We lived on one floor of a three-decker on Providence Street in Worcester that had asbestos siding and a chain-link fence around the concrete backyard. To go from that to owning my own colonial house in Belmont—well, that was pretty damned good, I thought.
Whereas the house Kate had grown up in, in Wellesley, was bigger than her entire Harvard dorm building. We’d once driven by the house. It was an immense stone mansion with a high wrought-iron fence and endless land. Even after her boozer father had finally killed off what remained of the family fortune with some lame-brained investment, and they’d had to sell their summer house in Osterville, on Cape Cod, and then their house in Wellesley, the place they moved to was about twice as big as the house she and I lived in now.
She paused, then pouted. “Jason, you don’t want to end up like Cal Taylor, do you?”
“That’s a low blow.” Cal Taylor was around sixty and had been a salesman with Entronics forever, since the days when they sold transistor radios and second-rate color TV sets and tried to compete with Emerson and Kenwood. He was a human cautionary tale. The sight of him creeped me out, because he represented everything I secretly knew I was in danger of becoming. With his white hair and his nicotine-yellowed mustache, his Jack Daniel’s breath and his smoker’s hack and his never-ending stock of stale jokes, he was my own personal nightmare. He was a dead-ender, a timeserver who somehow managed to hang on because of a few tenuous relationships he’d built over the years, those he hadn’t neglected anyway. He was divorced, lived alone on TV dinners, and spent almost every night at a neighborhood bar.
Then her face softened and she tipped her head. “Honey,” she said softly, almost wheedling, “look at this house.”
“What about it?”
“We don’t want to bring up kids in a place like this,” she said. There was a catch in her breath. She suddenly looked sad. “There’s no room to play. There’s barely a yard.”
“I hate mowing the lawn. Anyway, I didn’t have a yard growing up.”
She paused, looked away. I wondered what she was thinking. If she was expecting a return to Manderley, she sure married the wrong guy.
“Come on, Jason, what happened to your ambition? When I met you, you were this totally fired-up, sky’s-the-limit kind of guy. Remember?”
“That was just to get you to marry me.”
“I know you’re kidding. You’ve got the drive, you know you do. You’ve just gotten”—she was about to say “fat and happy,” I’ll bet, but instead she said, “too comfortable. This is it. This is the time to go for it.”
I kept thinking about that documentary about the Fierce People. When Kate married me, she must have thought I was some Yanomami warrior she could groom into a chieftain.
But I said, “I’ll talk to Gordy.” Kent Gordon was the senior VP who ran the entire sales division.
“Good,” she said. “Tell him you demand to be interviewed for a promotion.”
“‘Demand’ isn’t exactly my style.”
“Well, surprise him. Show him some aggression. He’ll love it. It’s kill or be killed. You’ve got to show him you’re a killer.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “You think I can get one of those Yanomami blowguns on eBay?”
3
“We’re screwed, man,” said Ricky Festino. “We are so screwed.”
Ricky Festino was a member of what we called the Band of Brothers, a fellow salesman for Entronics USA’s Visual Systems unit. Salesmen are supposed to all be outgoing and affable, backslappers, hail-fellows-well-met, but not Festino. He was an outlier. He was dour, cynical, bitingly sarcastic. The only thing he seemed to get into was contracts—he’d dropped out of Boston College Law School after a year, and contracts was the one course he liked there. That should tell you something about him.
As far as I could tell, he hated his job and didn’t much like his wife and two little kids either. He chauffeured his younger boy to some private school every morning and coached his older boy’s Little League team, which would theoretically make him a good dad, except for the fact that he was always complaining about it. I was never sure what motivated him except fear and bile, but hey, whatever works.
I couldn’t figure out why he liked me so much either. To Ricky Festino, I must have seemed cloyingly optimistic. I should have made him seethe with contempt. Instead, he seemed to regard me like the family pet, the only one who really understood him, a happy-go-lucky golden retriever he could bitch to while he took me out for a walk. Sometimes he called me “Tigger,” referring to Winnie-the-Pooh’s bouncy, irrepressible, and basically retarded friend. If I was Tigger, he was Eeyore.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“The acquisition, what do you think? Crap,” he muttered as he squeezed out a glistening dollop of antibacterial hand cleaner from a tiny bottle he carried with him everywhere. He rubbed his hands together violently, and I could smell the alcohol. Festino was an out-of-control germophobe. “I just shook hands with that guy from CompuMax, and he kept sneezing on me.”
CompuMax was a “system-builder,” a company that assembled and sold low-end no-name computers for corporations. They were a lousy client, mostly because they didn’t spend money on name-brand components, and Entronics was too name-brand for them. Festino was trying to sell them a bunch of LCD monitors that Entronics didn’t even make, that we got from some second-rate Korean firm and just put our logo on. He was trying to convince them that having the Entronics name on at least one of their components would make their systems seem classier and thus more desirable. A good idea, but CompuMax wasn’t buying. My guess was that Festino didn’t know how to pitch it, but I couldn’t get too involved—it was his deal.
“I’m starting to get why the Japs think we Westerners are so unclean,” Festino went on. “He was, like, sneezing into his hands over and over, then he wanted to shake. What was I going to do, refuse to shake his filthy hand? Guy was a human petri dish. Want some?” He offered me the tiny plastic bottle.
“No, thanks, I’m good.”
“Is it my imagination, or is your office a lot smaller than mine?”
“It’s the décor,” I said. “Same size.” Actually, my office was starting to look smaller all the time. The Entronics USA Visual Systems sales division took up the top floor of the Entronics building in Framingham, about twenty miles west of Boston. It’s by far the tallest structure in town, surrounded by low-rise office parks, and the locals fought it bitterly before it went up ten years ago or so. It’s a handsome building, but everyone in Framingham considers it an affront. Some wit had dubbed it the Framingham Phallus. Others called it the Entronics Erection.
He sank back in the visitor chair. “Let me tell you something about this Royal Meister deal. The Japanese always have a master plan. They never tell you what it is, but there’s always this long-range master plan. We’re just those little round game pieces—what’s that strategy game the Japanese play?”
“Go?”
“‘Go,’ right. ‘Go.’ Go take a leap. Go screw yourself.” I could see dark sweat stains under the arms of Ricky’s blue button-down shirt. The Entronics offices were kept at a steady sixty-eight degrees, summer or winter, and if anything they were too cold, but Ricky sweated a lot. He was a couple of years older than me and was going to seed. He was paunchy, a potbelly more advanced than mine hanging over his belt, a roll of neck fat spilling over the collar of his too-tight shirt. He’d started coloring his hair a couple of years ago, and the Just For Men shade he used was too black.
I sneaked a glance at the time on my computer screen. I’d told the guy at Lockwood Hotel and Resorts that I’d call him before noon, and it was 12:05. “Hey, uh, Rick…”
“See, you don’t get it. You’re too nice.” He said it with a nasty curl to his lips. “Entronics acquires Royal Meister’s U.S. operations, right? But why? You think their plasma screens are better than ours?”
“Nope,” I said, trying not to encourage him.
I’d tell t
he guy at Lockwood that I was closing a huge deal, that’s why I couldn’t call him earlier. I didn’t want to lie to the guy, but I’d hint around about a rival five-star luxury hotel chain I couldn’t name that was also putting plasma-screen TVs in all their guest rooms. If I hinted right, maybe I could make him think it was the Four Seasons or something. Maybe that would light a fire under him. Then again, maybe not.
“Exactly,” Ricky said. “It’s their sales force. They kick our ass. The boys in Tokyo are sitting on their tatami mats in the MegaTower rubbing their hands at the prospect of buying a sales force that’s more high-test than we are. So what does that mean? It means they get rid of all but the top ten percent, maybe, and move them to Dallas. Consolidate. Real estate in Dallas is a lot cheaper than Boston. They sell this building and throw the rest of us under a bus. It’s so totally obvious, Jason. Why do you think Crawford went to Sony, man?”
Festino was so proud of his Machiavellian genius that I didn’t want to let him know I’d already come up with the same theory. So I nodded and looked intrigued.
I noticed a slender Japanese man passing by my office, and I gave a casual wave. “Hey, Yoshi,” I said. Yoshi Tanaka, a personality-free guy with thick aviator-frame glasses, was a funin-sha, an expatriate Japanese, transferred to the U.S. to learn the ropes. But he was more than that. Officially, his title was Manager for Business Planning, but everyone knew he was actually an informer for the Entronics management in Tokyo who stayed at his office late into the night and reported back by phone and e-mail. He was Tokyo’s eyes and ears here. He spoke just about no English, though, which couldn’t have been good for his spying.
He scared the shit out of everyone, but I didn’t mind him. I felt bad for him. Being posted in a country where you didn’t speak the language, without family—at least, I assumed he had family back in Tokyo—couldn’t be easy. I couldn’t imagine working in Japan and not speaking Japanese. Always being a beat behind. Never getting it. He was isolated, ostracized by his colleagues, all of whom distrusted him. Not an easy gig. A hardship posting, in fact. I never joined the others in Yoshi-bashing.
Ricky turned, gave Yoshi a smile and a wave, and as soon as Yoshi was out of range, muttered, “Goddamned spy.”
“You think he heard you?” I said.
“Nah. Even if he did, he wouldn’t understand.”
“Listen, Rick, I’m late calling Lockwood.”
“The fun never stops. They still dicking you around?”
I nodded ruefully.
“It’s over, man. Forget it. Stop pursuing them.”
“A forty-million-dollar deal, and you’re telling me to forget it?”
“The guy just wants Super Bowl tickets. Any deal that takes this long is dead in the water.”
I sighed. Festino was an expert on deals that were dead in the water. “I gotta call him.”
“You’re like a hamster on a wheel, man. We’re all hamsters. Any second now the guy in the white lab coat’s gonna come and euthanize us, and you’re still running around the wheel. Forget it, man.”
I stood up to encourage him to do the same. “You playing tonight?”
He got up. “Yeah, sure. Carol’s already pissed at me for going out with clients last night. What’s one more night in the doghouse? Who’re we playing tonight, Charles River?”
I nodded.
“Gonna be another ignominious defeat for the Band of Brothers. We got no pitching. Trevor sucks.”
I smiled, remembering the tow truck driver from last night. “I got a pitcher.”
“You? You can’t pitch for shit either.”
“Not me. A guy who almost went pro.”
“What are you talking about?”
I filled him in quickly.
Rick’s eyes narrowed, and for the first time this morning, he smiled. “We tell the Charles River boys he’s the new stockboy or whatever?”
I nodded.
“A ringer,” Rick said.
“Exactly.”
He hesitated. “Pitching softball’s different from baseball.”
“Guy’s obviously an incredible athlete, Rick. I’m sure he can do fast-pitch softball.”
He cocked his head to one side, gave me an appraising look. “You know, Tigger, under that simpleton façade, you’ve got hidden reserves of craftiness. Never would have expected it. I’m impressed.”
4
The Lockwood Hotel and Resort Group was one of the largest chains of luxury hotels in the world. Their properties were a little mildewed, though, and in need of an overhaul. Part of management’s plan to compete with the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton was to put Bose Wave Radios and forty-two-inch flat-panel plasma TVs in every room. I knew they were talking to NEC and Toshiba too.
I’d been the one who’d pushed for a bake-off, and I arranged to send one of our screens to Lockwood’s White Plains, New York, headquarters, for a head-to-head comparison with NEC and Toshiba. I knew our product performed at least as well as the other guys’, because we were still in the running. But the Vice President for Property Management at Lockwood, Brian Borque, couldn’t seem to make a decision.
I wondered whether Ricky Festino was right, that Borque was stringing me along just for the Super Bowl and World Series tickets and the dinners at Alain Ducasse in New York. I half wished he’d just put me out of my misery already.
“Hey, Brian,” I said into the headset.
“There he is,” Brian Borque said. He always sounded happy to hear from me.
“I should have called you earlier. My bad.” I almost gave him the lie about the other hotel chain, but I didn’t have the heart to go through with it. “Meeting ran long.”
“No worries, man. Hey, I read something about you guys in the Journal this morning. You getting acquired by Meister?”
“Other way around. Entronics is acquiring Meister U.S.”
“Interesting. We’ve been talking to them too, you know.”
I hadn’t known. Great, another player in this endless negotiation. It reminded me of this old movie I once saw in college called They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, about marathon dancers who dance until they drop.
“Well, that’ll mean one less competitor, I guess,” I said, keeping the tone light. “How was Martha’s birthday? You take her to Vienna, like she wanted?”
“Vienna, Virginia, more like. Hey, I’ve got to be in Boston next week—you feel like catching a Sox game?”
“Sure.”
“You guys still get those amazing seats?”
“I’ll do what I can.” I hesitated. “So, listen, Bri.”
He heard the change in my tone and cut me off. “I wish I had an answer for you, buddy, but I don’t. Believe me, I want to do the deal with you guys.”
“Thing is, Brian, I’m getting a lot of pressure from senior management on this thing. The deal’s been on the forecast—”
“Come on, man, I never said you could forecast the deal.”
“I know, I know. It’s Gordy. He’s really been pressuring me. He wants me to set up a meeting with your CEO.”
“Gordy,” Brian said in disgust. Kent Gordon was the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Sales for Entronics USA, a Six Sigma black belt, the most aggressive guy I’d ever met. He was ruthless and conniving and relentless—not that there’s anything wrong with that—and my entire career lay in his hands. Gordy was in fact leaning on me hard to do this deal, since he leaned on everybody hard to do every deal, and it was entirely plausible that he’d want me to set up a meeting between him and the CEO of Lockwood Hotels. But it wasn’t true. Gordy hadn’t asked for that. Maybe it was only a matter of time before he did, but he hadn’t yet. It was a bluff.
“I know,” I said, “but, you know, I can’t control what he does.”
“I don’t recommend you do that.”
“My bosses really want to do this deal, and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and…”
“Jason, when I was on your side of the desk I tried tha
t old trick plenty of times,” Brian said, not unkindly.
“Huh?” I said, but I didn’t have the heart to carry the bluff all the way through. I touched my bruised rib cage. It was hardly painful anymore.
“Look, I wish I could tell you what’s going on with this deal, but I’m out of the loop. The bake-off went great, your price points are fine. I mean, I probably shouldn’t say it, but your price points are more than fine. Obviously there’s stuff going on upstairs that I’m not privy to.”
“Someone up there’s got a favorite or something?”
“Something like that, yeah. Jason, if I knew the whole story, I’d tell you. You’re a great guy, and I know you’ve worked your ass off on this deal, and if the product didn’t measure up, I’d be straight with you. Or if the numbers didn’t work. But it’s not that. I don’t know what it is.”
A beat of silence. “I appreciate your honesty, Brian,” I said. I found myself thinking about the egg-sorting machine again and wondering how they worked, exactly. “What day next week you coming up?”
My immediate boss was a woman, which, in this business, is unusual. Her name was Joan Tureck, and she was an area manager in charge of all of New England. I didn’t know much about her personal life. I’d heard she was gay and lived with a woman in Cambridge, but she never talked about her partner or brought her to company events. She was a little dull, but we liked each other, and she’d always supported me, in her low-key way.
Killer Instinct Page 3