Archive of Our Own

There are three fast ways in which you can make your way up in the world: sex, violence, and blind luck. The fourth way, the slow way was sheer dogged competence. Martin Stett had the advantage of three, the best of them, and it had brought him pretty far. The last was a bloody fist and it was still in question. But there was hardly a doubt in his mind that he would make it through. 

Stett had gone to business school but dropped out in his third year. During that time, he met no one worth knowing, and if he happened across some old buddy on the street he would just as likely lie and obfuscate as shake his hand. For another three years or so, he had drifted around the city, doing nothing virtuous. After he got his life back together again, his father got his friend to get him a job on the lower-rungs of TC (‘The Company’). 

Steadily, he worked himself into the graces of middle management—quick and obedient, never tiring of their slow stories, their anecdotes, their advice, and never daring to return the favour: never boring them and fretting them as they did him. Brought into their trust, he soon found himself living comfortably, in a suitable position for a young man of his age and his class—with no indication of a former disrepute. 

It was enough to say that. None of this was particularly worth going into, because this was the period of life before he had met the Director, and that thing that smiled with white teeth and called itself ‘Martin Stett’ was not, after all, Martin Stett as he really was. They were like two brothers, called after the same father. And one day ‘Martin Stett’ with his all-American smile would die, and one day Martin Stett who was something else would live. 

That day Martin Stett was born was the day that his boss called him into his corner office and said that there was a package that needed to be taken up to the top floor. Stett resented it at the time. He resented being made into a courier—he thought he was beyond all that. And although he tried to repress it, his boss must have caught a whiff of it—like the smoke of fire on a distant hill—because he said it was a package he would trust with no one else. Keep that in mind. I’m trusting you not to peek. It hadn’t occurred to Stett that he might be curious about a high priority envelope, poorly sealed and labeled, by rushing hands. Stett smiled, a little soothed, and went down the hall to catch the elevator with a crowd, going up. One by one, or by twos or threes, the elevator emptied—until it was only him and one other man, stepping out onto the penultimate floor. 

It was quiet here. It was nothing like the half-rabid, rough-playing bullpens and open-door offices which populated the floors below. It was the hush of a library—or of many, many executive offices, and their assistants, half of them empty in the middle of the day. Stett briefly paused, greedily drinking in the site of San Francisco and the bay. Three months ago, he had gotten his own office, with its very own  window; a window facing brick face and traffic . . . Grimly, he walked on. 

The secretary was a young man and he told him to take a wait; the director’s assistant would come down to get him. Stett sat down, watching the male secretary in the corner of his eye, speculatively—he knew the secretary was sizing him up as well, although he gave every appearance of flipping calmly through his papers. 

The director’s assistant was older, thinner. Yet there was something boyish in him, if only his sullenness and palpable sense of resentment. His hooded eyes surveyed Stett as he rose to his feet—then his mouth twitched, hardly up or down, but clearly enough some kind of grimace. 

“Right this way,” he said, gesturing down the hall. “The Director is expecting you.” 

Neither of them had tried to get the package away from him, although both of their eyes had flickered to it with avarice and deep suspicion. 

The Director’s office was at the end of the hallway. Under the hard-mouthed guidance of the assistant, Stett watched coldly amused as secretaries and executives scattered from their path—but the girls looked back with malicious and laughing eyes. Caught in the wane winter sun, the Director’s assistant looked only more sunken and unpleasant—and vaguely thwarted. At the doors, he held it open for Stett to pass through, but did not follow. The door shut on Stett’s heels. And he found himself suddenly adrift in a strange and oversized room, heavy and half-lit. In an unconscious admittance, his fingers tightened on the package—as soon as he knew it, he forced himself to relax. He stepped slowly out of the enfilade and into the main office. 

To his left, he heard an animal breast rumble, then begin growl. Slowly, he turned his head to stare down at the Doberman on the carpet; the dog fell silent. 

On the other side of the room, a chair swivelled to reveal a man. Until that moment, Stett had seen nothing of him but his head, made small on the far side of the room, dwarfed by everything it owned—and it had been lost and discounted. Now Stett narrowed his eyes a little to make him out. 

“You have something for me.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

The Director beckoned him forward. 

“Fifth floor?” he asked, his voice deceptively easy. Stett wondered at the relevance—and then wondered how he knew. It was the package; whatever was in the package.

“Yes, sir,” he said again, and then, as the Director’s fingers broke open the poor seal: “Will that be all?” 

And the Director paused, staring up at him. “I might have a message for you to take.” 

Stett nodded agreeably. 

The Director opened the envelope and slid out a stapled report, heavy in his hand, with a yellow cover page. When he turned it over, Stett saw the words FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. The Director swivelled in his chair to have the advantage of the light to read, but it meant that for several minutes, Stett could not tell where his eyes were looking. Stett stood quietly, just as he was—he thought it wise to do nothing more or less, except perhaps, to turn and look out the balcony doors, to where the Pacific waters were rioting, grey, and shimmering.   

Having read enough to satisfy himself, the Director turned his chair again and looked up at Stett. He looked so long that Stett was pressed to say: “A message, sir?” 

“No . . . That will be all.” 

Over the following few weeks, three or four excuses were found of errands for him to run. The second time it happened, he was still unsure what to think about it. When he walked out of the Director’s office that day, he thought it best to treat it like a dream, and let it slip between his grasp—forget it, don’t press it, and don’t hope for anything. For a week, he let it go. —And then, the second summons came: another confidential report. Was it only that Stett was shut-mouthed but well-liked? He went up to the top floor, into the Director’s office under escort, and felt himself being watched without knowing when—only where—and then he walked out the door again and tucked it into the box of dreams . . . In this, it would serve him best to be empty-headed, all knowing, slow-moving, and extremely cautious. But as his boss began to look askance, Stett began to listen for his next summons with half an ear—taking pains to play out his ignorance. When he was called into his boss’ office, he put on a face of being a little harassed, although unsuspecting . . . But of course he would do what he was told. 

It was on his fourth summons, he did not find the Director behind his desk as he habitually was—although Stett was expected. The call had been made. But the doors onto the balcony were opened wide. A cold wind slipped through, lifting the pages of a farmer’s almanac. 

Stett went to stand by the door, peering out from behind the balloon curtains. The Director was leaning against the balustrade, looking down far below, and smoking a cigarette. “Sir?” Stett said. 

The Director lifted his head and told Stett to join him. Stett tucked the package securely under his arm and stepped out. It was a fine enough day for late winter, neither very cold nor very windy—and the sky very clear. For the first time, Stett became conscious of how much taller he was next to the older man, and kept some distance between them so as to not offend a man’s pride . . . But, the Director turned and offered him a cigarette, mouth quirking up at all the space between them.

“Are you frightened of me?” he asked, with a trace of humour. They had previously traded pleasantries but never spoken frankly. This verged on pillow talk out of the mouth of the inhuman man he had only known from the other side of a desk. 

Stett calmed himself. He took those last few dangerous steps toward him, and rather dryly plucked the cigarette from the hand—careful not to touch. But, it was all for nothing. He knew it when the Director stepped in to light it for him, his hand cupped near Stett’s face; in his face there was a question asked, was that a question answered? Yes, it was.     

Stett lifted his cigarette to his mouth, and began to feel a sense of his power here. 

After three more months playing courier between fifth floor and top floor—each visit marked by the gradual expatriation of the sullen assistant: first not an escort, then not even in the room, then his office moved down the hall, then not seen at all—after three months, the assistant was gone, and Stett was promoted. 

He saw the perils immediately, and knew all the lessons that he had to learn. If it went the way that it had been for his predecessor, he might have five years at best—two or three good years, the remainder existing in a state of uncertainty and rejection. He would scramble to restore himself to good graces, but all his efforts would only worsen the bad favour; and then he would accept his sense of resignation, don it like a coat, and this would at least permit him some dignity, in those final months . . . 

No, it would not go this way for Stett. He would not make the same mistakes. He would not, for instance, commit to the lie—the lie being that he would like to touch the man on his shoulder sometimes. And it was true that he did not—he did not, because it was not at all prudent to do. But, instinctively, he sometimes nearly did. In that close, dark room, the accord between them hummed, so much that it was natural that he might come around the desk when he was called and absently put a hand there . . . Several times he stopped himself before he knew it was time to commit to it. The Director jumped and turned on him with pleasure and surprise. 

The other matter was the subject of a photograph on the picture frame on the desk. Stett did not doubt that the Director loved her very much—and if he ever saw her, Stett would be nothing less than perfectly friendly. But, his predecessor, he gleaned (a word here and there), had thought differently . . . If his predecessor had thought so, it was enough to put the motion to bed. And in any case, Stett had known about her and him before he had ever laid eyes on him. In the back of his mind, they would always come as a package. To think of him was also to think of her. Stett didn’t really think of her, but when he did, he thought of her in reference to him. And he didn’t even for a breath doubt that he loved her because she was, afterall, rather young. She was Stett’s age if not younger. She had stepped briskly out of the hallowed halls of Berkeley law and into TC’s legal department (seventh floor) and, fresh-faced—as fresh-faced as could be, considering how many years cooped up in the law library—she happened to catch his eye. Somehow, they were married within the year. Unwise, perhaps, but a man in the Director’s position could afford to live a little unwisely . . . 

Her name was Ann. Stett had even noticed her when he still lived on the fifth floor; he had not known who she was, but he had noticed that she was a rather lovely young woman and all the men were prone to stare. ‘Lovely’—that was the word. There was something in her comeliness which made a heart affectionate. Her voice was high and sweet, her laugh full-bellied. She naturally drew the eye, and seemed totally oblivious of it, while Stett leaned against the back wall in the hushed, hard-mouthed crowd, looking forward to the weekend, and looking at her. 

For the first half a year of Stett’s work under the Director, she did not come to the top floor. Then, suddenly, from the blue, one day she did. 

Stett had his back to the door when it opened, uninvited, and a woman’s step intruded. It could have been any upstart secretary on the floor, but he knew immediately it was her. It was confirmed by him by the gravitational pull she had on the Director’s attention; as soon as he saw her, her magnetic power pulled all of him to her. Stett stood up slowly and turned around to face her. 

He was met with her dark-eyed, hostile stare. They had met several times in the elevator and she had not looked at him like this; they had smiled at each other mutely, as passing strangers. But now she had discovered that this half-familiar face might be someone of moderate importance. 

“This is Mr Stett,” the Director said. “Mr Stett, my wife, Ann.” 

Stett went over to shake her hand, indifferent to her scowls. He said he had heard so much about her. 

“We’re going out for dinner tonight,” the Director explained. “Our anniversary.” 

“Congratulations.”  

Ann’s hostility did not abate. 

“Would you mind calling us a car?” 

“Of course, sir,” Stett said, and removed himself from the Director’s office, shutting the door. At his own desk, he picked up the telephone and made the call—hearing all the while the agitated hum of their conversation on the other side of the wall. He wondered if they were arguing. 

Outside, it had been long dark. He opened the window to the night summer air, and lit a cigarette. It had been two months since Stett quit calling the Director ‘sir’ behind closed doors; the Director hadn’t called him ‘Mr Stett’ since the day they had met—he had been ‘Stett’, and then he had been ‘Martin’. The excessiveness of cold formality, not merely polite but respectful, was dangerous. The Director should have just called him ‘Stett—E.A.’, and they all knew it. 

It was several minutes until the Director and his wife came out of the office. 

“Sorry to leave it all with you, Stett,” the Director said. “You don’t mind? I’m being called away, as you can see . . . ”

“I don’t mind at all, sir. I know what needs to be done.”   

Stett had nothing to go home to, unless the Director came with him. 

Leaning back against his desk, Stett crossed his arms and watched them go, arm in arm. They gave every appearance of being a harmonious pair—self-same even in their distractedness and their gloom. The Director stopped to close the door behind them, and for a moment, their two colourless faces stared through the narrowing gap, watching him watching them. Stett smiled and nodded, then they were gone. 

Stett let himself into the Director’s office, settling down in the executive chair behind the heavy desk, at his ease. In the compliant hush of the empty building, everything he saw was completely and entirely his, without dispute. 

But, tomorrow would come again. 

One morning, when they were in Fremont overseeing a critical moment, the Director suddenly set down his coffee and said, “You know, we have a dossier on you.” 

The only thing that surprised Stett was that it had been so abruptly brought up; he wondered what he had done to provoke it. 

“I know,” he said, at length. “I’ve read it. I’ve even suggested a few edits. They had my residence hall in university wrong. And I wasn’t born in Sacramento." 

The Director smiled in thin amusement, but it was beside the point. “Do I ask too much of you, Martin?” 

“No. Whatever gave you the idea?”

Slowly, the other man turned away, looking down on the busy street below. “I don’t know . . .” he said. “Just sometimes, I wonder . . .” 

As his mind turned towards his wife, as always, he lost the will to complete the thought. Instead, he plucked a new thread. “It’s nice here. I like it here . . . I’d like to come back, and sit here, as we are now.” 

Stett pulled a drag of his cigarette and exhaled it off to the side. “You can do whatever you want in the world, whenever you want to.”

But, this wasn’t the correct thing to say. The Director’s brow clouded. “That is true,” he said quietly, and nothing else about it.  

Stett didn’t know what happened behind closed doors, but he could get a pretty good idea, just by the manner in which the Director walked through the door. After Ann left the Company and lost the baby, it all seemed to get worse. Yet she came up to the top floor more than she ever had when she was still working on the seventh floor. It was enough to make one suspect . . . 

One day, Stett looked too long askance as she came in. Her brittle aspect became hateful, and she went into the office already fuming. When she came out again, barely five minutes later, her mood was dangerous—and she stopped beside Stett’s desk, looming. 

“I hope you know that you are totally replaceable,” she said. 

He blinked at her, once. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, ma’am.” 

“Oh, you,” she spat. “You with all your ‘sir’-ing and your ‘ma’am’-ing . . . I wonder if you know how servile you sound. The sound of your voice just grates.” 

He said nothing, sort of ignoring her. 

“Nothing to say?” 

“If I said anything to you right now, I think I would lose my job. And I can’t afford that.” 

She was struck by the statement, and, for a fleeting moment, almost looked ashamed of herself. But then she caught the unserious gleam in Stett’s eyes, and just scoffed. “I have no doubt you’ll get by somehow, Mr Stett.” 

“I thank you for the vote of confidence,” he said, raising his brows, “ma’am.” 

When she was gone, the Director called him into his office, and knowing it wasn’t a professional summons, Stett didn’t hesitate to sit himself on the edge of the desk—letting the Director complete a note. In the meanwhile, he wondered if it was possible to turn husband against wife. Was there anything to gain by it? After a moment, he decided probably not. Best not to interfere . . .  

The Director looked up at him. “What did she have to say?” 

“Just the usual.” 

“And what is the usual?” 

Stett shrugged. “A great deal of nothing. You know you have nothing to be concerned about with me . . . You’ve read my dossier.”

“Oh, yes, your dossier . . . ” the Director murmured. “So I have nothing to worry about you—but I notice you didn’t say I didn’t have nothing to worry about at all.” 

“Would you listen to me if I said so?” 

“You haven’t said so.” 

“What are those fair, distant minds to me,” Stett said, hopping off the desk again. “But, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” Not yet, anyway. But Stett wondered when they would begin to have to; it seemed almost inevitable. That was just how these things went. 

The Director braced himself on his elbows, rubbing hard at his eyes. “I want you to keep a watch on her,” he said. “You can’t come with me this time. Maybe next time.”

“Alright.”  

“I need to know where she’s going at night.” 

“I’ll take care of it.” 

“Thank you,” he said, and then only to himself: “My own Ann . . . Watching my own Ann . . .”   

Stett left him, gently shutting the door as he went out. At his desk, he stood gently turning the Rolodex—then plucked out a card and picked up the telephone. 

Ann’s dossier still existed from when she was still working at the Company, but it was now several years out of date. Between the usual business which occupied his hours, Stett reacquainted himself with her biography and began to fill in some of the missing details he knew, all second hand. The next day, he stayed on late, pretending not to notice the Director’s fretful glance as he was leaving; Stett was expecting a call, and it came around seven o’clock. The PD reported Ann’s day, from morning until night. 

She had woken up later than what was decent, and went out for lunch with some women of her class, housewives all of them, some with children, others childless—all of them idle. They ate at The Y—, an upscale restaurant with a view of the sea, and left not very impressed with the fare. Ann and one of her friends went shopping off of Union Square, gossiping, but the PD had not caught anything of relevance. Mostly, it was about the friend—and the habits of the friend might only be of interest because they were the habits of an adulterer. The PD felt that it was possible that the friend was attempting to encourage Ann to become similarly liberated. Ann seemed generally shocked, but perhaps too non-committal. That evening, they had dinner and drinks, and went home. The Director came in at quarter after six and Ann was waiting for him. They sat down at the table together: the Director ate; Ann did not. 

The following day, Ann didn’t go anywhere at all, and finished reading a book. A legal thriller. 

The day after that, Ann went out for dinner with two friends again. They had dinner, then changed locale for drinks—speaking in hushed voices, and glancing consideringly at certain men around the bar. One of her friends went home with a stranger. Ann returned alone to the house, where the Director was waiting for her. 

Several nights in a row, Ann left the house a little before the Director usually returned, and took long walks around the city—eating dinner in the cold at food trucks. After one such night, she laid in bed all day with food poisoning. The Director went home early in the afternoon to take care of her. 

It was the night after that she went out alone, to a bar, and went home with a man she didn’t know. He was around her age: blond, light-coloured eyes, business suit—well bronzed. His name was Anthony, and he had recently come back from Australia. His address was 372 Heizer St: mid century apartment block, third floor, second room from the north-east corner. Ann left, flustered, not even five minutes after they had arrived, and caught a taxi. Where she went after that, the PD did not know, but she didn’t make her way home until after midnight. It was possible that she had picked up someone else, somewhere else in the city. 

Stett calmly typed up this intelligence in bland, cold typeface, and fit it into the dossier. When the Director came in from a two o’clock meeting, Stett followed him into the office and laid the report in front of him on the desk. There had been no need to editorialize the details, if he had felt the need; the truth was bad enough. He thought it might suit him if the Director became alienated from his wife—it would mean that the Director leaned more on him, put more trust, more power, in him. Besides this, he didn’t like Ann and he would have liked to see egg on her face. But at the same time, he was unsure whether this eventuality would mean the Director would grow more or less tolerant of him—if he would get a looser or a tighter rein . . . A tight rein would be disagreeable to him. Best to tell the truth and test the waters, and steer the Director from rash action. 

He let the Director read the dossier without interference, and only spoke up when the Director put it down, aspect stormy. 

“You have to put it in perspective,” Stett said. “You thought that she was sleeping with someone else, but she isn’t—she’s only thinking about it, and couldn’t follow through. My own mother has done worse.” 

For a long moment, the Director shimmered, then rose to his feet—bellowing:

“I didn’t think anything! That was you!” 

Stett sat back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle, and let the Director bluster and pace. 

When he calmed down again, Stett said: “I’m not saying she won’t ever go behind your back, but now you know where you stand—and further escalation can be prevented.”  

“How! How can it be prevented! Are you suggesting I lock her up day and night?” 

Stett raised a brow, but didn’t go near that. “I mean that Ann is in a guilty frame of mind . . . She feels acutely all the things that she owes to you and will be never more open to any overture you make toward reconciliation.” 

The Director quit pacing. “That is . . .” 

“Yes?” 

“. . . Not what I was expecting you to say.” 

Stett eyed him consideringly, wondering if the Director had wanted him to say something else—whether to blow up and fight it, throw Stett out on his ass, or to meekly accept it and send Ann out into exile. Stett couldn’t take the chance. This middle-road was the best procedure; he could not look better than he did now, under the Director’s damp and bewildered eyes. 

Reconciliation went ahead. For the weeks following what could only be termed ‘the incident’, the Director was scarcely in office, let alone seen after hours. Except for meetings which could not be taken by anyone else, he worked from home, leaving more and more responsibility in the hands of Stett—if the show was to go on. The talking heads of the executive floor didn’t care for the arrangement—they resented all their pomp and dignity being wasted on a mere assistant—but in the end, what could they say? Stett did not sit in the executive chair unless he had to, he wasn’t going to push it, but he might as well have. But he didn’t sit in the executive chair because, sooner or later, his reign would end, and he would shrink back down to his appropriate role, and what he did he would pay for. 

He expected this state of affairs to persist for a few weeks at most—a second honeymoon, if you will. But the woman gets sick of the man and the man gets sick of playing the idle part of the bridegroom. But what Stett didn’t realize was that what he was looking at was the development of habit. Weeks became months. Stett was forced to bring in a second assistant and delegated to her more and more of his work; a second desk was set up in his office to accommodate the burden of the work. Meanwhile, the Director’s office remained shut up, the airless room permitting dust to collect on all the surfaces, and Stett remained in a room that seemed to continue to shrink, all in preparation for the day the Director would walk through the door and say, “Getting too big for your breeches, Stett?” 

But he seemed to be the only one expecting the Director’s return. Everyone else began to see it as an early retirement—and talk became careless, as they eyed each other along the hallways, seeking out the heir to all that power: whether they might be him; whether they might follow him; whether they might save themselves from being cast out . . . Stett wasn’t ready to make a play for power. He was too young and too low. But the talk was becoming as dangerous for him as it was for the Director; if the Director was pushed out at long last, defeated by a woman, his preeminent lackey would be chased out with him . . . And unlike the Director, Stett had nothing to fall back on. 

So the Director’s position had to be defended. 

Stett dropped his work on his assistant’s head, and concentrated on the dossiers. When he was not there, he was in meetings, watching the invisible threads which fractioned and united the room, and he was in various break-rooms around the building—where they didn’t know him—listening to what the masses had to say. They weren’t on the top floor, but their bosses’ bosses were, and things made their way down the telephone line. He quickly got a pretty good idea who was friends with who. The situation was developing almost exactly how he would have expected. 

The Director had one rival of any standing, and that was the Chairman of the Supervisory Committee of Development and Acquisition. There were ten or more Vice-Presidents, and various sectoral managers of no distinguishing feature, but there was only one Chairman. He was past middle-age, and by just a glance was entirely benign. Unlike the Director, he was well-liked by everyone, and especially by the more junior staff—putting them at ease as he did . . . But, of course, there was the dossier, and Stett knew it back to front. Veteran record with the Company. Military service before that (Korea). Petty teenage larceny. College indiscretions . . . The other side of being well-liked was that people tended to remember you. And they remembered well the gentlemanly man who tipped well, with a taste for underaged Chinese girls. His wife, of course, was not aware. 

It was a crude instrument, but Stett was not above using it. 

That night, he walked past the Chairman’s house and left a pamphlet in his mail box, advertising a Chinese opera coming to San Francisco. There was a pretty girl pictured—subtle curated for Western tastes—caked in heavy white make-up, in traditional dress. He wrote on the back in black felt marker: WILL BE ENJOYABLE TO EVEN THE MOST EXPERIENCED OF CONNOISSEURS. That would hopefully be sufficient to get the point across. 

On Tuesday, over the telephone, he strongly advised the Director to return to the office. The Director agreed; it was time. 

But, the following day, when he called the house at the usual hour for the daily report,  The week before, he was informed that the Director and his wife were in Costa Rica on a whim. Stett nearly didn’t believe it. His first thought was that it had to be a trick—the housekeeper couldn’t be trusted. Calmly, the old woman explained that it had been decided the night before, and they were gone that morning; the housekeeper had been expecting his call, and informed him that the Director’s authority had been transferred solely to him. 

Stett dropped the telephone into the holder with a clatter. This was disastrous. One might even think that the Director had been seduced away for someone else’s purposes. It wasn’t possible. Was it? Stett panicked and tried not to panic—and finally his mind was totally calm. 

For two more days, he managed to uphold the illusion that the Director was still at home, still picking up the telephone. The weekend gave him some relief from the host of expectations, crowding him in on all sides. Every day, the weekends too, he called the house to inquire whether the Director had sent word. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.  

Monday, hell brought loose. That morning he had awoken with a kink in his neck and the worst sense of dread. He knew it had happened before it had happened. The only question was, who spread the word? 

He suspected Ann. Whether maliciously or not, she still had friends at the Company, and she might have let them know where she was . . . It wasn’t necessarily malice. 

“Mr Stett,” his assistant said. “A Mr Leworthy is here to see you.” 

“—I’m sorry. Who?” Stett said, pretending not to catch the name, as he turned around to face the door. Mark Leworthy was already standing there, glancing around the room, narrow-eyed. Stett dropped the box of files in his hands on the desk, then went around to shake his hand. Mark all the while was looking at his face keenly, trying to see through him. “Sorry, I didn’t catch the name,” Stett said, showing him in.

“Leworthy,” was the rather curt reply. “Mark Leworthy . . . I’m from legal.”

That was not quite true, but Stett carefully showed no indication of knowing otherwise. Leworthy had started in legal, but he had been promoted out of that cesspool of pedantics into the Chairman’s closest staff, and his legal expertise had been exercised ever since in a merely in an unofficial advisory capacity. Stett had actually seen Mark Leworthy at work, although at the time, Stett had been allowed to be invisible—and Leworthy didn’t seem to know that he had ever been there, leaning against the wall behind him, watching him talk. 

In these days of crisis, they sat at the same table, and it was Stett who talked and Leworthy who listened. Talking didn’t suit Stett—he would have preferred to go back to being invisible. There was great power standing outside the ring of talking heads, looking in. 

He didn’t like that Mark Leworthy had come to find him. It meant, besides everything else, the Chairman wasn’t going to sit down quietly. He had sent Leworthy to find his blackmailer—even if Leworthy hadn’t the slightest what he was really doing here. He was to be the Chairman’s eyes and ears, deaf, blind, and dumb as he was. 

“Cigarette?” Stett offered. Leworthy wrinkled his nose, raising a hand and shaking his head. “Well, then . . . How can I help you today?”

“We need some answers from you about—” and he rattled off a case file number. 

“Ah,” Stett said, in not entirely feigned dismay; he looked around at the general disarray of the room. “Was that last September?”

“Yes.” 

“Late or early?” 

“Late.” 

“27th or 28th?” 

“It was the 28th.” 

“Yes, I know where that is . . .” 

Sticking his cigarette in his mouth, he leaned sideways out of his chair, straining to reach a certain file box, and pulled it across the floor towards himself. When he straightened up, both Leworthy’s eyebrows were raised, mouth contemptuous. Stett took out the file in question, giving it a quick once over, then nodded once. Let the questions begin. Leworthy shot them out, narrow-eyed, rapid fire. They were nonsensical, and scarcely related to each other. Leworthy was counting on him being too cowed to push back at questions which patently made no sense, being too dumb or too inexpert to know what was afoot. And it was true: Stett only knew three-fifths of the words coming out of Leworthy’s mouth. He played his part, and took no small pleasure in proposing to send Leworthy running to all far-flung corners of the building—and a satellite office in Santa Rosa—to get the answers he wanted to know. 

“Santa Rosa!” Lewrothy said, thrown off the hunt. 

“They’ll know for sure. Give them a call. There’s usually someone at the phone. But, you might have to go down there yourself.” 

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” was the brusque reply. 

“If you say so . . . But, you could have saved yourself the question.” Stett grinned at him to soften the remark. 

And it was the grin that did it. Leworthy was disgusted with him, and in a breath, completely dismissed him—and unless he was provoked otherwise, he would leave Stett’s office and never think of him again. Stett put a last touch on the lukewarm impression by taking a slightly simpering tone, saying that he was sorry that he couldn’t be more help . . . 

Stett rose to his feet to walk him out, but Leworthy put out a hand to stop him: “Don’t bother. Thanks for your time,” and he walked himself out. 

The Chairman sent no further recon, whether that day or the next one. Stett decided to count that as a successful redirection. After he gave it another day, just to be safe, he took himself out for a walk on his lunch break, stopping in on a payphone—leaning close to the mouthpiece like a lover, and made the call to Meredith. He asked her if she would be available to take a package down to the worst end of Capp Street. He needed her to put the idea of blackmail in a girl’s head, and he was prepared to pay everyone well. 

She told him to have it sent to the PO box. “It will be done tomorrow.” 

As he walked back to the office, he jingled some change in hand, and thumbed again a certain repeating thought. In Ann’s crowd, wouldn’t Mark Leworthy count as a friend of a friend?  

A few days after that, the Chairman learned to keep his peace. But, his haggard eyes still looked everywhere—and once in a while, Stett would feel the old man looking at him. Well, that was fine. He was in a long list of suspects. He wasn’t the only man to have cause to stab the Chairman in the back, not in the least. 

The following week, the Director returned to the office. Stett knew he was coming twenty-five minutes before he walked through the door; anyone who thought he had the right to had waylaid as he was coming up, all of them insinuating their undying loyalty. With the Chairman dead in the water, no better option had shown its head. And the energy of insurrection pulsed for several more days, restless and half-mad, but without focus. When the Director walked through the door, he pulled it back to himself, and all doubt of him was dispersed. 

“Hello, Stett,” he said, standing in the doorway with company behind him. “Keeping busy, I’m sure . . . Putting out fires?” 

“You could say that. Welcome back, sir.” 

And as the Director disappeared into his unaired office, a pack of Vice-Presidents scampering on his heels, Stett returned to his typewriter—but he was at a momentary loss, distracted from the point . . . 

Finally, he put the note in his private mental ledger of all he knew and knew well: Yes. It is true. She will be the one to destroy him. 

And he returned to work.