Termination Man: a novel (41 page)

“Wait a minute,” Bernie interrupted. “Let’s say that you do gain this photographic evidence through—unorthodox means. We still don't have a case. None of that would be admissible in court.”

“We aren’t preparing for court,” I reminded him. “We simply want King and O’Rourke to leave quietly without making trouble. And as for the methods, there is no reason why either one of them has to know.”

“Won’t they be able to deduce the origin of the photos?” Bernie asked.

“Not necessarily. No one ever accuses an employer of burglary, because Fortune 500 companies simply don't do such things.
Right?
King and O’Rourke will attribute the photos to a jealous cousin or a spiteful ex-girlfriend.”

“Aren’t we stepping over a dangerous line here? I mean—let’s not lose sight what we’re actually talking about.” Beth said. It wasn't usual for her to speak up so forcefully in a meeting that included Kurt Myers. Like a good corporate soldier, she knew that the wiser course was to wait and see which way the wind was blowing before committing. However, the prospect of authorizing a burglary must have been too much even for her. I almost felt sorry for Beth. She had been working at TP Automotive for years now; and she was capable of genuine shock when men like Kurt Myers and Bernie Chapman revealed their true colors.

“TP Automotive isn’t stepping over any lines,” Kurt said. “Our outside consultant has told has that he has the means to acquire photographs that will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Nick King and Michael O’Rourke have been stealing from the company. I say we entrust this matter to Craig—which I’m sure he will execute with his standard thoroughness.” He turned to me. “Craig, do what needs to be done. I want these two gone before the end of the week; and I don't want to be bothered with any wrongful termination suits. We’ve got enough trouble with frivolous legal matters as it is.”

I noticed that Beth silently bit her lip at Kurt’s oblique and biased reference to the incident between Shawn and the girl. Beth wasn't about to touch that one, obviously, even if she was willing to make a token resistance when asked to turn a blind eye to company-directed burglary.

“I suppose that Nick and Michael really do deserve to have their privacy invaded,” she said. “It’s pretty clear that they’re guilty of stealing from the company.”

There went her token resistance.

Kurt nodded. “Get it done, Craig.”

How does a business consultant carry out a burglary, you ask? It isn’t as difficult as you might think.

To begin with, the most troublesome prospect for any burglar is the possibility of being caught red-handed by
a
home
owner. This is a situation that often ends violently. I
knew that I
would be able to avoid this
danger
by conducting my break-in during the UP&S day shift, when King and O’Rourke
would be
busy on the loading dock. Beth Fisk would be monitoring the employee badge system, so she would be able to alert me if one of them left the building for any reason.

I had decided that Nick King’s residence would be my target. Since he was the obvious leader among the two, he would likely have insisted on holding the contraband. No doubt he was also arranging the black market sales—and lying to O’Rourke about how much money their little operation was actually making. There is truly no honor among thieves, I’ve found.

Nick King lived in rented one-story house in a section of Columbus that was teetering between lower middle-class respectability and outright blight. On one side of his neighborhood was an industrial strip that featured a junkyard and a factory that made ball bearings. On the other side was an even sketchier neighborhood that was frequently referenced in the police reports section of the
Columbus Dispatch
.

On Tuesday morning at approximately nine a.m., I told Lucy that I would have to leave for a while. A dentist appointment, I told her.

“Ugh,” she said. “I hate going to the dentist. Not a root canal or anything painful, I hope.”

“No, just a routine cleaning,” I assured her. “My life won’t be in any danger.” This assessment turned out to be less than accurate.

I drove in the direction of Nick King’s house. The late morning is the best time to carry out an unauthorized entry of a residence, because this is the time when almost everyone is at work or at school. The retired and the long-term unemployed are busy watching a.m. talk shows. And a stranger in a neighborhood—if he isn’t too suspicious-looking—is dismissed as a door-to-door salesperson.

Having arrived at Nick King’s house, I drove past it and parked a safe distance up the street. I quickly scanned the area: All of the front yards that I could see were empty: No one was doing any final leaf raking, or clearing out the winter dregs of a flower garden. Nor did I see any faces peaking out from behind the curtains of any windows.

Beth had informed me that Nick King bragged among the plant workers about owning a pit bull named Tyson. I assumed that this was a reference to the retired boxer and not the chicken company. I’ll never figure it out: Why men of a certain socioeconomic class regard pit bull ownership as the ultimate display of masculinity.

I was ready for the dog, though I hoped that I would not have to encounter the beast. A pit bull is nothing to mess with, even under the best of circumstances.

I made my way down the sidewalk toward Nick King’s rented house. It was a ranch house with white siding. The driveway was cracked and a few clumps of dead weeds were poking up between the gaps in the blacktop. I walked along the driveway toward the backyard. My strides were long and quick, but I dared not run. There is nothing more conspicuous than a grown man running through a residential neighborhood.

When I reached the back door, I put on a pair of latex gloves that I had stashed in my pocket. Then I took out a small leather case that contained a lock-picking kit. As I had anticipated, the backdoor lock was an old-style pin tumbler type, which is the easiest kind to pick. I was able to unlock the door with the most basic tool from the lock-picking kit.

I opened the door and stepped inside. I was immediately alert for any sound of a burglar alarm—or worse—the pit bull named Tyson. I didn't hear either. I closed and relocked the door behind me.

The house was the epitome of primitive bachelor mess decor. In the kitchen, dirty dishes overflowed in the kitchen sink, and excess garbage was simply piled around the overfull trashcan. On the kitchen table was an ashtray that contained about a third of a joint. I pulled out my cell phone and took two photos of this—both a close-up, and also one from a wider angle.

The photos of the joint would be icing on the cake; but the marijuana had probably been smoked by an underworld business associate or a visiting female friend. TP Automotive had already tried unsuccessfully to bust Nick King for drug use. His test results had been clean on three occasions over the past four months. The company couldn't risk the harassment charges that might result from another attempt. I needed photos of the stolen goods, not snapshots of half-smoked joints.

The front rooms of the house were nearly dark, as every curtain or blind had been pulled shut. I didn't think that Nick would store power tools and copper components in his bedroom, and the house had no basement from what I could tell. I decided that the garage was the logical starting point.

I passed through the living room and a little hallway that contained a utility room, where I found the door to the garage. I pulled the door open and saw all of the evidence I needed.

There were four wooden pallets in Nick King’s garage, arranged in a square pattern that consumed most of the available floor space. Atop the pallets were some of the items that had come up short in UP&S’s inventory records: power tools, hand tools, lengths of copper tubing, and copper and brass welding tips. I also saw a hand-held digital multimeter that would have fetched four or five hundred dollars on the open market, as well as a small electric generator that was easily worth a grand.

King and O’Rourke must have been convinced that their scheme was untouchable if they had removed these latter items from the plant. The multimeter and the generator would have certainly been missed. Companies tend to keep close tabs on expensive equipment of that type. I wondered how much the two thieves had made from their operation thus far. They weren’t getting rich from reselling any of this stuff; but all the money that they did make was one hundred percent profit.

The evidence in this garage was more than adequate for my purposes. Moving around the room, I took perhaps a dozen photos from various angles. The close-up photos established the presence of company property, and my wider-angle shots established that the setting was indeed Nick King’s garage.

Now all I had to do was go back the way I came. As long as no one surprised me at the back door, I would be able to make my getaway and drive back to UP&S. This had been relatively easy.

I was standing in the rear hallway of Nick King’s house, closing the garage door behind me, when I heard the rapid footsteps. And the growling.

It was Tyson: perhaps one hundred and sixty pounds of muscle, sinew—and teeth. The grey-coated dog paused at the point where the rear hallway joined the living room. Tyson had bloodshot eyes, and a head and jaw that seemed to be as wide as a shovel.
Where had the dog been until now?

A split second later, Tyson bolted around the corner, making a beeline for me, the intruder who had invaded his home. In that instant, I was profoundly frightened—more frightened than I had ever been in my life.

I dove into the utility room, which was occupied by a large washer and dryer, plus the house’s water heater. I didn't have time to close the door. I leapt onto the washer butt-first, swinging my legs clear of the floor just as Tyson snapped at them. I stood up, my head only inches from the ceiling, and seized upon the first object that caught my attention among the jumble of miscellanea on the overhead shelf: A baseball bat. In that moment I was actually thankful for the hoodlum proclivities of Nick King:
Who else but a hoodlum would keep such an object in his laundry room?

I swung the bat at the pit bull. The dog backed up, avoiding the bat, and then made a serious leap upward that would have carried him onto the washing machine had I not deflected him again with the bat. I couldn't allow Tyson onto the washing machine. In the close quarters atop the appliance, the bat would be all but useless, and the dog would be able to maul me at will.

The dog made yet another leap and I thrust the bat like a spear. This time Tyson clamped his teeth down on my weapon. He began to shake the bat to and fro, the object locked in the vise grip of those powerful jaws.

With Tyson momentarily distracted, I reached into my pocket with my free hand and withdrew the plastic baggy that I had brought along with me for such an eventuality. This was not easy, as Tyson was whipping my body from side to side via the baseball bat that we both held.

The baggy contained a handful of raw hamburger meat laced with a veterinary tranquilizer. I turned the baggy upside down, nearly slipping to certain death in the process. Luckily, the ziplock seal on the baggy was weak. The hamburger fell to the floor, landing at Tyson’s feet with a wet plop.

The bat finally slipped from my hands. However, Tyson immediately noticed the hamburger, and the temptation proved to be more than the dog could resist. Tyson let go of the bat and lowered his head to devour the meat. To whatever extent that the canine brain is capable of planning, Tyson probably intended to take a quick meal and then finish me off at his leisure. After all, I had not demonstrated myself to be much of a threat so far. 

He gobbled up the hamburger with surprising rapidity. Then the dog looked up at me and growled again. I pressed my body against the rear wall and shelf. I had a few seconds to contemplate the irony of being mauled to death only moments before Tyson fell unconscious as a result of the tranquilizer in the hamburger.

The dog crouched down as if to jump. Then it paused and let out a low moan. Tyson turned abruptly away from me and began to walk in the opposite direction. Each step was more unsteady than the last. Convinced now that I would probably live, I uttered a silent prayer of thanks.

Tyson collapsed in the doorway of the utility room. A man was never so glad to see a dog go to sleep.

I climbed down from the washing machine and hastily repaired the evidence of my encounter with Nick King’s dog. I wiped my footprints from the top of the washer, and picked up the empty plastic baggy. The fallen baseball bat was defaced by teeth marks that had not been there previously. Since there was no way to remove them, I simply slid the bat back onto the shelf in a near approximation of its original position.

I walked carefully past the slumbering pit bull. I knew that Tyson would awake within an hour or two, giving him plenty of time to recover his normal level of hostility before his owner arrived home. But he would remain asleep until I had gone.

In Nick King’s kitchen, I unlocked the back door, stepped outside, and pulled the door closed behind me. The lock made a satisfying click in its chamber. I pulled off the latex gloves and returned them to my pocket. A quick scan of the back yard confirmed that no one had seen me and summoned the police. I had accomplished my mission, the law and Nick King’s four-legged security system notwithstanding. The dependable Craig Walker brand of luck had come through for me yet again.