“I don’t smoke,” the newcomer said apologetically, shaking girlish bangs. “I’m not in any of your classes, and this isn’t about a paper. We have an emergency request from a major donor for a movie from the videotape collection, and none of us can find it.”
“What’s the title?” Melissa asked.
“We’re not sure. They thought it was Death Came in Green, but nothing like that is listed anywhere. It’s an English mystery from the 1940’s, set partly in a hospital.”
“That sounds like Green for Danger,” Melissa said instantly. “Some people would find it a little dated, but I think it’s lots of fun. The library does have a copy, and it may be indexed under suspense or even comedies instead of mysteries.”
“Is it a comedy?”
“With the British sometimes it’s hard to tell.”
The searcher thanked Melissa profusely and hurried off. The expression on her face suggested that she’d thought seriously of genuflecting first.
***
“That pizza isn’t to eat, Ms. Masterson. It’s evidence in a trademark case.”
“I know that,” Masterson told the receptionist who was finishing an early lunch of nuked lasagna at 11:58 in the fourteenth floor lounge. “I was checking to see if anyone had stolen the frozen yogurt I brought for my own lunch and hid behind the pizzas in the hope that it would still be here when I finally get a chance to eat it.”
“You mean we have to add petty theft to our list of associate grievances?” asked Arundel, who had entered the lounge in time to get the gist of Masterson’s answer. “You folks have an impressive array of morale problems for people making six figures a year eighteen months out of law school.”
Savvy beyond her years, Masterson understood that Arundel meant this as a friendly comment.
“I’ve had my lunch pilfered three times in the last month,” she said. “It’s incredible. You think you know the people you work with, but obviously we don’t.”
“You’re onto something there,” Arundel said. He was securing his fifth cup of coffee for the day, intended to wash down a catch-as-catch-can lunch that he, like Masterson, would be eating at his desk. “Take Pennyworth, for example. He came here straight out of law school, been here ever since, made partner a little over a year ago. Admittedly we either had to make him a partner or fire him, and if we’d fired him we would’ve had to find somebody else to do trademark and copyright work, so it wasn’t like we plumbed to the bottom of his soul or anything. Even so, you’d think after that length of time you’d know someone as well as you know Rule ten-b-five.”
“And?” Masterson prodded, baffled by the subtlety of the oblique signal she assumed she was receiving.
“I’m almost embarrassed to admit it,” Arundel said. “I had no idea that there were any little Repperts running around. But apparently there are.”
“Well, no, actually, there aren’t,” a now thoroughly baffled Masterson said. “He and his wife don’t have any kids. I had to do without a secretary for half a day last week because mine was making a list of all the children of lawyers in the firm for a museum outing this summer. He didn’t have any on it.”
“You don’t say,” Arundel said in his most professional brush-off tone. “My mistake, then. Well, enjoy your yogurt.”
Half an hour later, as he sat at his desk wading through the dense prose of a client’s annual 10-K report to the Securities and Exchange Commission and through an equally dry turkey on whole wheat, Arundel thought two things.
The first was, There are people making thirty thousand bucks a year who eat a better lunch than I do almost every day.
The second was, What in the world was Pennyworth doing with that tape hidden in his office if he and his wife don’t have children?
At twelve-forty-three, he brushed crumbs from his charcoal gray vest, adjusted the white French cuffs that matched the collar on his otherwise royal blue shirt, and strolled with studied nonchalance to Rep’s office. He felt he could be reasonably sure of privacy until the end of the lunch hour. He secured the Discipline Effectiveness Training tape and returned to his office with only a faint sheen of sweat along his upper lip to betray his nervousness.
He called the firm’s AV department and said that he’d need a television and VCR as soon as possible. A drone whose voice he didn’t recognize and whose name he didn’t register promised to have it to him by two o’clock.
***
The great thing about small town airports, Rep thought when the cab dropped him off at Traverse City International just before two P.M., is that there’s hardly ever anyone in them. A lonely attendant staffed the pristine ticket counter for Quad State Airlines, unencumbered by any snaking line of passengers anxious to check in for the 2:50 flight back to Indianapolis. Rep approached in solitary splendor, rashly entertaining hopes of eating something more nutritious than a candy bar between getting his seat assignment and boarding the plane.
Then he checked the monitor on the wall behind the slight, ear-studded gent at the counter and realized why he had the place to himself. DELAYED flashed opposite his flight number, right were 2:50 should have been.
“Why is it—”
“Weather,” the attendant said in bored haste, as if he’d had this conversation two or three dozen times already today.
Rep glanced at the abundant sunshine streaming through the windows and the blue sky visible outside them.
“Thunderstorms in Toledo,” the attendant said wearily. “Our plane there can’t take off to come here, and that’s the plane that’s supposed to take you to Indianapolis.”
“When—”
“Update at three,” the attendant sighed. “No promises.”
“Are there any airlines connecting to Indianapolis whose planes can fly in the rain?” Rep asked.
There were, but the options they defined didn’t strike Rep as happy ones. He could wait here for several hours and connect through O’Hare, wait there for over an hour, and (if he were very lucky) get into Indianapolis around nine tonight. Or he could wait here for several hours and connect through Pittsburgh, sitting there for over an hour before getting into Indianapolis, if he were very lucky, around ten. Or he could rent a car, drive five hours plus, and get home maybe by eight.
He decided to wait for the Quad States update at three.
Which was why, after checking his messages at the office and leaving word for Melissa on the answering machine at home, he had a chance to call Paul Mulcahy in L.A. When Mulcahy’s voice-mail recording had finished, Rep left a message asking for information about Mixler and about Selding, the young guy who’d been with Eastman yesterday.
***
“Bye, Ms. Pennyworth,” a voice behind the counter said as Melissa strolled past on her way home, around 2:15. “Thanks for your help with the video.”
“Sure,” Melissa said. “Did you find it all right?”
“In suspense, just like you said. We had it messengered over to the patron by ten.”
“You had a messenger run it out to someone?” Melissa asked, astonished. Even in the labor-intensive world of academics, this was extraordinary. “That must have been a very major donor.”
“Well, a very major donor’s daughter. Charlotte Buchanan.”
Melissa stopped. With no greater stimulus than this offhand datum, the fundamental fact about her husband suddenly burst through the resentment and irritation she’d been accumulating since late last night: Rep was a mensch. He wasn’t a jock or a stud or a world-beater, but he was someone you could count on. He got up in the morning and he did his job. He did what he was supposed to do and tried not to hurt people along the way. She wondered if maybe, somehow, some way, she had jumped to conclusions last night.
And with that thought, the last stray flotsam clogging her formidable intellect disappeared. Everything she’d heard from Rep in the past twenty-four hours marched through her mind with the unerring precision of a drill-team, except much faster,
and dovetailed with what she remembered of Green for Danger’s plot.
“Excuse me,” she said, reversing her course. “I want to check a couple of things.”
***
Arundel’s jaw hadn’t actually dropped, but he was doing a bit of heavy breathing as he got into the tenth minute of Discipline Effectiveness Training. He knew stuff like this existed, of course. But actually seeing it, there on the screen in his darkened office, knowing its provenance, challenged his seen-it-all-nothing-surprises-me self-image. He dug a phone list out of his desk to find the number for the firm’s head computer guru.
His own phone rang just as he found the number. He grabbed the receiver and snapped his name. His caller didn’t identify himself and didn’t have to, for it was Finneman.
“Tempus-Caveator, Inc. just filed a thirteen-d on Tavistock,” he said. “Conference room one.”
Those who spend their time doing useful things instead of merely moving around money that other people have earned would find it hard to imagine the galvanic effect that this laconic message had on Arundel. Finneman was saying that a very large corporation had just officially notified the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had acquired more than 5% of the stock in Tavistock, Ltd., with the intention of influencing management and control; in plain English, that it was undertaking a hostile takeover of the company. Chip Arundel was going to war.
Before he went to war, though, Arundel clicked off the video and called the head computer guru.
***
At exactly three o’clock, Quad State Airlines informed Rep that it was still raining in Toledo, and that the next update would come in about an hour. While Rep was getting ready to seethe about that, his phone beeped insistently. He answered to hear Mulcahy’s voice.
“So you’re going on with the Eastman thing anyway,” Mulcahy said.
“True,” Rep sighed. “Do you have anything on either of those guys I asked about?”
“I never heard of Selding, but it’s funny you asked about Mixler. The word is that he’s been greenlighted for about a year on a made-for-TV movie about Margaret Thatcher. They’re talking about Cameron Diaz for the lead.”
“What, they couldn’t get Jennifer Aniston?”
“Word is Jennifer’s English accent has gone south since she married Brad Pitt. They didn’t think she’d be credible in the scene where Thatcher faces down a troop of IRA gunmen and rescues Prince Andrew.”
“I thought Mixler was an agent or a sub-agent or something,” Rep said.
“Well sure, but in his heart everyone in Hollywood is a producer. Every Key Grip and Best Boy on every film being shot spends his spare time fantasizing about how he’ll rig the points when he’s finally executive producer on a major project.”
“How did Mixler manage to make his fantasy come true?”
“No idea,” Mulcahy said, “but he must’ve impressed someone fairly far up the food chain at Galaxy Entertainment Group.”
“Wasn’t Galaxy the studio that Eastman was working with on Red Guard!?”
“Yeah. He made the deal before Tempus-Caveator bought Galaxy. And it’s a good thing he did, because apparently no one at T-C thought Red Guard! was worth much of an investment.”
“Okay,” Rep said. “Thanks.”
He was about to turn the phone off because his battery was running low, but he noticed an envelope icon on the screen, indicating that a voice-mail message was waiting for him. He retrieved it.
“Mr. Pennyworth?” said a whispered voice that Rep recognized as belonging to Paul Calvin, a clever-with-machines type in the firm’s AV department. “There’s something I think you should know. Mr. Arundel asked for a TV and VCR earlier this afternoon. Then a little later, he called the Systems Administrator here and said he wants a record of all the internet connections you’ve made with your firm computer over the past year.”
***
It took Melissa until 3:45 P.M. to find the Life magazine article from August 10, 1962. It was the last item on the list she’d made of books, articles, videotapes, and vertical file materials extracted by the Reed University Library for Charlotte Buchanan.
“Tragedy at NASA,” the headline read. In appropriately somber tones, the article described how four space program workers had died of anoxia because without realizing it they had gone to work in a chamber filled with pure nitrogen. Breathing it felt the same as breathing air, but it didn’t bring any oxygen to their lungs. They had gradually grown drowsy, fallen unconscious, and died.
Melissa didn’t get a speeding ticket on the way home, but only because the Indianapolis cops were sleepy that day.
***
Dispatched in haste from Conference Room I, Mary Jane Masterson scurried into Chip Arundel’s office a little after 5:00. Arundel had sent her to retrieve a printout of pending regulatory proceedings involving Tempus-Caveator, Inc. that he remembered getting a week or so before.
The cardboard sleeve for the Discipline Effectiveness Training videotape inevitably drew her eyes. Intrigued, she flipped on the VCR and in fifteen seconds had seen enough to leave her astounded at her good fortune.
“Talk about fireproof,” she whispered in awe. “If I play my cards right, I have just officially acquired an asbestos-covered butt.”
***
Rep was about to call home again at 5:20, in the hope of actually talking to Melissa instead of just leaving a message for her, when the triumphant announcement from Quad States Airlines echoed through Traverse City International Airport. The flight from Toledo had called within range! It should be here in twenty minutes! They’d do a quick turnaround and try to have their Indianapolis-bound passengers in the air by six o’clock! A mere three hours and ten minutes late! They were very sorry for the inconvenience! Would passengers please proceed immediately to the gate!
Rep proceeded. He put the leather carrying case holding his laptop on the x-ray machine’s conveyor belt at the security checkpoint. He dumped car keys, loose change, digital phone, and watch into a plastic basket and handed it to an attendant. He stepped without incident through the metal detector. He retrieved his belongings from the basket. He stepped over to the x-ray machine to pick up his laptop. He noticed an attendant hovering over it.
“Is this your computer, sir?” the blazered gentleman asked.
“Yes.”
“Would you mind if we checked it a little further?”
“No, of course not.”
The attendant lifted the case to a table, stood it on its base, and ran a small, white, rectangular cloth over the zipper and the handles. Rep waited patiently. This happened about once every four or five times that he traveled by plane—generally at smaller airports, where people didn’t have enough to do and felt they had to justify some Airport Authority’s heavy investment in high-tech toys.
The attendant put the cloth into a scanner. About five seconds usually passed between this step in the ritual and the part where the attendant said thank you and nodded Rep on his way. This time, though, the interval was more like fifteen seconds, and when the attendant looked up from the scanner he didn’t say thank you.
“Would you turn the computer on, please, sir?”
“Certainly.”
Rep pulled the laptop out of its case and started to open it up.
“Uh, not here, sir,” the attendant said hastily. “Would you mind taking it into that small room over there to turn it on? This gentleman will show you the way.”
The gentleman in question had appeared silently behind Rep’s left elbow. He was about six-three, even without the Smokey-the-Bear hat he was wearing. He thoroughly filled a double-breasted gun-metal blue uniform coat featuring many brass buttons and a Sam Browne belt. And a badge. Rep noticed a holstered pistol, a can of Mace, and a pair of handcuffs on the belt.
“This way,” the guy said. He didn’t say “sir,” and if he had he wouldn’t have meant it.
Rep followed the state trooper out of the se
curity area, down a short hallway, and into a windowless room. Another man was waiting for them in the room. He was in mufti, but he had one of those haircuts that says football coach, marine, or cop. The uniformed trooper repeated the request that Rep turn on his computer.
He did so, noticing both men reflexively flinch as he pushed the gray button that would coax the machine to life. Green lights came on. The black screen dissolved into rapidly blinking numbers and letters. A little electronic fanfare played, as if the computer were quite pleased with itself at managing to make its circuits hum.
The two men looked at each other.
“Okay?” Rep asked hopefully, taking care to keep any smart-alec tone out of his voice.
The state trooper responded by undertaking a methodical examination of the laptop’s carrying case. The guy in civvies gazed with studied neutrality at Rep. After a good five minutes of turning the laptop case inside out, the uniformed trooper spoke.
“Sir, the reason you were asked to come in here is that the security scanner picked up traces of an explosive called PETN on your computer case.”
“People sometimes use PETN to blow up airplanes,” the plainclothesman said.
“The people who blew up the airplane over Lockerbie a few years ago used PETN packed inside a laptop computer,” the uniformed trooper said.
“I see,” Rep said.
“So the question, then, would be,” the cop in mufti said, “why your laptop case has these traces.”
“I have no idea,” Rep said.
“Well,” uniform said, “has anyone besides you had access to your computer case in, say, the last two weeks?”
“Um, sure, I guess,” Rep said. Melissa, for example. Eastman, Selding. Buchanan. Other clients, including the one he had just seen. His secretary. Most of the lawyers in the office, if you got right down to it. Most of the non-lawyers, for that matter. Not to mention the odd cabbie and bellhop.
“We’ll be wanting a list,” mufti said.
Rep felt blood draining from his face. With a mental shudder he imagined people like the folks in front of him going to his clients and his colleagues and saying Just a few routine questions. Nothing serious. We found something funny on your lawyer’s bag and we were wondering if you might be a terrorist.
Screenscam Page 9
