The Consultant (25 page)

“We’ll let you know,” Mr. Patoff said once they were all out of the room and in the corridor. He slammed the door behind them.  

“What the hell?” Jim said.  

On the way here, Jenny had worried only about incorrect test results. Now she was worried about…other things. Diseases, for one. She thought of that rusty knife and the man in the bloody butcher’s apron. The entire scene seemed unreal, and she decided then and there that she was through. She wasn’t going to put up with any more of this. She was quitting. She wouldn’t tell anyone, not even her team; she’d just go back to her desk, clean out what she needed and leave. It might take her awhile to find another job, but even if she ended up at 7-11, it would be better than here. This was wrong. And she was no longer going to be a part of it.  

Her only regret was that she’d participated in the blood test. If she had refused to do it, she would have been fired, and then she could have collected unemployment. She couldn’t get unemployment if she quit.  

No matter. The important thing was to get out of here.  

“Jenny?” Francis was saying. “That man can’t be a nurse or a doctor, can he? He cut me with a dirty knife.”  

“I don’t know,” she replied.  

They reached the elevator, and she was silent as she pressed the bottom button, the one marked
Down
.  

**** 

Austin Matthews pushed the intercom button on his console. “Get me Morgan Brandt at Bell Computers,” he ordered his secretary.  

“Right away,” Diane replied.  

Matthews leaned back in his chair, looking at the circular adhesive bandage on the back of his hand. A nurse had come into his office this morning to take a blood sample (“No one is above the rules!” she cheerfully informed him), but instead of withdrawing his blood using a needle and syringe, the woman had taken out what looked like a plastic bottle opener and started scraping the skin on the back of his hand. It seemed primitive and barbaric, and it hurt like hell, but the nurse assured him that this method was new and state of the art. Once her scraping had drawn blood, she’d pinched the skin and squeezed a drop onto a glass slide, immediately covering it.  

The procedure still seemed wrong, and, looking at the bandage, he decided that after he called Brandt he was going to find out a little bit more about this new process of collecting blood samples to see if it was legitimate.  

“I have Mr. Brandt’s office on the line,” Diane announced. “Please hold.”  

There was a click on the speakerphone and Matthews said, “Morgan?”  

“I’m sorry,” the woman said in a flat voice that indicated she was anything but. “Mr. Brandt is not here.”  

Damn
. “Well, can you tell me when he’ll be back?”  

“I’m afraid Mr. Brandt is no longer with the company.”  

Brandt was out?
Matthews’ internal warning system went off. He switched off the speakerphone and picked up the handset. “Where is Mr. Brandt?”  

“I cannot say.”  

“Well, why is he no longer with the company?”  

“I cannot say.”  

“Well, who’s the new CEO?”  

“The
interim
CEO is Mr. Nelson.”  

“I would like to speak with him, please.” The secretary was getting uppity, and he put enough authority in his voice to make sure he was obeyed.  

There was a click, a pause, a snippet of generic instrumental music, then a man’s voice came on the line. “This is Nelson.”  

“Hello.” Matthews introduced himself. “My name’s Austin Matthews. I’m the CEO of CompWare.”  

“What can I do for you?” The man was all business.  

“CompWare does a lot of business with Bell, and I worked very closely with Morgan Brandt.”  

“Brandt no longer works here.”  

“I was just informed of that.”  

“He was replaced as part of the phase two restructuring.”  

“I just talked to him a couple of weeks ago.”  

“He signed off on it back in January when the plan was first implemented.” Nelson sighed heavily, clearly bored with the conversation. “Listen, I don’t have time for idle chitchat. Is there a reason for your call?”  

Matthews had intended to pump Brandt for some honest information about BFG, but it was pretty clear that he would not be able to do that with this guy, so he said, “Would it be possible to get a home or cell phone number for Morgan? We’re friends, and I’d like to—”  

“If you were friends, you would already have his number. And you would have known that he no longer works here. Good day.”  

The line went dead.  

Matthews slowly hung up the phone. Brandt had signed off on his own ouster? How did that happen? Was he doing the same thing himself by going along with these incremental edicts Patoff was issuing under his name? He looked at the bandage on the back of his hand. Was he paving the way for his own expulsion?  

No. He was not Morgan Brandt.  

Not yet.  

But he’d better start putting his foot down and exerting some authority if he expected to ride this out.  

His office door flew open, hitting the wall with a sound so sharp it made him jump.  

Patoff stormed in, his normally placid face distorted with rage. Behind him, Matthews could see a frantic Diane anxiously attempting to signal him. Then the consultant slammed the door shut. “Jenny Yee in Accounting just quit!
Quit
! Damn that little bitch!”  

Matthews was not sure how to respond, or if he was even expected to respond. He had no idea what was going on here.  

The consultant paced around the office. “I wanted her gone, but that’s not the way she was supposed to go! She screwed up the plan, that slant-eyed slut!”  

Was he talking to himself? It seemed so, but at the same time he was addressing Matthews, so it was hard to tell at whom the diatribe was directed.  

Patoff slammed a hand down hard on the desk, making Matthews jump. “Meeting! I’m calling a meeting!”  

Matthews had slowly, carefully scooted his chair back from the desk and away from the consultant. “Okay,” he said, placatingly. “Who do you want to meet with?”  

“You! You and me, we’re the meeting!” He paused for a moment, clasping his hands together beneath his chin and lowering his head. “Dear Ralph, Bless this meeting. Amen.” Immediately, he resumed pacing. “These are your people, Austin. You have to get them in line.”  

“People quit all the time…”  

“No one
quits
!” the consultant shouted. “Not until we want them to!” He stopped pacing, took a deep breath. “A company is like a machine. Everything is delicately balanced, everything has a specific function, and when changes are made, they need to be done so carefully, surgically, so as to leave that machine more finely tuned. We have a
plan
here. And that plan needs to be
followed
!” He hit his closed right fist against his open left palm for emphasis. “We can’t let it get derailed by nobodies and nothings like that little yellow twat!”  

Matthews kept his eyes on the man. He did not understand the consultant’s tantrum, but he was glad to see it. Patoff had always seemed so unflappable, so completely in control, that it was gratifying to see him lose it over a minor deviation in his ultimate plan.  

Ultimate plan
.  

The phrase had a James Bond ring, like something hatched in the mind of a supervillain.  

Which seemed apropos.  

“Things are going well,” the consultant said. “Not just here but everywhere. Businesses are becoming more efficient, doing more with less. The economy’s coming back, and they’re not hiring, not wasting money on
people
. They’re staying lean and mean, boosting profits but not payrolls. It’s part of the overall strategy, and we’ve been working on it for a long time. Why do you think we came up with email? Why do you think we invented smart phones?”  

“Who’s ‘we’?” Matthews asked, frowning.  

The consultant didn’t reply, just kept talking. “We’ve got them checking their email at home, on vacation, at night, on weekends. They’re working even when they’re not at work. And all those overtime hours are free! It’s why we can keep cutting staff and raising profits. We keep them off guard by making them think they’re always about to be fired or outsourced, and we’ve
got them
!” He clenched his fist so hard it was shaking as he held it in front of him. Matthews saw a drop of blood drip down the edge of the scrunched palm from beneath Patoff’s pinky.  

This was getting out of hand. Matthews stood. “So what if Jenny Yee quit? We’ll hire someone else for her position. It’s not the end of the world.”  

“That’s not the point!”  

“Then what is the point?”  

“Look, we’re
going
to reduce staff. That’s the goal.”  

“I thought the goal was—”  

“Shut up!  

Matthews stiffened. “Excuse me?”  

“Shut up!”  

He glared at the man, infuriated. “No one tells me to shut up in my own office. Get out of here right now. You’re fired. Your services are no longer needed.”  

The consultant leaned forward, two hands on the desk. “Who do you think you are? You can’t fire me. I have a contract—”  

“I’m voiding that contract.”  

“Oh, no, you’re not.”  

“Oh, yes, I am.”  

The consultant straightened, said nothing, closed his eyes.  

A low hum vibrated through the room. With a sharp crash, a framed painting flew off the wall, glass shattering on the floor. The pens and pencils in a Lucite holder atop his desk floated into the air, hovering in a staggered pattern that made Matthews think of stars in a constellation. As though he had suddenly ascended in altitude, his ears plugged up, the pressure building, turning into a piercing headache that made him want to cry out in pain.  

What was going on?  

He stared at the consultant.
What was he
?  

“All right!” Matthews said. “All right!”  

The pens and pencils fell onto the desktop. The consultant opened his eyes. “We are here to do a job. The job you hired us to do. When we have completed that job, we will be gone. But, until that time, we require the freedom, access and resources that are stipulated in our contract in order to carry out our mission. Do I make myself clear?”  

Our mission
 

Matthews nodded dumbly.  

Patoff smiled. “Good. Then let me sort out the Jenny Yee situation and you go back to doing—” He waved a dismissive hand toward Matthews’ desk. “—whatever it is you do.”  

The door opened on its own, and the consultant strode out. Diane instantly rushed into the office. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I tried to get him to stop, but he just walked right past me and—”  

“It’s all right,” Matthews assured her. He felt numb.  

The secretary was looking at the fallen painting and the shattered glass on the floor. “What happened in here?”  

“Nothing,” he said.  

“I’ll call a custodian and get this cleaned up.”  

He nodded as she hurried out. Opening his mouth wide as if to yawn, he got his ears to pop, and the thick wall of pressure that had been muffling his hearing abated. He took a deep breath and held his right hand level with his eyeline. It was shaking. He glanced at the empty Lucite holder, and the pens and pencils scattered about the top of the desk, and looked toward the doorway through which the consultant had left.  

The thought occurred to him once again:
What was he?
 

TWENTY TWO  

“Oh my god,” Angie said.

Dylan, who’d been pushing the cereal around in his bowl, looked up. “What?”  

“Eat your breakfast.” She held the folded section of the newspaper she’d been reading out to Craig. “Do you know someone from CompWare named Jenny Yee?”  

“Not well, but I know her. Why?” Angie tapped a small article below the fold. “Read that.” The headline made him catch his breath:
West Hollywood
 

Woman Dies in Freak Accident
. He read the article:  

Jenny Yee, 31, of West Hollywood, was killed late Tuesday evening when she was struck in the head by one of the original Maltese Falcon statuettes that was used as a prop in the 1941 Humphrey Bogart film of the same name.  

An accountant at the software company CompWare, Yee was on her way home from work at the time of the accident. In a series of unlikely coincidences, she had gotten out of her car on Wilshire Boulevard to inspect her two front tires, which had been flattened by a police nail strip that had been thrown onto the street as a prank by three juveniles who had stolen it after a high-speed chase in a nearby neighborhood. A honking horn reportedly caused Yee to jump onto the adjacent sidewalk, where she knocked over Damon Harrison, an employee of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. For reasons yet to be explained, Harrison was hand-carrying the falcon statuette, which was to be part of an exhibit at the Academy headquarters on the next block. In an attempt to protect the object, Harrison threw the falcon into the air as he fell, intending to catch it before it struck the ground. The statuette hit Yee on the head, knocking her out. She fell backward onto the sidewalk, slamming her head on the concrete.  

Yee was rushed by ambulance to Cedars-Sinai Hospital for emergency treatment but was pronounced dead on arrival.  

“Jesus,” Craig said.  

Unlikely coincidences.
 

That was an understatement. The interlocking actions were like the game
Mousetrap
, or, more to the point, like one of those killings from the
Final Destination
movies, and reminded him of what had happened to Tyler. A chill passed through him, and he looked across the table at Angie, who met his gaze with an expression of disquiet that mirrored his own.  

“What happened?” Dylan asked.  

“Eat your cereal,” Craig told him.  

“Accident?” Angie said.  

He handed back the paper. “I’m sure it is,” he lied.