Power Play - Страница 5

Доступ к книге ограничен фрагменом по требованию правообладателя.

She paused, as if she was unsure whether to keep going. I almost said, Couldn't be all that top-secret if you know. But instead, I nodded, said, "Okay."

"Going into people's e-mail accounts and archiving their e-mail and sending it to some law firm in Washington, D.C."

"For what?"

"She didn't know. They just told her to do it. Kind of creeped her out. She knew it meant something serious was going on. Some kind of witch-hunt, maybe."

"Everyone's e-mail?"

She shook her head. "Just a few of the top officers." She waited a few seconds. "Including Hank Bodine."

"Really?" That was interesting. "You think Cheryl Tobin ordered it?"

"Wouldn't surprise me."

I thought for a few seconds. I'd heard that one of the reasons the board of directors had brought in an outsider to run Hammond was to clean house. There were all sorts of rumors of corruption, of bribes and slush funds, but to be honest, our business is sort of known for that. "No wonder Bodine wanted to know if I was a buddy of Cheryl Tobin's."

"If I were you, I'd be careful," Zoл said.

"Careful? What, I might get rope burn?"

Zoл grimaced. She seemed a little pissed off that I seemed to be dismissing her hot gossip with a stupid quip. But I figured that whatever was going on between Hank Bodine and the CEO had nothing to do with me.

"No," she said. "Four days of all that face time with the corporate bigwigs, I'm afraid you might speak your mind and lose your job. Those guys aren't going to take crap from you."

"No?"

"No. You may know dogs, Landry, but you don't know the first thing about wolves. It's a dominance thing."

6

As I cruised down the 405 Freeway to Van Nuys, making unusually good time, a police cruiser came out of nowhere: blue strobe lights whirling, siren whooping. My stomach clenched. Damn it, was I speeding? Sure; who wasn't?

But then the cop raced on past me, chasing down some other poor sucker, leaving me with only an afterimage burned on my retina and a memory of a time I rarely thought about anymore.

The bailiff took me into the courtroom in handcuffs.

I wore a white button-down dress shirt, which was too big on me-sixteen years old, lanky, not yet broad-shouldered-and the label made my neck itch. The bailiff, a squat, potbellied man who reminded me of a frog, took me over to the long wooden table next to the public defender who'd been assigned to me. He waited until I sat down before he removed the cuffs, then took a seat behind me.

The courtroom was stuffy and overheated, smelled of mildew and perspiration and cleaning fluid. I glanced at the attorney, a well-meaning but scattered woman with a tangle of frizzy brown hair. She gave me a quick, sympathetic look that told me she wasn't hopeful. I noticed the file on the table in front of her wasn't my case: She'd already moved on to the next one.

My heart was pounding. The judge was a fearsome black woman who wore tortoiseshell reading glasses on a chain around her neck. She was whispering to the clerk. I stared at the plastic woodgrain nameplate in front of her: THE HONORABLE FLORENCE ALTON-WILLIAMS engraved in white block letters.

One of the fluorescent lights was buzzing, flickering. The huge radiators were making knocking sounds. Voices echoed from the hall outside the courtroom.

Finally, the judge turned toward me, peered over the tops of her half glasses. She cleared her throat. "Mr. Landry," she said. "There's an old Cherokee legend about a young man who keeps getting into trouble because of his aggressive tendencies." She spoke in a stern contralto. "The young man goes to see his grandfather, and says, 'Sometimes I feel such anger that I can't help it-I can't stop myself.' And his grandfather, who's a tribal elder and a wise man, says, 'I understand. I used to be the same way. You see, inside of you are two wolves. One is good and kind and peaceful, and the other is evil and mean and angry. The mean wolf is always fighting the good wolf.' The boy thought about it for a moment, then said, 'But Grandfather, which wolf will win?' And the old man said, 'The one you feed.'"

She picked up a manila folder, flipped it open. Cleared her throat. A minute went by. My mouth had gone dry, and I was finding it hard to swallow.

"Mr. Landry, I have found you guilty of criminally negligent homicide." She stared at me over her glasses. The public defender next to me inhaled slowly. "You should thank your lucky stars that you weren't tried as an adult. I'm remanding you to a limited-secure residential facility-that is, juvenile detention-for eighteen months. And I can only hope that by the time you've completed your sentence, you'll have learned which wolf to feed."

The radiators knocked and the fluorescent light buzzed and somewhere out in the hall a woman's laugh echoed.

7

Hammond Aerospace had four corporate jets, all of which were kept at the company's own hangar at Van Nuys airport, in the San Fernando Valley, about twenty-five miles northwest of downtown L.A. "Van Noise," as the locals grumpily called it, was farther from Hammond world headquarters than LAX, but since it didn't service commercial flights, it was quicker and easier to get in and out.

Not that I'd ever flown on the corporate jet before-whenever I traveled for work, I flew commercial. The company planes were only for the elite.

I parked my Jeep in front of the low-slung terminal building, grabbed my suitcase from the back, and looked around. The jet was parked on the tarmac, very close by. This was the biggest and fanciest plane in our corporate fleet, a brand-new Hammond Business Jet with the space-age Hammond logo painted on the tail. It glinted in the sun as if it had just been washed. It was a thing of beauty.

No one had told me where I was supposed to go when I got there-whether I should go directly to the plane or not. I knew you could drive right up to the aircraft and board. But I could see, through the plate-glass windows of our "executive terminal," a cluster of guys who looked like Hammond execs, so I rolled my suitcase up to the building and walked in.

The passenger lounge was designed to resemble a 1930s airport, with marble-tiled floors and low-slung leather couches. It reminded me of one of those fancy airport "clubs" just for the first-class passengers, the kind of place you sometimes catch a fleeting glimpse of as you trundle by, before the door slams shut to the likes of you. Out there in the overcrowded airport, you're dodging speeding electric passenger carts that beep at you hostilely, and being jostled on the moving walkway by overweight women clutching Cinnabons, while inside the hushed silence of the Ambassador's Club or the Emperor's Club, rich, well-dressed passengers are clinking flutes of champagne and scarfing down beluga on toast points.

I looked around. There were ten or so men here. Not a woman among them. There were no women at the top of Hammond Aerospace. Except for the new boss, of course.

They all resembled one another, too. Their ages ranged from early forties to maybe sixty, but they all looked vigorously middle-aged, virile, and prosperous. They all had a certain gladiatorial swagger. They could have been relatives at some jocky family reunion.

Also, unlike me, none of them was wearing a tie. Or even a blazer. They were all dressed casually in sportswear or outdoor gear-cargo shorts and pants, golf shirts, Patagonia shells, North Face performance tees. Brand names all over the place.

I sure hadn't gotten the memo.

A couple of them were wandering around, talking to themselves, wearing Bluetooth earpieces that looked like silver Tootsie Rolls with flashing blue lights on them. Hank Bodine was standing near the entrance. He was wearing a navy short-sleeved knit shirt and talking to someone I didn't recognize.

Since he was the only one here I knew, I figured I should go up to him and say hi. I didn't want to break in on anyone's conversation, but I also didn't want to stand around like a mannequin. I may not be the most outgoing guy you'll ever meet, but I'm not socially stunted, either. Still, I couldn't help feeling like the new kid in grade school, peering around the cafeteria at lunch, holding my tray, looking for a familiar face so I could sit down. The same way I'd felt when I'd arrived at Glenview, when I was sixteen.

So I left my suitcase near the door and tentatively approached him. "Hey, Hank," I said.

Before Hank had a chance to reply, a tall, wiry guy came up and clapped him on the shoulder. This was Kevin Bross, the EVP of Sales in the Commercial Airplanes Division. He had a long, narrow face and a nose that looked like it had been broken a few times. Probably playing football: Bross was another Big Ten football jock-he'd played at Michigan State.

"There he is," Bross said to Hank Bodine.

Bross didn't even seem to notice me standing there. "You read that bullshit e-mail Cheryl sent around this morning?" he said in a low voice. He wore a black Under Armour T-shirt, tight against his broad, flat torso like a superhero's costume. "All that crap about 'guiding principles' and 'a culture of accountability'?" He stared at Bodine, appalled. I couldn't believe he was dissing the CEO so brazenly, and within earshot of the others.

Hank Bodine smiled, shook his head, unreadable.

Bross went on, "Like she's our den mother or something?"

Bodine just winked, and said, "Guess we didn't have any guiding principles before. You know Jake Landry?"

"How's it going?" Bross said without interest. He gave me a quick, perfunctory glance before turning back to Bodine. "Where's Hugo?"

"He should be here any second," Bodine said. "Flying in from D.C."