by Mike Brogan
“That’s my plan. Last night I booked a flight to St. Kitts.”
“Makes sense,” Dryden said.
Kevin didn’t appear to agree.
They thanked Dean again, left The Mad Hatteras and walked outside. The sun warmed Madison’s face and she breathed in crisp river air. She looked over at the Boat Basin Café and saw two young boys tossing bread crumbs to some seagulls.
“When are you flying down to the Caribe National Bank?” Kevin asked.
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
Kevin’s eyes narrowed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your attacker.”
She appreciated Kevin’s concern, but she had a plan.
“I ... won’t be flying down.”
“What?”
“Tonight I’m staying in a Manhattan hotel under an assumed name. My bodyguard, Neal, will be there. And I’ve booked the flight under my assumed name, Shae Stuart. Tomorrow, I’ll wear a disguise to the airport. My attacker will never even know I’ve left Manhattan.”
Kevin nodded, but didn’t seem convinced. “Let’s hope he doesn’t. Tomorrow I’m driving my mom up to Albany for her semi-annual get-together with my uncle. I could reschedule her trip and come with you.”
Madison’s heart did a little dance. “That’s very kind, Kevin, but not necessary. I’m certain your mom’s get-together is very important to her. But thanks for offering to come.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
As Kevin flagged down a taxi, Madison was surprised at how pleased she’d been at the prospect of Kevin traveling with her to St. Kitts. No, she’d been more than pleased. She’d been excited about being with him.
Quickly, she reminded herself to cool it.
You have more pressing things on your mind, not the least of which is running a two billion dollar company, and trying to keep more clients from walking out the door.
And so far you’ve done a lousy job at both.
* * *
In his parked Lexus, Eugene P. Smith focused his powerful binoculars on the faces of Madison McKean and Kevin Jordan as they got into the taxi.
Smith had lip-read their conversation as they walked down the pier toward him. So, Madison, you plan to stay in a hotel tonight and fly to St. Kitts tomorrow....
See you soon....
Eighteen
Madison and Kevin stepped from the cab. She noticed something was bothering him as they walked toward the agency.
“Your chili dog acting up?” she asked.
“No. A mean, motivated moron is.”
“There’s a word for people like that.”
“What?”
“Client.”
Kevin forced a smile. “Actually, he is a client, and I’ve got a meeting with him now. I just can’t seem to work well with him. None of us can.”
Madison couldn’t imagine anyone who couldn’t work well with Kevin. “Who’s the client?”
“Maurice Dwarck, ad director for FACE UP Cosmetics.”
“FACE UP is a good brand.”
“Good brand, lousy client. He redesigns and rewrites every ad.”
“So why’d he hire our agency?”
“Good question.”
The ad industry was filled with stories of corporations who spent a hundred grand or more finding the right agency, then told the winning agency exactly how to design and write each ad. Sort of like choosing the best heart surgeon and then telling him how to do your quadruple bypass.
“His budget’s twenty million a year, but we’re losing money on the account.”
“Why?”
“We present three, four, five tested campaigns. He tosses them all out for no valid reason.” Kevin’s face reddened. “And, the guy’s a scumbag!”
“Why?”
“Dwarck believes his agency relationship entitles him to a physical relationship with any woman in our agency. At a recent sales convention, he groped one of our young copywriters and promised to get her promoted if she spent the night with him. When she said no, the bastard pinned her against a parked van and fondled her. Fortunately her friends walked by and he backed off. But he tried the same thing with one of our art directors the next night.”
What a pig! Madison thought, realizing it was time for her to act like the CEO. “I’ll attend the meeting.”
“Great! Hopefully your presence will keep Maurice in line.”
“Actually, I’d rather he didn’t know my title.”
* * *
Madison and Kevin walked into the conference room where everyone was settling in around the table. She identified Maurice Dwarck immediately. He was bragging loudly about some arm-twisting deal he’d made. Dwarck, about forty, was a huge, bull-shouldered man with flushed jowls and thinning black hair combed straight back. Thick, large eyebrows hung over brooding eyes that were the strangest shade of gray she’d ever seen. Gorilla hands, thick and matted with hair, stuck out from his monogrammed french cuffs.
Beside Dwarck sat a short blonde with large breasts that appeared to be erupting from the low-cut bodice of her cherry-red shiny leather dress. Kevin whispered that she was Soozie Bender, Dwarck’s personal assistant in all ways. Soozie seemed entranced by the wood grain in the conference table.
Madison signaled her colleagues that she didn’t want to be introduced.
Maurice Dwarck finished his bragging, turned around and acknowledged Kevin, then eyeballed Madison, his gaze sliding from her face to her blouse.
“Let’s get this thing over with,” Dwarck said, slurping his coffee.
Tess Jennings, the agency’s attractive FACE UP account director, explained that the meeting was called to review a FACE UP lipstick advertisement for Cosmopolitan and Oprah magazines. She then presented the ad layout and placed it in front of Dwarck. The ad’s Asian model was stunning, and her lipstick and make-up worked beautifully with her tawny skin. Madison thought the ad looked terrific.
“This ad,” Tess said, “tested thirty-nine percent higher than Revlon’s ad, and over forty-seven percent higher than L’Oréal and three other competitive ads. These are terrific figures!”
Dwarck was looking at Tess’s terrific figure.
Tess finished and everyone waited for Dwarck’s reaction. He sat still as a statue, apparently savoring his absolute power, then grabbed the ad and frowned as though searching for something to criticize.
“Where the hell’s my FACE UP logo?” Dwarck demanded.
About three inches from your nose! Madison wanted to say.
Tess pointed to the logo in the lower right corner of the ad.
“You call that a logo?” He slammed the ad back down on the table and folded his arms.
“That logo size is exactly appropriate for a full page advertisement,” Tess said. “If we make the logo bigger, it makes the ad less inviting to the reader.”
“Well, this reader wants it much bigger!” Dwarck said.
Kevin leaned forward. “Maurice...?”
“Yeah?”
“We researched this ad with a larger logo. It turned people off so fast, they flipped the page and missed the product message.”
“Yeah, well here’s my message: Bigger logo! A bigger logo sticks in their minds! Right, Soozie?”
Hearing her master’s voice, Soozie Bender stopped doodling with her Bic pen. “That’s right, Mr. Dwarck!”
“But the logo cannot stick, if they don’t even look at the page!” Kevin persisted.
Maurice snorted. “Look, here’s the way it is. First, you will double the size of my FACE UP logo. And second, you will stick my big double-sized logo right up in the headline where no one will miss the goddammed thing!”
From bad ... to worse, Madison realized, her anger welling up fast.
“Does anyone have a problem with that?” Dwarck said, jutting his jaw out defiantly.
The room was silent for several seconds.
“I do,” Madison said.
Dwarck actually chuckled. �
��You? Why don’t you stick to pouring coffee or whatever else you do around here.”
Madison forced herself to remain calm. “Mr. Dwarck, all we do at this agency is create ads. We do that ten, twelve hours or more a day. We know how to make people stop and read your ads. This research proves that. And you know more about FACE UP products than we ever will. So if we’ve written something factually wrong, we’ll gladly change it. But if it’s a question of style, like the size and location of the logo, well, that’s our expertise.”
“So...?”
“So, Mr. Dwarck, we won’t change it.”
Dwarck’s mouth fell open. “Just who the hell do you think you are? You’re just a gofer!”
She paused. “I have other responsibilities as well.”
“Are you actually saying the agency won’t make my logo bigger and stick it in the headline?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
The room went graveyard quiet.
Dwarck blinked rapidly, as though he was having trouble believing what she’d said. His jaw muscles bunched up. “Listen, Toots, no one talks to Maurice Dwarck like that. Either this agency makes my logo bigger, or I take my business elsewhere.”
All eyes shifted back to her.
“Perhaps your suggestion makes sense.”
“Damn right my bigger logo makes sense!”
“No. Taking your business elsewhere.”
Dwarck looked like he’d been whacked upside the head with a two-by-four. “I’ve had enough of your fucking insolence! I’m speaking to your new CEO!”
“You are,” she said.
“Damn right I am!
“No ... you ARE speaking to her.”
Maurice Dwarck’s eyes actually bulged from their sockets. He turned to Tess for verification. Tess nodded.
Enraged, Dwarck stood and yanked Soozie Bender to her feet, causing her BIC pen to flop deeply into her cleavage where it disappeared from sight.
“This is grounds for firing your agency,” Dwarck sputtered.
“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Dwarck,” Madison said. “Our agency hereby officially resigns your business. Our resignation is effective immediately. We’ll confirm it in writing this afternoon, and of course, we’ll handle your work with complete professionalism until you’ve selected another agency.”
Dwarck’s neck arteries bulged above his collar. “You wanna play rough, lady, I’ll show you rough! Advertising Age is going to run a big article next week about how rudely Turner Advertising’s new CEO treated me, a good and decent client.”
Madison nearly choked on good and decent. All eyes in the room swung back to her.
“If they run that article, the same issue will run an article that the good and decent Maurice Dwarck, and his bosses, won’t like.”
“What article?”
“About two Turner female employees who are considering filing criminal complaints of sexual harassment against their lecherous FACE UP client, one Maurice Dwarck.”
Dwarck’s face turned dark purple. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. Abruptly, he stormed from the room, Soozie following close enough to be his fanny pack. Madison heard him cursing loudly as they stormed to the elevator.
She looked back at her colleagues. They were grinning.
She grinned back. “So how does everyone think the meeting went?”
Nineteen
Harry Burkett sat at the computer in his basement office, deep in the bowels of Turner Advertising, savoring the afterglow of lunch: a slab of juicy prime rib, Caesar salad, oven browned potatoes and three double martinis. His old man had called martinis ‘razorblade soup,’ and they’d hurt like razor blades when the bastard began forcing them down Harry’s throat at the age of six, thinking Harry wouldn’t remember what happened next.
But Harry did remember ... the old man’s liquor breath, the sweat, the perverted sex. Harry remembered it all with shame ... and hatred.
But he’d overcome all that through hard work and reading self-esteem books. Today he had a decent job, lots of Gulf War medals, even officer status in his elite white supremacists group. He was a solid American, a normal guy.
Burkett turned to his computer and clicked onto his favorite new porn Web site, PrePubies, featuring pre-teen girls.
He sighed at the photos a few moments, then had to force himself back to work. He entered the agency’s internal computer network and began his midday check of the company’s departmental networks. All systems were functioning well. He then scanned outside log-ons to the company network and saw a typical number of employees logged on from their home computers.
Then he saw something that felt like a kick in the gut.
Kevin Jordan was logged on with an outside IP address. Impossible! Jordan had walked by his office thirty seconds ago! Some outsider was using Jordan’s username and password to enter the company files.
Which files?
His heart pounding, Burkett quickly tracked the intruder’s meandering pathway through the company’s private network and one minute later he had the answer.
The financial files!
SHIT! Cold sweat trickled down Burkett’s neck. Did the hacker change our numbers? Burkett’s mind reeled with the potential damage to the company, and him!
He yanked open his bottom desk drawer, grabbed his silver flask and chugged down more aquavit.
Quickly, he ran a special software program that highlighted any modifications made to the financial files in the last seventy-two hours. As he waited, he stood and paced back and forth, biting his nails, afraid to look at the screen, knowing he would be drawn and quartered if the hacker had altered any numbers.
Two minutes later, the computer beeped. Burkett forced himself to look at the screen.
Documents Un-modified.
Burkett collapsed in relief into his chair. Then, slowly, his hands curled into fists. He grabbed the phone and called CyberMan, an e-mail tracking wizard he often used. Burkett gave CyberMan the outsider’s IP address and demanded he get back with the hacker’s name and location fast. With the location, Burkett would go have a gun-to-head meeting with the sonofabitch!
Suddenly, he wondered whether the hacker was the same guy who hacked into the memo accusing Mark McKean of stealing $8.7 million dollars from the company?
Burkett scrolled through yesterday’s outside log-ons. Seconds later, his eyes froze on the same IP address!
He swallowed, knowing he now had to report these system incursions to the EVP. He’d rather disarm a ticking time bomb.
He sat back and closed his eyes. All of a sudden, the aquavit and prime rib and potatoes and salad and double martinis began to slosh around in his gut. He belched, and felt like he might vomit. But he forced himself to take control.
Like he did at seventeen when he beat the shit out of his old man. And like he did in Desert Storm where he had a license to kill and used it greasing Iraqi soldiers. After Iraq, the military sent him to computer school at Fort Gordon, Georgia.
But two years later, he realized his computer skills would earn him three times more money in the real world. So he quit the Army and got a job in Information Technology at Turner Advertising.
He liked the job, but he wouldn’t have it much longer if he didn’t stop the hacker.
Forty minutes later, CyberMan phoned.
“The hacker’s name is Dean Dryden.”
The guy on the yacht, Harry knew.
He stood and hurried toward the door.
Twenty
The Executive Vice President sipped black coffee as Harry Burkett walked in and plopped down in the chair opposite the desk. Burkett’s plum-red cheeks and gleaming eyes suggested he had consumed yet another martini lunch. As a man, Burkett left much to be desired. But his skill with computers and handling the less savory tasks in life, unencumbered as he was by moral restraints, had proven indispensable over the years.
And Harry’s secret little sexual perversion gave the EVP excellent control of the man.
&nbs
p; “I just heard back from CyberMan,” Burkett said. “He found out who hacked into our financial systems.”
“Who?”
“Dean Dryden. The guy McKean and Jordan went to see on the yacht.”
The Executive VP had suspected it was Dryden. “Destroy his computers.”
“Him, too?”
The EVP paused. “Only if it’s necessary.”
Burkett’s grin suggested he felt it was necessary.
“Did you hear back from Eugene P. Smith?”
“Yeah. He’s handling Madison. Don’t worry!”
“Do I look worried?”
Burkett blinked and looked down. “No.”
“I pay you and Eugene P. Smith to worry for me, right?”
“Right.”
The EVP picked up The Wall Street Journal, letting Harry know their meeting was finished. Burkett sprang to his feet and hurried from the office.
Leaning back, the EVP realized that Dean Dryden’s incursions into the agency financial files would only lead to a dead end. So would his attempt to trace the 8.7 million dollars, since the name of the original depositor was a fake name.
Only Mark McKean knew the person behind the name. And he was dead.
Soon to be joined by his lovely daughter.
* * *
Madison entered the restroom where she saw Alison Whitaker brushing her hair in front of the mirror. Whitaker turned and smiled.
“Hi, Alison.” Madison walked over beside her, noticing they were alone in the restroom. “How’d your World Motors’ meeting go?”
“It’s Rebate-A-Rama time!”
“In Boston, we called it RID time,” Madison said.
“RID?”
“Yeah, R-I-D. Rebates, Incentives, Discounting. Anything to get RID of the new cars, especially after the car company bankruptcies. Buyers are addicted to these deals, and pounce on them.”
“Damn,” Whitaker said.
“What?”
“You could have saved us sixty thousand dollars. The research firm just came up with the same findings.”