Killer Instinct (19 page)

“Why not?”

“Because I was just starting to like you, and I don’t know if I’ll like the next guy as much.”

I smiled. “Gordy approved it,” I said.

“Sure he did,” Franny said, and she gave a little nervous laugh that turned into a smoker’s hack. “Had you put it in your name so you’d catch the flak, not him.”

“It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it,” I said, turning back to my computer.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have to go out for a smoke and buy a bulletproof vest,” Franny said, and she went back to her cubicle.

I looked the memo over one more time. It was harsh. It was guaranteed to be unpopular, which meant it would make its author unpopular. It was something Gordy should have done himself, not me. It could only end badly.

I clicked send.

Then the shit hit the fan.

Rick Festino came flying into my office maybe five minutes later. “What the hell’s this?” he said. He wasn’t holding or pointing to anything.

“What’s what?” I said blandly.

“You know damned well what. This T&E shit.”

“Come on, Rick. Everyone’s abusing the system, and we’re trying to cut costs—”

“Jason. Hello? It’s me you’re talking to. You don’t have to bullshit me. We’re buddies.”

“It’s not bullshit, Rick.”

“You just nailed the ninety-six theses to the door, and to me it looks more like Gordy than Jason Steadman. What the hell are you doing?”

“I always thought it was ninety-five theses,” I said.

He stared at me. “Did Gordy make you put your name on this?”

I shook my head. “He approved it, but it was my work.”

“You trying to get assassinated? It’s not safe out there.”

“This is the way it’s going to be,” I said. “The new normal.”

“The beatings will continue until morale improves, huh? This is Captain Queeg stuff.”

“Captain who?”

“You never saw
The Caine Mutiny
?”

“I saw
Mutiny on the Bounty
.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. That’s what you’re going to be facing. You think Trevor and Gleason and all those guys are going to put up with staying at Motel Six and taking their clients to Applebee’s?”

“I didn’t say anything about Motel Six or Applebee’s. Come on.” He was exaggerating, but it wasn’t much better.

“The guys aren’t going to put up with this.”

“They’re not going to have a choice.”

“Don’t be so sure, kid,” Festino said.

I was getting ready to leave for the day—Kate wanted to go shopping for baby stuff, which was the last thing I felt like doing—when Trevor Allard stopped me in the middle of the cubicle farm on his way out.

“Nice memo,” he said.

I nodded.

“Brilliant strategy, taking away perks like that. That’s the way to hang on to your top talent.”

“You planning to take another job?” I said.

“I don’t need to. I just have to wait for you to fall on your face. Which seems to be happening even sooner than I hoped.”

“There’s no ‘I’ in team, Trevor,” I said.

“Yeah. But there’s a ‘Me’ in Messiah.”

On the drive over to BabyWorld, I was lost in thought about the damn memo I’d just sent out. Everyone was now calling it the Queeg Memo. Guys who didn’t even know who Queeg was were calling it the Queeg Memo. I wondered whether Gordy expected an immediate, enraged reaction like this. No wonder he wanted me to be the bad guy.

“Jason,” Kate said, interrupting my train of thought.

I looked over at her. She sounded somber. Her hair was pulled back in an elastic band. Her angular face had begun to fill out, her complexion was getting rosy. Pregnancy became her. “What’s wrong, babe?”

“I tripped on the stairs again.”

“What happened? You okay?”

“I’m fine, but I’m pregnant, remember? I have to be really careful.”

“That’s right.”

“The carpeting is worn through in places. It’s a real trip hazard.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t in the mood to talk about home improvements. I wanted to talk Gordy and Trevor and the Queeg Memo, but I knew she wasn’t interested.

“What does that mean, ‘Okay’? Can you do something about it?”

“What do I look like, the
This Old House
guy? Call someone, Kate.”

“Who?”

“Kate,” I said, “how the hell do I know?”

She stared at me for a few seconds, eyes cold. I was staring at the road, but I could feel her eyes on me. Then she shook her head sorrowfully. “Thanks for your help,” she said.

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m just preoccupied with—”

“More important things. I know.”

“It’s Gordy again.”

“What a shock. Well, I hope you can keep your mind off your job long enough to pick out your baby’s crib.”

Sometimes I didn’t get my wife at all. One day she wanted me to be Napoleon Bonaparte. The next day she wanted me to be Mister Mom.

Had to be the hormones. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything.

BabyWorld was supremely annoying. It was a giant fluorescent-lit warehouse stocked with only baby things, from low-end to high. Its slogan was “Isn’t your baby worth the best?” That was reason enough to walk out, but Kate was set on stocking the nursery. Plus, there was this creepy music playing over and over, their theme song, little kids’ voices and a xylophone. I started getting a headache.

She rolled through the departments like an Abrams tank, picking out a changing table, and a contoured changing pad, and a mobile that had farmyard animals dangling from it and played classical music, to help develop the baby’s cognitive skills.

Meanwhile, I kept furtively checking my BlackBerry and my cell phone. My cell phone said no service—another reason to hate BabyWorld—while my BlackBerry kept receiving messages. Different service providers, I guess that was the reason. There were a lot of e-mails on my BlackBerry complaining about the Queeg Memo.

Kate was showing me a Bellini crib. “Sally Wynter bought this one for Anderson,” she said, “and she thinks it’s the best.” She heard my BlackBerry buzz, and she threw me an exasperated look. “Are you here, or are you at work?”

I’d have rather been anywhere else. “Sorry,” I said. I switched the BlackBerry alert mode to silent, so she wouldn’t hear it anymore. “Does that come already assembled?”

“It says some assembly required. I don’t think it’s all that complicated.”

“If you went to MIT,” I said.

We moved into a diaper-rich environment, tall stacks of Huggies and Pampers, floor-to-ceiling, a bewildering assortment. This was more confusing than the sanitary napkin section of CVS, where Kate had sent me once. I’d fled screaming in terror.

“I can’t decide between the Diaper Genie and the Diaper Champ,” she said. “This one uses regular garbage bags.”

“But this one seems to make diaper link sausages,” I said. “That’s kind of cool.” You get your kicks where you can.

We moved on to small electronics. She grabbed a box off the shelf and dropped it into our shopping cart. “This is so genius,” she said. “It’s a backseat baby monitor.”

“For the car?”

“You plug it into the cigarette lighter, and the camera goes on the back of the headrest, and the monitor goes on the dashboard. So you can keep a watch on baby without turning around.”

That’s what I need, I thought. More distractions while I’m driving. “Cool,” I said.

“Here’s a video monitoring system,” she said, grabbing another box from the shelf and showing it to me. “See that little portable video monitor you can carry around with you? So the baby’s never out of sight. Plus, there’s infrared for night viewing.”

Jesus, I thought, this baby’s going to be under more intensive surveillance than Patrick McGoohan in that old TV show
The Prisoner.

“Great idea,” I said.

“Oh, here we are,” Kate said. “The best part of all.” I followed her into the baby carriage department, where she immediately glommed on to a big, scary, black carriage with big wheels, antique-looking and forbidding. It seemed like something out of
Rosemary’s Baby.

“God, Jason, will you look at this Silver Cross Balmoral pram?” she said. “It’s so unbelievably elegant, isn’t it?”

“What’s that movie where the baby buggy rolls down all those steps?”

“Potemkin,”
she said with an annoyed headshake.

I took a look at the price tag. “Does that say twenty-eight hundred, or do I need reading glasses already?”

“Is that how much it is?”

“Maybe it’s in Italian lire.”

“They don’t use lire anymore. It’s euros now.”

“Two thousand eight hundred dollars?”

“Forget it,” Kate said. “That’s crazy. Sorry.”

“Whatever you want, Kate.”

“For way less money, there’s the Stokke Xplory,” she said. “The baby rides higher off the ground. It encourages parent-child bonding. Not much storage space underneath, though. But it’s pretty macho-looking, don’t you think? That telescoping handle?” I saw her cast a longing glance at the Silver Cross Balmoral pram when she thought I wasn’t looking.

“It’s macho, all right,” I said. I sneaked a glance at my BlackBerry and saw an e-mail from Gordy. Its subject line was U
RGENT
!

“Of course, there’s always the Bugaboo Frog.”

I clicked onto the message and read, “I tried to call your cell but no answer. Call me IMMEDIATELY.”

“Doesn’t it remind you of a mountain bike?” Kate was saying.

“What? A mountain bike?”

“I’ve been hearing a lot about the Bebe Confort Lite Chassis,” Kate said. “It’s a little more than the Bugaboo, but still a fraction of the price of the Silver Cross.”

“I’ve got to make a call,” I said.

“Can’t it wait?”

“It’s important.”

“This is important too.”

“Gordy’s been trying to reach me, and he says it’s urgent. I’m sorry. This shouldn’t take more than a minute.”

I turned and hurried through the aisles to the parking lot, where I picked up a cell phone signal. I punched out Gordy’s cell number, got a number wrong, and tried again.

“What the hell are you doing?” Gordy barked when he picked up.

“Shopping for baby stuff.”

“This goddamned T&E memo of yours. What the hell’s that all about?”

“Gordy, you approved it before I sent it out.”

He hesitated only for a second. “I didn’t get into the weeds. I left that to you.”

“Is there a problem?”

“Is there a
problem
? Trevor just came into my office and told me how the entire sales force is on the verge of revolt.”

“Trevor?” I said. Goddamned Trevor was going to Gordy behind my back now, was that it? “Trevor doesn’t speak for the ‘entire sales force,’” I said.

“Well, I got news for you. We just lost Forsythe over this.”

“What do you mean, we ‘lost’ Forsythe?”

“It was the last straw for the guy. Apparently he had a standing offer from our old friend Crawford at Sony, and guess what? Late this afternoon he called and accepted their offer. Why? Because of your damned crackdown. You have the guys eating in Denny’s and staying at fleabag motels, and now we just lost our star performer.”

My
crackdown?

“Now who’s next? Gleason? Allard? All because of what the guys are calling the Queeg Memo.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I’ve taken care of it,” Gordy said. “I just sent out an e-mail revoking your new policy. Told them there was a miscommunication.”

I gritted my teeth.
God damn him
. “So what about Forsythe?” I said. “Is he still leaving?”

But Gordy had hung up.

I walked across BabyWorld, the goddamned xylophone and the kids’ voices grating on me like fingernails on a blackboard. Kate was staring at me as I approached.

“Everything okay?” she said. “You look like you just got kicked in the stomach.”

“The balls, more like it. Kate, there’s all kinds of shit going down at work.”

“Well, I’m ready to check out anyway. But you shouldn’t have come tonight. You should have stayed at work.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re totally distracted with your job. You’re not required to go shopping with me, Jase.”

“I wanted to do this,” I said.

“You make it sound like an assignment.”

“That’s not fair. We’re buying baby stuff. I think it’s important for us to do it together.”

“Yeah, but you’re not exactly here, are you? Your head is back at the office.”

“And I always thought you loved me for my body.”

“Jason.”

She pushed the cart toward the checkout line, and I followed her. Both of us were silent, stewing in our own juices. We stood there in line. Finally, I said, “Why don’t you go get the tag for the
Rosemary’s Baby
carriage.”

“The Silver Cross Balmoral pram?” Kate said. “But that’s crazy expensive.”

“It’s the one you want. It’s the one we’ll get.”

“Jason, we don’t need to spend that kind of money on a baby carriage.”

“Come on, Kate. It would be downright irresponsible to put our baby in a carriage that doesn’t have shock absorbers and side-impact bars.” I broke off. “Look, I want to do this right. Baby Steadman’s going to travel in style. It does come with power steering, right?”