answering machine.” Shoe’s answering machine picked up on the fourth ring, then just beeped. “Anyway, I’m still at the office. Would you mind picking me up here? We can grab something to eat before the concert. I know I promised you a home-cooked meal, but Bill’s been like a bear with a bellyache all day. Damn Patrick. He couldn’t have picked a worse time to quit. See you. Thanks. Bye.”
Shoe made sure there were towels, toilet paper, and soap in the main upstairs bathroom. Then, leaving Jack to his own devices, he took his purchases into the master bedroom. He showered, shaved, and dressed. At 6:15, he went out to the car. The temperature had dropped a couple more degrees. It was snowing in earnest now, big heavy flakes materializing out of the darkness above the streetlights and plummeting earth-ward. He scooped the stuff off the windshield with his hands, got into the car, and drove downtown.
William Hammond was not in a good mood, but even when he was in the best of moods, Charles Merigold could usually be counted on to piss him off somehow. “Charlie,” Hammond said, because he knew how much Merigold hated being called Charlie, “I’m seventy-five years old, for crissake, and not getting any goddamned younger. Will you get to the bloody point? And speak English. I’m not a fucking MBA.”
Charles Merigold’s blandly handsome face reddened. He disliked profanity even more than he disliked being called Charlie.
“I think we should pass,” he said stiffly.
“From what I can see here,” Hammond said, tapping the laser-printed graphs and tables spread out across his broad, black marble desk, “it’s a nice solid little business. Doing better than a lot of my other holdings.”
“Yes, sir,” Merigold agreed. “However, in the last year their operating costs have gone up almost ten percent while their revenues have increased by only three percent. Unless they bring operating costs into line, profitability will continue to be negatively impacted.”
Hammond sighed. Profitability will be negatively impacted. Goddamned bean counters, he thought sourly. When the hell had they taken over? He knew the answer, though. It had happened the day computers had got cheap enough that any idiot could have one on his desk. A pox on the inventor of the microchip, he grumbled to himself.
“Frankly,” Merigold went on, “I don’t know what Patrick and Sandra St. Johns were thinking when they put this deal together.”
“You wouldn’t,” Hammond said.
“Pardon me?”
“Forget it,” Hammond said. He leaned wearily back in his chair. Patrick, he thought, wherever the hell you are, I hope you’re having as lousy a time as I am right now. “Is there anything else?” he asked.
“One more item,” Merigold replied. “It concerns Irene Oswald.”
“She that tall woman in personnel that looks a like camel?” Merigold nodded. “What’s her problem, besides being terminally homely?”
“Ms. Oswald alleges that her supervisor, um, sexually harassed her. He evidently propositioned her, and when she refused him he gave her a poor evaluation when she came up for promotion.”
Hammond closed his eyes. What had he done to deserve this? he groaned inwardly. Christ, maybe he should have handed the reins over to Patrick after all, let him take the company public, and retired. But even as the thought formed in his mind, he knew he couldn’t have done it. Notwithstanding Patrick’s argument that not only would going public provide capital for investment, it would also make anyone who got in on the ground floor very rich, there was no goddamned way Hammond was going to let a bunch of investment bankers and mutual fund managers, not to mention the fucking securities commissions, tell him how to run the business he’d spent his whole life building. Besides, he was already rich. So would Patrick have been if he’d been patient, if he’d given Hammond a little more time. He just wasn’t ready to let go. Not yet.
“Sir?”
Hammond opened his eyes. Merigold was still there, as bland and obsequious as ever. “What?” Hammond snapped.
Merigold blinked. “I’m sorry. If you’d rather, the Oswald situation can wait.”
“No, I’ll take care of it now. Who’s her supervisor?”
“His name is Arthur Somes.”
“And did he make a pass at her?”
“Apparently he’s propositioned a number of women in his office. Ms. Oswald is the only one who’s complained.”
“And this Oswald, she’s good at her job?”
“According to her co-workers, she’s competent and conscientious. They like her.”
“Who’s next in line for the supervisor’s job?”
“I suppose she is.”
“Then find some excuse to let him go and give her the job.” Merigold nodded. “But make sure she understands it was her complaint that cost him his job. Now, get out. And send Muriel in.”
At 6:40, Shoe parked in his reserved space in the underground garage of the headquarters of Hammond Industries, next to the empty space that still bore Patrick O’Neill’s nameplate affixed to the concrete wall. The Hammond Building occupied the same block in the heart of the Vancouver business district as had the original headquarters of H&L Enterprises. That dowdy old structure had been torn down in the eighties to make way for this glittery new edifice.
When Shoe had first washed ashore in Vancouver in the early seventies, he had taken what work he could find—barroom bouncer, professional wrestler, deckhand on a salmon boat, landscape gardener—before landing a job with a private security firm as a night security guard in the old H&L Building. It hadn’t been the most promising of careers, but it had vaguely resembled police work. It had also afforded him plenty of time to read and, on his days off, to “mess about with boats,” as Ratty in Wind in the Willows put it.
It was also how he’d met William Hammond, then co-owner with his father-in-law, Raymond Arthur Lindell, of H&L Enterprises, at the time the twelfth largest privately held corporation in Canada. After Shoe had been fired by the security firm for running personal errands for Hammond, Hammond had hired him as his chauffeur and general dogsbody—his “dofer,” as Hammond had put it. Twenty-five years later Hammond Industries, as the company had been renamed after Raymond Lindell’s death, had become the eighth largest privately held corporation in the country, and Shoe still worked for William Hammond, although his personnel file now described him as “Senior Analyst, Corporate Development.” He was taking a couple of weeks off, though, to look after some long overdue personal business.
When he pushed through the glass doors into the executive reception area on the twenty-third floor, Muriel Yee smiled at him from behind her desk. Muriel was slim and long-legged, with delicate features, a flawless ivory complexion, and glossy jet hair. She was forty-one, but didn’t look a day over thirty. Shoe thought she was the most exquisitely beautiful woman he’d ever known.
“I’ll just be a few minutes,” she said, tapping at her computer keyboard. Her voice was soft and surprisingly deep, but not at all masculine.
“We’ve got plenty of time,” Shoe said. The concert didn’t start until nine. He dropped into the casual chair beside her desk. “How was your weekend?”
“You
