EQMM, August 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Meg nodded. “That's good long-range thinking. It shows that you're concerned with the company's future health, not just the current month's sales figures."

  "I suppose so.” He decided not to tell her that the real reason he did those things was because he thought they were the right things to do.

  "But this is a beautiful opportunity, Jim. You can prove to Purle that you have the killer instinct by going after the other guys."

  "The other companies?"

  She shook her head impatiently. “The other candidates."

  He grinned. “What do you want me to do? Poison their coffee?"

  "Of course not, darling. But there are plenty of things you can do For example, when the older man—"

  "Charlie."

  "Right. When Charlie will be at a meeting, print the reports in small type. If he struggles to read it, that will remind everyone he's older."

  "My God,” said Jim. “You're serious."

  "Absolutely.” Meg looked at him, wide-eyed. “This is our future we're talking about, Jim. When will another opportunity like this come along? Or do you want to be like Charlie in twenty years?"

  The thought that he would be working for that company in twenty years—in any position—made Jim shudder. Suddenly he had another vivid memory of college—this time of a career fair. The whole cafeteria had been filled with booths, each representing some occupation or company that was looking for bright, eager young people. With all those possibilities, how had he wound up doing something he hated?

  "And as for Tina,” Meg was saying. “Let's hold a party. Give her a chance to show off her bad manners."

  Jim shook his head in amazement. “What about slimy Steve?"

  "I'll think about him. He lives right here in Maplewood, doesn't he?"

  "Next town over, South Orange. That's another thing. He lives a little higher than the rest of us. Drives a sports car."

  "Boy,” said Meg. “I don't like that guy and I only met him at the Christmas party. How do the bosses stand him?"

  A good question, Jim thought the next day, as he watched Steve butter up Purle at a meeting. Apparently you can't go wrong feeding the ego of a top executive, no matter how phony and self-serving you appear to everyone else.

  Near the end of the overlong meeting Steve tried to take credit for something Tina's team had done and she jumped all over him. Jim suspected she lost more points for her snarling defense than Steve did for his boasting.

  And Purle, the division head, sat there as usual, taking it all in with his enigmatic smile. Like a Satanic Buddha, Jim thought, if that makes any sense.

  He only cheered up when he reached Broad Street on the way home and saw the shanty drummer again. The fall evening was chilly and the kid wore nothing heavier than a T-shirt but he seemed to be having a great time.

  I probably make more money in a month than his family does in a year. How come he's happy and I'm miserable? he thought.

  Suddenly he was back in college again, remembering something a psychology professor had said about different people having different standards for happiness. Then the shanty drummer finished his riff and threw his sticks into the air. Before they hit the ground he was away from his makeshift drum kit, running straight into the street.

  Jim just had time to hit the horn. A truck coming the other way slammed on its brakes and barely missed the kid.

  "Are you crazy?” Jim shouted, but the drummer just laughed and held his hand out for money. Reluctantly, Jim dug out a buck and gave it to the boy. The music was worth it, but he didn't want to encourage more mad dashes into the street.

  The truck driver, red in the face, was halfway out of his cab, shouting something.

  The boy ignored him, collecting from a few more cars as the light changed.

  As Jim drove on he noticed an older man, sitting on a stoop. He wore a Jamaican shirt and shook his dreadlocks at the kid's antics.

  What a way to make a living, Jim thought. As bad as things get at work, at least my life's not in danger.

  That night, Charlie Butterworth had a heart attack.

  * * * *

  "The old guy's heart couldn't take the strain,” Arlene Reich told a crowd at the coffeepot the next day. She was one of Jim's staffers. “It's been a madhouse around here ever since they announced the job opening. You can't do that at fifty the way you can at thirty."

  "The way I see it,” said Steve Bright, “you owe it to your employer to stay in good shape. That's one of the reasons I play handball every week."

  Handball was Mr. Purle's favorite sport.

  When Jim visited him at the hospital, Charlie looked okay. Pale, but not bad.

  "Hell, the fact is I feel better than I have in months. The competition was killing me. Now I'm out of it."

  "Oh, I wouldn't say that."

  "Don't kid me, Jim. Purle has no place in his regime for cripples, and he's not going to give me a promotion just to watch me keel over.” Charlie's left hand rubbed his chest through the hospital gown. “You know, you're the only person from the firm who's come to see me."

  "Really?"

  "Well, a couple of secretaries.” Charlie shrugged; secretaries didn't count. “I'm not complaining, Jim. I know how it is. But listen, do you really want that department-head job?"

  He was startled by the blunt approach. “Yeah. Yeah, I do."

  "God help you. But hey, maybe I can help. I found out a little something about Tina. She never got that second master's degree she lists in her C.V."

  Jim's eyes widened. “She made it up?"

  "Not exactly. She did most of the work on it, but never sat for the last exams. Her mother was sick, or something like that. You can use that against her, if you really want the job."

  "But the job doesn't require a second master's degree."

  Charlie shook his head, a teacher with a dull student. “No, but lying on your resume is a firing offense. And, if you haven't noticed it, Purle can't stand Ms. Rivoli. He would love an excuse to bump her out."

  "I don't know, Charlie. That's not the way I like to play."

  "You think this is playing, Jim?” He sighed, and for the first time he looked old. “It feels like work to me. But if you think this is a game, I predict that Stevie Bright is gonna win big time."

  * * * *

  He knew it was a mistake to tell Meg about the conversation. She thought Charlie's idea was wonderful. “It's not like you're making something up, Jim, or setting a trap. She did it to herself. Besides, you owe it to the company."

  "The company? How do you figure that?"

  "There's a lie in their records. That's dishonest."

  "You think the stockholders care whether Tina Rivoli has a master's degree?"

  Meg frowned. “Just do it, Jim. Quit overthinking."

  * * * *

  But he didn't, not even when Tina pointed out, in front of Purle, that Jim's team had fallen behind on a new project. He had permitted two people to take some unscheduled time off for family emergencies. “This isn't a charity,” Tina had snapped. “If people need special breaks maybe they shouldn't be working here."

  His blood pressure didn't drop to normal until he reached Broad Street and saw the shanty drummer. The kid had somehow rigged two trash-can lids into a trap cymbal and was working them with a string tied to his foot.

  Jim crumpled a five-dollar bill into a ball and threw it all the way to the sidewalk, so the kid could pick it up without entering traffic. And he laughed all the way home.

  * * * *

  Tina left the firm two days later, “to explore new opportunities,” according to the e-mail.

  "Apparently Steve had found out about her resume and told Purle,” he explained to Meg that night.

  "Darn it, Jim. That could have been you."

  "Me? There's nothing in my resume—"

  His wife shook her head. “I mean, you could have been the one who told Purle."

  "You think being a tattletale will help me get the job?"

&
nbsp; "It would have shown Purle you have the killer instinct.” She sighed. “I'm disappointed, Jim."

  That night he dreamed Meg had run off with Steve Bright. He woke up thinking nightmare, but it hadn't felt like one.

  * * * *

  Jim volunteered for an out-of-town trip no one else wanted, to sweet-talk a big customer who was thinking of changing suppliers. Two days of coaxing and groveling brought them back into the fold and Purle praised his work. Steve tried to suggest that the customer was more trouble than it was worth, but that was sour grapes and everyone knew it.

  That night, for the first time since Jim had noticed him, the shanty drummer wasn't in his usual spot. Jim had been looking forward to seeing him, hearing him. Part of the boy's drum kit sat far back on the sidewalk, but without the kid it was just a pile of rubbish.

  * * * *

  "You better watch your back,” Arlene told him at work a few days later. “Slimy Steve is talking to people about the Hobson account."

  Jim frowned. “I've been working with that company for years. They aren't going to switch over to him."

  "He's not looking at the future, Jim. He's going over your past work. Apparently he thinks there's a skeleton in your closet."

  Jim puzzled over that. There was nothing in his work he was ashamed of. He went out to the coffeepot where Steve was bragging about having his sports car detailed. “You still driving that old Volvo, Jim?"

  He almost said something stupid, like: “Why do you care so much about this damned job, Steve?"

  Instead he smiled. “I don't have much time for car shopping, Steve, not with all the hours I've been putting in."

  He could play the game too, when he wanted.

  * * * *

  Once again, the shanty drummer wasn't there. Jim found himself annoyed, as if the kid owed it to him to be there. Sometimes it seemed like that random drum solo was the best part of his day.

  When he stopped for the light he spied the old Jamaican man standing at the corner. Jim rolled down the window.

  "Hey, where's the drummer?"

  The old man looked at him gravely. “You mean Jackie?"

  "Is that his name? The boy who plays drums over there."

  He nodded. “That's Jackie. I'll tell you for a dollar."

  Jim found the bill he had planned to throw to the boy. He held it out and the Jamaican took it. “Dead."

  He said it so casually Jim wasn't sure he'd heard it right. “Dead? Did you say the boy is dead?"

  "That's right, mon. Last week. Gone like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  Jim felt dizzy. Horns honked behind him; the light had changed. He drove through the intersection, parked, and came back to the Jamaican.

  "Are you serious?"

  The older man lit a cigarette. “Death is always serious, mon."

  "But how?"

  "Got hit by a car. Daft kid, he was always running out in the street for tips. I offered to help him, but no. Boyo didn't trust me. See what it got him."

  Jim looked at the street, as if there might be some clue, some trace left behind. Thank God, there was none. “Who was the driver?"

  "Nobody knows, mon. It was a hit-and-run. Too bad I wasn't here. There's a reward, you know."

  * * * *

  "That's a shame,” Meg said. “His parents ought to go to jail for letting him run around like that. And speaking of jail, can you get your hands on Steve's expense-account reports? I'll bet you he cheats like crazy."

  Jim had a nightmare that night, a real one. The shanty drummer—Jackie, if the Jamaican was right—was sitting behind his drums, banging out a complex rhythm. He was grinning, saying something Jim couldn't make out.

  He took a hand off the steering wheel to roll down the window. Then came the dreadful thud of a crash. He turned around, trying to see what he had hit—not the drummer, it couldn't be the drummer. The boy had been on the sidewalk. Jim looked wildly around—

  And woke up, shaking and sweating.

  "It's all right,” Meg said, putting her arms around him. “You have to be strong, darling. We'll find a way to win."

  * * * *

  "They're going to make a decision by the end of the week,” Arlene told him the next morning. “Have you heard Steve's latest stunt?"

  "No. What is it?"

  "He's put in a proposal to outsource customer service to India. That'll mean firing twenty people here."

  "And cut our customer satisfaction in half. Damn it, we studied this last year. It would never work with our product lines. Has he forgotten that?"

  Arlene shrugged. “All I know is it looks like a big savings to Purle."

  Of course, that was it. And if Jim spoke up he was going to come off as the softie who worried about layoffs and hard-to-pin-down things like customer satisfaction. By the time lack of repeat purchases proved who was right, Steve would have been in the corner office for months.

  The bastard.

  Jim felt dizzy, as if he might pass out from sheer rage. There had to be a way to stop this lunatic before he was promoted to a position where he could do worse to his fellow employees—and to the stockholders, for that matter.

  Talk to Mr. Purle? No, it would be seen as whining, more evidence that Jim didn't have what it takes.

  He paced the tiny square of his office.

  What could be done? He needed something to make Steve take his eye off the ball for a few days. Something to make Purle think twice about making him a major player.

  Jim lashed out, kicking his wastebasket as hard as he could. It hit the side of his desk with a thump and fell over.

  Arlene appeared in the hall. “Are you okay?"

  "Yeah. Bumped into something."

  "Are you sure? Because I—"

  "Arlene, just leave me alone. All right?"

  She drew in a breath and glared at him. Great. Just what he needed: a brand new enemy.

  But he needed time to think, alone. Because the thump of the wastebasket—like a big drum booming—had told him how to get the job.

  If he had the nerve.

  * * * *

  That night he barely glanced at the shanty drummer's old spot. If he had looked he might have chickened out. The old Jamaican wasn't at his usual post and Jim took that as a good sign.

  A few blocks later he pulled off the main street and started looking for a pay phone. The first three he tried weren't working, but the next one was perfect. He looked over his shoulder as he dialed—this part of Newark was no place for a civilian to be standing around after dark.

  He didn't call 911, because he knew those calls were recorded. Instead he called a police precinct at the far end of the city.

  "Hey, are you still looking for the guy who ran over that kid on Broad Street?” He tried to make his voice hoarse and low, not at all like his usual tone.

  "The hit-and-run last week? Yes, sir. Do you have some information?"

  "Yeah, man. Yeah, I do. You haven't caught the guy yet?"

  "Not yet. May I have your name?"

  "Uh-uh. I don't want you in my business. But maybe I can help you with this."

  "Did you see the accident?"

  "No, man. But I heard it. I was around the corner and there was a thump and brakes squealing. Then I saw a car speeding by, heading west, like there was a tornado on its tail.” God, I sound like a character in a TV show.

  The cop sounded excited now. “Can you describe the car?"

  "Sure can. It was a sweet little Mustang, gray or silver. And the license started with 128. The first letter was a P or a B, I think.” Actually Steve's license began 128R, but Jim couldn't afford to be too precise. If and when the cops caught the real killer he wanted this call to be thought of as a mistake, not a frame-up.

  "What about the driver?"

  "Didn't see him. Or her."

  "Why didn't you tell the police when they were there that night?"

  "Man, when cops come I go the other way. Like I said, I don't want you in my business. But—” He wiped c
old sweat off his forehead. “A little kid got killed, you know?"

  "Yes, sir. There may be a reward for this. If I can just have your name—"

  "Just get the guy."

  He hung up. His hands were shaking. He felt like he'd sweated off two pounds.

  * * * *

  Jim drove home in a fog. I can't believe I did that.

  The cops would investigate and find out that Steve drove home via Broad Street, and that he had told everyone he had brought his car to a shop for repairs, for detailing, supposedly. Oh, they would be very interested in him.

  Steve wouldn't go to jail, of course. Even if he had no alibi, even if the cops didn't see that he was innocent, surely he would hire a lawyer who would tear their case apart.

  More serious was the possibility that the cops would stop looking for the real killer. How would Jim live with that on his conscience?

  And the hell of it was, he didn't care so much about the damned job It wasn't so much that he wanted the promotion as that he couldn't stand the thought of slick and sleazy Steve weaseling his way into it.

  But Steve didn't commit a felony. You did. Filing a false police report.

  He had taken an introduction to law course in college, too.

  "What's got into you tonight?” Meg asked after dinner. “You haven't said a word, and I swear you haven't heard a thing I said.” Her eyes widened. “Jim! Is there bad news at work? Did they choose the department head?"

  For a moment he considered telling her the truth. But how would he even say it? I called in a false police report to get Steve in trouble. Because of that a murderer may go free.

  He imagined her horror. And then, much worse, he imagined that she might approve.

  "I'm just worried,” he told her.

  * * * *

  The police arrived just before five the next day. They were two beefy men in cheap suits, one white, one black. Jim happened to be in the hall—he had been too antsy to stay in his office for long—when they asked the receptionist to direct them to Steve Bright.

  Steve spent almost an hour in a meeting room with them, and then the three of them left together. Steve wasn't wearing handcuffs, but he was as grim as if he were.

  "What the hell do you think that's about?” asked Arlene. “Do you think someone finally went over the line?"