The secretary hesitated, ran a pert pink tongue around the subdued lipstick of her mouth indecisively, and finally buzzed Antony Tollini.
"Mr. Tollini. Mr. Mercurio is here."
"Show him in," said the bright voice of Antony Tollini.
Remo smiled confidently at the secretary, as he breezed past, saying, "Don't bother. I'll help myself."
Remo didn't know what to expect when he walked in. He would have to talk around the lack of a suit. That much was for sure. He might even have to strong-arm the man. He hoped his faked history and references-all rigged by Harold Smith-would get him over the hump.
Antony Tollini looked up from the paperwork on his desk. His light brown eyes acquired a stung expression as they alighted on Remo's bare arms and fresh T-shirt.
I blew it, Remo thought.
The stung expression lasted only a moment. Antony Tollini's mouth twiched, his nostrils flared.
Then a slow pleased smile stretched his mustache like a miniature accordion, to reveal gleaming white teeth like a row of tiny tombstones.
"Why, you're perfect!" Antony Tollini said in awe.
Remo blinked. Something was not right here.
..I am?".
"Sit down, sit down," Antony Tollini said, gesturing to a comfortable black leather chair.
When Remo had settled in, Tollini said, "It says here you grew up in Detroit."
"If that's what it says," said Remo, who never bothered with the details.
"From a good family neighborhood, am I right?"
" I remember it that way, yeah," said Remo, who had grown up in Newark, New Jersey, an orphan and ward of the state.
"Great. My family is from the Old Country. I'm second-generation. On my mother's side."
"I'm Irish too," lied Remo, who was finding this easier than he had thought. So far, none of the questions had been hard. He had boned up on computer terminology while waiting for his application to be processed. He hoped it would get him through.
"Irish? With a name like Remo?"
"Half-Irish," Remo said quickly, realizing the man meant some other Old Country.
"Great, great," Tollini was saying. He looked at the resume again. His head lifted and met Remo's eyes with a shine that was almost worshipful. "You're hired."
" I am?" said Remo, eyebrows quirking upward.
"Can you start today?"
"Sure.
"Right now?"
"Yeah."
"Good. You're on the next flight to Boston. The car is waiting."
"Boston? What's up there?" ,
"Our most important client. Their system is down."
"Down where?" asked Remo, frowning.
"Broken," said Antony Tollini. "Don't you know what down means?"
Remo suddenly remembered what "down" meant in the world of data processing. It had been on the list. Right under CPU.
"Where I come from, we don't say 'down,' we say 'flat.'
" 'Flat'?"
"Yeah, like a tire. All computer talk is like that in Detroit., When our computers crash, people get glass in their faces.'
"Now that you're with IDC,' Antony Tollini said, rising from his desk, "you say 'down.' Can you say 'down'?"
"Down," said Remo, suddenly noticing Tollini's arm across his shoulder. Remo allowed himself to be hustled from the office. This was happening awfully fast, he thought.
"Good. I can see you have a bright future with us, Mr. Mercurio."
Out by the secretary's desk, Antony Tollini was simultaneously congratulating Remo with a frantic two-handed handshake and telling his secretary to provide Remo with the proper documentation.
It was under his arm when Remo was hustled into a waiting company car. They had to wait while the paramedics finished loading a gurney into the back of an ambulance.
"Someone get hurt?" Remo asked the company driver.
"Lobby security guard. Fainted."
"Imagine that."
"Yeah, and they found him in his shorts. No sign of his clothes. Poor bastard will be reassigned to Siberia.
"IDC have a Russian office?"
"Siberia," the driver explained, getting the car going, "is defined at IDC as anyplace other than Mamaroneck."
"What does that make Boston?" Remo wondered.
"You going to Boston?" the driver asked sharply, looking up into the rearview mirror. ,