Company Man (36 page)

They walked through the Grand Fenwick Hotel parking lot holding hands. It was a cool, cloudless night, and the stars twinkled. Cassie stopped for a moment before they reached the porte cochere and looked up.

“You know, when I was six or seven, my best friend, Marcy Stroup, told me that every star was really the soul of someone who'd died.”

Nick grunted.

“I didn't believe it either. Then in school we learned that each star is actually a ball of fire, and some of them probably have solar systems of their own. I remember when they taught us in school about how stars die, how in just a few thousandths of a second a star's core would collapse and the whole star would blow up—a great supernova followed by nothingness. And I started to cry. Right there at my desk in sixth grade. Crazy, huh? That night I was talking to my daddy about it, and he said that was just the way of the universe. That people die, and stars die too—they have to, to make room for new ones.”

“Huh.”

“Daddy said if no one ever died, there'd be no room on the planet for the babies being born. He said if nothing ever came to an end, nothing could ever begin. He said it was the same way in the heavens—that sometimes a world has to
come to an end so that new ones can be born.” She squeezed his hand. “Come on, I'm hungry.”

The lobby of the Grand Fenwick was carpeted in what was meant to suggest an old-fashioned English broadloom, with lots of oversized leather furniture arranged in clubby “conversation pits,” like a dozen living rooms stitched together. Velvet ropes on stanchions partitioned the restaurant from the lobby. The menu offered fifties favorites like duck à l'orange and salmon hollandaise, but mainly what it offered were steaks, for old-school types who knew the names for the different cuts: Delmonico, porterhouse, Kansas City strip. The place smelled like cigars, and not especially expensive ones; the smoke had seeped into everything like dressing on a salad.

“They have fish,” Nick said, apologetically, as they were led to a corner table.

“Now why would you say that? You think girls don't eat red meat?”

“That's right, I forgot—you do. So long as it isn't actually red.”

“Exactly.”

Cassie ordered a rib steak well done, Nick a medium-rare sirloin. Both of them ordered salads.

After Nick ate his salad, he looked at Cassie. “Brainstorm. I always order a salad. But I just realized something: I don't particularly like salad.”

“Not exactly the solution to Fermat's last theorem,” Cassie said, “but we can work with this. You don't like salad. Same deal as with tea.”

“Right. I drink tea. Laura would make it and I'd drink it. Same deal. I order salads. But you know, I never liked tea, and I never liked salad.”

“You just realized this.”

“Yeah. It was always true. I just wasn't conscious of it, somehow. Like…Chinese food. I don't really like it. I don't hate it. I just don't have any liking for it.”

“You're on a roll, now. What else.”

“What else? Okay. Eggplants. Who the hell decided that
eggplants were edible? Nontoxic, I get. But is everything that's nontoxic a food? If I were some cave man, and I weren't starving, and I bit into an eggplant, cooked or not, I wouldn't say, wow, a new taste sensation—I've discovered a foodstuff. I'd say, well, this definitely won't kill you. Don't bother to dip your arrowhead in it. It's like—I don't know—maple leaves. You could probably eat them, but why would you?”

Cassie looked at him.

“You're the one who was complaining I was a stranger to myself,” Nick said, tugging on the table linen absently.

“That wasn't really what I meant.”

“Gotta start somewhere.”

She laughed. He felt her hand stroking his thigh under the tablecloth. Affectionately, not sexually. “Forget eggplant. Give yourself credit—you know what's most precious to you. Not everyone does. Your kids. Your family. They're everything to you, aren't they?”

Nick nodded. There was a lump of sadness in his throat. “When I was playing hockey, I could convince myself that the harder I worked, the harder I trained, the harder I
played,
the better I'd do. It was true, or true enough. True of a lot of things. You work harder, and you do better. In hockey, they talk about playing with a lot of ‘heart'—giving it your all. Not true of family, though. Not true of being a father. The harder I try to get through to Lucas, the harder he fights me. You got through the force field. I can't.”

“That's because you always argue with him, Nick. You're always trying to make a case, and he doesn't want to hear it.”

“The way he looks at me, I think he couldn't care less whether I lived or died.”

“That's not what's going on here. Has Lucas ever talked to you about Laura's death?”

“Never. The Conover men don't really do
feelings,
okay?” Nick looked around the darkened room, and was surprised to see Scott McNally being seated a few tables away. Their eyes met, and Scott waved a hand. He was with a tall, gangly man with a narrow face and a prominent chin. Nick
saw Scott talking to his dinner companion hurriedly, gesturing toward him. It looked like Scott was deciding whether to do the dessert visit, or to get it over with, and had decided that it would be better to get it over with. The two men stood up and came over to Nick's table.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Scott said, patting Nick's shoulder. “I had no idea this was one of your hangouts.”

“It's not,” Nick said. “Scott, I'd like you to meet my friend Cassie.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Cassie,” Scott said. “And this is Randall Enright.” He paused. “Randall's just helping me understand some of the legal aspects of financial restructuring. Boring technical stuff. Unless you're me, of course, in which case it's like
Conan the Barbarian
with spreadsheets.”

“Nice to meet you, Randall,” said Nick.

“Pleased to meet you,” the tall man said pleasantly. His suit jacket was unbuttoned, and he put his glasses in his breast pocket before shaking hands.

“We get that contract with the Fisher Group analyzed?” Nick said.

“Not sure that's something we want to rush into, actually,” said Scott.

“Sooner the better, I'd say.”

“Well,” said Scott, fidgeting with a lock of hair above his left ear, glancing away. “You're the boss.”

“Enjoy Fenwick,” Cassie said to the lawyer. “When are you heading back to Chicago?”

The tall man exchanged a glance with Scott. “Not until tomorrow,” he said.

“Enjoy your dinner,” Nick said, with a hint of dismissal.

Soon, heavy white plates arrived with their steaks, each accompanied by a scoop of pureed spinach and a potato. Nick looked at Cassie. “How did you know he was heading back to Chicago?”

“The Hart Schaffner and Marx label inside his jacket. The obvious fact that he's got to be some sort of hot-shot lawyer if he's having a working dinner with your CFO.” She saw the question in his eyes and said, “He put his glasses
away because they were reading glasses. And they hadn't been given their menus yet. We're definitely looking at a working dinner.”

“I see.”

“And Scott wasn't happy about introducing him. He did it strategically, but the fact is, he chose to have dinner here for the same reason you did. Because it's a perfectly okay place where you don't expect to see anyone you know.”

Nick grinned, unable to deny it.

“And then there's the ‘You're the boss' stuff. Resent-o-rama. A line like that always comes with an asterisk. ‘You're the boss.' Asterisk says, ‘For now.'”

“You're being a little melodramatic. Don't you think you might be over-interpreting?”

“Don't you think you might not be seeing what's right in front of your face?”

“You may have a point,” Nick admitted. He told her about Scott's secret trip to China, the way he tried to cover it up with a lie about going to a dude ranch in Arizona.

“There you go,” she said with a shrug. “He's fucking with you.”

“Sure seems that way.”

“But you like him, don't you?”

“Yeah. Or maybe it's more accurate to say, I did. He's funny, he's a whiz with numbers. We're friends.”

“That's your problem—it's blinding you. Your alleged ‘friendship' with Scott didn't exactly keep him from stabbing you in the back, did it?”

“True.”

“He's not scared of you.”

“Should he be?”

“Most definitely. Scared of you, not of what's-his-name, the Yale guy from Boston.”

“Todd Muldaur. Todd's really calling the shots, and Scott knows it. Truth is, I'm surprised by him. I brought him in here, I would have expected a modicum of loyalty.”

“You're a problem for Scott. A speed bump. An impedi
ment. He's decided you're part of the problem, not part of the solution. His deal is all about Scott Incorporated.”

“I'm not sure you're right, there—there's actually nothing greedy or materialistic about him.”

“People like Scott McNally—it's not about making a life, or attaining a certain level of comfort. You told me he wears the same shirts he's probably worn since he was a student, right?”

“So whatever he's about, it's not exactly money. I get it.”

“Wrong. You
don't
get it. He's a type. People like him don't care about enjoying the things money can buy. They're not into rare Bordeaux or Lamborghini muscle cars. At the same time, they're incredibly competitive. And here's the thing.
Money is how they keep score
.”

Nick thought about Michael Milken, Sam Walton, those other billionaire-next-door types. They lived in little split-level ranch houses and were completely fixated on adding to their Scrooge McDuck vaults, day after day. He remembered hearing about how Warren Buffett lived like a miser in the same little suburban house in Omaha he bought for thirty thousand bucks in 1958. He thought about Scott's nothing-special house and how much money he had. Maybe she was right.

“Scott McNally has his mind on winning this round, so he can play in the big-stakes games,” Cassie went on.

“They teach this after the lotus position or before?”

“Okay, then let me just ask you this. What do you think Scott McNally wants to be when he grows up?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does he want to be selling chairs and filing cabinets, or does he want to be a financial engineer at Fairfield Partners? Which is more his style?”

“Point taken.”

“In which case, it's fair to ask yourself, who's he really working for?”

Nick gave a crooked smile.

She stood up. “I'll be right back.”

Nick watched as she made her way to the ladies' room, admiring the curve of her butt. She wasn't there long. On her way back, she walked past Scott's table, and stopped there briefly. She said something to the lawyer, then sat down next to him for a moment. She was laughing, as if he'd said something witty. A few moments later, he saw the lawyer hand her something. Cassie was laughing again as she stood up and returned to her seat.

“What was that about?” Nick asked.

Cassie handed him the lawyer's business card. “Just check him out, okay?”

“That was quick work.” Nick glanced at the card and read, “Abbotsford Gruendig.”

“Just being neighborly,” Cassie said.

“By the way, I
can
see what's in front of my face,” Nick said. “You're in front of my face. I see you quite well, and I like what I see.”

“But as I said, we don't see things as they are. We see things as we are.”

“Does the same go for you?”

“Goes for all of us. We lie to ourselves because it's the only way we can get through the day. Time comes, though, when the lies get tired and quit.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Cassie looked at him steadily, searchingly. “Tell me the truth, Nick. What's the real reason the police were at your house?”

For a moment, he was at a loss for words.

He hadn't told her about the police searching the house and yard, which was a pretty damn huge thing not to have told her about. Especially given the connection to her father. Both Lucas and Julia knew the police had been searching for traces of Andrew Stadler. They just didn't know the real reason.

“Lucas told you,” Nick said neutrally. He tried to keep his pulse steady, his breathing regular. He took a forkful of steak for which he had no appetite.

“It freaked him out.”

“Yeah, well, he seemed to think it was a hoot. Cassie, I should have said something to you about it, but I knew how it would upset you. I didn't want to bring up your dad—”

“I understand,” she said. “I understand. And I appreciate it.” She was toying with a spoon. “They actually think my
father
was the stalker?”

“It's just one possibility,” Nick said. “I think they're really groping.” He swallowed hard. “Hell, they probably even wonder if I had something to do with it.” The last words came out in a rush, not the way he had heard himself say it in his mind.

“With his death,” Cassie said carefully.

Nick grunted.

“And is it possible that you did?”

Nick couldn't speak right away. He didn't look at her, couldn't. “What do you mean?”

She set down the spoon, placed it carefully alongside the knife. “If you thought he might have been the one doing all that crazy stuff, maybe you could have intervened, somehow. Helped him to get help.” She broke off. “But then, these are the questions I ask myself. Why didn't I
make
him get help? Why didn't I intervene? I keep asking myself whether there was something I could have done that would have changed things. Stratton's supposed to have all these great mental health programs, but suddenly he wasn't eligible for them anymore—that's a real Catch-22, isn't it? Because of a mental illness, you quit and lose your right to treatment for your mental illness. That isn't right.”

Warily: “It's not right.”

“And because of these decisions—decisions you and I and God knows how many other people made—my daddy's dead.” Cassie was weeping now, tears spilling down both cheeks.

“Cassie,” Nick said. He took her hand in his, and fell silent. Her hand looked pale and small in his. Then a thought came to him, and he felt as if he had swallowed ice. His hand, the hand with which he tried to comfort her, was the hand that had held the gun.

“But you want to know something?” Cassie said haltingly. “When I got the news about—you know—”

“I know.”

“I felt like I'd run into a brick wall. But, Nick, I felt something else too. I felt
relieved
. Do you understand?”

“Relieved.” He repeated the word numbly.

“All the hospitalizations, all the relapses, all the agony he'd endured. Pain that's not physical but every bit as real. He didn't like the place he was in—the world that, more and more, he
had
to live in. It wasn't your world or my world, it was his world, Nick, and it was a cold and scary place.”

“It had to have been hell, for both of you.”

“And then one day he disappears. Then he's dead.
Killed
—shot dead, God knows why. But it was almost like an act of mercy. Do you ever think that things happen for a reason?”

“I think some things happen for a reason,” Nick said slowly. “But not everything. I don't think Laura died for any particular reason. It just happened. To her. To us. Like a piano that just falls out of the sky and flattens you.”

“Shit happens, you're saying.” Cassie palmed away the tears on her face. “But that's never the whole story. Shit happens, and it changes your life, and then what do you do? Do you just go on as if nothing happened? Or do you face it?”

“I choose option A.”

“Yeah. I see that.” Cassie rumpled her spiky hair with a hand. “There's a parable of Schopenhauer's, it's called
‘Die Stachelschweine'
—the porcupines. You've got these porcupines, and it's winter, and so they huddle together for warmth—but when they get too close, of course, they hurt each other.”

“Allegory alert,” Nick said.

“You got it. Too far, and they freeze to death. Too near, and they bleed. We're all like that. Same with you and Lucas.”

“Yeah, well, he's a porcupine, all right.”

“Got to hand it to you Conover men,” Cassie said. “You're as well defended as a medieval castle. Got your moat, got your boiling oil over the gate, got your castle keep. ‘Bring it on,' right? Hope you got plenty of provisions in the larder.”

“All right, babe. Since you see so much more clearly than I do, let me ask you something. How much do you think I have to worry about my son?”

“Well, some. He's a stoner, as you know. Probably gets high a couple of times a day. Which can do a number on your ability to concentrate.”

“A
couple
of times a day? You sure?”

“Oh please. He's got two bottles of Visine on his dresser. He's got Febreze fabric spray in his closet.”

Nick looked blank.

“Fabric freshener. You spritz it on your clothing to remove the smell of the herb. Then he's got these Dutch Master leavings in his wastebasket. For making a blunt, okay? This is all Pothead 101 stuff.”

“Christ,” said Nick. “He's sixteen years old.”

“And he's going to be seventeen. And then eighteen. And that's going to be rough too.”

“A year ago you wouldn't have recognized him. He was this totally straight, popular athlete.”

“Just like his dad.”

“Yeah, well. My mom didn't die when I was fifteen.”

“What makes it worse is if you can't talk about it.”

“He's a kid. It's hard for him to talk about stuff like that.”

Cassie looked at him.

“What?”

“I wasn't just talking about Lucas,” she said quietly. “I was talking about you.”

A deep breath. “You like metaphors? Here's one. You know the cartoon coyote that's always racing off the edge of the cliff?”

“Yes, Nick. Wile E. Coyote. An odd role model for the CEO of Acme Industries, I'd have thought.”

“And he's in midair, but his legs are still pumping and he's moving along fine. But then—he looks down, and he sinks like a stone. Moral of the story?
Never fucking look down
.”

“Beautiful,” Cassie said, her voice as astringent as witch hazel. “Just beautiful.” Her eyes flashed. “Have you noticed that Lucas can't even
look
at you? And you can barely look at him. Now why is that?”

“If you bring up those Black Forest porcupines again, I'm out of here.”

“He's lost his mom, and he desperately needs to bond with his father. But you're not around, and when you are, you're not
there
. You're not exactly verbally expressive, right? He needs you to be the healer, but you can't do it—
you don't know how. And the more isolated he feels, the more he turns on you, and the angrier you get.”

“The armchair psychologist,” Nick said. “Another one of your imaginative ‘readings.' Nice guess, though.”

“No,” she said. “Not a guess. He pretty much told me.”

“He
told
you? I can't even imagine that.”

“He was stoned, Nick. He was stoned, and he started to cry, and it came out.”

“He was
stoned
? In your presence?”

“Lit up a nice fat doobie,” Cassie said, with a half-smile. “We shared it. And we had a long talk. I wish you could have heard him. He has a lot on his mind. A lot he hasn't been able to say to you. A lot you need to hear.”

“You smoked marijuana with my
son
?”

“Yes.”

“That is
incredibly
irresponsible. How could you do that?”

“Whoa, Daddy, you're missing the big picture here.”

“Lucas has a problem with this shit. You were supposed to help him. Not encourage him, goddammit. He looks up to you!”

“I told him to lay off the weed, at least on school nights. I think he's going to.”

“Goddammit! You haven't got a clue, have you? I don't care what kind of a fucked-up childhood you had. This is my
son
you're dealing with. A sixteen-year-old boy with a drug problem. What part of this isn't registering?”

“Nick, be careful,” she said, in a low, husky voice. Her face was turning a deep red, but her expression remained oddly fixed, a stone mask. “We had a very open and honest conversation, Luke and I. He told me all kinds of things.” Now she turned to look at him with hooded eyes.

Nick was torn between fury and fear, wanting to lay into her for what she'd done, getting high with Lucas—and yet frightened of what she might have found out from Lucas.

Lucas, who might—or might not—have heard shots one night.

Who might—or might not—have overheard his father and Eddie discussing what had really happened that night.

“Like what?” he managed to say.

“All
kinds
of things,” she whispered darkly.

Nick closed his eyes, waited for his heart to stop hammering. When he opened them again, she was gone.