24
Inside Fortress Tintrey
Tintrey’s corporate offices were only a quarter mile from Glenbrook High, as if Jarvis MacLean wanted to remind his alma mater how successful he’d become. MacLean had built his complex in the middle of a landscaped industrial park. Rustic bridges crossed the obligatory water feature, bits of shrubbery poked through the snow, and the walkways that surrounded the building and led into the parkland had all been shoveled and salted.
I parked in the lot in the same row where senior staff seemed to park, judging by the array of BMWs, Mercedeses, and Land Rovers. Nothing as cheap as a Buick. I paused behind a green E-Type Jaguar. Even in this weather, its body was clean and polished, not a mark on it. If Warshawski Enterprises ever got to be as successful as Tintrey, I was getting me one of those. Right after my corporate jet and all those other goodies.
I sighed wistfully but squared my shoulders and walked into a lobby that made no secret of Tintrey’s success. Unlike Anton Kystarnik, whose dingy building seemed designed to show the IRS that he had no assets, Jarvis MacLean had built to proclaim success to his prospective customers. Well-kept plants were potted around the entryway, along with a couple of sculptures of the kind my leasemate created—big abstract pieces of twisting steel and high-gloss wood.
A pair of receptionists, so highly polished I could almost see my face in their cheekbones, staffed a high rosewood counter. They were dressed in powder-blue blazers with TINTREY embroidered on the breast pockets. Behind them, electronic gates blocked access to the building’s interior.
On the far side of the gates, open glass-and-metal staircases invited you to walk to the upper floors. The elevators were along a far wall, but their doors were drab. A green architect clearly had been involved in putting the building together.
“May I help you?” one of the gleaming receptionists asked.
I produced a business card and asked to speak with someone in Human Resources. “I’m doing a background check on a woman who says she used to work here.”
The receptionist murmured into her telephone and then asked who was “the subject of my inquiry.” We fenced for a minute—me explaining that it was a confidential inquiry, she explaining that she was trying to save me time. In the end, she directed me to the third floor, where Belinda would see me. We smiled widely at each other, which made me very aware of my caffeine-stained teeth, and she pressed a switch that let me through the magic gates.
As I climbed to the third floor, I saw that MacLean was an unrepentant supporter of the Iraq war. The walls held some interesting art photographs, but these were overwhelmed by outsize pictures of Donald Rumsfeld and MacLean getting out of a Stryker together, of MacLean with Dick Cheney at an undisclosed location, and a blowup of the photograph I’d seen of MacLean online accepting some kind of award from Bush.
The personnel office was in the middle of the floor. Three people sat at computers in the outer room. The one nearest the door took my name, checked it against her computer log, and directed me to an alcove with the assurance that Belinda would be with me shortly. The alcove reminded me of a doctor’s waiting room. It was crammed with worried souls who were filling out forms on clipboards, each looking up hopefully when one of the receptionists came to call a name. They looked at me suspiciously. Each newcomer was a potential competitor. Suspicion turned to hostility when a receptionist came to get me after a mere ten minutes had passed.
“I was here long before her,” one man called out.
The receptionist just smiled, and said his turn would come soon.
Belinda turned out to be a stocky woman in her early forties. She was the first Tintrey employee I’d seen who didn’t look as though she were preparing for a photo shoot. Her nails were cut bluntly, close to the fingertips, and her clothes had been chosen for comfort, not glamour. She led me into an office behind the reception area that held four cubicles. In the other three, job supplicants sat trying to look earnest, eager, productive—whatever would get them a foot in the door. Belinda took me to her desk in one of the two middle cubes.
“They told me downstairs that you’re a detective who wants information about one of our employees. They should have known better than to send you up here. We don’t give out confidential employee information. Too many competitors in this business.”
“The message got garbled in translation,” I said. “I’m doing a background check on a woman who claims she used to work for you. Her résumé has two years that I can’t verify, so I’m wondering if she lied about her employment history with you.”
I pulled a folder out of my briefcase. I’d stopped at my office before heading for the Tollway and produced a résumé for Alexandra Guaman, inserting her yearbook photo at the top of the page. I’d used the information I’d found online for Alexandra, including her Social Security number, her educational background, and her employment history at Tintrey. I’d beefed up her credentials—I made her a cyberfraud expert working for Tintrey in Baghdad’s Green Zone. I showed her leaving Iraq two weeks after her reported death, working for a credit-card holding company I’d invented in Cleveland, and looking for “new challenges” back in the Chicago area.
I handed the résumé to Belinda. “It’s impossible for me to get any information out of Lackawanna Systems. They seem to have disappeared in the economic tsunami of the last few months, and I can’t find anyone who can vouch for Guaman in Cleveland.”
“Did you go to Cleveland in person?” Belinda asked.
“I do what the job requires.”
I kept my smile pasted on my face. She was shrewd; she knew I could have handled my query with her by phone or e-mail.
“Guaman’s résumé arrived online with a lot of fancy podcasts and video bits, but it boiled down to this history. If you’d just verify the dates with Tintrey and let me know if she really can set up the kind of cybersecurity she’s claiming, I’ll get out of your hair. I can see you’re swamped.”
While I’d been speaking, the lights on Belinda’s phone had been flashing, and her computer kept dinging to let her know she had IM messages piling up. These prods from the ether made her decide it was easier to cooperate than argue. She started typing and brought up Alexandra Guaman’s file without any trouble.
Her monitor was at an angle so that I could see a bit of the screen but not enough to read the text. Belinda frowned over what she was reading, then scrolled down until she was at the end of the file. Her mouth dropped open in shock, and she looked from her screen to me with growing suspicion.
“Who are you really?”
“Really, I am V. I. Warshawski.”
“That’s not what I mean. How did you get this woman’s résumé? What is it you’re really after? Who hired you?”
I started to move around her desk to look at her screen, but she held up a hand, traffic cop style and hit a key that brought up her screen saver, a collection of family photos.
“I am a confidential investigator, and I don’t betray my clients’ identities, so I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. Is there something wrong? I’d like to know so that I can remove Ms. Guaman from consideration for the job they want to hire her to do.”
Belinda bit her lips and looked again at her screen, perhaps hoping her toddler could help her decide what to do. She finally picked up her phone and tapped in a four-digit number with her pencil.
“It’s Belinda here, Mr. Vijay. We have a situation, a QL file that someone’s asking about.”
She listened for a moment, then spelled Alexandra’s last name. I could hear Mr. Vijay barking with excitement, and then, apparently, he put her on hold. After another wait, while I kept prodding Belinda in my role as baffled visitor, a stocky man in a gray jacket and sporting a pale pink tie strode into Belinda’s cubicle.
“I’ll take over from here, Belinda. You go on with your other assignments. I’ll call you when I’m through with this person.”
He took Alexandra Guaman’s résumé from Belinda.
“What did you say your name was?”
I handed him a card.
“V. I. Warshawski. What’s the problem with Ms. Guaman’s file?”
He refused to answer but led me down the hall to a door with his name on it. It was a small office, but it was private.
“What are you up to?” he asked without preamble.
“I am trying to verify Alexandra Guaman’s work history,” I said. “It’s a simple query, so I’d appreciate it if Tintrey would stop acting as though I wanted the design specs for the cruise missile.”
His mouth tightened, and he consulted the computer in front of him. I kept a look of honest bewilderment on my face, which wasn’t a complete act. Why couldn’t they just tell me that Alexandra had died in Iraq? Vijay typed an e-mail, and then sat with his hands folded in front of him. I asked him about Alexandra’s assignment in Iraq, but he didn’t speak. I asked him if he thought Indianapolis would make it to the Super Bowl again, and he looked nettled, so I expanded on that theme.
“Manning is the kind of quarterback a championship team needs: reckless, and convinced he’s invincible. Teams believe in leaders like that. Remember—”
“I’m not interested in football,” Vijay snapped before I could dwell nostalgically on Jim McMahon, the old Bears quarterback.
“Then let’s talk about Alexandra Guaman,” I said. “What did she do that warrants this kind of reaction?”
Vijay’s door opened, and another man came in wearing the kind of hand-cut wool you can afford only if your stock options survived the market meltdown. I recognized him from Rainier Cowles’s table at Club Gouge and from the Tintrey website. It was Gilbert Scalia, head of Tintrey’s Iraqi operations.
“I’ll take over from here, Vijay. What does she know?”
“I didn’t ask. The policy on QL files—”
“Right. Well done.”
Scalia looked at me narrowly.
“Haven’t I met you before? Oh, yes. At that strip joint the other night. You’re a detective, that’s what the owner told us. A detective who’s unpleasantly obsessed with Nadia Guaman. And now you’re up here trying to blackmail us about her sister.”
“What an extraordinary accusation,” I said. “And, by the way, an actionable one, as your friend Prince Rainier would be glad to tell you.”
“Don’t try to play word games with me. You’re way out of your league. You’re in my building under false pretenses, and, believe me, any legal action will be directed against you. By us. Not the other way around.”
He looked at Vijay. “What was she asking?”
“She has a résumé that she pretends came from the Guaman woman. She’s been trying to find out what Guaman did for us in Iraq.”
Scalia shook his head. “Her activities are classified.”
“Whoa, there, Mr. Scalia. You’re a private contractor, not the Department of Defense.”
“When we’re doing DOD’s work, their security clearances extend to our employees. We all regret the death of Alexandra Guaman, but we’re not at liberty to discuss it. Especially not with an ambulance chaser. Time for you to get out, before I bring along a team to throw you out.”
“A whole team?” I said. “That’s flattering, but I’m afraid someone—Olympia, maybe—exaggerated my fighting skills. One person would probably be enough if she knows what she’s doing. Two, if she doesn’t.”
Scalia’s lips tightened. “Before you leave, you’ll hand over whatever document you brought with you.”
“Wrong again. It’s a private document, and you don’t have the necessary security clearance to read it.”
“Where is it?” Scalia asked Vijay.
“She put it into her briefcase.”
“Then call security. We need someone up here to take her case and get the document.”
Scalia had me backed up where he wanted me, which I hated, but I opened my case and took out the spurious résumé. Scalia held out a hand for it, but I ducked under his arm and stuck it into Vijay’s shredder, which gulped it down with a satisfying growl.
Scalia grabbed my case and dumped the contents on Vijay’s desk, his face swollen with rage. My field notebooks that I use in client meetings and off-line research, a tampon that was coming unraveled, and a small makeup kit bounced out. I crossed my arms and leaned against the door while he looked through the papers.
Scalia suddenly ripped a page out of the center of one of the notebooks and fed it through Vijay’s shredder, then dropped the notebook on Vijay’s desk and dusted his hands with a satisfied smirk. I fought back the tide of rage that swept through me. I had just enough self-control to know that if I slugged him, I’d spend the next week either in jail or a hospital.
“What a he-man,” I said, my voice high and bright. “Able to rip a piece of paper with your bare hands. No wonder they put you in charge of war operations.”
“Pick up your shit and get out of my building,” Scalia roared, his face swelling again in anger.
I put the notebooks and the makeup back into my case. As soon as I had the door open, I turned back and stuck the tampon into Scalia’s jacket pocket.
“A souvenir,” I said. “Something to put on your wall along with all those pictures of you in uniform inside the war zone.”
I moved briskly to the stairs. A couple of guys in heavy security costumes appeared as I reached the front doors, but no one shot me, or even tripped me, as I crossed the walk to the visitor’s spot where I’d left my car.