I was perfectly willing to be civil to the guy, but I wasn’t going to extend myself. That was his job. Let him suck up a little.
We each stared at the walls vacantly, which is what guys do when they urinate. We’re animals that way.
When I’d finished, I went to the sink to wash my hands, and after I’d dried them and wadded up the paper towel, Trevor spoke.
“How’s it going, Jason?” His voice echoed.
“Good, Trevor,” I said. “You?”
“Fine.”
I was Jason now, no longer Steadman. That was a start.
He zipped up, washed his hands, dried them. Then he turned to face me. He spoke softly, quickly. “Brett Gleason went to Corporate Security to ask for copies of the surveillance tapes-the AVI files, actually-for the night and day before his computer got wiped out. And guess what happened to them?”
“Why are we still talking about this?” I said.
“They’re gone, Jason. Erased.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know anything about it.”
“Would you like to guess who the last person was to access those files? Just a couple of weeks ago? Whose name do you think was on the log?”
I said nothing.
“A guy in Corporate Security named Kurt Semko. Our pitcher. Your asshole buddy.”
I shrugged, shook my head.
“So you know what it looks like to me? It looks like you’re abusing Corporate Security to get revenge on people you don’t like. You’re using this guy to do your dirty work, Jason.”
“Bullshit. I don’t think Kurt was even working here when Brett’s computer crashed. And I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to wipe out a computer. You’re full of it.”
“Yeah, I bet it was really hard to get Kurt in here before he got his own employee badge. If you think you can get away with using Corporate Security as your personal goon squad, you’ve got your head up your ass.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“A lot of the guys are taken in by you. Your whole Easy Ed act. But I see right through you. Like when I had car trouble two days in a row, made me lose the Pavilion deal. You think I didn’t follow up on that? You think I didn’t call and apologize and tell them what happened? And you know what they told me?”
I said nothing.
“They said I called them from a golf club. Like I was playing golf, blowing them off. Well, I know someone who’s a member at Myopia, and I asked around. And the lady who runs the pro shop told me some guy in a leather Harley jacket came in that morning and asked to use the phone. Right around the time Pavilion got that call. She remembers because he didn’t look like a member.”
“Trevor, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course not. What do they call that-plausible deniability? Well, stay tuned, Jason. There’s more to come. A lot more.”
38
Kate wanted to celebrate my latest promotion, but this time she wanted to throw a dinner party for the occasion. She’d hired a caterer, the same one who’d catered several of her friends’ parties.
I didn’t want to celebrate this promotion. The circumstances were too unpleasant. But it seemed important to Kate. I think she wanted to show off to her friends that I was finally a success. So I said okay.
If a caterer had come to our old house for a dinner, she’d have run screaming after seeing our kitchen. But the kitchen in our Hilliard Street house was spacious and newly renovated-not concrete, but French tile countertops and island, fairly modern appliances. The caterer and her all-female staff set to work in the kitchen, preparing the grilled fillet of beef in an herbed crust with chanterelle Madeira sauce and Muscovado glazed carrots.
Or maybe it was grilled beef in a Muscovado sauce and Madeira glazed carrots. Whatever.
Meanwhile, Kate and I were upstairs getting dressed. I’d brought her a half glass of cold white wine. She liked to have a little wine before people came over, and her obstetrician had told her that a little wine was not a problem. After all, he said, look at all those French and Italian women who drink wine throughout their pregnancies. French and Italian kids come out just fine. If you overlook the fact they can’t speak English.
She sat on Grammy Spencer’s chaise lounge and watched me undress. “You know, you’ve got a great body.”
“Are you putting the moves on me, woman?”
“You do. Look at how you’ve slimmed down. You’ve got pecs and delts and all that. You’re a very sexy guy.”
“Well, thanks.”
“And don’t say I look great too. I’m fat. I have fat ankles.”
“Pregnancy becomes you. You’re beautiful.” And yes, you have fat ankles now, but it’s okay. I was never really an ankle man.
“Are you excited about the baby?” She asked that every forty-eight hours.
“Of course I’m excited.” I’m terrified. I’m dreading it. When the baby was just hypothetical, no one was more enthusiastic than me. But I was the Senior Vice President of Sales of Entronics USA, and in a few months, I’d have a newborn and be totally sleep-deprived, and I didn’t know how I’d get through. Or I’d be out of a job, and then what?
“I’m scared,” she said. “I’m terrified.”
I came up to her and kissed her. “Sure you are. So am I. It’s like you’ve got this thing growing inside you that’s going to take us over when it pops out. Like Alien.”
“I wish you hadn’t said that.”
“Sorry. Maybe it’s like-it’s like you’re jumping out of a C-141 Starlifter over Iraq. You don’t know if your parachute’s going to malfunction or if you’re going to get shot at on the way down.”
“Yep, that sounds like Kurt,” she said.
I shrugged, embarrassed. “He’s got some great stories. He’s done some amazing stuff.”
“Stuff you’d never want to do.”
“That too. And…some stuff he shouldn’t do.”
“Hmm?”
“He reads people’s e-mail, for one thing.”
“Whose? Yours?”
“Gordy’s.”
“Fine. Anyway, they say you really shouldn’t send anything in an e-mail that you wouldn’t put on a postcard. Isn’t Corporate Security supposed to monitor e-mail?”
I nodded. “I guess.”
“He’s really loyal to you, Jason. He’s a really good friend to you.”
“Maybe too good a friend.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? He’d do anything for you.”
I was quiet for several seconds. Yeah, “anything” is right. The “backgrounders”-the inside information he’d gotten me on Brian Borque of Lockwood Hotels and on Jim Letasky-that was borderline acceptable, as far as I was concerned. It made me uncomfortable. But what he’d done to all the Panasonic monitors: That was some kind of lunacy. A felony, probably, given the value of the equipment he’d destroyed. But worse, it was evidence of a strange violent streak, a brazenness. He was dangerous.
And what about Gordy’s drunken tirade? Gordy had asked Kurt to get him the Talisker bottle. Did Kurt spike it with something?
That broke dick’s not going to get away with screwing you over again, he’d said.
Well, Kurt was right. That was the end of Gordy.
Kurt had boosted me up the corporate ladder, a fact that I never wanted to tell Kate. But now he was out of control. He had to be stopped.
Trevor was digging, and in time he’d unearth proof that Kurt had done some of these things. And I’d be implicated too. I’d go down. It would end my career.
And that I couldn’t afford. Not with this house, this mortgage, car payments, and a baby on the way.
I’d made a terrible mistake getting him a job in the first place. Now I’d have to make things right. I’d have to talk to Dennis Scanlon, Kurt’s boss, and lay it all out.
Kurt had to be fired. There really was no choice.
I took a deep breath, weighing how much to tell Kate.
But then she cocked her head. “I think I hear the doorbell. Can you go down and let them in?”