Her Man Friday Read Free

offense, but I wouldn't be where I am in this business if I hadn't mastered discretion a long time ago."
    "No, Mr. Friday," Versace Man piped up then. "You don't understand. It's not your discretion we're worried about. It's
you
. Your very identity is the problem. You're too well-known, even by some of the company's less, shall we say, important employees. You're not to go by Leo Friday. You're not to be an investigator of fraud. We'll have to come up with another persona entirely for you. This has to look like a simple, standard audit of the books. Period."
    Great, Leo thought. This was just great. The wandering band of rogue executives were now Elliot Ness and the Untouchables.
    He shook his head imperceptibly. This had happened to him before. A different company, a different board of directors, but the same damned thing. They'd been convinced that his reputation had preceded him, right down to the guys in the mail room, and they'd insisted he play a game of cloak and calculator. And not only had the charade been totally unnecessary, it had been annoying as hell.
    "Well, can I at least go by my own first name?" he asked, masking his sarcasm as best he could, and telling himself that was
not
petulance he heard in his voice.
    "Leonard?" Cohiba Man asked with a shrug. "I don't see why not."
    Leo cringed at the sound of his given name. He
really
hated being called Leonard. No one but his great-aunt Margie got away with calling him that anymore, and the only reason she did was because she was ninety-two years old. Weil, that and the fact that, even though at six-foot-two, Leo was a solid one-hundred and ninety-eight pounds, Aunt Margie outweighed him by a good fifty pounds.
And
she watched way too much Championship Wrestling.
    "No, not Leonard," he started to object.
    But Halston Man cut him off. "Leonard Freiberger!" he exclaimed. "That's who you could be. It would be close to your real name, but not really. And you won't be an investigator. You'll be a… let's see now… a bookkeeper! Yes, that's perfect. A mousy little bookkeeper who's been hired to double-check the files for a few minor discrepancies. And I think Leonard Freiberger is the perfect name for a mousy little bookkeeper. I went to school with a Morton Freiberger," he added parenthetically. "Trust me. This will be perfect."
    "That's interesting," Leo replied blandly. "I went to school with a Butch Freiberger. Son of a bitch beat the hell out of me one day during PE."
    Leo also thought about telling Halston Man that he had bookkeeper friends named Trixie LeFevre and Jamal Jefferson, and not a single one with a name like Leonard Freiberger. But the old guy seemed to be having so much fun that Leo didn't have the heart. Unfortunately, when he said nothing to counter the man's suggestion, the other executives, incredibly, seemed to warm to the idea.
    "Yes, yes," Versace Man chimed in. "That's a wonderful idea. You'll need glasses, though." He whipped his own pair of delicate, horn-rimmed spectacles from his face and held them out to Leo. "Here, you can wear mine. Don't worry—they're not prescription. They're mood glasses. Women
adore
them on men."
    Mood glasses? Leo wondered. Now what marketing genius had come up with
that
idea? One who had never had to wear real glasses, obviously. Leo should know. He'd been wearing contact lenses for half his life—since he was nineteen years old.
    "I don't think—" he began to object.
    But this time Grecian Formula Man interrupted him. "And you absolutely must wear tweed," he threw in. "Not the good kind—the Lauren or the Hilfiger—the absent-minded professor kind. Like Peter O'Toole wore in
Goodbye Mr. Chips
. That would suit the charade beautifully."
    Leo pinched the bridge of his nose—hard—and tried not to panic. "Uh, I think you guys are getting a little too—"
    "It's just too bad we can't do anything about your physical makeup, Mr. Friday," Charlton Heston Man piped up, frowning as he considered Leo from head to