Killer Instinct (6 page)

Everyone was cool with it except, of course, Trevor Allard. We called a time-out, and we all huddled around Cal Taylor while Kurt hung back a respectful distance.

“He’s not an Entronics employee,” Trevor said. “You can’t play if you don’t have a valid employee number. That’s the rules.”

I wasn’t sure whether Trevor was just being his usual priggish self, or he’d heard that I’d put in for the promotion that he probably figured had his name on it.

Festino, who enjoyed twitting Trevor, said, “So? If they challenge him, he just says he’s a contract employee and didn’t know he wasn’t eligible.” He took advantage of the break to furtively slip the little bottle of Purell out of his pocket and clean his hands.

“A contract employee?” Trevor said with disgust.
“Him?”
As if a bum had just wandered onto the field from the street, reeking of cheap booze and six months of body odor. Trevor wore long cargo shorts and a faded Red Sox cap, the kind that comes prefaded, which he wore backwards, of course. He had a pukka shell necklace and a Rolex, the same kind of Rolex as Gordy had, and a T-shirt that said
LIFE IS GOOD
.

“You ever ask the Charles River guys for their photo IDs?” said Festino. “How do we know they don’t have their own ringers, from the Yankees farm team?”

“Or some guy named Vinny from the mailroom,” said Taminek, a tall, scrawny guy who did inside sales. “Anyway, Hewlett-Packard uses ringers all the time.”

“Yo, Trevor, you’re not objecting because this guy’s a pitcher, are you, dude?” Gleason razzed his buddy. He was an overdeveloped lunk with Dumbo ears, a lantern jaw, a blond crew cut, and bright white choppers that were way too big for his mouth. He’d recently grown a bristly goatee that looked like pubic hair.

Trevor scowled and shook his head, but before he could say anything further, Cal Taylor said, “Put him in. Trevor, you go to second.” And he took a swig from his paper bag.

All anyone had to say was “new hire,” and there were no questions asked. Kurt didn’t look like a member of the Band of Brothers, but he could have been a software engineer or something, as far as the Charles River team knew. Or a mailroom guy.

Kurt was assigned to bat third in the lineup—not fourth, like in a real baseball team, but third, because even in his Jack Daniel’s stupor, Cal Taylor understood that three batters would probably mean three outs, and we wanted to give the new guy a chance to show his stuff. And maybe save our asses.

Taminek was on first, and there was one out, when it was Kurt’s turn at bat. I noticed he hadn’t been warming up but had instead been standing there quietly, watching the Charles River pitcher and captain, Mike Welch, pitch. As if he were watching tapes in the clubhouse.

He stepped up to the plate, took a few practice swings with his battered old aluminum bat, and hammered a shot to left-center. The ball sailed over the back fence. As Taminek, and then Kurt, ran home, the guys cheered.

Kurt’s homer was like an electric shock from those ER paddles. All of a sudden we started scoring runs. By the top of the fourth, we had five runs. Then Kurt took the mound to pitch to a big, beefy Charles River guy named Jarvis who was one of their sluggers. Kurt let loose with a wicked, blistering fastball, and Jarvis swung and missed, his eyes wide. You’d never think a softball could travel so fast.

Kurt threw an amazing rise ball, then a change up, and Jarvis had struck out.

Festino caught my eye. He was grinning.

Kurt proceeded to strike out two more guys with a bewildering and unhittable assortment of drop curves and rise balls.

In the fifth inning, we managed to load the bases, and then it was Kurt’s turn at bat. He swung lefty this time, and once again drove the ball somewhere into the next town, trimming the Charles River lead to one.

Kurt struck them out, one two three, in the sixth, and then it was our turn at bat. I noticed that Trevor Allard was no longer complaining about our ringer. He hit a double, Festino singled, and by the time I struck out, we were up by two. Finally, in the bottom of the seventh, Kurt had struck out their first batter and allowed two hits—only because of our lousy fielding—when their guy Welch hit a slow grounder. Kurt scooped it up, fired to second, where Allard caught it, stepped, and threw to first. Taminek caught it and held it high for the third out. A double play, and we’d actually won our first game since prehistoric times.

All the guys thronged around Kurt, who shrugged modestly and gave his easy smile and didn’t say too much. Everyone was talking and laughing loudly, exuberantly, narrating instant replays, reliving the double play that ended the game.

The inviolable tradition after each game was for our opponents to join us for food and beer and tequila shots at a nearby bar or restaurant. But we noticed that the young studs from Charles River were heading sullenly for their German cars. I called out to them, but Welch, without turning around, said, “We’re going to pass.”

“I think they’re bummed out,” said Taminek.

“I think they’re in a state of shock,” said Festino.

“Shock and awe,” said Cal Taylor. “Where’s our MVP?”

I looked around and saw Kurt slipping out to the parking lot. I chased up to him and invited him to join us.

“Nah, you guys probably want to hang by yourselves,” he said. I could see Trevor, standing at his silver Porsche, talking to Gleason, who was sitting in his Jeep Wrangler Sahara, top down.

“It’s not like that,” I said. “It’s totally loose. Believe me, the guys would love to have a drink with you.”

“I don’t drink anymore, man. Sorry.”

“Well, whatever. Diet Coke. Come on.”

He shrugged again. “Sure you guys aren’t going to mind?”

7

I felt like I’d brought Julia Roberts to audition for the high-school play. All of a sudden I was Mister Popular, basking in the reflected glory. We all gathered around a long table at the Outback Steakhouse, a five-minute drive away, everyone jazzed from our comeback-from-oblivion victory. Some ordered beers, and Trevor asked for a single-malt Scotch called Talisker, but the waitress didn’t know what he was talking about, so he settled for a Dewar’s. Kurt gave me a look that seemed to communicate secret amusement at what a dick Trevor was. Or maybe I was imagining it. Kurt didn’t know that Gordy drank single-malts too, that Trevor was just sucking up to the boss even though the boss wasn’t there.

Kurt ordered ice water. I hesitated, then did the same. Someone ordered a couple Bloomin’ Onions and some Kookaburra Wings. Festino went to the john and came back wiping his hands on his shirt. “God, I hate those scary cloth roller towels,” he said with a shudder. “That endless, germ-infested loop of fecal bacteria. Like we’re supposed to believe the towel only goes around once.”

Brett Gleason hoisted his mug of Foster’s and proposed a toast to “the MVP,” saying, “You don’t have to buy another drink in this town again.”

Taminek said, “Where’d you come from?”

“Michigan,” Kurt said, with a sly grin.

“I mean, like—you play in college or something?”

“Never went to college,” Kurt said. “Joined the army instead, and they don’t play much softball. Not in Iraq, anyway.”

“You were in Iraq?” said one of our top dogs, Doug Forsythe, a tall, slender guy with a thatch of brown hair and a cowlick.

“Yeah,” Kurt said, nodding. “And Afghanistan. All the hot tourist spots. In Special Forces.”

“Like, killing people?” asked Gleason.

“Only bad guys,” Kurt said.

“You ever kill anyone?” asked Forsythe.

“Just a couple of guys who asked too many questions,” said Kurt. Everyone laughed but Forsythe, and then he joined in, too.

“Cool,” said Festino, yanking at the tendrils of a fried onion and dipping the straws into the peppery pink sauce before gobbling them down.

“Not exactly,” said Kurt. He looked down at his glass of water and fell silent.

Trevor had his BlackBerry out and was thumbing the wheel, checking for messages as he sipped his Dewar’s. Then he looked up and said, “So how do you guys know each other?”

I flinched. The cell phone, the Acura wiping out in a ditch—the true story could inflict lasting damage to my reputation.

Kurt said, “Mutual interest in cars.”

I liked this guy more and more.

“Cars?” said Trevor, but then Cal Taylor looked up from his Jack Daniel’s—a freshly poured tumbler from the bar—and said, “In ’Nam, we called you guys Snake Eaters.”

“The closest you got to ’Nam was Fort Dix, New Jersey,” said Gleason.

“Screw you,” growled Taylor, finishing off his Jack Daniel’s. “I developed boils.”

“Is that the same as Navy SEALs?” asked Forsythe. He was greeted by a chorus of derision, and Cal Taylor began singing, in a slurred and warbling tenor, the “Ballad of the Green Beret.” He stood up, held out his glass of J.D., and sang, “One hundred men we’ll test today…But only one wins the Green Beret.”

“‘Only three,’” corrected Gleason.

“Sit down, Cal,” said Trevor. “I think it’s time to go home.”

“I haven’t finished my supper,” Cal growled.

“Come on, old man,” Forsythe said, and he and the rest of the guys trundled Cal out to the parking lot, Cal squawking in protest the whole time. They called him a cab and promised that someone would get his car back to his house in Winchester.

Kurt turned to me while they were gone, and said, “Why are you guys the Band of Brothers? Some of you guys vets?”

“Vets?” I said. “Us? Are you kidding? No, it’s just a nickname. Not a very imaginative one, either. I don’t even remember who thought of it.”

“All you guys in sales?”

“Yep.”

“You good?”

“Who, me?”

“You.”

“I’m okay,” I said.

“I think you’re probably better than okay,” Kurt said.

I shrugged modestly, the way he seemed to shrug without saying anything. I do tend to unconsciously imitate whoever I’m around.

Then I heard Trevor say, “Steadman’s fine. He’s just not much of a closer anymore.” He sat back down at the table. “Right, Steadman? How’s that Lockwood deal going? Are we in the third year yet? This may be the longest negotiation since the Paris Peace Talks.”

“It’s looking good,” I lied. “How’s it going with the Pavilion Group?”

The Pavilion Group owned a chain of movie theaters that wanted to put LCDs in their lobbies to run trailers and ads for concessions.

Trevor smiled with satisfaction. “Textbook,” he said. “I did an ROI test for them that showed a seventeen percent increase in sales of Lemon Slushies.”

I nodded and tried not to roll my eyes. Lemon Slushies.

“Tomorrow I’ve got a meeting with the CEO, but it’s just a meet-and-greet formality. He wants to shake my hand before he inks the deal. But it’s in the bag.”

“Nice,” I said.

Trevor turned to Kurt. “So, Kurt, you guys skydive and all that?”

“Skydive?” Kurt repeated with what sounded like a little twist of sarcasm. “I guess you could call it that. We did jumps, sure.”

“How awesome is that?” said Trevor. “I’ve gone skydiving a bunch of times. Me and some guys from my frat did a skydiving trip to Brittany the summer after we graduated, and it was such a rush.”

“A rush.” Kurt said the word like it tasted bad.

“Nothing like it, huh?” said Trevor. “What a kick.”

Kurt leaned back in his chair, turned to face Trevor. “When you’re dropped off from a C-141 Starlifter at thirty-five thousand feet to do a jump deep inside enemy territory, doing a clandestine entry seventy-five kilometers east-northeast of Mosul, it’s not exactly a
rush
. You’re carrying a hundred seventy-five pounds of commo gear and weapons and ammo, and you’ve got an oxygen mask blinding you and your stomach’s in your throat and you’re falling a hundred fifty miles an hour.” He took a sip of water. “It’s so cold at that altitude your goggles can freeze and shatter. Your eyeballs can freeze shut. You can get hypoxia and lose consciousness in a few seconds. Sudden deceleration trauma. Death on impact. If you don’t hold your arms and legs just right when you’re free-falling, you might go into a tumble or a spin, and go splat. Maybe your chute malfunctions. Even really experienced soldiers break their necks and die. And that’s if you don’t find yourself under attack from SAMs and antiaircraft artillery. You’re scared shitless, and anyone who says they’re not is lying.”

Trevor blushed, looked as if he’d just been slapped. Festino gave me a sidelong look of immense pleasure.

“Anyway,” Kurt said, draining his water, “I’m sure Brittany was loads of fun.”

Kurt was a huge hit.

Forsythe said, “Hey, can you come back next week?”

“I don’t know,” Kurt said.

“We too Little League for you, that it?” said Taminek.

“Nah, not at all,” Kurt said. “It’s just that I work nights a lot.”

“Doing what?” Forsythe asked.

I braced myself—the tow truck, the Acura in the ditch…But he said, “I drive for a buddy of mine who owns an auto body shop.”

“We got to get this guy a job at Entronics,” Taminek said.

Kurt chuckled, and said, “Yeah, right.”

The rest of the guys eventually went home, leaving just me and Kurt.

“So,” he said. “Band of Brothers.”

I nodded.

“Good buddies?”

I shrugged. “Some of them.”

“Pretty competitive bunch, looks like.”

I couldn’t tell if he was kidding. “Can be,” I said. “At work, anyway.”

“That pretty-boy who sat across from me—what’s his name, Trevor?—seems like a real dickhead.”

“I guess.”

“Saw him driving over here in his Porsche. So, was your boss here tonight too?”

“No. Most of the guys here tonight are just individual contributors.”

“Individual contributors?”

“Sales reps. I’m a DM, a district sales manager, and so is Trevor, only we have different territories.”

“But he’s competing against you.”

“Yeah, well, it’s complicated. We’re both up for the same promotion.” I explained to him about the recent turmoil at Entronics and the AM job that had just opened up and the trouble I was having with the Lockwood Hotels deal. He listened without saying anything.