The Company Man

by Robert Jackson Bennett

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Robert Jackson Bennett’s debut novel Mr. Shivers was called “compelling and truly horrifying” (Library Journal), winning him favorable comparisons to Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy. The Company Man takes listeners on a wild ride to 1919 Washington state, where a war is brewing between the McNaughton Corporation and its union workers. When the conflict’s latest casualty prompts McNaughton security officer Cyril Hayes to investigate, he’s soon caught up in worker claims that the corporation’s machines have minds of their own.

Release date: April 11, 2011

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 464

Sample

The canal was a gray, rotting thing, so polluted and turgid that what it contained could hardly be called water at all. It
wound below the stone arches and the spiderweb trusses of its many bridges, and at each bend it gained yet more refuse. At
one turning enough sediment and muck had happened to gather and dry to become something like soil. There small, mousy reeds
grew and clutched at the passing garbage, forming a staggered little delta that curved out across the canal.


Hayes looked at the little nest and saw something shining on the edge. He examined the sludge around the channel and frowned
at his shoes, then sighed and found the best purchase and leaned forward. He scooped up the prize and took out his handkerchief
and cleaned off the mud. It was a coin, underneath it all. A politician’s stern face glared back, on the other side a state
bird or some creed. He smiled and laughed and held it up to the sky, trying to find a rare stream of sunlight falling through
the towering buildings of the surrounding neighborhood. Finding none, he gave up.


“Hey!” called a voice.

He turned and saw Garvey looking down at him from the top of the hill.


“Yes?” said Hayes.

“We hooked him,” Garvey said.

“Good for you,” said Hayes.

“Come on over.”

“Why?”

“Come on over,” said Garvey again.

“I don’t particularly want to. I’m enjoying myself here,” Hayes said, gesturing to the river. “Look, I found a quarter.”

“You don’t want to see him?” Garvey asked.

“I don’t need to see him. You’re not going to file it just by seeing him.”

“That’s not the point. Come on, get over here.”

Hayes walked to Garvey at the top of the hill, Garvey glaring at him all the while, and then they both descended into the
other side of the canal. It was an immense construction, a blank gray canyon with shanties and tumbling lean-tos grouped down
closer to the water. All of them had been abandoned as the police first invaded. Garvey and Hayes picked their way down around
soiled vagrant beddings and miles of graffiti. On one spot there were the faded bones of a hopscotch game. Hayes tried to
imagine children playing next to this reeking Styx and abandoned it.


The morning mist was lifting and Hayes could just make out the other officers milling away down on the bank. Something white
and smooth floated out on the waters ahead. The air was so cold and wet it stung and Hayes pulled his scarf tight. On cold
mornings like this he ached for the sour honey warmth of bourbon in his belly, but he steeled himself and tried to push those
thoughts from his mind.


“Say, who is this on this quarter?” he said. He held it out. “I can never keep track of your politicians.”

“He was spotted a ways down the canal,” said Garvey, ignoring him. “Head down, drifting our way. Looks like someone sent him on a swim.”


“Doesn’t seem to be a very good swimmer,” said Hayes.

“No. No, he doesn’t.”

They both approached the bank slowly. Garvey moved with the practiced plod of a harassed policeman, already resigned to face
the terrible day. A uniform scurried up to match his pace and Garvey nodded absently as he rattled off a few facts and details
about the sight ahead, none of which amounted to anything. The uniform waited expectantly, hoping for some commendation or
at least acknowledgment from the big detective, but Garvey’s face betrayed nothing. He just sniffed and put his hands in his
pockets as though enjoying any pleasant stroll. Crestfallen, the uniform departed, and Hayes resumed his place at Garvey’s
side. The other officers watched him curiously. He was short and wispy and overdressed, and seemed queerly aristocratic with
his long blond hair and expensive coat, which was several sizes too large for him. And whereas Garvey made a straight, slow
trudge to the river, Hayes wound and wove aimlessly, distracted by odd things found on the ground, or perhaps lost in his
own thoughts. To anyone’s eyes the two of them seemed no more right for each other than they were for the neighborhood, yet
when Hayes asked for a cigarette Garvey fished a tin from his pocket with his thick boxer’s hands and lifted one out without
a word. Hayes took it, murmuring a thanks through a small smile, and then passed his free hand over the cigarette in a quick
flourish. It vanished, his fingers left holding nothing at all. With another flourish it had returned again, and Hayes planted
it in his mouth, smiling cleverly. Garvey barely seemed to notice. His eyes stayed fixed on the river in the mist. Hayes sighed
and stuffed himself farther into his coat and continued on.


Finally they came to the water’s edge and looked. Had it not been for the hands you could never have told what it was. Facedown
in the water it looked like some floating pile of rags, wet white towels twisted up and drifting alone. But the hands were visible down in the waters below, ghostly white and perfect, gesturing this
way and that as they were buffeted by the currents. It looked like he was conducting some underwater orchestra, a soiled water
nymph toiling through the runoff.


Hayes watched the officers struggle with the thing in the water, tugging it ever closer. “And he’s a company man, I assume,”
he said.


“Don’t know,” said Garvey.

“What? You don’t?”

“No. That’s why I called you.”

“You called me down here at seven in the morning on a body that might not even be one of mine?” said Hayes. “Good God, Garvey.
I won’t forgive you for that. I won’t. I simply can’t.”


One of the uniforms reached out with a hooked cane and caught him on his side and pulled him close. They gathered around the
bank with sticks and nets and Garvey helped them ease the dripping wreck ashore.


Hayes watched as they hauled him out and half-sang to himself, “Here comes another stray from my accursed flock, perhaps.
My wandering lambs, my lost little babes. Where did you run to, little lamb? What trouble did you get yourself mixed up in?
And to where can I lead you next?”


“Jesus Christ,” said Garvey. He shook his head at Hayes, disgusted.

Once they had the body steady they laid him out on the ground. His face was waterlogged and almost formless, his eyes little
swollen slits and his lips dumbly twisted. A ragged gash ran zigzag from one corner of his jaw to the top of the opposite
collarbone. The injury was colorless, the flesh like custard or curd. No fish had been at him for no fish would live in the
Construct canals.


“One of yours?” asked Garvey.

Hayes peered at him. “I can’t say.”

Garvey sighed and leaned on one of the nets. “Not familiar? Nothing?”


“No, I’m afraid not, Garv. McNaughton pays me for a great deal of things, but they don’t pay me to keep a mental registry
of every factory groundling they have.” He coughed. “Anything in his pockets?”


Garvey reached in, fumbled around, then pulled his hands out and dried them off. “No.”

“So just a man in his skivvies and an undershirt working part time as a buoy.”

“Seems like it.”

“Well. That’s all I know, too.”

They stood up and looked at the dead man. Thunderclouds of bruises lined his ribs and legs. The other officers clambered ashore
and the gray river water from their waders left strata of silt across the dead man’s heels.


“Four hundred and eighty-six,” said Hayes.

“What?” said Garvey.

“This is Mr. Four Hundred and Eighty-six. Murder of this year.”

“Oh. That’s right, I guess. How’d you know that?”

“A rumor,” said Hayes.

“That the only good rumor you know about this?”

“Oh, perhaps, Garv. Perhaps.” He knelt and looked at the dead man’s fingers. They were yellowed with nicotine and the nails
were ragged. Several small pink cuts dotted the webbing of his hands and orange calluses floated in his palms below each finger.
Hayes touched them, felt their firmness. Factory worker. Maybe a loader of some kind. Or perhaps he had been, once.


“I think he’s one of mine, yes,” said Hayes softly.

“Is he a unioner?” Garvey asked.

“Oh, I’ve no idea there.” He gently placed the hand back on the cement and patted its back, as though reassuring the dead
man everything would be all right. Several of the uniforms pulled faces as they watched the gesture, but Hayes was so used to the presence of the dead that he barely gave it thought. “But I’d certainly
guess so.”


“Are we good to take this, Detective?” asked one of the uniforms.

“Yeah,” Garvey said, and sighed again. “Yeah, go ahead and pack him up.”

They watched as the uniforms unloaded the corpse slickerbag and tucked him in and tied it up. Then they placed him on a canvas
stretcher and began carrying him up the hill as a thin rain started. Garvey and Hayes followed.


“What I would give,” said Garvey, “for something simple. A wife that shot a husband in front of the butcher. Two thugs getting
into a tussle at a bar and one getting three inches of knife for his passion. Something nice, you know?”


“That’s a rather morbid thought. But then, you have made a rather morbid career choice, Garv.”

They began to crest the canal, the tops of distant buildings just peeking over the edge. “We’re going to pass five hundred
this year,” said Garvey.


“Yes,” said Hayes.

“Easily.”

“Yes.”

They left the canal and came back up to civilization, to the winding cement streets and electric lamps and the distant putter
of cars. The scent of burning coal laced the morning wind and cries and shouts echoed from the tenements. Rag-wrapped beggars
lay in doorways like sodden mummies, by all appearances dead except for the breath pluming from their hoods. And far beyond
the rambling skyline the downtown towers of Evesden overtook the horizon, their windows and lights shining bright, jealously
guarding their modernity. Every once in a while a spotlight stabbed up, calling out to some airship hidden in the clouds.
The future was only a mile or two away but would come no closer to places such as these.


“You should have looked at him,” said Garvey as they entered the warren of tiny lanes.


“I did look at him,” Hayes said.

“Yeah. But you didn’t want to.”

“It’s not part of my job. Or yours.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“You get too wrapped up in these things. It’ll ruin your morning.”

“He’s a victim. A real victim, I think. I’ve got a feeling about him. Someone has to look, for things like that.”

“Maybe. Do you think it’ll file?”

“I think it might.”

“Oh,” said Hayes. He thought for a moment and said, “I don’t.”

“Hm. No,” agreed Garvey after a while. “No, it probably won’t.” He sighed. “I hate Novembers. At least in December you know
it’s fucking done, or near enough.”


As they left the canal behind, the neighborhood grew cleaner and the streets grew wider. Even though the dawn was lost behind
the overcast the city was coming to life. Halfway up the side of a tenement a fat woman warbled something in Italian and draped
patched sheets along a clothesline, her enormous white breasts almost spilling out of her nightshirt as she moved. A slaughterhouse
ice cart rattled around to the back of a butcher’s, and though its back was stained rose-pink from old blood there was no
threat of any viscera spilling, not on a frosty day such as this. At Milligan’s the barkeep opened the door and began kicking
at three souses who’d slept hunched and penitent on the sidewalk, and the men moaned and scrambled away, cursing. Down at
the corner four Chinamen sat on a wooden cage of geese, stoic and regal in their robes and caps as though they were foreign
emissaries, and they watched Garvey as he walked by, sensing police. Garvey studiously ignored them, but Hayes gave them a
sharp salute, and one of them favored him with a raised eyebrow. Across the street what had to be the world’s oldest newsie
peeled back his ancient lips to reveal a toothless mouth and bawled out the latest trumped-up outrage, something about how President Ballinger
was once again sending the nation to hell in a handbasket. Three old men strode over, puffing in indignation, and paid for
three papers and read them and shook their heads.


All in all, it was a morning like any other. It was hard to believe that somewhere in all this were rivers where the dead
dreamily swam through the waters, or slept under upraised houses, or perhaps waited for the morning in an alley next to the
previous day’s trash. And yet Hayes knew it happened with regularity. They were simply another kind of citizen in these neighborhoods,
a kind that waited to be dealt with by whoever had the time.


They found Garvey’s car, a spindly affair that looked as if it should fall apart after four miles, and they both grunted as
they climbed in. Garvey primed the car’s cradle and listened to it whine as it fed into the engine. Then he eased up on the
drive handle. The engine buzzed and sang its clockwork song, and he released the brake and they started off, down through
the wandering alleys and out onto the trolley path and into the auto lane. Hayes leaned his head against the glass and massaged
his temples and pinched his nose. He moaned a little as a trolley roared past and sank down into the underground. Then he
took out a pair of spectacles with blue-tinted lenses, which he delicately referred to as his “morning glasses,” and fixed
them on his nose and stared out at the street.


“Late night?” asked Garvey.

“You know the answer to that,” he said.

“Hah. Yeah. Why did you help today, anyways?”

“Pardon?”

“Why did you agree to come at all? If you’d been up so late, I mean.”

Hayes didn’t answer at first. They moved onto Michigan Avenue and started across town. The Nail rose in the distance, dwarfing
the other buildings. It was at least twenty blocks north, but even from here every line of its architecture could be seen by the naked eye. Its ash-gray shaft stabbed into the sky, windows lining
its castellations. At the top its jade steeple glittered with promise. They called it the Nail because to many it looked like
one, with a fat head and a long sharp tooth, waiting to be hammered into something. Hayes had always disagreed. To him it
looked like a finger, gray and thick, and at the top was its green fingernail, scratching at the sky. It was still a nail,
but to him it was alive. Maybe growing.


Unlike many, Hayes was familiar with the inner workings of the building. He usually went there at least ten times a month.
At its top silver letters spelled out the word MCNAUGHTON. His eyes traced over the letters and he sourly reflected that the same people who owned that marvelous piece of architecture
also owned him, in a way.


“Well?” said Garvey.

“Mmm? What?” asked Hayes.

“Why’d you help?”

“Oh. I suppose just to have something to do,” he said, and rolled to his side and tried to sleep.

Garvey wheeled the car toward the Brennan Bridge as the wind shook the last drops of rain from its back. They descended into
the commercial streets and the sky was blotted out by a jungle of signs and advertisements dangling off the building faces,
dripping gray water and runny ink. They parked underneath the shadow of the signs and walked down to a small corner diner,
a dingy little eatery whose heat and noise spilled out onto the sidewalk. It was an early-morning place, filled with dockmen
and construction workers and other tradesmen who awoke before the sun, a place where one could go and grudgingly wait the
coming day. It was also a common stop for police, particularly ones who kept the most abnormal hours.


They had to fight their way through to a booth. Hayes thrust himself far into the corner and pulled his coat up so it made
piles about his shoulders. He leaned his head against the window and stared out at the street, blinking languidly.


Garvey looked him over, frowning. “You look terrible.”

“Well,” Hayes said airily, “I rather feel terrible. But then, we just fished a corpse out of a river. How should I feel?”

“No, I mean you really look sick. Can I get you something?”

“Just water. Water will do me fine.”


“Water? Your usual breakfast menu includes a beer or two, if I recall.”

“No,” said Hayes, and closed his eyes.

“No?”

“No, Garv. I won’t have a beer. I won’t be having a beer for some time, I should say.” He tilted his head away from the window
and smiled wanly at Garvey. “I’m giving it another go, you see, Garv. Trying to dry out once more.”


Garvey raised his eyebrows. “Again?”

“Yes. Again.”

“That makes this, what? Attempt number five?”

“Something like that,” said Hayes. He sank lower in his seat.

“What’s the occasion? Have another binge you regret? I can’t imagine it’d be worse than the time you fell off the trolley.”

“I suppose it’s something of a special occasion,” said Hayes. “But this is more professionally motivated.”

Garvey looked surprised. “Really? The company’s leaning on you to quit?”

“It’s all very unspoken. Everything’s done in subtleties. Courting a church girl is easier, I swear. Or at least I’d imagine
it’d be, having never personally tried.”


“How’s it going?”

“How do you think?” Hayes snapped. “It’s fucking awful. It feels like there’s an army of nails trying to dig their way out
of my head. How about you get me that water before I die right here in this booth, eh? Then you’ll have another fucking body
to deal with.”


Garvey allowed himself a small smile, then nodded and left.

Hayes turned back to the window. Outside a chilly cement world tumbled by, filled with columns of steam and window-lined canyons
and the colorless faces of crowds. He watched as people threaded through the alleys and the lanes to the waterfront streets.
The Arch Street airship cradle was just a block or two down, its spire covered in glittering cables and panels, all tilting and shifting to correspond with incoming airships. Below that he saw the immense
dark curve of the Brennan Bridge, the inner recesses of its arch lost to shadow. At the top two men sat dangling their feet
through the railing and sharing some small meal. Their bodies steamed slightly in the morning air as though burning.


Garvey returned with a glistening plate of eggs and sausage and rolls. He put down a mug of water and pushed it over to Hayes,
who lifted it up and maneuvered it through the lapels of his coat to his mouth. He sipped it once, then sipped again, deeper.
“Ah,” he said. “That’s better. That’s just what I needed.”


Garvey carefully watched as Hayes placed the mug of water back on the tabletop.

“What?” said Hayes.

“So,” said Garvey. “You’ve quit drinking but you’re still hitting up the tearooms.”

“Well. Yes,” said Hayes, nettled. “I can’t give up everything at once. I need a few vices. Just to function. Just to keep
my head on.”


“How long have you been dry?”

“Centuries, it feels like,” he moaned. “Ages. Ages and ages and ages. Civilizations have risen and fallen in the time I’ve
been dry. But I would guess a month, really. Two, at most.”


“That’s pretty good, for you.”

“Mornings are the hardest. Mornings like this, especially. I need a little fire in my belly to stay on my feet.”

“What’d you think of it, anyways? This morning?”

“I don’t know,” Hayes said, turning back to the window. “Do you want me to be honest, Garv?”

“Sure.”

“I won’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”

Garvey nodded, sawing through a sausage with slow, silent care. Grease poured from its mealy cross-section to pool around
the eggs.


Hayes waited a moment. Then he said, “If you want me to be completely frank, Garvey, I think you’re fucked. Very fucked. I don’t have any tricks to play here.”


Garvey stopped sawing. “You can’t at least check and see if he’s one of yours?”

“If you can get a name, sure. I can check him against the factory rolls. But that’s if you get a name, which I’ve got to think
is pretty unlikely. Even though he wasn’t dressed, he didn’t exactly seem like a socialite. Not a well-known out-and-about-town
sort. And even if you do get a name, there’s been a lot of flux among the loaders and workers since the whole union business
started. It’s less organized than ever. It’d be… Well. It’d be impossible to nail it down.”


Garvey’s grimace subtly hardened. His limited range of facial expressions bordered on an inside joke among his fellow detectives
in the Evesden Police Department. To the unobservant his face would seem to never move at all, his words just barely escaping
his slight frown, yet to those who knew him the slightest twitch of his broad, craggy forehead spoke volumes. Garvey could
tell you if he thought a body would file just by slowly lifting an eyebrow or pursing his lips. But his eyes never moved,
permanently buried in the shadow of his brow. They were eyes that plainly said they had seen it all, or at least enough of
it to feel they didn’t really need to see the rest.


“Yeah,” he said, and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Like I said, it’s nothing you don’t already know,” Hayes said. “I’m sorry you caught it.”

“You said that already.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“You sure he’s union, though?” Garvey asked, half-hopeful.

“Probably. You do, too, you just don’t want to admit it. I mean, come on, Garv, you can’t tell me you just fished a man who
looks like a worker out of a Construct canal and haven’t thought it has something to do with the lefties rattling around.”


“No. Goddamn, I wish it didn’t, though.”

“So. How many does that make?” Hayes said.

“Make?”


“Yes. Union deaths in all. I’d expect you’re all keeping tally marks over the morgue doors by now.”

“Hm. Four,” said Garvey reluctantly. “Four in the past five months. And that’s not counting the beatings and other pointless
violence that’s been going on. I don’t know how many we’ve had due to that.”


“But four murders? Four genuine union murders?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm,” Hayes said. “Things are heating up.”

“No doubt,” said Garvey. He began speaking in the toneless cadence of work-speech: “All four were found very, very murdered,
all in different but discreet areas of the city. Docks. Vagrants’ cemetery, found one out there, pretty vicious. Most recent
one was a union buster. He was found in a canal, like today. No one’s getting anywhere with any of them. Now Collins has us
all taking anything that even smells like union and making it high concern. ‘Prioritization,’ they’re calling it. We’re probably
going to junk those four, though. I don’t think there’s any headway to make with them. Not with fresh ones coming in today,
like this one.”


“Goodness,” said Hayes. “Your statistics must be terrible.”

“Yeah. Four hundred and eighty-six. Jesus.” Garvey shook his head. “Last month marked the highest yearly total of the century.
The papers were all over it. The mayor’s office is having daily panic attacks.”


“Well. Nineteen-twenty can’t come soon enough, I’d say. Happy new year, Garv.”

Garvey muttered his agreement and turned back to his plate, sometimes shooting Hayes sullen looks as though he had personally
engineered the foul morning, or possibly the bad year. Hayes ignored him, content to make his water vanish in little swallows.


Hayes was not, despite the beliefs of several scene-side cops and minor criminals, a policeman. He was often seen with the
police or the district attorney’s office and other civil servants, and a lot of the time he acted like a cop, with his constant questions
and presumptuous manner, though he did seem to grin more than most. The one thing that really marked him as different was
his English accent. But he had no badge, no gun, no pension, and no allegiance to the city or any jurisdiction. Those rare
few who concluded that he wasn’t police often wondered why he was tolerated among them, or why he wanted to be there at all.


Figuring out exactly who Hayes worked for would have been difficult for anyone. At the moment his paycheck came from a minor
canning factory on the wharf-front, partially managed by a San Francisco shipping firm, which was owned by a prominent Chicago
real estate corporation, which was in turn owned by a high-powered merchant bank overseas whose primary stockholder was, at
the end, the famous McNaughton Corporation, linchpin of the city of Evesden and, according to some, the world. Hayes made
sure to route how McNaughton paid him every once in a while, just to check. If he had done his work right, they changed its
path once every six months.


Precisely what Hayes did for McNaughton was a mystery to most everyone. His chief overseer was James Evans, deputy director
of securities at McNaughton, who often said Hayes’s job was to be “a backroom boy, someone to make sure everyone follows procedure
and that sensitive matters do not become unfavorable for the company’s interests.” Brightly, who was above even Evans as chief
director of securities, chose to say that Hayes was “a fixer” or “our man in the field, but here at home.” That was if he
said anything at all, which he usually didn’t.


Hayes thought of his job in very simple terms: it was his job to find out the things no one wanted him to find out and know
the things no one else knew, all in the name of McNaughton Western Foundry Corporation. It often put him in many interesting
situations. For example, this was not the first time he had been involved in a murder investigation, and while this one in
particular didn’t promise much interest for McNaughton as a whole, Hayes was always willing to help Garvey whenever he could. Garvey’s high position in the
Department and similar line of work made him an invaluable resource for Hayes, and after their working together for so long
he’d also become the closest thing to a friend Hayes had.


“So I’m fucked,” said Garvey to his near-empty plate.

“Maybe not,” Hayes said cheerfully. “You could turn something up. You often do.”

“Maybe. You say maybe. Maybe isn’t probably.”

“No. But if you keep at it long enough, it’ll drop.”

“Hm. Well. Give me a second while I pay,” said Garvey, standing up.

“I’ll be outside,” said Hayes, and he gathered his coat about him and worked back through the throng.

It seemed to be even colder now that Hayes had felt a second of warmth. He huddled by Garvey’s car, breathing deep and trying
to stuff his hands ever farther into his pockets. There was a sour film on the back of his throat. His thoughts returned to
the soft, white face rising up out of the river. Something mutinous began happening down in his belly, some minor organ pitching
and yawing with a foul tide. He resisted it at first. Then began swallowing. A rumbling belch came up, followed by something
that should have stayed down, and he instinctively flipped his hair and scarf out of his face before falling to his knees
and retching. The hot clear fluids sent up thick clouds of steam as they spattered onto the icy stone. For the next few minutes
he was wracked with the dry heaves, rattling burps that bubbled up from his deep inner recesses to come burbling out with
festoons of spit and mucus.


Garvey emerged from the diner and stopped short at the sight. “Jesus Christ. I thought you said you’d quit drinking.”

“I did quit drinking,” Hayes said, wheezing and hiccupping.

“That’s the classic drunkard’s morning pose to me. Careful not to get any on the car.”

“I did quit drinking,” Hayes insisted.


Garvey took in Hayes’s pale skin and the small puddle of thin, clear vomit. Then he sighed and scratched his head and said,
“God. I know what this is. You gave up drink so you’ve been hitting the pipe double time. Is that it?”