Transparency by Charles Royce (children's books read aloud txt) 📕

“WHAT BRINGS YOU up here?” the man asks. “I’ve seen you around the other office.”

Josh senses the man is flirting.

Josh would call West’s temporary assistant a pocket gay: about five foot two, dark hair, thin face, flawless skin. He talks with a slight lisp, walks in a confident saunter.

Josh follows the young man through the new space, the penthouse of the North Tower. The offices along the window are all made of glass, no curtains or blinds. Illustrations of Greek mythology are etched into each office door, a different glass god for each executive—Poseidon, Aphrodite, Medusa. The center area is filled with black metal and plexiglass desks, accented in tigerwood. Each employee can see the other no matter where they are. So can the cameras.

Josh has been up here before during an interior walk through but isn’t accustomed to seeing actual people in the space. To him, the executive floor seems electric, jumpstarted by eager New Yorkers anxious to enjoy the new space after months of construction delays. Josh wonders if any of them know their world is about to come crashing down.

“My team is moving in today, but I’m sure I’ve seen you before, too, maybe at the other building.” Josh walks behind him. “Hey, your name isn’t Reagan, is it?”

“If you want to know my name, just ask.” The young man winks.

Yep, he’s flirting.

“But it’s not Reagan, right?” Josh asks. “West said he had an assistant named Reagan.”

“Close, kind of. It’s Reed. Maybe Reagan was before me?”

“Josh here. It’s nice to meet you.” He holds his palm out to shake Reed’s hand, but it’s already on James West’s doorknob.

“Mr. West, I have Josh Harrison to see you.” Reed allows Josh in, then closes the door behind him.

West is looking out the window to his left. The new Élan logo is on a wire, swinging violently as it makes its way to its roost on the Center Tower. Two men are on a window-washing ledge trying to guide it into position just below the roof deck.

Josh takes a moment to look around.

Quite the contrast from his office at the old building, he thinks.

West’s souvenirs from his African travels are gone, replaced by abstract artwork in blacks, whites, and reds, with the occasional wood tones to break up the Nazi color scheme. No more ebony and ivory trinkets, no more huge elephants made of soapstone, no photographs of Kilimanjaro or the African tundra.

Josh looks at the back of the door. A relief of a mother and child takes up the entire space. “Who’s this?”

West turns. “That’s Plutus. Not the woman. The child. The great Plutus is said to have brought enormous wealth to ancient Greece. I picked him, but honestly, I don’t know much else. Zeus blinded him; I forget why. The interior folks explained it to me, but it didn’t stick.”

“Where’s the big elephant?”

West laughs. “If that’s a metaphor, I can certainly understand.”

Josh sits down in one of the black leather club chairs, puts his elbow on the armrest, his pointing finger on his temple. “I’m listening.”

“I can explain everything. In fact, I could use a friend right about now.” West walks to his desk, sits down. “Before I start, well, gosh, I hate to ask you this. Are you wearing a wire?”

Josh stands up, unbuttons, unfurls his shirt like superman. He undoes his sleeves, pulls them inside out. He reaches down, grabs his bag, and dumps its contents on West’s desk. Then he plops the empty bag on top of West’s laptop, knocking over two pictures of his wife and kids.

“I deserved that.” West picks up the framed photos, places them gently back in place.

“You’re goddamn right you did.” Josh sits back down. “What in the actual hell, James?”

“First of all, let me just say I appreciate the way you dropped it, came back to work. Freaking crushed it in the week you’ve been back. That shows me loyalty. I noticed.”

“Am I supposed to thank you?”

“Listen, you’re the one who fell off the face of the planet. Don’t forget I let you have that time off to sort it out. Three weeks is a long enough time to be off doing God knows what. All I could do was hope to God you wouldn’t do anything stupid.”

“Stop it with the veiled threats. I’m not going to play that game with you.” Josh gulps a pool of saliva that had collected in the back of his throat.

“Billy wrote the note, set the meeting up. All on his own. Once you got there, he thought you were someone else, someone who screwed us over more than anyone else.”

“It was dark. I was yelling for you, scared half out of my mind. Yelling for you, Mr. West, not Billy. Billy wouldn’t answer me; I didn’t know what was happening.”

“It was a case of mistaken identity, that’s all. He overreacted. His handling of the situation was abysmal.”

“Is that why you killed him?”

West looks up, eyes widening. The Élan sign is swinging wildly toward the window.

“Jesus Christ!” West runs to the window, bangs on it just as the logo swings away. “Hey, be careful, you dickwads!”

“What’s happening?” Josh leans forward but doesn’t get out of his chair. “Holy shit, that’s huge. And looks like it weighs a ton.”

The sign continues to move away from the window, up toward the guys on the ledge with the blowtorches.

“One and a half tons, actually. You know there’s a whole process to getting a crane up eighty floors? The crane has to build itself because it’s so high. Like literally build itself. You should google it, it’s mesmerizing.”

“Do these guys know what they’re doing?”

“We went with the lowest bid, and it’s showing. They have one operator, two crane builders, and two people to weld it into place. Three million dollars for five people.” He walks back to his desk, picks up the phone. “My foreman is helping out, but did you see that, Josh? It almost rammed into the window. All we need