Run: A Novel (2 page)

“I know all this, Roger. Save it for the shareholders. What’s your point?”

“The point is, the efficiencies you’ve helped us to identify? We’re really happy with them. They’ve made a tangible difference. But now we’re in the final stretch, and things are different. We have to make some tough choices. Choices we’re not happy about making. But this is business, Marc. Our own personal happiness doesn’t factor into it.”

“The final stretch?”

“You know what I mean.”

“The bandwidth auction?”

“Of course. It’s a watershed. Win or lose, everything’ll be different.”

“And you’re not confident of winning? After all the time you’ve spent in D.C., glad-handing the stuffed shirts and bullshitting the White House committees?”

“Ask me at noon tomorrow.” He shrugged. “Then we’ll know our fate. One way or the other, the guessing’ll be over.”

“There’s no guesswork involved. Just a finite number of known
outcomes, and I’ve helped you plan for all of them. The work I’ve done for you—the customer behavioral analysis, not the boring cost-saving stuff—it makes you unique. Even if you come out of the auction empty-handed and have to sell the company, it’ll be worth five times what it was before I started. At least. No one can match the kind of insights I’ve given you. They’re gold dust. They put you light-years ahead of everyone else.”

“AmeriTel will be worth fifteen times that, if we win.”

“You’ve got to keep some perspective, Roger. The other players are way bigger than you. There’s no shame in being outbid by a crew with deeper pockets. Especially if it’s the usual scenario where the winner pays too much and ends up bankrupt.”

“I’m not paying too much. I’m not a moron. I just don’t like to lose. And the bottom line is, I don’t want to lose—the company, or the extra money we’ll make if we stay in the game.”

“Are we in Death Valley yet? Has your bid gone in?”

“We’re putting in a revised bid this morning. The deadline’s five pm, eastern.”

“So isn’t this a conversation for tomorrow?”

“No. Not really. I’d like to get the decks cleared now.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s like I said. Tomorrow’s a watershed, Marc. Either way, after tomorrow we’re going to have a very different kind of company on our hands. We’re going to have very different support requirements, going forward. And that’s where those difficult choices I mentioned come in.”

“Difficult choices? Such as?”

“Look, Marc, this isn’t easy for either of us. And I want to be straight with you, right from the start. We’ve been extremely happy with the work you’ve done for us. We’ll be happy to recommend you to anyone. We’ll make sure that everything that’s due to you gets paid without delay. There might even be a couple of bonus clauses we can activate. But as of this morning, the reality is—your contract? It’s being canceled.”

My contract is
being canceled
? Great use of the corporate passive, I thought. All those brave words about being straight with me, but he
still couldn’t take responsibility for the six inches of steel he’d just plunged between my shoulder blades. I thought about calling him on it. I thought about my wife, Carolyn, who’d encouraged me to take the contract. She was a ten-year veteran of AmeriTel and a fixture at the place—unless she didn’t fit in with the new corporate support requirement landscape bullshit, and had been bulleted, too. And then I thought about my weekend, which had mostly been spent there at AmeriTel instead of at home with her. Again.

“Difficult choices? I’ve got news for you. You need a new dictionary, my friend. Because you’re confusing
difficult
with
stupid
. Have you got any idea how much money you’re setting fire to, letting me go? How many opportunities you’re going to miss out on?”

“I understand you’re frustrated.” He clasped his hands and placed them on the table in front of him with all the practiced sincerity of a TV preacher. “You’re brilliant at what you do, and I truly respect that. But try to look at things from our perspective. We’re facing a time of unprecedented change. We need to trim our cost base to the bone. And we need our operations to be as lean and agile as they can possibly be.”

“And there’s no room for me in that picture?”

“I’m afraid not. Look, this day’s dawned a little sooner than you or I expected, but we always knew it was coming. That’s the point of using consultants, right?”

“If you think that, you’re even more stupid than I realized. You want to cut costs? How much do I cost you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re firing me to save money, so it’s a fair question. How much do I cost you?”

“Marc. Be reasonable. I don’t have your contract in front of me. I can’t comment on the details. Only on the overall principles we’re trying to adhere to—”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“I cost you nothing. I take a percentage of everything I save you. And a percentage of everything extra you make, based on my ideas. Keeping me costs you nothing. Fact. And firing me will lose you money. Fact.”

“It’s not that simple, Marc.”

“It is that simple. Without my analytics you won’t know where your inefficiencies are. And you won’t know where to aim your new products. If you’re worried about cost, firing me is the last thing you should do.”

“Your initiatives have been very successful up to now, sure. That’s why we’re paying you, and why I said we’d be happy to endorse your work. But here’s the real problem: What you do is make recommendations based on the past. Now, a lot of your insights are fascinating. And those grenades you hit us with early on? Like that sales guy you found running an escort service on company time? Dynamite. But if things haven’t already happened, how can you analyze them? You see? You’re rooted in
history
, Marc. We’re not. AmeriTel’s entering a new era. We need different thinking. Future thinking. Radical transformation, not a way to milk the most out of the status quo.”

“If you don’t understand your history, you’re doomed to repeat your mistakes.”

“Oh, that old chestnut. Maybe it holds water for countries or governments or whatever. But not for the telecommunications industry. We’re moving too fast for that.”

“You’re moving fast, no doubt. But in which direction? Straight over the cliff? How can you tell? If you can’t measure, you can’t manage. And without me, you can’t measure. Not as well as you can with me, anyway. I think I’ve proved that.”

A large frown spread across LeBrock’s face, then he nodded.

“You’re right,” he said, quietly, after a moment. “Everything you’ve done here has been first class. If I’ve given you the impression we have a problem with your work, I apologize. If I’ve given you the impression we have a problem with you personally, I apologize. And if I’ve given you the impression this subject is up for debate, I doubly apologize. Because it isn’t. It’s done. I wish it hadn’t panned out this way. But my job’s not to do what’s nice. It’s to do what’s right for the company.”

I didn’t reply. I was back to thinking about the previous weekend. Something had struck me. Maybe my time hadn’t been completely wasted, after all. Especially if that’s the way they wanted to play the game.

“Come on.” LeBrock stood and held out his hand once again. “We’ve worked together before. I know we will again. Let’s part as friends. And think of Carolyn. How would she feel if you were dragged out of here in handcuffs?”

“Speaking of Carolyn, how about her job? Is she safe?”

“If we win this damn auction tomorrow, yes. I guarantee it. If we don’t—I won’t lie to you, Marc. I can’t promise anything. But I’ll do everything I can to make sure Carolyn’s looked after.”

“You better.” I took his hand. “I’ll hold you to that. And good luck tomorrow. For her sake, at least.”

“Thanks. I appreciate your understanding. Oh, sorry, there’s one other thing. The stuff you left in the office you were using? It’s been boxed up. It’s being shipped to your home. Simon Wakefield insisted. Security falls under Simon, so I couldn’t really argue.”

“And the computers?”

“Were any of them yours?”

“One of them. One of the new notebooks.”

“Then it’ll be in the box. You’ll have it by lunchtime.”

“And the company computers? Just out of interest.”

“Simon’s already set the IT boys to work on them. Stripping them down. Wiping the discs. Getting them ready for whatever tomorrow brings, I guess. With the level of access you had, you know we couldn’t just leave them lying around.”

I nodded. Wiping the computers clean was fine with me. I’d put a lot of effort into building those databases. If I wasn’t going to be there any longer, why should anyone else benefit from them?

THE BOARDROOM DOOR CLOSED
behind me, but I didn’t start down the stairs right away. I wasn’t trying to delay my departure, though. And I certainly wasn’t trying to capture a lasting memory of the place. AmeriTel honestly didn’t mean that much to me. It was just that for the first time since I started my contract there, I didn’t have an urgent objective in mind. A burning task to complete, or meeting to get to. I could take my time. Do what I wanted. Not what the company wanted.
And now that I realized how little they valued what I’d been doing, I was glad to be free of them.

I heard a rattling sound below me and when I looked down I saw a janitor wheeling a cleaning cart toward the exit. For one crazy moment I was tempted to call out to him and hitch a ride, since I was being thrown out with the rest of the trash. Then it struck me, I’d never seen the guy before. When I’d started working there, the cleaning crew had all been women. Thinking about it, they’d had different-colored uniforms, too. Blue. Not green. The original company must have lost the contract, somewhere along the way. I wondered what else could have changed without me noticing. The water coolers? The coffee machines? I wasn’t sure.

The realization kept me rooted to the spot for another moment or two, shaking my head at the irony. I make my living by seeing what no one else even knows is there. I use my analytical tools to peek beneath the skin of companies and make sense of whatever’s hidden beneath. Here, I’d missed the simple things that were in plain sight. But at least I wasn’t the only one who was out of touch. When I finally reached the parking lot I passed a pair of IT technicians making their way in with a portable degausser and a couple of cases of other equipment. They must not have started work on trashing my old machines yet, as LeBrock said they had. And they were from a different contractor, too. One with shabby coveralls and a name and logo I’d never come across before. Some kind of bargain basement, Mickey Mouse outfit, no doubt. Which meant the penny-pinching had spread all the way to business-critical systems.

AmeriTel must have sunk deeper into the mire than I’d thought.

All things considered, I was lucky to be out of the place.

W
HEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, THE TOUGH GO SHOPPING
.

I left Carolyn a voicemail telling her to ignore any office gossip she might hear—plus a promised to give her the full story over dinner—then headed to one of my favorite spots in the world. The TL Gallery. It’s owned by a friend of mine, Troye (that’s Troye with a silent “e,” as he’s always quick to point out to new acquaintances) Liptak. The place is only five miles from my house in terms of distance, but more like five light-years in terms of contents. On any given day you could rely on Troye to have at least one Picasso. A couple of Miros. Maybe a Dalí. A Richter. A Matisse or two. It’s like having a world-class art museum in the neighborhood, except that if Troye thinks there’s a chance you might buy a piece, he’ll take it down from the wall and let you hold it. He’ll honestly stand there and put a ten, fifteen, maybe twenty million dollar painting right in your hands and let you drool over it for as long as you want. Forget the Met, or any of those other famous museums. The TL is the place to go if you want an up close and personal encounter with art.

Troye was wearing one of his more restrained outfits that day—a lemon-yellow three-piece suit, a green shirt, and a pair of black and white correspondent shoes. He watched me come in, then after a few seconds he levered himself off the pillar he’d been leaning against and ambled across the floor in my direction.

“My goodness.” He swept a curtain of bleached blond hair away from his face before leaning forward and subjecting me to one of his
trademark overenthusiastic hugs. He felt like he might have gained a couple of pounds since my last visit, but even after all the years I’d known him I would have struggled to guess his age. The cosmetic surgeon who’d raised his cheekbones and sharpened his nose had made that impossible.

“Marc? Is it you? Where on earth have you been hiding?”

“It’s me. You know how I am. Busy, busy, busy. But I haven’t been hiding. And I never stay away for too long.”

“Yes, you do. I thought you’d forgotten about me. Or found someone else to relieve you of your excess cash. I thought maybe you’d become a car nut. Or worse, one of those antiques guys. I was thinking of closing the place down, I was so worried.”

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t. What stopped you?”

Troye took a step back and spread his arms.

“I couldn’t bear to leave my babies. Although, if you wanted to take one of them home with you in exchange for an obscene sum of money, that would be perfectly fine. Are you in the mood for buying today, Marc? Or are you just here for a looky-lou?”

“To be honest, Troye, I’m here to relive a memory.”

“You’ve had bad news?”

I nodded.

“You need a Roy moment?”

I nodded again. I hadn’t gone there with any realistic intention of buying a painting, that day. What I needed was to revisit the scene of my greatest life-affirming moment to date. Because the TL is the place where—after ten years of aspiring and getting by with poster-store copies—I’d bought myself a genuine Lichtenstein. It’s only a small one. It’s not the most critically acclaimed. But it’s the most valuable thing I’ve ever owned. And I don’t just mean in terms of the price tag.