Corridor Man 6: Exit Strategy

by Nick James

  “Perhaps we could chat at the funeral,” Allen said. I’m sure whatever you have on your mind can be dealt with in short order.

  “I’ll look for the two of you,” Bobby said. “I hope we can…” but then he heard the click on the other end of the line as Allen abruptly hung up. He smiled, pleased with the idea that the two of them, Sawyer and Allen, attempting to manage the firm was apparently having disastrous consequences.

  * * *

  Erin popped her head in his office a little before five. He’d forgotten she was still there. “I’m about to take off. You want to check out the monitor at the front desk before I leave? It pretty much covers the entire hallway. I think you’re going to like it.”

  “It’s already installed?”

  “Really just a matter of drilling a hole, a couple of screws and an internet connection. Come on and take a look.”

  Sure enough, the monitor screen sat on the receptionist desk, just beneath the counter. The screen was divided into three, live, black-and-white images of the hallway. The center image looked down on the area immediately in front of the office door. The images to the left and right covered the rest hallway to either end. As Bobby looked at the screen, a woman stepped out of the office at the far end of the hall, she approached their office, walked past their door and continued on to the opposite end of the hall where she waited for the elevator. Bobby looked over at Erin with a wide grin.

  “That’s fantastic.”

  “Yeah, it’s on twenty-four-seven. Stores a digital recording so we could go back to a date and time if you wanted. If there’s a power failure, it works on a battery system that’s good for up to seventy-two hours. Oh, and the computers came,” she said and pointed around the corner to a half-dozen large white boxes lined up against the wall.

  “I’ll put them in the offices tomorrow and set up the network.”

  “You can do that?”

  She gave him a funny look. “It’s not like they’re heavy.”

  “No, I meant set up the office network.”

  “Yeah, I think I can deal with that. With any luck, we’ll be good to go by noon. Doughnuts might be nice for the morning. Glazed, maybe more than one, would be especially nice.”

  “You got it.”

  She smiled, slung her handbag over her shoulder and headed out the door. As she stepped into the hall she called, “See you in the morning.”

  He watched her on the monitor as she walked to the far end of the hall and then waited for a long minute before the elevator arrived. Just before she stepped onto the elevator she turned and waved at the camera.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Bobby phoned Luis later that evening and left a brief message. Luis phoned back not five minutes later.

  “You called.”

  “Yes, Luis, thank you for taking my call. If you have a moment I would like to discuss the interviews I’ve been conducting.”

  “How is it going?”

  “It’s going well. I’ve gone over the résumés, made some calls to check facts. Four interesting people. I would consider hiring three of them, in fact I’d like to extend an offer to them.”

  “Which three?” Luis asked. Bobby listened for some sort of reaction in his voice, but couldn’t pick up on anything.

  “Griffin Lang, Thomas Thomas, and Chris McCall, all talented, bright and seem to have a hunger.”

  There was a pause and then Luis asked, “You weren’t impressed with Mr. Finch?”

  “You know he’s got an impressive history, top school, clerking for a Supreme Court judge, he’s been with some of the top firms in town. That said, I have two concerns. My first concern is he’s moved around a lot, quite a bit as a matter of fact. It seems like every eighteen to twenty-four months he ends up somewhere else. It might just be he’s looking for the right fit. But my sense is the firms he’s been with decided they didn’t need the headache.”

  “Did you talk to the firms?”

  “I knew a couple of people, checked with them. They didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know or suspect. Basically, all they did is confirm the dates he was with them. I couldn’t get any sort of personal comment regarding Finch out of them.”

  “What do you think that means?”

  “Trouble. Most likely the personality. He’s apparently never made a mistake in his life, just ask him. I don’t think he’d be a good hire, I believe he would antagonize everyone else on staff, and perhaps most importantly, I feel fairly confident he wouldn't be able to maintain confidentiality, and that is going to be key.”

  “That was my assessment, too. Bright, but what’s your term? He’s a loose cannon.”

  Bobby waited for a moment, then asked, “If that’s what you thought, why did you send him?”

  He could almost hear Luis smile. “I just wanted to be sure you had my best interests and the best interests of Privado at heart. Was there anything else you wanted to discuss?”

  “No, I’d like to contact the three tomorrow have them begin as soon as possible. Thomas and McCall will be able to begin almost immediately. Lang may need once he gives notice, I’m not sure.”

  “You’ll draw up the contracts?”

  “Yes. They’ll be virtually the same for each individual. Would you like to see them first?”

  “I think that would be best. I’ll trust your judgement on the sort of package we present, standard benefits and a fitting compensation. We don’t need a problem trying to save a few thousand dollars on salary.”

  “Understood.”

  “Well done, Bobby. And so it begins, the first in many major steps to be taken,” Luis said and hung up.

  Bobby Googled the local paper, the Pioneer Press, and checked the obituaries. The notice for Bennett Hinz’s funeral was in there and that was all, Just three short lines. Sad, after all the man had and had not accomplished, it ended in three short lines. Bennett’s name, his parents, and wife’s name, date of his death and the address of the church. No visitation. The service was at ten at House of Hope Presbyterian church with a private internment. That would serve Bobby just fine. The perfect place to have a brief, to the point chat with Sawyer and Allen. He’d need an update on the status of the sinking firm before that. He worked on some general things until close to eleven, then turned off the lights, and went into his bedroom.

  Maria was in his bed, asleep. He undressed, thought about waking her, then remembered he was supposed to be at Emily’s tomorrow night and so let her sleep. When he woke the following morning, she was gone.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen, Maria busied herself at the stove and said a crisp, “Good morning,” without looking at him.

  “You were tired last night and breathing heavily when I came into the bedroom. I decided to let you sleep.”

  She turned to face him, holding a spatula in her hand which she waved as she spoke. “I was awake. I wanted to see if you would desire me. You did not,” she said, then turned round and directed her attention to the pan on the stove.

  “Then you pretend very well.” He set his coffee mug on the counter and went back into his bedroom, packed a dark suit and tie, a fresh shirt and underwear then headed back into the kitchen. Miguel was taking a first sip from a coffee mug.

  “I should get to the office. A busy day today.”

  Miguel looked at the overnight bag and the travel suit bag, took a quick sip of coffee, slipped off his stool, and hurried out the door.

  “I’m traveling today and won’t be back until tomorrow night,” Bobby said.

  “Enjoy your trip,” Maria said not looking at him.

  Rather than respond, he left and hurried down to the car. He waited a moment, then heard Miguel honk the horn and hurried out to the car. “Were you off to?” Miguel asked once Bobby was settled in the back seat.

  “I’ll be in a meeting with Emily this evening, then tomorrow morning a funeral where I’ll meet with Sawyer and Allen. I’ll need you to pick me up at six tonight and half-past-eight tomo
rrow morning.”

  “Maria know?” Miguel asked and grinned into the rearview mirror.

  “Not a happy lady this morning.”

  Miguel looked like he was about to make a joke, then thought better of it and remained quiet until he pulled in front of the building.

  “I’ll see you at six tonight. I’m leaving the luggage in the car.”

  Miguel nodded as Bobby slid out of the back seat and headed into the building.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Once in the office the following morning Bobby made a pot of coffee. He set the white bakery box with a half-dozen glazed doughnuts on the break room counter. He was tempted to phone Maria, which only made him madder that he even cared. He strolled out to the front lobby about ten minutes before nine and watched the monitor screen for a few minutes until he saw Erin step off the elevator and head toward the office door. He watched as she approached, then hurried to the door and opened it just before she could ring the intercom.

  “Good morning.”

  “Oh, so you like the way it works.”

  “Absolutely. Great idea, Erin. The camera covers the entire hall. Wonderful. Hey, I’m going to make some calls this morning. I’m bringing three of the people I met with on board, or, well at least I’m going to make them an offer. So just a heads-up that they may be in later today. I’ll let you know in advance if they’re coming.”

  “Good, I’m going to get those iMac’s set up. I’ve got phones and modems coming. They should be arriving around ten, the service provider will get us linked up, and…”

  “I’ve been able to use my laptop already.”

  “Hmmm-mmm, You’re no doubt linked into some unsecure system, probably from somewhere on this floor. You don’t want that for the office, or your laptop for that matter. You’d be an easy target for hacking and I don’t think Mr. Morales would be too pleased if that were to happen.”

  “Yeah, of course,” Bobby said, wondering why he hadn’t thought of that. “You can set up our system?”

  “Yeah, I told you I’m an IT geek,” she said and laughed.

  “Could you take a system down?” he asked, suddenly thinking.

  “You mean like crash it, or just hack into it and look around?”

  “Well, let’s say both.”

  “Yeah. I can do that. It might take a while, well unless I had password access. That’s the toughest, actually. The initial entry into the system…after that it’s just a matter of time, finding your way around. Ninety percent of the systems are virtually unprotected.”

  “You know, I’m going to meet with Emily tonight.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Good, all things considered. I’m just wondering, if I gave you my password to the system at my old firm, where Sawyer and Allen are, do you think you could hack into it?”

  “That depends.”

  “On?”

  “Well, the prudent thing for them to do would be to delete or block your access since you’ve gone. That said, high tech to that Sawyer prick is a color TV where you still have to get up and change the channel. Probably a pretty good chance they haven’t done anything. Do they have an IT department?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Give me your password, the URL address and…”

  “A URL address?”

  Erin shook her head. “Is your laptop on?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Here,” she said and handed him the coffee mug from her desk. “I’ll be on your laptop for a moment so you can go get me some coffee.”

  “One coffee and how about a glazed doughnut?”

  “You really did that? Got them?”

  “There’s a half dozen in the break room, just waiting.”

  “God, I’ll be the original fat ass by the end of the day. Yes, by all means, I’d love one.”

  When he went back to his office, Erin was seated at his desk, tapping keys on his laptop.

  “You need my password?”

  “You know,” she said not looking up. “With your background, one would think security would have been a higher priority.” She held up the small rolodex card that he had taped to the bottom of his laptop with his password, date of birth and the answer to the three security questions.

  “Oh.”

  “I’m in their system now, looking around. It’s pretty basic as far as security goes. I’ve got a laundry list here of names and information, we should be able to gain access to everyone’s account. God, a ten yearly could have done a better job. What was the guy’s name that Emily fucked?”

  “Hinz, Bennett Hinz. He was the…”

  “Looks like the principal shareholder, CEO, Director, yeah.” She looked up at Bobby, slid the coffee mug he’d just set on the desk over toward her, then focused on the paper plate holding the glazed doughnut. She sat back in his chair, took a long sip and then a large bite from the doughnut.

  “Mmm-mmm, good. So, Bobby, what’d that take, two minutes and I’m in there? No security, at least none to speak of. You can raise all kinds of hell with these guys. I’ve got an account I’m going to send this access information to, it will allow us to remain virtually untraceable. I’m going to back out now so if, or rather when, you decide to do something they can’t link anything to you. Man, they are inept.”

  Bobby nodded. “The Montcreff information. Could you go in there and erase their files?”

  “Yeah, sure, although that would be rather obvious that someone has hacked their system. What I mean is, one minute it’s there and the next it’s gone. They would automatically know somethings up. If, on the other hand, you changed the information, addresses on buildings, payment structures, cosigners, that sort of thing it would appear everything was still safe and secure, but just the opposite would be true, everything would be wrong. You could download the files before we adjusted them and have the correct versions. They’d never even know you’d been there.”

  Bobby smiled. “Did we discuss a bonus structure?”

  “No, but we’re going to,” Erin said. She took another large bite of her doughnut and clicked a number of keys on the keyboard. “Okay, you’re out of there. I’ll send the info to a server in the Ukraine. By the time it gets back to me, it’ll be untraceable.” The intercom suddenly rang.

  “Okay, that’s probably the service provider. Let me deal with them and we can talk later,” she said then crammed the remainder of the doughnut into her mouth and headed for the receptionist counter.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Bobby settled in behind his desk, began to think of a number of ways he could compromise the computer system at the firm, and felt an intense amount of pressure suddenly lifted from his shoulders.

  He pulled the résumé files of Griffin Lang, Thomas Thomas, and Chris McCall and began to call them.

  “Griffin Lang.”

  “Hello, Griffin, Bobby Custer with Privado. How are you this morning?”

  “Umm-mmm, fine, sir, just fine.” Bobby thought he could pick up some tension in the voice.

  “Griffin, I would like to offer you a position over here. We think you’d be an excellent fit.”

  Lang gave an audible sigh into the phone and said, “Thank you, Mr., ahhh, I mean Bobby, thank you so much.”

  “What I would like to do is have you stop in today or tomorrow afternoon and let’s discuss some specifics. Is there a time that works better for you…?”

  He set up appointments with all three of them. Thomas Thomas and Chris McCall sounded even happier than Lang.

  Erin came into his office carrying a large, white, cardboard box by handles inset on either end. A colored image of a large computer screen was on the front of the box with the black logo of an apple with a bite out of it. “It’s your day to go get lunch. Not McDonald’s,” she cautioned. “I can probably have this thing set up and online by the time you get back. Then we can talk over lunch on how you’d like to make life miserable for your asshole former friends at that firm.”

  Bo
bby nodded, said, “The desk is all yours. I want the screen off to the side, so I can still keep an eye on whoever is on the opposite side of the desk.”

  Erin nodded, set the box down next to his desk, and opened the top.

  “You need a hand pulling that out?”

  She looked at him like he hadn’t a clue and said, “No, it’ll be the sixth one I’ve done this morning. But, I am really hungry and a nice lunch, a very nice lunch, would help.”

  Bobby smiled and hurried out of the office. He noticed as he headed down the hall that all four offices now had a large computer screen sitting on the desk along with a phone.

  He was back in twenty minutes with two lunches from the Thai restaurant around the corner. He let himself in the door just as Erin was walking up the hall from his office. “Okay, you’re good to go back there. I’ll give you a quick tutorial after lunch. They’re really easy to navigate and I think you’ll like them. Hey, what’s for lunch? And by the way, thanks for not getting McDonald’s.”

  “I’m saving McDonald’s for another day. We’re dining on Thai food this noon. A nice little place just around the corner. Join me in the break room?”

  “Let me just run to the bathroom and I’ll see you in there.”

  Bobby handed her his set of keys so she could let herself back in the office, then hurried back to the break room. Erin joined him just a few minutes later.

  “Be nice to get a set of these,” she said handing the keys back to him. “Then you wouldn’t have to run out to the lobby every time I had to run to the bathroom.”

  “I’ll get a set made for you. Here,” he said sliding a styrofoam tray across the table to her. A plastic fork and knife were taped to the lid of the tray. He opened a smaller styrofoam tray and pushed it toward the center of the table.