“Financial records. The stuff only the board has access to.”
He paused. “What for?”
“Can I say it’s for a project but leave it at that??
“Okay,” he sighed. “How far back?”
“Since Bruce joined the board.”
He groaned. “You’re not thinking of trying something, are you?”
“Of course I am. Help me out, Nelson.”
“Okay, okay, fine. I’ll send a courier with the papers when I have them.”
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
“A big fat fucking one.” He hung up the phone.
I smiled to myself and opened the door to my room, still planning. As soon as I stepped inside, though, I knew something was wrong.
It didn’t take me long to figure it out. I usually had papers and notebooks lying around with ideas and numbers in there. Some of it was junk, well, the vast majority was junk. But some of it was actually pretty important, financial stuff surrounding the mansion and my other ventures. Stuff that I wouldn’t want someone to steal.
It was all gone. I tore through the drawers and realized that everything had been taken, every journal, every notebook, and every paper. Everything was gone.
I stood there, shocked, staring around. There was no note, no nothing. Just an emptiness that spoke louder than anything else.
I got Marty on the phone right away, and he assured me that the security cameras didn’t show anyone entering my room since I left in the morning. He double-checked all of the logs and couldn’t see any access from any codes that Cox may have known the password for. I told him to send me all of the data and hung up the phone.
Distraught, I left my room. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. Every time I thought it was as bad as it could get, somehow they made it even worse. Without my papers and notebooks, I couldn’t really work. Years of ideas, data, and hard calculations had been stolen, along with important other documents, stuff I didn’t want Bruce and his bastards to see. I had a life outside of Valor, and what I did with my own personal money was none of their concern.
It was all gone now. I didn’t really realize where I was going until I entered my music room. I poured myself a double whisky, put on a Bowie record, and sat on the sofa, staring at the wall.
I got through the entire A-side of Station to Station, doing nothing but drinking and listening. My glass was half empty by the time the last note of the last song placed and the tone arm slid across the dead wax. I listened as the turntable’s mechanical parts clicked into place and lifted the tone arm up, carried it across the record, and gently lowered it down in the run-in grooves to play the A-side over again.
I sighed. That was the damn problem with old technologies. There was no way for me to just listen to the whole record. I had to get up and flip the stupid thing, and I didn’t feel like getting up.
Station to Station’s piano started, followed by that bass line, and I started to lose myself again. Just after it started, I heard a knock at the door, which jolted me from my funk.
Emily stepped inside, not bothering to wait for a response.
“I thought you’d be in here,” she said. “You know this music is really loud, right?”
I laughed. “Didn’t notice.”
“What are you doing?”
“Listening. Wondering why I bother with records.”
“What do you mean?” She walked over toward me, gorgeous and sexy.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head.
“What is this?” she asked, gesturing at the turntable.
“It’s David Bowie. Station to Station.”
“Oh. I’ve heard of that.”
“It’s good,” I said, warming up to my subject. “Bowie said that he was on so much coke and shit that he couldn’t remember recording it at all. His rhythm guitarist, Carlos Alomar, said something similar.”
She laughed, walking over and sitting down next to me. “I didn’t know Bowie was big into drugs.”
“He was for a little while. I think everyone was in the ‘70s. He also got into the occult.”
“Occult? Like, witches and wizards?”
“Sort of. He was into Kabbalah at the time, which is like a Jewish magic I guess. Apparently, Station to Station was Bowie’s grandest magical ritual, but I don’t know about that.”
“What kind of magic was he trying to make with this?” she asked, laughing.
“Who knows? Probably trying to summon more coke.”
“Oh, of course, the coke demons.”
“Coke angels, you mean.”
“Of course. Coke angels.”
We laughed together and leaned back into the couch as Bowie sang, It’s not the side effects of the cocaine. I’m thinking that it must be love.