Philip Kerr - Gridiron

Joan took off her wrap and hung it over her arm. She was wearing a cream linen sarong-style skirt with a matching shirt and tabard, a multilayered outfit that did a great deal to disguise her large behind. Joan was a good-looking woman, with a face not unlike one of Gauguin's Tahitian lovelies, but she was also a large one.

'Fabulous. Just fabulous. It makes you feel so proud to be a part of all this… all this energy.'

Ray Richardson grunted. His eyes searched the hard-edged, black, white and grey surfaces of the studio for Allen Grabel, who was working on both of the largest and most prestigious projects currently occupying the firm. With the Yu Corporation building nearing completion, it was the Kunstzentrum that was immediately preoccupying the firm's senior designer, not least because his principal was about to fly to Germany to present the detailed drawings to the Berlin city authorities.

The Kunstzentrum was an arts centre, Berlin's response to the Paris Beaubourg, designed to revitalize the Alexanderplatz, a huge, wind-swept pedestrianized plaza which had once been one of the German capital's main shopping meccas.

The two projects kept Grabel so busy there were times when he had to stop and remind himself which one he was working on. Spending a minimum twelve hours a day in the office-often as many as sixteen — he had no private life to speak of. He knew he was not a bad-looking guy. He might have had a girlfriend if he could ever take the time to try and meet someone, but with no one at home he spent more and more time at the office. He was aware Richardson took advantage of this. He knew he should have gone on holiday after the major design work on the Yu Corporation building had been completed. On his salary he could have gone anywhere he wanted. He just never found the right window in his increasingly busy work schedule. Sometimes Grabel felt he was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. At the very least he was drinking way too much.

Richardson found the tall, curly-haired New Yorker staring into the screen of his Intergraph terminal through a pair of glasses that were as grimy as his shirt-collar. He was re-shaping the curves and polylines of an architectural layout.

The Intergraph software system for computer-assisted design was the cornerstone of the Richardson practice, not just in Los Angeles but throughout the world. With offices in Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, New York and Toronto, as well as new ones planned for Berlin, Frankfurt, Dallas and Buenos Aires, Richardson was Intergraph's largest customer after NASA. The system, and others like it, had revolutionized architecture, providing 'drag and drop' handle-based editing that allowed a designer to quickly move, rotate, stretch and align any number of two- and three-dimensional entities.

Richardson removed his Armani jacket, moved a chair closer towards Grabel and sat down beside him. Wordlessly he tugged the colour AOsize plot across the desk and compared it with the 2-D image on the monitor while he ate the last slice of Grabel's takeout pizza. Already tired, Grabel's spirits sagged. Sometimes he looked at how CAD transformed an input pattern into a work of architecture and wondered if he might not as easily have created a piece of music. But such philosophical musing disappeared out of the window whenever Ray Richardson arrived on the scene; and whatever pleasure and satisfaction he took in his job seemed as ephemeral as one of his own computer drawings.

'I think we're just about there now, Ray,' he said wearily. But Richardson had already accessed the Smart Draw icon on the floating toolbar with a right-button mouse click that would allow him to judge the design for himself.

'You think?' Richardson smiled coldly. 'Jesus Christ, don't you know?'

He put his hand up in the air like a kid answering a question in class and shouted: 'Someone get me a cup of coffee.'

Grabel shrugged and sighed simultaneously, too tired to argue.

'Well, what's that supposed to mean? That shrug? Come on, Allen. What the fuck is going on here? And where the hell is Kris Parkes?'

Parkes was project manager on the Kunstzentrum project: although not the most senior member of the team, it was his job to run the regular in-house coordination meetings and to articulate what the project team was thinking.

Grabel told himself that right now the project team was probably thinking the same as he was: that they wished they were at home, watching TV in bed. Like Kris Parkes probably was.

'He went home,' said Grabel.

'The project manager went home?'

Richardson's coffee arrived, brought by Mary Sammis, one of the project model-makers. He tasted it, winced and handed it back.

'This is stewed,' he said.

'He was out on his feet,' Grabel explained. 'I told him to go home.'

'Get me another. And this time bring a saucer. When I ask for a cup of coffee I don't expect to have to ask for that as well.'

'Right away.'

Shaking his head, Richardson muttered, 'What kind of place is this anyway?' And then, remembering something, he called out: 'Oh, Mary?

How's the model coming along?'

'We're still working on it, Ray.'

He shook his head grimly. 'Don't let me down, love. I'm flying to Germany tomorrow afternoon.' He looked at his Breitling wrist-watch.

'In twelve hours, to be precise. That model has to be boxed and ready to go with all the customs paperwork. Understand?'

'You'll have it, Ray, I promise.'

'You don't have to make promises to me. It's not for me. This is not about me, Mary. If it was just me it would be different. But I happen to think that the very least we can do for a new office, with thirty people on board who are going to spend the next two years of their lives working on nothing but this project, is to show them a model of what it's going to look like. Wouldn't you agree, Mary?'

'Yes, sir, I would.'

'And don't call me sir, Mary. This isn't the army.'

Richardson picked up Grabel's telephone and punched out a number. Taking advantage of these few seconds of grace Mary walked quickly away.

'Ray, who are you calling?' said Grabel, giving a little twitch. His nervous tick only started when he was dog-tired, or needed a drink.

'Didn't you hear what I just said? I said it was me who told him to go home.'

'I heard you.'

'Ray?'

'Where's my bloody coffee?' Richardson shouted over his shoulder.

'You're not calling Parkes, are you?'

Richardson just looked at Grabel, his grey eyebrows raised with quiet contempt.

'You bastard,' he murmured, suddenly hating Richardson with an intensity he found alarming. 'I wish to God you were dead, you mother…'

'Kris? It's Ray. Did I wake you up? I did? That's too bad. Let me ask you something, Kris. Have you any idea what this building is going to be worth in fees to this firm? No, just answer the question. That's right, nearly $4 million. Four million dollars. Now, there are a lot of us in here working late on this one, Kris. Only you're not here and you're supposed to be the goddamn project manager. Well, don't you think that sets a bad example? You don't.' He listened for a moment and then started to shake his head. 'Well, frankly I don't care how long it is since you've been home. And I couldn't care less if your kids think you're just some guy their mother picked up in the supermarket. Your place is here, with your team. Are you going to drag your ass down here, or do I have to look for a new manager on this job? You are? Good.'

Richardson replaced the receiver and glanced around for his wife. She was stooped over a glass case near the stairs, examining a model of the Yu Corporation headquarters which, in real life, was now nearing completion on the Hope Street Piazza. 'I'm going to be a while here, honey,' he called. 'I'll see you upstairs, OK?'

'OK, dear.' Joan smiled and looked around the studio. 'Goodnight everybody,' she said and left.

There were a few people who smiled back. But most of them were too tired, even for polite smiles. Besides, they knew that Joan was every bit as monstrous as her husband. Worse. At least he was talented. One or two of the more senior designers still remembered the time when, in a fit of bad temper, she had thrown a fax machine through a plate-glass window.

Ray Richardson returned his attention to the monitor and, clicking the mouse again, changed the picture to a 3-D image. The drawing revealed a giant semi-circle about two hundred metres in diameter, gently disked like the city of Bath's Royal Crescent and surmounted by what resembled the wingspan of an enormous bird. There were some architectural critics, most of them in Europe, who had suggested that the wings were the wings of an eagle, and a Nazi eagle at that. For this reason they had already described Richardson's design as 'Post-Nazism'.

Richardson moved the mouse forward across its pad, bringing the 3-D image closer. Now it could be seen that the building was not one crescent but two, enclosing a curving colonnade separating shops and office buildings and the exhibition halls. These were the contract drawings, representing a statement of agreed information from the various consultants who would be involved in constructing the Kunstzentrum, and they were due to be passed on to the quantity surveyor when Richardson visited Berlin. Entering the colonnade, Richardson zoomed up to the ceiling and clicking the mouse twice, exploding a detailed diagram of one of the shape-memory steel tube supports for the photochromic glass panels.

'What's this?' he frowned. 'Look, Allen, you haven't done what I wanted. I thought I asked you to draw up both options.'

'But we agreed that this is the ideal option.'

'I wanted the other one, just in case.'

'Just in case of what? I don't understand. Either this is the best option or it's not.' Grabel started to twitch again.

'In case I change my mind, that's what.' Richardson performed a cruel but accurate imitation of Grabel's nervous twitch. Grabel took off his glasses, buried his unshaven face in his trembling hands and sighed deeply, stretching his cheeks towards his ears. For a moment he looked heavenwards, as if seeking guidance from the Almighty. When none arrived he stood up, shaking his head slowly and put on his jacket.

'God, I hate you sometimes,' he said. 'No, that's not true, I hate you all the time. You are a stray dog's rectal cancer, you know that? One day someone is going to do the world a big favour and murder you. I'd do it myself only I'm afraid of all the fan mail I might receive. You want it drawn? Then do it yourself, you selfish bastard. I've had it up to here with you."

'What did you say?'

'You heard me, asshole.' Grabel turned and started to walk towards the stairs.

'Where the hell are you going?'

'Home.'

Richardson stood up and nodded bitterly.

'You walk out now, you don't come back. D'you hear me?'

'I quit,' Grabel said, and kept on walking. 'I wouldn't come back here if you were dying of loneliness.'

Richardson exploded. 'You don't walk out on me,' he screamed.

'You're fired. I'm firing you, you piece of twitching shit. All these people are my witnessess. You hear me, Twitch? Your ass is fired!'

Without looking back Grabel held up a middle finger and disappeared down the stairs. Someone laughed and Richardson looked around angrily, his fists clenched, ready to fire anyone who stepped out of line.

'What's so goddamned funny?' he snarled. 'And where's my fucking coffee?'

Still seething, Grabel walked the short distance along the strip to the St James's Club Hotel where, as usual, he had a few drinks in the artdeco piano bar while he waited for a taxi. Vodka with Cointreau and cranberry juice. It was what he had been drinking six months earlier when the police had arrested him for driving under the influence. That and a couple of toots of cocaine. He had only taken the cocaine to help him make the drive home. He might not have been drunk at all if he hadn't been working so hard.