Company Man Read Online Free Page B

Don’t you have piano?”
    She gave him a look of amused contempt. “That’s not till four.”
    â€œI thought it was three.”
    â€œMrs. Guarini changed it, like, months ago, don’t you remember?”
    He shook his head. “Oh, right. I forgot. Well, listen, I have to talk to this policeman here. Marta, you guys stay here until the police say it’s okay to go in the house, okay?”
    Marta Burrell was from Barbados, a mocha-skinned woman of thirty-eight, tall and slender as a fashion model with an air of sultry indifference, or maybe arrogance, her default mode. Her jeans were a little too tight, and she customarily wore high heels, and she was vocal about her disapproval of Julia’s daily uniform. She expressed disapproval of just about everything in the household. She was ferociously devoted to the kids, though, and was able to make both of them do things Nick couldn’t. Marta had been a superb nanny when the kids were little, was an excellent cook, and an indifferent housekeeper.
    â€œSure, Nick,” she said. She reached for Julia, but the girl scampered off.
    â€œYou were saying,” Nick said to the cop.
    Manzi looked up, fixed Nick with a blank look, bordering on impertinence, but there was a gleam in his eyes; he seemed to be restraining a smile. “Do you have any enemies, Mr. Conover?”
    â€œOnly about five thousand people in town.”
    The policeman’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me.”
    â€œWe laid off half our workforce recently, as I’m sure you know. More than five thousand employees.”
    â€œAh, yes,” the cop said. “You’re not a popular man around here, are you?”
    â€œYou could say that.”
    It wasn’t that long ago, Nick reflected, that everyone loved him. People he didn’t know in high school started sucking up to him. Forbes magazine even did a profile. After all, Nick was the youthful blue-collar guy, the son of a guy who’d spent a life bending metal in the chair factory—business reporters ate that stuff up. Maybe Nick was never going to be beloved at the company like Old Man Devries, but for a while at least he’d been popular, admired, liked . A local hero in the small town of Fenwick, Michigan, sort of, a guy you’d point out at the Shop ’n Save and maybe, if you feltbold, walk up to and introduce yourself in the frozen-foods section.
    But that was before—before the first layoffs were announced, two years ago, after Stratton’s new owners had laid down the law at the quarterly board meeting in Fenwick. There was no choice. The Stratton Corporation was going down the crapper if they didn’t cut costs, and fast. That meant losing half its workforce, five thousand people in a town of maybe forty thousand. It was the most painful thing he’d ever done, something he’d never imagined having to do. There’d been a series of smaller layoffs since the first ones were announced, two years ago. It was like Chinese water torture. The Fenwick Free Press, which used to publish puff pieces about Stratton, now ran banner headlines: THREE HUNDRED MORE STRATTON WORKERS FACE THE AXE. CANCER VICTIM SUFFERS LOSS OF STRATTON BENEFITS . The local columnists routinely referred to him as “the Slasher.”
    Nick Conover, local boy made good, had become the most hated man in town.
    â€œGuy like you ought to have better security than that. You get the security you pay for, you know.”
    Nick was about to reply when he heard his daughter scream.

3
    He ran toward the source of the screaming and found Julia beside the pool. Her cries came in great ragged gulps. She knelt on the bluestone coping, her hands thrashing in the water, her small back torquing back and forth. Marta stood nearby, helpless and aghast, a hand to her mouth.
    Then Nick saw what had made Julia scream, and he felt sick.
    A dark shape floated in cranberry red water, splayed and distended,