As Brolan approached Kathleen's closed door, Shirley said, "Not in." She didn't look up from the paperwork she was doing at her desk. She liked to give the impression that, like nuns, she had eyes in the back of her head.
"I need to see her on the Falcon account."
Then Shirley looked up. Smirking. "The Falcon account. Yessir." Of course she knew all about Brolan and Kathleen. "Has she called in?"
"No, but she told me she was having breakfast with Ken Gilman." The smirk again. Gilman was the hunky ad manager for one of the agency's manufacturing accounts. Gilman had made no secret at agency parties of pursuing Kathleen. With her eyes back on her work, Shirley clucked, "Third breakfast they've had in the past two weeks. They must really be working hard on that account."
Of course she wanted the satisfaction of seeing him hurt or angry. But he wouldn't give it to her. "Tell her I'd like to see her when she comes in," he said, and walked slowly away from her office. He didn't want to give the impression he was running. At one point, though, he shook his head. He knew how frantic and pitiful a figure Shirley would make him out to be to others in the agency. "Comes back here ten times a day. Always looking for her. Looks like a whipped puppy. I don't have the heart to tell him that she's screwing everything in pants." By this point he figured that being whispered about was just one of the costs he paid to pursue Kathleen. The other major tally was Foster's growing disgust with him. Foster genuinely saw Kathleen as a predator and saw his partner as jeopardizing the agency by having a romance with her. In Foster's world men Brolan's age just didn't walk around lovesick. That sort of thing was done when you were in college, perhaps, but never after.
The second meeting concerned some disconcerting focus group tests. Raylan Chemicals, a major account of theirs, was about to market a new herbicide for agricultural use. Raylan was a respected name in the agricultural community, many farmers having used its products since the days when Herbert Hoover had promised to put a chicken in every pot. But Raydar 2 ("Hunts bugs down like radar") had been angrily criticized by six different groups of farmers in six different focus-group tests, one on the West Coast, one on the East Coast, the other four in the heartland. The objection was both simple and deadly: price. Several competitors had moved into the herbicide market lately and had been forcing prices down. Raylan was getting nervous. Profits had been sliding, and it was thought that profit potential for Raydar 2 would cheer stockholders.
The meeting was held in a small conference room. For most of the hour and a half-while two research-firm guys in Cricketeer suits and bow ties (no kidding)-slogged through page after page of statistics, Brolan stared out the window at the harsh grey day.
He tried to concentrate on the report and recommendations, but how could he?
The conference room opened on a hallway that led from the art department. Through the window to the right of the door, Brolan could see various art staffers bundled up and making their way to lunch. When he saw Tim Culhane pass by, he stirred in his seat. He wanted to run up to the man and throw him against the wall and ask him what he knew about the death of a prostitute named Emma.
Culhane, wearing a snap-brim fedora and a blast jacket, hurried past the glass and was gone. Brolan turned his attention back to the researchers and tried very hard to concentrate. He made it for four minutes, five maximum. Then he gave up entirely.
"Excuse me, Gil," he said to the agency account executive. "I've got to make a phone call. Why don't you take it from here?"
"Sure thing," Gil said, giving Brolan a tiny salute of goodbye.
Brolan thanked the research men and left.
He wished then he'd counted the people who'd left the art department. Back in the small cluster of offices-and the one big open-spaced production office-there were twelve employees. If all twelve of them had left-and it was now ten past twelve-he'd be safe in doing what he was about to do…
Culhane's office was in the rear, with its own door, a mark of privilege. Two director's chairs sat on either side of the door, spots for suppliers when they came to call. Brolan checked the open area. All the stools adjacent to the art boards were empty. A radio played an old Doors song. The place smelled of Sprayment and cigarette smoke.
Before he went into Culhane's office, he tried the two cubicles on either side. These didn't have doors. But they were empty, thank God.
Brolan went back to Culhane's office, looked around guiltily, and then opened the door and went inside.
A Dali and a 'blue period' Picasso were framed and hung on one wall. A variety of advertising awards filled another. Culhane's desk was messy with purchase orders and phone messages. Culhane was notorious for not returning his calls, even when they came from clients.
The place was carpeted and furnished sparingly. It gave the impression of being an order desk in a third-rate print shop. That was the way Culhane liked it, hippie defiance in the face of encroaching yuppiedom. In a way Brolan didn't blame him.
Two framed photographs stood on the desk. In one two blonde little girls grinned at the camera. They were dressed for winter. One was missing her two front teeth. The other looked sad in a certain distant way. The other photograph showed a thirty-ish woman in a swimsuit. She was too fleshy for so small a suit, and her hair was cut so short, it only emphasised her sagging face. The same sadness in the little girl could be glimpsed in the mother.
Brolan had no idea what he was looking for. Something. Anything. He sat down in the swivel chair and started pulling out desk drawers.
The drawers were as messy as the desktop. Paper clips and half pieces of gum were thrown in with pencils and erasers and dozens of pink, cheery phone messages. One drawer held maybe twenty fast food coupons, everything from Hardee's to Domino's.
Thinking he heard something, Brolan stopped. Frozen. He felt like a small boy, sweaty and guilty and shaken.
A male voice called, "Tim? You back here? Tim?"
Brolan recognized the voice of a media buyer named Meyers. Culhane and Meyers often had lunch together.
"Tim?" Meyers called again. His voice sounded disappointed in the rolling silence of the big room.
Meyers came closer. His steps were big and flat, like a clown's. He paused, maybe ten feet away, said, "Tim?" and then waited a few seconds for an answer, then said, "Shit" to himself and left.
Brolan went back to the drawers.
All the drawers but the bottom one were the same jumble of business odds and ends.
The bottom one held very explicit girlie magazines and a deck of playing cards that made Brolan sick in a very judgmental way. He tried to believe that anything consenting adults cared to do was their business, and basically he did believe that. But he had never been able to quite accept sadomasochism. The notion of pain equalling pleasure was not something he could grasp. He always had the sense that this was the sort of experience that could quickly get out of hand. Fun turned fatal.
The girlie magazines were harmless enough if you liked the type. The girls weren't pretty, and many of them were tattooed, and most of them were fat. All of them had their legs spread and showed you their wet pink sex. During the dreary days following his divorce, Brolan himself had bought magazines such as these. Not Penthouse and Playboy, which he still bought, but the down-and-dirties. At that time they'd held a curious appeal for him-their ambience seemed to be part danger and part sorrow. The women looked like the type who always turned up floating in a river somewhere. They bore no resemblance to Hefner's Playmates, with their radiant smiles and radiant bodies.