Читать книгу The Mural - Michael Mallory - Страница 11

CHAPTER SEVEN

“You told him what?” Jack Hayden shouted, sitting in Marcus Broarty’s office. Ordinarily he would not have taken such a liberty as screaming in his boss’s face. But after a largely sleepless night resulting from Elley’s having literally locked him out of the bedroom, followed by her leaving early this morning without so much as a word, just a good deal of slamming and thumping, he was not in a good state of mind.

“Jack, I just relayed what you told me,” Broarty responded, looking like a finalist in the Mr. Guileless competition.

“What I told you, Marc, was the place was a near total loss!”

“You used the word ‘encouraging,’ and I’m quoting you, Jack.”

“Maybe I did, Marc, but I used a lot of other words around it, and they add up to the fact that there’s nothing there. Didn’t you even look at those pictures I emailed you?”

“What pictures?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t get the pictures.”

“I believe that is what I am telling you, Jack.”

“Okay, okay, fine. Even without them, how could you ignore my telling you the place was a disaster area?”

“I don’t remember hearing you say that.”

“Maybe not verbatim, but—”

“Oh, so now I have to interpret what you really mean instead of what you say?” There was a hint of a triumphant smile on Broarty’s face.

“Oh, fuck off, you fat asshole!”

“What...did...you...say?”

Hayden looked at his boss, feeling his own face starting to redden. As with that crass old bat at the restaurant the night before, he had not intended to say what he really felt, and certainly not so vehemently, but it had come out anyway. God, he must be more tired and upset than he thought. “I’m sorry, Marc, that was way out of line. Totally. I’m a little ragged this morning. I slept on the couch last night. I apologize for my rude, unconscionable behavior.”

“Accepted,” Broarty said in an uncertain tone. “I just hope you know what to say to Emac, after he’s gone and told his board that the project is completely doable.”

Jack exhaled slowly, attempting to maintain what little control he had left. “Look, I know you got my phone call because I remember talking to you. And I remember what I said to you. So please tell me how you came to the conclusion that the place was in usable condition.”

Broarty leapt up from his chair and leaned over his desk, as much as his 44-inch waist would allow. “Okay, mister, I’ll tell you. You think I do nothing around here. You think I’m a total shithead, don’t you? What were your words? A fat asshole?”

Jack said nothing in contradiction, just continued looking at him.

“Well my contribution to this place is keeping the goddamned doors open. Emac was about to pull the contract on us unless I saw reason. Is that what you would rather have happen? A big, juicy, lucrative contract with a deep pockets corporation just yanked out from under us, and the news spread around the industry that we had failed in our responsibility to Resort Partners, which would serve to drive other prospective customers away? Is that what you really wanted to happen, Jack?”

“Marc, our responsibility to Resort Partners, the job for which we are getting paid, is to give them an honest evaluation of a parcel of land, pure and simple. Apparently we’ve already failed in that.”

“Goddammit, Hayden, you are not getting it! The lights in here are still on, thanks to me. Not you, me! We still have the contract with Resort Partners. We’ll find something to tell them. We’ll find a way to get around this. We still have time to do that. Had I told him the truth, that would have been the end right there. Why can’t you be enough of a team player to acknowledge that?”

Jack exhaled loudly again. “Okay, Marc, what do you want me to do?”

“Those pictures you took, you still have them, right?”

“The original ones, the ones I sent you, or tried to, no. I don’t know what the hell happened, but they disappeared.”

“Ahaaaaa,” Broarty said accusingly.

“But I went back and took more. Those I still have.”

“Good, that’s good. The ones you sent me...tried to send me...are gone, so we’re clear. And the new ones...those we’ll doctor in Photoshop.”

Jack stared at Broarty’s fat, jowly face. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

“You’re proposing we commit fraud?”

“Bullshit. This isn’t fraud, just a little cosmetic surgery.”

“What happens when they see the site for themselves, Marc? I mean, at some point they’re going to have to visit the place in person.”

“We’ll worry about that later.”

“I won’t do it, Marc,” Jack said, rising and heading for the door. “Sorry, but I draw the line here. I won’t falsify the photos.”

“You know, Jack,” Broarty said, “even though I have personally accepted your apology for your outburst with no hard feelings, I’m afraid it will have to go into your personnel file, which will strongly reflect on your next performance review. However, a little cooperation from you might convince me to just forget the incident altogether. Now get me the goddamned pictures.”

“Fine, I’ll give you the pictures. That’s the reason I went up there, after all. But don’t make me Photoshop them.”

“Since I need the job done correctly and soberly, I won’t.”

Jack Hayden said nothing. He merely stared open-mouthed at Broarty’s smirking face, then left the office, walking past Yolanda without so much as a glance, and went back to his own office. He had only been there a few seconds when his phone rang. It was Yolanda.

“What happened back there?” she asked. “You looked like you were walking to the executioner.”

“Good day for a hanging, don’t you think?”

“Jack, Mr. B. wanted me to remind you to submit your written report along with the pictures he asked for.”

“Right,” Jack said, hanging up. He was halfway through typing out his report when he realized something: if Broarty was so crooked as to fake the photos for Emac’s benefit, what was to stop him for altering the report to match it? Then when Resort Partners finally found out they were sinking money into a wasteland, someone was going to have to take the fall for the debacle, and Jack strongly doubted it would be Broarty. He could argue that his report had been altered, and it would be his word against Marcus’s. He could refuse to file the report at all and risk termination, particularly after his stunning performance earlier this morning. He could contact Emac over Marc’s head and tell him the truth about Wood City, and run the risk of exposing the company to exactly the kinds of legal action and attention that Marc viewed with terror.

No matter which direction he looked, he was screwed.

Only one direction held any appeal: the one that led from his office to The Tap House, a brewpub three blocks away which, unbeknownst to Elley, he frequented at lunch hours (always paying cash for his burgers and beers, so as not to have them appear on the Visa bills). It was only a quarter to ten, and he was not even sure the place was open yet, but he would like to find out. Maybe leaving this job and heading for the pub was the answer. Maybe telling Marcus Broarty what he could do with his fat self was exactly what he needed at this point in his life. Crane wasn’t the only building inspection company in the greater L.A. area. There were others, many others, and finding another job shouldn’t be too hard, even in this economy. Or maybe it was time to chuck the whole inspection game altogether and go do something else. What was stopping him from walking out on both Broarty and Elley, and restarting his life?

Robynn, that’s what.

Her face popped into his mind, and even though he wanted a beer now more than ever, he knew he could not run away and get one. No matter what, he had to stay put. He had to do it for Robynn.

Jack’s cell phone rang and half expected it to be Elley calling from the airport, giving him an ultimatum, but he was surprised.

“Hi, Jack,” said Dani’s voice. “I hope this isn’t a bad time to call.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he said, going over to shut his office door. “In fact, given the day I’ve had so far, hearing from you is quite welcome. What’s up?”

“I wanted to apologize if my calling your house last night got you in trouble. Your wife seemed a little annoyed.”

“Annoyance is the only human emotion Elley expresses these days.”

“God, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I was already in the doghouse before you called. The worst part was that my daughter picked up that something was wrong and she fell into a snit. She was kind of a mess this morning when I dropped her off at school.”

“Did you tell Elley about us?”

“No. You didn’t, did you?”

“No, of course not.” There was a long pause before Dani said, “Jack, how do you feel about what we did?”

“I don’t know. If you’re asking me did I enjoy it, hell yes. If you’re asking did it make me feel like I was alive for the first time in quite a while, again yes. If you’re asking me am I proud of it, then no. If you’re asking if I’m ashamed of myself, I really don’t know.”

“I guess I’m asking if it was worth it. I mean, was it worth risking losing your family.”

“My daughter, no,” he said quickly. “Nothing is worth risking that. As for Elley, well, I think it’s only a matter of time. Maybe I’ve been in some kind of denial about that and meeting you was the catalyst I needed to finally accept the truth.”

“Jack, what I really want to ask is...this might sound a little crazy...but when we were having sex, particularly the first time in the truck, did you feel like it was really you? Or did you feel like you were somebody else?”

“I think I’m ready to be somebody else for a while, Dani. Being me isn’t exactly paying dividends.”

He didn’t feel it, Dani thought, he didn’t feel that sense of wrongness. Maybe there was nothing to feel. She changed the subject then and started to tell him what she had learned from the folklore book, and Jack telling her the stunt that his boss was about to pull on their client. Then his intercom buzzed. “Uh oh, that’s trouble calling. Can you hold on a second?” Jack jabbed the intercom button and said, “Yeah, Yoli, what’s he want now?”

“He’s still waiting for the Wood City pictures.”

“Right. I’ll send them right now.” Hanging up on Yoli, he told Dani: “I have to go, but call me again, just make it on the cell, okay?”

“And you have my number, right?”

“It’s displayed, I’ll write it down. Bye, Dani.” Jack hung up, and after a brief but dangerous pang of loneliness, he pulled out his laptop out of its carrying case and powered it up, then went to his picture file. He found photos of a job site from the week before, an abandoned warehouse in Torrance, and there were a few personal shots he had taken of Robynn playing in the backyard, but the photos of Wood City were nowhere to be found. “Aw, no!” he cried, launching a general search through his entire system, which came up empty.

How could this happen twice? There had to be a problem with the camera.

Jack was about to call Yolanda, but decided that news like this might have to be delivered personally. Trying to ignore the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, he got up and walked to Broarty’s office, telling Yolanda on the way that he had to see him. Jack was told to wait, a move he interpreted as one of Broarty’s patented “power-pauses”—the attempt to put the other person on their guard by making them cool their heels before deigning to see or speak with them. But if it had been Broarty’s intention to put him in his place, this time it had backfired, because Jack used the next four minutes to formulate an idea, one that might solve several problems all at once.

The intercom on Yolanda’s desk rang, and she picked it up, then announced that Jack could go in.

“Pictures, Jack, pictures,” Broarty said as he entered the large corner office.

“Marc, I don’t know what in hell I did,” Jack began, “but I can’t find any of the second group of pictures that I took of the place, either. The first ones I emailed to you from the motel, but those didn’t arrive, and then they disappeared. The new set I took have disappeared too. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with my machine.”

“No pictures?”

“Sorry, Marc, no pictures.”

“That was money well spent, sending you up there,” Broarty sneered.

“I know, and I’m sorry. But look at it this way: now you don’t have to Photoshop anything, because they don’t exist.”

“You may have a point. But we have to tell Emac something.”

“I know, so tell him the god’s honest truth, that I screwed the pooch on this one. Tell him I’m going right back up there to take more pictures. Maybe the lighting will be better this time. I’ll take two cameras, my digital and a camcorder, so that if anything goes wrong this time we’ve got a video backup.”

“Great. Now tell me how I’m supposed to convince Emac to fund a return trip, because I’m not paying for it, Jack. This is not going to come out of our profit.”

“I’ll pay for it myself.”

“You will?”

“I’m the one who screwed up here, so I’ll make good on it. I’ll leave as soon as I clear up a few things on my desk, and I can be up there by late afternoon. I’ll pay for the gas, the motel room, everything.”

“Let me think about it.”

“No time, Marc. If I’m going back I have to do it now. This is the only solution, as far as I can see. Even if you want to take me off the job, you’ve got to send someone up there, right? If you send someone else, it will cost you or Emac. If you take another chance on me, it’s at no cost to you. I’m on my own dime.”

Marcus Broarty looked deep in thought, or as close as he could come, then said: “No, screw it.”

Shit! “Marc, eventually we’ve got to show Resort Partners something, don’t we?”

“Why offer proof the place is a wasteland? That is what you said, right? That there was nothing up there? By not having pictures we buy more time to figure out what to tell them later.”

“Can I make a confession, Marc?” Jack asked. “I’ve been in kind of a bum mood lately.”

“No shit.”

“I don’t know whether you fall into bum moods or not, but sometimes you look at things and everything on the outside looks just as bad as they do on the inside. Maybe when I was looking around Wood City, I was seeing things through my bad mood, making everything look worse than it really was. Maybe I need to go back and look at the place again with fresh eyes. I think I owe it to the project to take a second look, don’t you?”

“Frankly, Jack, it sounds to me like a waste of time.”

Why was Broarty being so dismissive of the idea? It would not cost Crane Commercial Building Engineering a penny, and Jack’s time was not an issue, since Broarty had freed up his schedule so he could devote the entire week to Wood City. What difference could it possibly make to his boss if he went back up the coast? Surely Broarty could not detect the ulterior motive that Jack was harboring. He was not that insightful or clever. There had to be some other reason.

Jack had one card left to play. “Okay, Marc, you’re in charge,” Jack said. “So I guess it’s up to you to call Emac and tell him that Crane is breaching its contract and that Resort Partners should find another firm.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Broarty shot back.

“Well, look, what if Emac finds out that I was willing to bend over backwards to make up for an error in judgment and some slipshod follow-through, and you wouldn’t allow me to?”

“You’re up to something.”

Oh, if only you knew. “I just don’t like making mistakes, particularly big ones. It bothers me, so I try to do whatever I can to rectify the screw-ups. God’s honest truth.”

After a moment of silence, Broarty said: “I’ll have to think about it. Now go away.”

Jack left, his mind already made up. Broarty could think about it all he wanted. Jack would not be there to hear the decision. He would be home throwing some clothes into a suitcase, clothes for both him and Robynn. Then he’d call Nola and tell her that he would be taking Robynn on a trip and she would not be needed for several days—unexpected time off that she would likely find welcome—after which he would swing by Robynn’s kindergarten class and pick her up, telling the teacher that it was an emergency and they would have to be gone for the rest of the week. The teacher, who was very young and not terribly sure of herself, would of course agree and hope that there was nothing seriously wrong, and Jack would assure her that they would be back as soon as possible. Then he and Robynn would drive up the coast, stay in San Simeon, and rendezvous with Dani, and live like a happy family...until he got caught.

And worrying about getting caught was tomorrow’s problem.