Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (6 page)

I didn’t really think the maternal reference would cut any ice with Ingrid, as upset as she was, but to my surprise, she slid back the latch and opened the stall door, a wad of toilet tissue pressed to her nose. I returned to the sinks and dampened a clean paper towel with cold water, then grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the counter. They were so cheap, you could practically see the wood shavings in them, but they were better than nothing. I handed Ingrid the tissues and draped the wet towel across the back of her neck, a technique employed by mothers everywhere to nip hysterics in the bud. There were a few more sniffles, but her heart wasn’t really in them.

“Thanks,” she said quietly and blew her nose again. She wet another paper towel under the faucet and pressed it to her eyes, propping her slim haunches on the countertop. “Oh, God, I’m going to have such a headache.”

“I’ve got Advil at my desk. I’ll get some for you in a minute. Better now?”

“Yes, much.”
She removed the towel from her eyes and turned to look at herself in the mirror over the sinks, then groaned. “I can’t believe I let that bastard get to me. I promised myself that I would never join the club, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let him harass me.”

“Club?
You lost me.”

“You know, all the women with self-esteem low enough to allow Alain to persuade them into his bed. If I had a dollar for every female he’s propositioned in this place, I’d be rich.” She shook her head at her image in disbelief, then turned on the cold water faucet and began splashing her ruined face vigorously.

“Oh, dear,” I said since nothing more intelligent sprang immediately to mind.
“That old story.
Well, if it helps, we’ve all been there at one time or another.”

Ingrid looked startled. “Don’t tell me he’s already made moves on you, too. You haven’t been here a month. Even he doesn’t work that fast.”

“Oh, no, no!
I didn’t mean Alain specifically, just men generally, men in the office. Years ago,” I amended hastily. After all, I had identified myself as the mother of a person about her age. I was sure she would be unable to believe that a woman of my advanced years could be subject to such overtures.

“I see.” Ingrid finished sloshing her face and dried off on more towels, which she gathered up and pushed into the trash bin. Meeting some resistance, she peered into the receptacle and looked at me with amusement.
“A lot of mail today?”

I returned to the topic at hand. “I heard
Girouard
taking you to task. At least,” I amended for the sake of accuracy, “I assumed that was what he was doing before he slammed the conference room door in my face. I wasn’t eavesdropping, just passing by on my way here.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think anyone saw us.” Ingrid fiddled with a stray lock of blonde hair as she sized me up in the mirror. She turned to face me. “What the hell. It’s common knowledge anyway. Alain has been after me for months. I thought I was safe, because I work for him; but for some reason, after all this time, he’s decided to add his personal assistant to his string of conquests.
Heavy emphasis on
personal
.”

A sardonic grin flitted across her face as her sense of humor reasserted
itself
. “I really can’t think what prompted this, but we were spending a lot of time together preparing for
Donahue v. City of Hartford
, late nights and so on, and well …” She shrugged. “The usual story of proximity and rampant hormones, I guess.
Nothing special.”

I smiled at her candor. “No, nothing special until it happens to you. There you are, maybe feeling a little down about something. You’re tired, lonely, and along
comes
a spider …”

“… and sits down beside her,” Ingrid finished gratefully. “Yes, that’s how it is. Or was,” she added firmly. “It’s not as if there’s any way I can complain. This isn’t a corporation, where there are sexual harassment policies and avenues of redress. The lawyers call the shots, and Paula Hughes, the HR manager, does what they want. So I just confronted Alain today and told him in no uncertain terms to leave me alone, that I am emphatically not interested. In fact, first thing this morning, I posted for another position at the firm. It pays almost as much, and I would be working for the little eunuch who passes for an operations manager here.”

I was happy to see that she was regaining her composure. I also knew exactly who she meant.

“Harold Karp!” we said in unison and laughed.

Karp was the firm’s bean counter by vocation and an avid horticulturist by avocation, cultivating profits by day and an impressive assortment of flora by night, which he insisted upon potting and displaying on the desks of all but the most pollen-sensitive staff. I myself had been presented with a clump of Lily of the Valley in a porcelain pot just yesterday, along with detailed instructions on how to nurture it in the dry environment of the Metro Building. I wasn’t optimistic. My gardening skills were never all that terrific. Besides, I always seemed to prefer the weeds to the expensive perennials.

“Well, that seems safe enough,” I agreed, remembering Karp’s thinning hair, round shoulders, and soft paunch as he patrolled the perimeter of BGB’s four floors each morning to make sure all of us peons were present and accounted for. Ingrid would face no threat from Karp.

“I’m glad you have a plan.” I patted her hand briefly.

“It’s just so infuriating to be thought of as one of
Girouard’s
harem,” Ingrid continued. “I know everyone thinks I’ve been sleeping with him right along, but it isn’t true, and it never will be true.” She frowned at her reflection. “I’ve put up with his pestering this long only because I really need my paycheck, and I’m almost vested in the firm’s retirement program.”

“Do you think
Girouard
will let you go quietly?”

“I don’t know, but I had to do something. I had reached my limit, you know?”

The chattering of other secretaries, headed for lunch, could be heard approaching the women’s room. “I know exactly what you mean. Okay now?” I asked quietly.

Ingrid nodded vigorously and put a finger to her lips. “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep my waterworks our little secret. I don’t want to blow my cool and collected image.” She grinned gamely, if a bit crookedly.

“You’ve got it. Besides,” I added, nodding toward the trash receptacle,” you’ve got something on me, too.”

“Yeah, between us, we share two of the worst-kept secrets in this place.” Giving a final tuck to the recalcitrant tress, Ingrid winked and led the way out. We went in opposite directions to our respective pods.

I arrived at my desk just in time to hear
Bolasevich
howling for
Strutter
, who sat before her computer wearing a transcription machine headset and her habitual serene expression.

“Tuttle!
Get your lazy ass in here before I tell Paula Hughes to hire me a real secretary,” he yelled.

It wasn’t the first time I had heard
Bolasevich’s
vulgarity, but it always made me flinch.
Strutter
remained where she was, fingers busy on her keyboard, until she came to a stopping place that seemed to suit her.

“Tuttle, where the
bejesus
are you?
Get in here, for
crissake
!”

Strutter
calmly removed her headset and gathered up a pad and pen. “At least this time he didn’t say lazy black ass,” she commented, rising from her chair and swaying languidly toward
Bolasevich’s
door. “That really pisses me off.” She paused in the doorway and smiled benignly at her boss. “You bellowed?”

“I wouldn’t have to if you ever, for once in your life, moved your
keister
into second gear,” the big man grumbled. “Shut the door and take a seat. I’ve got a letter of opinion to get out this afternoon, so don’t take all day about it.”

Strutter
stepped inside the office and closed the door, winking broadly at me just before it shut. Always ladylike in demeanor herself, she seemed completely unperturbed by
Bolasevich’s
ugly mouth, whereas I would have been ballistic. Let
Bellanfonte
take that tone with me just once, and he’d see my
keister
heading for the building exit—in overdrive.
Where
do these
lawyers get their arrogance,
I wondered for the umpteenth time.
Girouard
thinks he’s God’s gift to women,
Bolasevich
thinks he’s God’s gift to the legal profession, and
Bellanfonte
thinks he’s God’s gift generally speaking. Do they teach a course in applied egotism in law school, or is high-handedness a prerequisite for admission?

Two young associates scuttled by, the boy pale and the girl flushed. Farther down the corridor one of the female partners, a shrill, bony litigator known among the staff as The Diva, stomped out of her office and yelled after them, “By eight o’clock tonight, and don’t you ever make the mistake of trying to go over my head again, got it?
Got it
?” she repeated more loudly, demanding to be acknowledged. The humiliated young lawyers bumped into each other as they turned around, nodding
like
marionettes. The boy dropped a sheaf of papers he had been holding, and the two quickly crouched and scraped them together before hurrying on their way.

Hardly a morning went by that some similarly distressed youngster didn’t pass by, and my heart went out to every one of them. To become eligible for partnership consideration, every newly admitted lawyer at BGB had to serve six years as an associate, the legal profession’s equivalent of indentured servitude. “First Years,” especially, were expected to put in twelve- to fourteen-hour days routinely, and additional hours on the weekends were the norm. It didn’t get a whole lot better in years two through six, either. Four years of college, three years of law school, and six years of that sort of apprenticeship must create a wicked thirst to bully someone else when partnership was finally achieved.

I sighed in sympathy for the unlucky associates and returned to my telephone.
So far,
I thought, answering and transferring calls with growing confidence,
it’s been a very interesting day.

And then the emergency fire klaxons went off.

My first thought was that nobody could possibly hear an emergency announcement over that din. My second thought was,
so how can we tell what the emergency is?
After a shocked, motionless moment, I followed Jeannie and Cindy, the mailroom girls, to the windows overlooking Trumbull Street, where half a dozen anxious secretaries already jockeyed for position. From the Hartford Civic Center, which occupied most of the block on the opposite side of the street, clouds of thick, black smoke billowed upward, filling the air with frightening speed. Although the smoke was still below us, it was clear that even the top floors of our building would soon be engulfed. The klaxons continued to whoop relentlessly, drowning out whatever a building management staffer was yelling into the loudspeaker system.

“What’s happening?” wailed Jeannie, or perhaps Cindy, and I shrugged helplessly, as bewildered as she and possibly even more frightened. With images of September 11th etched into our memories, thoughts of terrorism were unavoidable.

“It looks like a fire across the street,” I hedged without speculating on the possible causes. “I suggest we blow this pop stand, ladies.” I was glad that my voice sounded steadier than my knees felt.

We joined the stream of white-faced BGB employees, plus a few luckless clients who had been conferring with their attorneys, heading for the nearest fire stairs. Still unfamiliar with the rabbit warren of cubicles, I meekly followed the crowd. A young associate who had been drafted into fire marshal duty stood at the door to the fire stairs, plainly wishing that he could bolt from the building with the rest of us. He compensated by shoving people through the door as quickly as possible, yelling, “Move!
Move!”

Jeannie, Cindy and I stumbled into the stairwell behind
Bolasevich
, who bulled his way impatiently past a knot of messengers who were trying to give an obviously pregnant young woman some room to maneuver. Although tempted to follow in his wake, I told myself to get a grip and set an example for my young companions. We adopted a more measured pace of descent, struggling not to give in to panic. If only the klaxons and the loudspeakers would stop, but on and on they went, whooping and yelling at us to evacuate the building immediately, as if that were not already uppermost in our minds.