De la Puente was responsible for Desktop Support for Licensing and reported to me. The rest of Desktop Support resources reported to Gladstone, however, before Tefft accidentally hired Gladstone because she thought he was white, the Licensing business users constantly complained about the level of service they got from the centralized Desktop Support organization. So, I hired my own Desktop person in the form of de la Puente, who was built like a brick wall, had eyes that jostled between friendly and deranged, had burly chokehold hands, and had undoubtedly killed before, but who also knew his technical shit and more importantly, knew how to please executives.
On the day police surrounded our building the first time around on a false alarm—most likely initiated by Pangbourn’s paranoia and his suspicion of most FedEx delivery personnel—de la Puente decided to run across the street to the other building to get his morning Starbucks coffee. Seeing someone like de la Puente immediately break into a sprint and suspiciously dash away from the scene at the very moment police skid to a stop in front of a business building certainly sparks uncertainty with conjecture. Without hesitation, the police course-corrected the original false alarm to now focus on the fleeing Latino who was obviously guilty of something. After all, look at those deranged eyes! The more the police pursued, the more de la Puente evaded. The quicker they came, the quicker he fled. This was the kind of thing that entertained de la Puente greatly. He swept past someone exiting the other building, ran around others in his path to Starbucks and rushed in through the door and then stopped abruptly behind the last person in line as the police came rushing in behind him. Since he no longer seemed to be fleeing, the police no longer seemed certain he was guilty of something. De la Puente turned around casually and gave them a friendly nod.
“Why were you running away from us?” Growled the stern, Hitler youth officer with the blond crew cut and blazing blue eyes.
“Why were you chasing me?” De la Puente innocently asked.
“We were chasing you because you were running away from us.”
“I wasn’t running away from you. I was running to Starbucks.”
“Why were you running to Starbucks?”
“To get in line.”
“What was the hurry?”
“I checked the Starbucks cam, and the line was short, so I wanted to beat the rush.”
“What’s a Starbucks cam?”
“We have a camera in here that shows us how long the line is at any given time. We can check from our desks. We have this thing called an Intranet. We waste less time by standing in the shorter lines. It promotes productivity.”
The officer was genuinely impressed. “That’s a great idea.”
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