by Susan Wolfe
“I don’t think we should bother with that now,” Jared said. “I mean, Ken, what about this apparent theft of Cordova intellectual property? If that’s a real problem, how can this company ever be safe for us to buy?”
“The way it could be safe, Jared, is for Futuresoft to go to Cordova, confess what they’ve done, and clean it up with them.”
“It is perfect,” Jean-Claude pronounced with a chuckle. “We must deliver this message. List every issue we have as a board, and then tell them we cannot agree to any further discussion until they have corrected the problem with Cordova. And if they do it,” he said, grinning, “we may be certain there was no other buyer.”
Laughter.
“So Roy,” Larry said, “you’ll see that the message gets delivered?”
“Certainly.” Roy’s stone cold eyes remained focused on the far wall.
Larry’s smile was almost sadistic. “And I think you’d be wise to start thinking about Plan B.”
“Okay, thank you everyone,” Jean-Claude said. “I think we are finished with our meeting. Roy, could you remain for another minute? The board would like to speak to you alone.”
Burt almost ran out through the swinging door of the boardroom. A moment later Georgia, Ken and Andrea were huddled outside in the hall.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Ken whispered.
“What do you know?” Andrea said softly, glancing both ways along the hall. “Justice sometimes prevails.”
“Awfully nice of Burt to take the heat for us in there. That deal’s as dead as a doornail.”
“Might be the most useful thing he’s ever done for this company,” Georgia whispered.
“Even if not the most popular,” Andrea agreed. “Did you see the look on Roy’s face?” Their gleeful laughter was tinged with guilt.
“What I don’t understand is how he got into that meeting in the first place,” Ken said. “Roy makes blunders, but usually not the tactical kind. Painful to watch.”
“It diminishes my pain,” Andrea declared, “to remember that Burt’s both incompetent and a Grade A asshole. Better him than us by a long shot.”
“Put ’er there, pal,” Ken said quietly, shaking Andrea’s hand. “We’re quite a team. Appreciate the support.”
“Let’s get out of here before the meeting breaks up,” Andrea suggested, glancing back at the boardroom. “See you later. Thanks, Georgia.”
Back in her cubicle, Georgia stared blankly at her whiteboard, trying not to let any hint of dissatisfaction dilute her feeling of triumph. Ken had praised her to the Board for the ITC lawsuit. It was perfectly appropriate for him to thank Andrea for killing the Futuresoft deal. After all, he had no way of knowing Georgia had anything to do with it.
At that instant she heard an engine roar to life in the parking lot. She ran to the hall window just in time to see Burt’s red Ferrari zoom out the exit. She sighed. Well, as her father and Harry Truman liked to say, you can accomplish quite a lot in this world, as long as you don’t care too much who gets the credit. It was going to be fun to tell this story to her father. Beyond that, she would emulate President Truman and savor her triumph herself.
CHAPTER 17
Georgia was so focused on her non-disclosure agreement that she jumped when she heard papers whap! like a beaver tail onto Beatrice’s desk in the adjoining cubicle.
“You gave me a document to sign as the chairman of a committee I know nothing about.” Sally’s furious voice brought instant silence to the double row of cubicles.
“Ann,” Beatrice said into her phone, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but somebody is . . .”
“I don’t sign things without explanation,” Sally hissed, “and no one with an ounce of professional pride would ask me to. And evidently you don’t proofread, either. The date on your mystery document doesn’t even match the date of the minutes. Let’s chat one day about what it is you do do.” Georgia could hear Sally’s footsteps receding down the hall.
The cubicles remained utterly silent, and Georgia felt heat rising in her face. Every person in every cube probably shared her dilemma right now: Should she race over and offer sympathy or pretend for Beatrice’s sake she hadn’t heard?
“Ann,” she heard Beatrice say after a moment, “I will call you back.” The phone went back into its base, and gradually the sounds from the cubicles resumed. She heard Beatrice pull a Kleenex from her box, and then Maggie said quietly, “Beatrice, you okay?”
“I did give her an explanation,” Beatrice said softly, “but I guess she didn’t read it.” Georgia could hear her crying. “See, I put it here in this email. And the date in my document is correct. I don’t know who prepared the minutes. Oh, Maggie, I feel ashamed. All these years I thought I was doing a good job here. Nobody ever made me feel stupid, until today. This is not the company I joined ten years ago.”
“Forget about her!” Maggie whispered fiercely. “She’s an unspeakable bitch, and you just happened to get in her line of fire. Come on, let’s go for a walk around the building.”
“I can’t, Maggie. I need to sit here for now and calm down.” Twenty minutes later Georgia saw Beatrice enter an empty office across the hall and close the door. She had stopped crying.
Georgia finished the non-disclosure agreement and headed over to Ken’s office. She found him standing in his open doorway, shrugging his shoulders into his suit coat. He glanced at his watch, and then stood back to let her enter. “What’s goin’ on? I have a couple of minutes before I head out to Mass.”
“You mean ‘Mass’ as in ‘religious ceremony?’ I thought you were a lapsed Catholic.”
His smile was sheepish. “I am. Definitely haven’t believed the stuff for quite a while. The funny thing is, though, that sometimes if I go to the service, I just feel better anyway. I know that’s pretty irrational.”
“So what, if it doesn’t hurt anybody?” she said with a shrug. “Anyway, I wondered if you knew what happened to Beatrice a while ago.”
“Maggie told me about her encounter with Sally. I went by to see her, but she’d gone home early.”
“What if she quits?” Georgia asked. “Yonatan quit because of Sally, and so did that woman from payroll. When the board told Sally to deal with attrition, didn’t they mean reduce it?”
“Well, hopefully Beatrice won’t quit.” Ken sounded alarmed. “She’s a very important person to the department and to the company. I guess I didn’t realize it was quite that bad.”
“Sally’s meaner than a snake on sandpaper,” Georgia declared with narrowed eyes. “Severine doesn’t even use her name any more. She just calls her ‘the Nusty Beech.’” Severine was their poised and refined French lawyer.
“Didn’t know our Severine was so poetic. I’ll talk to Beatrice tomorrow, and then Sally.”
Georgia shook her head. “Don’t think talking’s gonna help, Ken. The Nusty Beech needs a character transplant.” Ken laughed. “Should she even work here? I think a Human Resources director who terrorizes people should go work for SAP.”
“Appreciate your loyalty to Beatrice, Georgia, but Sally has complete job security here as long as Roy Zisko runs the company. He’s tied to her with hoops of steel. I’m afraid she’s just our cross to bear. I’ll talk to her, though. She might be capable of feeling embarrassed.”
“I’m sure Beatrice will appreciate it. Have fun at your Mass.” She turned to go with a little wave and heard him pull his door closed.
That was the only thing about Ken, she sighed as she passed Beatrice’s cube, pausing to confirm that Beatrice’s computer was shut down and her purse nowhere in evidence. He would fearlessly tackle a problem the size of Mount Rushmore unless it involved weeding out a problem employee. Too bad so many managers didn’t do that part of their jobs. It meant you lost the Beatrices and kept the Sallies, time and time again. Or worse, as her father well knew. Did Ken realize the Nusty Beech wanted control of the legal department?
Of course, you couldn’t just ‘weed out’ a muc
kety-muck like Sally, even if you were Ken Madigan, especially as long as she and Roy were—what did Ken say?—bound together with hoops of steel.
Too bad there wasn’t some way to loosen those rivets.
Georgia couldn’t have said why she preferred to sit in her car to read her father’s letters. Maybe she felt proud to remember what she’d been through just to get to herself and Katie-Ann to their present circumstance. Maybe it was because her car was now the only place she had real privacy. In any case, she waited impatiently until after dinner and the geometry lesson to carry his letter down to her car:
Dearest Georgia,
Thank you so much for your kind words regarding my mentoring. You have rekindled vivid memories of our long afternoons together in the barn, with the late afternoon sun slanting in through the dust motes and releasing that clean smell of fresh hay. While we groomed the horses and mucked the stalls, I would illustrate some little aspect of our special talents by describing one or two of my adventures.
Georgia smiled out her side window, picturing five-year-old Katie-Ann solemnly grooming a horse’s knees.
I say “our” because I knew even then that you shared my innate skills. I encouraged you to put them to good use, but never envisioned your creativity in adapting them to the corporate environment.
Isn’t it amazing how certain methods that would seem laughably transparent to any objective observer can be so completely effective? When we align these simple methods with the mark’s deepest desires, our preposterous assertions take root in his mind as unassailable truth. A mark’s self-awareness is the only effective barrier to this process, and fortunately for hucksters everywhere, self-awareness is in short supply.
By my count, you have now rescued your company from no less than three destructive characters, and will probably identify others as you continue your worthy efforts to improve your company’s performance. I’m honored to have contributed in some small way.
Will you allow me to remind you of a few things going forward? Well, but there was no “going forward,” not in the way he meant. She’d maybe had one or two successes, but she wasn’t going to keep tricking people for the sake of the company. Her open and above-board success with the International Trade Commission was a much better way to secure her job because Ken (and now even the Board!) knew and gave her credit. Another success or two like that and she could forget about unsavory cons forever. She read on.
For example, when you need to build confidence over time in order to execute a complex gambit, you must monitor your progress constantly. Although your mark seems to believe your disinformation, keep testing the strength and duration of that belief right up to the moment you spring your trap. After all, just as you perceive ways to entangle your mark, your mark might be able to perceive your intentions. This is a particular risk with the intelligent mark (which you seem not to have encountered so far at Lumina, but don’t become complacent!).
Glancing out her side window again, she watched a raccoon pop up out of a storm drain and waddle off beyond the slanting illumination of a street light. As usual, her father had a point. Wouldn’t hurt to cultivate a little rapport with Sally, just in case.
In the meantime, isn’t it all just a hoot? I selfishly hope this experience of professional satisfaction will persuade you to cast off your colorless desk job and join me in the Business as soon as I can resume it. Combining your creativity with my experience would make us unstoppable, my dear.
As for me, I continue my literary efforts as best I can, and believe I am making progress. I have also begun to collect a bit of information about the probable composition of my parole board, even though the hearing is still months away. Too bad. She’d been hoping for a sample of his literary endeavor, but of course he had to take the time to get it right.
My only other entertainment is these ongoing efforts to locate Robbie. Earlier this week they actually had me observe a lineup. So I am practicing my thespian skills along with my literary ones, pausing just the right length of time before rejecting each ‘suspect.’ Poor old Robbie would no doubt feel he is finally getting the attention that is his due, though I continue to wonder why they want him so badly. You don’t suppose he had hidden depths? Too bad he isn’t here to enjoy it.
Give my love to Katie-Ann. Happy to hear she plans to write to me, but I wouldn’t like her to be pressured. The two of you are managing exceptionally well under these difficult circumstances, and she needs to focus on her new life in California.
With love to both of you,
Daddy
Georgia smiled up through her windshield at the silver, silent man in the moon. The most cheerful letter she’d received from her father since the day he went into that awful place. But the man in the moon looked uneasy tonight, his ghostly mouth forming an alarmed ‘o’. She wished she could share her father’s optimism that he had nothing to fear from that ongoing search for Robbie. What if they decided Robbie was dead? If they developed the slightest suspicion her father was involved in murder, his hopes for early parole would vanish faster than a June bug on a duck. Well. He had a long, proud record of knowing exactly what he was doing, marred only by one unfortunate failure to assess a business colleague’s stupidity. If she could manage to take care of herself and Katie-Ann, her father could surely manage to take care of one half-wit grifter.
But maybe the man in the moon was worried about Georgia, simply because he understood the power of gravitational pull. What did it say about her, that she kept thinking up solutions that required her special talents, when she knew she needed to retire those so-called talents forever? Here was an unanticipated drag against escape velocity: She’d had the grit to get herself and Katie-Ann to California, but George Griffin’s daughter she would always remain. And yes Daddy, it really was a hoot.
“Georgia, the company has awarded you this bonus of $5,000.”
“It has?” she said stupidly, reaching across Ken’s conference table to accept the check from his outstretched hand.
“Your work on the new lawsuit against SAP was really extraordinary. The company has also decided to grant you 5,000 stock options. Gives you a little piece of ownership in the company, so that if the company does well, you’ll see some financial benefit there as well.”
Georgia realized she was still staring at the check, and looked up. “I know you’re not a practical joker, Ken, so what’s the catch?”
“Why would there be a catch?” He sounded taken aback, and slightly offended.
“Sorry, that came out wrong. Stupid joke. I’m just surprised. You must have done a lot to make this happen.”
“You’re the one who made it happen, Georgia, and it’s very
well deserved. Now, I don’t know what you’ll want to do with the money . . .”
“I want to repay your wife, and the rest is going straight into the bank as a cushion for Katie-Ann and me. The truth is, we need this bonus right now. Turning her into an Aberzombie was expensive.”
“A what?” Her dismissive head shake convinced him to let it go. “Saving’s a great plan, only, I hope you won’t mind me saying this . . .”
She raised her eyebrows and smiled slightly, waiting.
“I’m just wondering if you might want to use a few hundred dollars to put new tires on your car. I couldn’t help noticing your tread’s a little thin. I know it’s none of my business . . .”
She carefully hid how flattered she was that he’d cared enough to notice. “Great idea. New tires all around! And that still leaves a cushion, because the bonus is huge. Thank you thank you thank you. This is so great.”
He seemed slightly embarrassed. “Fine. Well, that’s the first thing.” He held up his keys. “The second thing is, I’m headed over to Woodrow, Mantella, and thought you might want to join me to look at the set-up for reviewing Charlie Reebuck’s email.”
Moments later they were in Ken’s Camry, taking the twenty-minute trip to the law firm. “We’re up to fifty-five email reviewers,” he reco
unted as they turned onto El Camino Real. “Another five will be trained tomorrow. The hourly output of each reviewer is up to seventy-one, so that helps.”
“You know what they’ve found so far?”
“As of this morning, we know Reebuck was on notice of the bad deal practice, although we still haven’t found an email that shows he actively encouraged it. Two pieces of excellent news: So far, no office outside of San Francisco has been implicated. And there’s nothing to suggest that Glen Terkes was informed.” He pulled into the parking lot.
“So we can file the Q on time?”
“Looks like it, by the skin of our teeth. But I’d feel a whole lot safer if we could find some way to speed things up. Here we are. Let’s see how the team is doing.”
Jill’s admin led them up coffee-colored, carpeted stairs and opened a door located in the interior of the second floor. Twenty-odd pairs of eyes flicked up as they entered, and then all but one pair flicked back to their computer screens. The remaining pair of eyes, pale gray in a prominently freckled face, lingered on her a moment before their owner looked back at his screen. These twenty-odd people were situated elbow to elbow around a group of mismatched tables dotted with half-empty water bottles and abandoned Starbucks cups. The floor beneath the tables was littered with wadded paper. The combination of heat and lack of oxygen in the room made Georgia immediately lightheaded.
A young woman rose from a desk in a far corner of the room and came to greet them.
“Mr. Madigan?” she asked, shaking his hand. “I’m Catherine DeVoe, I work with Jill.” She looked younger than Georgia, but that couldn’t be right. It must have been her china-blue eyes and the way her hair was swept into a ponytail. She was still wearing her tailored tan suit jacket in spite of the heat, and sported tiny beads of sweat across her nose.
“Here’s the setup. We’ve got twenty-seven readers in this room, and then the others in the room next door. I don’t know where the next five will go. Each of them is hooked to this very unimpressive server over here. We’re calling it the Little Server That Could to keep its spirits up.” She pointed to a box about five feet square with yellow and green lights glowing in the far back corner of the room. It looked like something from a low-budget sci-fi movie.