Zaffer flicked on his right blinker. He pulled into a shopping center, parked outside the IGA, and switched off the ignition. Only then did he give a long, low whistle and turn to face Milo. “What?”
Milo couldn’t help being gratified. A million dollars was an impressive amount. Quickly, because it hurt, he described the hidden accounting books the robbers had led him to, and how they’d driven him to seek out Farnon.
“Pearce uncovered it, he was my dad’s supervisor. He went to Farnon with it. When I saw Farnon in March, he showed me the repayment schedule my dad had written up. It was his handwriting, all right.”
Zaffer said “shit” softly, then with increasing force. “So that’s why you got a job there! What, are you trying to make it right or something?” When Milo didn’t answer, Zaffer struck the steering wheel in triumph. “You are, aren’t you? But Milo, that’s bullshit, you can’t….” Another implication registered. His next words were much calmer. “Did your dad kill himself? Because they found out?”
Zaffer was quick. Milo stared out the window. “Today Pearce asked me if I was like my father. He was just being a jerk, he doesn’t know I know about the money. You could see he didn’t even know I’d been hired.” Outside, shoppers went in and out of the supermarket. He wished he had nothing more to worry about than what to make for dinner. “That’s why he was calling Farnon. It had to be him on the other end, because Pearce said, ‘You’re the boss.’ When Pearce said, ‘What if he’s a chip off the old block,’ I know exactly what he meant. What if I’m a thief, too? Another embezzler could screw all kinds of things up.”
Zaffer considered this, then shrugged. He restarted the truck. Tim Shoemaker might have been an embezzler, but it was almost time to eat. They drove in silence until they reached Milo’s driveway. It was six o’clock and still very hot. Children’s shouts came from the backyard. It sounded to Milo as though the twins and every kid in their class were getting sprayed with the hose.
Zaffer left the ignition running. “He said, ‘It would be a shame to wreck it this late in the day.’ IT, Milo. I. T. Like something’s coming up soon. What’s that about?”
“A deal, an audit, who knows?” Milo opened the door but didn’t get out right away. “It doesn’t matter. And you’re wrong about me trying to pay back the money. Farnon wouldn’t let me, says they were insured. It’s more than that.”
He met Zaffer’s pitying gaze. “I want to prove I’m not a ‘chip off the old block.’ Not when it comes to stealing. Not only won’t I wreck anything—I’ll show Alf Farnon that this Shoemaker will be the best damn worker Wolverine Motors ever had.”
Zaffer started to say something. Then he nodded with all the gravitas Milo could wish.
Milo slammed the passenger door. As the truck backed down the drive, Zaffer stuck his head out the window and yelled, “Best damn data entry clerk ever!”
***
Chapter 7
His mother wouldn’t let Milo go upstairs to change until he’d given her a full debriefing. She grilled him while the twins and their friends screamed under the kitchen window.
“Did anyone say anything about your father?” she wanted to know.
“People said how sorry they were. You know. They were nice.” Except for Dad’s supervisor. Some guys you could kill yourself for and they wouldn’t care. “I met Mr. Pearce.”
His mother made a face. “Your dad called him Jekyll and Hyde. Said the best way to deal with Pearce was to stay out of his way.” She was cutting hot dogs into pennies and now she glanced up from her cutting board. “Did he say anything?”
Milo heard it. She suspected his motives in taking the Wolverine job. “Not much. My manager, Leslie, said she really liked Dad. Said she wrote you a note after he died.”
“Leslie Underhill is your manager?” Gloria put down her knife. “You’re in Payroll?”
Milo admitted it.
“Who decided that?”
“It’s where they had an opening.” He let exasperation color his voice. Sheesh. “I think I’ll like it. I’m good with numbers.”
It seemed to satisfy her, for now.
Though he’d heard Alf Farnon indirectly, on the phone—Pearce could have been speaking to no one else—Milo was impatient to see the president in person. He’d given up college to work for the man. Would Farnon remember that moment in his office? The understanding that had flashed between them?
But the rest of the week passed without a glimpse of him. During his second week, Milo asked his supervisor if she saw much of the Hero of Valeene.
“Mr. Farnon? Sure, all the time,” Leslie replied. “I was behind him in the cafeteria just the other day—he was getting Margaret a raisin bagel. He likes to walk around the whole complex, stick his head in and ask how you’re doing. He’s a sweetheart, he is, not like some muckety-mucks I could mention who think they’re God’s gift—well, never mind.” She glanced at Amber, who was listening, for once. “He’s been out of town a lot lately, though. Some big contract cooking. It’ll be good for Wolverine, is all I can say. Mr. Farnon’s like that fellow in the fairy tale, with the golden touch.”
“Midas?”
“That’s the one.”
This jibed with Milo’s own impression. He pictured the reaction in Payroll if the president wandered in someday to seek the advice of the son of an old friend. Amber’s gum would probably drop down her blouse; J’azzmin would snort in her Starbucks. There might be a moment, away from the others, to ask if Farnon had any projects he could use Milo’s help on.
A bold move. But it had only taken a few days for Milo to find the flaw in his resolution to Zaffer. He already was “the best damn data entry clerk” Wolverine had ever seen; Leslie said so repeatedly. J’azzmin and Amber were perfectly happy to marvel at his speed with no ambition to rival it. Milo marveled at them in return. He was used to the likenesses of twins, but except for the minor matter of skin color these two were clones, in their elaborate makeup, addiction to hip-hop, and sublime ability to ignore whatever they chose, including Leslie. He thought of them as Ebony and Ivory. At 4:59 every day they switched off their computers and marched out in lockstep as though responding to the same voice in their heads. Meanwhile Leslie kept scrambling to find numbers to feed through Milo’s hungry fingers.
“Done,” he announced late Friday morning.
“If you’re not just like your dad,” she declared. She was always saying this. “He did twice as much as the woman we had before, and that was on top of his schoolwork.”
“Schoolwork?”
Leslie clapped her hand to her mouth. “I shouldn’t have mentioned that, it was a secret.”
She pushed away from her desk and wheeled her chair over to Milo’s, her eyes crinkled in the sorrowful look he dreaded. “I don’t suppose there’s any harm telling you now—it wasn’t anything bad. Your dad was taking graduate classes, an online program. He stayed late some nights to turn in assignments. He was real careful not to do them on company time. He asked me to keep it quiet, especially from Mr. Pearce. Mr. Pearce is very…strict about chain of command.”
She tightened her lips in distaste. As much as Leslie admired Alf Farnon, she loathed Gordon Pearce; not that she ever came right out and said so. But they all knew. “I had no problem with it. Well, to do his homework your dad needed to see reports from other offices. He was studying forensic accounting. How to catch shady accountants, set up internal controls, things you have to know if you’re going to start your own practice. I really think he was hoping you might go into business with him someday. Oh, he was full of plans, your dad! And all for his family.” Her eyes filmed with tears. “It’s the saddest thing, seeing you here, sitting where he used to—it just brings it back to me.”
Milo squirmed. “It’s okay, Leslie, really. Please don’t cry.” Under cover of the desk he made his watch alarm go off. “Sorry, I told my mother I’d call, see if she needs me to pick up a prescription later…. Can I take a minute?”
This f
resh example of Shoemaker thoughtfulness undid her. She grabbed a tissue and waved him off.
Milo walked down the hall past Internal Auditing and into the quiet stairwell. He and Ellie seemed to be the only people who used the stairs for transport between floors, as opposed to a smoking retreat, so he was unlikely to be disturbed.
He crunched over cigarette butts on the landing and stared out the open window at a car passing down on Carleton Street.
Graduate courses in forensic accounting.
It was brilliant. Of course he knew his father had stolen a million dollars. But hearing how it had been done…fascinating. And of a piece, now Milo thought of it, with the innocent-looking, industrious behavior that had covered Tim’s gambling the first time.
At Wolverine, the cover story would explain any intra- or interoffice snooping. Take that, Gordon Pearce. The guy might be on the right side of the law, but he was a creep. Ellie was right about that. On the home front Tim’s story would explain to his wife any books in mismatched covers. Of course, given Gloria’s low interest in accounting—and dusting—he hadn’t needed to use it. Milo would have recalled his mother mentioning graduate classes.
Unlike some of his classmates, Milo had done more than scan the SparkNotes for Crime and Punishment—he’d read the whole novel. The criminal mind was prone to paranoia. Better to over prepare than be caught flatfooted. This elaborate story was Exhibit A.
A door opened on the landing above him. Someone coughed and clicked a lighter. Reluctantly, Milo returned to his desk. Too bad his father’s ingenuity hadn’t been applied to the wholesome entrepreneurship Leslie imagined, instead of to crime. To hear his dad had hoped Milo might work with him someday—that hurt in a new way. Using his son as part of his alibi…. Milo envied Leslie her high opinion of Tim Shoemaker. Tim’s son, on the other hand, had to admit that the Good Father he missed every day was not someone apart from The Thief. They’d been the same man.
Back in Payroll, Leslie had come up with something else to keep him busy. She pointed to a stack of cartons in the corner. They’d been there since Milo’s first day, and looked out of place against the sleek office furnishings.
“Old files,” she told him. “We’re converting everything to digital but we have to keep the paper files for six months. I want these taken to storage before Mr. Pearce asks why it’s so cluttered in here. Except some people,” she shot a scathing glance at J’azzmin, serenely inspecting a wickedly long maroon nail, “claim their shoes aren’t up to rolling a cart, so I’m waiting for Harry to send someone over. Which he hasn’t gotten around to yet.”
“I’ll do it,” Milo said.
“I accept.” She took a small key out of her desk. “Building G, it’s behind the cafeteria. Put them on the balcony where it says Payroll, and turn off the lights when you lock up.”
Milo borrowed a hand truck from Inventory Control next door, loaded up the cartons, and headed out. One drawback he’d already discovered about an office job was the sameness of surroundings. A guy needed a change of scenery once in a while.
He scanned the lawns on his way, but though he heard voices from the bay doors of the assembly plant, he didn’t see anyone. Probably Zaffer was scheming to get indoors at the same time Milo was looking to get out.
The interior of Building G looked like the warehouse scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Hundreds of identical rows of shelves loomed in the dim light of a few dirty roof windows. Gray file cabinets hunched against walls like sleeping guards, dozing until some auditor or judge or more likely, a Dumpster, called for their contents. Milo flicked a switch by the door and the glare of bare bulbs killed the shadows. But not the heat. The sun blistered the metal roof, and no air conditioning fought back. He was sweating before he’d gone five steps.
A tiny open elevator rattled him to the balcony that ran along all sides of the shed. He trundled his cart down the steel floor, found the Accounting section, and stacked his five boxes on top of identical ones under the Payroll sign.
He heaved the last one in place. This carton, or one just like it, probably held records his father had doctored. Not that Milo would have any idea where to start looking. He might know basic accounting but without specific guidance—the kind of guidance in the fraud books in his closet—weeks of privacy in here wouldn’t help him find wrongdoing. And what good would it do if he did see it in black and white? He did not doubt it was elegantly done; Farnon had said so. And Leslie had just supplied fresh proof of Tim Shoemaker’s resourcefulness. But it was over, settled. He did not need to feel that angry betrayal again.
He clattered back to the ground floor and shut off the lights. Outside the blazing sun was a gentle breeze compared to the stifling shed, and air conditioning the highest achievement of civilization.
He wheeled his cart across the pavement. It was almost lunchtime. Two men were coming out of the main doors. The dark one in the navy suit paused in the lobby’s shadow to hold the door for his companion, whose fair hair turned to gold in the sun. Gordon Pearce and Alf Farnon.
Milo rumbled up, conscious of the god-awful din the hand truck made.
“Well, hello there!” Farnon said heartily. “Hard at work, I see!”
He stretched out an arm and Milo put his grimy hand into that bone-crushing grip.
“How are you, Mr. Farnon.” He nodded toward the stale smoke smell. “Mr. Pearce.”
“How’s everyone treating you? Finding your way around—” Farnon glanced at Pearce, who was watching Milo balefully, “—Payroll, is it?”
“Yes sir. Everyone’s been really helpful.”
“Good, good. Payroll reports to Gordon here. If you have any questions you should ask him for help. Right, Gordon?”
Pearce’s nostrils flared. “Where have you been?” he asked Milo.
“The storage shed, sir, Building G. Mrs. Underhill asked me to take some cartons over, she can’t manage the cart herself….” With an effort Milo stopped babbling. Something about Pearce made him want to look like the purest Boy Scout alive.
“Ah, Leslie!” Farnon said. “Another hardworking soul. Makes a wonderful eggnog around the holidays. Well, we won’t keep you…er, Arlo. Good to have you at Wolverine.” With cheery vagueness Farnon patted him on the back with a mammoth hand; Pearce looked on, unsmiling. They set off again, and Milo watched them get into a dark-blue Lincoln Town Car. Pearce drove.
Shit. He jerked the cart up the stairs, ignoring the ramp, not caring now how much noise he made. Arlo!
The office traffic flowed against him, as people headed out to lunch. Milo and his cart had an elevator to themselves. In its mirrors he grimaced. He’d acquired a smudge across one cheek, and rings of sweat darkened his shirt. Ech.
Yet by the time the doors opened again on his floor, he was putting it in perspective. Four months had passed since he’d sat in the president’s leather armchair. Farnon wouldn’t forget Tim Shoemaker’s name in a hurry, but was it so surprising Milo’s might slip his mind? He was the president, after all; he had important things to think about. Milo replayed the scene out front. Had there been conspiracy in that squeeze of his shoulder? A gleam of recognition in those pale-blue eyes, hidden from the stony, suspicious gaze of Pearce? Yes. Yes, Milo was pretty sure there had been.
“Arlo” would just have to work harder to earn the notice of the Hero of Valeene.
Wolverine workers were friendly. Even when Milo ate by himself, he rarely bought a drink in the cafeteria to go with his packed lunch without meeting someone new. His favorites were the assembly line workers. They spent their days doing things, making fire trucks so good that municipalities from Monroe to Tokyo lined up to buy them. This was Big Business. Payroll was a support function, really, just desk work—but these line workers were the heart of Wolverine.
Fred was a Painter Level 2. Margie R. had a station on chassis assembly, Margie B. on wheels. Stubby was a ladder man, expert in attaching the long aerial ladders to the bodies shipped in from other manufacturers. They wer
e decades older than Milo, and they didn’t mind telling him whatever he wanted to know—and then some, with each worker competing to out-teach the others. Right away Milo learned that a fire engine was not the same as a fire truck—fire engines carried their own water supply. Wolverine made both. That Wolverine used 125 different shades of red paint on its cabs, not to mention all the yellows and lime greens. “Florida, see, they go for the pastels,” Fred confided. During those first weeks Milo’s head spun with tip load ratings (dry or flowing water), single-axle or tandem-axle chassis, outriggers, downriggers, torque box designs. The plant workers treated him—and Zaffer and Ellie, too, who often joined him—like company mascots. Right up there with subsidized cafeteria food and double overtime was the pleasure of explaining their work to “these kids.” And praising Alf Farnon, the genius whose vision they shared.
Sometimes Uncle Paulie had his break at the same time, and he never missed a chance to tutor his nephew in front of his colleagues. His favorite topic was Alf Farnon.
“Farnon told me once, he said, Paulie, each of us puts our name on those trucks. So to speak. And he means it. We’re in a war all right, but it’s not between management and labor. No way. The fight’s between Wolverine and every other fire engine out there our customers could buy. We don’t give Farnon any more effort than he makes himself. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for Wolverine. You gotta respect that.”
Uncle Paulie was preaching to the converted. Milo respected everything about Alf Farnon.
During their third week on the job, Zaffer got promoted. While still on call for weed pulling and lawn mowing, he was now Deputy Fleet Supervisor—he claimed. Milo doubted Zaffer’s boss knew about this title. It authorized Zaffer to wash the company’s four silver repair and training vans. He could do this himself down in the bays, or he could drive to the Trucker’s Wishy-Washy outside Valeene, grabbing a Big Gulp from the 7-11 on the way. Milo liked Big Gulp days—it meant Zaffer ate lunch off-site. So if Milo had the same lunch break as Ellie, and if he loitered in the stairwell till he accidentally ran into her, he could have her to himself for thirty minutes. Or at least without his amusing friend.
Unaccounted For Page 6
