The Last Word (2 page)

There are two other Spellman Investigations employees worth mentioning. Foremost,
Demetrius Merriweather, the bow-tied fellow you just met. D, as we call him, is a
complex, multifaceted human being, but if you had to describe him in an elevator ride,
this is what you’d say: 1) He spent fifteen years in prison for a crime he didn’t
commit. 2) He’s a freaking unbelievably great chef and shares his gift with anyone
in the vicinity. 3) He doesn’t take sides. 4) He really doesn’t like snitching, but
he understands the value of the subtle dissemination of information under a specific
set of circumstances. He’s also been employee of the month for the past twelve months.

If you were to find yourself alone in a parking garage with him, you
wouldn’t automatically assume ex-con. He doesn’t possess any identifying prison tattoos;
he doesn’t have the hardened look of a man who spent fifteen years behind bars, although
he’s not a small man—six-two, softer in the middle than when he first got out, because
he has other pastimes besides going to the prison gym, and his favorite hobby is cooking,
and there are more ingredients on the outside than the inside. He’s black. Did I mention
that? He has a few freckles, like Morgan Freeman, but the resemblance ends there.
Unfortunately. He shaves his head, not because he’s going bald, but because the look
works on him. He can look intimidating sometimes, but when he smiles he has these
ridiculous dimples. They’re adorable. But you never want to call an ex-con “adorable”
no matter how harmless he is. And the truth is, I doubt D is all that harmless. He
was in prison for fifteen years. You’re going to tell me he never got in a fight?
I’ve asked (repeatedly); he just doesn’t answer.

And, finally, our part-time employee, Vivien Blake. A college coed who used to be
the subject of an investigation, but we’ve never been good with boundaries, so now
she works for us. Something about Vivien reminds me of the old me: a recklessness,
a history of inappropriate behavior, a penchant for vandalism. Some years back Vivien
managed to steal an entire fleet of golf carts from Sharp Park Golf Course in Pacifica
and relocate them to a cow pasture ten miles away. I’ve asked her at least twenty
times how she managed to do it, and she refuses to reveal her professional secrets.
The seventeen-year-old delinquent who still resides somewhere deep in my core has
profound respect for that.

Vivien has only just returned from one month abroad in Ireland. She was supposedly
taking a four-week intensive summer course on James Joyce’s
Ulysses
at Trinity College, but I noticed that when my sister pressed her on the details
Vivien only mentioned castles and pubs and a walking tour of Joycean Dublin, which
Rae said was totally open to the public.

Viv has taken some time settling back into San Francisco life. The last time I saw
her she was in the midst of a heated phone call that might have suggested she was
working in the drug trade (and completely unconcerned with wiretaps): “Where is my
stuff? The delivery was supposed to happen
five days ago. I’ve called you every day since then and you say it will be the next
day and every day I wait around like some patsy and it never shows. I should charge
you for my time. My rate is twenty-five dollars an hour. I’ve now waited over twenty
hours. So, let’s see, you owe me at least a thousand dollars.
⁶
You will not get away with this. I know people. I know terrifying people, people
who have done time,
⁷
the kind of people who make weapons out of soap. Why do they make weapons out of
soap? Isn’t it obvious? What are you, an idiot? Because if you murder someone with
a sharpened blade of soap, then the rain and the blood will . . . change the form
of the weapon and you lose fingerprints and the blade won’t match. That’s irrelevant.
I really hope it doesn’t come to that. Listen to me carefully. Every hour of my life
that you destroy, I’m going to take an hour from your life. Hello? Hello?”

Vivien put her phone in her pocket.

D said, “Honey, not vinegar.”

“I want to pour a vat of boiling vinegar on that bastard’s head,” Viv said.

“Assault with a deadly weapon. Two to four years. Or attempted murder, five to nine,”
D said as he strolled over to the pantry. He pulled out a bar of Ivory soap and then
collected a paring knife from the kitchen and placed them in front of Vivien. “You
might want to get a jump start on these soap weapons you’ve heard about. Or you can
take a walk and chill out.”

Vivien took the soap and paring knife and stepped outside.

“Is she okay?” I asked after Viv left.

“She’ll be fine. Customer service just isn’t what it used to be.”

I would like to say I delved deeper into her hostile phone conversation, but I had
more pressing matters to contend with. If any of the information I’ve provided thus
far is confusing or you need a refresher, I suggest consulting previous documents.
⁸

Now is probably as good a time as any to explain how I became boss and why my two
most seasoned employees were wearing undergarments to work.

•  •  •

I began working for the family business when I was twelve. I won’t pretend that I
was a model employee, and I’ll come straight out and say that I was an even worse
teenager. Some might have called me a delinquent. A more generous sort would suggest
I was finding myself. I would probably tell the generous sort where to stick their
new-age bullshit and own the delinquent part. So, I admit I was trouble, but I grew
out of that phase at least five, six years ago and now I’m a relatively upstanding
citizen. As you know, your average citizen probably commits between one and five misdemeanors
a day.
⁹

About nine months ago our firm took on a series of cases that turned out to be interconnected.
A man hired us to follow his sister. His sister hired us to follow her husband. Two
of the three people involved were not who they said they were. When I noticed their
stories didn’t match, I began investigating the client. Generally, a private investigator
investigates the subject, not the client, but I believe that if the client is hiring
us under false pretenses, it is our job to set things right. My father, however, believes
we should serve the client, lest we develop a reputation for being the private investigators
with a de-emphasis on the
private
. During our company standoff, my father enacted a Chinese wall and only allowed the
assigned investigator to work on his or her respective case. I tried to climb the
wall a few times, only to be met by an escalating series of warnings from my father,
which culminated in a direct threat: If I continued to defy company policy, I would
be fired. I disregarded his warning, took a sledgehammer to the Chinese wall, and
uncovered our clients’ true and malevolent motives. While I considered my investigation
a success, my father considered it a breach of the basic tenets of our livelihood.
My dad’s threat to fire me was, in fact, not a bluff.

I politely and then impolitely asked for my job back. I even pretended that bygones
were bygones and simply showed up for work day after day. If we were a major conglomerate,
a security team would have promptly surfaced
and escorted me out of the building with my one sad box of belongings. Instead, each
day of each week, I was shown the door and then invited back for family dinner on
Sunday.

After a great deal of soul-searching and scheming, I did the only thing I could do.
I warned the person whom our clients were surveilling, one Edward Slayter, of the
potential danger posed by his scheming wife (now ex). Mr. Slayter, a wealthy businessman,
became my benefactor in a way. When he heard that I was fired because of my work on
his behalf, he offered to intervene, in this case negotiating a buyout with my siblings,
who, for the record, took my side.
¹⁰
At the time, the parental unit had a 40 percent share of the company, Rae had 15
percent, David had 15 percent, and I had 30 percent. After Slayter bought out my siblings’
shares, I owned 60 percent, which, according to the company bylaws, gave me the authority
to hire and fire employees and veto power over all major company decisions. My first
order of business was giving me my old job back.

But power comes at a cost. The coup made me enemy number one to my father and rendered
me permanently beholden to Edward Slayter. So, even though I’m technically the boss
of Spellman Investigations, Edward Slayter is kind of the boss of me. Our deal is
quite simple. I do jobs for him at a discounted rate and when he asks me to do something,
I generally do it.

That’s just so you understand why I’ll be jogging in seven pages.

1
. I’ve probably clocked in a full workweek of Plants vs. Zombies hours, I’m ashamed
to say. But Dad played as if he were an employee of PopCap Games.

2
. I’ll explain all that later.

3
. Put one in large print on the ceiling of my parents’ bedroom.

4
. For brief dossiers on family members and a few other relevant parties, see appendix.

5
. Why not?

6
. Her math gets iffy when she’s angry.

7
. Demetrius, at that point, walked over to the chalkboard and wrote,
I will not get involved
.

8
. All available in paperback!

9
. “Crime and No Punishment: Misdemeanor Rates Skyrocket as Criminals Realize Prison
Time Is Shorter for Nonfelonies” (2011). See appendix.

10
. Or they really needed money. But I prefer my first theory.

MEMO

To All Spellman Employees:

At 10:00 on Tuesday morning, Mr. Slayter will be joining us for a meeting about a
potential assignment. Please dress appropriately for the occasion.
¹

Signed,

The Management

E
dward Slayter arrived at 10:00
A.M.
sharp, which meant that he arrived five minutes early and waited in his car. I learned
in the young days of my serfdom that when Slayter said 8:15, he didn’t mean 8:10 or
8:20 or 8:16. He meant 8:15. So, you’d allow for traffic, often arrive early and loiter
outside his office, and occasionally argue with a security guard over the
NO LOITERING
sign.

As I traversed the twelve-foot expanse of the office to meet Mr. Slayter
at the door, I caught a half-clad woman on my father’s computer screen. I clicked
off the monitor just as Slayter’s eyes clocked the image. Since I haven’t yet gone
into great length about my father, let me briefly defend his honor. The Playboy.com
website was my father’s way of illustrating to Slayter that I had no control over
my employees. For the record, Dad doesn’t make a habit of ogling naked women or perusing
porn sites.
²

“Missing-persons investigation,” I said, explaining away the naked woman.

Edward raised his eyebrow and gave me a kiss on both cheeks. Let me be clear: Everything
was strictly professional between me and my new boss, but Spellman Investigations
was kind of his pet project and, as far as I could tell, so was I.

Professor Merriweather got to his feet when Slayter entered the room.

I made introductions.

“Edward, this is Demetrius, our best employee.”

“From the looks of it,” Edward said, “he’s your only employee.”

“We had a last-minute surveillance job. Couldn’t find anyone else. I’m afraid I had
to send the unit into the field.”

Just then the theme from
Sanford and Son
blasted from the television in the upstairs bedroom.

Slayter turned to me and squinted with his right eye, his nonverbal manner of communicating
that he doesn’t believe me. I was rather familiar with that look.

“Neighbors,” I said, completing the lie.

“I see,” Slayter said. He turned to Demetrius. “Nice to see you again, um—oh, I’m
terrible with names.”

“Demetrius,” I repeated.

“Nice to see you again, sir,” Demetrius said, playing along.

They had never met. Slayter compensated by always assuming he’d met a person and always
claiming to be bad with names. He had Alzheimer’s. Maybe I should have led with that.
It wasn’t that advanced, but names and
nouns and locations could be a problem. The disease was early onset and the diagnosis
was grim, but for now the symptoms were minimal and Slayter insisted on business as
usual. The only people who knew so far were me, Mr. Slayter, his doctors, and Charlie
Black, his navigational consultant. I’ll get to him later. The web of secrecy was
to protect a business that my boss had slaved over for twenty-five years. He had been
the CEO of Slayter Industries since the beginning and owned 25 percent of the company.
He was the only shareholder on the board of directors and there’d never been a vote
that hadn’t fallen on his side. He was the boss, is my point. Kinda like what I had
going on at Spellman Investigations. Slayter had made it clear that he would continue
to run his company, a venture capital firm, until he and his doctor decided it was
time to quit. At least that was the plan. For now, we did his bidding.

“I was really hoping to meet your parents today,” Slayter said.

“I’m sorry that didn’t work out. Next time,” I said, sliding a chair next to my desk.

Slayter waited until I was seated behind my desk before he took a seat. This dance
used to take an unusually long time until I figured it out. Women sit first. Once
I told him that was stupid and it didn’t go over very well. I just sit down now. What’s
the big deal? It’s not like I can’t vote.

“Does anyone want coffee?” Demetrius asked.

“No, thank you,” Slayter said pleasantly.

“Can I interest you in a freshly baked blueberry muffin?” D asked.

“Yes!” I said.

The glorious smell had been wafting into the office for the last twenty minutes.