The Consultant (10 page)

What would he do if it happened again?  

He didn’t know, but just the thought of it made his palms sweat, and he thought that he’d
better
confront the man before this situation got too far out of control.  

****  

Monday morning, Matthews told his secretary Diane to have Regus Patoff come to his office; he wanted a few words with the consultant.  

Ever since waking up, he’d been thinking about what he was going to say, rehearsing in his mind the delicate matter of asking the man whether he had stolen Rachel’s snow globe and replaced it with another one. It was hard to accuse someone of stealing when confronting them face-to-face. Especially someone like Patoff.  

But despite what he had said to Rachel, he was certain that she was absolutely correct about what had happened. What other explanation could there be?  

Why would he do such a thing, though? And where in the world had he gotten that pornographic snow globe?  

How had he even known that Rachel collected snow globes? 

The whole situation was unsettling.  

Matthews had brought the globe to work with him, hidden in a Neiman Marcus tote bag, and now he took it out, placing it on his desk. The small figures directly before him were doing something so unnatural and disgusting that he could not bear to look at it, and with a grimace, he twisted the object half a turn to the right until he at least saw a perversion that he recognized.  

“Nice object.”  

Matthews looked up to see Patoff standing in the doorway. If Diane had announced his arrival, the CEO hadn’t heard it. Pretending as though he had not been surprised, Matthews motioned the consultant into his office. Patoff smiled, but there was no friendliness in it, no humor. It was a calculated affectation, something he wore, like his geeky and ever-present bow tie, which today matched the oddly orange-brown shade of his close-cut hair. Rachel was right. There was a
feeling
one got from the man, a feeling of wrongness, and Matthews was glad the door was open because he felt uncomfortable being alone in a room with the consultant.  

Icky
 

Although he had co-founded this company, had been at its head since the very beginning, had steered it from a two-person startup into the major corporation it was today, he had never felt less in charge of CompWare than he did when he was with Patoff.  

Uninvited, the consultant sat down in the chair in front of Matthews’ desk.  

“It is
not
a nice object,” Matthews said, gesturing toward the globe. “And we did not appreciate you bringing it to our house. In fact, my wife demands that you get rid of this and give her her original one back.”  

The fake smile remained in place. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“You most certainly do.” It was time to get tough. “My wife collects snow globes. And after you left on Friday, one of them was missing. This one was left in its place.” He could feel himself starting to get worked up. “My wife was kind enough to invite you into our home, after I specifically told you not to come over to my house, and how did you repay her? By stealing one of her antiques and replacing it with this!”  

“I told you. I didn’t take it. And I’ve never seen this before in my life.” The consultant bent forward, peering through the glass into the watery world. He pointed. “Interesting. I think that fat woman bit off that gorilla’s penis.”  

“There were only three of us there.”  

“I didn’t do it.”  

“My wife wanted to call the police. I was the one who convinced her to wait.”  

The consultant straightened. “I can guarantee you that they will find no evidence that I had anything to do with this. But if she really wants to find out what happened, calling the police is probably a good idea.” He met Matthews’ gaze, and Matthews knew that there
would
be no evidence found linking Patoff to the theft, though the man was most certainly responsible.  

What kind of game was the consultant playing?  

“I
am
calling the police.”  

“Good.”  

“And I forbid you to come to my house anymore,” Matthews said.  

“You forbid me?”  

The consultant’s tone was mocking, but Matthews ignored it. “Yes,” he said angrily. “I’ve already told you that. And if you don’t pay attention this time, you will be prosecuted for trespassing. Do I make myself clear?” 

The smile was back, and this time there
was
humor in it. “Of course. It’s my fault for assuming that you weren’t just a nine-tofiver and that you took your work home with you. I thought, since you hired us, you were the type of man willing to do whatever it takes to bring this company back from the brink. I apologize.” He stood, bowing formally.  

There was no way to answer that have-you-stopped-beatingyour-wife statement, so Matthews didn’t even try, and he stood there ineffectually as the consultant left his office.  

It had been a mistake to hire BFG. He knew that now. But there was nothing he could do about it. He was hemmed in not only by the contract CompWare had with the consulting firm, but by market perception, which could torpedo the company’s stock if investors got any inkling of unsteadiness. At this point, in fact, he’d probably be
willing
to pay the charges and penalties stipulated by the contract in order to get rid of Patoff. But even if he could get the Board to agree to that drastic action, such a move would send their stock straight into the toilet, and with things as precarious as they were, he doubted that even the best PR campaign would be able to turn the situation around.  

He might be able to get Patoff reassigned, however. He had no idea whether there was anyone above Patoff in the consulting firm, but if he could interface with someone else, that would go a long way toward making his life easier.  

On second thought, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Patoff was arrested for theft. That sort of internal problem wasn’t something he had any control over, and if CompWare remained with BFG despite the scandal, thereby minimizing its importance, they’d probably be able to ride out the storm.  

The phone on his desk buzzed. Diane. He pressed the intercom button. “Yes?” 

“Your wife is on the line,” the secretary told him.  

“Thanks.” He picked up the phone. “Hello? Rachel?”  

“I found it,” she told him, and he could hear the relief in her voice. “My snow globe. It was in the cupboard under the sink in the guest bathroom, where we keep the toilet paper.”  

“Under the bathroom sink?”  

“Yes.”  

“Did you put it there?” He already knew the answer.  

“Of course not!”  

“Did
he
go in that bathroom?”  

“That’s the weird thing. No.” She sighed, indicating that it was all a mystery to her. “I don’t know
how
it got there.”  

He didn’t know how it got there either—but he was pretty sure he knew
who
had put it there.  

They talked for a few more moments, deciding jointly that it would be pointless to call in the police over such a small matter, and when he asked what he should do with the globe in his office, she told him to throw it away. “Don’t donate it or anything. No one should have the disgusting piece of trash. Throw it away. Better still: break it and throw it away so it can’t be rescued.”  

“Okay,” he said. “I will.”  

He hung up, looking for a moment at the object on his desk. It was just possible that the consultant hadn’t had anything to do with hiding Rachel’s snow globe, but he was the only one who could have brought in this perversion ball.  

Unless it was one of the help.  

The more he thought about it, the murkier things seemed, and he realized that there was no way he could prove to the satisfaction of the Board, let alone BFG, that Patoff had done anything necessitating his removal. On impulse, he decided to call Morgan Brandt, the CEO of Bell Computers and one of the men he’d relied upon for the initial recommendation, to see if Brandt had had any problems with the consultant. Brandt said he hadn’t, begging off when Matthews asked for details by saying that he was really busy and didn’t have time to talk. He and Brandt were contemporaries, had come up about the same time and were allies rather than rivals, and to his knowledge the Bell CEO had never lied to him. But Matthews didn’t believe him now, and he hung up the phone, troubled. 

Looking into the snow globe on his desk, he saw a miniature man bent over and trying to fellate himself.  

Disgusted, he picked up the object and dumped it into the wastepaper basket on the side of his desk.  

NINE  

Angie kissed both Craig and Dylan goodbye before heading off to the Urgent Care. Still eating breakfast, they waved to her from the table.  

Sometimes she resented having to work on the weekend. She knew they needed the money—especially these days, with everything up in the air at Craig’s company—but Dylan was six now, and she felt increasingly guilty about missing weekends with him. This should be family time. They should be doing things together, all three of them, and each passing Saturday made her realize that these were not days she could get back; once they were gone, they were gone.  

Life was passing quickly.  

Still, she did enjoy her job, and it gave her great satisfaction to know that she was helping people, that she was making a difference, that what she did mattered.  

There was a traffic jam on the way—road construction that had been going on forever and that she should have known enough to avoid—but she still arrived earlier than any of the other nurses, and as she pulled around to the employee’s parking area at the rear of the building, she saw that there was already a line of patients in front of the closed front entrance. She let herself in the back door, and turned on the lights and computers. Dr. Bashir arrived, followed by two other nurses who were scheduled to work this morning. Nina Tranh phoned in and said she wouldn’t be able to make it today—at least she
called
this time—but by the time Angie had logged on and clocked in, everyone else had arrived and was setting up.  

Before they opened the doors to the patients, another man came in through the employees’ entrance, accompanied by Pam, the Urgent Care’s office manager. They all knew instantly who the man was, and Angie shared a glance with the other nurses.
This
was the consultant who would be deciding their fates? He looked like he’d been beamed directly out of
Revenge of the Nerds
. On his head was the worst toupee since William Shatner’s
T.J. Hooker
rug, and he was dressed in clothes so geeky that they had
never
been in style. Skinny and nervous, he wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes but stared down at the clipboard in his hand as Pam introduced him.  

“This is David Morris. He’s with Perfect Practices, the consultants that have been hired to study our operation here. He’ll be with us for the next several weeks.” The man nodded in assent. “Today, though, he’s just going to get a feel for the place, observe what everyone does, find out how everything works, so I want you all to pretend he’s not there and go on about your business as usual. He won’t get in your way, and you probably won’t even notice that he’s there.”  

Pam then asked if there were any questions. Angie didn’t have any, but even if someone else did, there was no time to have a discussion about it because they were already a minute late opening up, and they could all see through the thin window of smoked glass on the right side of the front door that there was quite a crowd out there. It was going to be a busy day.  

And it was.  

The consultant started out by parking himself in a corner of the waiting room and observing the admittance procedures, but Angie had no idea what he did after that. Nor did she care. She had her own work to do, and as long as he stayed out of the way and remained inconspicuous, she didn’t give him another thought.  

All of the exam rooms were occupied and stayed occupied throughout the morning. She dealt with a dog bite, an ear infection, strep throat, hives, an allergic bee sting reaction and two cases of stomach flu before carving out a minute to herself for a quick cup of coffee in the oversized closet that acted as the break room.  

Sharon, the nurse who usually acted as her second, poked her head around the corner. “Dr. London needs you in room six.”  

Angie gulped down the rest of her coffee. “Coming.”  

The woman in exam room six had a hemorrhoid so swollen that it needed to be pierced and drained. Sharon wasn’t there, but Dr. London was, and he left for a moment while Angie helped get the woman into a gown and into the proper position for an examination. The woman was young and thin—which was unusual in such a case—but she was in considerable pain, and when Angie saw the size of the hemorrhoid, she understood why. The doctor determined almost instantly that it required lancing, and he prepped the necessary instruments and anesthetic while Angie had the woman lay on her side, facing the wall.  

Without warning, the door opened, and the consultant walked in, holding a clipboard and pen. After taking in the situation, he had to have known that his presence here was inappropriate, but he made no move to withdraw. Standing awkwardly in the center of the small room, he stared at the patient’s buttocks as though transfixed, and Angie was horrified to see that the crotch of his pants conspicuously tented outward.  

The doctor said nothing and made no move to have the man ejected, so Angie, moving to block his view, took it upon herself. “You need to leave,” she said firmly. “This is private.”  

“I’m sorry,” the consultant apologized, stumbling as he backed into the closed door. “I didn’t mean to…”  

His face was red with embarrassment and his attempt to open the door so clumsy that she almost felt sorry for him. But then she thought of the intrusive way he’d stared at the patient’s exposed rear end, her eyes flashed downward for a second, and she was disgusted to see that he still had an erection.