41

“DANA, TELL FRANKIE I’M ready to look at the numbers.” Fiore called out the instructions to his secretary through his open office door as he headed for the conference room. Scardino joined him there a few minutes later, wearing his usual silly grin. Early on, Fiore used to think that Scardino was ready to tell a funny story that brought a premature smile to his face. After a while he learned that it was the look Frankie carried around most of the day.

“The financials will take us a couple of hours,” Scardino said. “Can we talk about something else first?”

“Go ahead.” Fiore sat back in his chair. He figured it would involve Frankie’s private life in some way.

“Doug, we’ve got to do something about Helen Barone.” The words came out almost in a whine.

He immediately sensed what Scardino had in mind. “What’s the problem?” he asked. His tone implied that it was difficult for him to believe Barone could be the source of any concern.

Scardino picked up on the inflection in Fiore’s voice and realized he might have a difficult selling job. He decided to inject more emotion into his answer. “The problem is that she’s always ready to give me a hard time. She resents my keeping after her to make sure she’s doing the job right. I guess I must be the first person who ever checked up on her—you know, ask around to see if the lawyers and secretaries are happy with the way she runs things, how she treats everyone.

“When I get complaints, I speak to Helen about how to correct things or do them differently. The trouble is that she doesn’t want to hear it from me. She thinks she’s doing a perfect job. And I’ll tell you something, Doug, it’s even worse when you’re away. Like it was the past two weeks. She figures the managing partner is the only one who can tell her what to do. She just ignores anything I say. How am I supposed to do my job that way?”

Fiore didn’t respond immediately. He stared at Scardino during the pause, then leaned back in his chair when he spoke. “Frankie, do you know how long Helen’s been here?” He dragged out the word “long.”

“Twenty-three years,” Scardino replied. “I checked it out in case you asked.”

“That’s right. And how do you think it would look if we just let her go?”

“We don’t have to fire her.”

“What then?”

“Put someone in over her with a new title, like ‘Senior Administrator.’ Let Helen report to her.”

“She’d never accept that, Frankie,” Fiore said. “It would be too embarrassing after all that time. She’d quit first.”

Scardino was ready for that one also. “If she quits, that’s her decision,” he answered, as if rendering a solemn judgment. “We’re only doing what’s best for the office.”

Fiore decided to play the game with Scardino a little longer. “Besides, it would cost us money to go to a headhunter and find someone new to bring in,” he offered.

“No, it wouldn’t, Doug. We could promote from within.”

He kept it going. “How can we do that, Frankie? We don’t have an assistant office manager now. We never needed one with the way Helen handled things.”

“You’re right. I know that. But we’ve got one or two people who could step right in and do the job.”

“Who do you have in mind?” Fiore asked. He knew for sure who one of the two would be.

“I think Janice Rossman would be good,” Scardino said. “She’s been doing a fantastic job supervising the mail room. Things have improved a hundred percent down there since we moved her into that slot.”

Fiore smiled to himself, recalling his being informed by Dana Briggs earlier that morning that Manny Puleo gave the firm his two weeks’ notice the previous Friday afternoon. He had worked in the mail room for almost three years and everyone complimented him on the job he did. He didn’t just walk, he danced through his chores there every day to the rhythm of whatever Latin song was playing on his stereo. But Puleo told Dana that too many things in the mail room changed after Rossman was put in charge.

“He spoke to me because Helen left early on Friday for a dental appointment,” Dana told Fiore. “He said it’s not a fun place any more, that Rossman doesn’t know how to treat people. He told me she always blames someone else for anything she messes up herself. Manny expects that a couple of the others will quit too,” Dana reported.

As he thought more about what Dana told him, Fiore began to get angry. Frankie must think I don’t know what’s going on around here, he said to himself. I don’t like his trying to bullshit me like this. Maybe it’s time for me to tell him that Rossman’s gone as far as she’s going to go. He decided to hear the rest of what Scardino had to say.

“Who else could you recommend?” he asked.

The question caught Scardino off guard. He didn’t have another candidate for the position because the whole idea was to put Rossman in a situation where she could make more money and keep her dependent on him. He stared at Fiore blankly for several seconds before getting a sudden inspiration.

“I think Dana could handle it, but I know you’d hate to lose her.”

Fiore didn’t confirm that supposition. “Janice or Dana, huh? Let me think about it. Maybe I ought to speak to Helen first and see if I can straighten her out.”

“I really think it’s too late for that,” Scardino said quickly. “She’ll know I spoke to you and resent me for it. Then she’ll always be looking for a way to undermine me.”

Fiore was impressed with the answer. Frankie’s put some time into this, he thought. He really wants it bad. Doug had already considered the various things he would be asking Scardino to do for him in the months ahead when he’d be spending so much time out of the office. He knew he’d have to step down as managing partner temporarily once the campaigning began. It was important to have someone like Frankie around to watch everything that was going on and report to him on a regular basis. He realized that Frankie would be aware of things that might never catch Dana’s attention. If he wasn’t going to be the next governor, Fiore wanted to be sure that no palace revolts were taking place in his absence, and that the power he now had would still be there when he returned to practice law. If all it took to guarantee Scardino’s loyalty to him was a decision making it easier for his comptroller to keep getting a piece of ass in the office, it was a cheap price to pay. When he was through campaigning, he could move Rossman to some other job, or even terminate her if she wasn’t performing well as office manager. And he would do his best to convince Helen Barone to take another position, with the same pay. In fact, he might be able to create something new for her, something she’d be happy doing. It could work out well for everyone, he thought.

“You’re probably right,” he said, lifting Scardino’s spirits instantly. “I’ll think about it. Okay, let’s get off that and see if we’re making any money around here.”

As Fiore turned to the spreadsheets placed in front of him, he was sure that Frankie’s shit-eating grin had gotten even bigger. There was a strong temptation for him to say that maybe Dana would be great for that job. But for the sake of getting through the work in front of them, he resisted it.