He sat back in his chair, his face drawn.
“She’s my accounts-receivable manager. She’s the wife of a buddy of mine. A good buddy.”
“I’m sorry, man. I am.”
“You’re sure?”
I reached back into the laptop bag, came out with my case file. I slid it across the table to him. “Go through the top twenty invoices. Those are the dirty ones. I attached the invoices the companies received so you can compare.”
“Twenty?”
“Could be more,” I said, “but those are the ones would hold up in any court if she ever sued you. Or if she files a grievance with the Labor Board, throws any sort of wrongful termination shit at you. If you want to have her arrested—”
“Oh, no.”
Of course that would be his reaction.
“I know, I know. But if you did, all the proof you need is right there. At the very least, Mike, you should consider making her pay restitution.”
“How much?”
“This past fiscal year alone? She took you for twenty thousand minimum.”
“Jesus.”
“And that’s just the stuff I found. A true auditor, knowing where to look, who knows what he’d find?”
“This economy, and you’re telling me I got to shitcan my accounts-receivable manager [_and _]my floor manager?”
“For different reasons, but yeah.”
“Christ.”
We ordered two more beers. The place began to fill up; the traffic outside thickened on Centre Street. Across the street, people pulled up in front of the Continental Shoppe to pick up their dogs from a day’s grooming. While we sat there, I counted two poodles, one beagle, one collie, and three mutts. I thought of Amanda and her thing for dogs, the only trait I’d heard ascribed to her that sounded soft, humanizing.
“Twenty thousand.” Mike looked like someone had swung a bat into his stomach, then slapped him in the face while he was doubled over. “I ate dinner at their house last week. We went to the Sox a couple times last summer. Christ, two years ago, she’d just started for me? I gave her an extra thousand as a Christmas bonus because I knew they were about to get their car repo’d. I just . . .” He raised his hands above his head and brought them back down helplessly behind his skull. “I’m forty-four years old and I don’t understand anything about people. I just don’t get them.” He brought his hands back to the table. “I don’t understand,” he whispered.
I hated my job.
Chapter Seventeen
It had been a few hours since my encounter with Yefim and I still couldn’t shake it. Back in the day, I would have manned up with a drink or six, maybe called Oscar and Devin so we could meet at some dive to out-understate one another when it came to violent encounters.
Oscar and Devin had retired from the BPD several years ago, though, and bought a failing bar together in Greenwood, Mississippi, where Oscar’s people hailed from. The bar was just up the street from Robert Johnson’s purported grave site, so they’d turned it into a blues club. Last I heard, it was still failing, but Oscar and Devin were too drunk to care, and the Friday-afternoon barbecues they threw in their parking lot were already the stuff of local legend. They were never coming back.
So there went that outlet for me. Not that it was much of an outlet. What I really wanted was just to get back home. Hold my daughter, hold my wife. Shower off the smell of my fear. I was planning to do just that, taking the Arborway over toward Franklin Park so I could cut through to my side of town, when my cell rang and I saw Jeremy Dent’s name on the caller ID.
“Fuck me,” I said aloud. I had Sticky Fingers in my CD player, turned up loud, the way Sticky Fingers should always be played, and I was right at the point in “Dead Flowers” where I always sang along to Jagger getting goofy with the words “Kentucky Derby Day.”
I turned down the music and answered my phone.
“Merry Almost Christmas,” Jeremy Dent said.
“Merry Almost Festivus,” I said back.
“You got a minute to drop by the office?”
“Now?”
“Now. I got a yuletide present for you.”
“Really.”
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s called a permanent job. Like to discuss?”
Health insurance, I thought. Day care, I thought. Kindergarten. College fund. A new muffler.
“On my way.”
“See you soon.” He hung up.
I was halfway through Franklin Park. If I hit the lights on Columbia Road just right, I would reach home in about ten minutes. Instead, I banged a left onto Blue Hill Avenue and headed back downtown.
“Rita Bernardo took a job in Jakarta, of all places.” Jeremy Dent leaned back in his chair. “Booming security business there these days, all those wonderful jihadists—bad for the world but great for our bottom line.” He shrugged. “So, anyway, she’s off to keep Indonesian discos from blowing up and that opens up a slot we’d like to offer you.”
“What’s the catch?”
He poured himself a second scotch and tilted the bottle toward my glass. I waved it off. “No catch. Upon further evaluation, we came to the conclusion that your investigatory skills, not to mention your experience in the field, are assets too valuable to pass up. You can start right now.”
He pushed a folder across his desk and it cleared the edge and landed on my lap. I opened it. Clipped to the inside cover was a photo of a young guy, maybe thirty years old. He looked vaguely familiar. A slim guy with dark, tightly coiled hair, a nose that fell just a half-inch short of beakish, and a café-au-lait complexion. He wore a white shirt and a thin red tie and held a microphone.
“Ashraf Bitar,” Jeremy said. “Some call him Baby Barack.”
“Community organizer in Mattapan,” I said, recognizing him now. “Fought that stadium plan.”
“He’s fought a lot of things.”
“Loves the camera,” I said.
“He’s a politician,” Jeremy said. “By definition that makes him an Olympic-level narcissist. And don’t let the Mattapan roots and the Mattapan address fool you. He shops at Louis.”
“On what? Sixty K a year?”
Jeremy shrugged.
“So what do you need?”
“A microscope on his whole fucking life.”
“Who’s the client?”
He sipped his scotch. “Immaterial to your efforts.”
“Okay. When do you need me to start?”