Nick’s heart thrummed, and he bit his lower lip.
“Now,” Eddie said, a lilt to his voice. “I’m not reading your fucking e-mails. I don’t need to. You forget I can watch your house on my computer.”
“Watch my house?” Nick shook his head. “Huh?”
Eddie shrugged. “Your security cameras transmit over the Internet to the company server, you know that. I can see who’s coming and going. And I can see this babe coming and going a lot.”
“You do not have permission to spy on me, you hear me?”
“Couple of weeks ago you were begging for my help. Someday soon you’ll thank me. You know this chick spent eight months in a psycho ward?”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “Only it was six months, and it wasn’t a ‘psycho ward.’ She was hospitalized for depression after a bunch of college friends of hers were killed in an accident. So what?”
“You know that for the last six years, there’s no record of any FICA payments on this broad? Meaning that she didn’t have a job? Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“I’m not hiring her to be vice president of human resources. In fact, I’m not hiring her at all. She’s been a yoga teacher. How many yoga teachers make regular Social Security payments, anyway?”
“I’m not done yet. Get this: ‘Cassie’ isn’t even her real name.”
Nick furrowed his brow.
Eddie smiled. “Helen. Her name is Helen Stadler. Cassie-that’s not on her birth certificate. Not a legal name change. Totally made up.”
“So what? What’s your point?”
“I got a feeling about her,” Eddie said. “Something about her ain’t correct. We talked about this already, but let me say it again: I don’t care how sweet the snatch. It ain’t worth the risk.”
“All I asked you to do was to find out what Scott McNally was up to.”
After a few seconds of sullen silence, Eddie handed Nick another folder.
“So, those encrypted documents my guys found?”
“Yeah?”
“My guys cracked ’em all. It’s really just one document, bunch of different drafts, went back and forth between Scotty and some lawyer in Chicago.”
“Randall Enright.”
Eddie cocked his head. “That’s right.”
“What is it?”
“Fuck if I know. Legal bullshit.”
Nick started to page through the documents. Many of them were labeled DRAFT ONLY and REDLINE. The sheets were dense with legal jargon and stippled with numbers, the demon spawn of a lawyer and an accountant.
“Maybe he’s selling company secrets,” Eddie said.
Nick shook his head. “Not our Scott. Huh-uh. He’s not selling company secrets.”
“No?”
“No,” Nick said, once again short of breath. “He’s selling the company.”
81
“Why do you trust me?” said Stephanie Alstrom. They met in one of the smaller conference rooms on her floor. There was just no damned privacy in this company, Nick realized. Everyone knew who was meeting with whom; everyone could listen in.
“What do you mean?”
“Scott’s stabbing you in the back, and you hired him too.”
“Instinct, I guess. Why, are you working against me too?”
“No,” she smiled. Nick had never seen her smile before, and it wrinkled her face strangely. “I just guess I should feel flattered.”
“Well,” Nick said, “my instinct has failed me before. But you can’t be distrustful of everyone.”
“Good point,” she said, putting on a pair of half-glasses. “So, you know what you’ve got here, right?”
“A Definitive Purchase Agreement,” Nick said. He’d looked over hundreds of contracts like this in his career, and even though the legalese froze his brain, he’d learned to hack his way through the dense underbrush to uncover the key points. “Fairfield Equity Partners is selling us to some Hong Kong-based firm called Pacific Rim Investors.”
Stephanie shook her head slowly. “That’s not what I pick up from this. It’s strange. For one thing, there’s not a single mention in the list of assets of any factories or plants or employees. Which, if they were planning to keep any of it, they’d have to list. And then, in the Representations and Warranties section, it says the buyer’s on the hook for any costs, liabilities, et cetera, associated with shutting down U.S. facilities or firing all employees. So, it’s pretty clear. Pacific Rim is buying only Stratton’s name. And getting rid of everything else.”
Nick stared. “They don’t need our factories. They’ve got plenty in Shenzhen. But all this money for a name?”
“Stratton means class. An old reliable American name that’s synonymous with elegance and solidity. Plus, they get our distribution channels. Think about it-they can make everything over there at a fraction of the price, slap a Stratton nameplate on it, sell it for a premium. No American firm would have made a deal like this.”
“Who are they, this Pacific Rim Investors?”
“No idea, but I’ll find out for you. Looks like Randall Enright wasn’t working for Fairfield after all-he represents the buyer. Pacific Rim.”
Nick nodded. Now he understood why Scott had given Enright the factory tour. Enright was in Fenwick to do due diligence on behalf of a Hong Kong-based firm that couldn’t come to visit because they wanted to keep everything very quiet.
She said, “The least they could do is tell you.”
“They knew I’d go ballistic.”
“That must be why they put Scott on the board. Asians always demand to meet with the top brass. If Todd Muldaur thought firing you would help, he’d have done it already.”
“Exactly.”
“It freaks potential buyers out if a CEO gets fired right before a sale. Everyone’s antennae go up. Plus, a lot of the key relationships are yours. The smarter move was to hermetically seal you off. As they did.”
“I used to think Todd Muldaur was an idiot, but now I know better. He’s just a prick. Can you explain this side agreement to me?”
Her pruned mouth turned down in a scowl. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks like some kind of deal-sweetener. From what I can tell, it’s a way to speed up the deal, make it happen fast. But that’s just a guess. You might want to talk to someone who knows.”
“Like who? Scott’s the only one I know who understands the really devious stuff.”
“He’s good, but he’s not the only one,” Stephanie said. “Does Hutch still speak to you?”
82
Nick had begun to dread going out in public.
Not “public” as in going to work, though that still took a fair amount of effort, putting on his Nick Conover, CEO act, confident and friendly and outgoing, when a toxic spill of anxiety threatened to ooze out through his pores. But whether it was school functions or shopping or taking clients out to restaurants, it was getting harder and harder to keep the mask fastened securely.
What was once just uncomfortable, even painful-seeing people the company had laid off, exchanging polite if tense words with them, or just generally feeling like a pariah in this town-was now close to intolerable. Everywhere he went, everyone he ran into, he felt as if a neon sign was hanging around his neck, its gaudy orange tubes flashing the word MURDERER.
Even tonight, when he was just another spectator at Julia’s piano recital. Her long-dreaded, long-awaited piano recital. It was being held in one of the old town performance theaters, Aftermath Hall, a mildew-smelling old place that had been built in the nineteen thirties, a Steinway grand on a yellow wooden stage, red velvet curtain, matching red velvet upholstered seats with uncomfortable wooden backs.
The kids in their little coats and ties or their dresses streaked across the lobby, propelled by nervous energy. A couple of little African-American boys in jackets and ties with their older sister, in a white dress with a bow: unusual in Fenwick, given how few blacks there were.