Disclosure: A Novel (36 page)

We're checking the wrong company."

He watched as the computer terminal flashed:

SEARCHING DATABASE

And then, after a moment, he turned the screen so Fernandez could see: Digital Communications Data Reference Search Report

DB 4: Human Resources (Sub 5/Employee Records)

Search Criteria:

1. Disposition: Terminated a/o Transferred a/o Resigned

2. Supervisor: Johnson, Meredith

Michael Tate 5/9/89 Terminate Drug Use HR RefMed

Edwin Sheen 7/5/89 Resign Alt Employment D-Silicon

William Rogin 11/9/89 Transfer Own Request Austin

Frederic Cohen 4/2/90 Resign Alt Employment Squire Sx

Robert Ely 6/1/90 Transfer Own Request Seattle

Michael Backes 8/11/90 Transfer Own Request Malaysia

Peter Saltz 1/4/91 Resign Alt Employment Novell

Ross Wald 8/5/91 Transfer Own Request Cork

Richard Jackson 11/14/91 Resign Alt Employment Aldus

James French 2/2/92 Transfer Own Request Austin

Fernandez scanned the list. "Looks like working for Meredith Johnson can be hazardous to your job. You're looking at the classic pattern: people last only a few months, and then resign or ask to be transferred elsewhere. Everything voluntary. Nobody ever fired, because that might trigger a wrongful termination suit. Classic. You know any of these people?"

"No," Sanders said, shaking his head. "But three of them are in Seattle," he said.

"I only see one."

"No, Aldus is here. And Squire Systems is out in Bellevue. So Richard Jackson and Frederic Cohen are up here, too."

"You have any way to get details of termination packages on these people?" she said.

"That would be helpful. Because if the company paid anybody off, then we have a de facto case."

"No." Sanders shook his head. "Financial data is beyond minimal access.

"Try anyway."

"But what's the point? The system won't let me."

"Do it," Fernandez said.

He frowned. "You think they're monitoring me?"

"I guarantee it."

"Okay." He typed in the parameters and pressed the search key. The answer came back: FINANCIAL DATABASE SEARCH IS BEYOND

LEVEL (O) ACCESS

He shrugged. "Just as I thought. No cigar."

"But the point is, we asked the question," Fernandez said. "It'll wake them right up."

Sanders was heading toward the bank of elevators when he saw Meredith coming toward him with three Conley-White executives. He turned quickly, then went to the stairwell and started walking down the four flights to the street level. The stairwell was deserted.

One flight below, the door opened and Stephanie Kaplan appeared and started coming up the stairs. Sanders was reluctant to speak to her; Kaplan was, after all, the chief financial officer and close to both Garvin and Blackburn. In the end, he said casually, "How's it going, Stephanie."

"Hello, Tom." Her nod to him was cool, reserved.

Sanders continued past her, going down a few more steps, when he heard her say, "I'm sorry this is so difficult for you."

He paused. Kaplan was one flight above him, looking down. There was no one else in the stairwell.

He said, "I'm managing."

"I know you are. But still, it must be hard. So much going on at once, and nobody giving you information. It must be confusing to try to figure everything out."

Nobody giving you information?

"Well, yes," he said, speaking slowly. "It is hard to figure things out, Stephanie."

She nodded. "I remember when I first started out in business," she said. "I had a woman friend who got a very good job in a company that didn't usually hire women executives.

In her new position, she had a lot of stress and crises. She was proud of the way she was dealing with the problems. But it turned out she'd only been hired because there was a financial scandal in her division, and from the beginning they were setting her up to take the fall. Her job was never about any of the things she thought it was. She was a patsy.

And she was looking the wrong way when they fired her."

Sanders stared at her. Why was she telling him this? He said, "That's an interesting story."

Kaplan nodded. "I've never forgotten it," she said.

On the stairs above, a door clanged open, and they heard footsteps descending. Without another word, Kaplan turned and continued up.

Shaking his head, Sanders continued down.

In the newsroom of the Seattle Port-Intelligencer, Connie Walsh looked up from her computer terminal and said, "You've got to be kidding."

"No, I'm not," Eleanor Vries said, standing over her. "I'm killing this story." She dropped the printout back on Walsh's desk.

"But you know who my source is," Walsh said. "And you know Jake was listening in to the entire conversation. We have very good notes, Eleanor. Very complete notes."

"I know."

"So, given the source, how can the company possibly sue?" Walsh said. "Eleanor: I have the fucking story."

"You have a story. And the paper faces a substantial exposure already."

"Already? From what?"

"The Mr. Piggy column."

"Oh, for Christ's sake. There's no way to claim identification from that column."

Vries pulled out a xerox of the column. She had marked several passages in yellow highlighter. "Company X is said to be a high-tech company in Seattle that just named a woman to a high position. Mr. Piggy is said to be her subordinate. He is said to have brought a sexual harassment action. Mr. Piggy's wife is an attorney with young children.

You say Mr. Piggy's charge is without merit, that he is a drunk and a womanizer. I think Sanders can absolutely claim identification and sue for defamation."

"But this is a column. An opinion piece."

"This column alleges facts. And it alleges them in a sarcastic and wildly overstated manner."

"lt's an opinion piece. Opinion is protected."

"I don't think that's certain in this case at all. I'm disturbed that I allowed this column to run in the first place. But the point is, we cannot claim to be absent malice if we allow further articles to go out."

Walsh said, "You have no guts."

"And you're very free with other people's guts," Vries said. "The story's killed and that's final. I'm putting it in writing, with copies to you, Marge, and Tom Donadio."

Fucking lawyers. What a world we live in. This story needs to be told."

"Don't screw around with this, Connie. I'm telling you. Don't."

And she walked away.

Walsh thumbed through the pages of the story. She had been working on it all afternoon, polishing it, refining it. Getting it exactly right. And now she wanted the story to run. She had no patience with legal thinking. This whole idea of protecting rights was just a convenient fiction. Because when you got right down to it, legal thinking was just narrow-minded, petty, self-protective-the kind of thinking that kept the power structure firmly in place. And in the end, fear served the power structure. Fear served men in power. And if there was anything that Connie Walsh believed to be true of herself, it was that she was not afraid.

After a long time, she picked up the phone and dialed a number. "KSEATV, good afternoon."

"Ms. Henley, please."

Jean Henley was a bright young reporter at Seattle's newest independent TV station.

Walsh had spent many evenings with Henley, discussing the problems of working in the male-dominated mass media. Henley knew the value of a hot story in building a reporter's career.

This story, Walsh told herself, would be told. One way or another, it would be told.

Robert Ely looked up at Sanders nervously. "What do you want?" he asked. Ely was young, not more than twenty-six, a tense man with a blond mustache. He was wearing a tie and was in his shirtsleeves. He worked in one of the partitioned cubicles at the back of DigiCom's Accounting Department in the Gower Building.

"I want to talk about Meredith," Sanders said. Ely was one of the three Seattle residents on his list.

"Oh God," Ely said. He glanced around nervously. His Adam's apple bobbed. "I don't-I don't have anything to say."

"1 just want to talk," Sanders said.

"Not here," Ely said.

"Then let's go to the conference room," Sanders said. They walked down the hall to a small conference room, but a meeting was being held there. Sanders suggested they go to the little cafeteria in the corner of Accounting, but Ely told him that wouldn't be private.

He was growing more nervous by the minute.

"Really, I have nothing to tell you," he kept saying. "There's nothing, really nothing."

Sanders knew he had better find a quiet place at once, before Ely bolted and ran. They ended up in the men's room-white tile, spotlessly clean. Ely leaned against a sink. "I don't know why you are talking to me. I don't have anything I can tell you."

"You worked for Meredith, in Cupertino."

"Yes."

"And you left there two years ago?"

"Yes."

"Why did you leave?"

"Why do you think?" Ely said, in a burst of anger. His voice echoed off the tiles. "You know why, for Christ's sake. Everybody knows why. She made my life hell."

"What happened?" Sanders asked.

"What happened." Ely shook his head, remembering. "Every day, every day. `Robert, would you stay late, we have some things to go over.' After a while, I tried to make excuses. Then she would say, `Robert, I'm not sure you're showing the proper dedication to this company.' And she would put little comments in my performance review. Subtle little negative things. Nothing that I could complain about. But they were there. Piling up.

`Robert, I think you need my help here. Why don't you see me after work.' `Robert, why don't you drop by my apartment and we'll discuss it. I really think you should.' I was-it was terrible. The, uh, person I was living with did not, uh . . . I was in a real bind."

"Did you report her?"

Ely laughed harshly. "Are you kidding? She's practically a member of Garvin's family."

"So you just put up with it . . ."

Ely shrugged. "Finally, the person I was living with got another job. When he came up here, I transferred, too. I mean, of course I wanted to go. It just worked out all around."

"Would you make a statement about Meredith now?"

"Not a chance."

"You realize," Sanders said, "that the reason she gets away with it is that nobody reports her."

Ely pushed away from the sink. "I have enough problems in my life without going public on this." He went to the door, paused, and turned back. `Just so you're clear: I've got nothing to say on the subject of Meredith Johnson. If anybody asks, I'll say our working relationship was correct at all times. And I'll also say that I never met you."

Meredith Johnson? Of course I remember her," Richard Jackson said. "I worked for her for more than a year." Sanders was in Jackson's office on the second floor of the Aldus Building, on the south side of Pioneer Square. Jackson was a good-looking man of thirty, with the hearty manner of an ex-athlete. He was a marketing manager at Aldus; his office was friendly, cluttered with product boxes for graphics programs: Intellidraw, Freehand, SuperPaint, and Pagemaker.

"Beautiful and charming woman," Jackson said. "Very intelligent. Always a pleasure."

Sanders said, "I was wondering why you left."

"I was offered this job, that's why. And I've never regretted it. Wonderful job. Wonderful company. I've had a great experience here."

"Is that the only reason you left?"

Jackson laughed. "You mean, did Meredith Manmuncher come on to me?" he said. "Hey, is the Pope Catholic? Is Bill Gates rich? Of course she came on to me."

"Did that have anything to do with your leaving?"

"No, no,"Jackson said. "Meredith came on to everybody. She's sort of an equal opportunity employer, in that respect. She chased everybody. When I first started in Cupertino, she had this little gay guy she used to chase around the table. Terrorized the poor bastard. Little skinny nervous guy. Christ, she used to make him tremble."

"And you?"

Jackson shrugged. "I was a single guy, just starting out. She was beautiful. It was okay with me."

"You never had any difficulties?"

"Never. Meredith was fabulous. Shitty lay, of course. But you can't have everything.

She's a very intelligent, very beautiful woman. Always dressed great. And she liked me, so she took me to all these functions. I met people, made contacts. It was great."

"So you saw nothing wrong?"

"Not a damn thing," Jackson said. "She could get a little bossy. That got old. There were a couple of other women I was seeing, but I always had to be on call for her. Even at the last minute. That could be irritating sometimes. You begin to think your life is not your own. And she's got a mean temper sometimes. But what the hell. You do what you have to do. Now I'm assistant manager here at thirty. I'm doing great. Great company. Great town. Great future. And I owe it to her. She's great."

Sanders said, "You were an employee of the company at the time that you were having your relationship, isn't that right?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Isn't she required by company policy to report any relationship with an employee? Did she report her relationship with you?"

"Christ, no,"Jackson said. He leaned across his desk. "Let's get one thing straight, just between you and me. I think Meredith is great. If you have a problem with her, it's your problem. I don't know what it could be. You used to live with her, for Christ's sake. So there can't be any surprises. Meredith likes to fuck guys. She likes to tell them to do this, do that. She likes to order them around. That's who she is. And I don't see anything wrong with it."

Sanders said, "I don't suppose you'd-"

"Make a statement?" Jackson said. "Get serious. Listen, there's a lot of bullshit around now. I hear things like, `You can't go out with the people you work with.' Christ, if I couldn't go out with the people I worked with, I'd still be a virgin. That's all anybody can go out with the people you work with. That's the only people you get to know. And sometimes those people are your superiors. Big deal. Women screw men and get ahead.