Headcount: v5

by Frank Stein

  SEVENTEEN

  I was a new man after that weekend. I felt powerful and righteous, and at the same time disgusted with myself for feeling powerful and righteous. But I was also a management consultant who was being billed out at four hundred and sixty dollars an hour, and so I sucked it up and went in to work on Monday morning.

  Mo called that afternoon. “Hey. I’m at the airport. Heading back to California to finish up that sales pitch.”

  “Okay. Anything for me to do here?”

  “No. You should be wrapping up at All-American this week. I’ve already got a new project for you starting in ten days.”

  “New job? Or new assignment?”

  Mo laughed. “Both. Along with a promotion.”

  I was confused. C&C had just promoted me to Senior Consultant, and I wasn’t due another bump for at least a year. “Promotion to what?”

  “Beta.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should be happy. “But I thought you said that I would need to . . . ”

  “I think you’re there. You’ve made the right choices so far, and I think you’re ready.” She paused. “You’ll have to be. This next assignment is going to be the real thing, and it’s going to be hard. I need you to be confident going in, so I’m promoting you.”

  “Okay. Well, thanks, I guess. What’s the assignment? Or job. Whichever. I can’t keep this stuff straight.”

  Mo laughed. “We’re going to be advising a Japanese firm that wants to set up a motorcycle manufacturing facility in Wisconsin.”

  “Japanese?” I shivered as I envisioned chunks of my own flesh being hacked off by smiling sushi chefs.

  “Don’t worry. These aren’t samurai we’re talking about. Still, it’s going to be a little tricky. I’ll be with you all the way on this one.”

  “Okay. So what do I do?”

  “Nothing for now. Think about what we learned this weekend.”

  “Okay.”

  “And have the C&C travel department book us into the Milwaukee Hilton for two weeks starting next Tuesday.”

  EIGHTEEN

  The Milwaukee Hilton was an old, once-grand building with superficial renovations. It was exactly what one might imagine the Milwaukee Hilton to be like, if that makes any sense: excessively ornate staircases and yellow chandeliers, old red carpeting, odd-shaped rooms, and lots of people with beards hanging around at the bar. I loved it.

  Mo called to say she’d be flying in late that day, and since the Japanese company didn’t really have any offices in Milwaukee yet, we were going to be working out of the local C&C branch in combination with some conference rooms at the Hilton. Our first client meeting wasn’t until the next day, and so I stayed in my room and watched television.

  Since I was technically working that day, I did a little thinking about the consulting job I was about to start. A Japanese company setting up a motorcycle factory in Milwaukee? I checked the web, and immediately felt like a fool for not remembering that Harley-Davidson was headquartered in Milwaukee. There had to be a connection. Maybe the same logic that results in similar businesses getting clustered together? Like New York’s diamond or fashion districts? Did the Japanese firm think it would be easier to find skilled and experienced labor by starting up next door to Harley? Perhaps even a long-term plan for a merger or an acquisition? Or maybe figuring all this out was part of the reason we were being hired.

  Okay, that was enough thinking about the consulting job. My head hurt. It was late afternoon already, and so I hit the gym before it got mobbed by the pre-dinner crowd. The workout didn’t help my headache, so I ordered the salmon and some fruit when I got back to my room. Mo called me just as I was finishing.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “I’m here. See you in the lobby in ten?”

  Too many meetings with Mo in random hotel lobbies. But if you’re a consultant who doesn’t like hotel lobbies, then you’re in the wrong freaking line of work. I sighed and told her I’d be down.

  The lobby was packed. It looked like some kind of convention was going on. Lots of people with nametags and that nervous smile you get when you’re surrounded by people you’re supposed to be networking with. I looked for Mo, and saw her sitting at the lobby bar. I went up to her.

  “What’s up.”

  “Hi, Frank. You want a drink?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Let’s step outside and talk.”

  “Okay.”

  We walked outside. The sun had just set. We went around the building and stopped in a courtyard that had a couple of empty benches.

  “So what’s the deal?” I said.

  Mo lit a cigarette. She offered me one and I took it.

  “This one is going to be tricky,” she said.

  “You mentioned that. What does ‘tricky’ mean in the context of murder?”

  “Stop using that word. It gives me the creeps.”

  “Like it doesn’t give me the creeps? But that’s what it is, right?”

  “Technically, yes. But I still don’t like it.”

  “Welcome to my world.”

  Mo looked at me as she blew a puff of smoke into the reddish blue Wisconsin dusk. “You know what your problem is?”

  “What?”

  “You still think you have a way out of this. Maybe it’s because you haven’t killed anyone on your own yet. Or maybe it’s because you think you’re going to somehow get through this without taking a life.”

  I was quiet. I stared up at the illuminated hotel building. I could see flashes of light as the convention-goers entered their rooms. I sighed as I thought about the delicious humdrum of their lives. If only I were a mid-level sales manager from South-Central Iowa with nothing to worry about but my ten local customers and my two chubby kids. But no, here I was, possibly living my last week as a somewhat normal human being. My last few days as a non-murderer.

  Mo watched me for a few moments. “I don’t care what you think of me, Frank. I know you must hate me. I know you’re constantly thinking about a way to prove that you didn’t kill Simone and that I’m setting you up. I know you tried to record our calls, and trust me, I would know if you were wearing a wire. I'm pretty good at this, and you're not going to find a way.”

  I turned and looked at her. She almost looked sad as she sat there alone on the concrete bench, her dark hair shining under the rising moon. But I could see that she wasn’t kidding. She had made up her mind a long time ago. As grotesque and awful as her actions might have been, she had found a way to live with them. And I would have to do the same.

  Mo shifted in her seat as she stubbed out the cigarette. The sadness and vulnerability I had seen in her for that instant was now gone. Now she was the stoic warrior-queen who had killed god-knows-how-many people. The woman who had taken my freedom from me, and the only one who could give me my life back. Like a demon slowly wears down its human target before possessing it, Mo was pushing me to the point where I gave in, the point where I said, “Yes, I am with you. I am committed. I have killed, and I will go on killing.”

  Mo smiled and shook her head. “You will have to kill. Whether it’s me or someone else, your road to freedom passes through the life of another human being.”

  I flinched. I knew she was right. Whether I moved forwards or backwards, I would have to kill.

  “Sorry,” said Mo. “But I’m going to keep saying things like this. You need to be mentally prepared. You need to have gone through it in your mind so many times that when the moment comes there is no hesitation. In your mind, you will have already killed. The physical act will just be a technicality. It’ll just be the paperwork.”

  And then just like that, the moment of self-pity passed for me. I didn’t feel sorry for myself anymore. I knew I had a conscience. I knew that if I killed, it would change me. It would torment me in my sleep, invade my daydreams, poison my personal relationships. But that’s why it would be a sacrifice. I had to remember, there were nineteen-year-old kids doing this for me. They had consciences too.
They couldn’t sleep either. They were no longer capable of stable and healthy emotional relationships. Those things weren’t part of their job descriptions. I got paid more than they did. To hell with my selfish arrogance. Why should I take it for granted that I didn’t need to live with the guilt and self-hatred that comes with taking a life?

  I looked at Mo, and realized that she had been watching me. She had an odd smile on her face, a smile I didn’t really want to interpret. It embarrassed me. It was something like admiration, and that made me uncomfortable. Nothing about me should be admirable. We weren’t heroes or people to be admired, but she was right in that we weren’t remorseless murderers either.

  “Fine,” I said. “I won’t use that word anymore.”

  Mo smiled some more.

  I continued. “We’re killers, pure and simple. I don’t want to glorify it by saying we’re vigilantes or dramatize it by saying we’re assassins. But I also don’t want to degrade it by saying we’re murderers. We’re just killers. That’s as neutral a word as I can think of right now.”

  Mo nodded. “I can live with that.” She smiled. “If you can.”

  I laughed and shook my head. It was still unbelievable to me. Maybe it would stay that way even after I had killed. Maybe I would never really believe I was a killer.

  “You ready to talk some specifics now?” said Mo.

  “I’m ready.” I sat next to Mo on the bench. The courtyard was still empty, the moon was now bright as hell, and the hotel building was glowing like an upright tubelight. “Tricky, you said. What’s going to be tricky about it?”

  “Well,” said Mo. “Our targets are three Japanese men. They are also US citizens, but they don’t spend much time here.”

  “They work for the firm that hired us?”

  “Yes. But this isn’t a project like the one at All-American, with a bunch of consultants working with a bunch of client-employees at a huge company. We’re the only two consultants on the job, and these three men are the only clients we’re going to be working with.”

  “Ah. That is tricky.”

  “Yes. So although we might get plenty of alone-time with these guys, we have to be careful.”

  “So it’ll have to be an accident. Maybe explosives again?”

  Mo shook her head. “Nope. Firstly, it’ll take us a while to get access to untraceable explosives in Wisconsin—I obviously didn’t fly here with the remaining plastique from Texas. And second, all our meetings are either going to be in the hotel or at the C&C offices, and there’s no way we can pull off an explosion without risking other lives.”

  “Then what? Something more subtle? Like poison, maybe?”

  Mo smiled. “No poison. No accidents. And nothing subtle. In fact, we’ll have to go to the other extreme.”

  I stared at her. “Which is what?”

  “It’s going to have to be an obvious, over-the-top murder scenario with a clear set of identifiable suspects, but not enough evidence to actually convict anyone.”

  I laughed. “And you have a plan for this?”

  Mo nodded. “Of course I have a plan.”

  NINETEEN

  Mo didn’t tell me the plan that night. Instead, she told me our first meeting was to be at the C&C offices in downtown Milwaukee at eight the next morning. Good enough for me. I was in no hurry to learn Mo’s definition of an over-the-top murder. Wasn’t any murder over-the-top?

  Before bed I went through the practice routine Mo had set for me—multiple repetitions of certain martial arts moves and knife strikes. She had also showed me how to detach the closet pole without breaking it, and I went through a number of attack moves with the metal pipe. I know this sounds laughable, and I actually did laugh a couple of times when I initially caught sight of myself in the mirror. But after a week of twice-daily sessions, the moves had started to become second nature to me, and I began to appreciate the sense of peace that the motions brought to my daily routine. In some way, I knew I was going to be good at this, and it calmed me down.

  Mo drove us to the Milwaukee C&C office the next morning. We booked a conference room, and parked ourselves in it. Our three Japanese clients came in just as I finished booting up my computer and setting up the projector to show the PowerPoint slides that Mo had put together.

  Mo had been right: these guys didn’t look like samurai warriors. I gave them a warm smile, its genuineness drawing from my relief that our victims looked like they would be easy to put down. The oldest one, Mr. Takahashi, was about five-and-a-half feet tall and maybe three feet wide. Who says fish doesn’t make you fat? The other two looked like they might be brothers, and I don’t mean that in a racist way. In fact, it turned out they were indeed brothers—not twins, but fairly close in age and facial features. They went by Yoshi and Aki, and I immediately liked them. They were both just under six feet tall. Yoshi was thin as a twig. Aki was a bit more filled out; not fat, but he looked soft and squishy like a bean bag.

  Their company, Chimura Industries, was a typical Japanese family-owned conglomerate, albeit a fraction of the size of Mitsui or Sumitomo. Most of Chimura’s profit came from farm machinery and other motorized items used in rural Japan. Since rural space in Japan was limited and also shrinking, Chimura was looking to get into a different industry and also branch out internationally. And since Harley-Davidson was one of the most popular and successful brands in Japan, Takahashi and Yoshi and Aki had been charged with developing a plan to imitate Harley-Davidson’s designs and production methods so that Chimura could produce similar motorcycles both in the US and Japan. Of course, the idea was that Chimura’s versions would sell at less than half the price of a Harley.

  This didn’t seem particularly unreasonable to me. I knew that much of Harley-Davidson’s high price-point came from a keen understanding of the psychology of its customer. After all, most Harleys aren’t used as primary transportation vehicles—the reasons for buying one are more emotional and symbolic than practical. And you’re always willing to pay a little more for something that makes you feel and look good. You were paying up for the privilege of riding a Harley-Davidson product.

  I didn’t have much to say or do in that first meeting. It was really just introductory, with Mo going through some slick PowerPoint slides about how C&C had worked with Harley-Davidson before and would bring deep knowledge of the industry to Chimura. I gave them stern professional looks to convey my seriousness and expertise as I clicked the mouse button to switch slides at Mo’s command.

  Takahashi, Yoshi, and Aki left just before lunch. We had agreed on an approach to the project and a schedule for the next two weeks. Mo and I were to prepare an initial report based on the expertise we could glean from C&C’s insider knowledge of the motorcycle industry in general and Harley-Davidson in particular. Then we would discuss market-entry strategies for Chimura, and eventually summarize everything in a final report. The entire process would take two weeks, and C&C would be paid a total of ninety-three thousand dollars plus expenses. Of course, if Chimura liked our work, they might hire us for more detailed planning work. I was curious to see how the follow-on work would pan out once Takahashi, Yoshi, and Aki were murdered soon after delivery of the first report.

  “So we’re going to wait two weeks before doing this?”

  “Of course,” said Mo. “We have jobs, you know. If our clients disappear before the project is done, it’s hard to collect our consulting fees.”

  “Of course,” I said. I put on my serious professional look for a moment.

  Mo laughed. “I like your client-face. It makes you look serious and professional, and well worth the four hundred bucks an hour these guys are paying for you.”

  “Four hundred and sixty, thank you very much.”

  “Well, excuse me.” Mo smiled. “Come on, let’s get some lunch.”

  We walked out into the sunny street. Downtown Milwaukee wasn’t a bad spot. The river added a nice touch to the place, and there were small pockets of office-goers and tourists loitering near th
e waterfront. I smiled at an old Italian guy who was walking around shouting, “Pepperoni-Cannoli, Pepperoni-Cannoli!”

  Mo called the old Italian guy over and ordered a stick of pepperoni and two cannolis. I ordered three sticks of pepperoni and a single cannoli. We sat on a white wall near the river’s edge and stared at the murky water as we ate.

  “So these guys don’t look so tough,” I said.

  Mo crunched her cannoli. “This is a great cannoli.”

  I looked out at the river, and my gaze followed it down to where the wall ended and there was no barrier.

  “You know, we could just go out drinking with these guys, hit them on their heads, and push them into the river,” I said. “I’m sure people fall in all the time.”

  “I’m sure they do,” said Mo. “Which is why there’s probably someone patrolling the river around the time the bars close. Besides, there’s no guarantee they’ll actually drown, and there’s almost no way we can knock three guys out without at least one of them seeing us.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  Mo finished her second cannoli and lit a cigarette. “I told you I have a plan.”

  “Yes, you did tell me that.” I was annoyed that my idea had been dismissed so quickly.

  “And so I do.”

  “Well, what is it? Or do I just keep guessing?”

  Mo smiled as I got progressively more irritated. “I like the guessing game,” she said. She blew a puff of smoke at my face and winked.

  “Go to hell,” I said, and then lit a cigarette of my own.

  “All right, here it is. Quite simple, really. Next Friday, after we’re done with the report, we’re going to take Takahashi, Yoshi, and Aki out to dinner. I’ve already confirmed this with them, and I have reservations at the place.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “It’s a place called Fifth Base. Quite an interesting joint—I’ve been there before. Most of it is a cross between a sports bar and a biker bar, but they also happen to serve gourmet food in the back. I’m talking lobster, swordfish, steak—you name it.”