The Dinosaur Club

by William Heffernan

  “Does the company have any government contracts?”

  “Yes. They’ve been working on a fiber-optic gyroscope for missile guidance systems, but it’s purely research and development; there’s no production contract in hand.”

  Kijewski shrugged. “Maybe they want to hide their problems until they have one. The government is notorious about letting companies get away with that. Even helping them. Then they shell out beaucoup bucks to correct production glitches that should have been corrected beforehand.”

  Samantha thought about it, nodded. “If that’s being done, it’s an attempt to defraud.”

  “Hey, for today’s bozos that’s just good business. But if it’s there, I’ll find it.” Kijewski winked at her. “There’ll be memoranda, and memoranda are something everyone gets careless about. It was safer in the old days, when everything was on paper and they just shredded the evidence. Now …” He waggled his eyebrows and let out a soft cackle.

  Samantha looked at her watch, then asked, “What is all this going to cost?”

  Kijewski gave an exaggerated shrug. “Hey, things are slow, and this sounds like it could be fun. It’s also something I can do myself. If it gets more involved, and I have to bring my cohorts in, then we’ll talk money. Otherwise, consider yourself obligated for one heavy dinner at the Four Seasons.” He grinned and fluttered his eyebrows again. “I love to go there. I love to walk in in my jeans and sneakers, and watch them all shit.” His yellow/brown teeth flashed again. “If I can walk in with a gorgeous woman, even cooler.”

  Samantha reached across and lightly stroked his cheek. “You’re a doll, Stanley:”

  Kijewski’s revolting smile widened. “If you think you like me now, wait’ll my wizardry nails these humps. Then you’ll think I’m Tom Cruise.”

  No, I won’t, Samantha thought. But I’ll hug you so hard your Snickers bar will melt. She gave him one of her best smiles and raised her glass. “To the Four Seasons,” she said.

  Charlie Waters stroked the ball and watched it run across the green, then veer off and miss the cup by a foot. He frowned.

  Carter Bennett stood eight feet to his rear, marveling at the man’s total lack of hand-to-eye coordination. Losing to Waters at golf was undoubtedly the hardest part of his job.

  Waters tapped the ball in, retrieved it, then walked sullenly to their golf cart and slid his putter into his golf bag. They drove on to the next green, Waters quietly fuming over his missed shot.

  “So you’re certain Jack bought the package,” he said at length.

  “Positive,” Bennett said. “When I told him about the raise, you could almost see his lawyer’s bills falling from his shoulders.”

  “Frankly I’m surprised he bit so hard, so fast,” Waters said. “I always thought he was tougher than that. But…” He let the sentence die, then looked over at Bennett, who was just pulling up to the next green. “Just make sure he keeps his promise about those tests. We don’t want our problems finding their way to the Street. Especially when they’re not on our end. I’ve already sent out memoranda on it, but Jack Fallon could charm the skin off a rattlesnake. So let’s remain alert.”

  Bennett fought back a smile. Fallon was dead meat. Bought and paid for and wrapped for delivery. But if Waters couldn’t see it, he wasn’t about to contradict him. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” he said. “In fact, I’ll be escalating the pressure on one of his people next week. It should provide a nice little test of Fallon’s commitment.”

  “What are you planning?” Waters asked.

  Bennett told him.

  Waters chuckled, shook his head. “Jesus, Carter, that’s insidious. Even for you. That should send tremors through the whole company.” His chuckle turned into a laugh. “Hell, every washroom stall will be filled. And everybody in middle management will be trying to pad their expense accounts to cover liquid lunches.”

  “It’ll be cheap at half the price,” Bennett said.

  “Yes, it will,” Waters agreed. “Yes, it will.”

  They pulled up to the next green. Waters put his hand on Carter’s arm as he prepared to exit the cart. “What’s happening with this phony newsletter and those E-mail memos? Have you found the source?”

  Bennett had known the question would come sooner or later and he gritted his teeth. “Not yet, but I have people working on it.” He thought about the gun magazines that had been found in the trash of the sales department. There had even been an article explaining how to make bombs. One of those articles had been mailed to him, together with a map that detailed the route from the Chrysler Building to his apartment. It had both shaken and angered him, and he had ordered Les Gavin to get to the bottom of it, to physically search offices, if necessary. But Gavin had failed miserably. The trash in question had been in the bullpen area outside Wally Green’s office and could have been placed there by any of his salespeople.

  Waters pulled some folded papers from his shirt pocket and handed them to Bennett. “Have you seen this?” he asked.

  Bennett unfolded the papers, revealing the latest issue of The Daily Downsizer. The headline read: WATERS CABLE BUYS NURSING HOME. EMPLOYEES OVER 45 OFFERED ROOM AND BOARD AT REDUCED RATES. The article that followed, which Bennett had already read, liberally quoted both him and Chambers. In it they explained that a fleet of ambulances would arrive at the Chrysler Building next week to move employees to the nursing home as part of a resource relocation. The plan, the article alleged, involved the nonrenewal of four thousand jobs, as a means of refocusing the skill mix and implementing a much needed redundancy elimination. What was especially painful was that Bennett had used exactly those terms on various occasions. That realization had led him to have his office swept for bugging devices. But none was found.

  “I’ve already seen it,” he said now.

  “Well, you haven’t seen this,” Waters said. “This goddamned newsletter was mailed to my home.” He jabbed a finger at the envelope. Arrows had been drawn, pointing to the stamp affixed at one corner. It was one the government had issued a year earlier. It depicted a large rodent, and was intended to celebrate the Chinese New Year—The Year of the Rat.

  “I received a similar letter,” Bennett said.

  Waters looked at him in the same way Bennett often looked at Chambers and Gavin. “Get on the stick, Carter,” he snapped. “We need to put a stop to this. And we need to do it now.”

  George Valasquez stared at Fallon, his eyes narrowed into a suspicious squint.

  Fallon returned the stare. “Don’t give me that look, George. If I was out to screw anybody, I wouldn’t be standing here talking about it.”

  They had gathered at Ryan and McFaddan’s, a popular watering hole on Second Avenue and Forty-second Street, only two blocks from the office. It was four o’clock, an hour before their normal gym time, and the bar was empty as expected; the lingering smell of stale beer, together with two bored bartenders, the only signs of human presence, past or yet to come.

  “So why’d they hand you a raise?” Valasquez asked. They were clustered at the far end, away from the bartenders’ always curious ears.

  Fallon’s jaw tightened. He placed his draft beer on the mahogany bar with an audible crack. “They were buying me, George. It’s that simple. It’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?” He glanced at the others; saw some flickers of doubt.

  “And you took it,” Valasquez said.

  Fallon wanted to reach out and grab the man by his skinny throat. He held back, fought to keep anger from his voice. The man is just frightened, he kept assuring himself. “That’s right, George. I played dumb and said thank you very much. What would you have done?”

  Wally Green didn’t give George a chance to answer. “Hey, he would of blown Bennett’s brains out.” He glared at the smaller man. “You’re being an asshole, George.”

  “Let’s calm down.” It was Ben Constantini. He moved his square, heavy body between Green and Valasquez like a referee in a boxing match. He faced Fallon. “So what did
the little prick tell you?” he asked.

  “Nothing we didn’t already know. He assured me I’d have input in any final buyout plan, but there’s no guarantee he’ll live up to it.”

  “So what was the alternative?” It was Jim Malloy.

  Fallon gave him a sick grin. “I think they would have tossed my butt out on the street. Just to make sure I didn’t organize any resistance.” He shrugged. “I think this Dinosaur Club thing is making them nervous. I’m just not entirely sure why.”

  “Maybe it’s the T-shirts,” Annie Schwartz suggested. “People always get nervous when I make one of my many fashion statements.” She winked at Fallon, then turned serious. “Or maybe they think we’re a lot better organized than we are.” She tilted her head to one side. “Look, I think we’re all being a little schmucky about this. I understand that. We’re all scared.” She saw some faces scowl at the word, and she let out a coarse laugh. “Oh, I know, it’s only the poor, helpless women who get scared. But let me tell you big guys something. The reason some of us are ready to jump on Jack is because we’re all scared shitless. We’re scared that if he walks away, we won’t have him to lean on. So let’s screw our heads back on and get real. Okay?”

  Fallon listened to mumbled agreement, as he took in his ragtag group of dinosaurs. He was grateful to Annie, but he also knew the suspicion and the fear would not go away.

  “Someone I spoke to thinks the real concern for Waters and Bennett is timing,” he said at length. “That they’re trying to buy me off because they don’t want any resistance until they’ve picked enough of us off.”

  “They’ve already started that game,” Joe Hartman said. “Look what they’re doing to Jim. I’m just wondering when they’ll get down to me.”

  Six pairs of eyes turned to Malloy.

  “Hey, don’t worry about me. I can take anything they dish out.” It was pure bravado. Fallon could hear it in his voice, and as eyes were slowly averted, he could see the others knew it as well.

  “We better get ready for more.” Fallon’s words snapped their attention back. He looked at each of them in turn. “If timing is a part of this, and if Bennett thinks he’s got it all under control, he’ll start picking up the pace.”

  Malloy’s face paled. “You think you’ll know when he’s ready to make his next move?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m hoping. But the important thing is, we stick together. Nobody buckles. Nobody quits. We play their game and live with whatever they hand down.” He turned back to Valasquez. “Whether they hand us a pile of shit or a bouquet of roses. Okay?”

  Valasquez curled his lips. “Yeah, sure, Jack.”

  “Georgie, when we get to the gym, I’m gonna rap you upside the head with one of the dumbbells,” Wally snapped.

  “Come on, George. Cool down.” It was Constantini again. “Let’s not jump all over Jack.” He turned to Fallon. “You’re right, about us needing to hang together on this. But this business about the raise isn’t making it easy. Annie’s right. We’re all pretty scared.”

  Fallon raised his hands. “Look, everybody’s nervous. I know I am. But they’re nervous, too. Bennett made a point about the tests we tried to have run. He wants us to back off; leave it alone. He claims it’s a budget issue, but I’m not so sure. I think it may be a part of this whole thing. So I want to find a way to run those tests without his knowing.”

  “That’s a tough nut,” Malloy said. “They have pretty tight controls. Some lab tech would have to do it on his own time and not record what he did in the laboratory log. And if nobody’s willing to do that, then one of us would have to request it.” Fear returned to his eyes. “Either way, whoever did it could get himself canned. Hell, they sent Wally a letter of reprimand about the last test we tried to get.”

  Fallon had scotched the reprimand Willis Chambers had sent to Wally. He had simply sent a memo to personnel, for inclusion in Wally’s personnel file, stating that he, not Green, had ordered the tests. But this was different.

  “Yeah, he could,” Fallon said. “If he got caught.” He grinned at them. “But we’re all going to get canned anyway, right?” He watched several of them nervously shift their weight. They still didn’t want to believe it, he thought. They were terminal patients, each praying a cure would be found before they croaked. “Look, it’s something we’ve got to do,” he said. “I’ve got a trip scheduled to Washington tomorrow. But I’m going to Plattsburgh instead. I’m going to see Stuart Robaire and lay it all out, try to convince him to run the tests on the QT.”

  “He wasn’t too helpful when we were up there,” Wally said. “Bennett called and said boo, and Robaire wet his pants. What makes you think it’ll be any different this time?”

  Fallon smirked at him. “I’m supposed to be a salesman, right?” Wally rolled his eyes. Fallon’s smirk turned into a laugh. “Okay, so I’m management. I haven’t sold anything in a long time. So it’s time I got off my ass and sold something to someone. Robaire’s elected.”

  “There may be another way.” It was Annie, and all eyes had turned toward her. “It’s just an idea,” she continued. “But my niece is married to a guy who’s an assistant professor at M.I.T. He’s a dork, but he’s always bragging how he works with the best minds in the country. And he owes me a little favor. If Robaire gave us some sample wire from different runs, I could ask him to run the tests, then get one of those geniuses to check the results.”

  “You think he’ll do it?” Fallon asked.

  “I think so.” She grinned at Fallon. “His name’s Paul Palango, and he likes to be called P.P.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s a nose picker and a farter, and according to my princess of a niece, she’s gotta use masking tape on P.P.’s little pee-pee every time she wants a little romance in her life. In short, he’s an all-around schmuck. But he owes me money, so I think he’ll do it if I ask him.”

  Fallon grinned, shook his head. “Sounds like nobody thinks I can sell Robaire. But it might be an easier route, and an outside evaluation would be even stronger.”

  “Especially M.I.T.,” Wally added. “I like it, Jack.”

  “Why don’t we cut the roundabout bullshit and just make Bennett tell us,” Valasquez snapped. “If this crap about faulty wire is part of it, that bastard knows why.”

  Fallon stared at him. “What do we do, George? Beat it out of him? Or do we just say please?”

  “We do whatever the hell we have to,” Valasquez snapped back. “We stop dancing around this goddamned thing. It’s not getting us anyplace. We start playing the game the way they play it. We make them do what we want.”

  Fallon glanced at the others, then glared at Valasquez. “Forget it, George. What you’re talking about would blow everything. And—just in case you haven’t noticed—we’re a bunch of middle-aged, overweight wire peddlers. This isn’t Don Corleone’s crew. I don’t want to hear this crap. Is that understood? We’ll get through this, but we’ll do it by sticking together and playing it smart.” He drew a breath and glanced at each of them again, then at his watch. “And speaking of middle-aged, overweight wire salesmen, it wouldn’t hurt if we hit some of those machines back at the gym.”

  Valasquez started to move past, then stopped. He stared up into Fallon’s eyes. “What are you gonna do when Bennett sees that you’re still working out with us, Jack? Say, ‘Don’t worry about it, Carter old buddy, we’re just a bunch of fat guys getting in shape’?”

  Fallon took hold of his arm, a bit tighter than necessary. He wished it was the man’s neck. He held George’s gaze. “I’m going to tell him that I’m lulling you into a sense of false security, George. And if he has any doubts, I’m gonna tell him to talk to you.”

  20

  STUART ROBAIRE LOOKED AS THOUGH HE’D JUST BEEN asked to play Russian roulette with five bullets. They were seated at a minuscule conference table in Robaire’s small, neat office at the Plattsburgh plant. It was glass-enclosed, and they could see his two assistants in even smaller adjoining offices.r />
  “All this talk about downsizing and buyouts has my wife terrified,” he said. “I tried to explain that to you last week. We have one kid in college, and another ready to go next year. If I lose my job, I don’t know what we’ll do.” He glanced at Annie Schwartz as if she would understand, almost as if her sex alone could corroborate his argument.

  Fallon pressed his hands against the table and stared at them. He had removed his wedding band weeks ago, but he could still see the slight discoloration that remained on his finger.

  “Some things won’t go away, Stuart.” He looked up at the man. He was in his mid to late forties, well within Bennett’s dinosaur range—one of the people who in a few short years would cost the company an additional one and a half percent in yearly pension contributions.

  Robaire stared back. His pinched, narrow face seemed suddenly more so. He had removed his glasses and was squinting to make up for his poor vision. He seemed to be gulping air, and his protruding Adam’s apple bobbed up and down with each nervous swallow.

  “I told you about the group we formed in sales,” Fallon said. “We’re going to fight this thing, Stuart. But to be successful we have to have people throughout the company who are willing to fight it, too.”

  “But what do these tests have to do with it?” Robaire was nervously toying with the pocket protector in his shirt pocket. He kept checking the outside flap, as though assuring himself it still covered the exterior.

  “It may have nothing to do with it. I just don’t know.” Fallon held his eyes. “I do know that Bennett, and even Waters himself, seem determined that no one check into it.” He raised a mollifying hand. “Look, I just want you to give us samples. Enough so we can have the people at M.I.T. run tests on the gyroscopic cable you think Sprint got by mistake. You won’t be running any tests yourself. If anyone asks, Annie and I will say we needed the samples for a potential customer. We’ll cover you completely. We’ll play it as safe as you feel is necessary.”