Terminated (21 page)

“You see, my father has been unhappy for so long. You might not think it from looking at him, but he was once a vibrant man. His illnesses have been tough on him.” Tarbell came around the chair to face his father and peered into his thousand-yard stare. “I should have seen this coming when he sent me out to get him a cigar. I know I shouldn’t have, but he missed having a smoke. It was one of the last joys left open to him.”

He patted his father on the shoulder and left the house in search of a smoke shop. When he returned, he called 911 and told them the whole sorry story. He squeezed out a few sobs for appearances, but inside he’d never felt better.

M
onday. A new day and the beginning of a new
week. Things would change this week. Paul could feel it. He checked himself out in the mirror. It felt good to be in a suit again instead of sweats. He might have been out of work for over a year, but it didn’t show in his demeanor. He was confident, sharp—employable. He put it all down to the suit.

Gwen watched him from the bathroom doorway. “You look great.”

“I feel great.”

She sidled over to him and draped her hands over his neck. “You’re going to knock ’em dead today.”

He kissed her. “I think so, too.”

Paul hit the road with the rest of the morning commuters for the first time in a long time. While his fellow drivers were no doubt bitching about the Monday morning crush, he couldn’t stop smiling. He was part of the rat race again and he wanted his bit of cheese. If he got this job, he’d no doubt complain about the shitty traffic and the idiot who cut him off at the on-ramp just like everyone else, but he’d still be happy to be back.

He drove on autopilot while he went over his talking points. He’d been to enough interviews over recent months to know what he’d get asked today. Anything skill and experience related, he had down pat and he had enough references
to sink a battleship. Where things got sticky was answering why he’d been out of work for thirteen months. It was one of those stick-it-in-and-break-it-off questions. He could claim bad economics, the war in Iraq or sun spots, but those arguments became harder to defend with every week he was without a job. Long-term unemployment came with a stigma all its own.

“Please give me the job,” he murmured to himself.

He needed this position. He knew how touchy he’d become over time. Gwen had been an absolute star putting up with his shit. He knew it would have been a lot worse for him without Kirsten. His daughter kept him sane.

This job opportunity wasn’t just for him. The good ship Farris was leaking on all fronts now that Gwen had been fired. Their money was just about gone. They wouldn’t last long with both of them out of work.

They were still both reeling from her firing. Tarbell should be in jail for what he’d done. Paul could be bitter, but it did him no good. Gwen was better off working somewhere else. Pace had put her in danger when their hired detectives had played at trying to catch Tarbell. Despite the bad timing, losing her job was for the best.

“Concentrate,” he told himself. He couldn’t afford to be distracted. Impressing Greg Solis was all that counted today. The Farrises needed to end their losing streak.

Paul followed the directions to the project site in Fremont. He knew the site already. It was a commercial building project that had hit the rocks when the investment fell apart. The building had remained half built and had looked destined for demolishment, but new investors had popped up. Construction would be kick-started when the permits were transferred to the new owners.

Nothing had hit the news about the project. According to Solis, the project architect, the investors were having a press conference in two weeks to announce the job was up and running again. By then, they wanted a crew onsite and
working. It was tight, but it was doable.

Paul spotted the nine-story concrete and structural steel skeleton jutting into the air as he came up to his exit. He took the off-ramp and followed the roads to the site entrance. The chain-link fencing surrounding the site had long since been torn down, and many of the concrete surfaces had been tagged with colorful graffiti. That was going to be the rough part with this job—making sure the damage to the structure was taken care of after months of neglect.

As he bumped his car over the rough driveway, he came face-to-face with a tall, skinny man in a suit holding a pipe wrench in one hand. Paul tensed, but relaxed when the man with the wrench smiled and waved at him.

Paul stopped the car and swung the door open. He was slow about getting out, just in case this wasn’t his interviewer.

“Greg?” Paul said.

“Yes. Paul Farris?”

Paul slipped from the car with his file containing his references and some notes he’d worked up on the project. He’d spent all of Sunday putting a work program together. It was overkill, but he needed to land this job.

Solis trotted over to Paul with his hand out. He noticed Paul gazing at the pipe wrench.

“Sorry about the hardware,” he said, holding the wrench up. “With no security onsite until the papers are signed on this place, I need a little something for protection.” He jerked a thumb at the graffiti. “We get a lot of homeless and vandals hanging out here. You can’t be too sure.”

Site security was always a problem. Copper cable got jacked for the salvage value. Tools got stolen for resale. Anything that was too heavy to lift or too complicated to operate got trashed. Security would be his first order of business—if they gave him the job.

Solis slung the wrench on the backseat of his Honda and locked the car. “I thought I’d make this a practical interview. We’ve got to get this place up and running
fast. I’m looking for someone who can do that.”

Paul smiled. His preparation had been worth every minute of the Sunday he’d burned up putting his package together.

Solis walked Paul over to the building. “OK, we’re bringing this project out of mothballs. You’re the construction supervisor. What do you do?”

Although Paul hadn’t seen the project plans, Solis was playing to his strengths. He knew how to assess a jobsite and break it down into functions and tasks. He led Solis through the building, outlining his plans for putting the building back on track and getting it finished within a reasonable timeline. At first he was a little stiff with his ideas, but the rust that had built up over the last year quickly fell away.

He watched Solis for his reaction. The man was lapping up everything he said. He reined in his enthusiasm before it got away from him. If everything was on the up and up, he was in a good position for this job. But he’d been in this position before only to have the job snatched away from him.

Solis pointed to the stairwell, and they climbed to the fourth floor. It had been partially framed in, but that was the extent of the work. If there’d been any utility lines put in, they’d been ripped out by scavengers.

“What would you do with this?” Solis asked as they wandered through the floor’s skeletal layout.

Paul examined the studs for damage and rot. “Leave it as is until the floor plan changed.”

Solis nodded his approval. He pointed to the far wall over Paul’s shoulder. “And that?”

Paul turned and took an exploratory step toward the wall but didn’t see what he could do with it. It was a wall. Just as he was about to turn back to Solis, pain exploded in his back. It spread out through his body, driving him to his knees. He tried to suck in a breath, but he’d lost the ability. Another blow, this time across his shoulders, sent him onto all fours.

He tried calling out to Solis, but the words
didn’t come, just a noise. He choked with the effort and tears filled his eyes. Whoever had gotten to him must have taken Solis out first. It had to be vandals, thugs, or the homeless. Someone had claimed this place as their own and as de facto owners, treated trespassers with brute force. Nothing else made sense.

“Greg,” he said, the word burning his throat. He made himself rise to his feet before his attacker got in another blow. He scrabbled forward. His back burned where he’d been hit. Everything hurt too much to tell if anything had been broken.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Paul searched for an escape route. The stairway seemed like a world away and the unfinished building left him nowhere to hide. The studs running from floor to ceiling like wooden jail bars gave him some protection. He lurched between two studs. It was hard for Solis to swing the pipe with them in the way. He wrapped his arms tightly around the studs to hold himself up.

Now he came face-to-face with his attacker. Solis moved in toward him with a two-foot length of scaffold pipe. The sight of Solis coming at him sent his mind reeling. What had he missed? He felt as though five minutes of his life had been removed and spliced back together. The resulting confusion hurt his already dizzied mind.

“Nowhere to run, Paul.”

Solis stood between him and the only functioning stairwell. He could simply jump out the unfinished side of the building where the floor-to-ceiling windows would go in, but he was looking at a three-story fall to the rubble-strewn ground. It was an escape, just not a good one.

“What’s going on?”

“What’s it look like?”

Paul didn’t have an answer. Confusion kept getting in the way.

Solis slipped closer to him, and
Paul backed up. Each step took him closer toward the windowless edge of the building. There were three or four more skeletal rooms to pass through before he was left with nowhere else to go.

He looked among the trash on the floor for a weapon—a length of stud, a piece of scaffold, a discarded hammer, an old saw blade, anything to fight back with. He’d even take a section of drywall for protection. But he saw nothing but dropped screws and spent nail gun magazines.

The second Paul took his eyes off Solis, the architect pounced. He sprang forward with the pipe raised above his head. Paul scurried back, slipped on something, and sat down hard on his backside. He snapped back onto his feet, but the damage had been done. Solis slipped between the studs separating them. Paul tried running, but Solis had the momentum and was on Paul before he could escape. Solis swung the pipe. Paul put up his arm to protect himself, and the pipe smashed down on his forearm, breaking it. Paul felt the bones shatter and almost puked from the pain.

Paul bottled the pain and jerked right to sidestep Solis and make for the stairwell. Solis spotted the move a second too late. He tried to cut Paul off, but Paul rushed through the framed doorway. A corridor of doorways stretched ahead of him toward the stairwell.

Paul held his arm tight to his side to dull the agony of broken bones grinding against each other. The stairs would hurt, but he could deal with that as long as he got away from this son of a bitch.

But Solis robbed Paul of that chance. He hurled the scaffold pipe at him, and it struck the concrete floor before bouncing up and entangling itself in his ankles. Paul’s legs went out from under him, and he came down hard on his right hip and broken right arm. The agony drove a scream out of him he didn’t think he had left in him.

Solis’s footfalls echoed off the
concrete.

Paul wanted to give up, surrender, but he couldn’t. He wouldn’t die at Solis’s hands. The pipe was still knotted up between his legs. He grabbed it and brandished it to stave off Solis. He swung it back and forth, slicing the air.

But Solis ignored the weapon that had worked so well on Paul. He led with his foot and kicked Paul in the elbow of the arm holding the pipe. The kick struck Paul’s funny bone. The explosion in his now numb arm forced the pipe out of his grasp. Solis followed up his first kick with a second to Paul’s stomach. His foot connected with something that forced Paul to curl up into a ball.

Solis stepped back to appreciate his handiwork. Paul looked up at him through tear-blurred vision.

“Why are you doing this?”

Solis snorted. “Why don’t you ask Gwen?”

Confusion became horrifying clarity. Paul knew who this man was. He’d finally met Tarbell.

Tarbell went over to reclaim the scaffold pipe. The significance of that simple act struck fear into Paul. He squirmed to get up, but his body failed him. He was only beginning to get the feeling back in his left arm. His fingers tingled to the point of burning, and there was no real strength in his arm to support his body.

Tarbell returned with the pipe loose in his grip and a sneer tight on his face. The soulless expression in his eyes forced Paul to push himself to his knees. Tarbell backhanded Paul savagely. Paul’s balance wasn’t with him, and he went down on his back. Tarbell raised the pipe above his head.

“Please, don’t,” Paul said.

Tarbell didn’t listen. Paul didn’t have an escape plan this time. He closed his eyes and waited for the final blow. Finding a job was the furthest thing from his thoughts when Tarbell brought the pipe down.

It was deep into the afternoon when her cell
rang. It was Paul, at last. She’d expected him home hours ago, but she knew how these interviews went sometimes. They could drag on forever, especially if the interviewer liked you. She hoped that was the case and that it had not gone so badly that Paul had decided to slink off somewhere to be alone. She answered the phone as cheerfully as possible. “Who’s this?” said an unfamiliar male voice.

That should have been her question and it struck a chord of irritation in her. “Can I speak to Paul?”

Gwen became suddenly aware of the background noise making it down the line. There were voices—not like those belonging to guys in a bar. Orders were being issued. Besides the voices, she heard vehicles, their engines sounding angry and urgent. Her stomach dropped when she heard the sound of a siren.