Chapter 4: Badge on the Table

Alana was sober by six.

She woke in the motel chair with the blanket around her and a crease from the armrest across her cheek.

She looked at me, at the bag by the door, and at the sunrise coming through the cheap curtain.

"You didn't come home," she said.

"No."

"I'll call a car and make Camille listen."

"Don't. Please. Let me do this myself."

She wanted to argue.

I could see it on her face, and I could see the bottom line in my eye holding at 0.9.

She called a car and sat in the lobby until it came.

At the door she turned and said, very quietly, "I'll fix it."

"Alana, you can't fix a number."

"Watch me."

I took two buses to the Winterbourne Shipping tower, a glass building on the harbor with the family name in steel letters over the doors.

The lobby guards knew me.

One of them looked away, and the other one stood up.

"Mr. Culligan, I've been told not to let you upstairs."

"By who?"

"Ms. Winterbourne's office. Last night."

"I'm not coming to work," I said. "I'm coming to hand in my badge. Call up and tell her that, or let me walk past."

He called.

He listened, and then he looked at me with something almost like apology.

"She says come up. The board is in session."

That was Camille, all over.

If I was going to quit, she wanted a room full of witnesses.

So did I, as it turned out.

The boardroom was on the fortieth floor, with a table that sat sixteen.

All sixteen chairs were filled, and every face turned toward the door as I walked in.

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