Company Man (13 page)

Audrey found an empty room in the hospital basement where the three of them could talk. It was an employees' lounge: a collection of chairs upholstered in different institutional fabrics, a short couch, a coffee machine that looked as if no one ever used it, a TV. She and Bugbee moved chairs into a cluster. A couple of open soda cans were clustered on an end table. She found an almost-empty box of Kleenex. Cassie Stadler's narrow shoulders bobbed; she sobbed silently, with all her body. Bugbee, who'd obviously learned how to distance, sat impatiently with a clipboard on his lap. Audrey couldn't take it anymore, put her arms around the woman, murmuring, “Oh, it's so hard, I know it.”

Cassie took in great gulps of air, her head bent. Eventually she looked up, saw the Kleenex box and pulled out a few tissues, blew her nose.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't think…”

“Don't apologize, sweetheart,” Audrey said. “What a terrible time for you.”

Cassie took out a pack of cigarettes and shook one out. “Okay if I smoke?”

Audrey nodded, gave Bugbee a sidelong glance. Smoking wasn't allowed in here, but she wasn't going to make a point of it, not with this poor woman at this time, and fortunately neither was Bugbee, who nodded as well.

Cassie took out a cheap plastic lighter and lit up, then exhaled a cloud of smoke. “He was shot in—in the mouth?”

A funeral home would have done some reconstruction, skillfully applied makeup. The face would have looked artificial in that way that all dead bodies look at funeral homes, but at least she'd have been spared the brutal sight.

“That's right,” Bugbee said. He didn't elaborate, didn't say twice, didn't say Stadler had also been shot in the chest. He was following standard procedure, which was to give out as little information as possible, in case a withheld detail could help them, down the line, confirm the killer.

“God!” she erupted. “Why? Who'd
do
that to my daddy?” She took another puff, took an empty Coke can off the end table and tapped out the ash into its small opening.

“That's what we want to find out,” Audrey said.
Daddy
: it stabbed her, hearing that from a grown woman. She thought of her own daddy, remembered his smell of tobacco and sweat and Vitalis. “We need your help. I know this is a painful time, and you probably don't want to talk at all, but anything you can think of will help.”

“Miss Stadler,” asked Bugbee, “was your father a drug user?”

“Drugs?” She looked puzzled. “What kind of drugs?”

“Such as crack?”

“Crack? My
dad
? Never.”

“You'd be surprised at who uses drugs like crack cocaine,” Audrey put in hastily. “People you'd never ever think of as users, people from all walks of life. Prominent citizens even.”

“My dad didn't even know about that world. He was a simple guy.”

“But it's possible he kept things from you,” Audrey persisted.

“Sure, possible, but I mean—crack? I'd have noticed,” Cassie said, expelling smoke through her nostrils like the twin plumes of a fire-breathing dragon. “I've been living with him for almost a year, I'd have seen something.”

“Maybe not,” Bugbee said.

“Look, I don't do drugs myself, but I sure know people who do. I mean, I'm an artist, I live in Chicago, it's not unheard of, you know? Dad had none of the signs. He—it's absurd, really.”

“You're originally from here?” Audrey asked.

“I was born here, but my parents divorced when I was a kid, and I went to live with my mom in Chicago. I come…came back here to visit Dad pretty often.”

“What made you come back to stay?”

“He called me and told me he'd just quit his job at Stratton, and I was worried about him. He's not well, and my mom passed away four or five years ago, and I knew he needed someone to take care of him. I was afraid he couldn't cope.”

“When Detective Bugbee asked you about drugs just now, you hesitated,” Audrey said. “Was he on any kind of medication?”

She nodded, passed a hand over her eyes. “A number of meds including Risperdal, an antipsychotic.”

“Psychotic?” Bugbee blurted out. “Was he psychotic?”

Audrey briefly closed her eyes. The guy never failed to do or say the wrong thing.

Cassie turned slowly to look at Bugbee as she snubbed out the cigarette on the top of the Coke can, then dropped it through the opening. “He suffered from schizophrenia,” she said absently. “He suffered from it for most of my life.” She turned to Audrey. “But it was more or less under control.”

“Did he ever disappear for stretches of time?” asked Audrey.

“No, not really. He'd go out for walks once in a while. I was glad when he got out of the house. This last year has been hard for him.”

“What did he do at Stratton?” Bugbee asked.

“He was a model builder.”

“What's that mean?”

“He worked in their model shop making prototypes of products they were working on, the latest chairs or desks or whatever.”

“He quit, didn't get laid off?” Bugbee said.

“They were about to lay him off, but he just sort of blew up and quit before they could do it.”

“When did you last see him?” Audrey asked.

“At supper Friday night. I—I'd just made supper for us, and he usually watches TV after supper. I went to the room I've been using as a studio and painted.”

“You're an artist?”

“Sort of. Not as serious as I used to be, but I still paint. I never got a gallery or anything. I support myself by teaching Kripalu yoga.”

“Here?”

“In Chicago I did. I haven't worked since I got to Fenwick.”

“Did you see him before you went to sleep?” Audrey asked.

“No,” she said sadly. “I fell asleep on the couch in there—I do that fairly often, when a painting's not working and I want to think about it, sometimes I just fall asleep and wake up in the morning. That's what happened Saturday morning—I got up and had breakfast, and when he wasn't down by ten I started to worry about him, so I went to his room, but he was gone. I—will you excuse me? I'm thirsty—I need—”

“What can we get you, honey?” said Audrey.

“Anything, just—I'm so thirsty.”

“Water? Pop?”

“Something with sugar in it.” She smiled apologetically. “I need a hit of sugar. Sprite, Seven-Up, anything. Just no caffeine. It makes me crazy.”

“Roy,” Audrey said, “there's a vending machine down the hall—could you…?”

Bugbee's eyebrows went up, a nasty smile curling the corners of his mouth. He looked like he was about to say something unpleasant. But she wanted a little time alone with this woman. She had a feeling Cassie would open up more easily with her alone.

“Sure,” Roy said after a long pause. “Happy to.”

When the door closed, Audrey cleared her throat to speak, but Cassie spoke first.

“He has it in for you, doesn't he?”

Good God, was it that obvious? “Detective Bugbee?” Audrey said, feigning surprise.

Cassie nodded. “It's like he can barely contain his contempt for you.”

“Detective Bugbee and I have a very good working relationship.”

“I'm surprised you put up with him.”

Audrey smiled. “I'd prefer to talk about your father.”

“Of course. I'm sorry. I just—noticed.” She was weeping again, wiping a hand across her eyes. “Detective, I—I have no idea in the world who might have killed my daddy. Or why. But I have a feeling that if anyone can find out, you can.”

Audrey felt tears come into her eyes. “I'll do my best,” she said. “That's all I can promise.”

Terra was the finest restaurant in Fenwick, the place you went to celebrate special occasions like birthdays, promotions, a visit of a special old friend. It had the slightly forbidding air of an expensive place where it was assumed you didn't go often. Men were expected to wear ties. There was a maître d' and a sommelier who wore a big silver taste-vin on a ribbon around his neck like an Olympic medal. The waiters ground pepper for you in a mill the size of a Louisville Slugger. The tablecloths were heavily starched white linen. The menu was immense, leather-bound, and required two hands. The wine list itself, a separate leather-bound folio, was twenty pages long. Nick had taken Laura here for her birthday, a few weeks before the accident; it was her favorite place. She loved their signature dessert, a molten chocolate cake that oozed chocolate like lava when you spooned into it. Nick found Terra stuffy and nervous-making, but the food was always great. From time to time he'd take important clients here.

Dinner tonight was with his most important client: his boss, the managing partner from Fairfield Equity Partners in Boston. Nick hadn't particularly liked Todd Muldaur when he first met him, in the company of Fairfield's founder, Willard Osgood. But Osgood always placed one of his
deputies in charge of the companies his firm owned, and Todd was the man he picked.

Not long after Dorothy Devries had tapped Nick as her husband's successor as CEO, she'd summoned Nick back to her old dark mansion to announce that the family was facing a huge tax bill and had to sell. It was up to Nick to find the ideal buyer. There was no shortage of interested bidders. The Stratton Corporation had no debt, steady profits, a major market share, and a famous name. But plenty of the buyout firms wanted to buy Stratton, gussy it up, then turn it around for a quick sale to someone else. Spin it off, maybe take it public—who the hell knew what those rape-and-pillage folks might do? Then the call came from the famous Willard Osgood, who had a reputation for buying companies and holding on to them forever, letting them run themselves. Willard Osgood: “the man with the Midas Touch,” as
Fortune
magazine called him. The perfect solution. Osgood even flew in to Fenwick—well, he flew in to Grand Rapids in his private jet and then was driven out to Fenwick in a plain old Chrysler sedan—and came a-courtin' on the widow Devries and Nick. He charmed the pants off Dorothy Devries (she was partial to pantsuits, actually), and won over Nick as well. Willard Osgood was as plainspoken and unpretentious in person as he was in all his interviews. He was a lifelong Republican, an archconservative, just like Dorothy. He told her his favorite holding period was forever. Rule number one, he said, is never lose money; rule number two is never forget rule number one. He really won her over when he said it's better to buy a great company at a fair price than a fair company at a great price.

The deputy he brought with him, Todd Muldaur, a straw-haired Yale football jock who'd done time at the big management-consulting firm McKinsey, didn't say too much, but there was something about him Nick didn't like. He didn't like Todd's swagger. But hey, it was Osgood who ran the show, Nick figured. Not Muldaur.

Of course, now it was Todd who presided over the quar
terly board meetings, Todd who read the monthly financial reports and asked all the questions, Todd who had to sign off on the major decisions. After that first meeting with Willard Osgood, Nick never saw the old guy again.

 

Nick arrived a few minutes early. Scott McNally was already at the table, nursing a Diet Coke. He'd changed out of his frayed blue button-down shirt into a crisp blue-and-white broad-striped one, a red tie, a good dark suit. Nick was wearing his best suit too, which Laura had picked out for him at Brooks Brothers in Grand Rapids.

“Muldaur give you any sense of what he's here for?” Nick asked as he sat down. This was just about the last place he wanted to be, eating at a fancy restaurant when he had no appetite, being social with some strutting asshole when he just wanted to be home in bed.

“No idea. He didn't say.”

“He told me he wanted to ‘touch base' in advance of the board meeting.”

“Gotta be the updated financials I just sent him. They can't be happy about our numbers either.”

“Still, no need for a personal visit.”

Scott lowered his head, muttered, “He just walked in.” Nick looked up, saw the big blond man coming their way. Both he and Scott stood.

Scott stepped around the table, went up to Muldaur, gave him a hearty two-handed shake. “Hey, bud!”

“Scotty! My man!”

Muldaur extended his beefy hand to Nick and gave him one of those unnecessarily crushing handshakes, grabbing his fingers just below the knuckles in such a way that Nick couldn't shake back. Nick hated that. “Nice to see you,” Todd said.

Todd Muldaur had a big square jaw, a button nose, and turquoise eyes that were bluer than they'd been last time Nick had seen him, in a glass-walled conference room at Fairfield's offices on Federal Street in Boston. Had to be colored contacts. He had the lean, drawn face of a guy who ate
a lot of protein, worked out regularly. He wore a dove-gray suit that looked expensive. “So, this must be the one good restaurant in town, huh?”

“Nothing but the best for our friends from Boston,” Nick said affably as they sat down.

Todd took the big white linen napkin, unfolded it, and put it in his lap. “Gotta be good,” he said sardonically. “The American Automobile Association gives this place its ‘prestigious Four Diamond Award,' it says out front.”

Nick smiled and imagined punching Todd's face out. He noticed a couple being seated a few tables over and recognized them. The man had been a senior manager at Stratton until last year, when his division had been shut down in the layoffs. The guy was in his fifties, with two kids in college, and despite the best efforts of the outplacement service Stratton had hired, hadn't been able to find another job.

That familiar sinking feeling came over him. Nick excused himself, and went over to say hello.

It was the man's wife who saw him first. Her eyes widened briefly. She turned away, said something quickly to her husband, then stood up, but not to greet him.

“Bill,” Nick said.

Now the man rose without saying anything, and he and his wife turned and walked out of the dining room. For a few seconds, Nick stood there, his face burning. He wondered why he subjected himself to this kind of snub. It happened often enough for him to know better. Maybe, on some level, he felt he deserved it.

By the time he returned to his table, Todd and Scott were deep in conversation about the good old days at McKinsey. Nick hoped that neither man had seen what had just happened.

It had been Todd who'd insisted that Stratton replace their old CFO, Henry “Hutch” Hutchens, with Scott McNally. Nick had gone along quite happily, but it annoyed him sometimes that Scott was so friendly with Muldaur.

“Whatever happened to that guy Nolan Bennis?” Scott was saying. “Remember him?” He smiled at Nick. “Another
McKinseyite. You wouldn't believe this dweeb.” He turned back to Todd. “Remember that Shedd Island retreat?” He explained to Nick: “McKinsey always used to rent out this really posh hotel on this superexclusive island off the coast of South Carolina, for a retreat with top clients. So this guy Nolan Bennis is out there on the tennis court with some Carbide guys, and I swear to God, he's wearing black socks and penny loafers. Couldn't play for shit. Really stank up the place. We heard about that for months—what an embarrassment. I mean, the guy was a total loser. You couldn't take him out in public. He still at McKinsey?”

“You obviously didn't see the latest
Forbes
Four Hundred,” Todd said.

“What are you talking about?” Scott said, a quizzical look on his face.

“Nolan Bennis is the CEO of ValueMetrics. Worth four billion dollars now. He bought the Shedd Island hotel a couple of years ago, along with about five hundred acres on the island.”

“I always thought that guy would go places,” Scott said.

“Gotta love this menu,” Todd said. “Duck breast with raspberry coulis. I mean, how 1995 can you get? I'm getting nostalgic here.”

The waitress approached their table. “May I tell you about our specials tonight?” she said. The woman looked familiar to Nick, though he couldn't quite place her. She glanced at Nick, looked away quickly. She knew him too. Not another one.

“We have a Chilean sea bass with roasted cauliflower, pancetta, and tangerine juice for twenty-nine dollars. There's a pistachio-crusted rack of lamb with celery root puree and wild mushrooms. And the catch of the day is a seared tuna—”

“Let me guess,” Todd broke in. “It's ‘sushi quality,' and it's served rare in the center.”

“That's
right
!” she said.

“Where have I heard that before?”

“You look familiar,” Nick said, feeling bad for the woman.

Her eyes flitted to him and then away. “Yes, Mr. Conover. I used to work for Stratton, in Travel.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. You doing okay?”

She hesitated. “Waitressing pays less than half what I was making at Stratton, sir,” she answered tightly.

“It's been tough all around,” Nick said.

“I'll give you gentlemen a few more minutes to decide,” she said, and moved quickly away.

“Is she going to spit in our salads?” Todd said.

 

“You guys don't need me to tell you we got a real problem here,” Todd said.

“No question,” Scott agreed quickly.

Nick nodded, waited.

“A bad quarter or two, blame it on a lousy economy,” Todd said. “But it keeps happening, it begins to look like a death spiral. And we can't afford that.”

“I understand your concern,” Nick said, “and believe me, I share it. I want to assure you that we've got things under control. We've got a major customer coming in tomorrow—I mean
major
—and it looks good for signing them up. That contract alone will turn things around.”

“Hey, we can always hope lightning strikes,” Todd said. “Maybe you'll get lucky. But let me tell you something. Corporations may be based on continuity, but capital markets are all about
creative destruction
. If you're unwilling to change, you'll be drawn into that big slide toward mediocrity. As CEO, you've got to overcome the organizational inertia. Unclog those corporate arteries. Free the flow of fresh ideas. Even the best boats need rocking, man. That's the magic of capitalism. That's what Joseph Schumpeter said years ago.”

“Didn't he used to play for the Bruins?” Nick said, deadpan.

“There's the quick, and there's the dead, Nick,” Todd said.

“Well, I don't know about ‘creative destruction,'” Nick said, “but I know we're all basically in sync. That's why we sold the company to Fairfield. You guys are value investors with the long view—that's the only reason I was able to convince Dorothy Devries to sell to you. I always remember what Willard said to Dorothy and me, in the parlor of her house on Michigan Avenue—‘We want to be your partner, your sounding board. We don't want to run the business—we want you to run the business. We may have to go through some pain together, but we're all in this for the long haul.'”

Todd smiled slyly. He got what Nick was doing, invoking the words of the ultimate boss like Holy Scripture. “That sounds just like Willard. But you gotta understand something—the old man's been spending an awful lot of time fly-fishing in the Florida Keys these days. Guy loves fly-fishing—last year or so, he seems to think a lot more about tarpon and bonefish than P and Ls.”

“He's retiring?”

“Not yet, but soon. All but. Which means he leaves the heavy lifting to us, the poor suckers who have to go to work every day and do the dirty work while he's standing in the bow of his Hell's Bay, casting his line. The world has changed, Nick. Used to be all the big institutional investors would write us a twenty-million-dollar check, maybe a hundred-million-dollar check, and let us do our job. At the end of six years, ten years, they cash out, everyone's happy. Not anymore. Now they're all looking over our shoulders, calling all the time. They don't want to see one of our major investments turn sour. They want to see results yesterday.”

“They ought to go to your Web site,” Nick said. Fairfield Equity Partners actually had an animated Flash movie on its Web site, the Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare, made to look like a storybook. It was beyond cornball. “Tell 'em to check out the tortoise-and-the-hare story. Remind 'em about the long view.”

“These days, the tortoise gets made into turtle soup, buddy,” Todd said.

Scott laughed a bit too loud.

“Don't worry,” Nick said, “that's not on the menu.”

Todd didn't smile. “The kind of companies we like are healthy companies that are growing. We don't believe in catching a falling knife.”

“We're not a falling knife, Todd,” Nick said calmly. “We're going through some adjustments, but we're on the right path.”

“Nick, the quarterly board meeting is in a couple of days, and I want to make sure the board sees a comprehensive plan to turn things around. I'm talking plant consolidation, selling off real estate, whatever. Creative destruction. I don't want the board losing confidence in you.”

“Are you implying what I think you're implying?”

Todd cracked a victorious smile. “Hell no, Nick! Don't take me the wrong way! When we bought Stratton, we weren't just buying some outdated factories in East Bumfuck, Michigan, with equipment out of 1954. We were buying a
team
. That means you. We want you to hang in there. We just need you to start thinking different. A balls-out, warp-speed effort to come up with a way to change the trend line.”