He was the staff word nerd.
Murphy, Knox & Associates was listed with Dun & Bradstreet as a “financial services office” that claimed annual sales of $516.6 million. The press releases Jamie wrote often dealt with new financial packages. The information would come straight from Amy Felton—sometimes Nichole Wise. Rarely did it come from David, though every press release had to pass through his office. Jamie would drop a hard copy into the black plastic bin on Molly’s desk. A few hours later, the hard copy would be slid under Jamie’s door. Sometimes, David didn’t change a thing. Other times, David would rework Jamie’s prose into an ungrammatical, stilted mess.
Jamie tried to talk him out of it—taking the liberty of rewriting David’s rewrite, and presenting it to him with a memo explaining why he’d made certain changes.
He did that exactly once.
“Repeat after me,” David had said.
Jamie smiled.
“I’m not joking. Repeat after me.”
“Oh,” Jamie said. “Um, repeat after you.”
“I
“I
“Rewrite David Murphy’s work.”
“Rewrite your work.”
“David Murphy’s work.”
“Oh.
So yeah—David could be a tool every once in a while. But that was nothing compared with how the other Murphy, Knox employees treated him on a daily basis. It wasn’t a
To be dismissed completely, unless you needed a press release.
Worst of all: Jamie could understand. At his former job, a reporting gig at a small daily in New Mexico, the editors and reporters were tight. They pretty much ignored the newspaper’s controller—the bean-counting cyborg. What, invite him out for a beer after work? That would be like inviting Bin Laden home for turkey and cranberry sauce.
And now
Somehow he pulled it together. The memory of Chase, sleeping, reminded him of why.
The air-conditioning quickly cooled the interior of Jamie’s Subaru Forester. The vehicle was newly equipped with a Graco baby seat in the back. The hospital wouldn’t let them leave without one; both of them had forgotten about it. He’d had to run to a Toys “R” Us in Port Richmond, then spent the better part of a humid July night trying to figure out how to strap the thing in.
He looked at Chase’s seat in the rearview. Wondered if he was up yet.
Jamie reached into the front pocket of his leather bag. Grabbed his cell, flipped it open. Held down the
No service.
What?
Jamie tried it again, then looked for the bars. Nothing. In its place, the image of a telephone receiver with a red hash mark across it.
No service.
No service here—a few minutes from the heart of downtown Philadelphia?
Maybe David had canceled the free office cell phone perk since he’d left. But no, that couldn’t be right. Jamie had used the phone yesterday, calling Andrea from CVS, asking if he had the right package of diapers for Chase.
Jamie pressed the button again. Still nothing. He’d have to call Andrea from work.
… and his Ford Focus was halfway up the white concrete ramp before he saw the sign. He hit the brakes and squinted his eyes to make sure he was seeing right. The Focus idled. It didn’t like to idle, especially on such a steep incline. Stuart had to rev it to keep it in place.
Weekend rate: $26.50.
Unbelievable.
The Saturday-morning sun blazed off 1919 Market, a thirty-seven-story box of a building. You couldn’t call it a skyscraper, not with Liberty One and Two just two blocks down the street. This was where Stuart reported for work, Monday through Fridays. He had no reason to know the garage rates. He almost never drove. The regional rails carried him from his rented house in Bala Cynwyd to Suburban Station, no problem, all for just a few bucks. But this was a Saturday. Trains ran much slower. And without much traffic downtown, it was faster to drive. Apparently, it was more expensive, too.
You’d think a cushy government job would come with free parking.
Then again, you’d think that a cushy government job wouldn’t haul you in on a Saturday.
Hah.
But really, he had no idea why he was being dragged in on a weekend morning. Stuff he did—erasing bank accounts, leaving your average wannabe jihadist with a useless ATM card in one hand, his dick in the other—could be done anywhere, really. He could do it at friggin’ Starbucks. There was nothing more simple and yet nothing more satisfying. Maybe some guys got off on the idea of picking off towel-heads with a sniper rifle. Stuart loved doing it by tapping ENTER.
Guess he’d find out what this was about soon enough.
Stuart threw the Focus in reverse, gently lifted his foot off the brake. The car rolled back down the ramp. Another vehicle turned the corner sharply, ready to shoot up the ramp and, judging from its speed,
Brakes screamed. The Focus jolted to a stop, pressing Stuart back into his seat.
“Man,” he said.
He slapped the steering wheel, then looked into the rearview.
It was a Subaru Tribeca. With a woman behind the wheel.
Stuart crouched down into his seat, checked the rearview again. Squinted.
Oh.
Molly Lewis.
Stuart allowed the Focus to roll backwards. The Tribeca got the hint and reversed back down the foot of the ramp and backed onto Twentieth Street. Stuart steered the Focus until it was parallel with the Tribeca. Traffic was light this morning. It was only 8:45. Stuart rolled down his window. The Tribeca did the same, on the passenger side.
“Change your mind about work?”
“Hey, Molly. Yeah, I wish. I’m just not paying twenty-six fifty to park. I’ll find something on the street.”
“Then you’ve got to feed the meter.”
“Then I’ll feed the meter. I’m not paying twenty-six fifty.”
“David told me we’d be here until at least two o’clock.”
“What? I thought noon.”
“He e-mailed me this morning.”
“Man. What is this about anyway? I’ve got my laptop at home. I can do whatever he wants from my living room.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger.”
Stuart watched the Tribeca—fancy wheels for an assistant, he thought—shoot up the ramp. He continued up Twentieth, turned left on Arch, then Twenty-first, then Market down to Nineteenth. He drove past the green light at
