Revenge of the Cube Dweller (12 page)

Ouch again
. “Wow, that is really great. Good for you,” I say.
I hope you get smacked in the head by one of Winston’s slices
, I think. I decide to change the subject to something I actually care about. “How’s Rocky doing?”

“Oh, we had to give him away,” Caroline says brightly, and I see Winston give her arm a pinch. “I read in my book that dogs can become very jealous of a new baby, and we didn’t want to take a chance. You know what I mean. God, can you imagine?” She leans toward me like we are sorority sisters.

“Why didn’t you ask me to take him, Winston?” I ask, backing away. “For crying out loud!” I have to stop myself because other people are turning to look in my direction.

“Bill Matheson took him,” Winston stammers quickly. “Rocky still gets to go hunting, just like the old days. Relax,
Tanzie! Jeez.” I see Winston give Caroline a “see what I’m talking about?” look, so I collect myself to keep from reinforcing any bitch references Winston may have fed her over the past couple of years. I don’t want my bad behavior to make it easier for her to justify ruining my life.

“Lulu got into NYU, Winston. Isn’t that terrific? She’ll be in the theater program,” I say, changing my tone.
Maybe he will ask about financing. It’s a long shot, but worth bringing up
, I think. Caroline looks confused.

“I’ll tell you what’s terrific.” Winston laughs. “Not having to put every single O’Leary through college. The forward curve of that cost savings is fairly steep!” Caroline joins Winston in the laugh and I smile politely although inside I’m longing to slap his smiling face. “Will you be joining us for dinner?” Winston asks.

It occurs to me that Winston and Caroline are being included in the after-visitation dinner festivities with Beth, Grant, and the rest of the club folk. I really want out now. I am not sure I can keep up my good manners any longer.

“You know, I came here with Grant and Beth,” I begin, “but I am so overcome from the sadness of this tragedy that I think I’ll pass and take a cab home.”

“Whatever you think is best,” Winston says.

“It is good to see you again, Winston, and best of luck to both of you.”

The club ladies are gone. I look around to find Beth, but instead run into Leanne and Mason near one of the food stations next the fire exit.

“Oh Lord, is that you Tanzie?” Mason shouts. “I hardly recognized you, darling. You’ve plumped up just like a Ball Park frank!”

“Yes I have, Mason. It’s all that gourmet food in Tulsa.” I smile at a horrified Leanne.

“Have you seen your ex, Tanzie? Turned into quite a specimen with all that working out. And wow, that babe he’s married to—”

“Mason, honey, will you please get me a refill?” Leanne interrupts.

“God, I’m so sorry, Tanzie,” Leanne whispers as she watches Mason amble toward the bar. “He really is in another world these days. He doesn’t know what he’s saying most of the time.”

“No problem, Leanne. It’s really okay.”

I couldn’t fault poor Mason for stating what probably everyone else and even I was thinking.

“Oh my God, Tanzie, Mason’s talking with Alice’s sister; I need to get over there.” And she’s off, leaving me frowning at the paunch below the waistband of my black dress. I suck in my stomach, noticing only a slight improvement. I exhale in defeat and continue my search for Beth.

“I’m not feeling well. I think I’ll take a pass on dinner and get a cab back to your place. Do you mind?” I ask when I finally find her.

“It’s not because Grant asked Winston and Caroline to come along, is it? I told him not to.”

“No,” I lie. “I’m really tired and sad. I just don’t think I would be good company for anyone.”

“We’ll miss you,” she says. But I can tell Beth is relieved that I’m not going.

“T
ake me to the Internet café in the Heights,” I tell the driver when I get into the cab. “Do you know where that is?”

“Of course,” he says in a thick accent.

“Great. But stop at Beck’s first.” I am really starving. Eating Beth-food all day yesterday and then nothing today has really left me dying for something delicious, and a hamburger will be just the thing to sober me up and sustain me for a night of hacking into Baldwin Bishop’s files. What are another couple thousand calories, after all?

I text Beth and tell her I’ve had a change of plans and not to wait up for me.

She texts back almost immediately. “OK. I’ll leave the back patio door open and the alarm off.”

It is 7:30 p.m. when the cab drops me off, and I ask him to return at 10:00. I had only heard about this particular place from
others. In my lovely black dress, I look a bit formal for the place. It isn’t really a café but an Internet bar where you can order a drink and sit at a terminal, paying for services with a credit card or a code from the cashier, if you prefer the anonymity of cash, as is the custom of most Nigerian princes. I choose the cash option; anonymity is going to be important for what I am doing. I skip the bar and enter my code into the access page.

The first thing I do is check my e-mail account since I have been out of the office a couple of days. I am not important enough to have been issued a company phone or Blackberry, and I had refused to have my private iPhone configured to get email. Thus the only way to access my work e-mail is to actually be at my desk or access it remotely. Clearly my role at Bishop is expendable, and there is nothing particularly urgent about any of my assignments.

I sift through the ten or so e-mails before reading one from Moe. He asks if I can attempt another security review over the weekend, only this time “use better judgment and stay off the executive floors.” I am to look for unprotected passwords, confidential stuff in the trash cans, or unlocked office doors. There is another e-mail from Frank. He is sorry I am under the weather but wants to see if I can complete some testing by Monday. I write back that I am still quite ill and don’t think I can make it in tomorrow, but tell him that if I feel better I will come in over the weekend to do it. There is no reason anything needs to be completed by Monday; it is purely a power trip on his part.

I turn my attention away from Frank and his nonsense, and within a minute or two I am logging in to Baldwin’s account. I am fairly certain he is gone from the office by now, or if not, he
is unlikely to be behind a computer. I click on the webmail icon and go immediately to his Outlook account.

I scroll through the inbox looking for the juiciest stuff but decide it will be better to adopt a more methodical approach. I read each e-mail, one by one, so as not to overlook anything. It is amazing what you can glean from reading a person’s daily e-mail. The most current correspondence has to do with the Houston explosion, and I can also see from his calendar that there have been almost nonstop meetings with attorneys, insurance companies, and the environmental team since the explosion on Tuesday. I can also tell that Baldwin works from his iPhone starting around 6:00 each evening, so it is clear to me that I can roam around his desktop without detection after that time.

From his e-mail, it seems Baldwin is concerned about the families that perished in the disaster, but he is much more concerned with the impact on Bishop Group’s bottom line. Several e-mails deal with revised estimates for damages and what will be covered and what will not. There is other correspondence asking if construction or sewer crews in the area could have caused the rupture. One e-mail from the attorneys suggests that Bishop quickly offer money to victims and thus contain civil damages. If the victims take initial cash, it may be considered a settlement, and they then would not be able to sue for additional damages if Bishop is subsequently found negligent. There are no solid decisions since it has only been days since the crisis. This sort of thing will most likely go on for years before liability is established, settlements with families are agreed to, and fines are levied by government agencies.

I have not seen any reference to LEAR_2008_17_Houston_Gas, and Wagner Jones is no longer the Vice President of EH&S.

There is a new fellow with that job, Sullivan Kimball. I have never met him, because I haven’t done any work around the EH&S departments. I see an e-mail from Baldwin to Sullivan asking him to go through the files and check for anything that should be “sanitized.” It is dated yesterday and so far there has been no reply.

The biggest trophy of the session is the conference call information contained in the meeting invitations on Baldwin’s Outlook calendar. It has a dial-in number and participant code that allows someone on the other end of a telephone to participate in meetings. Such codes are issued to individuals, so all of Baldwin’s teleconferences will have the same access information, including his weekly Monday calls with the executive team. It is so Bishop-like to use conference codes that don’t change.

Companies that are more tech-savvy use WebEx meetings that have unique codes for each meeting and each participant, but once again, Bishop has elected the least costly alternative at the expense of security. With this information, I will be able to call in anonymously and listen each Monday to the confidential discussions among the highest rankers in the Bishop organization. I can also listen in on any other telephonic meetings that Baldwin originates. Now that I have access to his Outlook calendar, I know exactly when they are, whom they are with, and what they are about.

I’m not done, but my access time is just about up. I look at my watch and it is almost 10:00, and from the window by my terminal I can see my cab waiting across the street. I think about telling him to come back later and continuing my hacking, but I decide that might be rude to Beth. Besides, I am getting tired, and tomorrow will be a long day.

I leave the café, get in the cab, and thirty minutes later I’m
pouring a glass of white wine from Beth’s refrigerator. I am still out of cigarettes, but I know from previous visits that Beth keeps a carton in her pantry. I help myself and walk out to the patio for my evening tradition. It is dark but I can see Grant on the other side of the pool and walk over to him.

“Hi, Tanzie. We missed you at dinner. Where did you go?” Grant gets up and scoots one of the patio chairs closer to where he has been sitting.

“Nowhere, really,” I lie. I sit down and take a sip of wine. “Took a cab and rode around for a while. Ended up going to Beck’s for dinner.”

“Wow. Better than ours, I’m sure.” He laughs and leans toward me. “Sometimes I get so tired of this Paleo shit that Beth has me on.”

“You two look fabulous, Grant. And what about Winston? Talk about a transformation,” I say. “Who’da thunk it?”

“Yeah, he’s shed a few pounds,” Grant says, nodding.

I light my cigarette, take a long drag, and blow the smoke out of the corner of my mouth.

“Tanzie, did you hang on to any ownership interest in Winston’s company?”

“No, I took the cash equivalent,” I say, staring at the pool. “I thought about holding on to it but I really wanted to put as much distance between the two of us as possible. It was getting pretty ugly. Why?”

“That Bakken shale position has been going gangbusters,” he says. “Word on the street is that he’s selling out to one of the big players up there for a tidy sum.”

“Why am I not surprised?” I groan. “His life is great and mine has gone to shit. He’ll probably end up with some board seat
and I’ll be making Xerox copies of expense reports. Did you know he gave Rocky to Bill Matheson?”

“I hadn’t heard that. But hang in there, Tanzie—things will get better.”

“Thanks,” I say. I hesitate. “I have an insurance question, Grant.”

“Sure.”

“Will Bishop’s costs all be covered if it turns out they are responsible for the explosion?”

He looks at me. “That depends on a lot of things, like their coverage. Insurance can be complicated. I would imagine a company the size of Bishop has plenty of insurance, but everyone has a ceiling. If the costs exceed that ceiling, then they are on their own.”

“Would there be any reason for the insurance not to pay?” I ask.

“Well, if the company didn’t keep up their scheduled maintenance, perhaps. But that’s fairly well controlled by the Department of Transportation. I’m not an expert, but I am pretty sure that Bishop would be required to file routinely with the agency and also have regular audits. Now of course if fraud is involved, that will be something else entirely. Why do you ask? Are you aware of something implicating them?”

“No,” I react without thinking. “Actually, I’m not sure. I don’t know what I think at this point, Grant. Those two boys. You saw them growing up. Every Fourth of July, every Easter egg hunt, every Halloween. I just find it horrible that their lives could be extinguished like that. And why? And who’s to blame? Surely not the poor people who bought property not knowing they were sleeping over a powder keg. It’s so unfair, Grant. It’s unfair that our friends are gone.”

“I agree one hundred percent, Tanzie. Did you happen to see Bill at the reception earlier? You know he’s handling some of the suits.”

“You told me that, but no, we didn’t connect. I needed to get out of there.”

“He was at dinner with us,” Grant says. “I’m confident that Bill will get to the bottom of what happened and who’s responsible. He’s a bulldog; we all know that. I did mention that you worked for Bishop in the audit department. He seemed very interested in speaking with you.”

I take a long last drag on my cigarette, put it out, and light another, trying to buy some time and figure out what to say. As angry as I am, I doubt I’m ready to hitch my wagon to Bill Matheson. Making Bill rich off information I discover doesn’t sit well with me at the moment, even if it might help win a lawsuit. Plus, he has my dog.

“I’m just a flunky, Grant,” I say finally. “I don’t think I know anything relevant to the case.”

“He’s hosting a reception after the funeral tomorrow; maybe he can catch you there.”

“Maybe. Thanks.” I put out my fresh cigarette, watching it bend awkwardly in the ashtray. “I’ll see you in the morning.”