Roughing him up could cost me the rest of my karma, but I didn’t think he had what it took to rub it off my card right here and now. That wasn’t Office style, and Kornfeld was Office all up and down the line. I’d get a night to sleep on it, and there would be a knock on the door in the morning.
Besides, as much as he hated my guts, I didn’t think Kornfeld really wanted to see me go down on karma. I didn’t think he could afford it. The result would be an inquiry, into a thing he was obviously eager to wrap up before anyone got too close a look at it. Grabbing his collar was a calculated risk, only at the time I did it, I hadn’t yet calculated. I just went ahead and did it.
“You’re a fool,” he panted.
“No kidding,” I said, and tightened my grip on his neck as I said it. “You think I need you to tell me that?”
“Let me go.”
“Give me the license.” I pushed with my thumbs on the part of his neck where it mattered most. “They can take it,” I said, “but they’ll have to send a bigger man than you to do the job.”
He brought it out of his jacket pocket, and I let go of him and took it from his hands. He rubbed his neck and patted down his hair, his eyes full of incredulous fear. “Enjoy it while you can, Metcalf,” he said. “I wouldn’t count on it lasting too long.”
“Fuck you.”
Kornfeld opened the door and went out. I heard him speak in muffled tones to Catherine Teleprompter and then I heard their paired footsteps tramping down the stairs, and then I heard the whine of the air hinge on the front door of the lobby. I looked down at my hands. My fingers were clenched as if I still had hold of Kornfeld’s throat. I unclenched them.
And then I made a vow. Nobody was going to end this case but me. I’d answer all my questions, the old ones and the new ones, and I’d live to see Orton Angwine walk out of the freezer. Not because I liked the guy so well. It wasn’t that. At that moment I hated Kornfeld more than I liked Angwine, but it wasn’t my hatred that would carry the vow either.
If I was doing it for anyone, I was doing it for Catherine Teleprompter, oddly enough: I wanted to answer her question about why I’d left the Office. I wanted to show her what my job meant, and what it looked like afterwards when I got it right. How different it was from the Office version.
But I wasn’t doing it for her either, finally. It always came back to me, me and my old-fashioned sense of outrage. I could only laugh, even as I was making the vow. Either I or the entire rest of the world needed fixing, bad. Probably both.
The rest of the evening I passed one way or another. From the empty ice trays in the sink the next day I suspect it had something to do with a connect-the-dot series of drinks, but to tell you the truth I don’t remember a damn thing.
CHAPTER 19
I GOT UP THE NEXT MORNING WITH A HEAD THAT FELT like the change you get back from a five-spot when you spent it on a $4.98 bottle of wine. Determined nonetheless to act like an inquisitor on a case, I reamed out the insides of my skull with toothpaste, mouthwash, eyedrops, and aspirin, and at the same time drew up a mental list of places to go and people to talk to. First on the list was the architectural firm of Copperminer and Bayzwaite. That was the name I’d read off the blueprints in Pansy Greenleaf’s dresser, and it seemed like as good a place to start as any.
The musical interpretation of the news that morning was superficial and blithe, and it didn’t go too well with my headache, so I turned it off. The information I wanted wouldn’t be on the musical news anyway. I made myself a cup of coffee so strong it snarled, and chased it with a piece of dry toast and a couple of bites of a moldering apple. By the time I got out of my apartment, the sun was bright and high in the air and my watch said eleven.
I drove up University to the parking lot in the Albernathy Overmall, where Copperminer and Bayzwaite kept their offices. The Overmall was all glass and chrome, and blinding to look at coming up from the bay. When I drove into the shade underneath it, I was plunged into a darkness so complete that I almost caromed my car off a concrete embankment. I gratefully turned my car over to the bulldog running the lot and took the elevator up into the Overmall.
Architectural offices are always a good argument against architects, and Copperminer and Bayzwaite was no exception. The outer room served just about any purpose imaginable except those of walking in, talking to the receptionist, and sitting down to wait. I enacted these procedures anyhow, only I skipped sitting after taking a look at what passed for chairs. The room had been shaped from molten glass, pierced through with beams of burnished aluminum, and although several of these met in a confluence meant to suggest a seat, it didn’t look like something I’d be able to get back out of, so I let it pass.
After a few minutes a door opened in the back and one of the architects came out to see me, his hand extending for a shake from halfway across the oversized room. He was well groomed and looked alert, with a lick of hair sticking up in the back to create an impression of boyishness. I stuck up my hand to intersect with his—if I hadn’t, he might have charged right past me or jammed his hand into my stomach in his enthusiasm. I guess he thought I was a client.
“Cole Bayzwaite,” he said.
“Conrad Metcalf,” I answered, trying to slow him down by drawing the syllables out.
“Let’s go into my office.” He stepped to one side and pointed the way, then bent over neatly at the waist and whispered something to his secretary. I went inside and picked out the most user-friendly chair and sat down. Cole Bayzwaite closed the door and went around to his reclining leather chair. I took out my license and put it on his desk.
His face fell, as if it had been supported only by his billowing optimism. The corners of his mouth tightened in an expression of distrust.
“You must think I can help you in some way,” he said.
“That’s right. I found your name mixed up in a case, and I was wondering if you would answer a few questions.”
“I guess that would be all right.”
“Your firm drew up a set of blueprints for a sort of bunkhouse, to be built adjacent to an existing property. Do you remember the design I’m describing?”
“We draw up proposals on blueprint all the time,” he said. “I’d need a name.”
“Maynard Stanhunt.”
He tapped it into the keyboard on his desk and squinted at the monitor: “No. He’s not on our client list.”
“Try Pansy Greenleaf. That’s whose room I found it in.”
He looked at me oddly for a minute and then entered the name. “No. Sorry. You must have the wrong firm.”
“Nothing under Stanhunt? His wife’s name is Celeste—”
“Nothing at all. I’m sorry.”
I was coming up empty, but I didn’t want to let it go. I had to find some way to justify myself to Bayzwaite, and buy some time. “All right,” I said. “Let’s start over. Let me tap your intelligence. Let me describe a room to you: eight bunk beds crammed against a wall, with less than three feet allowed for each bed. This room is upstairs in a kind of clubhouse that’s a stone’s throw from a big, well-equipped modern house, in a fancy neighborhood. What would a thing like that be for?”
“I—I really couldn’t say.”
“Animals,” I said. “That’s what I think. Evolved animals. Some kind of servant’s quarters, maybe.”