Orbuculum
“There’s a lot of blood.”
“Wait, what?” replied the well dressed young man from his side of the security glass, looking up from his phone.
“That was some mash-up your man was in and the tow guy tells me he’d pretty much bled out by the time the paramedics finally pried him loose so, yeah, a lot of blood. But El Jefe says you can have whatever’s in there so long as you sign this waiver,” the older man (Arnold according to his shirt) said as he slid a piece of paper and a disposable ballpoint pen through the narrow opening at the bottom of the window.
The younger man, Jacob (Jake to his friends, lovers, and close associates), hesitated, overwhelmed by the thought that he was very likely about to have to touch dried pools of that which only twenty-four hours ago was still coursing through the veins and arteries of his former boss.
“Or not,” Arnold said and moved to retrieve the waiver, adding yet another greasy fingerprint to the several already smudging the document. It occurred to Jake that this man had more oil and grease on his shirt than had ever existed on the entirety of Jake’s garage floor. But the receding paperwork snapped him back.
“No!” Jake said sharply, immediately aware it had been too harsh. “I mean, sorry, yes, yes I will sign the waiver.” Then, looking around as he slid the signed original back to Arnold, thought to ask, “do you have any gloves”?
“Gloves?” Arnold asked, and gave Jake an even more quizzical look as he retrieved a pair of formerly grey work gloves from the back pocket of his Dickies and held them up for inspection. “You can borrow these if you want.”
“No!” Jake yelled again, this time actually taking a step back and immediately realizing he had made another mistake as Arnold’s look soured even further. “I’m sorry, it’s just that this has all been a bit much. I meant latex gloves, you know, the disposable kind.”
“No. Sorry. Fresh out of latex,” Arnold said as he jammed the work gloves back into his pocket and punched a button unlocking the security door to Jake’s left with a deafening, dissonant buzz. Uttering a small, piteous cry, Jake actually hopped back another step when the alarm sounded, eliciting a brief, satisfied smirk from Arnold who, with a sweeping gesture toward the door and speaking loudly over the alarm, said, “So, if our business here is concluded, perhaps you would care to join me in the yard.”
[Yesterday]
“Ms. Ardelean is here” the Executive Assistant announced as she half entered the conference room.
“What’s she like?” Jake asked, looking up from the thin brief he had printed out. “I couldn’t find anything on her except what Mr. Thomas gave me. How does a ghost make a living as a consultant?” Jake asked exasperated, tossing the pages into the middle of the vast marble conference table.
“She’s very . . . European,” the Assistant offered. “Eastern European I think. And very serious. Shall I show her in?”
“No,” Jake said, looking at his watch. “She’s four minutes early. Bring her in exactly at ten a.m. I’ll let Mr. Thomas know she’s here.” Jake reached for his phone to text his supervisor, a privilege he relished as he knew only about five other people at Sacro had the CEO’s personal cell phone number, all of them senior executives. He also knew they all resented him for his near unlimited access to their boss, and that was fine. Jake had done enough “research” to ruin any one of them if they stepped out of line. After all, that was his job. To know everything. About everyone. To be a human database with his eidetic memory pulling from a seemingly bottomless reservoir of research. If there was a God, and Jake had serious doubts on that score, the Almighty had certainly created him for this position and so Jake remained a devout agnostic out of respect for the possibility of a divine intelligence.
At ten o’clock on the dot, the Assistant held open the conference room door for a striking woman, at least five feet ten inches tall with raven hair down to her waist and a bespoke Armani suit (this season) tailored to her exact measurements, which were impressive. “Ms. Ardelean,” announced the Assistant.
“Please. Sofia,” the woman said as she took Jake’s extended hand only to pull him to her for a kiss on both cheeks. “There is no need for formality here. We are just talking.” The accent was indeed Eastern European, Serbian or possibly Romanian, and intoxicating. Jake was aware he was now blushing and introduced himself quickly so he could sit down before any other physical symptoms could reveal themselves. He also made a mental note that it was high time he slept with a woman again. The men in his life lately had been clingy and, frankly, boring, but there was absolutely nothing boring about Sofia. And Jake suspected she would get less boring the more one got to know her.
Jake cleared his throat and forced himself to concentrate on the brief as he tried to collect his thoughts. “You’re a hard woman to find, Ms. . ., sorry, Sofia. I couldn’t find any reference to you or your firm online. And I pride myself on my research skills.” At least a minute passed with no response until Jake was finally forced to look up and see Sofia smiling at him, occupying his soul with her emerald green eyes.
“Yes,” she said at last. “I pay for the privilege. I work only by word of mouth and have no ‘firm’ as you put it. I am simply a woman who advises people upon referral from my friends.” Jake could hardly keep the words in his head, the texture and cadence of her voice was so hypnotic he couldn’t concentrate. He was about to make some excuse and ask again, but was saved by Mr. Thomas (Ted to his friends, ex-wives, clients, and, very recently, Jake) making his usual power entrance five minutes late through the private, unmarked door that led to his office. As always, Ted looked like he had just come from a workout, full breakfast, and shower, wearing a perfectly pressed suit almost as expensive as Sofia’s.
“Ms. Ardelean” Ted boomed, arms held out for a professional hug, his signature move with women to allow them to fully experience both his significant height and his well-toned upper body. Whether he was trying to seduce, or simply dominate them for business purposes (or both), Ted had often lectured Jake that this was the best way to assert control at the outset. But Sofia didn’t look dominated or controlled. In fact, she seemed to have a few moves of her own. She remained seated and silent just past the point of awkwardness, and then slowly stood to offer her hand with the clear expectation that it be kissed. Ted obliged with the same look on his face that Jake had been wearing only a few moments ago.
“Hello Ted, how wonderful to meet you in person, she offered at long last, and Jake was certain her accent wasn’t quite as pronounced as when they had been talking. Taking her seat as soon as the formalities were over, she made eye contact with Jake just long enough to wink with her right eye as Ted took his seat at the head of the table to her left. Jake still had no idea how Ted had found Sofia, “comes highly recommended” is all he would say, but now that she was here, Jake was willing to listen to whatever she chose to say for as long as she chose to say it.
“I see you’ve met Jake here,” Ted began, his voice even louder as he tried to recover the ground he had unexpectedly lost to Sofia in the opening salvo. Jake steeled himself for the explanation Ted gave every time he introduced him to someone new, that Jake was his scribe, his all-knowing, all-seeing, trusty sidekick without whom he would be at a complete and utter loss. In short, letting the other party know that Jake was no threat, and certainly not a principal to the discussion, but that he had a pass to be in the room and it was not negotiable. But he had barely warmed up with “Jake is my . . .” before Sofia cut him off.
“There is no need,” Sofia announced as she gave Jake a warm, albeit somewhat conspiratorial, smile. “Jake and I are old friends now. I feel I have known him my whole life. His great-great-grandmother was from my country and I can see her blood pulsing through his veins. He also went to the same college as my sister, Antonia. I believe they even took a class together with, who was it Jake, Professor Venkman?”
“Um, yes,” Jake stammered. “That’s it.” Jake had no idea where his great-great-grandmothers were from and if he had ever taken a class with someone who looked even remotely like Sofia, he would certainly remember. But he had taken a dreadful elective in medieval poetry from a Professor Venkman, strange that she would know that. Whatever, he thought, after fifteen years of playing second to powerful primaries, Jake had a keen sense for who had the most material in any given situation, and Sofia clearly had Ted’s queen and bishop at this point, so he just rolled with it. “I’d have never passed if Antonia hadn’t been willing to share her notes with me when I was too hung over to make it to class.”
“I heard that’s not all she shared with you,” Sofia said with her strongest accent so far and another blind-side wink. “But enough reminiscing. You are an important man and your time is valuable, Mr. Thomas so let us, as you say, get down to business.” Ted, now completely flustered and off his game, tried to recover after several seconds of dead air.
“Sohpie!” Ted scoffed. “My father’s not here. It’s just Ted, or Teddy if you prefer,” he began and Jake barely caught the flash of anger on Sofia’s face as Ted turned to retrieve a coffee tray that had been placed on the credenza. Sofia declined the coffee but asked for herbal tea, specifically asking Ted to “be a dear” and get it for her as she could not stomach American coffee. And to Jake’s astonishment, his boss actually got on the intercom and ordered it himself instead of delegating it to Jake. Trying not to cede any further ground to Sofia (“Sophie” to no one apparently), Ted started talking before he had even switched off the intercom, explaining how the meeting would progress as they waited for Sofia’s tea. Jake would provide the details of their little “problem” (that being how Sacro’s stock had been trending down for three months now despite reasonable growth for their industry, solid financials, no scandals or acquisition rumors, and, per Ted, “the best CEO in the industry”). After that, Sofia would ask her questions, and if neither Ted nor Jake could provide the answer, they would have someone brought in who could.
“That won’t be necessary,” Sofia said, after patiently listening to Ted’s outline of the rest of the day (and possibly night if necessary he assured her) while making quite the production of pouring, stirring, and sipping her tea.
“What?!” Ted blurted out, violating his cardinal rule to never say or do anything that would indicate confusion or a lack of control. “How can you possibly . . ., he began before Sofia held up a hand for him to stop, and then waited a few seconds until he closed his mouth.
“I already know all of the necessary facts,” she explained, maintaining constant eye contact with Ted as she reached for her caramel 24/24 Hermes bag in the adjacent chair. “I simply needed to be in this physical space, with you present, to find the answer.” Ted did not respond, did not look at Jake, simply started at Sofia with no affect as she opened the purse and retrieved a plain, indigo, velvet pouch. After loosening the drawstring and reaching her hand inside, she paused and this time took in both Ted and Jake with eyes that made it clear there was to be no more speaking unless spoken to by Sofia. “This is the part you do not talk about. To anyone. Ever. I do not like defining relationships with words on paper but this is what the lawyers would call a ‘non-disclosure agreement’ and the penalties are severe. Do you understand?” Ted and Jake both nodded in unison but their expressions conveyed nothing remotely resembling understanding.
“Bun,” Sofia said, and Jake vaguely registered the conference room door locking and the automatic blinds lowering as she withdrew a crystal sphere about the size of a grapefruit and placed it atop the crumpled pouch to keep it from rolling away. Jake could hear some part of his mind screaming: What are you doing?! Are you seeing this? What kind of an idiot hires a gypsy with a crystal ball as a management consultant?! But Jake couldn’t speak, or move, he could only watch as Sofia turned her emerald gaze to the sphere and spoke very softly in her native tongue. It could have been minutes or hours, but at some point Jake stopped resisting the rhythmic cantor of her voice and the ever-shifting colors that appeared first like smoke and then like fog inside the ball. He had never known such utter calm and absence of thought, not even wondering if he should check his phone (which wasn’t working anyway). Eventually, he left the conscious realm altogether and was fairly certain the last thing he heard was Ted’s head hitting the table.
“You comin’ or what?” Arnold (Arnie to everyone but Jake) asked as he held the gate open. Jake looked up from his phone, still trying to reset the clock which was exactly two hours and forty-three minutes behind the actual time, slipped it back into his inside jacket pocket, and followed Arnold into “the yard.”
“Did your tow guy happen to hear the police say what happened?” Jake asked as they meandered through a maze of rusted cars, trucks, and various other vehicles that had come to the automobile graveyard to be crushed or sold off in pieces.
“Yeah, the tow drivers gotta stay friendly with the staties so they stay on rotation. Costs a fortune in coffee and donuts but any driver worth his salt don’t show up at a job without an order from Dunkin,” Arnold said, chuckling to himself.
“So what did they say?” Jake asked after enough time had passed that it was clear Arnold had forgotten the question.
“About what” Arnold asked, and then remembered why he had started talking about cops. “Oh yeah, they said it was a definite suicide. Guy apparently got caught scamming his own company with some stock scheme and just drove right into the path of the train, no skid marks or nothin’. Just crashed right through the crossing gate and BOOM! Check-out time.” Arnold illustrated all of this with elaborate hand gestures which Jake barely noticed as he tried to remember anything between sitting in the conference room yesterday and waking up in his car in the company garage this morning.
“Stock scheme?” Jake asked, now starting to feel real concern about what else he might not be remembering.
“Yeah, don’t you listen to the news? I couldn’t really follow it all but apparently he was trying to make money by getting his own company’s stock to go down, so he started spreadin’ a bunch of rumors about how there was some big scandal nobody knew about. Turns out he was the scandal! Ha!”
“Hold on,” Jake said trying to absorb the enormity of what Arnold was saying. “Are you telling me Ted Thomas shorted Sacro’s stock?”
“Yeah, that’s what they said, ‘shorted.’ Can’t say I know exactly how he did it but somehow he was bettin’ against his own horse. Go figure. Apparently there was a big fracas at his office when it came out too, somebody even got video of him being thrown out of the building by his own security guards. Him and some hot number that I guess was his secretary, tall drink of water she was. Maybe he was cheatin’ on his wife AND his company. ‘Disobedience is its own reward,’ that’s what my grandmother would have said, rest her soul.” Fracas, yes, yelling Jake thought as shards of yesterday began to reappear. In the conference room. More fog burning off. More clicks.
“I called security,” Jake said, more to himself than to Arnold.
“What’s that?” Arnold asked, clearly not making any connection between Jake and the story he’d just told.
“Nothing, sorry. I just remembered something,” Jake said, which was partly true because he was pretty sure he now remembered almost everything. When Sofia looked up from the crystal ball crystal ball?! God, did that actually happen?, she looked at Ted and explained that someone had been shorting Sacro stock and then leaking false reports of fraud to B-List financial bloggers as an “anonymous insider,” knowing the posts would self-validate and eventually the real analysts and hedge funds would smell smoke and there really would be a fire sale. But she said it in a way that clearly indicated Ted was that shorting anonymous insider and, Ted being Ted, he took the bait and lost it. No “gypsy bitch in a knock-off suit” was going to bring him down and then grabbed the ball, banging it on the table so hard Jake was afraid he was going to succeed, sending shards of crystal flying. But once he had sort of flamed out and stopped to take a breath, Sofia, in a very calm, even tone, reminded Ted that she hadn’t accused him of anything, and, though he had pretty much just admitted it, she had a duty of confidentiality and wouldn’t be sharing anything with anyone, as she gently took the ball from his hand and slipped it back into her bag.
“Well, here she is,” announced Arnold as they rounded a corner formed by crushed VW Beetles. “What’s left of her. Looks like she was a dame before your guy decided to take her out with him. Never had one of these in here before.
“Nineteen Sixty-One Mercedes Adenauer,” said Jake. “That car was his baby alright, named her ‘Addie.’ It’s supposed to be a limo, but he mostly drove it himself unless he wanted to impress someone by . . . hiring a driver.” Jake was feeling physically sick just looking at the mangled hulk of the car he had driven so many times. Chauffeur was just one more of Jake’s “other duties as assigned” but it was also one of the best times to pick up valuable information as Ted made his calls, usually to his broker complaining about not being able to exercise his Sacro stock options and to shady sounding creditors asking for “just one more month.” Jake had a fleeting thought that the repo guy was going to be very disappointed when he came to collect on whatever usurious note had been secured by Addie.
“I wish I could have seen her before,” Arnold said. “I’ll bet Addie was a real German dish,” he mused, as Jake felt an almost audible “click” in his brain.
“Wait, you said there was video of Ted . . . Mr. Thomas, leaving the building with a woman?”
“Yeah, it was weird. It looked like she was kind of smiling which was an odd thing to do under the circumstances. Of course, I wasn’t really looking at her face,” Arnold said, lowering his voice a notch and giving Jake a wink.
“Was she with him in the car?!” Jake asked, suddenly panicked though he wasn’t sure why, since he’d only just met the woman yesterday and had been with her a total of around three hours, most of which he had spent in some kind of trance.
“Oh, no, it was just him. Must have dropped her off somewhere before he took the last exit. Do you know her?”
“Me? Oh, no, I don’t think she even worked at the company, some kind of consultant.” Well, at least that last part was true, Jake thought. She was, indeed, some kind of consultant alright. After his phone finally came back online, Jake had texted the Chairman of the Board who had discretely added one item to his job description and Jake, ever sensitive to a shifting of the political winds, agreed to immediately report “anything that might be of interest to the board” via private text to her personal phone. This seemed to qualify. Five minutes later, Jake unlocked the conference room door to admit security so they could escort Ted from the building as he shouted to anyone who would listen that everyone involved in “this fiasco” would be fired, if not charged with whatever crime he was sure had been committed. He would have likely made more of a scene except that Sofia was leading him by the arm and cooing to him in that soothing accent about how everything was going to be alright and together they would “fix everything” but first they needed to go someplace they could have some “privacy.” Jake had tried to say something to Sofia as they left, but she cut him off saying simply, “I’ll make sure you get my card.”
“So, you want to take a look? I think only the back doors still work but there’s not much left of the front seats anyway so you shouldn’t miss much. I’m supposed to stay with you, but I’m just going to sit over here and have a smoke, which means you’ve got exactly one cigarette to do whatever you need to do and then I need to get back up to the house.” And with that Arnold ambled off to seat himself on an old engine block that had the benefit of shade from a late eighties era school bus perched precariously on concrete blocks.
“Sure thing, but try to make it last because I don’t know what I’m going to find in here,” Jake said as he tested the driver’s side passenger door handle. Arnold responded with an enthusiastic thumbs up as he expertly flipped a soft pack out of his shirt pocket and tapped out a lone cigarette.
It took some effort, but the door finally came open with a deafening metallic screech. It was an apt harbinger for what came next, a waft of the sickly sweet copper smell from all the blood on what remained of the leather upholstery baking in the midday sun. Jake tried to repress his gag reflex, and almost failed, before deciding to hold his breath and take intermittent forays into the interior of the car, as if he were a snorkeler exploring a wrecked pirate’s schooner in a shallow cove.
As expected, Jake didn’t see anything at first. Ted had been a real stickler about not using one’s car as a storage (or trash) bin, and harshly judged those who did. But after mustering the courage to actually stick his head into the interior, he noticed something poking out from under what was left of the driver’s seat, a corner of caramel leather. Jake tugged it out carefully with two fingers and immediately recognized it as Sofia’s purse. It didn’t have a spot of blood on it and Jake wondered how she could have possibly left it in the car. Maybe she and Ted had a fight and he threw her out on the side of the road or, more likely, she stormed out. Good decision, Jake thought. He still couldn’t reconcile the thought of Ted killing himself. Ted always assumed he could buy, litigate, or fight his way out of any situation. And he certainly had the means to flee the jurisdiction if need be during the time it would take to assemble enough actual evidence to charge him. He had often bragged to Jake about having friends who were white collar criminals living like kings in non-extradition countries with their ill-gotten gain. To him, they had beaten the game and were to be admired, not imprisoned.
“My finger’s starting to get warm!” Arnold announced from his block. Just about three puffs left.
“Almost done,” Jake answered and looked inside the bag, realizing it probably cost more than anything in his wardrobe, including his prized Tag Heur watch. The purse was empty save one item: a thick, very high quality bone business card with no name or address, just a phone number that began with a country code Jake didn’t recognize. Jake smiled as he realized he would be calling that number shortly to arrange the return of the bag and, once again, get to hear that voice. And who knew what possibilities awaited when they met. But first, Jake had to get out of this God-forsaken junk yard and away from Ted’s bloodmobile.
Almost as an afterthought, to be thorough, Ted screwed up the last of his courage and put his head as close to the rear floorboard as he could without touching it and peered under the seat to see if anything might have slid out of Sofia’s open bag. As his eyes adjusted to further darkness, Jake realized that, because the car was antique, it had none of the electric motor apparatus that usually took up most of the space under a modern car seat, and therefore he could see all the way through to the now misaligned gas, brake, and clutch pedals. The gas and clutch were both bent at bizarre angles from engine components that had penetrated the cabin wall but the brake pedal looked in perfect working order, exactly where it was supposed to be. Having concluded nothing of Sofia’s had rolled under or in front of the seat, Jake was just turning his head to extricate himself from this most unpleasant situation when something flashed in his peripheral vision. Turning again to peer under the driver’s seat, Jake could see something just starting to reflect the early afternoon light from under the brake pedal. Squinting his eyes and shoving his head even further under the seat as his lungs screamed for oxygen, Jake could just make out part of the object which, he now realized, had prevented the brake from being depressed as Ted approached the train crossing. It was the curved edge of a crystal sphere, about the size of a grapefruit.
