Termination Man: a novel (16 page)

“Yeah, I miss those old times, though,” Alan said. The wistful look again. “Anyway, I’ll let you two get back to work.”

“Bye, Professor. Bye, College Boy.”

“They aren’t about to cut a new guy any slack on his first day, are they?” I asked, once we were past Roy and Helen’s workstation.

“Oh, Roy’s a good guy,” Alan said. “Like most of the people out here. Like most of the people in the front office, truth be told.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”     

“Am I that transparent?”

“Alan, my car’s windshield is less transparent than you are. So when are you going to give me the scoop about what’s really going on at this company and what you’re planning to do about it? I know you’re up to something.”

“All in good time, grasshopper,” Alan said. “All in good time.”

We completed the rest of the tour, stopping at all the requisite places: the die maintenance department, the tool room, the myriad production lines. Although I gave Alan my appropriate share of reflective questions and appreciative comments, most of this stuff was pure fluff, as far as my mission at UP&S was concerned.

My interest did, however, perk up when we stopped by the loading and receiving dock. This was the home of Nick King and Michael O’Rourke. These two men were UP&S’s resident embezzlers—if there was
any truth to the suspicions of TP Automotive’s management team.

Michael O’Rourke struck me as a dullard. He was tall, about thirty pounds overweight, and would barely look at Alan and me when we shook his hand. His safety helmet was cocked on his head at a lazy, haphazard angle, revealing a shock of curly red hair.

My case file had informed me that Nick King was in his early thirties; but he carried himself like a teenaged boy who is determined to prove himself the tough guy troublemaker. My research had also told me that Nick King was in fact a troublemaker of sorts: he had had a number of run-ins with the law.

“Yo,” Nick said, giving me an upright handshake, as if we were two gangsters preparing for a rumble with a rival gang. I played along, not wanting to arouse his suspicions. I wanted him to meet me and forget me.

But then, it was perfectly plausible that I, as an eager new employee, might have some detailed questions about procedures on the loading and receiving dock. I asked Nick what kind of computer system he and O’Rourke used to record shipments and receipts. He replied that they used an AS/400—a datum that I already knew.
Could he show it to me
, I asked, going out of my way to look harmless, eager, and hopeful.

I saw a flash of nervousness on Nick’s face. He recovered quickly—but
his sudden dread was unmistakable.
Nick didn’t want to show me the AS/400. It wasn’t difficult to figure out why: If he was stealing from the company, then falsifying the data he entered into the mainframe would be a crucial element of the scam. It almost always is in embezzlement schemes.

Michael O’Rourke shot Nick an imploring, alarmed look of confusion, and Nick glared in response. All this interplay between King and O’Rourke was sufficiently subtle so that the casual observer would have missed it. But I was no casual observer.

“Aw, I wish I could show you,” Nick King said. “But that thing takes a while to boot up. I don’t want to keep you waiting.”

“Some other time, then,” I replied. “Thank you anyway.”

“Absolutely.” A crooked smile.

If there is an embezzling operation going on,
I thought,
Nick King is
the primary one behind it
.
Michael O’Rourke is simply along for the ride.

“Well, gentlemen,” Alan said. “We thank you for your time. Time for us to be moving along.”

“Have those two been with the company for long?” I asked Alan as we made our way back to the office.

“No. I don’t think either one of them has been here for more than a year or two. “To tell you the truth, I think that Nick King is a little suspicious. I don’t have any proof, but I always get the sneaking suspicion that he’s hiding something.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Can’t say,” Alan replied. “But I have a very strong bullshit filter. I can almost always tell when someone is lying to me.”

When we arrived back at our desks, the office area was deserted—except for Lucy, who sat tapping away at her computer, a strange, intense expression on her face.

“Oh,” Alan said by way of explanation. “There’s a company assembly in the cafeteria at 9:00 a.m.” He glanced at the wall clock in the front of the room. It was already past 9:45. “I must have forgotten about it. It’s a monthly thing they do. They use the meeting to update the office staff on what’s going on out in the factory—quality statistics and production numbers, that sort of thing.”

“Should we go and attend it now?” I asked.

“No. No point now. We’ve already missed most of it.”

Lucy had barely acknowledged our presence. She was still staring intently at her computer screen.

“What about you, Lucy?” Alan asked. “Did you decide to be a rebel and skip the monthly assembly?”

Lucy’s lower lip began to tremble. Then she suddenly burst into tears.

“What’s the matter?” Alan asked.

“Shawn Myers,” Lucy said, sobbing. “He called me an idiot.”

“Why did he do that?”

More sobs followed. Had the office not been empty, this would have been quite a scene; but the monthly assembly had at least spared Lucy the embarrassment of crying in front of several dozen colleagues. After a few more sobs, an explanation finally emerged.

“It was the inventory report,” she said. “Shawn didn’t understand it. So I tried to explain it to him several different ways, but he
still
didn’t understand. Then he said that if I couldn't make it clear to him, I must be some kind of an idiot.”

Being the newcomer here, I stepped back to a discreet distance so that the two of them could talk. But not too far back; this might be an opportunity to gain additional insights about the situation in which I was operating.

“Which inventory report?” Alan asked. “Give me the specifics.” Alan sat down at his desk and wheeled his chair over to Lucy’s. He placed his arm around her shoulder. The two of them were obviously quite close, though I couldn’t detect any sexual chemistry. It was more like the kind of bond you see between two longtime friends, or two siblings.

Then Lucy proceeded to give Alan the specifics. I had heard this story before. Not this exact story, mind you—but similar versions in different organizations. The disagreement about the clarity of the inventory report involved the sort of minutiae that is mostly impervious to outsiders. Every corporation has controversies like this—about how work should be performed, measured, evaluated, or recorded. These often boil down to something like religious debates, in which neither side is demonstrably right or wrong, and you simply have to chalk it up to a difference of opinion.

Given what I had seen of Shawn Myers so far, I was more than willing to assume that he was mostly in the wrong, though probably not to a degree that would inhibit him from pulling rank. If he had, in fact, called Lucy an idiot, then that was another matter. I would have been willing to bet, though, that Shawn was smart enough to have made sure that no third parties overheard the remark.

“I’m sorry, Lucy.” Alan clenched his jaws together. The anger on his face exceeded the emotional level justified by this situation. At this instant, Lucy might have been his daughter, deflowered by a gang of hoodlums against her will. “Shawn Myers is a son-of-a-bitch!”

“It’s all right,” Lucy said through her tears. She placed her hand on one of Alan’s. “Calm down. As for me, I’m mad now. But I’ll be okay.”

“Do you think you should go to HR?” Alan asked. “Talk to Beth Fisk?”

The question provoked a laugh from Lucy. “Be serious, Alan. That would be a bit like appealing to Al Capone about Chicago’s organized crime problem, wouldn’t it? She’ll just take Shawn’s side. She’s from TP Automotive, after all. They’re all on the same side.”

“What about Bill Prescott?”

Lucy rolled her eyes, shook her head, and then blew her nose into a Kleenex. “Didn't we already try that? Please. Bill Prescott has given up. He’s still wondering when they’re going to fire him as part of their grand reorganization scheme.”

I realized that this last observation likely had a basis in truth. When TP Automotive took over the company, they did release most of the existing senior management team. For some reason they had held on to Bill Prescott, either because he posed no threat, or because they wanted to maintain him as the face of the old regime—to partially preserve the fiction that nothing had changed. It was clear that
everything
had changed, though; and the Bill Prescott whom I had met would be as pliable as clay in the hands of a man like Kurt Myers.

Lucy finally composed herself—at least enough to allow her to go to the women’s restroom. When she was gone, Alan turned to me and shrugged.

“A lot of drama for your first day on the job.”

“Never mind that.” I said. “You know, I could tell that there was something wrong with her when we first walked in.”

“
Lucy is like an open book
,” Alan said. “Know her for a little while, and you’ll always be able to tell what she’s thinking.”

“Tell me, Craig: Is it your normal practice to question your clients’ motives? We’ve hired you to complete a job for us—not to spar with us.”

Beth and I were alone in a small meeting room. I had requested this unscheduled meeting with her by text message after spending the morning with Lucy and Alan—the two people whom I had been hired to remove from the organization. Technically, this was a breach of protocol: It wouldn't be a good idea for me to be seen meeting with Beth Fisk now that I was undercover. But we had arrived separately at this meeting room behind the office area; and we would leave separately as well. The morning had given me some fundamental doubts about the nature of this assignment. I had to resolve them before moving forward.

Clearly, Beth didn't like what I had said thus far.

“I’m not questioning you,” I said. “And I’m not sparring with you, either.”

A diplomatic smile. “It sure seems that way.”

“Let me put it like this: It may not be my place to question your motives; but I need to at least understand them. I need to get my arms around why these two employees—who strike me as rather harmless—are such a threat to the well-being of this operation.”

Beth sighed. “As you’ve probably gathered,” she began. “Shawn Myers is being groomed for the top leadership position in this company. Right now his father is acting CEO; but Shawn will move up from the VP role as soon as he’s ready.”

“Well,” I said. “He might advance his readiness by learning not to refer to his subordinates as idiots.”

As soon as the remark had left my mouth, I knew that I had overstepped my bounds. I half expected Beth to reproach me, but she afforded me a quick, discreet smile instead. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who had taken a disliking to Kurt Myers’s son.

But Beth was still, in her heart of hearts, a good corporate soldier. “Shawn may need to make adjustments to his management style as time goes on,” she allowed. “And we’re prepared to coach him in that area. He’s never worked this closely with lower level office personnel and production employees before. Shawn’s spent all of his time at TP Automotive thus far among the executive staff.”

This was another way of saying that Shawn had not worked his way up from among the ranks. From his first day on the job, Shawn had been set apart from other employees, elevated by his father. No—he probably hadn’t spent much time among the company’s hoi polloi. I imagined that Shawn’s duties thus far had mostly consisted of cushy make-work staff jobs in various corner offices at the TP Automotive headquarters. In all likelihood, Shawn had never really done much of anything substantial. His father had been simultaneously protecting him and keeping an eye on him.

But that situation couldn't go on forever. In a publicly traded company like TP Automotive, nepotism had its limits. Sooner or later, Shawn would have to prove himself. He would have to face and pass a test. His posting to UP&S was that test.

Beth continued:  “In any event, though, we can’t tolerate two staff-level team members who show open contempt for one of our senior managers. We need to protect the chain of command and the integrity of the organization.”

“You mean protect Shawn Myers.”

“It amounts to the same thing.” She leaned forward. “Look, Craig. I’m not going to try to convince you that Shawn Myers should be nominated for any corporate leadership awards. Do you think that you’re the first person who’s raised the issue of nepotism here? You should hear some of the talk I overhear back at the headquarters building. But Kurt Myers is a very influential member of the TP Automotive executive team; and this is important to him. Moreover, I don’t think it’s impossible that Shawn Myers could have the makings of an effective manager. He’s a bit of a diamond in the rough.”