Chapter 4

I had finished with my desk and was sitting, checking my emails on my phone when the partners approached me tentatively.

“We have a counter-proposal,” Mr. Hill told me. “If we buy Roger out, he’d just end up passing the money to you in the settlement for your suit against him. Instead, we’ll let you buy him out and keep the money in the business coffers where it can help us get through the next few months. It won’t change our agreeing to your requests, but it saves some of the dancing. We agreed to a buyout price of $750,000 for what his portion of the firm is worth in light of this lawsuit. The firm was worth just over $20million this morning. The lawsuit makes it worth significantly less.” I caught what he was telling me. They hadn’t discussed splitting the cost of the suit between insurance and the business itself with Roger. That was a business decision and it wasn’t his business.

I nodded. “I can live with that change,” I told them. “Roger. Are you prepared to pay me the full amount of the lawsuit or do we need to negotiate?”

“I can pay you two million total,” he said. “That would be my interest in the business and the rest in certified funds. Are you willing to accept that?”

I thought about it and nodded. The original suit amount was for $3million. “I’ll have my lawyer draft the settlement. When can you have the funds?”

“I’ll have to move some things around,” he admitted. “Monday morning.”

I nodded and called Grant for an appointment. “Hi Grant,” I said.

“How’s it going at the office? I’ve already gotten three calls.”

“I have a settlement offer from Roger Hicks. He says he can be prepared to sign on Monday morning. Do you have an opening?”

“Nine sharp,” he said and I could hear his smile. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” I said. I gave him the details of the settlement.

We hung up and I gave Roger the news.

He nodded and sighed. “Now I get to go home and explain this to my wife,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I know if it had been my wife, I wouldn’t have been quite so kind. I probably would have taken a swing at you if our positions were reversed.”

I nodded. “I’m not generally a violent man, but this has tested me some.” He left and Henry and Collin welcomed me as the newest partner and showed me to my new office.

I settled in and set an alarm for 3PM. The rally was at 4 and I wanted to get some work done now that I was going to be staying with the firm. The three of us had an emergency meeting to discuss how best to fill our losses. We had some interviews to focus on, that would fill a few seats, but the reality was that we were way understaffed right now. I suggested offering internships to some of the college kids that were working in their final year. If we got ten kids to fill in for Saturdays and possibly Sundays, we could cut our productivity losses some more.

“On paper, it looks bad,” I admitted. “It’s not that horrible. It took Dan two days to get around to a few hours of work. I think he was allergic to numbers. So that’s forty hours that we paid out that we got maybe six of productivity for. I was doing Sandy’s job for him. That’s ten percent of our loss made up right there. I know for a fact that if you offer Christina a fat raise and a promotion, she’ll stay and she’ll work her ass off to get us through the crunch. Between her and I, we can do the job of four people. We have four that we were in the process of hiring and really, we had a little flexibility on the floor. Other than me and a few other people, there was a relaxed pace out there. If we put the hammer down, I think we can come out the other side without missing any deadlines.

They both nodded. “You’re more familiar with who’s working and who’s gliding,” Henry told me.

“Frankly, cleaning house today got rid of more dead weight than Dan and Sandy,” I told them. “There was a laid back attitude that I think might have had something to do with seeing their boss fucking someone that wasn’t his wife. Not outright blackmail, but definitely a sense that they had a favor they could cash in and a little extra leeway about how much effort they put in.”

“So with all that, how would you rate our work deficit?” Collin asked me.

“On paper, we just lost 700 hours since a couple of the people we lost were in management and HR. In reality, we probably lost about 400 and I was pulling 80 per week myself. Christina can probably match pace in the short term and we’re planning on hiring four more so that puts us at a deficit of 80 hours roughly. If we can get a few people to put in a little overtime and hire some interns, we can cut that down to negligible. We’ll still need to hire another 10 people in the long term for comfort’s sake, but for the next few weeks, we should be able to juggle a few deadlines.”

They nodded and Collin said he’d start calling around to the universities for recommendations of students. Henry and I went to talk to the remaining staff. We explained that the dismissed members of the staff were involved in sexual misconduct and were fired with cause, that they shouldn’t give out professional references to any of them, take any orders from them, advise them of the operations of the business, or otherwise treat them as if they were employed there. He included Roger Hicks and then introduced me as the new partner, replacing Roger.

“What about the promotion I was promised?” one of the girls in the back asked. She was hired just shortly after Christina and had been working at a normal pace.

“What specific position were you promised and who promised it to you?” I asked her gently.

“I was told that Mr. Hill was going to be retiring soon and that Mr. Blevins was going to be promoted to partner, so his job would be open. Mr. Hicks told me about it.”

I looked at Henry and saw a look of horror on his face. She explained that it had been offered to her about two weeks ago.

“Did he ask any favors from you?” I asked. “Ask you to attend any company functions or meet him to discuss it outside of work?” She shook her head and we both breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s why everyone was fired today, including Mr. Hicks,” I told her. “He was promising that promotion to more people than just you and he was leveraging favors or extra work from others.”

She paled. “You mean, he would have wanted me to...” she trailed off in horror.

“Specifically, I was assigned extra work in order to keep me busy while my wife was enticed to perform sexually for the stated purpose of furthering my career here. The men that were fired were served with lawsuits for helping to destroy my marriage. I can’t say what Mr. Hicks’ intentions were for you, but in the light of what he’s done with his authority, we’re going to be doing a thorough audit of our policies and any promises he might have made.”

After that, we had IT erase all the passwords of the former staff, disable all remote logins and create new ones so that no one could access the computers from home after today’s mass firings. By that time, It was just after 3. I told the partners that I had an appointment, but I’d put in as much time through the week and weekend as I could.

I stopped by Christina’s desk on the way out and told her I might be laying low tonight, but that I’d see her at work in the morning. She nodded and I went to meet the process server for coffee before the rally.

I was going to trail him by a few steps so that I was there after they’d been served. “These are the last two,” he told me. “You’ve made today pretty busy, but it’s always interesting how people react. Most of them thought they were subpoenas to testify until we were well on our way.”

“Really?” I asked, excitedly. “You got them all? That’s amazing!”

“Well, wait until we get these served. THEN it’ll be amazing.” We got up and took our coffee with us. I was feeling a little better, between work and having this finally out of the bag. I think it was seeing the ones in the office delivered and seeing them suffering for all the misery they’d inflicted. I was especially satisfied at seeing the stunned look on Sandy’s face when he read the lawsuit amount. People that had been instrumental in my implosion got a little MORE sued than the ones that had been along for the ride.

By the time we got to the rally, the crowd was already thick. We got to a position we liked and I let him lead. “John Mitchell?” he asked as Mitch was shaking hands on his way to the podium.

“That’s right,” he said brightly, sticking out his hand to shake.

He smoothly put the envelope into his hand. “You’ve been served, Sir. Mona Mitchell?” She nodded and accepted her envelope. They signed his list and then he was off.

I was standing between them and the stage and when Mitch saw me, his face drained of any color. I knew I looked like a corpse. The ghost of his best friend, there to haunt him. This was the first time he’d seen me since that night. I was wearing some of the clothes I’d had since college, the ones that hadn’t fit in years, but we’d never quite gotten around to throwing out or giving to Goodwill. My gaunt frame was on display and he was horrified. Sunken cheeks and eyes, dark circles under my eyes and a slight tremble from living on coffee for five days made me the perfect picture of a man’s descent into oblivion.

Even Mona was horrified. She’d seen me last night in baggy clothes, but I looked worse today. I’d worked a half day today and an additional sleepless night had done the more damage.

“Adam?” he asked, dismayed. “Is that really you?”

“Not for much longer, I don’t think,” I said. The clapping near us tapered off some as people seemed to realize something was going on. They looked at me nervously, probably wondering if what I had was contagious.

“What happened to you!” he breathed, stunned.

“My best friend hollowed out my will to live with a blowtorch,” I told him calmly. “It’s amazing how quickly the body deteriorates when you can’t hold down food or sleep without seeing things no man should ever have to see.”

“Adam, I want to talk about this,” he said. “I really do. Now is not the time though. Hang around and we can talk later.”

I laughed mirthlessly and lifted my shirt so they could see my ribs. “How much longer do you think I’m gonna be hanging around, John? A week? Two? I personally think you’ll be mayor over my dead body, but you’ve been picking my corpse for six years. That shouldn’t bother you.” I pointed to their envelopes. “You’ll want to read those completely,” I told them and turned to go.

“Wait!” Mona came over to look at me searchingly. “You’re really going to kill yourself over this?!!?” she asked angrily.

“I haven’t been able to sleep or hold down food since my life came to an end in your game room,” I told her. “It’s not about killing myself. Whenever I try to eat, my stomach clenches and I lose it all. Whenever I try to sleep, my mind is filled with what happened in that basement. You think I don’t want to go back and stop myself from going down those stairs and seeing her like that? It was the worst night of my life and it was just a regular Friday to you. Enjoy your rally. I’ll show myself out.”

I walked away and knew I needed to try to eat soon. I was light-headed and shaky as I got back to my car. When I looked up, Mitch was on stage smiling and waving like nothing had happened. Mona looked like she was having to remind herself to smile though and she shot glances in my direction. I started my car and went home. I hadn’t seen any signs of life around the property, so I backed my car into the garage, going inside and making myself an exciting dinner of toast and peanut butter. I managed to keep it down, but decided that one piece was enough for now. I packed a couple of PBJ sandwiches into a backpack with some bottles of water and bundled up like it was winter, slinging my backpack on and strapping my Desert Eagle to my hip. It was fully dark, so I locked up the house and hiked across the road with my new purchases. I put the game-trail cameras on two trees far enough back that they wouldn’t be noticed and then took the video camera from my backpack and picked a third spot watch from.

I’d assumed that someone was going to show up to get a little payback on me for today. If there was no one before ten, I’d get in the car and get a motel somewhere.

About an hour into my vigil, Rob showed up, angrily pounding on the door. “Open up! I know you’re in there, Adam. Open the fucking door!” He kept it up for at least twenty minutes until he got finally got the hint that I wasn’t home. He pulled out his cellphone and called me instead. I had mine on silent and chuckled as I watched him pace on my front porch.

“Hello, Rob,” I said. “Before we go any further, I need to let you know that our call is being recorded. Do I have your consent to continue recording?”

“Listen, you piece of shit. I was with my wife when they gave me that fucking thing. You happy now? She’s gonna divorce me for this!”

“I’d be only too happy to discuss the events of your day, but for legal reasons, I’m afraid we can’t continue until the matter of recording the conversation is resolved. Do I have your permission to continue recording?”

“No!” he bellowed into the phone. “Shut that fucking recording off now!”

“I understand. For legal reasons all my phone calls are recorded right now. I understand that will make it impossible for us to talk on the phone until my legal issues are resolved or you give consent to record. Enjoy the rest of your evening. Goodbye.”

I hung up and watched the fireworks. He screamed and swore and kicked the door in frustration before he returned to his car. I wondered if he was going to break in, but he just left.

I called his wife and talked to her for a little while. I gave her Grant’s number and told her he’d take good care of her. She asked a lot of questions and I told her that it had been going on since college and that I only just found out, but that Grant had a tape of Rob talking about it that I’d let him use in the divorce.

“There won’t be much left after you get done with him,” she said upset. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame you. What he did with Jennie ... I’d want to roast him too. You’re gonna get the lion’s share though.”

“Once you start your divorce, I’ll probably put off the suit until you take him to the cleaner’s and then either drop it or drill him for what’s left.”

“Thanks,” she said and sighed. “I’ve gotta go. I have some other people to call, like my parents, HIS parents. I’m gonna love telling them what he’s like.”

“If you talk to him, tell him not to kick my door again? It’ll make him paranoid.”

We hung up and I settled back down. My phone lit up with a call from Christina. “Hi,” I said, speaking quietly.

“Hi, Mr. Dean, Sir,” she said and then giggled a little. “I can’t believe you got them to agree to make you a partner.”

“Well the suit would have ruined the firm,” I said, enjoying the conversation. “They really didn’t want that and neither did I really. More than half the staff weren’t guilty of anything. They don’t deserve to lose their jobs because most of the men they worked with were pigs.”

“That’s true,” she said lightly. “So what are you up to? You said you might lay low tonight.”

“I’m watching the house,” I told her and told her how I was camped out in the trees across the road to see if someone comes to vandalize the house and break in.

“That’s pretty devious,” she admitted. “Planning to stay there all night?” she asked.

“No,” I admitted. “I was thinking about cutting it short and going to a motel for the night. I managed to eat a little toast tonight,” I told her, encouraged by my success. “I think if I was somewhere I didn’t think she brought other guys, I might be able to sleep, you know?”

“You should try,” she said encouragingly.

“Yeah,” I said wistfully thinking about the pleasant idea of dreaming. “I think I will. I’ll see you in the morning.”

We said goodnight and I went down to the house, getting out of the cold weather gear, putting the gun away and deciding I’d get showered and changed at the motel in the morning. I packed a suitcase for a few days in case someone got brave and burned the house down tonight. I got in the car and took off. I passed a few motels that I thought people might check when they didn’t find me at home and checked in. I still had my backpack, so I eased myself down into the room’s chair and ate half a sandwich.