Cafe Underground Presents
They did an early breakfast of bagel, lox, onion and tomato at Noah's and back at the office Andi checked her notebook for the day's assignments; Francois at nine, coffee with Ramirez sometime undecided and after work her mother.
Lena was sorting through the virtual reams Francois had sent. Andi gave a hostile glance at her pending box--she'd have to allot at least an hour a day or it would crowd them out of the building. Francois had always seemed obsessed with security, but she'd take his advice this time--if only to keep Armando happy.
A false file would only be needed if someone came sneaking, but if they did it might save them a headache. She scowled at the make-work, but pulled up a business letter macro and started, politely requesting a Professor Snowden to piddle with some innocuous research.
It went so quick, she changed the date and did another, then got on a roll and added an invoice for a routine check of county records, a letter of thanks for previous research and four requests for material a thirteen year old could pull from the library, chuckling that if Riparian ever plucked it, somebody would have to be sent out after each document and somebody else would have to read them all. The thought was so inspirational that she went back and added another dozen entries to each request.
She sent the work pages to the printer, glanced at her watch and proof-read two smallish pending files, initialing both and virtuously tossing them onto Lena's table.
She drove down Division to the block with Francois' office. Actually he owned the entire block of storefronts and apartment buildings where, hidden among the jumble of buildings, he'd built a secret cyber-wonderland crowded with computers and racks of peripherals with connections to a couple hundred phone lines.
Andi entered the Asian market. The clerk was Janeen Tran, a studious young woman getting a second advanced degree in some intersection of quantum mechanics and what sounded like metaphysics. A year ago, Andi'd tried to discuss it but had given up in frustration, unable to get past the first two concepts that Janeen couldn’t describe without half a page of calculus.
Janeen looked up, recognized her, and buried her head back in her textbook. Andi shut the door and picked her way through the narrow aisles piled with the interesting smells and bright colored packages she always intended to check more closely, past the little cubby of a bathroom, into the light-well behind and up the connecting back-stairs of the apartment building just behind.
She trod the six short flights to the third floor landing, ducked inside and tip-toed through the carpeted halls to push a small button set into the edge of a window casing. She pressed it three times, paused, then again once, then waited by the window, watching a station wagon do an awkward job of parking.
A minute later, the door on her left opened and Francois stuck his head out grinning from ear to ear. "Yo Andi, good to see ya." He stood aside, nervously glanced down the hall and carefully locked the door behind him.
She smiled silently.
"I got started already. Some of the stuff was so obvious that a kid could have hack it." He led through a narrow hall, made two right-hand turns and ducked into a small furnace room mostly filled with an industrial-sized forced air furnace topped by a sheet metal box up through the ceiling and old ducts branching off in all directions.
He pulled open a hinged cover on the furnace’s side, exposing a door large enough to step through. The furnace was gutted and had a ladder attached to the wall. She followed Francois up the ladder into the attic space above.
They traveled from one dusky attic to the next before dropping down another ladder into his secret office. A colorful shawl had been draped over a floor lamp, subduing it. Miles Davis' Seven Steps to Heaven played on the radio, red and amber lights of various pieces of equipment glowed with life, a high intensity reading light illuminated a patch of desk with white brilliance and there was the vaguely industrious smell of coffee and ozone.
"How's Lena?" Francois asked gregariously as he plopped into his high-backed swivel chair. The subdued light gave his light brown complexion a goldish-red tinge. There was a neatly made bed in the corner and a small espresso machine waited on the counter of the minuscule kitchenette.
Andi stepped around him and headed for the kitchenette. He'd fill a minute or two with social talk before getting down to it. She mumbled "Fine, just finished a meditation course, now she’s trying to get us to take a vacation." as she poked into the refrigerator for lime flavored bubble-water and settled in the chair beside him.
"She said you were going to Canada."
Andi glowered at the speed the news traveled, all she’d ever manage was spin-control. "It's not really decided." she claimed, taking a sip and wondering how long ago Lena left the message and trying to remember if it was really her own idea. "You got started?"
Francois nodded and pointed vaguely to his keyboard that sat before two screens, both which were on and crowded with lists that scrolled and blinked spontaneously. "I figured general stuff like winnowing tax and county recorder records for our target names was bland enough without permission."
"Get far?" Andi didn't bother looking at the computer screens. "We should discuss what we'll want." He was as herdable as a room full of cats.
“Double books?" He held outstretched fingers before him, critically inspecting his manicured nails. “Toss this stuff in both."
“I go requests and correspondence for Dr. L.I. Snowden at OHSU."
"You might want to fill Snowden's voice mail with trivia. It's on the campus system so it's easy to break into, it'll take far more time to go over things and wonder if they're important, that it will to leave them."
"How do we pay Snowden?"
"He has an open research account at the finance office. Write your checks to him, I'll send them to the University and he'll buy equipment." Francois pulled his keyboard onto his lap and began whizzing through menus. "Here's the stuff from the county records. I'll e-mail this vanilla stuff to Kinko's." He gave a smug smile. "Pick it up there. They'll be nothing to trace and you a get a receipt for your taxes."
"It’s a system." Andi grinned an awkward acknowledgment. His security fixation might pay off at times.
"Interesting or compromising stuff I'll flash direct. Remind Lena to keep everything on floppies until we get you a safe system.
"Lena suggested dividing things up and using code-names for different companies."
Francois made a face. "It’ll builds in more problems. If the files are obscure enough to fool anybody, they'll be next to impossible to keep straight." Francois was skeptical. "Encryption's better."
Andi'd had this discussion before. "But it's a pain un-encrypting every time you want to glance at something."
Francois put a finger to his lips and puzzled a moment. "We'll get Armando to spring for a high-horsepower processor, invisibly network it with your existing systems and leave it dedicated to encryption. Will Soxx let us in the attic?"
Bobby Soxx was her office landlord. "Sure I guess..." Andi hazarded. "Arrange it with Lena." Bobby was their office landlord, a better rock and roll guitar player than business man, but solid as a friend.
"We'll install it up there...out of sight in case somebody gives a look-see." Francois made a note to himself and looked up expectantly, mentally he was past the permission stage, half-way into running wires. "About data targets?"
Andi was ready, she caught his up-beat and came in on cue. "Target corporate officers and executives, go deep and scratch for dirt. They're the types that would keep a lot under cover and for once we have the budget. Cross reference friends and family in case they're into nepotism." Andi glanced down at her notes. "If and when you get into their books, match what goes in against what comes out, salaries, benefits, unusual transfers."
"It’s going to take some effort, Riparian has beefed up security; both traditional and data."
"We’ve faith." Andi smiled. She flicked her notes with a finger. "Next, we go for connections between Riparian firms, who buys and sells what to whom...as much detail as you can."
"You and Lena do our running? I'm going to be shut up a while." He looked pleased with that situation.
Ramirez arrived at their office at ten to twelve. Andi was on the phone, so he lounged against the wall and made small talk with Lena. It was only in the last couple of months that he'd started wearing glasses full time--now he sported some highbred wire/horn-rim frames. Today he was dressed in a tweed coat with suede patches at the elbows and grey slacks, if he added a cheap tie with his loose collar, he'd look like a University of Oregon academic looking for tenure.
They trooped down the stairs and went three-abreast up the sidewalk to Bread and Ink, a long established restaurant with decent food and stable but often only good wait-staff. There were a dozen empty tables but still had to stand around five minutes to be seated. "Funny they can get away with it since most other restaurant's in town are considerate," snipped Lena as they'd examined their menus.
"It’s a tradition, not a restaurant." whispered Ramirez as they waited again for a waitress.
"So...are you here to grill me for Max?" Andi asked politely as she tore off a slice from the complementary basket of bread.
"Officially, it's to grill both of you." he smiled. “What led up to Jimmy Tuft's death?"
"He looked into junk spilling into the rivers." Andi answered carefully.
"Let's see. It seems last time we talked you were about to be hired to look into something like that." Ramirez' voice was quiet and patient, smiling innocently, both elbows on the table, congenial leaning forward to increase the sense of intimacy.
Andi smiled back, spinning mentally through his possible strategies. "Am hired." She decorated the admission with a foolish grin and left it at that.
The waitress arrived. Lena ordered the blackened snapper salad, Andi a Caesar salad with extra anchovies and Ramirez the ravioli soup with shrimp salad and polenta. Lena asked for a refill of water and the waitress nodded without cracking a smile.
"You’re hired by Armando DeVino?" Ramirez' smile remained glued in place.
"Yes."
"You know." he drawled slowly, "He's as funny a guy as I’ve pulled up info on in a while...never had a driver's license before a year and a half ago." He paused to see if either of them would comment.
Lena busied herself with tearing her bread to bits with the frozen butter she was trying to spread. Andi smiled expectantly, willing to let him keep the floor.
"He says he was overseas, somewhere around the Mediterranean. Was there for years.”
“Do you know what he does for a living?" Ramirez gave her a smile warm enough to melt truck tires.
"He's executive director of Oregon Industry/Nature Coalition."
"I suppose you looked into who that is. Did that strike you as a strange position for an Environmental activist?" Ramirez gave a little depreciating shake of his head. He was playing the long-suffering, patient good-cop interrogator--all desire to believe and good intentions.
Andi shrugged. "Yeah it struck me as strange, but I looked into it, discussed it with him and was satisfied."
"Try satisfying me." asked Ramirez, dryly.
"He admits that it's a scam--using polluter's money to do environmental activism."
"Does that make sense?" he asked, only a hint of smile remaining to lighten his face.
"Does a industry-mouthpiece doing graffiti make more sense?" she countered.
"Give me more." he insisted.
Without cracking a smile, Andi asked, "What's the acronym for his organization?" Keeping a smile off her face took all her concentration, all she could think of was ‘OINC.’
Andi waited through the moment of silence until Ramirez’s disgusted snort. It took him another moment to change the subject. "So, are you looking into Riparian Industries?"
"Yes we are. Riparian is the owner of the companies that do the real polluting. I think their main product is waste paper."
Ramirez sat silently, the smile had slipped from his face. "You don't have to make this so difficult." he growled ominously.
"You’re assuming we know more than we do." Andi shrugged and grinned uneasily.
"OK. I can play that way." Ramirez smiled easily again. "What do you know?"
Andi took a breath, then looked directly into Ramirez's eyes. "We haven't found any evidence of anything illegal. We’re nailing down corporate structure and names of major players. We know the name of their security company and that they seem to hire a high percentage of people with criminal records."
"Oh yeah?" Ramirez commented. "That's interesting, but how would you know that sort of thing."
"Professional trade-gossip." Andi lied. "It’s also rumored their only clients are Riparian companies."
Ramirez stared her blankly. "Is that significant?" he asked, scratching his ear.
"Not that I know of." Andi answered honestly. "But nothing we know so far seems significant. Honest."
"This is hardly worth the price of lunch." Ramirez complained, shaking his head with a discouraged smile.
"Max's loss." She kept her face neutral offering two palms up and a shrug. Not that she cared much about minimizing Max's out of pocket expenses. "How about if we give you copies of what we've got on Riparian's structure? At least you'll have something to pad your file so you won't go back empty handed." She glanced from Ramirez to Lena and raised her eyebrows in a question.
Lena nodded, her face a mask of friendly concern.
Their food arrived just at that moment and they paused until the waitress returned to her conversation in the back corner.
Lena looked into his eyes. "We don't have much, Ramirez...honest. You'll see...I'll show you everything I've got in my computer, our files..." She gave him a friendly, almost silly grin and shrug. "It's the best we can do."
Ramirez sighed and shook his head cynically, then he broke into an easy smile. "Oh well, I've done my best."
"I'll give you a note for Max that says that." Lena offered, then she looked down at her empty water glass and toward the waitress still gabbing with her friend at the back. "Hey...I didn't get my water."
Ramirez finished half his bowl of soup before bringing up the next subject. "Tanya wants another game night. Our turn. She was thinking stir-fry with peanut sauce on rice noodles, fried won tons and ginger snaps."
"Ginger snaps?" Lena repeated in disbelief. "What do those have in common with Thai food?"
Ramirez rolled his eyes as if the decrees of heaven and spouses were beyond the ken of mere mortals. "Ours is not to wonder why." he quoted as he mopped up the last of his soup with polenta. "When are you guys free?"
They settled on the Saturday after the one coming up, finished lunch, shared a piece of espresso cheesecake three ways, let Max pay the bill and sauntered back to the office.
Lena gave Ramirez a guided tour through her computer files and dished the squeaky clean files from their cabinet with a social half-cup of hours-old coffee and the use of their copier. To round that out, Lena printed a third of a ream of trivia.
Andi picked a folder from her pile to keep her hands busy and her mouth shut. She kept her eyes down while he surveyed what he was given, only stopping to say "so long," when he finally took off.
Only then did Lena return to reviewing the material from Francois. Andi answered the phone, screwed around at two easy background checks and chipped away at her pending files, trying to clear her desk for Armando's project. They finished the day that way and drove home too tired to even talk.
Ten minutes after returning home, Lena was rattling pans and fanning the refrigerator door while Andi puttered until it was clear she was avoiding the trip to her mother's.
Finally, gritting her teeth, Andi grabbed her Levi jacket and tromped downstairs yelling "I'm going." over her shoulder. She didn't wait for Lena's answer, striding purposefully to her car and pulling off a bit too fast.
She parked at the end of the block, just down from her mothers apartment. The trees were changing colors, Fall’s coolness was in the air, leaves littered streets, sidewalks and yards and the sky was streaked with fast moving showers. Vitality and life filled the air, she was aware of little details; the shaking of a branch as a squirrel jumped higher, a glistening snail's track across the sidewalk. She waited another moment to steel herself, then rang the buzzer to her mother's apartment.
There was a long wait she filled noting the chipped paint showing an earlier color along a window sill and the rounded knobby look of the much-painted plaster of the well-built nineteen thirties. The front door buzzed. Andi pulled it open and waded through the warm, deep carpet to where her mother stood clinging to the door jamb.
"Hi Mom." she began lamely. "How was your day."
Her mother's face was noticeably more gaunt, her eyes clouded, her color grey and pasty. She nodded a reply and started turning--then she all but collapsed. Andi caught her halfway to the floor and, with an arm around her waist, helped her back into the bedroom and into bed.
"You don't look well." Andi offered tentatively.
There was a momentary pause as if considering her answer. "I'm not particularly well." she retorted. There was another pause filled only with her labored breathing. "I think I'm heading into decline." Her voice was more reflective than sad, more tired than anxious.
Andi could feel her stomach tighten. She remembered Charlotte's Web--Charlotte had said she was languishing. Andi prayed her mother wouldn't use that word. "You'll rally." she assured her heartily. "There'll be a remission."
Mrs. Wicksham looked up sadly and flailed a hand to grasp Andi's. "What for?" she asked with a wry smile. "So I can be miserable another few months?"
"Mom." Andi's voice caught in her throat. Then after a moment. "How are you taking care of yourself? You can barely get out of bed."
"Andi..." her mother admonished. "I'm aware of what I can't do. There’s a front door key on the bedside table for you. So I won't have to get up next time."
There were two keys there, each on separate little rings, one paper clipped to a paper with her name on it.
"Two keys?" Andi asked.
"The other's for a visiting nurse I've hired. She'll get your phone number and permission to tell you whatever you want." The strength returned to her words if not her voice. "Even though I'm not hungry, I've signed up for meals on wheels and my landlady Mrs. Bronstein let's them in twice a day. I'm not helpless you know." She was so exhausted her head sunk into the pillow, but there was an irritability in her voice Andi hadn't heard since she was fourteen and wanting to hitch hike cross-country to visit a friend.
"Sure. OK." Andi placated. She squeezed her mother's hand and tried to smile. "What can I do?"
"Across in my desk, in the lap drawer, in the back, you'll find a little pill bottle labeled `dog vomit’"
Andi set her mothers hand gently onto the covers and crossed to the desk. "Dog vomit?" she asked, giving bottle a shake to hear three or four pills rattling inside.
Mrs. Wicksham smiled, "I wanted something nasty to keep some innocent from taking them."
"Oh." Andi breathed, afraid she knew what they were.
"I want a promise from you." She looked sternly into Andi's eyes and waited for a response.
A lump in her throat delayed her answer, "What do you want me to promise?" There was a feeling of being twelve and afraid of being sent to boarding school for getting into trouble.
"I can't tell you how much pain I've been in. I think that’s what makes me weakest. Anyway, it's often unbearable, even with narcotics." She had to pause to catch her breath.
Andi clung to her hand and stared helplessly into her face, noting each wrinkle, how her hair had thinned and now barely covered her scalp, how there was yellow a yellow tinge to the whites of her eyes and a slight milkiness that hinted at cataracts she'd never mentioned.
"Those pills will end that misery." There was another long silence, this one thundering with the echoes of unsolicited memory--being tucked into bed, read stories, oatmeal cookies, and clothes still warm from the dryer.
"Mom..."
"No, Andi. You have to listen. Life is a wonderful miracle, I've enjoyed almost every moment of it. I've given this an enormous amount of reflection. I've discussed it with Rabbi Aryeh and Roshi Sarah...and my doctors and Mrs. Bronstein."
"Everybody but me?" Andi asked in a hurt, small voice.
"Neither you or Cinny." her mother returned with irritation and shot her a reproachful glare. "Do you really want to discuss my dying with me? Could you give me advice not influenced by the love of your mother?" There were tears forming in Mrs. Wicksham's eyes. "I needed confirmation of my thoughts. A reality check, not clinging, not emotion, not reproach. I can't stick around forever anyway." She gave a little sad smile.
Andi squeezed her hand tighter.
"I didn't tell Cinny I was even considering it. She wouldn't understand and would try to stop me. I'd like it if you didn't tell her, but that's really up to you." Squeezed Andi's hand back, then relaxed as if in exhaustion. "The pills will work if I can swallow them, if I can't you, can crush them, mix them with syrup and squirt them into my mouth."
Andi opened her mouth to object, but her voice refused to function. She shook her head to protest, but her mother shook her own and hissed an insistent whisper.
"You have to hear this. We might not get another time completely alone and I don't want to put you in unnecessary risk. The nurse will probably put me on an IV so I can get pain meds as I need them. It'll probably have a branch. With your key is a paper with a phone number. If I'm vomiting and can't keep down the syrup, phone and ask for Jack, mention my name my name and that you're my daughter. He'll get you a vial of potassium and barbiturates and a syringe."
Andi glance over to the bedside table and regarded the square of paper in horror. This was the issue they were discussing, though neither of them could say the words kill or die.
"I can't ask anyone else." her mother appealed weakly, more helpless than Andi had ever seen her before. "I know it's a terrible burden, but it's my last request to be saved the worst of the agony." She coughed and wheezed. "I promise I won't ask until the very last moment...until I can't experience life because the pain and don’t want the narcotics."
Andi simply nodded, lips pinched together to keep from bawling, her heart hurting enough to burst.
Andi's nod seemed like a balm, relieving he mother--her head sank back into the pillow. "Now I'm very, very tired, Dear. It's time to sleep. Can you let yourself out?"
Andi nodded again and held her mother's hand, watching quietly as the wrinkled eyelids closed over her discolored eyes, watching for a long time as her face relaxed, her eyes twitched as if in dream and her shallow breath slowed.
Finally Andi disengaged her hand. The separation felt like a rehearsal of her mother’s request. She retrieved the key and it’s paper and phone number, then walked around the apartment looking at pieces of furniture she remembered from childhood; the brocade wing chair, though a far more thread-bare and faded than it had been growing up, the writing desk with fawn-like legs, its alabaster pen stand with ink-wells of paper clips; the table, the enlargement of an old daguerreotype of great-grandmother and father Goldberg, stiff in their upright collars and formal clothes. It led into a labyrinth of recollection, the belongings around her evoking the Aunts an uncle and two cousins who’d died within her memory, her own misdeeds and failures, growing up with Cinny and when Daddy died.
It seemed like a week later that she let herself out, slowly walking through the dark to her car, feeling as if the planet itself was barren. The promise to her mother felt like a dirty secret. Back at home dinner waited and Lena would be there to talk or not, but the issue hovered. She felt a twinge in her stomach and doubted she'd eat. She could feel it already, there'd be little sleep tonight and no happy resolution now or ever.
Lena met her at the top of the stairs, concern creasing her cheeks and adding a depth to her eyes. Andi said she didn't want to talk and kept that resolve through dinner, but afterwards, damp eyed and shredded with frustration, she described each moment, how her mother’s spirit still pumped, tethered lightly to her body that was already all but corpse.
At last they sat together, Lena reading, Andi holding a book but lost in thought. She took a shower that didn’t wash her clean.
The next morning, tired from her restless night, shut-down and depleted from the preoccupation with her mother, Andi staying in the office all day, attending her backlog, making a zillion routine calls for their thirty-five dollar, cut-rate employment package.
It took an early morning run to Salem, but Lena got corporation data from the state board. Riparian Industries, Inc. owned their stable of companies and, nominally, each was independent with their own boards of directors, but every single one of directors were pulled from the same small pool.
By lunch Lena was driving by each of Riparian's twelve satellite companies' main offices, auxiliary branches and warehouses; confirming addresses, taking a snapshot and noting thumb-nail first impressions.
Andi called Francois to let him know she was office sitting. His first-pass trawl for information echoed Lena's--almost to the last detail. Deeper than that, he'd run into cyber security and stepped back to reassess--Riparian maintained firewalls around their systems, with trip-wires to flag intruders. He started laboriously poking through their telephone system, lurking and looking for interesting users to steal passwords from.
Francois found that Riparian's bookkeeping was encrypted, at least when sent from individual companies to their corporate mother-ship. He carefully syphoned copies of weekly reports and had Cray super-computers in three states beating away in stolen minutes using a borrowed code-breaking program, but he still wasn't promising results this decade.
The next day Lena wanted to stay out in the field and Andi grumpily stayed in the office, tracking her through town via her repeated calls and meeting her for lunch at the Cafe Underground. Over Thai chicken salads, they exchanged jokes about the relative hazards of bus fumes, paper cuts, screen glare and the ankle ache of pumping a gas-pedal.
That afternoon Andi saw the bottom of her pending box, it was a phenomenon unique to her experience, indeed unprecedented in the five years she’d been in business. The office manager role had a few powerful draws; puppeteer spy master pulling strings from her desk in midst varying crises. Andi could feel her finger on the pulse of the business; Lena sleuthing, Francois laboring in his digital burrow, Armando waiting however he waited, others at her beck and call. After another though she dismissed the image--two operatives and a client added up to a small potatoes with less intrigue than John LeCarre would use to cancel a luncheon.
She phoned her mother at noon, but steered well clear of the issue. She sounded tired but maintained her lucid, upbeat conversation and irreverently bristly veneer that left Andi staring blankly at the wall at the end of the call.
Next, Andi assembled Riparian’s organizational tree, but it was bogged down with cluttered marginalia and lists. Lena could do no doubt do something on the computer far better so Andi made notes explaining it all and pushed the project aside.
Late that afternoon, as she toyed with the idea of calling it an early day, Francois called.
"Two things. First, I got a good start on the executive's background checks and biographies. Second, far more interesting, I got a break. A&C Machine Works keeps their work-sheets unencrypted on separate computer." There was a nervous hint of excitement in Francois' voice.
"Yeah?" Andi responded. "So how did you do it?"
"I lurked in A&C Machine’s PBX, listening until I figured which lines fed accounting and waited until the assistant director connected. I'd a Trojan hoof ready to stick in the door with a daemon to record keystrokes. It compressed 'em and zipped them to a neutral address. Once inside, I set that program on all the executive lines, learned the system and collected damn near everybody’s password. Then I hacked the operating system and set myself up as a super-user...neat huh?"
Andi blinked to clear her head after the avalanche of jargon. "I didn't understand more than a tenth, but congratulations. What does it mean?"
"It means we got one of the company's computers eating out of our hand. That gives us a leg up."
"Oh.”
"Uhh. Yeah, there are majorly big ifs still ahead. Riparian uses a sperate computer as a gatekeeper, buffering, screening and routing traffic. Unless I stumble on a back door, I’ll have to go in that way too and there's no telling what they’ve got watching at the other end of the pipe."
Andi shut her eyes and tried to imagine what all that meant.
"The real target is the dead file with their memos and notes." He seemed to be thinking out loud.
"So far so good..." Andi encouraged. "It's Friday afternoon, Dos XX time, you calling it a day?"
"No." Francois answered with the eagerness of a zealot. "I'm on a run. I got about ten different things going on different lines. I need to check to see if the other companies use the same encryption and codes. I'll be up until midnight, catch a few winks and hit it again before dawn. With any luck I'll do my biggest screw-ups over the weekend while their sys-op is at the beach with mama."
"Gee, that gives confidence." mumbled Andi sarcastically.
"What?" queried Francois, innocently.
"I've complete confidence." translated Andi, pulling herself from the brink of disinterest. She hung up and started the evening clean-up only to be interrupted by Lena rushing all but bouncing off the walls from the pace of the streets.
"I stuck my head in and took a photo of most. But the exciting thing was..." the light in her eyes danced, "Just for the hell of it, I followed a double-breasted suit leaving Janus Chemicals. He made a bee line to Titan Marine, picked up a big folder, went on to A&C Machine Works, where he stayed all of about six minutes. Then he made a bee line home and pulled into the basement parking area of Riparian's building downtown." She gave a look of triumph over her shoulder as she paced to the file cabinet and started rooting through the files.
"Recognize him?" Andi asked, raising her eyebrows inquisitively.
"Didn't have the photos." Lena responded, frowning as she pulled a folder from the drawer. She opened it on the desk and hummed tunelessly as she shuffled through the photos of Riparian's executives.
"Thomas Boyd" She read the name from the back of one and tossed it to Andi. "That's him." Pulling out the fact sheet, she skimmed, "All it says is `vice president--Facilitation'. What the hell does that mean?"
"All their titles sound like pudding." Andi turned back to straightening her desk.
Lena was pacing, trying to pin a detail with an exact description, belaboring a nuance Andi didn't give a fig about.
It was easy to feel out of synch--Lena still sped at the pace she’d done her day. Andi herself must come in that way after. Funny that she'd never noticed it before.
Lena bobbed up and down on her toes with excess nervous energy. "I thought it cool that I recognized his face and followed. Was I as slick as a real sleuth, or what?" She shot over a smug grin.
"Private eye? Kewl man..." Andi smirked.
"Why not? There's probably lots of shady goings on at Titan Marine. If they were going to do something bad, seems like they'd do it on a weekend when less people would be watching." She still was cruising at an interior fifty MPH.
"No work on weekends. Remember, my little workaholic? She tossed the photo back to Lena and went back to cleaning-up. "Want to take out the trash, Ms. Sleuth?"
The evening, though not eventless, unfolded without serious injury. Andi picked up Simone from Jason and Tris's, installed the car seat, loaded diaper bag, bucket of toys, changes of clothes, favorite video and child in her car for delivery and transport upstairs to their apartment. That triggered the first unfortunate situation. Once carried upstairs, Simone raced joyfully at full bore, reaching for everything in reach. She couldn't be trusted not to tumble down the stairs or trash philodendrons while the second and third loads were schlepped from the car, but Lena’d been promised complete removal from all burden.
She relented with a superior, I-told-you-so smile, sitting on the floor with a mystery novel within reach, her legs fencing half the room and ineffectually trying to engage Simone in piling blocks.
Lena retreated to the far end of the couch and Andi reassumed the reins, chattering baby talk to Simone who had decided with firm unfeigned resolve that climbing up on the window stool was her most sincere and ardent goal. At last she settled to climbing on Andi and watching A Hundred And One Dalmatians; which Andi hadn't seen in so long she couldn't remember the ending. It was magic--she became deeply involved in the classic. And then there was the crash.
A tearful wail tore the air and imbedded itself in the walls and mumbled curse from Lena followed--Simone wandered to a side-table and pulled a pile of magazines and a vase of chrysanthemums down on herself.
Lena hurled herself first--justifying an I told you so glare. Simone, wailing and strewn with flowers, sat soaked, surprised and insulted, open eyed and indignant. They exchanged custody of the still-screaming toddler, Lena first dashing for towels while Andi comforted, then fussily over playing wordless reproof, daubing at each magazine with the towel, then the table legs and tossing the flowers into the trash.
Andi changed Simone's outfit; a task far more enjoyable for her than Simone. Smiling again, she and Lena spent a few hasty moments lifting plants and lamps and most everything else from ready grasp before settling again into domestic peace.
Meal time was brought a great excuse from cleanup. Lena wiped cabinet doors and floor while Andi snuggled with Simone, watching cartoons and holding stuffed animals. By eight Simone was tired, but too excited to know it--then came a tearful, wail as she remembered she’d been separated from her mommy. She was not to be consoled, Lena adjourned without comment to the bedroom and Andi held Simone on her chest, laying on the couch watching One Hundred And One Dalmatians a second time.
All in all it was a win, win, win situation--Andi successfully managed the evening, Lena felt her predictions of doom justified and Jason and Tris appeared flushed, ruffled and blissful in obviously quickly donned bathrobes when Simone was delivered to their door, asleep.
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