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  About the Author

  Prior to becoming a freelance writer and novelist, FRANK STEIN spent almost a decade as a management consultant working out of the New York City offices of one of the world's largest consultancies. He holds an undergraduate degree in philosophy and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

  www.frankstein.net

  HEADCOUNT: A NOVEL

  FRANK STEIN

  2012

  4CP FOCUS | USA

  Copyright Notice

  HEADCOUNT: A NOVEL

  A 4CP FOCUS Electronic Book

  First Edition, May 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Frank Stein

  www.frankstein.net

  All rights reserved by author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, places, businesses, organizations, events, brands, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, businesses, or locales is entirely coincidental and not indicative of any intent to malign or misrepresent.

  Cover art by Jack Straw

  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  1. Fiction - Thrillers

  2. Fiction - Management Consultants

  3. Fiction - Vigilante Murders

  Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Notice

  HEADCOUNT

  HEADCOUNT

  PROLOGUE

  My name is Frank Stein. There is a middle initial but I never use it. I’m too close to actually being a monster to carry it off. Just call me Frank. Frank will do. Frank is a good name. It describes me just fine. I may be a monster, but I’m straight up fucking honest.

  Or at least I will be with you.

  I’m not a writer. I’m a consultant. Yeah, I know that word doesn’t mean shit now. Everyone’s a goddamn consultant these days. This is the new world of the non-permanent job—you find what you’re good at, and then you take it from company to company. Like a mercenary. A virus. A parasite. A bacterial infection. A leech.

  No, you say, that’s not right. Be nice, you say.

  To hell with that. I know what I’m talking about. I’m one of the originals. A management consultant. Remember us? The business doctors. Corporate SWAT teams. Self-professed experts in whatever it is you do. We come in, clean up your shit, and get out. We don’t care if your shit stinks. Actually, we like it when your shit stinks. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t bring in asswipes like us.

  But this isn’t some memoir with cute anecdotes about my life and career. It’s not some goddamn insider look at the industry. And while I hope some of you read all the way through, the truth is I’m not writing it for you. I’m writing it for me. To convince myself that I’m still sane. To remind myself that I’m still human. To trick myself into believing that there’s still some good left in me.

  Even after what I’ve done.

  ONE

  It begins with a laptop. All stories about management consultants begin and end with a laptop. The laptop is everything to the consultant. It is what the rifle is to the Marine. It is what the handgun is to the street cop. The vodka to the Siberian prison guard. Your blanket in the cold. The flickering dim light in the deafening dark. We are one with our laptops. We are sub-human without our laptops. I think you get the idea.

  This laptop didn’t start off as any of those things. It wasn’t the standard issue given out to new consultants or the upgrades given to managers or the slim sexy machines given to partners and directors. I had only just noticed it sitting there on the generic office table in that long flat unnamed office complex in the sterile office park in one of those dead little towns that you’re always surprised is the global headquarters of that eleven billion dollar company. I stared at the laptop and then looked away when I heard Simone behind me.

  She walked around me and pushed the laptop away and leaned on the edge of the table. I sat down and lowered the chair and used my face to gently push her legs apart. After a while she made a sound and then I stood up. When we were finished she turned and I leaned in to kiss her, but she raised a hand to stop me.

  “Gross,” she whispered.

  I laughed and licked her hand. She smiled and then we stepped outside for a smoke.

  We smoked and then Simone went directly to her car. I watched her tail lights disappear around the corner and then walked back inside. The place was dead. Goddamn clients. In at six, out at three. Little Timmy has baseball practice. Precious Jenny has a soccer game. We’re hosting a Tupperware party. Fuck you and your perfect little lives.

  We love to drop the f-bomb when we’re alone or with each other. It’s a spontaneous release of all the withheld swear words that only partners can use around clients and not expect repercussions.

  Not just any partner, of course, but certainly the one who currently owned my ass: Monica Hussein. Mo Hussein. Smart as hell. An amazing salesperson. Ripped like a triathlete. A wonderful mentor. Clients loved her, which says a lot when you bill out at seven hundred an hour. And yes, you know where this is going—a total nightmare if you have to work for her every day.

  But she had been exceptionally chilled that day. It wasn’t even Thursday. Not that our four-days-at-the-client policy seemed to be holding up. New York was a distant memory. I didn’t know why I even kept an address there. How long did I have to be away before the rats took over my shithole on the Upper Upper Upper West Side? No, I’m not kidding. Most consultants don’t get paid enough to live in the fancier areas of Manhattan. At least not middle of the road consultants like me. I was good, but I wasn’t the best.

  Maybe that’s why Ms. Hussein hadn’t bothered to hide that she had been staring at a client-issued laptop all day. She couldn’t imagine I’d notice. And even if I had, why would I think anything of it? Why would I know that our client, Walker-Midland, didn’t allow an outside consultant to go anywhere near its in-house computers? How could I know that all client machines had pre-installed software keys that allowed access to the company intranet? And not just the company intranet. If you plugged into a wall network jack, then depending on where you were located, different areas of the castle opened up. And we happened to be in an administrative building. Sounds benign until you realize that payroll is an administrative department. And Walker-Midland was one of the few global conglomerates that hadn’t outsourced the processing of its three billion dollar payroll.

  But we weren’t there to consult on their payroll process. At least not yet. Actually, I wasn’t quite sure what we were doing. For now it was some pro-bono scoping work. In other words, Ms. Hussein had offered Walker-Midland her team’s services to help put together a list of possible projects for consultancies to bid on. Of course, with the implication that she’d get to pick the juiciest ones from the list.

  Worked for me. There wasn’t much pressure. All I really had to do was make sure I was in by nine and not out before eight. The client wasn’t paying, so they couldn’t care less about me. And Mo wasn’t riding me too hard. As long as I looked busy she didn’t bother me. So it wasn’t surprising that she didn’t notice that I had noticed the laptop. And she certainly wouldn’t have guessed that I knew what it could mean.

  Of course, I wouldn’t have known if not for Simone, Walker-Midland’s Chief Human Resources Officer and the person responsible for bringing us in. Simone was forty-six. She had two grown kids out west. She also had three ex-husbands, one of whom was underground. As in dead and buried. Yes, Simone had left her perfect little family-life far behind. And s
he didn’t want to go back down that path.

  Fine with me. I’m too much of an asshole to be husband material anyway. And I don’t know about being a fourth husband. Especially when husband number three dies in a boating accident. Boating accident? Reminded me of that story about that guy who had four ex-wives. Four divorces must be rough on the wallet, someone asks him. The man sips his drink and replies: I don’t believe in divorce; I believe in boating accidents.

  But I didn’t take that seriously, of course. Simone was a cool woman. Besides, I just wanted to use that story about boating accidents. So, back to Mo and the client-issued laptop. Now, it was possible that she had special permission to use the laptop. I didn’t know the Walker-Midland policy by heart. But I did know that a laptop could not be checked out overnight. Even Simone didn’t have a company laptop. Walker-Midland was old school. Everyone had desktops at work. If they traveled, they could use shared desktops at satellite locations or check out a machine for the day.

  So it had been strange to see the client-issued laptop blinking at me before Simone came over. It sure looked like the one Mo had been using—I had noticed the big white numbers: 451. Why had it not been checked back in? Why had it been on after hours? And plugged into a wall network jack?

  I walked back towards the desk and wondered if I should look at the laptop. But when I got there it was gone. I shrugged. Must have been security or some IT guy on the late shift. So I packed up and I left.

  And that’s how the story begins. With a laptop.

  TWO

  The next morning my BlackBerry warned me of an e-mail from Mo Hussein before I had even left the hotel. Not too many words, as was her style: See me - Mo. So I did.

  “What’s up,” I said. I walked into the empty spare office that Simone had assigned Mo.

  “You tell me,” said Mo. She didn’t look up from her computer screen.

  I glanced at the back of her laptop. Chadwick & Company standard issue. One of ours. I looked at Mo and shrugged. “Not much. Been picking through some of the documents I got from you and Simone. A lot of reports that don’t make sense. There’s probably scope for some kind of reporting optimization work. Want me to write up a proposal?”

  Mo looked at me. She smiled but I didn’t like the smile. “I didn’t call you in here for a status update.”

  I felt my stomach try to squeeze into my nutsack. She had seen me with Simone. Of course. How goddamn stupid could I be? I see my boss staring at a laptop all day, then I see the laptop on a table, and then I have sex with our client at the same table. Simple logic should have told me that Mo had been there. She must have watched us and then taken the laptop when we went down to smoke. Shit. Shit.

  I smiled back. “Okay. What do you need?”

  Mo stood up and walked around me and shut the office door. As she walked back to her spot behind the table she looked at me over her shoulder. “Simone won’t be in today.”

  I shrugged. “Fine, I guess. I didn’t have a meeting or anything with her today.” I waited for Mo to say something else but she didn’t so I did. “What happened? Is she ill? Or working from home?”

  “No. She’s missing.” Mo leaned back in the cheap office chair and put her hands behind her head.

  “Missing?” I looked at the time on my BlackBerry. “Well, it’s only nine in the morning. She’s probably running late. Or maybe she slept in. Did you call?”

  “I didn’t call.”

  I got that feeling again where my gut is down where my balls should be, and so I sat on a chair facing Mo. “What’s this about?” I said.

  Mo pushed a shiny bit of paper over to me on the table. I flipped it over. Then I jerked my chair backwards and cried out and gagged. I looked at Mo. She looked at me without blinking and with no expression on her face.

  “She’s dead?” I finally said. I looked at the picture again and turned away. “Where did you get this? How can this be real?" I was almost shouting now. "What the hell happened to her? What kind of animals could have done that to her face?”

  Mo smiled. “Careful who you call an animal.” She took the photograph back and I watched as she tore it into small pieces. I almost laughed in my panic as I watched her calmly swallow each scrap of the photograph and wash it down with VitaminWater.

  “No,” I said. I tried to smile, maybe even laugh, but all that came out was a gurgled stream of words. “This is ridiculous. This has to be a joke. This can't be real. This is not happening.”

  “It is happening. And this is just the beginning,” said Mo. “Well, the beginning for you, at least.”

  I stood up, not sure what to do. I started to move towards the door.

  She called after me. “You going to turn yourself in? Or you’re going to try making a run for it?”

  I stammered. Then I stopped trying to talk.

  Mo stood up and moved close to me. “You watch those crime shows on TV, right? You know that when they find your semen and saliva on her they’re going to be a little less willing to believe your side of the story. And what’s your story? That your female boss admitted to the murder and showed you a picture which she then proceeded to eat? Good luck with that. This is Texas, you know.”

  I stammered again.

  “Of course, they don’t have to find anything,” said Mo. “In a couple of days people will realize that Simone is missing. And it can just stay that way. Like they say: no body, no crime.”

  “You’re insane,” I said.

  “Sanity is relative to one’s frame of reference. Don’t worry, though. I’ll help you with the transition.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I need some help. It’s becoming harder for me to do this work discreetly now that I’m a partner with C&C. I need someone lower down the chain.”

  “What work? What kind of work involves doing . . . that?” I said. I rubbed my head and looked at the ground.

  “Trust me, she had it coming,” said Mo. She smiled again.

  “Nobody deserves to be murdered. Especially not like that.”

  “Shut the hell up. You don’t know shit about what’s going on. It’ll take a while for you to get it. That’s why I needed to lock you in to start with. But you’ll get it.”

  “Get what? That you’re a homicidal maniac? I think I’m starting to see that already.”

  Mo laughed. “Nice. You speak your mind even when you have no control in the situation. I was right to pick you. And when the opportunity presented itself last night, I knew it was a sign from Allah that you will be the one to accompany me in this holy mission.”

  “Sign from Allah? Are you kidding me? What mission?”

  Mo raised her hand and took on an almost comical expression and tone of voice which, under the circumstances, was frightening as hell. “To work the legal dead zones created by international jurisdictions, extradition treaties, and other government red tape. To take out the invisible men and women financing and enabling the mechanisms that brainwash Muslims into becoming foot soldiers in a fake religious militancy. To purify Islam while reconciling it to the promise of democracy and capitalism. You know, regular consultant stuff.”

  THREE

  “But I’m Jewish,” I said. “You’re sure Allah wants you to team up with a Jew on your holy mission to purify Islam?”

  Mo laughed. “Actually, I’m not particularly religious. And this isn’t about Islam. Or religion at all, for that matter. I just said that crap about holy quests and Allah because it sounds dramatic. You know, some self-righteous fanatical bullshit to freak you out a bit. Wanted to see how you reacted. Sorry. I was just playing.”

  “Oh, okay. So you’re just a regular homicidal maniac, not a religious one. Phew.”

  “You’re a funny guy, Frank.” Mo smiled and shook her head. “Well, the first part of what I said is true. More or less.”

  “What? The stuff about legal dead zones or something? What does that even mean?”

  “I’m not going to get into it just yet.�
�

  “And how does Simone fit into this? Or did you do that for fun?”

  “I don’t kill for fun. I take it very seriously. As will you.” She looked at her laptop screen and then looked back up. “Anyway, I have a meeting soon. You should get back to your desk. And yes, write up something about that reporting optimization shit you were spouting earlier. If we can sell it, you’ll lead the project.”

  I stood up and slowly walked out and found my desk. It took me fifteen minutes just to unpack my laptop and plug it in. An hour later I realized I hadn’t even turned it on. I walked to the men’s room and locked myself in the handicap stall. I waited until the guy pissing had left and then I turned on the faucet in the sink and broke down. I cried like a helpless baby. I howled like a trapped animal. I whimpered like a beaten dog.

  I splashed cold water on my face and hair and waited in the stall until the redness left my cheeks and the swelling under my eyes subsided. Then I slowly walked back to my desk and sat down.

  I had to go to the police. There was nothing to think about. I had to go to the police. No question about it. I tried not to think about my options. I had that feeling where I already knew what I would do, but I didn’t want to articulate it to myself because it scared me too much. I knew I had to go to the police now, because if I thought about it I knew I wouldn’t go to the police. Shit, and I was thinking about it. No, I couldn’t go to the police.

  So I had to find Simone. But then what? That picture didn’t look fake. Simone was dead. And what would I do if I found her? Destroy the body? Make myself look guilty in case I got seen or caught? Risk getting her blood on me and making it an easy case for any prosecutor? No. Finding Simone’s body wouldn’t do shit for me. It would make it worse.

  What would happen if I just turned myself in and explained the situation? An investigation? And then what? A trial? Her word against mine? Prison for life? Wait, we were in Texas. The rape and vicious murder of an upstanding community leader means death row. Ten years of taking it up the ass, and then a needle in my arm. No way. Call me a coward, but no goddamn way.