Read JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home for Free Online

furniture, mostly in leather and dark woods.
    I drank water from a bottle in the refrigerator. Then I stretched for ten minutes and peeled off my running clothes and stepped into the shower. When I stepped out again I smelled curry and cilantro and coconut milk, and I heard faint guitars. I wrapped a towel around my waist and walked out of the bathroom.
    Jane waved at me across the loft. She was sitting at the head of my long oak table, a cell phone at her ear, a pen in her hand, and a thick sheaf of documents in front of her. Farther down the table was dinner— chicken satay, pad thai, vegetables simmered in curry and coconut milk, and crab rolls— all from the Thai place around the corner. Caetano Veloso was singing soft Portuguese from the stereo. I picked a crab roll from its white cardboard box and took a bite.
    “Shit,” Jane said into the phone. “We sent them the audit papers three weeks ago, Roger. They’re only getting to them now? What lazy bastards.” She was wearing a white MIT T-shirt and snug blue jeans. Her small feet were bare, and there were two black loafers under her chair. Her left leg was tucked beneath her, and she brushed the ball of her right foot lightly against the floor.
    Jane was about five-foot-four and slim, with a shapely layer of muscle on her arms and legs and on her flat belly. Her cropped jet-black hair was damp just now, and I figured she’d stopped upstairs to shower and change. She listened to Roger talk and said “uh-huh” and jotted notes in the margins of a page, and there was an intent look on her heart-shaped face. Her small mouth was pursed, and the pout in her bottom lip was more pronounced. Her fine brows were furrowed as she scanned the pages. She looked much younger than her thirty-four years.
    Jane made some final notes and put aside the document. Roger spoke, and she drummed her short glossy nails on the tabletop. She took up another document and flicked through the sheets.
    “I’m on page seven of the memorandum of understanding, third paragraph. You with me?” She waited. “They screwed up the revenue targets for year two… . Yeah, all four quarters.” Roger talked some more, and Jane looked at me and rolled her eyes. She made a one minute gesture. “And the same thing with the head-count projections on the next page. You see that? … All right, I’ve got to eat now. I’ll call you when I’m back in the office.” She laughed. “Yes, I actually eat, Roger.” She closed her phone and sighed heavily. She looked me up and down.
    “Nice outfit,” she said, smiling.
    I smiled back. “Glad you like it. How’s your deal going?”
    “Lurching is the word that comes to mind. Par for the course with law firms and investment banks, I guess; lots of well-credentialed people billing lots of time while avoiding much actual work. Pass me those noodles, will you?” I handed Jane a container and a pair of chopsticks. She ate from the box. I sat down next to her with the container of crab rolls.
    Jane is a CEO-for-hire, a kind of über-consultant called in by the boards of companies in deep trouble to save their sinking ships— or at least to get a good price for the scrap. Her gigs are strictly short-term, two years or less, and she demands— and gets— a piece of the action for her efforts. Jane was brought into the dot-com about a year ago, by the venture capital firm that held a majority stake in the company. Her mandate was to get the business back on its feet, make it profitable, and find a buyer, and through a combination of scary intelligence, relentless energy, and icy political savvy wrapped in irresistible charm, she was three-for-three. For the last six weeks, she’d spent most of her time on closing the deal.
    “You’re really going back in?”
    “I have to. They’re reviewing our contracts tomorrow, and I’ve got people getting ready. They’ll need help.”
    “So it’s going to happen?”
    Jane picked a crab roll from my container.