"Okay, it's getting late and I know you were on the road for a while today. Go ahead and get those scouting reports into TUBER so we have them for the rest of the draft, then I want you to take tomorrow off. You've earned a three-day weekend, Youngblood.""Thank you, sir. Again, I'm really sorry for what happened," the rookie scout tells me.
"Water under the bridge. Now get outta here!," I say with a smile.
Youngblood leaves the office and I slump into my office chair. What a day, what a mess. I pick up my iPhone and dial. As the phone rings on speaker, I get up and close my office door for some privacy.
"Frank here."
"Hey Frank, he's gone. So let me get you up to speed..."
"It's Portland," Frank Potts, director of team security says cutting me off. Damn, he's good.
"Yeah, when did you..."
"Figured it out in about ten seconds after we last spoke." He's real good.
"Well, so what's the plan? It's that strumpet Kate Fiscus. She has company property with her, including The Great Wheel!"
"Nothing to worry about, sir. It's been taken care of." Frank is as cool as a cucumber, exactly what you'd hope for from a man in his position.
"It is?," I say with curiosity. "Do I even want to ask?"
"We're not Chicago or Yellow Springs. Nothing untoward, nothing illegal. My team remotely logged into the kid's laptop and phone and wiped it clean. There's nothing on there. And even if Portland hacked into them before we got to them, all the data is encrypted. There's no way they can access any of the information," Frank assures me.
"That's good to know. What about the hard copy? We're fucked there, right?"
Frank laughed aloud, distorting the tiny speakers on my phone with a crackle. "You don't know about the joke of the hard copy?"
"No, Frank, I do not," I say with no ounce of humor in my tone. "Do tell."
"So for whatever reason, a few employees went to HR over the winter and asked for a hard copy of The Great Wheel. These clowns obviously don't read their NDAs ever year before signing. The non-disclosure states The Great Wheel is to remain on company laptops only, no printed copies are allowed."
"Okay, but he had one so..."
"Yeah, so as a joke we printed up dummy annotated copies. The cover looks legit, but it's all nonsense. All of the content is entirely incorrect, formulas are wrong. It's in no way The Great Wheel. It's a bunch of mumbo jumbo. We even threw it five pages straight from the old The Plan in Nashville, and we know how terrible that ended up." Frank's laugh blows out my phone again, but this time I let out a chuckle.
"So it's bupkis?"
"Exactly. Nothing to worry about at all."
I let out an audible sigh. "Well, Frank, that's great to know. I think I may actually sleep tonight."
"Well you rest your head. My team will be staying up finding out what Portland is up to. I don't trust Kate or Dan or even Wilson over there. We'll get down to the bottom of this."
"Sounds good, Frank. Thank's again...you're the best."
"Hey, wanna hear something funny?," Frank asks as I'm about to hang up.
"Sure, I could use a laugh."
"In reviewing Youngblood's personnel file, we came across something in his annual physical for insurance purposes."
"Do I wanna know? Seems kind of like an invasion of his privacy, Frank."
"As long as you can keep a secret, he won't know."
"Oh man...okay, what is it Frank?"
"The kid tested for the clap. Which means..."
A lightbulb goes off above my head. "Oh. OH!"
"Yeah," Frank adds. "That's going to be one nasty cookie."
