Chapter 32: Friends and Family

December 26, 1987, Chicago, Illinois

The Twin Beech swooped down through overcast skies to touch down on the runway at Meigs Field early on Saturday morning. It rolled out, then taxied to the ramp. I saw Aimee in the Pilot-in-Command seat, and her father in the co-pilot's seat. They shut down the engines, and a moment later, my parents came down the stairs, followed by the Clarkes, and then Aimee and Patrick Shaughnessy.

"Merry Christmas!" I called out as they walked over to where I was standing just outside the fence.

"I need to arrange for fuel, and then we'll be ready to go," Aimee said.

She walked into the FBO office and everyone else came out through the gate to where Stephanie and I had our cars parked. I shook hands with the men and nodded at Mrs. Clarke. My mom made no move towards me, so I simply smiled at her, receiving a stern look in return. I smiled even more broadly and opened the trunk of Stephanie's car to load the carry-on bags.

"How was the flight?" I asked my dad.

"Smooth as silk," he said. "I'm glad it's not too cold here today."

"It'll be a bit warmer tomorrow, and they're predicting light rain late in the afternoon. But that's after you leave."

Aimee came out of the FBO office and everyone got into the cars. It was a tight fit in the back seat of my car for Elyse's dad, who had drawn the short straw with my dad and Patrick, over who would get the front seats. Elyse's dad grumbled good-naturedly and squeezed into the back seat of the Daytona with his wife, and Patrick got into the front passenger seat. My mom, dad, and Aimee got into Stephanie's car with her, and we headed for Hyde Park.

"How's business?" I asked Patrick.

"Great. Now, if I could just talk your friend into joining me, I'd be a very happy man!"

"Well, Gorbachev is loosening things up a bit, so you never know. Just keep an eye on how things go in Russia. Her daughter is planning on not going back, so that might be just what Katya needs to convince her to stay."

"Just mention it to her when you see her, please!"

"I will. She'll probably visit sometime over the Summer, or I'll go to New York. Where are you staying tonight?"

"The same place as your parents and the Clarkes. We'll get a car to take us downtown when it's time."

"OK," I said.

At home, the Clarkes and my parents made a beeline to the sunroom where Jesse and Matthew were with their moms. My mom gave her usual disgusted look at Jennifer and Josie, but didn't say anything. She knew that without their approval, she'd never see Jesse.

"Where's your sister?" my dad asked.

"She and Jorge went out for the day. I tried to talk her out of it, but I couldn't. They'll be here for dinner," I said, then lowered my voice. "She just wants nothing at all to do with Mom."

"She still blames her for everything, doesn't she?" he said, just as quietly.

"Yes. You know how she is with anyone she perceives as treating me badly or even threatening to do so."

"Like a lioness with a cub," he chuckled, almost under his breath.

"Exactly. Give her time. I think she'll come around."

"How serious is she with this boy?" my dad asked.

"Fairly," I said. "I don't know that they'll get married, but she's going steady with him, which for Stephanie is a pretty major step."

"He's living here?"

"Yes. With her. I think that's another reason Stephanie didn't want to be here. She's afraid that Mom will get on her case about it."

"Your sister is over eighteen and has to make those decisions for herself."

She'd made them LONG before she turned eighteen, but I wasn't about to say that to my dad. I suspected he knew about her and Ed, but we'd never talked about it, and I wasn't going to raise the subject.

"I take it everything is set for mid-January?" Dad asked.

"Yes. Jorge and Kurt helped me move all the furniture last weekend, and Kara made up the bed and dusted everything."

"How is Julia?"

"Getting big! But I've seen that movie a few times in the last two years!"

"And you'll see it quite a few more!" Kara said mirthfully, coming to my side.

"The plan is for seven altogether? Including Jesse?" my dad asked.

"That's right," I replied. "Two each for Elyse, Kara, and Jessica. The timing for Jess will be tricky with her Residency, but she'll be on the surgical service by then, and it'll just be a six-week interruption."

"She can operate right up until she goes into labor?"

"Probably not, but she can do chart reviews, morbidity reports, post-op and pre-op work-ups, ER surgical consults, that kind of thing, and it'll count towards her progress."

"Will we see her?" my dad asked.

"We're going to try to have lunch with her. She's going to call in the next half-hour and let me know if she has the time. She started last night at 4:00pm and doesn't get off until 4:00am tomorrow. I'm sure you can imagine she's going to want to sleep."

"That's just crazy, Son! They don't let big-rig truck drivers spend more than even half that many hours behind the wheel before they're required to get some real sleep!"

"I know," I said. "They say it's the best way, but I'm not so sure having seen Jessica at the end of those shifts."

My dad shook his head, and I knew exactly how he felt. We went into the Indian room so Dad could play with the boys. Jessica called and let us know that we could join her for lunch in the hospital cafeteria. She'd have a guaranteed thirty-minute lunch break because it had been extremely quiet since midnight. We chose to drive because of my dad's hips and met Jessica in the cafeteria. She was wearing scrubs with her lab coat over them. Kara and I both kissed her, and then the five of us got in line to get our food.

Jessica answered lots of questions from my dad, while my mom sat in silence. I knew she was truly afraid of Jessica after their first interaction in Ohio, and she wouldn't say a word. That was fine by me, because although she was keeping quiet, I could tell that the acid tongue was still there, and could be unleashed at any point.

After we ate, Jessica gave my parents a tour of the emergency room. She wasn't kidding when she said it was quiet. There was only one patient on the board, and that was a 'Rule-out MI', just as it had been the previous time when I'd had my tour. It seemed that the Christmas spirit had somehow prevented the usual flow of patients into the ER. Jessica told me quietly that she'd managed to get five hours of sleep, which was pretty good, given that they were running short-handed.

"I'll see you tomorrow at 4:00am," I said after Kara and I kissed Jessica goodbye.

"Thanks, Tiger!" she said, and then turned to my parents. "Mr. and Mrs. Adams, thanks for coming to the hospital and accommodating my insane schedule!"

"You're welcome, Dear," my dad replied. "I hope we'll have a chance to visit when I come in January."

"I'm sure Steve has told you about my schedule, but we'll work something out."

She gave my dad a quick kiss on the cheek, and we headed back home. My parents spent the rest of the day with the kids, and I spent some time with Aimee and her dad, talking about his security business and her time at the Academy. Patrick and I took a walk to the NIKA offices so he could check out the rudimentary security system that we had. After a tour of the offices and a lengthy discussion, he made some suggestions about improving the security.

"You might want to consider a keycard entry system for your employees. That way you can disable a card and don't have to worry about someone having made a copy of a key, or losing a key. They're a bit expensive, but if you have to re-key your doors and issue new keys a couple of times, it would have paid for itself. It would also let you know who's come and gone during the off hours. You also really need a more sophisticated alarm system that allows you to have a code for each person, so you know who disarmed and armed the system. And finally, you should consider a closed-circuit television with a recorder for the front door."

That last suggestion kind of hit home because a camera like that had been instrumental in getting Ed out of his predicament. Of course, everything he suggested made sense, but I'd have to talk to Julia before we could implement any of it. I was also a bit concerned about how people would react to basically being tracked as they came and went. I knew I didn't like the idea, and I had to decide on the trade-off between privacy and security.

"The important places for a keycard reader would be the front door, the room with your computers and phone system, wherever you store your financial records, and probably your office, along with Julia's," he said as we toured the office for a second time. "Basically, you want to limit access to sensitive areas."

I frowned, despite my best efforts to keep my face neutral. We treated everyone equally and with complete trust, and his proposal seemed like it was going to violate that trust. Patrick noticed my reaction.

"You're having a normal reaction, Steve," he continued calmly. "You run what is, in effect, a small family business and you trust everyone who works for you. You're afraid that this sends the wrong message. It doesn't. People might react badly when they first hear about it, but after I explain what it's all about, they mostly understand. Let me ask you this — when you have 100 employees, are you sure you want every single one of them to be able to waltz in and out of the room where the company servers and phone system are? Or go to the file cabinet with all the financial and payroll records? And do you think it'll be easier to make a change now, rather than after a problem?"

I nodded. He had a point, though I didn't particularly like it. I'd already experienced someone violating my privacy, and that was one of the reasons that the office I shared with Penny had a lock. Replacing the lock with a keycard reader wasn't a significant change. And we did lock Elyse's office, as well as the room where the Novell server and the Merlin phone system were. But everyone had what was, in effect, a master key to the building.

I smiled, "You make some good points. Let me talk it over with Julia; she's the one who would have to sign off on those changes. We'll talk to the team about them as well."

"You should let me do that," he said. "That way, the initial hard feelings are directed at me, the guy who is recommending the changes, not at you. As I said, I've done this before. If you want to ease the transition, we can set the system so that everyone has access to everything as they do right now. That way, we're just going 'high tech', which will make sense to your team, given what your company does."

"And the security camera?" I asked.

"You told me that you had a bit of trouble with some union heavies and your black employee. And believe it or not, there is crime in Hyde Park and Kenwood. Your office would be attractive to thieves — grab your computers and run. Finding them would be next to impossible once they were fenced. And there's another thing — all of your physical assets should have property or asset tags and all the serial numbers should be recorded. I'm sure your insurance company requires at least the latter."

I nodded, "They do. We keep detailed records of all the computer equipment, as well as a list of stuff like furniture."

"Photograph everything as well. That makes it easier if you ever have to make a claim. And make sure you keep a copy of your asset list somewhere besides the office."

"We take a backup tape to the house with us each night. The most recent one is here, because we might need to use it, but we take the previous day's tape to my office at home. Elyse is using spreadsheets to track everything and those are on that tape."

"You can't even begin to imagine how many places don't make backups."

I chuckled, "Oh yes, I can! We spot check our clients' backups and quite a few of them don't bother to change the tape, or if they do, they leave them all sitting next to the computer. Our administration manual makes it clear that they should take a tape offsite somewhere, preferably to a bank safe deposit box, at least once a week."

He laughed, "Of course you would know that! I had a client in Miami that had a diskette with all of his financial information on it. He just left it in the computer all the time. You can guess what happened."

"The diskette developed an error, and he lost everything."

"Bingo."

"I learned THAT lesson back when I was saving programs on cassette tape on my TRS-80 and Apple II back in the late 70s. I had to key in a program from memory when I couldn't read it from the tape. After that, I made sure I saved it twice on each of two tapes. Once diskettes came along, it was easier. And WAY more reliable. But the problem most people have is that if you have a 20MB hard disk, it takes 20 floppies to back it up, and they just don't do it. And almost nobody has a tape drive on their PC."

"Quite true," he concurred. "Who handles your alarm response?"

"Alarm Detection Systems. They installed the system for the previous owners, and I just took over the contract."

"I know them. They've been around for about 20 years, and I've worked with them before. Most likely I'd just subcontract the work to them, unless you want to switch companies."

"They've been fine, and the price seems reasonable," I said. "Is that how you normally handle things?"

"Yes. I act as a consultant to design the system, but contract out installation and monitoring. My direct employees are all personal security officers."

"Bodyguards?" I asked.

"Yes, but they do more than carry a gun or drive your car. They're all ex-military, mostly former Marines, but a few ex-SEALS, and they're fully trained as security consultants. They'll do what I'm doing here today, make secure travel arrangements, train you in defensive driving, train you to use a firearm for self-defense, train you in unarmed self-defense, that kind of thing."

"You may not know it, but I'm a 2nd Dan black belt. And I own a 9mm handgun, but Chicago frowns on handguns, so it's locked away tight."

"What form of karate?" he asked.

"Shōtōkan."

"I'm a black belt in Taekwondo. Most of my security officers have some kind of martial arts training, be it karate, judo, jiu-jitsu, or the like. I'm guessing you don't practice shooting."

"No. I'd have to find a range in the suburbs and apply for a concealed carry license. That latter bit is tough, given my home address."

He nodded, "There are a couple of places in Indiana, not too far from the border with Illinois. Indiana has no license requirements. If you were to buy a second firearm at a gun show, for example, you might be able to keep it at the range. It's not exactly kosher, but sometimes, when the government is stupid, you have to find a way around it. The other question I have, and I think I know the answer, is, how often do you clean and oil your 9mm?"