“And, no. You can’t be both.”
The son of a bitch was on to me.
“My title is really Person in Charge of the Project?”
“Sure. Why not?”
I shook my head. “I might know someone.”
He looked up from his gunmetal desk in his tiny cubicle office. “That would help. As person in charge, it’s going to be your job to find that someone. And if they screw up, as I feel certain your roommate will, it’s going to fall on your shoulders.”
The guy was a prick. “This man I’ve got in mind, he has his own business. He’s obviously good at management, and I think he’d work well in this environment.”
“Bring him by tomorrow, okay? I’m going to need to at least meet him.”
I was faking it. I had a vague idea, but who knew? The guy might be legit, he might be a fake.
“Michael, I’ll have him here tomorrow morning. You’ll be in till noon?” He had a habit of scooting by eleven thirty. You’d never see him the rest of the day.
“Um, yeah. You get him here no later than noon, okay?”
“Sure.”
I didn’t know what time he woke up, but I was going to pound on Jim Jobs’s door tonight until he finally answered. There was no way this job was going to get away from me because of a missing supervisor. I didn’t know Jim Jobs well, but for what this position called for, anyone could do it.
Hell, I’d hired James hadn’t I?
CHAPTER SEVEN
S ure, I should have contacted someone I knew. This was a job that was paying me a fortune, and I should have approached it with a little more responsibility. However, in my defense, I am not a responsible person. In my short life, I’ve come to accept that fact. I think I’m stuck in an immature, irresponsible lifestyle, and I have to be content with that. As it turned out, I wish I’d looked elsewhere.
I knocked three times, and finally he opened the door.
“Huh?” Spoken like someone who had just been wakened from a deep sleep. At two in the afternoon.
“Jim Jobs?”
“Huh?”
“I’m sorry. I’m Skip Moore, two doors down? Apartment 12 E?”
He just stared at me, scratching himself through the white Hanes Jockeys.
“You do odd jobs, am I right?”
He seemed to be a little more clear. “I do.” His thick head of hair was spiked all over his small head and his face sported a two-day, three-day, maybe a four-day growth. Various shades of brown and gray.
“Well, I’ve got an odd job.”
He squinted, scratched himself again, and nodded. “Can you give me just a minute? I think I need to make myself presentable, this bein’ a business deal and all.”
“Sure.”
He came back a minute later, dirty T-shirt and a pair of khaki cargo shorts. The shirt was gray, but appeared to have been white originally. I was relieved that he’d dressed, until he scratched himself again.
“People usually call me on the phone.”
I could understand why.
“In fact,” he now scratched his chin, “this is the first time anybody ever came to my door asking about a job.”
I thought about using the phone the next time I wanted to contact him.
“What is this job?”
I noticed he’d used water to try and smooth down the unruly hair. He hadn’t been successful. “Different than anything you’ve done before.”
“I’ve done a lot of jobs.”
“Trust me, Jim. It is Jim, right?”
Jim Jobs shook his head back and forth. “No. Name’s Albert. Albert Jobs. But you can call me Jim. Everyone does.”
I considered going somewhere else for my hire.
“Now, what is this job?”
Get it out of the way. Bust his chops and move on to someone who would be good at it. “It’s this way, Albert… Jim. I need someone for just a week who can work in security. We’re installing a system for a company, and this position would be for someone who runs information back and forth between the installation teams.” It was complicated, and I really didn’t want to get into the details.
“I used to work for two companies that do exactly that.” Jim Jobs smiled at me, two front teeth totally missing.
“Do exactly what?”
“Install security systems. And I helped set the whole thing up. Worked with the crew, told them where to install motion detectors, sound detectors-”
“You did this?”
“I did. Is that why you’re calling on me?”
I had no choice. I gave Albert the job.
“You did what?”
“Em, you have no idea what it’s like to live without any money.”
“Oh, jeez, Skip. Don’t start with that.”
“Then where do I start? This job is going to pay me more than I made all of last year, Em. It’s not like I’m sleeping with her.” Although if I had enough money She shook her head and bit into another bite of cornbread. We were lunching at Esther’s, on Twenty-seventh in Carol City, where they serve biscuits and gravy, sausage, baked chicken, and this fabulous peach cobbler. I’d decided to make a clean confession.
“You always play the money card.”
“Em, I love you. You know that. And I’m always amazed that you reciprocate, but there is a money issue.”
“It’s not important to me.” She pursed her lips and closed her beautiful blue eyes for several seconds.
“Because you have a lot of money and I don’t have any.” My father had abandoned the family when I was very young, and my mother, younger sister, and I lived off welfare for about as long as I can remember. Em’s father owned a huge construction company, and he’d made a boatload of money off the wealthy homeowners in the richest districts of Miami.
“Just because I work for my father-”
The argument came up once in a while. About every other day.
“So what exactly are your obligations?”
“I pretend we’re dating. Sarah and I. At the job site. And, I park my car in front of her condo three nights a week.”
“You don’t park yourself at her condo?”
“Come on, Em.”
“This lasts how long?” I could see her softening, the fire leaving her eyes, and her fist opening into a five-fingered hand.
“Until we’re done.”
“Which is when?”
We’d be done in four or five days. The Sarah thing should be done at the end of the month. “Three, four weeks tops. Em, I’m not interested in her. It just seemed so innocent, and-”
“You’re helping Sarah destroy a marriage. You’re helping her break up this Sandler Conroy and his wife. Am I right?”
“Well, I think the marriage-”
“Am I right?”
“Yes.” How could I argue that point.
“How did she ever get involved with this guy?”
I said I was making a clean confession. That isn’t exactly true. I was leaving out a certain part of the story. I figured that Em would buy most of the story. The hooker part, I wasn’t so sure about. “Dating service. Once she found out he was married, it was too late. She was hooked.”
“Skip,” she looked into my eyes, and I knew she was going to agree, “you fall into some of the strangest situations.”
“Em. Let me finally break even. I’m going to make over twenty thousand dollars. Do you realize that I’ve never had that much money at one time in my life?”
She nodded. This beautiful, sexy woman who probably made over $100,000 a year, she got it. She couldn’t argue with me. I knew it.
“So I’ve got to pretend that you’re dating someone else?”
“No. It’s a couple, three weeks, Em. That’s all. And it stays inside the company.”
We both still had a full plate of food. I thought that confiding in Em would make me feel better. Instead, a partial confession only made me feel worse. I could feel a burning in my stomach, and I couldn’t touch another bite of food.
“I’m not happy about it, Skip.”
“I didn’t expect you would be.”
“What if I told you I’d leave you because of this?”
“Would you?”
She sipped on her glass of water.
One of the servers stepped out from behind the buffet counter and headed toward the restroom. He turned to look at Em. A lot of guys do. As he turned and stared, he slid on a spot of grease and fell hard on the tile floor. Em never even noticed, and I immediately thought to myself, a lot of people had taken a fall for Emily. She just shrugged it off.