Baroness Von Smith

by Survivanoia (v5. 0) (epub)

  Scally pulled one of the steel balls on Mongo’s Newton’s Cradle, watched the one at the other end snap out, fall back and push the original one click clack click clack. “Mongo, who’s the Baroness?”

  “President.”

  “I know that. But who is she?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Come on!”

  Mongo sat behind his desk, set a cloth napkin on his lap.

  “We don’t know.”

  Scally gaped at him. “How. Is that possible? My dad owns the company. How can he not know the President?”

  “He doesn’t own it by himself.”

  “Come again?”

  “There’s somebody else. A silent partner.”

  “It can’t be the Baroness, she’s my age.”

  Mongo pulled a bottle from one of his desk drawers, poured himself a glass of red wine. He gestured to Scally but Scally declined. “This silent partner,” Mongo said, “never identified himself. He worked through an agent. And he appointed this President.”

  “She’s hollering at me to reclaim a product she herself admits is meaningless.”

  “Probably she sees massive potential in the product’s inventor. That’s how you get and keep the best and brightest. You know these things.” Mongo paused, assessed the younger man.

  Scally’s knee jimmied and he tapped his fingers like a restless musician.

  “What’s really on your mind, kid?”

  “She knows about Ian. She mentioned him by name. Why would she know that? How does anybody out here know that?”

  “Maybe she wanted some leverage.”

  “You saying she dug up dirt on me? To claw her way up the ladder?”

  “Or maybe she’s in with the Senator. Could be part of the deal your dad cut.”

  “That was sixteen years ago!”

  “You killed the man’s son.”

  “I didn’t do that!”

  Mongo leveled a heavy gaze on the younger man.

  Scally waved away his protest. “Besides, I asked her. She says no.”

  “You expect her to say yes?”

  Scally let out a low, irritated moan. “What do I do?”

  Mongo shrugged. “Me? I’d take the rest of the day off.”

  Scally generally did what Mongo suggested. When he arrived home, techno boomed from the Bose stereo, where he spotted Nike’s pink MP3 player. Nike, his girlfriend, had been named after the goddess, not the shoe, by parents from the Netherlands who didn’t know any better.

  He removed his Italian leather shoes, leaving them in the closet-sized front foyer, and turned down the stereo. In the kitchen, Nike sat cross-legged on a stool by the marble island, poring over a hand-scrawled recipe. His two tabby cats, one orange and one grey, sat at her feet waiting patiently for scraps. When Scally came in, Nike sprang to the steel counter, spreading her arms to hide whatever was on it.

  “This was supposed to be a surprise!”

  “What is it?”

  “Chicken cordon bleu. Or chicken cordon mess, depending on how it comes out. I got this recipe, like, six months ago, but I haven’t tried it yet and the girl I got it from is some kind of gourmet chef, like, as a hobby. So it might be too hard for me. Is what I’m saying.”

  He slid his arms around her waist, kissed her on the cheek.

  “New dress?”

  “You like it?” She squirmed away from him and did a little pirouette, displaying the purple silk adorned with gold and green dragons. It laced up the front like a corset, and she wore it with black tights and suede boots that came to her knees.

  Scally pulled her back to him. “It’s beautiful.”

  “I thought it looked cool with my hair.”

  “It does.” He rumpled her short, boyish hair, which this week was cherry red, with the tips dyed black. “How come you’re here? Not that I’m complaining.”

  “I wanted to surprise you with dinner and didn’t think you’d want to drive all the way to my place.”

  “And you’re not at work because…?”

  “Barry’s client never showed.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Barry’s pissed. Doesn’t matter to me, I’m overbooked the rest of the week. How come you’re here?”

  “Terrible headache.”

  “Survivanitus?”

  He laughed “I think you’re right, doctor. Headache seems to have dissipated on the way home.”

  He kissed her again and headed for the bedroom. His little house’s hardwood floors stayed cool, and he enjoyed the feel of them against his soles. After stripping out of his black linen pants and cobalt blue shirt, he stretched out to bask in the air conditioning. Morris, the orange cat, stretched out between his feet.

  He hoped to clear his mind and take a nap, but how could he? It struck him, though, that the Baroness hadn’t singled him out until he’d pissed her off. In her opinion, he’d somehow lost them a super-genius employee. Maybe Mongo was right, she wasn’t out to get him, she was just angry. But who was she?

  And something about Mongo nagged at Scally as well. Had the man waited a beat too long? Furrowed his brow nearly imperceptibly? Scally didn’t know, but what he did know, could not shake, was the heaviness in his gut that made him think Mongo knew more than he admitted. This woman hadn’t come out of nowhere….

  Nike plopped down next to him in the bed. “You’ve been in here an hour. I think something’s wrong with you besides a headache.”

  He curled up, which sent the cat running, and lay his head in Nike’s lap. “You know I hate to talk about work.”

  “Yeah, yeah, something about it being irrelevant and boring. Funny, I was taught that being a VP meant you were grown up and important.” She kissed the top of his head. “Now vent. So we can get on with our evening.”

  He relented, explained about the missing Mister Sanchez and his box. “My plan was to have him appear at the quarterly meeting, box in hand. It’s already built, right? Our engineering staff wouldn’t need to comb over blueprints written on napkins, I’d have made a money-saving decision. Be a big hero.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I can’t find Sanchez. And the meeting’s tomorrow.” Nike ran a hand through his hair. “Is that all?”

  “No. Remember there was another guy with the same thing?”

  “The little foreign guy with the white socks?”

  “Right. I already called and told him no.”

  Nike shrugged. “So call him back.”

  “I wish it were that easy.” He sighed, explained briefly.

  Nike laughed, reminding Scally of a wind chime. “Why are you business guys so afraid to leave tracks?”

  Scally sat up, stretching “What do you mean?”

  “You painted yourself into a corner. So to walk out, you’re going to have to leave tracks.”

  “Or wait for the paint to dry.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think I know what your problem is.”

  “Oh? The doctor is in?”

  “I don’t think you’re enough of a bastard to succeed in corporate America.”

  “Funny, you’re the second person to accuse me of that today.”

  “How’d you end up with this job anyway?”

  He shrugged. “Just sort of fell into it. You know, started as a temp in the mailroom. Worked my way up.”

  Nike pursed her lips slightly, looked sideways at him.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just always feel like you’re omitting things whenever you talk about your past. Like you’ve got some horrible mysterious secret you won’t let me be privy to.”

  Scally, as he often found, was taken by her insight. It made him wonder why he d
idn’t tell her everything. He wanted to believe he didn’t like discussing work because it was boring, but the fact was discussing work meant delving into his past. In the four years they’d been together, Scally had never revealed that the company belonged to his father, and he’d sure as hell never told her about Ian. The things he had disclosed were mostly about his mother, how poor she was, and how he’d bought her a little house in Queens (she’d refused a car) and arranged with the market to deliver her food. Once after having done all his dishes, Nike said to him “I don’t understand why you don’t hire a maid.”

  “Because Ma was a maid. I hate to think that I’ve got somebody’s mother cleaning my dirty draws.”

  Rather than lecture him on how those women need those jobs just as his mother surely once did, Nike smiled. “You sure love her. You think you’ll ever find anyone you love as much as your mother?”

  “I’m looking….” at her right now was what he’d been thinking but he swallowed the words. It wasn’t the first time he’d short-changed her. Or his mother.

  There was another reason he’d chosen Sanchez over Dr. Stuckhowsen. It had to do with his Ma, and it shamed him so he didn’t think about it. Instead, he ate his chicken cordon blue and thought about how lucky he was.

  CHAPTER 13

  Thursday morning Scally pulled into work early. The Baroness hadn’t yet arrived. Scally turned on his computer, fiddled with finished reports, kept surreptitiously checking her door. At 9:30, he heard her laughter.

  He headed to her office, which he’d been in only once before, to interview the funny little scientist. Her office disconcerted him. For one thing, she worked with the door closed. He knocked and the door opened slightly, revealing nothing because inside was dark. But the Baroness’s plush voice bid him good morning. “Come on in.”

  She closed the door behind him. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust. Crimson velvet curtains blocked most of the light from outside; just a sliver crept through, seemingly guided like a dog trained to heel, illuminating a work area on the Baroness’s tidy desk. From the corner over her seat loomed an enormous, stuffed white bear. Mahogany paneling that matched her desk lined the walls to waist height. Above that stood built-in bookshelves, full.

  Undistracted this time by any energetic interviewees with alien-like math skills and horrible English, Scally scanned the volumes the shelves held. Mostly reports, bound in three ring binders and shelved in strict order. Here and there he saw a gap, which invariably had a paper hanging in it with a name and date.

  A curious buzzing thing sat on one of the shelves. He’d noticed it before, two stiff wires forming a V and meeting at a block beneath them. But last time it had been silent, a dumb sculpture. Now a spark ran up the wires with a tiny zap. Like in old horror movies. Scally put a hand up to it but—

  “You’ll get hurt.”

  “What is that thing?” He couldn’t stop watching the crackling line of light.

  “It’s a Jacob’s Ladder. A controlled arc of high voltage electricity.”

  “Amazing. Aren’t you afraid of burning your office down?”

  She didn’t respond.

  Scally tore his attention from the dangerous toy and moved to her desk. “Did you kill that bear?” he asked.

  “No. My father-in-law did. He hunted with Hemmingway.” A strange, vague vertigo grasped Scally, but he couldn’t identify its source so he shook it off. “I wanted to talk about finding the Doc—what are you wearing!”

  The Baroness’s eyes narrowed. Scally felt his chest tighten. But he stared at her outfit. She wore a wide white jacket with a ruffled collar and fuzzy balls the size of his fists where the buttons should be. Matching white pants were trimmed in the same dark blue as the fuzzy balls. “You’re dressed,” he said, incredulous, “like Pagliacci.”

  “Oh! How delightful, an educated man who gets the reference.”

  “I watch Seinfeld reruns.”

  “I wasn’t kidding.”

  “What?”

  “The memo. Today’s meeting will be held in clown suits. No exceptions. I’m putting corporate America back into perspective.”

  “My clown suit is at the cleaners,” Scally stated flatly.

  “You take a look in that conference room, Sydney. They’re all dressed for the occasion. Rubber chickens, striped shirts, red noses. Not one of them has the guts to defy me. Are you stronger? Make me proud. Give me something to believe in.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “If the clown-shoe fits.”

  “This is madness! You’re a—what? A spy? I know some things about you.”

  He stepped toward her; she grinned menacingly. “Yeah? Bring it on.”

  “You only got this job because of your connection with the owner. The silent partner.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Oohh, you do know something. What else?”

  “VER IS DIS SCALINESCU PERSON!” A voice raged from the hall.

  Scally nearly choked. The shouting girl pronounced his name right, said skoo instead of skew at the end. Nobody did that.

  The Baroness’s door flew open. A girl stood in the entranceway like a scary cartoon. Her spiky hair was dyed purple, and she wore a black velvet jumper over striped tights and matching arm warmers. A girl Scally might date. If she weren’t aiming a shot gun at him.

  The girl’s nostrils flared, eyes darting over Scally. The Baroness’s phone rang.

  The Baroness cocked her head at the gun-wielding intruder.

  “May I?”

  “Is dis him?”

  The Baroness glanced at Scally. “Who?”

  “Dee man who said my brooder is not good enough. Now his house is burned to the earth and he is gone.”

  “I never said he wasn’t good enough!”

  The Baroness sighed. “Idiot.”

  Then the shot came.

  BLAM! SLAM! Scally fell back against the Baroness’s desk. His chest splashed bright crimson. Another blast opened another fistful of gore. The Baroness shouted in German, lunged at the girl. A third horrible shot erupted and he saw the Baroness’s white jacket explode in gruesome red. But she was still moving, still shouting, “Geben Sie mir die Gewehr!”

  --I will not!

  This was the girl’s response, but not in English or German. Not in English, but Scally understood it, clear as crystal. It was the language the little inventor had fallen into during their interview when he’d gotten too excited and it was the same language Scally’s mother still spoke to this day. This embarrassing language was the true reason Scally had preferred Sanchez to the doctor.

  Scally crawled under the desk. The women yelled and wrestled, the Baroness in German and the punk-rock Rambo in that haunting childhood memory of a language. Scally closed his eyes and shuddered.

  He didn’t hurt as much as he thought he should. In death you should feel something. His mother would be heartbroken, but she’d be okay financially. She’d never know how he’d forsaken her. What she would know, what Scally now understood, was that she’d been right, that the corporate world is as ugly and cutthroat as the Bronx streets, they just put on airs of civility here.

  If one was as bad as the other, then had he really stolen sixteen years? Or only shifted the location of his destiny? After all, he’d still died the death of a gangbanger. Joe Strummer’s voice came to him, Shot down on the pavement or waiting in death row.

  Well, better the former than the latter, he supposed.

  “Sweet oblivion,” he whispered, “open your arms.”

  But he was wrong. The door slammed shut and silence filled the office. Some minutes later, when he thought he was dead, he heard the door open again, and the Baroness’s bright face grinned down at him, covered in crimson smear. What was she so happy about?

  She knelt down next to him under her des
k. “It’s paint,” she whispered to him. “Taste it.”

  Cautiously, he set a red-stained finger against his tongue.

  “Bleech!”

  “She shot us with a paintball gun.” The Baroness laughed, reminding Scally of a tall, bubbly drink. “Clever!”

  “Best she could buy on a Thursday morning, I guess,” he grumbled.

  “Oh, give the girl some points. In fact, take her to lunch. She might just get you off the hook.”

  “How’s that?”

  She leaned in conspiratorially, whispered, “She says she knows of somebody who can tell us where The Doctor went.” Grinning like a madwoman, she settled in next to him, there under the desk. Scally noticed that he couldn’t hear any office noises. All he heard was the birds out in the garden.

  “You’re going to have to choose a side, Scally.”

  “What are my choices?”

  “Me, or the rest of the business world.”

  Scally huffed a laugh. “I don’t even know who you are. Nobody knows who you are. How is that possible?”

  “Your father is good with the media.”

  “Not always.” He pulled a tattered half page news article from his wallet, the article Geo had slapped onto his desk in a huff a few weeks back. He watched as the Baroness took it from him and grinned at the half-page, three color ad. “Has You or Someone You Know Died From Flower Flu?” it queried. “SURVIVANOIA COMPANY IS WITHHOLDING THE CURE!” It detailed some evidence, then provided the name and number for the law firm of Tehzan, Preston, and Guite, Experts in the Unprecedented.

  The Baroness folded the ad back up and handed it to him. She looked at him carefully as if deciding something. “I hired them. That’s the only reason this company has gotten any media coverage whatsoever.”

  “But even people inside the company don’t know who you are.”