“Do they not like you?” I asked, keeping the subject of the potential hatred broad. I wanted him to fill it in.
“Who?”
“Her family.”
“They don’t care enough about her to worry about me,” he said.
I felt a dull pang in my chest and subconsciously rubbed my shirt back and forth as if warming it up would make it go away. It was one of those feelings that sometimes reared up on the commuter bus ride home at dusk or in the audience of one of those unnecessary conferences I always had to attend. It was that disquieting feeling of being alone.
I thought of Jeanette, the shelves of self-help books, her distracted parents, her lying in that clinic surrounded by strangers, and I felt for the first time a real need to find her. I didn’t necessarily need to bring her home, just find her and talk to her. I’d figure out what I would say later.
“All right, I’m in,” I told him.
He looked at me quizzically.
“In on what?” he asked.
“Whatever it is you guys are trying to do. I’ll help by getting the old man off your backs.”
I could see Nelson internally deliberate the offer. He was trying to determine if this was a trick. Overselling the offer would only increase his suspicion that it was a trap, so I decided to pull back a bit in order to enhance its legitimacy.
“I don’t even want to hear the plan. I assume it’s a horrible one,” I said with disgust. “But I’ll do what I can. Probably won’t be successful but I will try.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Help us.”
“You look like you could use it.”
After some shuffling of feet and more pouting, I got him to agree on a place and time to meet later that night. I tried to get him to bring us to Jeanette but he wouldn’t go for it.
“I have to talk to her first,” he explained. “You guys show up with me…she wouldn’t forgive me if I did that.”
I didn’t have much choice but to trust him.
“Okay,” I agreed. I proffered my hand and shook the dead fish he offered back. “Come on, kid, first thing you have to do is tighten up that shake.”
I left a smiling Nelson to finish packing and walked back to the car where Hector waited by the driver’s door. He looked past me as if expecting to see Nelson in tow.
“We’re going to meet him tonight at a Rally’s out in the Valley,” I explained. Off his quizzical look, “He’s going to bring Jeanette with him.”
Hector said nothing but he didn’t have to. I could hear the doubt in his silence.
“He’ll bring her,” I said.
He didn’t bring her. He didn’t even bring himself.
We wasted four hours driving out to Sunland and sitting in a Rally’s parking lot waiting for Nelson and Jeanette to show. But they never did. Just as we were about to call it a night, Hector’s phone buzzed.
“Is it her?” I asked.
“No,” he said and studied the number. “It’s Valenti.”
We both sensed what was about to happen next. I observed Hector answer and casually look away to some random spot across the parking lot as he listened to the old man. It was a short conversation.
“He wants to meet us at the club,” he said.
Hector said nothing on the drive. Perhaps it was my imagination, but he started to resemble the Hector I knew when we first started out on this work. He was morphing back into his old role before my eyes. Or, I was projecting my feelings onto him because I knew at the end of this drive I was going to be fired.
I knew the termination walk very well. I had walked it too many times with associates not to recognize that feeling of a distinct distance growing around me. The banter, if there was any, was small talk of a different sort than the kind that took place around the coffee machine or in the elevator. There, you talked of the weather and last night’s game to non-sports fans. Here, you made hollow observations on anything at all just so you wouldn’t have to listen to the silence.
“Be nice once they open up another lane on the 110 interchange,” I said, but Hector never acknowledged me.
I desperately wanted to crawl into the backseat for the remainder of the ride.
DEAD MAN WALKING
We pulled into the loop under the Coverdale Building and parked under the canopied entrance, a completely unnecessary design as the building above already shielded us from rain and sun. Rows of exposed light bulbs lit up the space like a Broadway theater.
Inside, I was led to the antiquated dining room and pointed to a table in the corner where Valenti sat. He was the only person in the room. I assumed members preferred the Malibu chapter of the club on the weekends. The tuxedoed fellow who was helping me eyed my coatless frame and quietly brought over the house’s blue blazer with shiny gold buttons. I slipped it on and made the long walk across the burgundy carpet. I slowed as I reached the table and took the coat off. I was growing tired of being told what to do.
Valenti started to dress me down before I even took my seat. I held out my hand to stop him.
“No more speeches,” I said. “Not today.”
I looked around for the waiter. Valenti wasn’t going to offer me anything and I was damn determined to get a free cocktail out of the deal before being dismissed. I tried to think of one of the expensive, aged scotches but none of the names immediately came to mind so I ordered a gin instead. A double.
“What happened in 1963?” I asked after a long pull on the glass.
“That’s not what we are here to discuss.”
“Yes, it is. You pushed me in that direction.” I gestured to the area by the entrance. “You insisted that I work closely with Hector. You insisted that I talk to Gao—”
“Jimmy,” he corrected with his usual smirk.
“What actually happened that day?”
I didn’t expect him to answer, and he obliged.
I was coming to the uneasy conclusion that I was being played the entire time. All along it wasn’t about his granddaughter; it was about the museum and Gao and getting what he wanted. Jeanette might just have been a pawn in the whole thing.
“Was Hector covering up for you? Or did you cover up for Hector to gain his loyalty? Whatever this feud was between you and Li, I imagine it manifested itself in some sort of proxy war among the people down a few levels. At least you paid Hector back with some lifetime employment driving you around. I guess that was a fair bargain. The other guy didn’t fare so well.”
Valenti stared at me with no emotion.
“And now it’s all come full circle with the younger Li,” I said, being deliberately vague with the details. He took the bait.
“How do you mean?”
“Just what I said. He’s involved. And maybe trying to exact a little payback.”
I decided to leave it at that. If I was going to be dismissed, there was no reason to give him any information I had discovered. Hector would probably fill him in later anyway.
Valenti was intrigued by the developments I alluded to. I wanted to pretend that didn’t mean anything to me but it did. In a strange way I felt all along like I needed to impress this man, or the money that elevated this man to such stature. Sometimes we look for validation wherever we can get it.
“Why’d you hire me in the first place? Look, I am my own biggest fan, but if I wanted this task done, and done right, I would have hired a real private investigator or gone to the police.”
“Ironically, you were hired for the same reason you’re being dismissed—indiscretion.”
He slid over a printout from a local gossip blog.
“You know I didn’t place that article,” I said. “But you’re pissed off or scared or humiliated or whatever it is and you’re going to relieve yourself as you have all your life—on someone else. So if it makes you feel better, have your speech about indiscretion. At least let me order another drink.”
I pointed to my glass, and the attentive waiter hurried off to bring a refr
esher.
“By the way,” I said when the waiter returned. “She had the baby. That’s probably what the $45,000 was for—to pay for the right to have her baby in some crummy building in Alhambra with a bunch of strangers.”
“What?” he whispered.
“Trust me that you wouldn’t want to see this place. Ten to a room, not exactly sanitary. Hector can fill you in,” I told him, somewhat uncomfortable with the cruelty of the words coming out of my mouth. “Maybe because she didn’t know where else a sixteen-year-old with no support can go to have a baby. Or maybe the family didn’t want her to have that baby. You would know why, not me.”
“I’ll make your life a living hell,” he hissed, white spittle forming on his lip.
“Too late,” I replied. “Now that I give it some thought, I think you knew about the baby the whole time. At least at the very end before she went ‘missing.’ You conveniently left out those little details,” I reminded. “So before you give me another speech about indiscretion or whatever, look within, pal, look within.”
That’s when I noticed the check on the table written out to me for 5,000 lousy dollars. I asked the hovering waiter for his pen and full name and then endorsed the check over to him.
“Better cash that now before he cancels payment,” I instructed as I handed the man the check.
I went out the front entrance, passed the idling sedan where Hector sat behind the dark glass, and grabbed the first available taxi for the long and expensive trip back to Eagle Rock.
HOG-TIED
Pat Faber set up a six-thirty touch base on Monday morning as a not-so-subtle reminder that he was still in charge. Normally, calling in was accepted for any meeting starting before 8 a.m., but with a touch base you had to do it in person.
Touch-base meetings, at which people just talked to each other, were the darlings of the corporate world. For managers, it was tangible proof that associate feedback was important to them. For associates, it was the opportunity to talk about your accomplishments and hint at the need for a salary increase, something your manager never truly acknowledged and certainly never did anything about.
I always followed a standard approach. I would come with a list of three topics. Never more than three because that would overwhelm Pat, and when that happened he assumed that the person overwhelming him had a communication problem. At the end of my agenda of three I would always drop, “…and one thing I need your advice on.” Pat relished the opportunity to pass along wisdom, so I would quickly roll through my three items, always presenting the challenge first and then how I overcame it. We’d then spend the remaining twenty minutes of the thirty-minute touch base going over the issue I needed help on. To be sure, the issue was never a real one and if it was, I already knew the answer. But Pat saw it as something I really struggled with. The value of the touch base was measured by the amount of time Pat talked. Sometimes he’d speak for the entire meeting and when it was time to leave, he was so energized that he’d show me to the door and with a slap on the back he’d say, “We need to do these more often.”
That’s how I kept off management’s radar. But on this particular Monday morning, I flirted with danger. Distracted by my work outside the office, irritated that I had to drag myself into work on a Monday just as the sun was creeping over the horizon, pissed off that they had yet to replace the half-and-half in the break room, I walked into Pat’s office without an agenda.
“Whatcha got for me, Chuck?” Pat chirped a level or two louder than was needed in the empty offices.
“What a week,” I stumbled. “I’m barely keeping my head above water.”
Pat nodded but he didn’t like it. “Busy” was an acceptable reply in elevator banter but not in a touch base.
“Well, that’s why they pay us,” he reminded me.
We bandied about a couple of things I was working on but we never quite got into a good rhythm. I was distracted and my words showed it. Pat grew frustrated and decided to take the lead.
“What do you think of this whole obesity thing?” he asked casually. I was taken aback. All along I never felt my co-manager Paul’s relentless focus on eradicating obesity from the firm ever garnered much support, but here was Pat taking up the mantle. He either believed in the cause or it was just a ploy to stir the pot holding the two people about to duke it out for head of the group. “The health costs are becoming prohibitive,” he added. “We really need to help these poor people.”
Now I was nervous. Pat was quoting verbatim from Paul’s messaging plan. When you can get someone to repeat what you say, you have won the game. I knew not to dismiss Paul’s idea outright—that would not be received well, even if the receiver was not a fan of it. I had to tread carefully.
“It’s a real concern,” I started solemnly. “It’s something that’s going to take the full attention and resources of our group.”
I foolishly hoped that would be enough. It wasn’t.
“So what would you do?” he asked straight out. “There’s no silver bullet solution,” I began tentatively, “but more a series of smaller efforts and initiatives.” I babbled on like this for a minute-plus, which must have felt like twenty. It was all empty jargon, and Pat wasn’t buying a word of it. “Anyway, it’s something I’d need to get my head around and put out a recommendation, or something.”
I had flown under the radar in enemy territory for a long time but it felt like I was about to be discovered. My reputation was built on being an innovator but the truth was I hadn’t had a fresh idea in over ten years, and even that idea wasn’t very original. The Stoplight System was a “revolutionary” program aimed at curbing sexual harassment in the office. All I really did was repackage work already in existence into an easier-to-understand format. As long as I played along and talked a good game, no one seemed to notice or care that I hadn’t done anything meaningful since then The real concern wasn’t that I had no ideas; it was that management would figure it all out. But reputations, once built, are very hard to undo. Thankfully, no one ever looked that closely.
“Chuck, you haven’t had a fresh idea in ten years.”
My heart skipped.
“If you’re going to take this group to the place it needs to be, you’re going to have to bring a new perspective, a new vision.” The lecture that ensued was as direct a dressing-down as the corporate world ever saw. They were very rare, and that did not bode well for me.
“You’re right,” I mustered like an already defeated man.
There was a long, uncomfortable pause.
“Nothing for me?” he asked like the seventh kid after a six-pack of sodas has been passed out.
“No,” I answered, though I wished I did have something. “Not this week.”
“Thank you, Chuck.” He dismissed me without getting up.
I scurried out of his office before anything more was said and nearly ran over Paul on his way in.
“Hey, Chuck,” he smiled. “Little touch base with the boss?”
“Yeah, we just wrapped up.”
“Did you touch them all?” He laughed at the same joke he’d been telling for fifteen years.
“Yes, Paul, I touched them all.”
“Hey Chuck,” came the earnest voice, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about all this…craziness. I just want to say ahead of time that there are no hard feelings.” Why would there be any, I thought to myself. “No matter how this turns out, whether it’s you running the group or me, I’m going to be happy. Because at the end of the day, it’s the group that matters, and with you or me at the helm it’s going to be a huge success.”
It was a terrific speech, and I didn’t believe a word of it.
“Paul, thank you for those kind words. You have to know that I feel the same way about you. And if put to a choice,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder and mustering up a level of unctuousness to match his, “I think you are the better man for the job.”
“I believe you, Chuck, when you say it.” The bastard som
ehow got a tear in his eye. I could compete with Paul on many things, but false sincerity was not one of them. If he went in for a hug I might have punched him.
“There are my boys,” Pat said, smiling and watching over the proceedings from his office door like a spectator with a fistful of crumpled bills. “Sizing up the competition, are you?”
Paul and I played it off like good sportsmen do, but I resented the cockfight element of it and the way Pat stood over us with that glib smile at his “boys” who were about to be pitted against each other in a fight for their corporate lives.
Pat never had to fight for anything and was kept around for fear of an ageism lawsuit. And still he clung on despite the firm stripping him of any kind of responsibility. I hated that old man because he was a dithering fool who believed he was gifted. I hated him because he made it and men like my old boss, Bob Gershon, didn’t. I hated him because this was the man who controlled my destiny. And it was at that very moment that I decided I actually wanted the job.
I didn’t want the responsibility of the role, or the bump in salary, or the juicy title that came with it. I didn’t want the A-level parking spot or the secret double-bonus opportunities that opened up once you entered this rarified layer of upper management. I wanted it because I wanted to shove it down Pat Faber’s throat.
“Make sure you touch ’em all,” I advised Paul and stormed off.
Despite any misgivings I had of ever using Badger for any work assignments, I needed him for some personal use because, even though Valenti had fired me from the job, I was nowhere near ready to quit. For some reason I simply felt like I owed it to Jeanette to find her and make sure she was safe.
The Perpetual Summer Page 12