Nora grinned as she pulled her Honda CRV into the Saugatuck Associates parking garage, with its rows of moderately priced cars. David Jepson was seventy now and determined to transition out of running the company he built, but his presence was everywhere in its culture, including the parking lot. Every employee knew that the billionaire Jepson drove a beat-up Ford Explorer. They had also heard the story about his visit to the office of an investment firm interested in a merger, where he looked with disgust at the fancy cars parked outside and loudly asked the Saugatuck employees with him, “Are these the cars of people you want to make a life with? I sure don’t.” There was no merger. And there were still no fancy cars in the Saugatuck lot. Many of Nora’s colleagues owned expensive sports cars, but those were for weekends.
The garage walls were studded with cameras. Saugatuck was as serious about security as it was about truth and transparency. The company made millions—billions, really—for itself and its clients because, over decades, it had deciphered connections among world events and used those connections to automate its investment decisions. Drought in central Asia? That meant the stock price of American big-box retailers was destined to go down. Why? Because the ships that weren’t needed to move grain drove down the cost of shipping electronics from Asia and forced competing retailers to lower their prices. Most people didn’t know that, or the hundreds of other connections that made up Saugatuck’s “secret sauce.” This complex recipe of causes and effects could never get out or the company would lose its edge.
That explained the cameras and the fingerprint scanner Nora pressed to open the door from the garage. More cameras in the ceiling watched her walk down the long hallway past chrome and glass walls toward Abe, who was waiting for her outside her office door.
“Morning, boss,” he said with a smile.
“Boss? You know we have no hierarchies here at the Saugatuck meritocracy.”
“Oh yeah, then why am I called your ‘assistant’ and I sit in a cubicle while you get a private office with a big desk and a view?”
“Fair point,” Nora answered. “And how are truth and transparency this fine morning?”
Abe followed her into her office, which, like all Saugatuck workspaces, was designed to have a microphone in the ceiling to record meetings. Saugatuck’s default was that all work-related conversations should be recorded so any person interested in the topic could review them—and to enforce the company rule against gossip: No absent person should be talked about unless the conversation was recorded and the subject notified. Not long after she started at the company, Nora stood on a chair and yanked the microphone out of the ceiling. She also unplugged the one connected to her desk phone.
Abe had watched her on the chair that day, wide-eyed. He came to Saugatuck straight out of Harvard and was attracted, like dozens of other young graduates of elite schools, by the company’s determination to root out the twin poisons of hierarchy and gossip. And also by the money, although that was something one didn’t admit at Saugatuck.
Abe Evans had lasted two years so far, all of which he had spent as Nora’s assistant. As she stepped off the chair that morning two years ago, she noticed Abe’s thick rust-colored mustache had drooped along with his mouth. He looked sad and confused watching Nora destroy transparency.
“Oh, I should have explained,” she said. “No way the general counsel’s conversations can be recorded. Too much risk to the company that the taping and dissemination will blow the attorney–client privilege. But if there’s some meeting that doesn’t relate to my role as a lawyer, we can plug it back in.”
The mustache went back up. “Got it.”
With her right pointer finger, Nora mimed a mustache on her own face. “So you a redhead?”
Abe smiled and ran one hand over his shaved head. “Would be if I had enough hair to cover. Premature baldness is a big thing in my family. I’m way ahead of it.”
“Looks great,” she answered, immediately regretting that she asked about the man’s hair. After a half beat of awkward silence, she pressed on. “What does it mean for you to be my assistant?”
“Not really sure,” Abe replied. “One of those undefined Saugatuck things. All they told me was: Do what makes sense.”
Nora chuckled. “I’m from the federal government, where every job comes with a two-page, single-spaced definition. I kinda like ‘do what makes sense.’ Let’s go with that.”
And they had, for two years and counting. Abe didn’t know anything about the law, but he was extraordinarily bright, hardworking, and interested in learning. He did secretarial chores like making copies, but slowly grew into what Saugatuck called a “thought partner,” someone Nora could kick ideas around with. He also quickly became the younger brother Nora never had. As close as they were, though, she couldn’t quite bring herself to talk to him about her sense that things at Saugatuck were not always what they seemed.
Now, as she dropped her bag on the desk, he answered her usual morning question. “The search for truth at the weekly Management Committee meeting is delayed this morning. Not sure why, but I think they’re having trouble rounding up the members. We’ll get a five-minute warning before they start.”
The Management Committee, or “MC,” was made up of the eight most senior leaders of the company and met once a week in the large glass-walled conference room. The MC members sat at a big rectangular table, with assorted assistants and invited guests sitting behind in chairs along the walls. As the firm’s chief lawyer, Nora was always invited and liked to sit facing the Saugatuck River, which was only inches below the glass walls. This close to the Long Island Sound, the river was really an estuary, reversing direction with the tide in a mesmerizing water dance, which made things challenging for the frequent paddleboarders headed down to the Sound or up to the center of Westport. Nora found those distractions indispensable to enduring the endless MC meetings, which often went on for hours. She could only listen so long to brilliant people challenging each other’s thinking without refreshing herself by rooting for a paddleboarder. And now she had some extra time before the MC began its weekly marathon.
“Good,” Nora answered with a smile, “that gives me time for free food. Can I buy you something?”
Catered meals were provided to all company employees in break rooms spread throughout the sprawling three-story building. Abe had his plate covered with fresh fruit carefully arrayed around a bowl of granola on a bed of Greek yogurt. He set it on the counter to look at his buzzing phone. “They pushed the start back to eleven with lunch served at noon. I’ll come get you a few minutes before.”
“Sounds good,” Nora said. “I’ll be in my awesome office eating and drinking free stuff.”
“And I will be in my completely equal nonhierarchical cubicle, ready to provide assistance at a moment’s notice.”
Their laughter filled the hallway.