Her name was Ellen Hail. She was seventy-six years old, the company's founder, its largest voting shareholder, and the chairwoman who had not appeared at headquarters in person for almost a decade. Her photograph still hung in the boardroom upstairs, though it had been taken when her hair was darker and her face less lined. New employees passed it without recognizing her. Most older employees assumed she had retired completely, or that she lived abroad, or that her name survived only because it was printed above the building's entrance.
Jamal had not recognized her either.
He was nine years old the last time he had seen her face to face. In the intervening years, a family disagreement had hardened into years of silence, and then into a business arrangement conducted through lawyers, annual reports, and carefully scheduled telephone calls. Ellen had watched photographs of Jamal grow older from a distance. She had read every quarterly result, attended board meetings remotely, and allowed herself to believe that the company she built could be supervised through figures on a screen.
Then the complaints began.
They were small at first: unexplained deductions from temporary workers' wages, a facilities contractor replaced without competitive bidding, expense reports that seemed to rise while employees complained they could not get routine supplies approved. Human resources described the problems as isolated. The executive summaries contained words like adjustment, transition, and modernization. Ellen had built the company long enough ago to know when bland language was being used to hide the shape of a real problem.
She requested a deeper review. The first report arrived late and left out half the questions she had asked. The second contained reassuring conclusions but very little underlying evidence. The company she had founded in her kitchen was becoming an organization where everybody claimed responsibility and nobody seemed able to explain a decision.
So she stopped relying on summaries.
Ten days before the water spilled in the lobby, she called Otis Walker, a maintenance supervisor who had worked for her since the first warehouse opened. Otis was sixty-four, broad-shouldered, and still carried a ring of ordinary service keys that opened more useful doors than most executives knew existed. He had never mistaken Ellen's lack of public appearances for lack of authority.
"I need a favor," she told him.
"That sounds expensive, Mrs. Hail."
"Probably for somebody. Not for you. I want to see the building from the bottom."
There was a long pause. "You mean a tour?"
"I mean a mop and a badge that says cleaning services. I want to know what people say when they think nobody important is listening."
"The janitorial company employs its own people. We can't just give you somebody else's job."
"Then arrange a properly documented temporary facilities assignment through the contractor, without taking anybody off their shift. I'm not asking you to falsify payroll. I'll pay my own wages back into the contractor's employee emergency fund if necessary. And I want you to keep the board's audit counsel informed that I'm making an operational observation."
Otis sighed. "You still think of everything."