The Edge of Ruin (9 page)

“No, you are not, in fact, the man who runs this company.” She had a German accent, and she sounded snotty. She turned back to Jeannette. Pamela noted that her shoulder-length brown hair had been expertly highlighted. “So, I would like to see my employer now.”

Pamela could feel her face going stiff.

“Judge Oort is Richard’s father. I’d start with him.” There was a pause, and then Jeannette added, “If I were you.” Pamela caught the significant look the two women exchanged.

Richard needs to fire this woman. She acts like
she
runs the company.

“Fine.
Gut
.”

Jeannette withdrew and closed the doors behind her.

Her father stood and extended his hand. “Perhaps I was out of line, but my son is convalescing.”

“Convalescing? Why? What has happened?” She looked again at the paper that showed the bruising on Richard’s face. “Is it this? Was he hurt more badly than reports indicated?”

Pamela couldn’t help but smile at the little throat-clearing her father made, and the way it had the COO’s attention instantly focused on him.

“You are?” her father asked.

The woman hurried to the desk and reached across. As they shook hands she said, “Dagmar Reitlingen.” Something niggled at the back of Pamela’s mind, but when she reached for the elusive memory it went skittering away.

“And I am Robert Oort, and this is my daughter, Pamela.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

Dagmar next took Pamela’s hand. Pamela noticed the woman’s short-clipped nails, very out of character with the expensive clothing, and the width across the back of Dagmar’s hands. It was the mark of a horsewoman, and Pamela had it, too.

“I would have been here two days ago, but I had the journey from hell,” Reitlingen was saying. “We were late leaving Gatwick, and instead of three hours in Dallas it became eight.” Her mouth worked as if she were chewing on something. “And
mein Gott
, how absurdly dry it is in this place. Normally, Mr. Kenntnis and I would meet in London. I’ve only been here once before, just after the building was completed. The heat was shimmering on the pavement, if you can believe it. The sky is still that impossible blue, but at least this time the temperature is bearable.”

Pamela felt like she was being pelted by the nonstop words, but her father was faintly smiling. “Is this a long way of asking for a drink?” he asked.

“Why, yes, exactly,” Dagmar said and smiled.

“Water or something a little stronger?” the judge asked.

“Oh, don’t tempt me. But at this hour of the morning, and as tired as I am, I’d best be cautious. Water, please.”

At a look from her father, Pamela moved to the hidden bar and filled a glass with water and ice cubes from the small refrigerator. The polished red metal of the professional espresso machine gave her a distorted view of the COO. She realized the woman was assessing her with sharply calculating eyes, and Pamela realized that just as she had evaluated Dagmar’s wardrobe the favor was now being returned. Pamela brought her the water.

The judge settled back into his chair, and indicated the chair on the other side of the desk from him. An offended look, quickly masked, flashed across the older woman’s face.
What is she worried about?
Pamela thought.

“Are you here to brief my son, or evaluate if the company is in trouble because of this queer turn of events?” the judge asked, and Pamela felt both stupid and enlightened for not realizing the source of Reitlingen’s discomfort sooner.

Once she found out a gaggle of relatives had arrived, she probably thought we were a gang of rapacious hillbillies. Well, she’s been set straight now.

“You are very direct,” Dagmar answered. “But I think these discussions should best be held with my employer, and not with you … no matter how close your relationship. Which brings me back to the convalescing. What does convalescing mean? Exactly. If you please.”

“My son was shot yesterday.”

“
Mein Gott
. How did this happen?”

“He was responding to a … er … domestic disturbance call,” the judge said.

Pamela watched the color flee from Dagmar’s face. “He is
still
working as a policeman.”

“No,” said Pamela. “He finally listened to Papa. He quit today.”

Pamela caught the flicker in Dagmar’s brown eyes, and wished she could have trained herself out of pronouncing “Papa” in the French manner. It was such an affectation, and it was so like her mother to have stuck her children with it.

“In my experience that career is either very easy or very hard to leave,” Dagmar said.

It was so rude, but Pamela couldn’t control herself, “Oh, God, please, not another one! I am so sick of cops.”

“Well, let me make you feel better. I was never a policeman. My father, however, he was a policeman, and after watching his life I had no interest in pursuing that career.” The older woman paused, and gave a wry smile. “But damn, I wish I could have had the uniform.”

“Why?” her father asked.

“My country has always loved a uniform.” Dagmar paused, and the smile she gave them was a study in irony. “Often to Germany’s detriment. But because I didn’t have a uniform it made it harder for me to achieve my goals.”

Suddenly it all clicked into place for Pamela. “My God, you’re
that
Reitlingen. I thought I recognized the name. You won the gold medal in dressage with the highest overall score ever posted.”

“Ah, I was right, you are a horsewoman. I spotted your hands immediately, and your thighs. So many American woman are …” She made a gesture that indicated bulges. “How do you call them? Saddlebags, yes? But not ladies who ride.”

Her father frowned again. Pamela knew this discussion of horses was not to his taste. “I don’t know. When we were taking Pamela to horse shows I saw a good many ladies who would qualify as … er … large.”

“Ah, but they are not
riding
. They were just riding.” Pamela saw her father’s frown of confusion, but realized she was nodding in agreement and understanding.

Dagmar clapped her hands together with delight. “Yes, you know exactly what I mean. So, do you still ride? I do. Perhaps we can ride together.”

“Not anymore. I quit when I started college. I checked out a few universities that offered horsemanship programs, but Papa pointed out that selecting a college based on whether it had a barn was spectacularly foolish.” Pamela wondered why in the hell she had added all of that. She slid a glance at her father. He was not looking happy. “He was absolutely right, of course.”

“You are very young now, and it is never too late to return to the sport,” Dagmar said.

“Why is it that women have this obsession with horses? And apparently none of you outgrow it.”

Dagmar gave the judge her shoulder and turned to face Pamela straight on. “Does your brother share your father’s disdain?”

“No, he rode, but he decided to focus on gymnastics, and they’re not exactly complementary sports.”

“I’ll take you to Richard,” her father said, his tone making it clear that there was to be no more discussion of horses.

R
ICHARD

T
he cards filled the computer screen like signal flags on a mast, but the message they spelled out was
you lose.
I guided the cursor to the red button and depressed the mouse. The cards vanished from the screen. Whoever invented Spider needed to die. Talk about a time sink, and totally addictive. Just mindlessly clicking on the cards, trying to get used to the Mac mouse. It felt weird not to have the right and left buttons.

I should have been doing something useful, but mostly I was fighting nausea brought on by overheated air and Vicodin, and worrying about what I’d done to circumvent my father’s will. The fact that it felt like a sauna in the penthouse was another strike against my sister. Pamela hated the cold. She had probably hiked the thermostat sometime during the night. I plucked at my pajama top and pulled it away from my damp skin. My scalp prickled with sweat, and I gave my head a vigorous scratching. God, I wanted a shower, but Angela had said I had to wait a couple of days and then wrap my thigh in plastic wrap or keep my leg out of the water.

Okay, I had to get to work. I virtuously guided the cursor over to the folder titled
LUMINA BOOKS
. Then, almost like it was a maddened guide on a Ouija board, the cursor circled the file several times, then darted back to the dock at the bottom of the screen. But of course the cursor didn’t really have a life of its own; I was just stalling. I set the arrow on the folder and firmly pressed down on the mouse. The subfolders, each one titled with a year, filled the screen. How many years was I expected to go back? I opened one at random and was faced with a P&L statement.

The numbers marched like lines of toy soldiers. It took me back to that six months I had spent working at Drew’s brokerage house. Which took me to other memories of Drew. A weight seemed to be pressing down on my chest. Usually when I felt one of the panic attacks coming on, I would go swim laps or run or take a walk.

But all of those coping mechanisms weren’t available right now. I needed to find another distraction. I looked up, and the room obliged. The Steinway grand piano was under the large picture window. Through the glass I had a view of the hunched boulders that littered the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. I made a note to tell Jeannette to get my piano out of my old apartment and over to the penthouse. It had been kind of Kenntnis to buy the Steinway, but I preferred the touch on the Bösendorfer. I really ought to practice. I hadn’t touched the keyboard in four days. No, longer.

The geometric pattern of the Oriental rug, picked out in rich reds, blues, and creams, offered another distraction. I thought about the women in Turkey and the various “stans” knotting these treasures. Well, for us they were treasures; for their creators they represented a small amount of money and a large amount of drudgery. If we finally achieved a living wage around the world, this art would be lost. But maybe that was a good thing. A machine can’t go blind.

I lifted my eyes and looked at the beautiful objets d’art that filled every available surface. There was a tiny Roman marble sculpture of Diana, her features carved in exquisite detail. A Mughal dagger. Egyptian tomb figures. Did the value of the objects keep this room from being a cluttered mess? My uncle’s house in Vermont was also filled with collectables, but the only word that came to mind was “tchotchkes”.

On the wall to my left stood two tall bookcases crammed with books. They flanked a Caravaggio painting of the Madonna.
Wonder which Old One she’ll turn out to be
, I thought.
Or maybe she had been a creation of Kenntnis’s? A loving, comforting mother to offset the vengeful, “damn you all to hell” males. Mothers didn’t scare you like fathers did.

It’s an uncomfortable moment when you’ve realized your errant thoughts turned out to have a psychological agenda. I didn’t want to dwell on where that thought had come from. I opened up another file. The spreadsheet lay before me, numbers centered precisely between the grid lines. There were lots of them. With big amounts. No, make that
huge
amounts. And I was supposed to juggle, manage, decide how to spend the money represented by those numbers. I closed the file and pushed away the rolling table holding the laptop.

I grabbed up a report from a subsidiary company and started reading.
Nonrefundable fees received at the initiation of collaborative agreements for which we have an ongoing research and development commitment are deferred and recognized ratably over the period of ongoing research….
A pounding settled behind my eyes. It felt like my brain was trying to hammer its way out of my skull. I set that report aside and tried another.
Intangible assets are the singular source of differentiation in a postindustrial economy.

The pages flapped like a gooney bird attempting takeoff as I threw it back toward the pile, but the slick paper sent it skidding off the other side. It overbalanced the entire dead-tree tower, and all the reports went tumbling to the floor.

Okay, music. I’d play for a while. Maybe sing a little. That would clear my head, and I could come back to the reports refreshed and able to concentrate.

Yeah, right.

A
s they rode up in the elevator, Pamela could feel her father’s eyes boring into her back. She probably shouldn’t have come along, but she was hoping for a chance to talk to Dagmar Reitlingen, and find out what happened to that amazing gray mare she had ridden in the Olympics. Was Mist still alive? Had she been bred? How many foals? Were they competing?

They stepped off the elevator into the foyer. Piano music and Richard’s rich tenor met them. The liquid runs reminded Pamela of children laughing, but the gaiety of the music didn’t mollify her father. His lips tightened into a thin line.

“Damn the boy,” Robert muttered half under his breath.

Pamela and Dagmar had to hurry to keep pace with the judge. Their heels made a discordant syncopation that shattered the purity of the music. Then they were through the archway and into the living room.

Richard sat at the concert grand piano. His crutches leaned against the side of the instrument. His body swayed in time to the music, and a lock of silver/gilt hair flopped against his forehead.

The judge stood between the two women, and Pamela felt her father gather himself. She was startled when Dagmar laid a restraining hand on his arm and held up a finger in a shushing gesture. The older woman then turned back to Richard and watched him intently. Pamela wondered what she was seeing, and really hoped the woman wasn’t going to prove to be like every other woman and be swayed by her brother’s looks.

As an experiment she tried to look at Richard dispassionately, as an outsider might. Richard’s eyes were closed, his concentration was total, and his entire body was immersed in the effort of drawing music from the piano and his body.

Pamela found it disturbing to look at the fading bruises that trickled down from his eye, across his cheek, and along the line of his jaw. For some reason the physical beating made this seem more real and more frightening than the gunshot wound he’d sustained. It wasn’t rational, but that’s how she felt.
Maybe because cops and guns go together. But cops hit people, too. I see it all the time. Maybe it’s weird because it was a cop getting beat up.