I recognized both of them, though I'd never met either. One was the corporate controller, John Danziger. He was tall and lean and broad-shouldered, around forty, with thinning blond hair and gray-blue eyes. He looked like an all-American preppy jock from an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. The other was the treasurer, Alan Grogan, around the same age and height, but slighter of build. He had thick, wavy dark brown hair touched with gray, hazel green eyes, a wide mouth, a sharp chin, and a prominent, aquiline nose.
As soon as Danziger noticed me, he stopped whispering. Grogan turned around, gave me a sharp look, and the two men parted abruptly, without another word, walking in separate directions.
Very strange.
16
The door to the Vancouver Room was open. The walls and ceiling were unpainted, rough-hewn pine boards; the floorboards, smooth wideboard pine. All the furniture-the two large beds, armoire, and desk-was rustic and looked handmade. Big puffy down comforters on the beds. A window overlooked the ocean.
Geoffrey Latimer was already in there, unpacking. He looked up as I entered. He looked around fifty. He had warm, sincere brown eyes, the trusting eyes of a child. Graying light brown hair, perfectly Brylcreemed and combed into place and parted on the side. His face was reddened and chafed, like he had psoriasis or something. "I don't believe we've met," he said. "Geoff Latimer."
He shook my hand, his grip firm and dry. His fingernails looked bitten. He was a worrier.
Latimer was thin and wore chinos and a navy-and-gray-striped golf shirt. His clothes looked like they came from the men's department at Sears. He also gave off the faint whiff of Old Spice, which reminded me, unpleasantly, of my father.
"Jake Landry. I'm filling in for Mike Zorn."
He nodded. "Those are big shoes to fill."
"Do my best."
"Just don't let the turkeys get you down."
"How so?"
"They're just middle-aged frat boys."
I gave him a blank look.
"Lummis and Bross and those guys. They're bullies, that's all. Take it with a grain of salt."
I was surprised he'd even noticed. "It's no big deal," I said.
He turned back to his suitcase, working methodically, like a surgeon, transferring impeccably folded clothes from a battered old suitcase to dresser drawers. Even his T-shirts and boxer shorts were folded into little squares.
"You'll see the same posturing when it comes to the silly team-building exercises," he said. "Those guys are always competing with each other. Who can climb higher or pull harder, that kind of thing. They don't want you showing them up."
"Show them up how?"
"Outdoing them. Climbing higher or pulling harder. You can't win either way. But you seem to take it well."
I smiled. Latimer was shrewder and more insightful than I'd expected. I knew he was coordinating the internal corporate investigation, but I wasn't sure whether he knew that I'd been told about it. Or that I'd been asked to help. So I decided I'd better not let on that I knew about it. Maybe wait for him to bring it up.
I unzipped my suitcase and started unpacking, too. My clothes were a jumbled mess. I'd tossed them in there in about five minutes. We unpacked in silence for a while. I noticed him take a handful of syringes out of the suitcase, an orange plastic kit, a couple of vials of something, and put them all in a dresser drawer. I didn't say anything. Either he was a heroin addict or a diabetic. Diabetic seemed a little more likely.
He looked over at me. "That all you brought?"
I nodded.
"Travel light, huh?" Latimer said.
What?" Ali said. "I travel light."
She'd started unpacking a duffel bag. Not her usual small overnight bag-a change of clothes, a toothbrush, the mysterious arsenal of cosmetics-but things that signified a longer stay.
"Not as light as usual," I said, keeping my tone casual.
She stopped, a couple of pairs of silk panties in her right hand. "Hey, Landry, correct me if I'm wrong here. But aren't you the one who keeps telling me to just move in?"
"Ah, okay." Spoken with more conviction this time. I gave her an encouraging, if forced, smile.
"Just the essentials," she said, putting the panties in an empty drawer in my dresser, patting them in place. "So I don't have to keep lugging all my stuff around, like a Gypsy."
"Great."
Her back was turned to me now, but she heard it in my voice. "You don't want me here, Landry, just say the word."
"Oh, come on," I said.
Later, in bed, her legs twined around mine: "How come you never talk about your childhood?"
"There's nothing to talk about," I said.
"Landry."
"It's not interesting."
"I'm interested."
"I'm not."
She made a quiet hmmph sound. "You're hiding something, aren't you?"
A jolt in my stomach, maybe more like a little twinge. I turned, a bit too quickly. Saw the playful gleam in her eye. "I'm in the Witness Protection Program."
"Mafia informer," she said, nodding sagely.
"Drug cartel," I said.
She ran her fingers along the bridge of my nose, down my lips, tracing a straight line to my chin. "The plastic surgeon did a nice job."
"Good enough for government work."
"Of course, for all I know, you really are in the Witness Protection Program." Her eyes told me she was no longer joking. "Given how little you talk about yourself. I feel like I don't know any more about you than what's on the surface."
"Maybe that's all there is." I started feeling uncomfortable. "Isn't it almost time for my dog show?"
"That's on Sunday nights, Landry."
I snapped my fingers. "Rats."
"You know what you remind me of? Remember when we went to Norman Lang Motors to buy your Jeep, and we saw that huge black SUV with those opaque tinted windows? Totally blacked out?"
"The Pimpmobile. Yeah, it was a Denali. What about it-I'm a pimp? I'm gangsta?"
"You see a car like that in traffic, and you turn to look at who's inside, but you can't see in. So you stare, longer than you usually might. For all you know, they're staring back at you. But you have no idea who's in there. That's you."
"Ali, I think you've been spending too much time watching Pimp My Ride," I said, suppressing a surge of annoyance. "I'd say I'm more like the sign they had on the Jeep's windshield. Remember what it said?"
She shook her head.
"It said AS IS. Okay? That's me. What you see is what you get. Don't go looking for hidden secrets. There aren't any."
"I think there's a lot more to you than you want me to see."
"Sorry," I said. "Deep down, I'm shallow." I clicked on the TV. "Today's Monday, right?"
You married, Jake?" Latimer said.
"Nope."
"Planning on it?"
"No danger of it happening anytime soon."
"Hope you don't mind me saying, but you should. You need a stable home life if you want to make it in business, I've always thought. Wife and kids-it anchors you. It's a safe place. A refuge when work gets stressful."
"I just drink," I said.
He looked at me keenly for a second.
"I'm kidding," I said. "You got kids?"
He nodded, smiled. "A daughter. Twelve."
"Nice age," I said, just because that seemed like the thing to say.
His smile turned rueful. "It's a terrible age, actually. In the course of a month I went from a guy who couldn't do anything wrong to a guy who can't do anything right. A loser. Uncool."
"Can't wait to have kids, myself," I said with a straight face.
We changed into dinner clothes. Latimer's boxer shorts were white with green Christmas trees and red candy canes on them. "Christmas gift from my daughter," he said sheepishly. He was scrawny, with a smooth, pale, hairless belly and spindly legs. His skin was milky white, like he'd never been in the sun.
He put on gray dress slacks, a white button-down shirt, a black belt with a shiny silver buckle. When he'd finished changing, he took out a BlackBerry from his briefcase. A few seconds later, he said, "Oh, right. I keep forgetting. No signal here. I'm addicted. You know what they call these things, right? Crackberries?"