Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide

Cliff’s second journal notes that he has been working for a florist and disguising himself as a recent Latvian immigrant but swaps this persona for a ridiculous outfit similar to his original attempt that signals to everyone around that he is trying to be in disguise. He wears this outfit to a bank where he speaks in a bad fake accent and attempts to make a deposit of $3,333 into Fiedler’s account. When the manager says he can’t unless he opens an account, disguised Cliff makes a scene to make sure people notice. He seems to accidentally leave the briefcase which has “MF” on it. After he leaves, the manager puts the briefcase in the safe, expecting the police to ask for it eventually.

The door attendant at Fiedler’s apartment answers the phone which has been ringing constantly. A menacing voice tells him to give Fiedler the message that his bookie knows where he sleeps and Fiedler needs to pay the $3,333 by tomorrow or he’ll break his arm. The door attendant doesn’t like Fiedler and decides, as Cliff expects, not to deliver the message.

Cliff has tested Woltan’s delivery entrance as a pizza man and confirms he won’t be asked for an ID. He delivers a COD flower arrangement from his job earlier in the morning to Fiedler’s secretary’s office when she is out to check the layout and displays, as well as to confirm the location of the hidden office key. He notes he doesn’t have a backup plan like McMasters advises, but even if he fails, he will have exposed the faults in the plane’s designs. He takes a moment to thank his sponsor no matter how it ends, as either he or Fiedler will die tomorrow.

A nice, delicate, and attractive young man enters a gay bar in Newport Beach and orders a drink and chats with the bartender while the other clients size him up. The man, who is actually Doria Maye, goes into the bathroom which she had scoped out earlier that week. She goes to the last stall, notes the hole between the walls and prepares a massage glove, oil, and an open jar. She hears the bathroom door open and thinks it’s no different than being a medical worker and she is too experienced to be nervous. It only takes a few minutes, and she leaves the bar with her filled jar and keeps driving toward Kosta’s vacation house, knowing she is a few hours ahead of him.

Doria, now close to Kosta’s house, changes into another disguise of a sexy, blonde woman walking along the highway. Multiple drivers stop before Kosta who predictably offers her a lift and more. He takes her to his beach house, not recognizing her, and gets her into the bedroom by showing her some of his Academy Award statues. He tells her that a film career depends on her performance that night and Doria engages in banter that betrays a sexy, tough, but vulnerable side that Kosta thinks will make her fabulous for a role Doria originally wanted. He hurries to get in bed, knocking his pill box off the table while Doria strips, revealing that the outfit is mostly padding. She pulls off the wig and gives him one last chance, asking if he agrees now that she will be good in the role of the sexy woman with a heart of gold. He rejects her idea and when he moves to call a taxi, she kills him with a firm swing of an Oscar.

Cliff takes another flower delivery to Fiedler’s office along with the liqueur from Liliana and a portable typewriter. It is just before closing on Friday night and Cliff is wearing a long shaggy beard and a shaved head that makes him look very different than when he worked at Woltan Industries. Knowing he has the place to himself, he begins to set up his items both in Fiedler’s office and the copy room and grabs a mug of coffee. He sits at Fiedler’s desk to wait for the meeting time Fiedler demanded and bandages his hands.

Fiedler has no plans to bring Amigo’s half of the money and greedily feels he deserves all of it. He arrives for the meeting and is surprised to see a man behind his own desk. The light is such that he can’t see the man’s face. He asks about the bandages and the man says enforcers at the racetrack caught on to his system. He asks Fiedler to type a receipt for the money, saying it is to avoid his wife getting it in a divorce. Fiedler does so and asks when he saved Amigo’s life. Cliff says it was when he didn’t die in front of the subway train and quotes himself on his last day of work. Fiedler still doesn’t recognize him, but when Cliff reveals his identity, Fiedler relaxes, assuming he can best Cliff. Cliff says he wants Fiedler to drink to Jack and Cora and puts the Unicom as well as a bottle of poison on the table, which he says Fiedler can use to escape a bad situation. Cliff explains how he’s set up Fiedler to be convicted of selling Woltan plans to competitors to pay off gambling debts. Fiedler points out the check to cash will be traced to Liliana and she will be implicated in the scheme. Cliff confesses that Fiedler has bested him again and says he can’t let Liliana suffer. He gives Fiedler a typed paper and says it’s his final chance at a way out.

Doria begins to clean up as taught at McMasters and puts the contents of her jar on Kosta and in the clothing of her disguise. She has a fake dog and stiff leash she pretends to walk as she goes through the dark neighborhood to the nearest hotel where she checked in earlier as the young man and parked the stolen car. She drives it away, abandons it, and takes a bus back to Los Angeles where she calls the police to report Kosta’s body. She then takes a taxi to a restaurant across from the studio where she has a martini and then goes home confident that she had also been photographed in the studio lot earlier despite being two hours away.

In Kosta’s house, the police find the padded bra, a pair of underwear meant to flatten penile bulges, as well as semen stains on the underwear and traces on Kosta. The coroner declares it “sordid,” and the police determine they are looking for a man.

The letter Cliff presents says he alone is responsible for trying to destroy Fiedler and Liliana has nothing to do with it. Cliff will also sign a confession. Fiedler signs his exoneration of Liliana and Cliff is about to sign his when there is noise outside the office. Cliff goes to look and when he comes back from finding a copy machine, Fiedler seems unnaturally mellow. Cliff signs the confession, they switch papers, and Fiedler agrees to drink from the bottle of Jack’s liqueur. They pour and drink.

Cliff says they now wait for the poison to work. Fiedler pretends to be hurt that Cliff thinks he put poison in Cliff’s glass while he’s looking for the noise. Cliff says there is poison in both glasses, and that he put the poison in the bottle, and he had antidote in his coffee mug when he took a drink in front of Fiedler earlier. Fiedler shouldn’t worry, however, as the antidote is actually in the poison bottle and if Fiedler didn’t try to poison Cliff, there should be some left and all would be well. Fielder dies painfully, having tried to poison Cliff.

Cliff cleans up, removing the gauze from his hands, and staples the paper Fiedler signed, exonerating Liliana, to the back of a second, making the signed section page two of a longer confession about gambling and selling the plans. He now has Fiedler’s prints on the typewriter from creating the receipt and the bottle with poison as well as a confession of guilt. He locks the door and turns off the copy machine that he had set up on a timer. He thinks that while he is guilty and that the police will rule it suicide, Fiedler actually murdered himself.

Gemma improvises a deletion plan that involves parking her convertible close to a construction site next to the hospital’s carpark and hooking up cinder blocks to fishing wire attached to the car. They will fall onto the driver’s side when the car backs up. Adele gets into the car and as she begins to back up, says her boyfriend has gotten her pregnant. Gemma throws herself across Adele, saving her and the baby’s life but failing at her deletion.

Doria Maye wakes up to Flood knocking on her door. He shows her the photographs he took the previous night, which show her naked in her house, and tells her he has been offered money to take the photos for the studio. She offers to pay him for the negatives and photos. He comes back that evening asking for more money and installments every time she makes a lucrative deal. Police who have been listening in the back arrest him for extortion. The police officer adds that it’s positive in that both of them have alibis for their boss Leonid Kosta’s murder. Doria fakes shock while the police officer tells her that they think they are looking for a man and that Kosta’s end was sordid. Doria determines to make sure the story gets around.

Cliff goes to see Liliana and tells her Fiedler is dead. She asks if it was painful and is happy when she hears the affirmative. He asks if she has enough money to take care of herself and she says she does but has spent most of the insurance money, revealing that she was his sponsor at McMasters.

Cliff writes a letter to Dean Harrow clarifying that he told Liliana the man who killed her husband is dead, leading her to believe Cliff committed another murder beside Fiedler but in actuality he suspects Jack Horvath died by suicide and made it look like murder to make sure Liliana got the life insurance money.

Cliff is sad, having lost his main focus in life. Captain Dobson and Sergeant Stedge have been tracking him and note this is a dangerous time as deletists often seek professional help at this stage. They decide to put him out of his misery.

The Final Report interview for Gemma’s master’s thesis is with Dean Harrow and Father Pugh and takes place in the hospital. She assumes they are there to delete her for failing, but they say they are impressed she stuck to the Third Enquiry, which asks if an innocent person will suffer and Four, if the deletion will improve the life of others. They ask if she wants another chance and Gemma says now that Adele’s a mother-to-be she won’t do it, and they will have to delete her instead. They are impressed and offer her a position at McMasters as a tutor in morality. When she expresses doubt about never seeing her mother again, they say she can have a job with Tissier in the kitchen, as she is an experienced cook.

The Final Report interview for Dulcie/Doria is done by Dean Harrow on set in Rome. She has found out from the new financial head of the studio that the board was planning on replacing Kosta as he was sick and going to die soon. Doria remembers the pill box and is saddened. The new head tells Doria that they are restructuring and that she will spend her time in foreign countries being lent out by the studio with her voice dubbed by local actors. Doria is upset by this but sticks to her Enquiries saying the deletion was necessary and improved many people’s lives. She asks Dean Harrow if she can come to McMasters to teach. When he says she can’t, she muses that she can kill the latest studio head if necessary.

Gemma and her mother arrive with Sergeant Stedge and newly arriving students to McMasters. Gemma points out buildings and landscape to her mother and introduces her to faculty and students. She is introduced to the new Hedge House RA and science professor. It is Cliff who she thought was dead. They make a date to talk later, and she kisses his cheek before going to help Coach Tarcott with her first PE class as faculty. Cliff looks around and thinks that he is truly home.

Dean Harrow hopes the book has helped the reader become familiar with McMaster’s principles and will assist them with their attempts. He mentions that some of his peers are unhappy with him making McMasters known to the world, though they seem to have changed their minds. A few minutes after writing the Postscript, many of the faculty will be escorting him to view a bust of him created to be exhibited in the boardroom. When he is finished with the ceremony, he has many more volumes planned for curious readers. As the honor guard arrives in his office, the narrative breaks off in the middle of a word.