Lucky Leonardo

by Jonathan D. Canter

  But recently, to wit the divorce, including without limitation the divorce, or however else they would say it to cover and/or preserve their loopholes, the lawyers in and near his life were multiplying, assuming positions of leadership and responsibility, standing at turns in the road, directing traffic. Like he exited the highway and followed Brockleman’s lawyerly directions around the bend to the right, came to a complete stop at the flashing red light, and turned onto DeltaTek Drive, a half-mile, two-lane strip through thick woods ending at the seven-story, glass-walled DeltaTek building, which was circled by parking lots and naturalistic plantings, and seemed calm and ominously normal. Like any other corporate day.

  He paused at the little security house. A uniformed guard stepped out, gave him an eyeball, and waved him through. “Awfully normal,” Leonardo thought. He parked in a visitor spot near the front door. As he climbed out of his car he was approached by a thickly-built, neatly-dressed man carrying a walkie-talkie, with a picture identification badge hanging from his neck.

  “Dr. Cook?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” Leonardo answered.

  “Welcome to DeltaTek. I’m Johnny Angelo. Attorney Brockleman asked me to greet you and escort you upstairs.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That’s a nice car you have.”

  “Thank you again.”

  Chapter 3

  DeltaTek’s lobby was tall and bright. Its floor was finished with a rich-man’s marble, clean and polished, reminiscent of a palazzo, brown like turned soil with red and black veins streaming across like nutrients and water. A seasonal pumpkin display enhanced the sensation of fertility.

  As did the sinewy volcano with ridges rippling along the rise to its pink peak, dormant but potentiating in the sky above tropical rain forests and a romantically-imagined agrarian community in the hemispheric mural which stretched across the back wall of the lobby, and was the prototype for DeltaTek’s much-publicized and admired corporate logo. Leonardo recognized the depiction right away. A version was on the breast pocket of Johnny Angelo’s blazer, and posted as a sign upon the doors. And on the annual reports.

  Elevators to the left of him, ferns to the right which grew out of the big mural and camouflaged an oasis of telephones and an ATM and a little store that sold candies and soda. The pumpkin display fronted a donut-shaped reception station, which was staffed by a smiling blonde woman in the corporate blazer who waved at Johnny and Leonardo as they passed.

  “How’s it going, Johnny?” she asked.

  “Very well today,” he answered.

  Leonardo nodded to the smiling blonde, and recalled the article he wrote a few years back when he was ambitious and married and played less golf, where he applied a psychological analysis to the corporate cultural requirement that office workers smile and deliver upbeat banter to their colleagues rain or shine, and offered the timely conclusion that “[t]his forced conviviality can contribute to a build-up of anxiety which tends to promote workplace inefficiency and, in extreme circumstances, rage…”

  The article won Leonardo his fifteen minutes as a talking head and some corporate business, including, in a roundabout way, Brockleman, whose wife’s sister saw Leonardo ventilating on television and gave his name to her daughter who was writing her high school social studies paper on workplace violence, and gave Leonardo a call. He was asked back into the limelight whenever an office worker decided to commit a reduction in force, cubicle by cubicle.

  Of course, the blonde in the blazer didn’t appear especially anxious, and the clumps of people they passed on their way through the lobby smiled and delivered upbeat banter to Johnny, and didn’t appear especially anxious either. The whole scene was so unanxious, so placidly corporate, that by the time Leonardo reached the elevator the hairs were standing straight on his neck and he thought he heard jittery music rising in the background. Like he was approaching Stan’s porch.

  Or the twilight zone. Like a fire was burning behind closed doors and to avoid panic they decided to detach the smoke detectors.

  “Quiet day,” he said to Johnny as they entered the elevator.

  “Not where we’re going,” Johnny replied as the doors closed, and he inserted his key into the elevator control panel to access the top floor, and stopped smiling en route. Without his smile he looked grim and cold, like corporate muscle. They ascended in silence, watching the floor numbers change.

  The doors opened to two large men dressed, like Johnny, in corporate blazers, who frisked Leonardo, under the arms, the crotch, the whole drill, as he stepped out and looked around to see what he could see. A receptionist desk, missing a receptionist. A glass wall, with a view of woodlands stretching to the horizon dotted by church steeples and cellular phone towers. Fancy furnishings. Empty corridors. Peaceful view. Jittery music.

  Attorney Brockleman, who—prophetically, it turned out—once told Leonardo he planned to wear a starched white shirt, dark suit and conservative tie “…up to and including my funeral…,” emerged from a nearby closed door with his suit jacket off, his collar unbuttoned, and the sleeves of his shirt rolled to the elbows, which was a higher level of casualness than he had reached after a six pack of vodka martinis the night he cut the deal for the girlfriend of the kidnapped old man, wherein she accepted a lump sum and agreed to disappear, and he and his team and she and her girlfriends went out to party. Leonardo didn’t need to be a weatherman to recognize a storm cloud stopped overhead.

  The late Brockleman was a big guy, six foot two inches tall with a gut rolling over his pants. Without the cover of a suit jacket it looked like he was harboring an inner tube. “He played football at Dartmouth,” his wife liked to say, “until he ate the ball.” She also told him that if he kept eating she wouldn’t be able to find a casket to fit, which turned out to be an unnecessary worry. He was fifty-three years old and might have still been handsome except for the belly, and the florid face, and the chins. “Dr. Cook,” he announced in his booming voice, “welcome to our fun house.”

  To the men doing the frisking he said, “Find anything?” and before they could answer he added, “Well, frisk him again anyway, and this time do it right…,” and before Leonardo could blurt out a protest he gave Leonardo a hearty slap on the back. “Just kidding,” he boomed. Most everybody liked Brockleman. He was a people person. He returned to the room he had come from, pushing the smaller Leonardo ahead of him, and closed the door behind.

  The room was a mid-size conference room, furnished with a glass-topped mahogany table and eight sturdy chairs. Off to the side there was a spread of sandwiches and sodas, and a computer station. Four somber people, two men and two women, stood when Brockleman and Leonardo entered.

  “Folks,” Brockleman announced as he returned to his chair, and pushed his gut under the table top, “this is the shrink I’ve been telling you about. Trust me, he’s smarter than he looks.” A smile or two, but this was a tough room for comedy.

  “Dr. Leonardo Cook,” Brockleman continued, “this is Jack Mulverne, founder and CEO of DeltaTek.” They shook hands.

  “…Janet Casey, Senior Vice President and General Counsel.” They shook hands.

  “…Bruce Hall, Director of Human Resources.” They shook hands.

  “…and Cathy Leigh, assistant to Mr. Mulverne and crackerjack secretary.” They nodded.

  Leonardo processed information as he moved around the table to an empty seat. Mulverne looks like a tough old bird, scrawny frame, beady eyes, a beak of a nose. He struts around like he hasn’t recovered from hip surgery. My man Brockleman did the bow and scrape to him during introductions, making it clear to me who runs this show down to the color of mustard on the ham sandwiches over there, one of which I would like to eat at the earliest appropriate moment, with some chips if there are any...

  …And Ms. General Counsel Casey is no summer stroll either. Close to forty, and working on that frosty and harsh look.
Thin soup from mom? Distant dad? Not pretty enough for the popular boys? I assume she reviews my bill, so she’s pretty enough for me…

  …The Human Resources guy with the annoying habit of drumming his fingers on the table top looks scared to death of Mulverne and Casey, and won’t speak unless he’s spoken to, which I assume he won’t be unless something gets fucked up...And on the computer, featuring long legs sticking out of a short skirt, we have the crackerjack secretary Cathy Leigh, whose assignment seems to be to sit there...

  Leonardo settled in, between Janet Casey and the human resources guy, across from Mulverne, Brockleman and the sandwiches. Look eager and erect, he reminded himself. Be the kind of shrink who respects corporate culture and can breathe the air outside of his shrink room without getting or giving the heebie-jeebies. Be one of the boys. Fake it. “Pleased to meet you all,” he said.

  Mulverne took charge. “Thank you for coming on such short notice, Dr. Cook,” he began in his grating, crow-like voice. “Here’s the story. A close friend and business associate of mine, Eugene Binh, who is a certifiable software genius, has lost his mind. He’s holed up in the office at the end of the corridor. He’s threatening to do serious harm to this company. I want to get him out of here, and get him help. If at all possible I want to avoid hurting the company with a scandal...” Mulverne paused. “We are responsible to our shareholders, Dr. Cook. Do you understand?”

  Leonardo nodded with his professional nod which was intended to convey that he understood and appreciated what the speaker was saying, and wanted the speaker to keep speaking, even though he wasn’t sure what Mulverne was saying about his shareholders, and even though Mulverne didn’t seem the kind of speaker who needed his hand held. In the corner of his eye Leonardo saw Brockleman reach back and grab a sandwich with the fluid movement of an ex-jock.

  “I spoke to Eugene’s wife,” Mulverne continued, “just a few minutes ago. She’s at her mother’s house. She walked out on him last week. She took the kids, ages nine and five. I think that’s what pushed him over the edge…”

  “Yes,” Leonardo said, continuing to nod.

  “She says she feels sorry for him, but won’t deal with him anymore. He was pushing her around, getting physical, scaring the kids.”

  “Yes,” Leonardo said, with an inflection of sympathy for the wife and kids.

  “So this is my crisis team. My public relations guy is on the way in. He was out fishing. We haven’t called the police yet.” Mulverne looked at his wristwatch, prompting Leonardo to do the same. It was 3:07 pm. There was a moment of silence, like the time between songs.

  Leonardo figured that was his cue. “How’d this get started?” he asked, folksy-like.

  “Well,” said Mulverne, “I’d say it officially started this morning when I got back to the office from New York where I’d been working for a couple of days on our proposed public offering, which is a very big deal for us. I saw Eugene wandering around like he’s in a daze. He’s unshaven, unkempt. Security told me he slept the night in his office. He’d been acting erratic for a couple of weeks, and we’d been trying to figure out what to do…”

  “Down a quarter,” interjected Cathy Leigh.

  “Damn,” said Mulverne, “but this morning when I saw him he’d obviously gotten worse. I talked to him and he just blankly stared back, you know…”

  “Hmm…,” Leonardo offered.

  “…so I decided it was time to act. Maybe we should have acted sooner, but, you know, we’re humane people. He was our friend. And we weren’t really focused on it because there’s a lot of other things going on, and he’s always been a little idiosyncratic anyway. Brilliant but idiosyncratic. They’ll put that on his gravestone…”

  “Soon, I hope,” said Janet Casey.

  “Down another quarter,” said Cathy Leigh.

  Mulverne stood up and got himself a Coke. “Dr. Cook,” he said, “would you like something to drink or eat?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  Mulverne popped the tab and took a sip, and gave Leonardo a beady-eyed stare like a football coach trying to figure out whether the new player could be trusted with the ball on a crucial play. He as much as kicked over the water cooler and spat into the mud before continuing: “…Eugene must have figured the game was up because that’s when he goes into the men’s room, locks himself into a stall, and stays there. I sent Bruce here to get him a couple of times, but nothing doing. So after a while I called in Johnny Angelo and his boys. Eugene starts screaming when Johnny drags him out. It gets loud and messy. There’s secretaries and other people around. I told Johnny to back off. I told Eugene to go to his office and cool down, and I’d meet him there in a couple of minutes to talk it through. I thought he understood. He walked back to his office unassisted. You know, in retrospect, it’s easy to see other ways to have played this, but here we are…”

  “Uh, oh,” said Cathy Leigh. “Down a half.”

  “I think,” Brockleman said between chews, “that Eugene has hit the street.”

  Mulverne scowled, but kept talking. A little faster: “So I walked down to Eugene’s office. His door was locked. I knocked…”

  “‘Open this fucking door or I’ll kill you,’ is what I heard,” said Janet Casey.

  “I was heated by then,” Mulverne said. “Eugene screamed back at me from the other side that he needs a million dollar bonus, and we can pay him or kiss Code B good-bye, words like that…”

  “Down another quarter,” said Cathy Leigh.

  “We should think about a press release,” said Brockleman, moving on to the second half.

  “So Dr. Cook,” Mulverne continued, giving Brockleman a hard eye and getting noticeably tighter around the beak and gullet, “we had a situation developing. The first thing I did was give everyone on the floor, present company excepted, the rest of the day off because I didn’t think it was going to help morale or stock value if people started thinking our best new product was about to be exploded…”

  “Code B?” Leonardo asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s…do you know anything about our business?”

  “Not really. Although coincidentally my ex-wife owns some of your stock, which she inherited from her mother, who was sort of a speculator in high-tech start-ups. I used to see your annual reports.”

  “How much stock?”

  “Some.”

  “When did she buy?”

  “A while back.”

  “My guess is that our stock has done well for your ex-wife, Dr. Cook. Some ups and downs, but recently mostly up. We were close to our all-time high this morning with some good ratings from Wall Street on account of prospects for Code B…,” he glanced over to Cathy Leigh and her computer screen, “but we’re fucking soft this afternoon…”

  “Free fall,” said Janet Casey.

  “Down another quarter,” said Cathy Leigh.

  “We’re not a start-up any more, Dr. Cook,” Mulverne said. “We have an integrated line of software security products. We have substantial government contracts. We’re focused on developing a new product to protect the privacy of certain specialized financial communications. We think we have it. Eugene was in charge of the project, code-named ‘Code B.’ We’re raising capital now to finish development and bring it to market. This has big potential…”

  “If it works,” Brockleman chimed in as he swallowed the last corner of his sandwich, “DeltaTek gets bought by some big player, and everyone’s a millionaire.”

  “Or better,” added Mulverne, with a sly gleam in his beady eye. “But we have nothing if we don’t solve today’s little problem…”

  “Another quarter,” said Cathy Leigh.

  “…and this is shaping up to be a bitch of a little problem.” Mulverne walked over to the computer screen, and stared angrily at it from behind Cathy’s shoul
der. The rest of the group stared into space. Leonardo thought he could hear the sound of air hissing out of the balloon.

  “Can he transmit it?” Leonardo asked.

  “Of course he can. He’s a fucking computer genius,” said Mulverne.

  “Would he?”

  “Obviously, Dr. Cook, that’s the question. Is he sick enough to kill his own baby? I don’t know...”

  “I assume you have a plan,” Leonardo said.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to get here, Dr. Cook, and get up to speed. My plan is for you to use some wily psychiatrist tricks to talk him out of his office.”

  “Do you have a back-up plan?”

  “Not yet.”

  There was a knock on the door, followed by the appearance of the head of Johnny Angelo leaning around the door and his hand dangling a piece of paper. “Boss,” Johnny said, “Eugene just slipped out this note.”

  Cathy Leigh, responsive to Mulverne’s crooked finger, retrieved the note and handed it over. Mulverne showed it to the group. It contained handwritten lines scrawled unevenly. “Mulverne,” he read aloud, “I have a wife and children to support and you’re making it difficult for me to do so. I am prepared to defend myself.”

  Mulverne slumped. The rest of his group shook their heads like they were in a place that wasn’t on their map. But Leonardo spoke up brightly, like he’d been there before and knew the way out: “It sounds to me like Mr. Binh wants to talk,” he said. “Let me give it a shot.”

  Chapter 4

  Leonardo was medium-sized, assuming he remembered to stand straight, and handsome enough for his age group. He had hair, and dark eyes that were usually calm and non-threatening. Generally closer to Bill Murray than Woody Allen. With a beard, because the psychiatrist’s how-to book said he had to wear a beard even though it was wispy and even though he tended to play with strands of it at times when he should have been sitting quietly and letting his ears do the talking.

  He was a Gemini, as were a disproportionate number of his patients. But he was not about to go public with this insight. He liked baseball and golf, and sought moonlit walks along tropical beaches with JFHs (Jewish Female Heiresses), but preferably JFPSHs (Jewish Female Psychologically-Stable Heiresses) in the Sunday personals after Barbara left, resulting in one pleasant evening with an experimenting lesbian (“I am attracted to the banality of your fantasy…”), and in one razor-edged lunch date with a rich Jewish girl who had just dumped her psychiatrist, and was waiting for an apology.