and blame it on them. Of course it was good for us, too. The night we found out it was dead, the entire task force went out to a bar and celebrated. Even Scanlon came." He was talking faster and I knew he wanted to hang up.

"So the venture capitalists would have had incentive to make sure the contract failed. But wouldn't that have lowered the value of their investment?"

"Nor'easter would have been worth more with a signed agreement with their largest union, but these guys bought into the company originally on the cheap, so even at a reduced price they all made out. I really do have to go, but if I find this stuff for you, you're not going to ask for anything else, are you?"

"I don't know." Matt was shifting into serious self-protection mode, and his tone had taken on an every-man-for-himself quality. I reached for the remote control and started surfing the dial. "Is someone giving you a problem?"

"I don't want to get on Lenny's shit list. You've heard what he's been saying about you, right?"

My finger froze mid-surf, and my hamstring started throbbing again. "What has he been saying?"

"That you can't handle the union and he's probably going to have to come up there himself. And if he does that, then he's going to have to bring someone else in, and he's all concerned about the management turnover in the station and what it's doing to 'those poor employees because they've been through so much already.' You see why I don't want him mad at me?"

"He said he's going to replace me?" I dropped the remote behind me. It fell off the edge of the bed and clattered to the floor. "Who's he been talking to?"

"The only guy who counts."

"He said that to Bill Scanlon?" That was one question answered. I now knew what Bill was being told. What I didn't know was what he believed. "How do you know?"

"He told Scanlon's entire staff. He brought it up at the monthly planning session. If you ask me, he's covering his ass in advance in case anything else goes wrong."

"Goddamn him. He is such a liar. I just got off the phone with him at the airport. He was unbelievably supportive. 'These things happen,' he said, 'don't worry about it, it's not a reflection on you.' He's flying up here tomorrow."

"We don't call him the Big Sleazy for nothing."

"The what?"

"He's from New Orleans. That's what we call him."

In spite of everything, I had to smile. The Big Sleazy. I'd never heard that one before.

"You still want all this stuff," he asked, "if I can find it, right?"

"Yes, and call me when you have something."

He hung up and so did I. My channel surfing had stopped on the Animal Planet station. The mute was still on. In the silence I watched a baby turtle on his back in the sand on a beach. He was fighting to roll over, to right himself so that his shell was on top. His tiny turtle flippers flapped desperately as he rolled from side to side. I knew how he felt. I was starting to understand how Ellen must have felt. Lenny was my boss. He was supposed to be on my side, to provide cover while I was fighting it out on the front lines. Everything I found out about Lenny made him more contemptible to me. But in the end, I knew I could deal with Lenny. What I couldn't deal with was the thought that Bill Scanlon might start to question my abilities, to believe that I was failing out here. I went to my briefcase and found my address book. The phone number was right where I'd put it, unlabeled and written lightly in pencil inside the back cover. I hadn't used it in over a year, had even made myself forget the number that I had known by heart. But I'd never erased it and I never forgot it was there.

I sat on the bed staring at the phone until I could make myself pick up the receiver. Even after I'd dialed, the pattern on the keypad so familiar, it was an effort not to hang up. The call rolled to voice mail and I thought I was saved, but then I heard his voice. It was a recorded message, but it was his voice and my entire being responded as it always had to the timbre, the cadence, the rhythm of his voice. It was the perfect pitch to reach something inside of me, and the sound of him reminded me of the feel of him, the taste of him. All I had to do was speak, to leave a simple message, to say what I needed, but all I could do was sit on the edge of the bed, the room blurring around me, listening as the electronic operator demanded that I put up or hang up.

I hung up.

The baby turtle was gone when I checked the screen. I found the remote under the bed and waited a few seconds before turning off the TV, but he was nowhere in sight. I would never know if he had walked away or been carried away.