The personnel office was in the middle of the floor. Three people sat at computers in the outer room. The one nearest the door took my name, checked it against her computer log, and directed me to an alcove with the assurance that Belinda would be with me shortly. The alcove reminded me of a doctor’s waiting room. It was crammed with worried souls who were filling out forms on clipboards, each looking up hopefully when one of the receptionists came to call a name. They looked at me suspiciously. Each newcomer was a potential competitor. Suspicion turned to hostility when a receptionist came to get me after a mere ten minutes had passed.
“I was here long before her,” one man called out.
The receptionist just smiled, and said his turn would come soon.
Belinda turned out to be a stocky woman in her early forties. She was the first Tintrey employee I’d seen who didn’t look as though she were preparing for a photo shoot. Her nails were cut bluntly, close to the fingertips, and her clothes had been chosen for comfort, not glamour. She led me into an office behind the reception area that held four cubicles. In the other three, job supplicants sat trying to look earnest, eager, productive—whatever would get them a foot in the door. Belinda took me to her desk in one of the two middle cubes.
“They told me downstairs that you’re a detective who wants information about one of our employees. They should have known better than to send you up here. We don’t give out confidential employee information. Too many competitors in this business.”
“The message got garbled in translation,” I said. “I’m doing a background check on a woman who claims she used to work for you. Her résumé has two years that I can’t verify, so I’m wondering if she lied about her employment history with you.”
I pulled a folder out of my briefcase. I’d stopped at my office before heading for the Tollway and produced a résumé for Alexandra Guaman, inserting her yearbook photo at the top of the page. I’d used the information I’d found online for Alexandra, including her Social Security number, her educational background, and her employment history at Tintrey. I’d beefed up her credentials—I made her a cyberfraud expert working for Tintrey in Baghdad’s Green Zone. I showed her leaving Iraq two weeks after her reported death, working for a credit-card holding company I’d invented in Cleveland, and looking for “new challenges” back in the Chicago area.
I handed the résumé to Belinda. “It’s impossible for me to get any information out of Lackawanna Systems. They seem to have disappeared in the economic tsunami of the last few months, and I can’t find anyone who can vouch for Guaman in Cleveland.”
“Did you go to Cleveland in person?” Belinda asked.
“I do what the job requires.”
I kept my smile pasted on my face. She was shrewd; she knew I could have handled my query with her by phone or e-mail.
“Guaman’s résumé arrived online with a lot of fancy podcasts and video bits, but it boiled down to this history. If you’d just verify the dates with Tintrey and let me know if she really can set up the kind of cybersecurity she’s claiming, I’ll get out of your hair. I can see you’re swamped.”
While I’d been speaking, the lights on Belinda’s phone had been flashing, and her computer kept dinging to let her know she had IM messages piling up. These prods from the ether made her decide it was easier to cooperate than argue. She started typing and brought up Alexandra Guaman’s file without any trouble.
Her monitor was at an angle so that I could see a bit of the screen but not enough to read the text. Belinda frowned over what she was reading, then scrolled down until she was at the end of the file. Her mouth dropped open in shock, and she looked from her screen to me with growing suspicion.
“Who are you really?”
“Really, I am V. I. Warshawski.”
“That’s not what I mean. How did you get this woman’s résumé? What is it you’re really after? Who hired you?”
I started to move around her desk to look at her screen, but she held up a hand, traffic cop style and hit a key that brought up her screen saver, a collection of family photos.
“I am a confidential investigator, and I don’t betray my clients’ identities, so I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.