The Last Word Read Free

time as any to explain how I became boss and why my two
     most seasoned employees were wearing undergarments to work.
    •  •  •
    I began working for the family business when I was twelve. I won’t pretend that I
     was a model employee, and I’ll come straight out and say that I was an even worse
     teenager. Some might have called me a delinquent. A more generous sort would suggest
     I was finding myself. I would probably tell the generous sort where to stick their
     new-age bullshit and own the delinquent part. So, I admit I was trouble, but I grew
     out of that phase at least five, six years ago and now I’m a relatively upstanding
     citizen. As you know, your average citizen probably commits between one and five misdemeanors
     a day. 9
    About nine months ago our firm took on a series of cases that turned out to be interconnected.
     A man hired us to follow his sister. His sister hired us to follow her husband. Two
     of the three people involved were not who they said they were. When I noticed their
     stories didn’t match, I began investigating the client. Generally, a private investigator
     investigates the subject, not the client, but I believe that if the client is hiring
     us under false pretenses, it is our job to set things right. My father, however, believes
     we should serve the client, lest we develop a reputation for being the private investigators
     with a de-emphasis on the private . During our company standoff, my father enacted a Chinese wall and only allowed the
     assigned investigator to work on his or her respective case. I tried to climb the
     wall a few times, only to be met by an escalating series of warnings from my father,
     which culminated in a direct threat: If I continued to defy company policy, I would
     be fired. I disregarded his warning, took a sledgehammer to the Chinese wall, and
     uncovered our clients’ true and malevolent motives. While I considered my investigation
     a success, my father considered it a breach of the basic tenets of our livelihood.
     My dad’s threat to fire me was, in fact, not a bluff.
    I politely and then impolitely asked for my job back. I even pretended that bygones
     were bygones and simply showed up for work day after day. If we were a major conglomerate,
     a security team would have promptly surfacedand escorted me out of the building with my one sad box of belongings. Instead, each
     day of each week, I was shown the door and then invited back for family dinner on
     Sunday.
    After a great deal of soul-searching and scheming, I did the only thing I could do.
     I warned the person whom our clients were surveilling, one Edward Slayter, of the
     potential danger posed by his scheming wife (now ex). Mr. Slayter, a wealthy businessman,
     became my benefactor in a way. When he heard that I was fired because of my work on
     his behalf, he offered to intervene, in this case negotiating a buyout with my siblings,
     who, for the record, took my side. 10 At the time, the parental unit had a 40 percent share of the company, Rae had 15
     percent, David had 15 percent, and I had 30 percent. After Slayter bought out my siblings’
     shares, I owned 60 percent, which, according to the company bylaws, gave me the authority
     to hire and fire employees and veto power over all major company decisions. My first
     order of business was giving me my old job back.
    But power comes at a cost. The coup made me enemy number one to my father and rendered
     me permanently beholden to Edward Slayter. So, even though I’m technically the boss
     of Spellman Investigations, Edward Slayter is kind of the boss of me. Our deal is
     quite simple. I do jobs for him at a discounted rate and when he asks me to do something,
     I generally do it.
    That’s just so you understand why I’ll be jogging in seven pages.
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    1 . I’ve probably clocked in a full workweek of Plants vs. Zombies hours, I’m ashamed
     to say. But Dad played as if he were an employee of PopCap Games.
    2 . I’ll