Termination Man: a novel (64 page)

Penance
, I thought.
How can a man ever atone for all of his sins? Is such a thing even possible?

After a while, I reached the tentative conclusion that no, it was not; but that impossibility did not excuse me from trying. Half efforts were almost certainly better than nothing.

And then I thought about another person: One who had taken a life and who would now suffer the state’s punishment.

I did not want to see her; in fact, I wanted to forget that she even existed. But I knew that I would have to see her, sooner or later. That, too, was another step of the great penance that had now become such a large portion of my life’s work.

The last time I saw Claire Turner, she was wearing the orange jumpsuit of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. I drove north from Dayton to visit her one Saturday. She was incarcerated in the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, about forty miles outside Columbus.

After signing in and completing a short orientation program for first-time visitors, I waited for Claire in a small visiting room: There was a single table
with two chairs
, cinderblock walls
painted institutional white
, and a window from where a guard would be watching us while we talked.

A female corrections officer led her in. The CO directed Claire to sit in the chair opposite me, on the other side of the table.

“Fifteen minutes,” the CO said. “I’ll be right outside the window.”

“Okay,” I said. The corrections officer nodded and left the room. The door clicked shut behind her.

I wondered what I should say. I didn’t have a prepared monologue—not even any conversation openers. Claire and I had been together in a lot of situations: We had done uncover corporate jobs. We had eaten and had drinks together numerous times. And, of course, we had shared the same bed on more than one occasion. Despite our frequent disagreements—including our final one involving Shawn Myers—I had never had any problem talking to her. I had never been reticent in her presence.

Until now.

The previous weeks had taken their toll on Claire. She was still a physically attractive woman, I supposed; but no longer the stunner who had so easily lured Alan Ferguson into that storage room at UP&S. As the corrections officer led her in, I noticed that she had lost weight. Her cheeks looked sunken. Her blonde hair—which had previously been coiffed by the most expensive salons—was now stringy and damp. It had been cut to just short of shoulder length.

I had to say something. So I blurted out the first words that came to mind.

“How are you doing, Claire?”

“How does it look like I’m doing?”

I felt myself squirming in the hard plastic chair.

“You’re looking good, all things considered.”

“I look like hell. And I feel like hell. I’ve thrown my life away. And I’ve killed a man.”

I had known that this was going to be an uncomfortable meeting. Nevertheless, I felt that I owed her my presence here. Although I had in fact tried to stop her in the end, I had somehow abetted her downfall.
Was it accurate to say that Claire would not have been residing in this institution if not for me? If not for Craig Walker Consulting?

It was.

And there was another, more important matter to consider. While Claire was paying an enormous price, Alan had paid an even greater price. Not to mention the people that Alan had left behind. His two daughters, who would now have to go through life without their father. 

“How is the legal situation coming?” I asked.

Claire’s trial was scheduled to begin in three weeks. Not surprisingly, the case had attracted its share of notoriety. It isn’t everyday that a gorgeous, highly paid management consultant guns down a man.

“How do you think it’s going?” she asked. “You’ve seen what the media has been saying about me, right?”

Just last week, an op-ed opinion piece in the
Columbus Dispatch
had laid out the reasons why Claire Turner should receive the maximum penalty for taking Alan Ferguson’s life. The editorial had been entitled: “
In this Case, the Devil really Does Wear Prada
”—a pun on the 2006 movie that starred Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep.

Since there was no evidence of premeditation, Claire would not be eligible for the death penalty. But she would likely be going to jail for a long, long time.

“My attorney says that with good behavior, I might be able to get paroled in twenty or twenty-five years. I’ll be in my fifties.” She looked straight at me, and for the first time, I saw tears in Claire Turner’s eyes. But were they tears for the man she had killed, or only for that dream of hers that had gone horribly wrong?

“Was it worth it?” she asked. “Tell me, Craig.”

Was it worth it?
The answer was so obvious that no actual response was required. Four people had died as a result our operations at UP&S: Lucy, Alan, Nick King, and Shawn Myers. Claire’s life was all but over. All of these victims were themselves in some way responsible for their own fates. I had never lost my conviction that Lucy and Alan should have exercised their free wills, and found their own paths out of the bad situation that their company had become. Nick and Shawn were obviously guilty—as was Claire.

And what about me?
I could have told Kurt, Beth, and Bernie no at any time. I could have walked away.

Or
could I have?
I remembered what Claire had said that one night when we were arguing. Craig Walker Consulting was only guilty of removing people from jobs that they don't particularly like anyway. Others remove those who actually value their jobs, by sending their work to third-world sweatshops where workers are paid pennies on the dollar. 

But despite these lingering questions, I felt that I owed Claire an answer.

“No, Claire,” I said. “It wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth it at all.”

For the rest of our time together, we talked about inconsequential things. She told me a little about life in the women’s prison. It was generally not as brutal the male equivalent, though there were occasional fights between female inmates. I asked her if there was anything I could do for her. She shook her head; she was beyond my help now.

“Craig,” she said. “Don’t come back here again. Okay? I—I don’t want to meet with you again.”

This, of course, was a statement that could have multiple interpretations. Was Claire so proud that she did not want me to witness her decline? Or did she blame me for her ruination—for the death of Shawn? Was she still lost in the illusion of what a partnership with Shawn Myers might have been?

“Alright,” I replied.

The door opened. My fifteen minutes with Claire had reached its end. The CO led Claire back to her cell, and I turned away from her—toward my future.

I should have known that it would be only a matter of time before Kevin Lang would contact me. Alan had told me that Kevin knew everything; and by now the turmoil at TP Automotive had found its way into every newspaper in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. With all the news that could be accessed online, Kevin would have been closely following these reports. I could imagine him turning over these online news blurbs in his head, comparing their content to his own theories regarding what had happened to him. Kevin Lang now had a connection to a vast corporate conspiracy that had ultimately led to violence. This fact would have increased his sense of persecution. And the ex-machine operator from GLFS wasn't the type to suffer in silence.

It began with a few emails. Then he somehow tracked down my cell phone number, too. Like Alan had said, you don’t have to be a highly paid business consultant nowadays in order to dig up information on the Internet.

I could have simply ignored Kevin Lang; and believe me, there was a voice inside me that said this was exactly what I should do. But Kevin Lang was unfinished business. He was a loose end for me—and I was a loose end for him. Somehow another meeting between us seemed predestined, as if we were two celestial bodies caught in a mutual gravitational pull.

He said that he wanted to meet, so I called his bluff by agreeing to a meeting. I drove to Cleveland one morning so that I could put the Kevin Lang situation to rest. It was an early March day, one that still hinted of the past winter rather than the approaching spring.  

We met in the parking lot of the Backstop Bar & Grill, where it had all begun—at least for Kevin. Kevin got out of his car as soon as he saw mine pull into the lot; and he wasted no time in telling me exactly what he thought about me.

“You’re a son-of-a-bitch,” Kevin said.

I shrugged. I figured that I deserved that. It was certainly no less than I would have said had I been in Kevin’s shoes. Before I got out of my car, I had been leaning toward opening with an apology. It is difficult, though, to apologize to a man while he is so openly hostile toward you.

“You son-of-bitch,” he repeated.

Like so many employees who find themselves in a termination meeting, Kevin was past the point of rational discourse and was simply venting. He continued this line of attack for a while, until I finally decided that I had grown tired of listening to it.

“You want to take a swing at me, Kevin? Go ahead. It’s just the two of us here. And who knows—I might not even do anything to stop you. I’m sure you’ve got some of your buddies inside that bar, to back you up if things don't go your way.”

Kevin shook his head in disgust. “Oh, I see your angle. I’ve found you, and you know that I’ve found you. And now you think that you’re going to have to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, waiting for me to take a shot at you.”

The suggestion sent a chill up my spine. I thought about the three people from UP&S who had been killed by gunshots. I recalled those old fears of mine—fears that I would be tracked down by one of my targets. Well, I
had
been tracked down, hadn’t I?

“Something like that,” I said.

Kevin looked away from me, and considered the matter for a brief while before he spoke.

“A few years ago,” he said. “I watched this documentary about some country in the developing world that had been under a dictatorship. Well, then the dictatorship fell; and they freed all the political prisoners and put the henchmen of the old regime on trial. One of the former political prisoners, a man who had been tortured, was given the opportunity to decide the fate of the man who had been his primary guard in prison. The man who had caused him so much suffering. And when he was given the chance to take his revenge, do you know what he did?”

“I would imagine that he ordered the former prison guard to be strung up and shot,” I said.

“No,” Kevin said. “He looked into the eyes of the man who had persecuted him and said: ‘Your punishment is that I forgive you.’”

“So you’re saying that what took place at GLFS is bygones,” I said.

Kevin shook his head. “Not hardly. I’m saying that I’m not going after you in any way. You came here, and you listened to what I had to say to you. That’s all I wanted. Now you can go about your life. And you won’t have to worry that I’m going to come up behind you with a crowbar someday, or take a potshot at you when you open your front door one morning. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll ever forget what you did. What you are.”

“Fair enough,” I said. And not for the first time in recent weeks I wondered:
What exactly am I?
I was only following my clients’ instructions, of course. I was fulfilling my contracts. But wasn’t that line of argument so often the refuge of men who had harmed others? Adolf Eichmann, after all, also claimed that he had only been following orders. I knew that this metaphor was extreme; I was no Eichmann, not by a long shot. But still…

Kevin gave me a long, appraising look and shook his head.

“What?” I asked.

“You’ll do fine,” he said. “You’ll land on your feet. People like you always do. You’ll find a way to skate by, to turn the system to your advantage.”

People like me? What did he mean by that? People who were born with certain advantages? People who were willing to selectively ignore their moral compass
es
?

Kevin was walking away from me now. “Good luck to you,” I said to his back—because it was the only thing I could think of to say.

He turned around and faced me. “If you think that can make things better, you’re wrong. I don’t want your good wishes. I don’t want anything from you. I never want to see your face or hear your name again.”

Kevin did not wait for my response. He continued walking into the Backstop Bar & Grill, leaving me to stand alone in the parking lot. I had come to this meeting with the belief that Kevin would forfeit his dignity by doing something foolish; but it had not turned out that way. Somehow Kevin Lang, by exercising and pledging his restraint in the face of a great injustice, had won this round.