Night Owl (The Complete Serial)

36

James

The conference room buzzes with energy matching the buzzing phone firing in my pocket. I slip it out and look over the screen, Eli is telling me to call him back. Dread fills me contemplating what he might have information wise.

Casey bumps my shoulder whispering, “Everything alright?”

This is the most I have seen her happy since getting her voice back, her happiness is as important to me as is her safety and I struggle with what to tell her. My jaw clenches and the lie slips easily from my lips. “Yeah,” I say rubbing the back of my neck.

Her eyes narrow, but she doesn’t say anything else.

“I just need to take this call, I’ll be right back.” Pushing the chair away from the table I inform Tucker, my newly appointed station manager, George, the producer, and the crew to continue meeting. I make sure the door shuts before slipping down the hall to my office closing the door behind me. Now I’m feeling paranoid and I haven’t done anything wrong.

Uneasily, I wait for his response when he answers the phone, “Bennett.”

“Eli, what’s going on?” He doesn’t bother with small talk jumping right into our current problem. Pacing the space in my office, I am ready to wear the carpet out.

“There’s something bothering me about all of this.” He’s not the only one bothered and this fucking mystery has me dancing to a puppet masters’ tune.

“No kidding.”

“I mean, what’s the motive to bringing down a communications company that, no offense grosses a pretty penny, but isn’t buying up third world countries?” He doesn’t mean it to be insulting; Eli seems wired to be excruciatingly blunt so I take his candor for what it is. It’s safe to say I do alright monetarily speaking.

“None taken, just let me know when your brother works out that radio amplifier and we’ll talk about my station’s reach.” Eli laughs and we both know none of this makes a bit of sense.

I wouldn’t mind getting his brother, Jacob Reed’s ear on those radio antennas I know he’s been working on. The Reed Corporation has its hands in a few areas of my interest and when life settles down I’ll be giving him a call to explore my options.

“Let’s talk suspects… the out of work gamer dude from her building.” We proceed to review our checklist starting at the top. Yeah, Devin the boy wonder, it’s surprising he made it out of his mother’s basement and survived into adulthood. In my experience, guys like him either make a career out of their nerdish tendencies, or they build underground tunnels in their backyard.

I pick up a media file on my desk glancing over it letting Eli know what I learned so far, “He’s moved back with family out of state.”

“I checked into that.” My stomach clenches because I’m certain Eli knows more than I do, it’s what I pay him for, but I also anticipate not liking what he has to say next. “He’s living down in south Philly.”

A steady beat of pain pounds in my head thinking about this kid’s proximity to us. “Son of a bitch. So much for leaving the basement, I had high hopes he was at least gone geographically.” Now I had to worry about him hanging around town with a massive crush on my girlfriend.

“There’s a Halo tournament at the convention center coming up. It might be temporary, he’s staying with a friend couch surfing.”

“Better than living next door to us I guess.” The view from my office windows spans the city. The convention center is in view, and not as relieving as I had hoped it would be.

“Your cousin, the creepy fuck?” My cousin was going to be a pain in the ass to the bitter end, but I didn’t give him credit for masterminding the attempted ruin of our family holdings. He needed me to bail his ass out and I would rather pay him off and know what he was doing then be surprised.

“I bought out his company shares so he could pay off his gambling debts.” I shuffled the file in front on me, the phone between my ear and shoulder. I was going to have to ask Michelle to check on this account and wrote myself a note on the sticky pad.

“Yeah, again, unless you paid Frankie the Shark up in Chicago, I don’t think he’s done fucking with you.” Eli had me there. I couldn’t control everything, and the knowledge that I couldn’t burned. Opening my desk, my hand shifts papers around for the bottle of antacid tablets but I find the bag of strawberry candies instead. I grab one, pop it in my mouth and think about the gorgeous girl down the hall.

“God damn it. Are you saying we are back to square one?” Pushing back from the desk, I spin in my chair to look out the window. Philadelphia is my home, my city, but right now all I can think about is packing up and escaping.

“I think the simplest answer is the obvious one sitting right in front of our faces. It’s someone in the building, intimate with the company comings and goings. It has to be.”

“I just can’t fathom why. Have you run a list of all the employees?” The sun struck a building in the distance, the reflected light blinding, reminding me how insignificant I was in all of this.

A knock at the door interrupts our call.

“Hold on a sec. Come in.” Michelle strides in grinning big.

“Welcome back boss.” Leaning over my desk, she drops the day’s correspondence and advertising air time contracts for review. A packet from the FCC sits on top and I take them waving her off. “We need to review your meetings for the week and Jerry from accounting has quarterly reviews to discuss along with the monthly ratings report.”

I’m waving her off feeling annoyance. “Not right now, Michelle. I’m on a call. I’ll review these and get back to you.” She nods and leaves. The door closes with a soft snick behind her as I resume talking to Eli.