Although sunrise was half an hour off, spotlights chased away all hint of shadow. As Peter approached on foot from where he parked, the nighttime dew traced his face like an icy sweat, the wind snapped his loose cotton slacks, and he angled a shoulder to ward off the draft. Still a hundred feet away, he spotted two armed guards, looking as hard as bronze. The sight made him wary. One man simply stared, his head immobile. The other glanced side to side as if he had a nervous tic or head palsy. Had he landed in Russia as a suspected spy? Was he marching into Sing Sing? The questions didn’t seem so outrageous as Peter kept a steady pace, feeling the closed circuit cameras observing him like a hundred eyes, peering at him from the carport, every third or fourth light post, and the building front.
Scanning for what? Protecting what?
Peter took deep breaths of cool air and reached for his moonstone— his habitual anxiety-reducer—but did not withdraw the gem from his pocket. With all these guards, guns, and cameras, he didn’t want anyone wondering what he might be clutching. It seemed like a shoot-first, ask-questions-later kind of place.
With his eyes, but without moving his head, Peter scanned the silhouetted horizon. Through the dim light, he made out the rough edges of the one hundred-foot bluffs overlooking the beaches tying together the coastal communities of La Jolla and Del Mar. From the look of the place, Stenman had elected to buffer her headquarters with at least two acres of undeveloped grounds, with every square inch sharing an ocean view. How much had this property cost? In the tens of millions, he guessed.
Once he reached the front door, the guards glanced at Peter’s paperwork. He then signed in and was led to Security, where a nurse drew a vial of blood. “A drug test,” they said. A set of fingerprints followed. Efficient. Practiced. Everything performed in less than four minutes. These people knew their business.
Minutes later, a Dr. Parker wired Peter’s fingertips and pasted electrodes across his chest and neck. He spoke in a monotone, explaining that he had a few questions. Wanted to talk about issues. Peter—like a good new employee—dumbly nodded as if he understood.
The doctor’s appearance defined the word “bland.” He was man without affect, and almost too perfect a caricature of a psychiatrist. He wore wire-frames and had a large forehead and a pasty face, shaded by a well-cropped beard. The lace of gray at his temples looked painted on. When Parker began by asking questions about Peter’s family, school, grades, and social activities, Peter obliged with short, to-the-point answers.
After ten or twelve minutes of mundane conversation, the lab-coated psychiatrist asked, “And your mother’s death: how did that happen?”
Peter did a double-take at the sudden change in topic. He briefly tried to figure out what possible relevance his mother might have—unless it was some kind of Oedipal Complex test—but went ahead and volunteered the details provided by the police. He also mentioned some of his mother’s professional concerns.
For several minutes, the shrink continued to press this line of questioning, so much so Peter thought the guy might be suffering from an obsession of his own. When Peter had had enough, he asked Dr. Parker about the relevance of the interest in his mother. The doctor at first looked taken aback, then nodded and answered: “We are a stressful working environment, and you have experienced a tragic loss. Our concern is for your mental health. If you prefer, though, you may refuse to answer.” The man’s expression, however, seemed at war with the conciliatory words. “Dealing with guilt,” he continued, “is often a difficult thing to do. Sometimes parting conversations with loved ones have great psychological significance. We tend to blame ourselves when a parent dies. At the end, did your mother share anything else?”
Peter stared at his questioner. “Like what?”
“Anything. Maybe something struck you as curious or out of character.” Dr. Parker made a notation in the spiral notebook perched on his lap. “You earlier said something about her concerns with the law firm’s clients.”
Peter shook his head. “As I already told you, my mother didn’t like the fact that law firms defend certain kinds of people, but she didn’t go into specifics.”
“I see,” the doctor said. “Now, I want you to close your eyes and visualize that morning. Are you certain she didn’t give any other clues as to why she was upset?”
“Visualize?”
“Yes. Mentally replay the morning.”
“She said something about feeling tired all the time. I doubt you’ll find much psychological significance in that.”
“If you give a psychiatrist enough time, he’ll find significance in anything.” The doctor smiled as if to say, See, I’m really a good guy, after all.
A moment later, in what struck Peter as an abrupt move, Parker hit the intercom and announced to his secretary, “Mr. Neil and I are finished.”
Instantly appearing and illuminating the room, a knee-knockingly beautiful blonde pranced in. She placed a hand on Peter’s shoulder and brimmed.
“I hope you don’t mind walking, Mr. Neil,” she said. “It’s two flights, but then you look in good shape.” She sized him up. When she deposited him in front of a locked double door, she said, “My name is Katrina. If you need something . . . anything . . . I’m on extension twenty-two. Twenty-two— that’s also my age. Maybe that’ll help you remember.”
“Thanks. I’ll remember,” Peter said. He watched her tight hips and narrow waist sashay down the stairway. She reminded him of ex-girlfriend Ellen Goodman.
He turned and faced the last barrier, a heavy metal door, believing— hoping—he’d made it to the big-time. At least he was on a payroll and had survived the initial scrutiny. Building up his resolve, Peter stroked his moonstone and knocked. A click indicated the disengagement of a dead bolt. When he entered, the simultaneous cacophony of a half-dozen voices deluged his senses. Other than the blasphemies polluting the air, not a word of what he heard made any sense at all.
Two hours after Peter first entered Stenman Partners’ building, the warm rays of dawn lanced through the trading room windows. He felt like an unarmed Don Quixote surrounded by fire-breathing dragons, knee deep in trash. It wasn’t exactly a bad mix of emotions that washed over him—more a jumbled mass of confused fascination. The room—his new workday home—was a pigsty of coffee cups, paper scraps, greasy brown bags, leftover fast food, and soda cans. The smell was a combination of a packed McDonald’s restaurant, burnt coffee, and sweat. Accompanying this stink was bedlam. Shuffled, scrunched, and torn paper coated every surface. Bodies popped up and down. A pen was flung against a computer screen. The place could have been a ward for the attention deficient.
Three steps in, Peter halted in petrified fascination. A pyrotechnical voice echoed from a skull scaled to a body twice the size of the one it sat on. The face was a vast oval with Aryan eyes framed by a brow running in a single unbroken bush over the nose-bridge. In his late thirties, the man with flapping lips was at least six-four. He had out-of-kilter ears—tiny, like apricots—almost no more than holes in the side of his head. His looks— the sum of scary, mean, and downright weird—intimidated Peter more than his foghorned vulgarities. The man stood at the door of the only office on the floor and was clearly in charge of the other hyperactive traders. Peter realized this person had to be Howard Muller, his new boss.