He eased his big black Cadillac Escalade down the ramp into the underground parking garage. A couple of uniformed security guards emerged from their booth. This was a new procedure as of a few days ago, with the heightened security.
Matt clicked off the radio-his favorite sports-talk radio show, the host arguing with some idiot about the Red Sox bull pen-and lowered the tinted window as the older guard approached. Meanwhile, the younger one circled around to the back of the Escalade and gave it a sharp rap.
“Oh, hey, Mr. Parker,” the gray-haired guard said.
“Morning, Carlos,” Matt said.
“How about them Sox?”
“Going all the way this year.”
“Division at least, huh?”
“All the way to the World Series.”
“Not this year.”
“Come on, keep the faith.”
“You ain’t been around here long enough,” Carlos said. “You don’t know about the curse.”
“No such thing anymore.”
“When you been a Sox fan as long as me, you’re just waiting for the late-season choke. It still happens. You’ll see.” He called out to his younger colleague, “This guy’s okay. Mr. Parker is a senior manager at Bristol Worldwide, on twenty-seven.”
“How’s it going?” the younger guard said, backing away from the car.
“Hey,” Matt said. Then, mock-stern, he said, “Carlos, you know, you guys should really check everyone’s car.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Carlos said.
Matt wagged his finger. “It only takes one vehicle.”
“If you say so.”
But it was true, of course. All someone had to do was pack a car-not even a truck; it wouldn’t have to be any bigger than this Escalade-with RDX and park it in the right location in the garage. RDX could slice through steel support pillars like a razor blade through a tomato. Part of the floor directly above would cave right in, then the floor above that, and pretty soon, in a matter of seconds, the whole building would pancake. This was the principle of controlled demolition: The explosives were just the trigger. Gravity did the real work for you.
It always amazed him how little people understood about the fragility of the structures in which they lived and worked.
“Hey,” Matt said, “you guys ever get the CCTV cameras at the Stuart Street entrance fixed?”
“Hell didn’t freeze over, last I checked,” said Carlos.
Matt shook his head. “Not good,” he said. “Not in times like these.”
The senior guard gave the Escalade a friendly open-handed pat as if sending it on its way. “Tell me about it,” he said.
The first thing Matt did when he got to his cubicle was call home. Kate answered on the first ring.
“No word from the doctor yet?” he asked.
“No,” Kate said. “I thought you were him.”
“Sorry. Let me know when you hear something, okay?”
“I’ll call as soon as I hear. I promise.”
He hung up, checked his online office calendar, and realized he had ten minutes before the morning staff meeting. He pulled up Google and entered “license plate search,” which produced a long list of websites, most of them dubious. One promised, “Find Out the Truth about Anyone!” But when he entered Nourwood’s license plate number and selected Massachusetts, he was shuttled to another page that wanted him to fill out all kinds of information about himself and give his credit card number. That wasn’t going to happen. Another one featured a ridiculous photo of a man dressed up to look like someone’s idea of a detective, right down to the Sherlock Holmes hat and the big magnifying glass, in which his right eye was grotesquely enlarged. Not very promising, but he entered the license plate number anyway, only to find that Massachusetts wasn’t one of the available states. Another site looked more serious, but the fine print explained that when you entered a license plate and your own credit card information, you were “assigned” to a “private investigator.” He didn’t like that. It made him nervous. He didn’t want to be exposed that way. Plus, it said the search would take three to five business days.
By then it would be too late.
He clicked on yet another website, which instantly spawned a dozen lewd pop-up ads that took over his whole screen.
And then Matt noticed his manager, Regina, approaching his cubicle. Frantically he looked for a power button on his monitor but couldn’t find one. That was the last thing he needed-for Regina to sidle into his cubicle asking about the RFP, a Request for Proposal, he was late on and see all this porn on his computer screen.
But when she was maybe six feet away, she came to an abrupt halt, as if remembering something, and returned to her office.
Crisis averted.
As he restarted his computer, he found himself increasingly baffled: How could this guy, this “James Nourwood,” not appear anywhere on the Internet? That was just about impossible these days. Everyone left digital grease stains and skid marks, whether it was phone numbers, political contributions, high school reunion listings, property sales, corporate websites…
Corporate websites. Now there was a thought.
Where was it that “Nourwood” worked again? Ah, yes. The big tech company ADS, in Hopkinton. Or so he had told Kate.
Well, that was simple to check. He found the ADS main phone number. An operator answered, “Good morning, ADS.”
“I’d like to speak with one of your employees, please. James Nourwood?”
“Just a moment.”
Matt’s heart fluttered. What if Nourwood answered his own line? Matt would have no choice but to hang up immediately, of course, but what if his name showed up on Nourwood’s caller ID?
Faint keyboard tapping in the background, and then absolute silence. He held his index finger hovered just above the plunger, ready to disconnect the call as soon as he heard Nourwood’s voice.
Then again, if Nourwood really did answer the phone, then maybe it wasn’t some cover name after all. Maybe there was some benign explanation for the fact that he couldn’t be found on the Internet.
His finger hovered, twitched. He stroked the cool plastic of the plunger button, ready to depress it with the lightning reflexes of a sniper. There was a click, and then the operator’s voice again: “How are you spelling that, sir?”
Matt spelled Nourwood for her slowly.
“I’m checking, but I don’t find anyone with that name. I even looked under N-O-R-W-O-O-D, but I didn’t find that either. Any idea what department he might be in?”
Matt’s twitchy index finger couldn’t be restrained anymore, and he ended the call.
After the staff meeting, he stopped by Len Baxter’s office. Lenny was the head of IT in Bristol’s Boston office, a bearded, gnomelike figure who kept to himself but had always been helpful whenever Matt had a computer problem. Every day, no matter the season, he wore an unvarying uniform: jeans, a plaid flannel shirt, and a Red Sox baseball cap, no doubt to conceal his bald spot. Everyone had something to hide.
“Mattie boy, what can I do you for?” Lenny said.
“I need a favor,” Matt said.
“Gonna cost you.” Lenny flashed a grin. “Kidding. Talk to me.”
“Can you do a quick public-records search on LexisNexis?”
Lenny cocked his head. “For what?”
“Just a name. James Nourwood.” He spelled it.
“This a personnel matter?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. He’s just some sales guy at ADS who keeps trying to sell us a data recovery program, and I don’t know, I get this funny feeling about him.”