Pandemic Page 14

“Great,” Margaret said. “So you’re a.s.signing a babysitter?”

“I’ll a.s.sign a midget with a whip if that’s what it takes to keep you from reading blog posts about yourself for fifteen hours a day.”

Margaret fell silent. Murray knew all about how far she’d fallen. Of course he knew. Clarence had probably told him.

Murray reached out and took the envelope from her.

“Get packed,” he said. “A car will be here for you in fifteen minutes.”

HIGHWAY TO h.e.l.l

Cooper Mitch.e.l.l stared at the accounting program on his computer screen. He willed the numbers to change. The numbers didn’t cooperate.

The force is not strong with this one …

He looked at the company checkbook. Specifically, he looked at the check stub, frayed edges lonely for the check that should have been there.

“G.o.ddamit, Brockman,” Cooper said. “How many times do we have to go through this?”

There was no information on the check stub, of course — Jeff never bothered to do that. Maybe this would be one of the lucky times when he hadn’t spent that much, when he actually came back with a receipt, when his impulse purchase wouldn’t make their account overdrawn. Again.

Cooper rested his elbows on the messy desk, his face in his hands. The dented, rust-speckled metal desk took up most of the small, cinder-block office. The “Steelcase Dreadnaught,” as Jeff called it. It weighed some 250 pounds. Cooper could barely budge the thing; Jeff had once picked it up by himself, held it over his head just to prove that he could. The desk had been here when they’d bought the building and would probably be there when they sold it.

Which, if they didn’t get a client soon, would be within weeks.

Their building bordered the St. Joseph’s River, but the office’s only window didn’t offer that view. Instead, it looked out onto a bare concrete floor. The place had been a construction company garage once; maybe the window was where the foreman watched his people toil away, loudly growling get back to work! every time someone slacked off. The tall, deep shelves lining the walls were filled with diving gear (some functioning, most not), welding rigs, heavy-duty tools and other equipment. He and Jeff hadn’t used some of the pieces in years, but in the underwater construction business you never got rid of something that was already paid for. Never knew when you might need it.

In the middle of the shop floor sat Jeff’s pet project: an old, sixteen-foot racing scow that he had been meaning to fix up for the last five years. The boat, of course, had been purchased with one of the mystery checks. That check had bounced. Jeff still got the scow, though. Since the day they’d met in the third grade, the man could talk Cooper into d.a.m.n near anything.

Jeff had put in all of eight or nine hours on the scow before he got bored with it, moved on to the next shiny object. But not a day went by when he didn’t talk about making it pristine, selling it for a huge profit. Jeff loved the thing. Cooper wondered if someone would buy it as-is. Maybe it could bring in enough to make that month’s payment on JBS’s only ship, the Mary Ellen Moffett.

Maybe, if anyone was buying. In this economy, no one was.

Through the window, he saw the building’s front door open. Jeff Brockman walked in, carrying a blue SCUBA tank under his left arm. A few brown, windblown leaves came in with him, one sticking to his heavy, shoulder-length hair of the same color. From his right hand dangled an overstuffed white plastic bag — take-out food.

Cooper forced himself to stay calm. A new tank? Maybe Jeff had found it. Maybe he hadn’t spent money they didn’t have on equipment they didn’t need.

Yeah, and maybe Cooper would suddenly find out he was a long-lost relative of Hugh Hefner and had just inherited the Playboy Mansion.

Jeff Brockman strode into the tiny office, blazing a smile that said I totally hooked us up!

“My man,” he said. “Wait till you hear the deal I just scored.”

Cooper pointed to the open checkbook. “A deal you paid for with that?”

Jeff looked at the checkbook, drew in an apologetic hiss.

“Oh, right,” he said. “Sorry, dude. I know, I know, you told me a hundred times. I’ll fill in the stub thing right now.” He looked around for s.p.a.ce on his desk to set the food. “The receipt’s in my pocket. I think. Or maybe I left it at the dive shop.”

Cooper stared, amazed. Jeff moved a stack of bills aside, cleared a s.p.a.ce to set down the bag. Through the strained plastic, Cooper counted five containers — had to be enough food there to feed a half-dozen grown men. And the odor … Italian. f.u.c.k if it didn’t smell delicious.

“It’s not about the stub,” Cooper said. “Well, yeah, it’s about that, too, but, dude, we don’t need a new tank!”

Jeff looked the part of rugged entrepreneur: the hair, the two-day stubble, the wide shoulders, and the blue eyes that made meeting girls at the bar so easy he didn’t even have to try.

He smiled. “Coop, buddy, I got a great deal. We’ll need to replace my tank in a couple of years anyway, so I actually saved us money.”

Cooper stood up, slapped his desk hard enough that the thick metal thoomed like a cheap gong.

“You don’t save money by spending it, Brock!”

Jeff’s good humor faded away. His expression hardened. They hung out together all day, most every day, and that familiarity made Cooper forget that Jeff had thirty pounds and four inches on him, made him forget that Jeff carried layers of muscle built over a lifetime of construction and demolition jobs, made him not really see the little, faded scars on Jeff’s face collected from the fights of his youth. That expression, though, made Cooper remember those things all too well.