Company Man Read online

  Critical Praise for Joseph Finder and His Novels

  Company Man

  “At long last someone has done for executives what John Grisham did for lawyers: create fictional ones sufficiently three-dimensional to care about…the book doesn’t slow down for a second.”

  —Fortune

  “Compelling…Company Man confirms what Paranoia made clear: [Finder] has unusually keen instincts for backstabbing in the business world…as much a novel about the chicanery of the business world as it is a mystery story…Finder weaves these prospects menacingly throughout the story.”

  —The New York Times

  “Sharply created characters…makes the workplace as duplicitous a world as any in the Cold War. Company Man resonates with anyone who has seen corporate politics at its worst.”

  —Orlando Sun-Sentinel

  “Finder skillfully places his story of corporate intrigue (who is trying to sell the company, and why?) in counterpoint to the unraveling of a family’s secrets (why is Nick’s son Lucas so disturbed?), and the plot, which also features rogue cops and at least one homicide, accelerates to a headlong finish.”

  —The New Yorker

  “It’s everything a thriller should be: suspenseful, entertaining—and, above all, thrilling.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “Finder (who last mined corporate culture in 2004’s Paranoia) expertly keeps the pages turning as he ups the stakes chapter after chapter in Conover’s professional and personal life. He is equally confident in portraying the small stuff involving family conflicts, marriages in turmoil and especially the telling details of corporate life…it more than achieves its main goal of entertaining the reader—as a good thriller is supposed to do.”

  —Baltimore Sun

  “Once again, Finder has produced a page-turning corporate thriller with enough twists and turns for any reader.”

  —Denver Post

  “Not only fast-paced excitement but also sympathetic characters with authentic back stories and realistic situations. Highly recommended.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “A frightfully good suspense thriller.”

  —Booklist

  “Finder has become a master of the modern thriller. There are twists and deceptions packed in here…once again, Finder has managed to update the claustrophobic thriller into something that resonates with our times…Joseph Finder has secured his niche as a master of the contemporary corporate thriller, a smart plotter in touch with our new century’s soft spots.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Propulsive…should cement Finder’s reputation as a reliable chronicler of the perils lurking in e-mail and the executive suite.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “A solid, engrossing thriller…the novel’s pacing is strong, with steady suspense…there are few thriller fans who won’t stay up to finish this assured tale.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Finder expertly doles out the suspense and comes up with a climactic twist…a highly efficient thriller combining state-of-the-art corporate malfeasance with the old-fashioned kind.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The business thriller is rejuvenated by Joseph Finder with Company Man. That’s because Finder puts the emphasis on sharply created characters instead of potentially eye-glazing business minutiae.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Doesn’t disappoint…if there ever was a one-sitting book, this is it. Don’t miss Company Man!”

  —Themysteryreader.com

  “Finder is back with a new thriller that is almost as good as Paranoia, one of my favorite books last year…the good guy/killer dichotomy is a fascinating study in an intense story about the good and evil in all of us, and Finder twists a couple of storylines and keeps those pages turning. Great read.”

  —Bookbitch

  “Hard to believe it’s possible that Finder could top his last success with the corporate thriller Paranoia but that’s exactly what he does with his latest. Not only can you find the requisite devious corporate moves, but even more enticing is the sincerity, heart, and sometimes just plain madness brought about by a truly inspired cast of characters…this must-read comes highly recommended for its stunning suspense, intelligent writing, and gripping plot, along with a cast of characters that is so perfectly drawn they seem to fairly leap off the page…when you put all these ingredients together, you have one heck of a perfect read that shouldn’t be missed.”

  —NewMysteryReader.com

  Paranoia

  “The most entertaining thriller of the year.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Jet-propelled…this twisting, stealthily plotted story…weaves a tangled and ingeniously enveloping web…[with a] killer twist for the end.”

  —The New York Times

  “Last year belonged to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code…this year’s first contender for Page Turner of the Year is Joseph Finder’s Paranoia.”

  —USA Today

  “Riveting…perhaps the finest of the contemporary thriller novelists, Finder is reminiscent of Michael Crichton, only with more character development and less slavish attention to detail…in the case of Paranoia, he’s an expert on suspenseful storytelling that is at once slick and substantive…you may think you’ve read one mystery too many. Find Finder and you’ll think again.”

  —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  “Kudos to Joseph Finder…in Finder’s lively prose, even his thumbnail sketches come alive…it may go without saying that in a thriller of this quality, just about everyone has a story that’s other than it first appears. What sets Paranoia apart from others of its genre is not only Finder’s fun, chatty prose, but also his command of the setting. A former Sovietologist, the author knows his spy stuff—and has researched well the ins and outs of post-Enron corporate security…in a way, it’s an intellectual puzzle that he has shaped into a thriller.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Combining nail-biting suspense with state-of-the-art technology, it’s sure to become one of the hotter books this year…Finder excels in keeping the reader guessing until the last sentence, literally.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Paranoia is a cleverly nuanced suspense story. It builds slowly and relentlessly, developing character and plot, creating intrigue…fresh, original, and without cliché, this is a cerebral, contemporary thriller that ends with a wrenching twist followed by a supple extra turn.”

  —Boston Herald

  “A superbly edgy read…fraught action scenes worthy of the best heist movies…in Paranoia, Finder mines a rich vein of scary entertainment…grab[s] readers by their throats the way The Da Vinci Code did.”

  —New York Daily News

  “Page-turning perfection…dead-on dialogue…palpable tension…Finder has that rare knack for instantly pulling the reader into the story and then tops that with surprises within surprises.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Terrific…riveting…practically redefines the highstakes, high-tech thriller. It’s the best novel of its kind since Michael Crichton’s Disclosure.”

  —Providence Journal-Bulletin

  “Fast, funny, and very, very topical.”

  —Toronto Globe and Mail

  “A terrific thriller…expertly paced and full of suspense and surprises.”

  —San Jose Mercury-News

  For my parents, Morris and Natalie Finder

  And in loving memory of my in-laws,

  Michel and Josephine Souda

  That is the thankless position of the father in the family—the provider of all, and the enemy of all.

  —AUGUST STRINDBERG, 1886

  Contents

  Part One: Security

&n
bsp; Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part Two: Trace Evidence

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Part Three: Guilt

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Part Four: Crime Scene

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Part Five: No Hiding Place

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Part One

  Security

  1

  The office of the chief executive officer of the Stratton Corporation wasn’t really an office at all. At a quick glance you’d call it a cubicle, but at the Stratton Corporation—which made the elegant silver-mesh fabric panels that served as the walls around the CEO’s brushed-steel Stratton Ergon desk—“cubicle” was a dirty word. You didn’t work in a cubicle in the middle of a cube farm; you multitasked at your “home base” in an “open-plan system.”

  Nicholas Conover, Stratton’s CEO, leaned back in his top-of-the-line leather Stratton Symbiosis chair, trying to concentrate on the stream of figures spewing from the mouth of his chief financial officer, Scott McNally, a small, nerdy, self-deprecating guy who had a spooky affinity for numbers. Scott was sardonic and quick-witted, in a dark, sharp-edged way. He was also one of the smartest men Nick had ever met. But there was nothing Nick hated more than budget meetings.

  “Am I boring you, Nick?”

  “You gotta ask?”

  Scott was standing by the giant plasma screen, touching it with the stylus to advance the PowerPoint slides. He was not much more than five feet tall, over a foot shorter than Nick. He was prone to nervous twitches, anxious shrugs, and his fingernails were all bitten to the quick. He was also rapidly going bald, though he wasn’t even out of his thirties; his dome was fringed with wild curly hair. He had plenty of money, but he always seemed to wear the same blue button-down Oxford shirt, fraying at the collar, that he’d worn since Wharton. His brown eyes darted around as he spoke, sunken in deep lilac hollows.

  As he rattled on about the layoffs and how much they were going to cost this year versus how much they’d save the next, he fidgeted, with his free hand, with what remained of his straggly hair.

  Nick’s desk was kept fastidiously clear by his terrific assistant, Marjorie Dykstra. The only things on it were his computer (wireless keyboard and mouse, no pesky rat’s nest of wires, a flat-panel screen), a red model truck with the Stratton logo painted on the side, and framed pictures of his kids. He kept sneaking glances at the photos, hoping Scott would think he was just staring into space and concentrating on the interminable presentation.

  What’s the bottom line, dude? he wanted to say. Are the guys in Boston going to be happy or not?

  But Scott kept droning on and on about cost savings, about outplacement costs, about metrics, about employees as “units,” as bar graphs on a PowerPoint slide. “Current average employee age is 47.789 years, with a standard deviation of 6.92,” Scott said. He noticed Nick’s glazed expression as he touched the screen with the aluminum stylus, and a half smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “But hey, age is just a number, right?”

  “Is there any good news here?”

  “Ahh, it’s only money.” Scott paused. “That was a joke.”

  Nick stared at the little display of silver frames. Since Laura’s death last year he cared about two things only: his job and his kids. Julia was ten, and she beamed with her thousand-watt smile in her school picture, her curly chestnut hair unruly, her enormous, liquid brown eyes sparkling, her big new teeth a little crooked, a smile so unself-conscious and dazzling she seemed to be bursting out of the photo. Lucas was sixteen, dark-haired like his little sister, and unnervingly handsome; he had his mother’s cornflower-blue eyes, an angular jawline. A high school heartthrob. Lucas smiled for the camera, a smile that Nick hadn’t actually seen in person since the accident.

  There was just one photo of all four of them, sitting on the porch of the old house, Laura seated in the middle, everyone touching her, hands on her shoulder or her waist, the center of the family. The gaping hole, now. Her amused, twinkling blue eyes looked right at the camera, her expression frank and poised, seemingly tickled by some private joke. And of course Barney, their overweight, lumbering Golden/Lab mix, sat on his haunches in front of everyone, smiling his dog smile. Barney was in all the family pictures, even in last Christmas’s family photo, the one with Lucas glowering like Charles Manson.

  “Todd Muldaur’s going to have a shit fit,” Nick said, lifting his eyes to meet Scott’s. Muldaur was a general partner in Fairfield Equity Partners in Boston, the private-equity firm that now owned the Stratton Corporation. Todd, not to put too fine a point on it, was Nick’s boss.

  “That’s about the size of it,” Scott agreed. He turned his head suddenly, and a second later Nick heard the shouts too.

  “What the hell—?” Scott said. A deep male voice, somewhere nearby, yelling. A woman’s voice, sounded like Marge’s.

  “You don’t have an appointment, sir!” Marge was shouting, her voice high and frightened. An answering rumble, the words indistinct. “He isn’t here, anyway, and if you don’t leave right this instant, sir, I’m going to have to call Security.”

  A hulking figure crashed into one of the silver panels that outlined
Nick’s workstation, almost tipping it over. A bearded giant in his late thirties wearing a checked flannel shirt, unbuttoned, over a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt: barrel-chested, powerful-looking. The guy looked vaguely familiar. A factory worker? Someone who’d recently been laid off?

  Immediately behind him followed Marge, her arms flailing. “You cannot come in here!” she shrilled. “Get out of here immediately, or I’ll call Security.”

  The giant’s foghorn voice boomed: “Well, whaddaya know, there he is. Boss man himself. The Slasher is in.”

  Nick felt a cold fear wash over him as he realized that the budget meeting might turn out to be the high point of his day.

  The guy, probably a worker just laid off in the most recent round of cuts, was staring, wild-eyed.