My Boss is a Serial Killer (12 page)

Bill came toward my desk, dark eyes shining
with worry. As I’ve said, he responded badly to stress, and legal
briefs caused him plenty of stress. They’re important documents;
sometimes they can win or lose a case for you. Because Bill did
estate work, he almost never had to mess with such things, except
in the very few cases where disputes among heirs forced these
matters to go before a court. This was one such matter. If his last
secretary had only realized this and not allowed his worry to run
roughshod over her, things might have worked out better between
them. As he began to try this silliness with me, I could easily see
that I would have to do some intervention right then and there.

Bill’s fingers reached for the original copy
of the brief. “I just want to check this over before we send it
out.”

“
No.” On the impulse of
self-preservation, I took it away from him.

He thought I was kidding. He tried to reach
for it again, but I held it near my breasts so he wouldn’t dare
come closer for fear of an embarrassing harassment suit.

“
Carol, come on. We’re on a
deadline.”

“
That’s right, and I’m mailing this out
now. You’re not to touch it.”

“
I need to review it.”

“
No. It’s been reviewed. It’s
beautiful. It’s perfect.”

“
I want . . .” unhappily he began. His
fingers began to worry at his tie, straightening a garment that
could not have been straighter if he’d put it on with guidance from
a slide rule. He may have, in fact. He glanced around as if looking
for someone to help him.

“
You did already. Trust yourself. Trust
me.” I put the original brief behind me and put my hands on his
shoulders to push. “Go away.”

There was some protesting, and he ground his
heels into the carpet so I couldn’t move him.

I commenced with threats. “So help me, if you
touch that brief and make me redo a single bit of it, I’ll put all
the binder combs on backwards before I send it out. All those
teeth, pointing the wrong way. Think of the horror.”

Bill knew that I was teasing him about his
abject fear of backwards binder comb teeth, but he was also
considering with terror the idea that I might actually do something
that evil. He made a move to take a copy with him, but I reached
for the bound document and snapped the binder comb hard enough to
pull three teeth loose. Bill gasped.

“
There’s more where that came from,” I
warned. “Get away from my desk.”

He stared at the loose binding, sweat
breaking out on his forehead.

I promised, “I’ll fix it when you go
away.”

“
I don’t appreciate this,” he informed
me, not precisely walking but stuttering away, held in the vice
grip of the bad binder comb.

“
You can fire me tomorrow, I
guess.”

He didn’t fire me, though. A new legend was
born. “The Time Carol Threatened Bill with Backwards Binder Combs
and He Didn’t Fire Her.”

Here’s another anecdote, on a larger
scale:

One morning Bill had an astoundingly
important nine o’clock hearing before a judge. We had prepped and
prepped for this thing; it was almost on the scale of a trial, it
was so vital to the case. But on the morning of his hearing, I got
stuck in a traffic jam and, thanks to my own carelessness, my cell
phone battery was dead. The devil himself couldn’t have arranged
more perfectly for Bill Nestor to freak out.

Ordinarily I have a twenty-minute commute to
the office from my nearby suburb, but that morning, someone
rear-ended someone else on the highway and traffic snarled into an
unholy mess, turning the busiest highway in Kansas City into its
most crowded and angry parking lot. I should have been there at
7:30 to help Bill get his head together, but instead I found myself
racing off the elevator at 8:35.

Lucille cried to me, “Oh thank God you’re
here!”

“
What, what?” I had anticipated this,
knowing that Bill, frantic about appearing before a judge, would be
in a state of contagious chaos. He had gone into estate law
specifically to lessen his confrontations with judges and
juries.

Lucille snapped her fingers at me and
gestured violently around. “Find Bill! Find Donna! And find
Suzanne!”

“
Why Suzanne?” I didn’t wait for an
answer, though. I hurried back, dropping my coat and purse
somewhere along the way, trusting my coworkers not to rob me blind.
I had worked diligently on this hearing’s preparation, and I was
not happy that Bill had decided to freak out on the morning of it,
just because I was an hour late and he didn’t have anyone who could
effectively reassure him.

People had been watching for me to make an
appearance. Three different people at once—Donna, my supervisor;
Suzanne the paralegal; and Junior Gestapo Brent—each assaulted me
from a different side.

“
Where is the Swanson Discovery
file?”

“
Where do you keep Bill’s passwords for
online electronic filing?”

“
Do you have a courier coming to pick
up the boxes?”

“
What boxes?” was all I could think to
ask. I looked at their harried faces. Bill had been busy, it
seemed. These were all people, much like myself, who had been
trained to do whatever the attorneys told them to do, and the more
emphatic and hysterical the attorney was, the more attention he
got. That’s a Catch-22, but it’s hard to break habits.

“
The file boxes that are going to the
trial!”

“
He needs a complete docket sheet for
the case!”

“
He wants copies of all the documents
they have produced so far!”

I wasn’t able to piece together who was
talking about what, but that’s okay because the truth is, it didn’t
matter. I looked to the closest copy station where stacks of
documents were piled around the heaving copy machine while two
frantic file clerks passed booklets and binders back and forth,
apparently trying to build exhibit notebooks.

“
Kids!” I shouted at them. They jumped
and turned to me, startled and wary. A boy and a girl, neither of
whom could have been older than twenty-two. “Are you doing that for
Bill Nestor?”

“
He needs four exhibit notebooks by
eight-forty-five!” they cried almost in unison.

“
No, he doesn’t,” I said. “Stop that
right now.”

“
Bill said,” Suzanne started to tell
me, but I waved her off. Technically, I should have been respectful
to her because I worked for her, too. But this was not a time for
respect. Bill was trying to turn the office upside down.

I interrupted her. “Forget everything he
said. He’s flipping out. He’s wasting time and the client’s money.
Just chill; go back to whatever you were doing before he
attacked.”

Leaving the horror-stricken clerks behind, I
turned and hurried to Bill’s office before he could strike again.
My coworkers did not do as I’d suggested but followed me, eager to
witness the coming scene in the same way that onlookers this
morning had been eager to ogle the car accident, causing the
traffic snarl that made me late in the first place.

Bill was in his office, messing it up rather
badly, which gave a good indication of how hysterical he was. In
his normal state, Bill was perversely neat; it was only when he
lost control and began to fear the irrational that he turned into
something like the Looney Toons’ Tasmanian Devil—whirlwind,
gibberish and all. I’d definitely have to clean this up before he
returned from court.

“
Bill!” I barked at him from the
doorway.

He jerked his head up to look at me, an
expression of intense relief crossing his face. “Carol! Carol,
you’ve got to help me! I’ve got to leave for court in ten minutes,
and I don’t have any of the discovery documents! Where are my
discovery documents?” He fumbled with the files before him, showing
me how lost he was. “I need a courier or one of the file room guys
to get this stuff down to my car. It isn’t all going to fit!”

“
Stop.” I lowered my voice to almost a
whisper. This was a trick I learned from babysitting my nieces.
Lower your voice enough, and a child must quiet down to hear you.
It works for attorneys, too. I approached Bill and put my hands on
the file box, scooting it across the conference table and out of
his reach. “Look at me.”

He looked at me.

“
I’m sorry I was late,” I said. “There
was a bad, bad traffic jam. Traffic is tied up all over the city.
Now follow me.”

Obediently he did follow, saying, “Can you
call a courier?”

“
No, Bill.” My cubicle was just outside
his office, and I led him there before the group of onlookers. “See
this?” I gestured to a pristine white box on my desk. “Remember I
introduced you to this box yesterday?”

He did not seem to remember. He looked
bewildered.

“
This is the only box you are taking to
the hearing. Everything you need is inside.”

“
Exhibits?”

I opened the box and showed him twenty
exhibit folders labeled with huge white stickers that proclaimed
their contents.

“
Copies for opposing counsel and the
judge?”

“
Right behind the
originals.”

“
Docket sheet?”

“
Right here,” I said, pulling it from a
similarly marked folder. I replaced it.

“
What about the rest of the
file?”

“
You don’t need the rest of the
file.”

“
But what if…”

“
No.”

“
But the golden rule
letters.”

“
No. It’s all here.”

“
But what about…

“
Stop.” I put a nicely labeled lid on
top of the box. “This is the special box, Bill. It is nice and
clean and neat. See how pretty the label is?”

He looked at it wistfully. Then he grinned at
me, for teasing him. “Okay, I remember now.”

“
But you let yourself get upset this
morning and forgot that I was looking out for you.”

“
I’m sorry. You’re right.”

“
Of course I’m right. I went to a lot
of trouble with this, and there’s nothing missing. You have my word
on that.” I shook my head. “Honestly, Bill, you can’t go crazy and
start working up the other staff like this just because I’m late.
What if I had been sick or something? What if some day I get hit by
a bus?”

“
You must never, ever be hit by a bus.”
He said this to me and then he turned to Donna, Suzanne, and Junior
Gestapo Brent. “Sorry about that. Sorry.”

Donna and even Junior Gestapo Brent accepted
his apology with relief, slinking away before they were trapped
into another ordeal. Suzanne, who did not especially like me or the
way I handled Bill, remained and said, “Well, as long as you’re
sure that you have everything you need.”

Yeah, she meant that in a bitchy way. Before
I came along, she was the only one in the office who came close to
being able to control Bill Nestor, and she didn’t like the fact
that I took that title away from her. I know it sounds stupid, but
in a limited office universe, you grab at whatever renown you can
get.

“
Everything’s fine,” Bill told her.
“Thank you, Suzanne. You’ll have to excuse me. It’s a really
important hearing, and I got concerned.”

Concerned was not exactly the right word, I
didn’t think. I called him on it. “Concerned is one thing, Bill,
and hysterical is another. You mustn’t go tearing into the
courtroom like this.”

“
No, of course not, Mom.” Now that he
was calming down, he could joke along with me. His calling me Mom,
though, I don’t know just how funny that was. It wasn’t far from
the figurative truth.

“
Fetch your jacket,” I instructed.
“I’ll carry this down to your car, and we’ll talk about the best
route to take to the courthouse that avoids the highways.
Absolutely everyone is going to be late today, except for
you.”

I was his hero that day. When he came back
from court, he brought me a chocolate chip muffin.

Here’s another incident—actually kind of a
freaky one. Last year I was enjoying an autumn weekend, minding my
own business. I was watching old episodes of
The Incredible
Hulk
(because I can connect most of the things that have
happened to me in the last three years to what I was watching on
television at the time). And yes, I like that show quite a bit. We
can thank Bill Bixby for being able to make turning into a big
green bodybuilder every time he got furious a completely credible
plot device. I’m not ashamed to admit my fandom. Anyway, not much
of that show was available on DVD at the time, but enough was that
I had made a perfectly lovely Saturday night out of it when at
almost 11 p.m. I received an unexpected phone call from a
stranger.

The stranger quickly identified herself as
Bill Nestor’s apartment landlord. Apartment? I asked. I had been
under the impression he lived in a house. No, she rented his
apartment to him. That wasn’t the point, she said. The point was
that he was in the lobby of the building, and she couldn’t get him
to go back to his apartment. He had been there all afternoon. He
was inconsolable over some mysterious problem. She told me almost
tearfully, “I don’t want to call the police, but he’s got me so
worried, and he doesn’t seem to have any family. When I asked him
who to call, he told me to call you. Are you a friend?”