by Mike Cooper
“That junkie?” This time the grunt was half laughter. “I threw him out of the house last year after I caught him selling my power tools to buy drugs.”
Some days, I tell you. I couldn’t try the car thing, either—I knew he drove a twelve-year-old Cavalier. The man stood waiting, and I could see that his hands were large and scarred and evidently used to pounding on more than desktops.
He looked like he really, really wanted me to try him.
Finally I nodded. “Okay,” I said, and reached into my back pocket.
He barely moved, but enough—his weight suddenly on the balls of his feet, one hand forward, a slight turn sideways—and we were a split second from a lethal escalation of the discussion.
“Relax.” I pulled out my wallet.
He looked puzzled.
“No need to do this the hard way,” I said. “How about five hundred?”
—
One more rung down the ladder: the Quality Assurance lab. According to the manufacturing director—who’d chiseled me out of a grand in the end, can you believe it—the bad silicon was QA’s fault because they’d accepted two full runs from the chip fabricator without completely testing the samples. Somehow the design specs had been corrupted by the fab, one or two transistors out of a zillion were backward or something. I didn’t understand the explanation. But QA had been sloppy and passed the shipments, so the company got stuck with payment even after Manufacturing realized their automation controllers, built with the problem chipsets, were failing.
Lunchtime had come and gone and I was still walking back the cat—that’s a little counterintelligence jargon, just to show I really was in the business. Still looking for the prime culprit. The current suspect, the QA manager, appeared unpromising. He was young enough to have tattoos and a shaved head, and dumb enough to think that both were cool. But his ecru shirt was stained with sweat, and he stuttered a pathetic greeting when I loomed over the opening to his cubicle. He was flat-out terrified, for which I was grateful, after the parade of rockheads so far.
“Wh-what can I d-d-do for you?” he asked. He had three computer monitors on his desk, all of them dirty and festooned with Post-it notes.
I pointed at the middle screen. “What’s that?” It showed a pair of boxes, numbers flashing and disappearing, with long strings of gibberish slowly scrolling past.
“Uh?” He twisted around. “That’s, uh, a test run on the CDU processors racked in over there . . . ah, why do you . . . ?” His voice trailed away.
“Just making conversation.” I waited, but he didn’t pick up the ball. “Look, I’m here from headquarters, checking some accounts. That’s all.”
“Yes sir.” His eyes were fixed about three feet to my left.
“The manufacturing director, he says you destroyed more than five million dollars of chips by accident.”
“What?” His voice cracked, but suddenly he was looking directly at me, with more than simple fear. “He said five million?”
Aha, I thought. “It wasn’t?”
“It wasn’t near that much. Maybe a million, and that’s only at the transfer price, not wholesale.”
“So he overreported the bad inventory by a factor of five.” I glared at the boy. “Why would he do that?”
“He must have . . .”
“What?”
The QA manager continued to hesitate. “I don’t want to get anybody in trouble.”
I had to laugh. “Look, kid, you can safely assume that right now every person here is in trouble. The question is, how are you going to get yourself out?”
You could see smoke coming from the gears, but he spilled it after another minute. The manufacturing director must have taken the useless chips and set aside another four million dollars’ worth, then sold the good chips on the sly. There’s a gray market for stolen chips, which I’d heard about—during the bubble, Vietnamese gangs with AK-47s would sometimes burst into Silicon Valley office parks. But illegal channels always mean a steep discount.
“What do you think he cleared?” I asked.
The manager shook his head, no longer so much afraid of me as worrying about being blamed. Or more likely, angered by his own failure to think of it first. “Maybe five percent,” he muttered. “Ten, tops.”
I thought about going back and shooting the manufacturing director, but that could wait. I was more and more impressed by the utter venality of the company. Was every single employee crooked?
You hear a lot about fostering a good corporate culture: respect your workers, your customers and your goals, and business will take care of itself. Clay Micro seemed to be a case study in the opposite.
“Back up a moment,” I said. “Maybe he took advantage, but you still dustbinned quite a few of these chips on your own. How did that happen?”
“That jerk who runs our network, it was his fault. Said it was a mistake.” He scowled. “Like any idiot could confuse an ethernet switch with a base-10 cable hub!”
Well. “The kindergarten version, please.”
“Mistake, my ass.” The manager spoke bitterly. “He was too cheap to buy the right equipment, is all. Probably kept the switch for himself and swapped in a no-name hub he found for ten dollars on eBay. When I racked in the chips and started the diagnostics, the routines ran fine for five minutes—just long enough for me to go for a coffee. When I came back, the whole frame was on fire. On fire! Flames, smoke—lucky they got rid of the halon last year, after the OSHA inspection, or we’d all be dead now.”
He started to rant. To sober him up, I reminded him that being dead now was certainly something I could arrange.
“It was his fault,” the QA manager repeated, sullenly. “I do as good as I can, with the equipment they give me.”
“I’ll make sure you get a gold star in your performance review,” I said. “Now, this computer guy—where do I find him?”
—
“I’m a Microsoft-certified network engineer,” the man said prissily. He was bald and short, feet barely touching the ground below his stool. “Not to mention my degree from PTI, and I’ve passed more than half the courses for a master’s. That’s with no tuition reimbursement, mind you.”
“Fine. Let me ask—”
“Not that these ingrates would even notice. Most of them are so lazy they can’t even unjam their lousy printers. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve said, ‘Turn it off, then turn it on again,’ well, I’d have a lot of nickels, I tell you what.”
The network administrator—excuse me, network engineer—had his own nook in an isolated room next to the loading dock, with cinderblock walls and crowded racks of computers and cables everywhere. Half the overhead lights were out, making the man look even more molelike behind his thick, plastic-framed glasses. The air smelled of ozone and warm plastic.
“And don’t get me started on those nitwits in engineering. Think they’re all hotshots, just because they have some worthless options from the last dot-com flameout they worked at. Could any of them even punch down a wall jack, I ask you? But as soon as they forget their password, well, then I get a polite message on my voicemail.”
“Let’s try to stay focused here, okay?” I thought about pulling out the Sig, but the mole was so wrapped up in his own bitterness I’d have to fire a few rounds to get his attention, and unlike Brinker’s office, down here I’d probably hit something that would explode. I reached out, put one hand on top of his head and one under his jaw and squeezed his face.
Forced to stop talking, he glared at me.
“The QA manager says you gave him a bad stub,” I said. “Or something like that.” I eased up on his jaw.
“It wasn’t me—I didn’t do it!”
The company motto, apparently. “Yeah, yeah. Who did?”
“The co-op. I wasn’t even here that day.”
“Huh? Co-op?” Hippies and organic tofu?
“His name is Timmy. He’s a co-op student from Pitt. Like an intern, helps out three days a week, part of his
degree program.”
I looked at him. “There’s someone lower on the totem pole than you?”
He unconsciously stroked the humming computer alongside his chair, for comfort, I guess. “I was letting him do basic network maintenance, load software, handle simple complaints. When that QA knucklehead said he needed a few more ports, Timmy just plugged in another hub, but he didn’t check with me first. Overloaded the entire frame! If he had asked me, of course, I would have said—”
You get the drift. This case started out like MF Global, but it was finishing like a two-bill slip-and-fall.
The network engineer sputtered to a stop after another minute of buck-passing, and he looked sideways at me. “So . . . who are you, anyway?” For the first time he sounded unsure.
“An accountant,” I said. “Where’s Timmy?”
CHAPTER TWO
By the time I finished with Timmy, Brinker must have given everyone the rest of the afternoon off. Mental health day, maybe. The parking lot was almost empty.
Just one lonely Porsche Cayenne sitting by itself in the executive row.
The day had warmed up—a little too warm for late spring in western Pennsylvania—and I stood in the pleasant breeze for a minute.
Lawrenceville was a scruffy neighborhood even by Pittsburgh standards. Clay Micro’s long brick factory, a hundred years old, looked over at the backside of a food wholesaler. Its blank, corrugated steel walls were stained and rusty at the joints. Potholed asphalt filled the space between them—half parking lot, half roadway. The street dead-ended at a narrow canal.
I didn’t want to leave immediately. If Brinker was going to call in a reaction team, better it happen here, while I was ready, instead of on the road somewhere. I walked to the canal’s edge and admired the cut granite blocks descending to waterline, perfectly fitted a century ago by masons who’d probably been working with hand tools. Just to the left a box trestle crossed the canal—a railroad bridge, long fallen into disuse. Its classic trapezoid of iron girders was stark against the sky, black and rusty red in the late-afternoon sun.
I kicked some gravel into the canal. There was a sort of gloop instead of a splash, the water viscous with grime and oil. On the other side of the bridge the old rails disappeared into brush. More brick remnants of industry were slowly crumbling into ruin over there—windows gaping, scarred plywood across the dock doors.
A boat horn sounded. The Allegheny was only a few hundred yards farther, though invisible behind the structures. Upriver I could see the 40th Street Bridge overhead, homeward commuter traffic starting to thicken at rush hour.
Nothing happened. No one came out of the Clay Micro offices. I walked back to my rental car, a Chevy Malibu—I’d wanted something reliable, but that’s what they had—plugged my phone in to charge and drove away.
—
The tail picked me up after a quarter mile.
Lawrenceville wasn’t just abandoned industry and cheap warehouses. Compact two- and three-story row houses butted right up against the factories—worker housing, from back when. People had fixed some of them up. Wooden trim had been painted, cars were parked on the street, here and there a barbecue grill sat on a stoop.
A pair of boys were flicking a lacrosse ball back and forth, sticks swinging. They stopped as I passed. I looked in the rearview, wondering if they were watching me.
And by chance I saw a car turn onto the street behind me, two blocks back.
Downtown then onto I-376 would have been a quicker way to leave the city. Instead I turned onto Butler, then Penn, meandering east toward city neighborhoods that most people tended to avoid—according to police statistics and local news, anyhow. Google can tell remarkably detailed stories if you ask. I’d never been here before.
The car was newish and had four doors. What can I say? I live in New York City, I don’t drive much, I just don’t know much about them. It kind of looked Japanese, but they all do nowadays.
I turned left, it turned left. I turned right, it kept going . . . then reappeared a minute later, turning onto the street fifty yards in front of me. They must have taken a shortcut, accelerating through some alley to take the lead. A pretty good move for single-car surveillance.
I never would have noticed if I hadn’t been looking for it.
We drove through Homewood. Residential and not a lot of money: weedy lots behind waist-high chain-link, foreclosures, scrawny men talking to themselves on the street. The dark car—metallic royal blue—stayed nearby.
But that was all. Just followed, and watched. Anything else was going to happen later.
Finally I turned south, went through Edgewood and took an on-ramp onto 376 going east. A few miles later I saw a sign, smaller than a billboard—the Hiway Rest Motel. I signaled, took the exit at a reasonable speed, and led the dark car onto a four-lane avenue.
The motel was close to the highway, a plain concrete two-story with red doors every ten feet, top and bottom. FREE HBO IN EVERY ROOM! the sign said, like it was 1985. I pulled in several spaces away from the front entrance—no need for the clerk to see my car—and walked in.
“Just one night,” I said. “Cash all right?”
“Certainly. Ninety-seven dollars plus tax.”
I filled out the card with imaginary details, reversing two digits on the license plate, and handed over my twenties.
“Continental breakfast, six to nine,” the clerk said. “Coffee all day.”
“Can’t wait.”
Outside I strolled to the car, drove it to the end of the building and reparked. Room 14 was on the first floor. I turned the key—no fancy card entry here—went inside and closed the door.
I waited thirty minutes, lights out and gun drawn, sitting on a chair in the corner opposite the door.
Nothing happened.
I thought about Clay Micro. Rotten from top to bottom was not so common, even among my sort of clients. The division had to be making money somehow, to avoid attention from Clayco corporate for so long. Brinker might have been doing something right.
But he wouldn’t be doing it much longer.
I assumed that he’d called the cavalry. Brinker looked like a Rotary Club businessman, but he ran a thoroughly corrupt shop, and grimy environments attract more germs. All the same, it was surprising he had friends with pursuit and intimidation skills—friends who could show up with less than an hour’s notice.
After half an hour I stood up, pausing to let the blood recirculate. It was still light outside, not even five o’clock. The window drape was heavy but not fully drawn, so I peeked around the edge.
The blue car was still with me, parked in a restaurant lot across the broad street. It sat off to one side, late sunlight glinting off the windshield so I couldn’t see inside. They had a good position, with a clear view of my room and a straight shot to the lot’s exit.
A rifle aimed at me from inside the vehicle seemed unlikely—someone would notice, and a sniper would have to fire through tempered auto glass. I could probably walk over to the restaurant without being shot.
Why not? If they attacked me on the way, we could all improvise. I felt a frisson of adrenaline at the thought.
Enough fucking around. I’d whacked the hornet’s nest, and now it was time to shoo them away.
I took off my jacket and let it fall over my right hand; the pistol was concealed, and I could drop the jacket in an instant if necessary. I left the key on the nightstand.
I waited until the lights turned, up the road, so traffic dropped to nothing—what I could see from the room, at least. Then I opened the door, let it close behind me and walked directly across the motel’s parking lot.
No reaction from the car. I wasn’t going toward them, but toward the front of the restaurant. I hopped the grassy ditch between the motel and the road, jogged across its four lanes and fell in behind two couples, older folks, probably here for an AARP discount.
A warm Fryalator smell drifted from the rear of the building. My shoes scuffed pebbles
and grit on the asphalt. The senior citizens shielded me from my pursuers’ sight lines until we approached the door, and then the car was blocked completely by the corner of the restaurant.
I immediately took off, going right, along the front window glass. Diners inside glanced up from their booths as I passed, so I kept the pistol low down, still covered by my jacket. Around the corner, moving faster now, then across the back of the building. A busboy in dirty whites stood at a dumpster, tossing plastic bags of garbage over the lip. He looked at me running past, started to say something.
Around the last corner, and the rear of the dark car was dead in front of me. I dodged a Lincoln and an SUV. Two people, front seat. No brake lights, no exhaust visible. The driver’s window was rolled down—that was convenient, I wouldn’t have to smash it out.
“Don’t move. Don’t move.” I stopped four feet from the vehicle, outside the door’s radius, with the pistol raised but only the barrel end visible. The jacket was still draped over my forearm.
“Put your hands behind your neck.” I kept my voice just loud enough to carry, quiet enough not to attract attention. “Do it. Now.”
Both glared at me, motionless. About my age. One was huge—his seat was all the way back, and his head brushed the car’s roof. He had sunglasses on, the other was stubbly, both had very short hair and broad shoulders. I couldn’t see much else.
“The early bird ends at five-thirty,” I said. “What are you waiting for?”
The giant driver slowly shook his head. He muttered something I couldn’t catch.
“Open your door. Just you—driver’s side.” I gestured with the pistol.
A long moment, and then he put one hand down, pulled the latch, and pushed the door halfway open. I stepped up, standing just behind the roof pillar on his side, gun at my side.
Now he couldn’t hit me with the door. Trying to reach back and grab the pistol would be awkward. It was a risk, coming in this close, but the situation was as much in my favor as I could expect. Main thing, I wasn’t presenting an OK Corral tableau to all the elderly busybodies in the restaurant.
