“This.” Ceci scooped up a bit of ranch dressing with a celery stick and munched on it. “Is one big fat mess.”
“Yeap.” Her husband shook his head. “This is a squad with the trots and one outhouse kinda mess.”
“I told em Dar wouldn’t do it.” Mark said “Matter of fact, since I had him on the phone I told him exactly what kind of no brain ears out the sides of his asshole jerkwad he was.”
Dar had one hand over her ear, and the phone pressed to the other. “Yes, I hear you. No, I really don’t have anything to comment on about that since it’s not my problem anymore.” She took a sip of her coffee. “I’m sorry they’re having issues, but I suggest they direct their questions to the management at ILS. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Lord.” Andrew sighed. “This ain’t never gonna end good.”
“You got that right, daddy Roberts.” Hamilton said. “Let me go call those poor idiots who sent me and tell them they should go off and buy some banana plantations in Curacao and get out of this damn technology business.”
Kerry reached over and put her hand on Dar’s thigh, feeling the tension under the fabric of her jeans and the slight vibration as she jiggled her foot restlessly. She met Ceci’s eyes across the table, exchanging a faint shake of the head with her mother in law as she tried to reason a way through the problem.
There was no reason, though. That was the problem. She could only consider the actions of their replacements as some kind of ego driven insanity and she agreed with Dar one hundred percent that she should stay the hell out of it.
“Yes, I agree it seems odd that a system that was working well stopped working, but again, you would need to ask the current management.” Dar said, in a firm tone. “I don’t want to speculate on what would have caused it.” She listened, then glanced at Kerry and rolled her eyes. “Do I think it’s a cyber attack? I have no idea. I have no data at all to base any theory on.”
“You’re actually being extraordinarily kind to those people.” Ceci said. “They’re lucky its you their talking to not me.”
“That guy really was an ass.” Mark said to Kerry, lowering his voice. “I mean, like really. Just all snide and creepy. He made it out like he knew we’d planned this all out, and when I called him on the whole change thing he did, he said he’d sue me if I told anyone else that.”
“Wait. He called you for help and then said he was going to sue you? Really? He must be nuts.” Kerry said. “What in the world is wrong with these guys? They think this is some kind of stupid game?”
Mark shook his head. “I felt so slimy after talking to him I took a shower.”
“Well, yes, I could do that.” Dar was saying into the phone. “If it’s a general interview on how that type of technology works, sure.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m at a café down the road from our offices. If you want to come back over, I’ll give you a few minutes.”
“Lord.”
“C’mon Dad, don’t you want to be on CNN?” Kerry smiled at him.
“No, I do not.”
“Okay see you in a little while.” Dar released the line and let her head drop back against the back of the chair. “Son of a bitch.”
“Wouldn’t take no for an answer?” Ceci guessed. “Well, I’ve seen you on television, kid. You draw eyeballs.” She regarded her tall offspring and smiled at the droll expression directed back at her. “Make sure you get a nice plug in for the new company.”
“Kill me now.” Dar sighed. “Mark, where did you leave it with this jackass?”
“Told him he needed to clean up his own shit.” Mark said. “Sorry, Dar. I just wasn’t going to let him talk smack to me, especially when he was calling me to beg for help.”
“Didn’t have the guts to call me directly?” Dar smiled briefly. “I know my home number’s in the records there. Hasn’t changed in years. He wouldn’t have even had to search for a sticky note.”
“Well, the angle he took was, he was doing this as like a favor to me, sort of letting me come back in and help you help him so you didn’t have to get dragged in the mud.” Mark said. “He said if he went public, you could kiss your new business goodbye.”
Hamilton had been listening. Now he turned his head towards Andrew. “What do you say, we go visit this gentleman? He’s from the North, y’know.”
“Wall.” Andrew looked thoughtful. ‘If that there feller is making threats at my kids, I do believe I should go talk with him.”
“Let’s wait until after CNN interviews Dar for that.” Ceci took a sip of her wine. “Because that would be too much excitement for them to handle and I want to put a deposit down first on that little cottage in St Johns for us to escape to first.”
Dar leaned forward and put her elbows on the table. “Hamilton.” She said. “Can you get me the number of the jackass who replaced me?”
“He didn’t.” Hamilton said, straightforwardly. “But I can get you his phone number, sure.”
Dar made a come hither gesture at him. “Let me make one stab at giving him some advice. Jacques wouldn’t take it, maybe he will.”
Hamilton started fishing in his cell phone, shaking his head all the while. “More chance of getting a pig to sing.” He lamented. “But what the hidey hell. Let’s give it a whirl.”
**
“Okay.” The CNN lady producer turned her ball cap around and settled it back on her head. “So just for some prelim, we went over and tried to get some information about this outage that’s apparently affecting a good portion of the banking business. “
“Interbank.” Dar agreed. She was seated behind her office desk, leaned back in her comfortable chair and had her hands wrapped around one hiked knee. “It’s a central clearinghouse, a meet point for a lot of the large banks where they exchange information.”
“Right.”
“Lets you use some other bank’s ATM from your own.” Dar said.
“Exactly.” The producer said. “So ILS runs it.” She watched Dar shake her head. “No?”
“No. Interbank runs itself. It happens to have contracted a third party to carry the connections instead of building their own network. Lot of companies do that. Building and maintaining a wide area LAN is hellish expensive and complicated.”
“Ah.” The woman took a seat across from Dar. “How does that work?”
“Same way as you buy telephone service for your house.” Dar’s eyes twinkled a little bit. “Or to be more familiar to you, it’s how you buy satellite transponder space from Intelsat to send your signals to and from Atlanta.”
“Ah!” The woman nodded. “So they buy transport.”
“Yes. Transport and the management services that goes with it. Making sure there’s enough bandwidth, tracking outages, rerouting, all the things that go with keeping the data going from point a to point b.” Dar said.
“So what’d they screw up, Dar?” The woman asked. “I know you know. I heard them talking in the background in a different room than we were in. Didn’t know we were listening.”
They were alone in the office. Kerry and the rest of the gang were entertaining the camera team and the on screen talent downstairs, serving them gratefully received strong coffee. Hamilton had driven off to go have a meeting with someone, and Dar was hoping as soon as they were finished talking she could take her partner home and fall into bed.
Long ass day. “I can’t discuss that on the record.” She said, candidly.
“Why?” The woman asked. “You don’t work there anymore. It’s a cock up, we know about it. Why not give me a scoop?”
Dar shook her head. “Sorry, Cheryl.” She said. “If they decide to go public, I’ll comment on it, but I’m not going to talk about someone else’s problems.”