He walked toward the center of the lobby and he stood there and he waited. The front doors opened behind him. The investigators came through first four of them in dark suits carrying cases that had the specific efficient look of equipment rather than luggage. Behind them came two lawyers identifiable by the way they carried themselves. particular alertness of people who are always reading a room for liability. And then walking through the doors with the unhurried stride of a man who had built something from nothing and intended to protect it came Richard Whitmore.
He was 71 years old. He had white hair and a face that had been weathered by decades of decision-making. The kind of face that had absorbed a thousand hard days and kept going. He was wearing a gray suit and no tie, which on a man like Richard Whitmore was itself a statement. This is not a ceremonial visit.
This is work. He walked directly to Andre, not to the security desk, not to the elevator, not to the executive floor where his daughter was waiting. He walked directly without hesitation to the man in the gray facility's uniform, standing alone in the center of the lobby. He extended his hand. "Mr. Williams.
He said, "I owe you an apology and a conversation." Andre shook his hand. "I'm listening." "Not here," Richard said. He looked around the lobby, the security staff frozen.
The employees pressed against windows and walls, the suspended animation quality of a room full of people who don't know what's happening, but know it's significant. "Is there somewhere on this floor? Somewhere private?" Conference room B, Andre said, down the left corridor. It's not on the main security camera grid.
I rerouted those feeds 6 months ago when the system was upgraded. Richard looked at him steadily. You know the camera grid. I know everything about this building, Andre said. That's why I'm still here.
Something shifted in Richard's expression. Not surprise exactly, more like confirmation of something he had already suspected. Conference room B, he said. Let's go. They were halfway down the corridor when the elevator opened and Gerald Park stepped out, phone to his ear, moving fast, and then stopped dead when he saw Richard Whitmore walking beside a man he had escorted to the door 40 minutes ago.
Gerald's face went through several calculations in rapid succession. None of them comfortable, Mr. Whitmore said carefully. I wasn't informed. No, Richard said pleasantly. You weren't.
He kept walking. Gerald stood in the corridor and watched them go. And Andre, glancing back, saw the older man raise his phone again with the specific tension of someone making a call they are not looking forward to. Good, Andre thought. Let him call.
Let them all know. In conference room B, Richard sat down across from Andre and laid a folder on the table between them. He didn't open it immediately. He looked at Andre directly. The way men of his generation looked at people when they wanted them to understand they were being taken seriously.