“I never said it was.”
“These guys, the AP, they’re dangerous people. They can be ruthless when they have to. We got something here and a lot of it has to do with the work you did. But I think you need to step aside and let me run with it.” She must have seen the disappointment on my face. I had never felt so alive as I did these past few weeks. To willingly walk away from it was going to be hard. Cheli tenderly reached out and touched my arm. “I also don’t want to see you get hurt.”
By the time we got back to the Huntington parking lot it was after dark and the guard at the gate was about to lock Cheli’s car in for the night. The air was cool and still. Los Angeles had this incredible ability to scald you during the day with relentless sunlight but at night, as soon as that sun slipped over the horizon, the air turned cool and quiet. I felt goose bumps on Cheli’s arm as I took hold of her hand. We silently leaned in and kissed, a little awkwardly at first, but it felt comforting to have someone in my arms again. As Cheli pulled away and got into her car, I heard her whisper, “Mirada arrasadora.”
THE STEAMER INCIDENT
Monday morning brought a new chapter to my Human Resources career. A regional manager for distribution returned to work after a long weekend only to discover that her office had been vandalized. This type of incident was rare to the corporate setting and warranted senior manager-level involvement due to the nature of the vandalism. As my co-manager, Paul, was out with his typical “eye problem” after a three-day weekend (he couldn’t see himself working after such a nice, long weekend), the investigation into the affair landed in my lap.
The first thing I did was pull the key card logs from the weekend, starting with Friday night. Every associate has a badge with their photo. More importantly, they have a chip that grants them access to-and-from every section of the building, including the parking garage. A computer logs all of the time stamps and keeps it for three years. These logs have proved invaluable in theft investigations and when building a case for termination against an associate. Between your computer log and key card log, we were able to piece together your entire day, from what favorite gossip sites you frequented to the number of bathroom breaks you took.
It didn’t take long to narrow it down to a single suspect, though the name surprised even me. The associate in question was the administrative assistant to the woman whose office was vandalized. She was also a twenty-year vet to the organization and quite possibly the gentlest human soul ever to grace this land. One couldn’t walk past her desk before 9 a.m. without her wishing you a cheerful “good morning” and likewise after 3 p.m. a genuine “good evening.” Her contributions to the company far exceeded her daily duties as an assistant. She organized the annual Adopt-A-Family charity event where the company would provide gifts and essentials to needy families around the holidays. There inevitably would be a shortfall in the funding from people who “forgot” to pay their five dollars for the privilege to wear jeans on Fridays, and this woman would quietly make up the difference out of her own pocket. She held a free knitting class during lunch on Wednesdays, baked homemade cakes for every monthly birthday celebration, read to disadvantaged children at nearby schools, decorated cubicles for associate anniversaries, and even volunteered for the job no one wanted which was as floor warden during earthquake evacuation drills, a job that ensured — in the event of an actual earthquake — she’d be the last person out of the building. Knowing all this, I was hard-pressed to believe, despite the mounting evidence against her, that this sweet, little lady would come into the office early on a Saturday morning to defecate on the chair of her direct report.
I brought the woman into my office for some “fact finding.” By all appearances, the suspect showed no signs of guilt. She was her usual cheerful self and even remembered that last week was my twenty-third anniversary with the firm. I didn’t want to let on that she was our person of interest in the case and began my questioning in a breezy fashion.
“Oh my goodness,” she started characteristically, “what a thing to do. I can’t fathom someone from this company doing that. It’s simply tragic.”
“Yes, very tragic.”
The woman recapped the morning in concise detail. When she got to the part of the discovery of the excrement, she took a few moments to gather herself. The words did not come easily and appeared to visibly upset her.
“The poor thing let out a scream. I must admit, I feared the worst.”
“Worse than what was sitting on her chair?”
“I thought…she may have lost a loved one,” she said and made the sign of the cross. “It was that kind of scream.”
“You work closely with Ms. Timmons. Can you think of any incidents that we should be aware of? Any conflicts she may have had with other associates?”
“I can’t imagine anyone at the company doing such a thing.”
“I know, you said that earlier. But even small things can lead to larger consequences. People we think we know are capable of doing things we never thought possible.”
I thought I saw her eye twitch, or was it a twinkle?
“Not anyone I know. And I know people.”
“What’s it like working for Ms. Timmons?”
“Ms. Timmons?” she repeated as if there were some confusion on who we were talking about. “She’s a smart woman, very dedicated. Even when she’s not in the office I can see she’s logged on from home.”
“And working with her? What’s that like?”
“Fine. No real issues.” It felt like there was more, it just needed some time to coax it out. It didn’t take much time. “Sure, she can be particular at times about the process but we’re all in this together and in the end we get the work done, which is what really matters.”
And there it was — the root of the issue.
“Does she micro-manage?”
“Goodness, no. I didn’t mean to imply that.” Micro-management was commonly levied against most mid-level managers. “Really, it’s about finding that balance in styles. It all works out in the end.”
It was the second time she used the phrase “in the end” like there was some inevitable outcome that was beyond her control, one she had to either accept willingly or unwillingly.
“Is she fair?”
“Yes, she’s very clear in what she asks us.”
“And in what she asks of you?”
“We’ve struck that right balance in approaches.”
“And on how you’re evaluated?”
“Very consistently.”
She had the right answers but to questions I wasn’t asking. The woman’s mounting frustration was palpable. She began this manic gesture with her hand where she touched her thumb with each of her fingers — pinkie first, then ring finger, middle, and finally index — and then start it all over again. She did it with an obsessive-compulsive rhythm.
One of the dirty secrets in corporate America was this: the good never go unpunished. This administrative assistant was a dynamo, an individual who truly helped make the place run. And to reward her for her good work, she was transferred to Ms. Timmons, a woman whose “approach” had alienated half of the company and run through at least ten administrative assistants over the last seven years. Most either quit or were terminated. And rather than solve the issue head-on by going to the root of the problem, they decided to take a valuable asset like this sweet administrative assistant sitting before me and thrust her into the hell which was working with Ms. Timmons.
Old-fashioned harassment — the pat-on-the-ass kind — was rare and all but extinct from Corporate America. What cropped up in its place was a more insidious form of harassment that was just as harmful as it was totally legal. This new form was an ultra-passive aggressiveness, meted out in a way that remained within the rules of the company and always with a smile.
Take a simple mistake like printing up the wrong handout for a meeting. A normal person would simply correct your mistake and ask for the right handout. A normal jerk would call you a
“dumb ass” and then ask for the right handout. Ms. Timmons would do something differently. She’d most likely start like this.
“I noticed you printed the wrong handout for the meeting.” Her voice would be soft and treacly. She’d most likely have an expression of honest-to-goodness concern. Then she’d say, “Did you mean to print the wrong handout?” That question alone has no merit, as only a total nincompoop would willfully make a mistake like that. But what it does is force you to answer the question. It wouldn’t end there. “Are there any issues you are dealing with that led to this mistake?” Again, this is all above-the-board. If brought to HR, Ms. Timmons could claim she was trying to identify any obstructions to the associate’s ability to do quality work. Although your answer would be that there were no issues and that it wouldn’t happen again, she would recommend you take a time management course (God help you if you declined as this would show an unwillingness to develop) and now you are sentenced to an eight-hour seminar with some hack from a corporate consulting firm. Have this done to you all day, every day and you too might revert to your pure animal instincts and take a dump on someone’s ergonomic chair.
I watched the woman do her nervous finger dance and I was overcome with a great sadness because I had contributed to this mess. All my work in HR had enabled people like Ms. Timmons to exact their torture on people who couldn’t defend themselves. My job was to protect those people and here I was an accomplice in their dirty work.
I don’t know what came over me but I reached out and took hold of the woman’s hand. I could still feel her fingers continue their incessant tapping but I slowly squeezed her hand and they eventually stopped.
She knew that I knew, but it didn’t matter. I closed the case as unsolved and set about a plan to transfer the unnamed administrative assistant to a more accommodating position.
I also decided to question Claire about what we had discovered. Avoiding a confrontation in the hopes that things would reconcile naturally simply wasn’t the right thing to do.
* * *
Claire’s office was in downtown off the hill on Figueroa in one of the relatively new buildings overlooking the freeway. I took a shortcut through the Bonaventure Hotel and prepared what I was going to say. I decided to confront her about her involvement in person so I could see her reaction to my questions. Not calling ahead ensured I’d get visceral reactions. After five minutes of poring over approaches I realized I still wasn’t out of the hotel. With its maze-like structure of half loops and symmetrical concrete cylinders I felt like a hamster running in place on a Venn diagram. “That’s the point,” one of our architecturally-inclined graphic designers once told me. Apparently, only Japanese businessmen got the building’s intentions as they were the few remaining people who still rented office space there.
I finally found my way out of the rabbit hole and skirted down Flower, under the Fourth Street overpass where the city’s bike messengers gathered to smoke dope when they weren’t being bothered to actually have to make a delivery. Claire’s building had a marble-encrusted lobby and two security guards who waved me through to the elevators even though I had a badge that didn’t match any of the others walking past. The elevator spat me out on the top floor into a lobby with a cute, young girl at the reception desk. The general rule for office “eye candy”: the film industry and real estate firms took it seriously; everyone else hired your Great Aunt from Pacoima.
“I’m here to see Claire Courtwright,” I told the young girl with green eyes and a low-cut blouse that had the strength of an industrial magnet.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.
“Yes, she told me to swing by when I made it downtown. I’m her husband,” I added.
The receptionist’s cool tone immediately changed. Nothing was more desirable than someone who belongs to someone you looked up to. The young girl gobbled up the phone and enthusiastically called Claire’s office.
“She’ll be right out,” the girl announced cheerfully.
I sidled over to the waiting lounge with its clean-lined sofas and glass coffee table. One of the magazines featured a cover story on Valenti’s philanthropic work. He clearly didn’t adhere to Maimonides’s Eight Degrees of Charity. For every dollar he gave to a worthy cause he spent three more dollars publicly promoting how generous he was. Every Sunday he took out a full page ad in the Times to thank himself for all the great work he was doing for Los Angeles charities. The ad would feature a dozen or so heads of local non-profits who had benefitted from Valenti’s largesse. All the participants looked like they had been forced at gunpoint to utter the quotes attributed to them in the captions below their faces. Everyone on the page was extremely grateful but it didn’t seem like they had much of a choice.
“This is a surprise,” Claire said behind me.
She looked good in her business suit and hair neatly pulled back in a clasp. The receptionist secretly eyed us while feigning interest in her computer screen.
“Do you have a minute to talk?” I asked.
“Not really,” Claire said and checked her watch. “Is something wrong?”
“I want to talk over a couple of things.”
“You’re acting suspicious.”
“Come on, let’s go grab a coffee.”
Claire reluctantly agreed after looking back to her office like there was some personification of “work” tapping his watch and reminding her of her duties.
“I’m just stepping out,” she said to the receptionist. “I’ll be back in a few.”
We grabbed lattes at the coffee stand in the lobby of the building. I tried to form the words in my head but it was hard to concentrate. The marbled floors, walls, and pillars made it very hard to hear anything. All the voices around us merged into a single, incomprehensible echo. The barista banging used grinds from the machine didn’t help.
“Say that again,” I asked, “I can’t hear you.”
“Don’t make me repeat it.”
“Seriously, I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”
She looked annoyed.
“Claire, I didn’t hear you with all this noise. Please repeat what you said.”
“I want a divorce,” she blurted out.
The skin tingled in my face and arms and I felt the blood suddenly pumping through my body.
“Okay, I heard it that time. Jesus…really?”
“I think it’s the best thing for us.”
“I’d ask that you refrain from making judgments about ‘us’ without first conferring with me.”
“Don’t be a nit.”
“Nice, I get delivered this news at a shitty coffee cart in a crowded lobby and then get called names because I don’t like it.”
“You know it isn’t going to work —”
“No, no I don’t know that. And stop making up my mind for me.”
“I know it isn’t going to work.”
It was just like Claire — here I came to confront her about her questionable involvement in the dealings around The Deakins Building, Langford’s murder, and Ed’s disappearance and she undercuts me with her announcement.
“Are you seeing someone?”
“Stop.”
“That toolbag from Valenti’s office, I assume. Boy, you’re really making a name for yourself.”
She didn’t justify my barb by responding to it. She had the quiet balance of a person who had already thought the entire thing through to its very last move. I secretly cursed myself for coming down here. I knew all along this was the unavoidable outcome of our separation and yet I had avoided it as long as I could.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, Chuck,” she said, placing her hand over mine. Taking the high ground was easy when you know you’re the one walking away a stronger person. I mustered the composure to play the same game.
“You’re right, Claire. I’m sorry for what I said.” I placed my other hand over hers so we now had that two-fisted handshake sales guys like to do to prove they care. I then gave that extra
squeeze to show how serious I was. She may have taken the high ground, but I took the goddamned bluff above it.
Her eyes started to well up and we stayed locked in that embrace for what seemed like an hour.
“I’m happy that we can get through this amicably,” she said, which was code for “let’s not make a scene.”
That part I didn’t agree to.
KNIGHTS ERRANT OF THE PURPLE CRUSADERS
The ascendency of football to the title of “America’s game” coincided with a rash of football analogies in the workplace. We no longer managed a project. We worked on “moving the ball down the field.” And when the project went awry someone invariably called an “audible.” Never had so many balls been “put through the uprights,” so many “chinstraps” been buckled, so many “timeouts” called than over the last year in my office. Luckily, the other true football tradition of towel slapping didn’t catch on. When Easy Mike and I “huddled up” to “run the X’s and O’s” on the board of the Deakins game, we threw out those tired gridiron phrases and went old school — we convened in the War Room.
The War Room was actually a corner of Mike’s office with a dry erase board and an endless supply of colored markers and Post-It notes. We created a DNA map of the case, the nucleus of which was a circle around Ed’s name. We added all of the players — Claire, Valenti, Temekian, Ashry-whatever-his-name-was, and anyone who might be involved — and then drew lines from names where we knew there was a connection. The line was labeled with whatever information we had. So Claire’s bubble and Langford’s had a note that they brokered deals together. Anything we didn’t know was marked with a question mark. The result was a dizzying web of facts, potential facts, and missing facts.
“This Temekian character confuses me,” Mike said as he tapped a printout of his mugshot. “He’s telling Ed’s kid to sell the building even though Ed is missing. We know he talked to Ed near the day he disappeared. We also know he’s going around threatening people in this block of Holcomb Street, a stone’s throw from the Deakins Building, and forcing them to sell the buildings on the cheap. That much we know. One thing we don’t know is this.” He wrote a new name on the board.
Smile Now, Cry Later (Chuck Restic Mystery Book 1) Page 10