You want to find the one woman working in a building likely filled with men, find the ladies' room and then count twenty paces, which, naturally, is precisely where the employee-relations office was.
Sam checked his reflection in his sunglasses-it wasn't going to get much better-and made his way down the hall.
The employee-relations office, like every other door Sam passed, was closed. The difference was that every other office was placard free, as if maybe all that was there was a door that opened into a brick wall. But right on the door was a sign that said employee relations and then, beneath it, a name: BRENDA HOLCOMB.
Sam gave the door a pound. It opened a few seconds later and revealed a woman in her midfifties. Her hair was straight and black and came down to her shoulders, though it looked like it had been cut using a rock. She wore a white buttoned-down shirt that she'd opened to the middle of her chest (where Sam saw a few red freckles and the outline of her sports bra) and a black skirt of, sadly, an appropriate length. Thick clunky sandals with heels probably two inches too tall. Painted toenails. Calves that showed about two dozen years of regular workouts. If pressed, Sam would guess she'd been an MP somewhere. She had that cop stance-one leg forward, one leg back, a hand on the hip reflexively, as if still looking for a gun, but instead holding a venti Starbucks cup.
More interesting, however, was that she had a lightning-bolt tattoo that started at her clavicle and shot up the right side of her neck, dying into her jaw line. It covered a jagged scar. That must have hurt, Sam thought.
"Who are you?" she said, all business.
"Finley," Sam said. There was always a Finley on the books.
"What do you need?"
"I'm here about that OSHA thing," Sam said. When Brenda just stared at him blankly in response-not mad, not confused, not suspicious, just not getting it-Sam added, "Iraq?"
"Oh, workers' comp," she said, her voice not unpleasant. Brenda opened the door and Sam got the full measure of her office. There were three file cabinets along the right wall, a garbage can overflowing with shredded paper, a desk that held two laptops and stacks of paperwork that didn't seem to have any order whatsoever. Two more venti Starbucks cups. On the left wall, there was a huge map of the world with white thumbtacks shoved into different regions. The Middle East was filled. Africa had scattered clumps. Afghanistan was covered corner to corner. The weird thing was the number of thumbtacks in Wyoming, Texas and Georgia. Who the hell needed paramilitary units in Wyoming? Maybe it was to keep the people in, stop them from infecting the rest of the country. There was a separate blown-up map just of Miami, with thumbtacks along different streets. "Have a seat," Brenda said, pointing to a white plastic chair covered in newspapers. "Just toss that crap onto the floor."
Sam did as he was told. It gave him time to look at the file cabinets. No one had file cabinets anymore. It was all digital. But Brenda, apart from her tattoo, seemed old school. That was a good thing.
"Where'd you get shot?" Brenda asked. She was yanking paper out of a drawer in her desk, compiling them into a stack.
Sam did a quick catalog of his body. He'd taken some bullets. "Back of the right thigh," Sam said. He doubted she'd ask him to strip down to see the scar.
"No," she said, "I meant where in the country?"
Sam took a look at the map. "See all the tacks? Right there in the middle."
Brenda laughed. She seemed like a nice lady. Apart from that, Sam sensed that she actually wasn't a very nice lady. "We'll put down Sunni Triangle and let them figure it out," she said. She'd compiled about twenty pages of documents and was now going through them with a yellow highlighter and marking places where, presumably, he'd need to fill things out.
That wasn't going to happen.
"Nice ink," Sam said.
That did it.
"You think so?" Brenda said. She was staring at Sam now, trying to see if he was mocking her or if he meant it. Sam liked that. That little bit of unease on her part. Opened up some avenues of charm.
"Know so," he said. "How'd you get cut?"
"A knife, soldier," she said. Smart, like of course he was soldier. Now he was getting somewhere, could feel things changing in the room.
"That carotid is a bleeder," Sam said. "One time, in Caracas, I saw a guy milk out completely in under a minute. And that was with a Norelco Electric during a shaving accident." He had Brenda laughing again. "I like that you're not afraid of the scar. Highlight it. Own it. Pretty cool, you ask me. Gives you a real element of intrigue."
"Guys around here," she said, motioning around the building, "they call me Bolts now. Brenda Bolts. I guess I'm like a sister to them, mother to half of them, all of thirty, you know? But still, I'm not a robot."
No. No, you aren't, Sam thought. "How did it happen?" Sam used his quiet voice, let her know that he wasn't trying to get some sort of glee out of it, but that he was deeply, deeply concerned. Brenda (who he could only think of now as Bolts, thought, in fact, that it was a much more alluring name) told him a long and rather circumspect story about helping out on a mission in San Salvador two years ago-some on-the-ground work, paying off people, that sort of thing, when shit got tight and, well, next thing she knew, there was a knife to her throat and demands for her money or her life.
"I'm glad you gave your money," Sam said. He reached across the table and touched her lightly on the hand. Nothing sexual. Nothing overt. Just letting her know she had a friend who understood. He was surprised to find her hand shaking.
"Whew," she said, "it's like it's happening all over again. It does feel good to talk about it."
"They say talking about trauma splits it in half," Sam said. He didn't know where he heard that. Oprah? Maybe Dr. Phil.
"Isn't that true?" Brenda said and then she was uncomfortably silent.
The rat saw a space to squeeze through again. "You keep any beer here?" Sam said.
"It's a little early for that, don't you think?"
Sam didn't really consider it a question. More like a coconspirator making sure they were on the same job. Plus it was clear she wanted one, too, so he said, "I'm still on Iraq time," though not really sure he even knew what time it was in Iraq.
Brenda pushed back from her desk. "We could have one, right?"
"Of course," Sam said.
"Didn't you earn it, soldier?"
"Didn't you, soldier?" Sam felt his own skin crawling. But this Brenda, good old Bolts, seemed to fall for every line. You don't get any sympathy, even false sympathy probably felt pretty swell.
"It is lunchtime," she said, convincing herself. Sam liked that. Liked that in just a little over fifteen minutes he'd actually convinced Bolts to have a liquid lunch with him. "Why don't I run down to the kitchen, get us both a taste, maybe a bag of chips? There's no harm in that, right?"
"Right," Sam said. He pulled the stack of papers from in front of Bolts and a pen. "And I'll get started on these forms."
Brenda got up then, straightened her skirt and gave Sam a look that he usually associated with nature programs where a wildebeest finally figures out that the stream is filled with crocodiles but figures, What the hell? Take a chance or two in life. "Why haven't I seen you before?"
"Bad luck," Sam said and then, when that didn't seem like enough, added, "For both of us."
When Brenda left her office a few moments later, she still looked a bit puzzled but aroused. Sam figured he had maybe five minutes to get what he needed and get out before puzzled and aroused turned into suspicious and angry. He could still hear her heels clomping down the hall, like she was a Clydesdale. Those calves. Man. He had to get to work before she got back and wanted to tussle. That might be a fight he'd lose.
His first thought was to jump onto the laptops, but he was for shit on a computer. Worst case, he'd take one of them and let Fiona work that. So he hit the file cabinets first, particularly since he could already see a drawer marked s-z and had a pretty good idea they'd contain at least something he could use.