“It just got a little more interesting.” I checked her out just long enough to be polite. “No Zoom meetings today?”
“They’re only going to see my shoulders.” She grinned as she turned on her computer.
Rachel’s a graphic designer, and also my girlfriend. She’s got hazelnut eyes, red hair, and psychic powers. And nice shoulders.
My phone buzzed, recapturing my attention. Alia Melendez, COO of Illinois Metal Supply Inc., had hired me to look into the expense accounts of one of the company’s salespeople, Michael Willey. I wasn’t sure why, but Melendez seemed concerned about it, so I’d spent a day or so confirming what I could.
“Good morning, Tom.” Melendez’s voice was all business. “Have you found anything?”
“It all seems to check out.” I pulled up the file on my computer. “The last item is a meal at Stromboli, in Little Italy, last Wednesday. They do have a reservation from him on file for four people. The other three are Lisa Hobbes and Carl Benson, both at Tomorrow Metalworks, along with someone named Anton Czernoff. Willey’s expense form IDs him as a consultant for Tomorrow, but I can’t find out anything about him. I can confirm that Hobbes and Benson both work for Tomorrow. That’s the last expense report you gave me, from a week ago. I can’t say there’s any evidence of padding or embezzlement in anything I’ve looked at—”
“Yeah,” Melendez cut in. Then she sighed. “Here’s the thing. Michael has sort of—disappeared. We haven’t heard from him since Thursday afternoon. His sister Cindy has been calling us about it every day. Nobody here knows what happened. The sister filed a missing persons report. He’s a good salesman, everyone likes him. Ryan Ludd, the VP of sales, says he’s the best.”
She paused for a breath. “This is sort of unusual, so we started looking at his reports to kind of track where he went—he’s out on calls a lot, and I mean a lot, especially since things calmed down with COVID a little. But none of us knew what to look for, which is why I called you.”
That made a little more sense. “His company credit card doesn’t show any use after that day either. The charges before that all seemed legit, although I didn’t look at the gas stations or other incidentals closely—”
She interrupted again. “The thing is, sometimes—between you and me—he goes off on binges. But never this long, and never like this. I’ve got his sister calling me every day.”
“You want me to hunt for him?” I handle a fair amount of missing persons cases. Sometimes I even find them.
Melendez hesitated, uncertain. “Mike’s been listing a lot of calls to Tomorrow Metalworks, more than usual, without getting a lot of orders to justify it. I mean, that happens, I would have just asked him about it, but now . . . I don’t know.”
“They’re a good customer?”
“Middle tier. Mostly steel and aluminum, a little brass. Some lead.”
Melendez’s company supplied metals to manufacturers all over the Midwest who turned it into siding, doors, and other stuff, but that was the extent of my knowledge about the industry. Still . . .
“How about this? I could go there as a salesperson for you, find out a little about what Willey was talking about with them. They were the last people to see him, maybe they know something.”
“Huh. Yeah, that’s a good idea. Do you know anything about the metal business?”
“I can barely separate the stuff for recycling.”
Melendez laughed. “Okay, I’ll send you some information. Maybe you can be brand new.”
“Print up some business cards for me. Use my real name. Set up an email address, and I’ll send you a number for a burner phone I use. Once that’s set up, I’ll call and make an appointment.”
“Sounds good. Maybe you can sell something while you’re at it.” She chuckled.
“I’ll expect a commission.” We hung up.
I swiveled to Rachel. ”I’m going undercover.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Hitman? Arms dealer? Alien?”
“Metal salesman.”
She snorted. “You’ll do fine.”
So at 10:30 the next morning I pulled my Prius into the parking lot in front of Tomorrow Metalworks. It was on Chicago’s southwest side, surrounded by other factories, office buildings and a few dingy restaurants and convenience stores. A McDonald’s sat across the street.
A woman met me at the reception area inside the main office building. In her 30s, she had short blond hair and glasses, and wore a blue linen jacket over a yellow blouse. “Tom? Lisa Hobbes, VP of development. Nice to meet you”
A man walked up to join her. “Sorry—sorry. Meeting. Carl Benson.” He was big and blocky, 40ish, with thinning hair and a thick chin.
“Let’s grab a conference room,” Hobbes said, and she led us down a hall until she found an open door and an unused room with a long table and 12 chairs facing a huge monitor.
I’d already checked out Hobbes and Benson’s backgrounds. Their LinkedIn profiles and their social media presence were pretty standard. Hobbes had a degree in marketing from Indiana University, and Benson had an MBA from Michigan State, where he’d also played football.
Hobbes had worked at three different companies over the last 10 years, two tech firms and a telecom company. The last one had cut all ties with her when she left—No “We’re sorry to see Lisa go,” or “We wish her the best of luck.” Just “Lisa Hobbes is no longer employed here.” Fired? I found a lawsuit that she’d settled, but the details were sealed.
Otherwise, she collected stamps and took vacations in the Bahamas. Benson was in some of the pictures.
“What can we do for you?” Hobbes sat down at a corner chair with a smile.
“Well, I’m just trying to get up to speed.” I didn’t have to pretend to be nervous. I’d spent hours last night studying the material on the metals industry that Melendez had sent me, while Rachel watched a reality TV show about bickering couples locked in an escape room. I still couldn’t reliably tell the difference between copper and brass.
“The truth is—” I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “I don’t have a lot of experience with all this. My last job was selling AV equipment. I have to figure this out in a hurry. I mean, I have all of Mike’s stuff, but I still don’t know half of what he did for you.”
“Well . . .” She looked at Benson. He smiled reassuringly. “We do welding, laser cutting, plate rolling, and plasma cutting for rods, bars, tubing, pipe, corrugated sheets, and other products, and Mike usually kept us supplied with aluminum, steel, copper, and brass. Companies use us to build siding, metal for farm equipment and heavy vehicles, and some small work, like electronics. Like AV equipment.”
“And lead?” I opened my briefcase. “I saw some orders in here for lead. What’s that for?”
“Car batteries, weights, radiation protection.” Benson shrugged. “It’s still useful, just not for water pipes.”
“You said laser cutting? With real lasers?” I was playing the role of someone new to the job. Also, I was curious.
Hobbes laughed. “Maybe if we showed you around.” She stood up. “Carl, let’s take him to the works.”
The factory where they crafted the various metals was behind the office building, connected by an enclosed walkway. Inside a steel door we put on goggles and helmets, and Benson led me into the facility.
The place was noisy and bright, with a high ceiling over our heads. Benson pointed out a series of lasers cutting sheets of aluminum, and another instrument using plasma on steel. Welding tools cast sparks and blinding light. The air smelled like oil and grease and the sizzle of electricity.
Hobbes followed behind Benson and me as we made our way through the facility. The noise was too overwhelming to talk much. I noticed a door off to the east side marked AU, like the symbols for alpha and omega. I nudged Hobbes and pointed. “What’s that?”
She shook her head. “Automated Utility. Specialized equipment.”
After 20 minutes I had a headache, and we went back to the office building. “Lunch?” Benson asked, guiding me down a hallway. “The cafeteria’s actually pretty good.”
I got a ham sandwich with fries and a Coke. The ham tasted fresh, and the fries were hot and crispy. Hobbes and Benson told me more about the business and the industry, and after we were finished Benson told me to come back to his office and he’d place an order.
Hobbes left us at the cafeteria door. “Are you at the four o’clock meeting?” Benson asked her.
“Yeah, but I have to leave early to meet Cherny.” She shook my hand. “Nice meeting you, Tom.”
Cherny? One of the names on Willey’s expense account was Anton Czernoff. Maybe that was Cherny. But I kept my mouth shut as I said good-bye to Hobbes.
Benson led me to another conference room. Melendez’s assistant had sent me an app for my laptop that let me take basic orders for the company’s materials. Benson actually knew it better than I did, but I fumbled my way through it. I knew he was only helping me out of pity—but I still got a little kick out of making a sale.
We shook hands again, and I left. Out in the car I called Rachel.
“How’d it go?” she asked. “Did you blow your cover?”
“Not so far. I even got a sale. This may be the start of a whole new career for me.”
She snorted. “Did you find out anything?”
I sat back, thinking. “I saw a bunch of lasers. That was pretty cool. Not so much about the case. Except . . .”
“Except what?”
I sat forward. “I told them I was new, taking over the account. But neither of them asked anything about what happened to Willey.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah.” I thought back. No, not a single question.
“You coming home?”
“Yeah. I had lunch. I have to go out tonight to tail one of them.”
“And tonight’s your night to make dinner, of course. Figures.”
“There’s leftovers. I’ll cook tomorrow.”
“Whatever. I’ve got work to do.” She hung up.
No comments:
Post a Comment