55.057 – Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Head

[RonCo]

“All due respect,” Carlos Camacho said as he gripped the chair in Ron Collins’s office. “I don’t think you understand the dire nature of this situation.”

“You can believe, me, Mr. Camacho, when say that I understand exactly the danger we are in,” the green-eyed woman spat back. She was sitting in Collins’s chair again, and had been contemplating the conversation she’d just had with Heidi Hickman.

Hickman had been banished moments before, and he had been brought back to the conference room. The aroma of the transferal was thick with the remnants of burnt lightning.

“But –”

“Get serious, Carlos. I was here a decade before you arrived. I’ll be here a decade after you are gone—which could be any minute now depending on how the next few moments go—and unlike you, I can see in many directions at once. Given that, I can say without reservation that the results of not having a General Manager available for conversation will draw worse result that whatever prattle he can get on about.”

Camacho’s cheeks grew red with heat.

The green-eyed woman waited only a beat. “I need you to get him back on his feet and out doing whatever it is he does.”

“But the idiot is out in public, talking about altering the very grounds this stadium is built on. We just can’t have that, right? We have too many … adjustments … made to the fortress. Any significant change could result in destroying the tunnels.”

“Any yet we also can’t have the position go silent, either.”

Camacho bit his tongue. The green-eyed woman was losing patience.

“Inquisitive people notice these things, Carlos. And when inquisitive people notice things, they start asking questions. Your clumsy steps to take Collins out of the picture have already caused damage. Hellscape’s appearance here is just the tip of the hidden ball trick. I understand that now we have a reporter on the uptake, too.”

“What else is there to do? I think—”

“You were not brought here to think, Carlos. You were brought here to bluster and pose and generally be a distraction. Which is a role perfectly suited to your lack of skills, and one you’ve been handling predictably well until you started overstepping the boundaries of your ability to cognate. That is why I gave you the devices to begin with.”

Camacho sat back, stunned. He didn’t like being a secondhand flunky, but he knew his place. He also didn’t like the idea of losing the newfound power he’d found himself attuned to after the green-eyed woman had wooed him to return. In ways, he’d been as shocked as anyone when @shoeless.db had called him. It made sense, he supposed. At least as long as he didn’t look at all the reasons it didn’t. Gazing at the green-eyed woman now, though, a chill went up his back. What if this had been all part of the plan from the get-go? What if she’d needed him to leverage the old GM out of the seat. Shoeless had gone brainsoft in the end, hadn’t he? How much did the green-eyed woman and her arcane procedures have to do with his old boss’s departure.

For the first time, Camacho felt a pang of loss for the old guy.

At least Shoeless was a lot better than Collins. Collins was a pain in the ass, always getting upstart ideas if Camacho didn’t keep him under the influence of that gizmo the green-eyed woman had given him.

“It would be a shame if we needed to perform some work on you, to, Carlos,” the green-eyed woman said with an icy stare. “Or, should I say, some more work on you?”

The hackles rose on Camacho’s mustache. “All right. All right. I understand.”

“Do you now?”

Camacho nodded in overly bold movements. “I promise that Collins will be at an event tomorrow afternoon.”

“That’s good.”

“But what are we going to do about his hair-brained ideas on redoing the field? You know we can’t afford to let him do anything so drastic without risking … well … everything.”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about that.” The woman’s eyes narrowed and the room temperature dropped ten degrees. “I’ve got it under control.”