Killer Instinct (16 page)

He read the number and blinked twice. “It says the offer expires today.”

“I want you to have time to talk this over with Gail. But I don’t want you using this as leverage within NEC to negotiate a better package.”

“They’d never match this,” he said. I really liked his honesty. It was refreshing. “It wouldn’t do any good.”

“You’re not the top performer there. Here, you would be. So we’re willing to pay.”

“I have until five o’clock today to decide?”

“Boston time,” I said. “That’s four o’clock Chicago time.”

“Wow, man. I don’t—this is so sudden.”

“You’ve thought about it for quite a while,” I said. I knew he’d just turned down an offer from Panasonic. “Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and jump.”

He looked at me, but his eyes were focused on some point in the middle distance. I could see he was thinking hard.

“Plus, do you know how close we are to the Vineyard?” I said. “A hop, skip, and a jump. Ever been there? Your family would love it.”

I suggested he go back up to his hotel room and call his wife. I told him I’d wait down in the lobby, making calls and doing e-mail on my BlackBerry. I told him I had all the time in the world, which wasn’t true.

Forty-five minutes later he returned to the lobby.

Gordy’s jaw dropped. I mean, you hear the expression, but how often do you ever really see someone’s jaw drop? Gordy’s mouth came open, and for a few seconds he was speechless.

“Holy shit,” he said. He kept looking at Jim Letasky’s signature on the agreement, and then back at my face. “How the hell did you do that?”

“You approved the package,” I said.

“I’ve offered him damn good packages before. What did you promise him?” he said suspiciously.

“Nothing you don’t know about. I guess we just finally broke down his resistance.”

“Well,” he said, “good job.” He put both hands on my shoulders and squeezed hard. “I don’t know how you did it, but I’m impressed.”

He did not look happy.

20

When I got back to my office after lunch on Friday, there was a voice mail from Gordy. He wanted me to come by his office at three o’clock.

I called right back, talked to Melanie, and confirmed.

Managed to get through an hour and a half of calls and paperwork, all the while replaying Gordy’s message in my head, trying to read his inscrutable voice, figure out whether it was bad news or good.

At a few minutes before three I walked down the hall to his office.

“Booya,” Gordy said. He actually stood when I entered his office. Next to him stood Yoshi Tanaka, eyes dead behind thick lenses. “The better man won. Our new Vice President of Sales. Congratulations.”

Gordy extended a hand and gave what seemed to me a pretty damned grudging shake. His giant gold monogrammed cuff links glittered. Yoshi didn’t shake my hand. He bowed, ever so slightly. He didn’t know how to do handshakes, but then again, I didn’t know how to bow. Neither man smiled. Yoshi apparently didn’t know how to do that either, but Gordy struck me as unusually subdued, as if someone had a gun to his back.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Sit down,” Gordy said. We all took our places.

“I wish I could say this is a tribute to your own success,” Gordy said, “but that’s only part of it. You’ve had some good wins. Some
big
wins. You really seem to be getting your shit together. Getting Letasky was a major coup, and I frankly didn’t think you could pull it off. But the main thing is, I can’t have a bumbler in this job. I need someone totally reliable. Not like Gleason, spacing out on appointments. Even Trevor, dropping the ball on Fidelity. Playing golf and blowing off Pavilion.”

“Well, I look forward to the challenge,” I said, which, when I heard the words come out of my mouth, almost made me barf.

“And challenge it will be,” said Gordy. “You have no idea. You’ll be doing Joan’s job
and
Crawford’s job now. Anyway, I think Yoshi-san wants to say a few words.”

Tanaka bowed his head solemnly. “My most congratulation—to you.”

“Thank you.”

“You have very—imposu—job to do.”

“What kind of job?”

“Imposu—impo—sent.”

“Important, yes.”

“Not good time for our—business.”

I nodded.

“Very—hard time.”

“I understand.”

“I think you not know how hard time,” Tanaka said quietly.

“Thank you, Yoshi-san,” said Gordy. “Now I’d like to discuss salary specifics with Steadman. Yoshi-san, maybe you could give us a little privacy.”

Tanaka rose, tipped his head in a parting bow, and walked out.

“Could you close the door?” Gordy called out. “Thank you, Yoshi-san.”

I was determined to seize the initiative, not let Gordy see me as a wimp. Kurt would be proud. “I have a pretty good sense of what my salary requirements are—” I began.

“Your
requirements,
” Gordy spit out. “Give me a break. We’re not negotiating. Your package is take-it-or-leave-it. I just said that to get the Jap out of the room.”

I met his eyes and nodded, waiting. No more Mister Nice Guy, I guess.

He told me what it was, and I tried not to smile. It was more than I’d expected. A lot more.

“You weren’t my top choice, I think you know that,” Gordy said.

Now I understand why Yoshi was there. He was the enforcer, making sure Tokyo’s will was done, or at least making sure Gordy remembered who called the shots. Gordy must have hated that—a guy who ostensibly worked for him, who barely spoke English, telling him what to do.

“I hope to prove you wrong,” I said.

He stared malevolently. “I already told you there’s shit raining down on us from the MegaTower in Tokyo. Well, let me tell you who’s doing the shitting. You know the name Hideo Nakamura, I assume.”

“Sure.” A couple of weeks ago a press release was e-mailed around that the president and CEO of Entronics, a guy named something-Ikehara, had been “promoted” and was being replaced by this guy Nakamura. No one knew anything about Nakamura—that was way up the stratosphere. But the word was that the old guy, Ikehara, had become what the Japanese call a
madogiwa-zoku,
a “window-watcher.” Basically that means getting put out to pasture. In Japan, no one gets fired; instead, you get humiliated by being put on the payroll with nothing to do except stare out the window. They literally give you a desk by the window, which, in Japan, isn’t a good thing the way it is here. In Japan, a corner office means you’re on corporate death row.

“I flew down to Santa Clara to meet this guy Nakamura, and he’s real polished. Real smooth. Speaks good English. Loves golf and Scotch. But this guy’s an executioner. Might as well been wearing the black hood and carrying a noose. They put him in because the very top guys in the MegaTower are real unhappy. They don’t like our numbers. That’s why they bought Royal Meister’s U.S. business—because they want to extend their reach into the U.S. market.”

“I see.”

“So we gotta show Nakamura what we’re made of. Can you do that?”

“I can.”

“Can you incent the guys to work harder? Crack the whip?”

“I can.”

“Can you pull a rabbit out of your hat?”

I almost said,
I’ll do my best.
Or,
I’ll sure as hell try.
But I said, “You know it.”

“I’m going to expect a lot out of you. I’ll be riding you mercilessly. Now, get out of here. We’ve got to prepare for the weekly conference call.”

I stood up.

He stuck out his hand. “I hope I haven’t made a mistake,” he said.

I tried not to smile. “You haven’t,” I said.

Melanie smiled at me as I left. “Say hi to Bob,” I said.

“Thanks. Hi to Kate.”

I made my way to my office. Coming out of the men’s room was Cal Taylor. He gave me a lopsided grin and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I knew he’d just had a little midafternoon cheer—his cubicle was too public. “Hey there,” Cal said, weaving toward me.

“Hey, Cal,” I said cheerfully, and kept walking.

“You look like the cat that got the cream,” he said. Even soused, which he was most of the time, he was scary perceptive.

I chuckled politely and gave him a friendly wave, and smiled all the way to my office. There I shut the door and pumped my fists into the air.

I called Kate’s cell. “Hey, babe,” I said. “You at work?”

“I’m just sitting here at Starbucks, having coffee with Claudia.” Claudia had gone to prep school and college with Kate, had an immense trust fund, and apparently did nothing but go out with her friends. She didn’t understand why Kate insisted on working at the foundation.

“I just saw Gordy.” I kept my voice neutral, a blank.

“And? You don’t sound so good. You didn’t get it?”

“I got it.”

“What?”

“I got the promotion,” I said, my voice louder. “You’re talking to a vice president. I want some deference.”

She let out a loud squeal.

“Oh, my God. Jason! That’s so wonderful!”

“Do you know what this means? It’s a huge boost in salary.
Serious
bonus.”

“We’ve got to celebrate,” she said. “Let’s go out to dinner. I’ll make reservations at Hamersley’s.”

“I’m kind of wiped out,” I said. “It’s been a long day.”

“All right, baby. We’ll do something at home.”

The word got around pretty quickly. The reactions from the Band of Brothers were interesting and not entirely unexpected. Ricky Festino could not have been happier for me. He acted like I’d just been elected President of the United States instead of picked as some VP of sales. Brett Gleason did something totally out of character for him, which was to acknowledge my existence by saying “Have a good weekend.” Which was frankly kind of big of him, since he’d just been beat out of the job he wanted. Trevor Allard ignored me, which was basically what I thought he’d do, and which gave me endless satisfaction, because he was obviously really pissed off.

Everything felt good now. In the elevator, on the screen, the word of the day happened to be “felicitation,” which sounded like a positive thing. Entronics stock was up. Everyone in the elevator looked and smelled good.

I stopped in at Corporate Security on my way out of the lobby and found Kurt at his cubicle. I told him the good news.

“No way,” he said. “You’re it? You’re the man?”

“Yep.”

He stood up, gave me a manly hug. “You rock. You got your stripes, man. Bravo Zulu.”

“Huh?”

“Army talk. Congrats, bro.”

21

In the car on the way to the Atrium Mall in Chestnut Hill, I listened to some more of Old Blood and Guts. “When you’re downrange and you come under attack,” he barked, “you’re gonna have to act immediately. The enemy can shoot you in the back when you’re running away just as easily as he can shoot you in the front running toward him. In the time it takes you to read this paragraph, one of your team members will die. So you’ve got to give an order, and fast. Don’t hesitate. Just make a
goddamned decision
!”

I was half-listening, half-daydreaming about my new job. How happy Kate was going to be, now that I was finally making money. We could move. Buy a house she liked for once.

I took the escalator up to Tiffany’s and asked to see the brooches. I’d never been inside Tiffany’s before, believe it or not, and I discovered that their jewelry isn’t organized by category, like necklaces in one case and earrings in the other, but by where you can afford to shop. On one side of the store are the things that regular well-off people can afford, mostly sterling silver and semiprecious stones. On the other side of the store are the gold and diamonds, where you don’t dare to tread unless you run your own hedge fund.

When I described which brooch I was looking for, the saleswoman escorted me over to the wrong side of the store, the high-rent district. I gulped. Then she went behind a glass case and took out the starfish and put it on a black velvet square and cooed over it.

“That’s it,” I said. I turned it over, pretending to look at the back but really trying to get a look at the price tag, and when I saw it, I gulped again. This was more than I’d spent on Kate’s diamond engagement ring. But I reminded myself that I’d just gotten a sizable salary increase, and I’d be getting a handsome bonus, so I put it on my Visa and asked her to gift-wrap it.

By the time I got home I was feeling pretty good about life. I’d just been promoted, and there was a tiny robin’s-egg blue Tiffany’s bag on the passenger seat next to me. Granted, the car was an Acura, and not a new one, but still. I was
good,
damn it, and I worked for a great company. I was a meat-eater.

Kate ran to meet me at the door. She was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, looked and smelled great. She threw her arms around me, kissed me right on the lips, and I kissed her back, and kept going. I was immediately aroused.

When you’ve been married for a while, that kind of spontaneous combustion doesn’t happen all that often, but I felt this surge of testosterone. I felt like the conquering hero returning home for some nookie. I was Og, Cro-Magnon man, returning to his woman in the cave, having speared a woolly mammoth.

I dropped my briefcase and the blue Tiffany’s bag to the carpet and slipped my hands under the waistband of her jeans. I felt her silky-smooth warm skin and began kneading her butt.

She gave a throaty giggle, pulled back. “What’s the special occasion?” she said.

“Every day I’m married to you is a special occasion,” I said, and I went back to kissing her.

I moved us into the living room, pushed her back onto Grammy Spencer’s rock-hard, chintz-covered couch. The floor would have been more comfortable.

“Jase,” she said. “Wow.”

“We’re allowed to do this without a plastic specimen cup, you know,” I said as I started to peel off her T-shirt.

“Wait,” she said. “Wait.” She wriggled free, went over to close the drapes so the neighbors didn’t get a free show and their little children wouldn’t have therapy bills for decades.