The Consultant Read online

  These guys were playing hardball.

  Craig responded to the emails that required a response, then told Lupe he was going downstairs to see the programmers.

  “You have that meeting with the consultants.”

  “That’s not until eleven.”

  “Leave your phone on,” she told him.

  “I’ll be back in plenty of time.”

  “Leave your phone on.”

  She knew him well. He was still watching a demo of Zombie Navy, gathered around a PC with a group of programmers, all shouting out instructions and suggestions to the technical writer, testing the recently debugged second level of the game, when his phone beeped, and he picked it up to see a message from Lupe: “Meeting in ten minutes. Third floor conference room.”

  “Gotta go,” he told them. “Let me know if you find anything. And I need you to have that next level ready by Friday.”

  “It’s done,” Huell said. “I just need to clean up a few things and then we’ll let John-Boy go at it.”

  The technical writer did not look away from his screen. “My name’s Rusty, dillweed.”

  “Just keep me up to date,” Craig said.

  The third floor conference room was much smaller than the one on the first floor and was not set up like a theater but consisted of three large tables facing a freestanding white board set up in front of the bare concrete wall. Nearly all of the seats around the tables were taken, and Craig was forced to sit in a row of overflow chairs that had been lined up in the back of the room. Phil was nowhere in sight, but seconds later, he hurried into the room and sat down in the chair next to Craig. “I was on the phone with this jerk from IBM. Couldn’t get off. I finally had to just hang up and bail. I’ll call him when we’re done here and tell him there was a glitch in the phone system or something.”

  There was no one standing at the front of the room, and Craig didn’t see anyone unfamiliar who might be a consultant, but just as he was about to ask Phil if he’d heard any scuttlebutt regarding the morning’s earlier meetings, Matthews entered through the back door, another man with him. Silently, they strode between two of the tables directly to the head of the conference room.

  All conversation ceased as the gathered division heads faced forward. The man standing next to Matthews was tall, thin and wearing a red bow tie. His hair, an odd shade of brown so light it was almost orange, was cut into a flattop, rendering his already large forehead even larger. The expression on his face was blank, like that of an automaton waiting to be powered up, and he placidly surveyed the seated audience, his eyes taking in everyone without resting on anyone in particular.

  “All right,” Matthews said. “Let’s get started. This is Mr. Patoff. As you may have already guessed, he will be coordinating the study for BFG Associates to help us determine how to proceed forward after our recent, ah, misfortunes.”

  The man smiled. Warmly, some might have said, but they would be wrong. Outwardly, his smile did appear warm, and Craig had no doubt that it could seem that way to a lot of people. But there was something underneath, the opposite, a coldness he detected and that left him feeling uneasy. There was nothing genuine there, only a calculated attempt to convince those in the room that he was a kind man who had their best interests at heart instead of a soulless shark who was here to decide whose jobs should be cut.

  This man was dangerous, Craig decided. He needed to be careful from here on in. And on his best behavior.

  “Mr. Patoff and the consultants working with him will be…” Matthews paused, smiling. “Well, why don’t I let him tell you about it? Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Patoff.”

  There was light applause.

  “No need to be so formal,” the consultant said, stepping forward and writing his name on the white board with a black marker. “You can call me Regus. Like the talk show host, only spelled with a U.”

  Polite chuckles.

  “As Mr. Matthews said, we’ve been hired to take a look at your operations. I understand that your organization has had some recent financial setbacks, and it’s our job to look for a way to ameliorate whatever losses you may have suffered and find a new way forward. Whether that involves merely streamlining procedures or revamping product lines remains to be seen.

  “We look at each company in toto. Problems can trickle down from the top or percolate up from the bottom, so we study every facet of the organization before determining which approach to restructuring will be most appropriate.”

  Phil’s hand shot up, though he didn’t wait to be called upon to speak. “There’s going to be restructuring?”

  Matthews stepped in. “That’s premature. We don’t know what there’s going to be. That’s why we’ve hired Mr. Patoff’s firm. They will study the situation and then we’ll determine the best course of action.”

  “He said ‘restructuring’,” Phil pressed.

  The consultant smiled. Coldly, Craig thought again. “An inappropriate turn of phrase on my part. Mr. Matthews is correct: nothing has been decided ahead of time, and we won’t make any recommendations until we conduct our study. What I meant to say was that each company is different, with different problems arising from different sources. So we talk to everyone, conduct surveys, perform research and investigate the particulars of each organization hiring us.

  “In the case of CompWare, we will start out by conducting individual interviews with each and every employee. We will film these interviews, and then go over them with the appropriate supervisors, managers, division heads and department heads in order to make sure that senior staff is involved in the process every step of the way. It is not our intent to spring surprises on anyone. Our methodology is purposely transparent, and any recommendations we make will not only be backed up by relevant data but will be discussed at the appropriate level in the chain of command so that if there are changes to be made, those changes will not come out of the blue.”

  The consultant continued to describe in vague terms the process by which his firm examined the companies they were hired to evaluate, though his account did not really address the particulars of CompWare. He asked afterward whether there were any questions, and while there were quite a few and he answered them all, neither the questions nor the answers were particularly illuminating. Craig himself asked nothing, only watched and listened, and he came away from the meeting with the distinct impression that Angie was right, that Matthews and upper management had already made their decisions and were looking to the consultants to provide validation.

  Leaving the meeting, he expressed his thoughts to Phil, and wondered aloud whether the consultants were truly independent and what would happen if they came to a different conclusion than Matthews wanted.

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Phil said drily.

  “I don’t either.”

  Craig had some errands to run at lunch. Angie wanted him to pick up some stamps at the post office—“Cute ones,” she told him. “Not those boring flag stamps you always get.”—and he stood in a long line to buy some Disney cartoon stamps before walking next door and getting himself a burger and chocolate shake at Wendy’s. On his way back, he filled up his tank with gas because he’d heard prices were supposed to go up this week, and stopped off at Target for some Drano and paper towels. He could have also picked up a SpongeBob Monopoly game, which was the present they’d decided to buy for Dylan’s friend Jamie who was having a birthday party on Saturday. But Dylan liked to be there himself when they bought presents, and he needed to pick out a card as well, so Craig held off on that.

  After lunch, he had a meeting scheduled with the programmers working on updates to OfficeManager. Tyler Lang was in charge of that project, and while he had lobbied Craig hard for the position, he was now behind the eight ball due to the software program’s weak sales. The programmer was not only a good worker but a good friend, and now Craig felt guilty for giving him this assignment. It was more than possible that the consultants were going to blame Tyler and his team for
OfficeManager’s poor showing, and all of the programmers involved were worried about their futures. Craig tried to reassure them, promising that he would argue on their behalf if it came down to that, but the meeting was serious and by-the-book, and the programmers left early for their introduction to the consultant.

  The rest of the afternoon was taken up with other meetings. Updates on each of the division’s projects. He saw Lupe after the secretaries’ encounter with the consultant and asked her how it went. She frowned. “Honestly? I didn’t like him and I don’t trust him.”

  “Me, neither!” Craig said.

  “There’s something about him that just rubs me the wrong way. Apart from the fact that he’s here to figure out a way to downsize the company and get rid of my job.”

  “I feel the same way.”

  Lupe fixed him with an open look. “There are a lot of rumors flying around. What do you think’s going to happen?”

  He didn’t want to lie to her—he couldn’t lie to her; she knew him too well—so he told her what he really thought, an opinion he hadn’t even let himself acknowledge up to this point. “I think we’ll be okay. Maybe not the whole division, but most of it. We’re the workhorses, after all. We’re the producers. And you and me, in particular? I think we’re safe.”

  The expression on her face was one of visible relief. He felt relieved himself, saying it, and he realized that despite everything that was going on, he really did think his job was secure. His and his secretary’s. The thought was absurdly comforting amidst the chaos, and he and Lupe shared a smile.

  After work, he went out with Tyler and a few of the other programmers for drinks, something that had once been a regular occurrence but in the past several years had become exceedingly rare. It was fun hanging out with the guys, so he stayed out a little longer than he’d planned, and when he got home, Dylan was steaming. “Where were you?” his son demanded. “You’re supposed to read to me!”

  Craig couldn’t help laughing at the intensity of the boy’s focused anger, and that only made things worse.

  “I told you Daddy was going to be late,” Angie reminded him.

  “But he’s not supposed to be!”

  “Sorry, buddy.” Craig picked up his son, hoisting the boy onto his shoulders, noticing that he was starting to get heavy. Dylan was growing fast, and in another year or so, Craig probably wouldn’t be able to pick him up anymore. And Dylan probably wouldn’t want him to. The thought made him sad, and while he’d had fun going out with the guys after work, he decided that he should spend as much of his spare time as he could with his son. “Let’s read.”

  THREE

  Austin Matthews left work early with a splitting headache that had already beaten the shit out of the Tylenol he’d taken two hours ago and was apparently kicking the ass of the Advil he’d swallowed just before leaving. Although he’d always been good at maintaining his game face, the stress of CompWare’s ongoing implosion was too much even for his hardened sensibilities. But he’d helped found this company, damn it, and he wasn’t about to let it go down in flames. He’d do whatever he had to do to keep the business alive, and if that meant restructuring and mass layoffs, well, so be it. Sometimes you had to cut off a foot to save the leg.

  He closed his eyes against the pounding pain in his temples. Even if the company came out of this disaster solvent, he’d probably come out of it with an ulcer.

  It had been so much easier when they’d first started out, when he and Josh Ihara had rented their first office in a partially abandoned industrial park. They’d had to borrow from their parents to make the rent each month; the one programmer they had was working on spec, and for a whole week they’d been without power because both of them had forgotten to pay the electric bill. When someone had broken in one night and stolen their one newly purchased desktop PC, they hadn’t been able to replace it because they didn’t have insurance, and all three of them had had to timeshare the remaining refurbished computer. But somehow they’d survived, and while the prospects of their continued existence fluctuated from week to week, and everything was always on the line, they’d had fun. With nothing to lose, they’d been able to take chances, and they had, and it had ended up paying off big time.

  Matthews pressed the button on the dashboard of his Jaguar to open the driveway gate, watching through the windshield as it slid slowly to the side. As he had so often over the past fifteen years, he wished Josh was still with him now. But his former partner had cashed out early, eager to strike out on his own, and though none of Josh’s subsequent ventures had been successful, he had not given up. He was still in the start-up trenches, hoping lightning would strike twice.

  While Matthews remained here, trying to keep things together, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

  He pulled up the driveway, parking in front of the door rather than pulling into the garage. Inside the house, he announced that he was home, but there was no answer, and he assumed that Rachel was out somewhere with one of her friends. It was just as well. He wanted to lie down for a while, and he went into the bedroom, kicked off his shoes and closed his eyes.

  When he opened them, it was clear from the diminished light outside that some time had passed, and his headache had subsided into a dull pressure behind his eyes. He went into the kitchen to get a drink of water, then wandered around both floors of the house, looking for Rachel. His wife, apparently, was still out, and when he found himself upstairs in his office, he sat down at his desk, opened his laptop and accessed his email.

  There were over three hundred messages in his inbox.

  300!

  Scrolling down quickly, he saw that they were all from Patoff, the consultant.

  How was that possible? He never left work with messages still pending, it was almost an obsession with him, and when he’d left his office less than—he looked at the time displayed in the corner of the screen—three hours ago, his inbox had been clear. Which meant that ever since he’d left CompWare, Patoff had sent an average of one hundred messages an hour, over one-and-a-half messages every minute. That was not merely obsessive; it was crazy.

  And damn near impossible to do.

  Maybe the messages were identical. Maybe the consultant had set up some sort of program to automatically resend the same message until an answer was received.

  But they all had diverse subject names, and when he called up two at random, they were both completely different. Each was more than two paragraphs long.

  The doorbell rang, and Matthews jumped in his seat.

  Why had he jumped? Was he nervous?

  Yes.

  But what was he nervous about?

  He didn’t know.

  The doorbell rang again. Matthews frowned. It couldn’t be Rachel; she had a key. And even if she’d forgotten her key, he hadn’t locked the door behind him when he’d come in. So it had to be someone else.

  But the gates were closed. How could someone have gotten up the driveway?

  The bell rang again, and he hurried downstairs. He reached the front door, opened it, and—

  It was the consultant.

  Patoff stood on the wide portico. There was no vehicle other than his own on the driveway, and Matthews wondered how the consultant had gotten here. Had he parked outside the gates, jumped over the fence and walked up the drive? It seemed the only logical answer, but why in the world would he do such a thing? It made no sense.

  The consultant stood there, his expression flat. Matthews was more disconcerted by the man’s presence than he wanted to admit or was willing to show, but he managed to affix a scowl to his face. “What are you doing here?” he said derisively. “This is my house.”

  The consultant smiled, and Matthews decided that he didn’t like that smile. He had seen it before, at the office, in the context of work, and its meaning had flummoxed him then. But now, things seemed clearer, and while Patoff’s expression was supposed to be obsequious, there was a mocking element in it as well. “I heard that yo
u left early because you weren’t feeling well,” the consultant said smoothly. “I just wanted to check in with you and make sure you’re all right. I also sent you a few emails, and I was wondering if you had a chance to look them over.”

  A few emails?

  Uneasiness had given way to anger. “I went home because I had a headache. I still have a headache. That is why I am not at work. If I were at work, I would speak to you about work-related matters. But I am not. I am at home. And I did not invite you to my home, and if you want to continue consulting for CompWare, I suggest you leave these premises immediately.”

  The smile grew more obsequious. And more mocking. “I understand, sir. And I’m sorry for the intrusion.” Patoff started to turn away, then turned back, as though he’d forgotten something. “By the way, just to remind you, CompWare has a contract with BFG Associates. You cannot actually fire us from the project.” His smile grew wider. “Well, you could. But it would cost CompWare a lot of money.” Still smiling, he nodded. “Hope you feel better.”

  The consultant, turned, walking away, and Matthews watched him, feeling unaccountably nervous.

  Why?

  He couldn’t say, but he stood in the open doorway as the man strode purposefully down the drive without once looking back. When he reached the gate, the gate slid open, activated by the motion detector, and the consultant stepped through, turning right onto the street, where he must have a car parked.

  He couldn’t have walked all this way. It was over ten miles.

  Why had that even occurred to him?

  Matthews thought about the three hundred email messages awaiting him and shivered involuntarily. He wished now that he hadn’t bullied the Board into hiring BFG. He’d done so out of panic, to reassure investors and the market, but he probably should have put together a team to conduct a search for the right consultant. He hadn’t really had the time, though. He’d needed to act fast, to appear decisive, and the CEOs of several blue chip companies had sworn by the firm. In fact, every indication from the quick research he did was that BFG would be the perfect fit for CompWare and a solution at the very least to their perception problem.