Killer Instinct

by Joseph Finder

  “We’re not in rough shape,” I said. “We just need to be more competitive. Cut costs. A lot of our travel expenses are frankly out of line. Anyway, Gordy overruled me on that.” I was tempted to tell the truth—that Gordy had made me his flak-catcher, told me to do it, then backed down when the shit hit the fan—but I decided to just suck it up.

  “I know,” Forsythe said. “But I get a feeling that’s just the tip of the old iceberg.”

  “How so?”

  He lowered his voice. “I’ve heard talk, is all.”

  “What kind of talk?”

  “About how Entronics is planning to get rid of its entire Visual Systems sales force. Now that they have Royal Meister’s, they don’t need us.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I’ve heard it,” he said.

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s not true?” He looked right at me now.

  I shook my head. Lying like a kid caught with his hand stuck in the cookie jar. “Totally not true,” I said.

  “Really?” He sounded genuinely perplexed.

  “You don’t want to move to New Jersey,” I said.

  “I was born and raised in Rutherford.”

  “I don’t mean it like that,” I said quickly. “Now, obviously we’ll match any offer Sony makes you. We don’t want to lose you, you know that.”

  “I do.”

  “Come on, Doug,” I said. “We need you here. Entronics is your home,” I said.

  He didn’t reply.

  “So forget those rumors,” I said. “You can’t listen to nutty rumors like that.”

  He blinked, nodded slowly.

  “So I’ll see you at the game tonight,” I said. “Right?”

  I was finally on my way out of the office around six when my phone rang. The calls that come after five are often from people trying to avoid talking to a human being. They want to get voice mail. We call this playing dodgeball. Actually, it’s harder and harder to play dodgeball these days, what with cell phones and e-mail, so when someone tries it, it’s pretty obvious.

  Franny was still in, and I heard her say, “One moment, Mr. Naseem. You’re in luck. You just caught him on his way out.”

  I said, “I’ll take it,” and I went back to my desk. This could be it, I thought. We’d gone back and forth on numbers, and the last time we talked, Freddy Naseem told me he was close to having sign-off from Mr. Belkin himself. This would be the biggest deal I’d closed in six months.

  “Hey, Freddy,” I said. “How’re we doing?”

  “Jason,” he said, and I could tell from his voice that it wasn’t good news. “There’s been a little complication.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I can work with you.”

  He paused. “No, you see…I just got some bad news.”

  “Okay.” This was not what I wanted to hear.

  “I’ve just been informed that we’re buying the plasmas from Panasonic.”

  “What?” I blurted out. Then, calmer: “You weren’t even talking to Panasonic.”

  “I’m afraid we didn’t have a choice. Mr. Belkin liked your idea so much he’s decided not to wait, but to start installing the flat-screens in three of our dealerships in two weeks.”

  “Two weeks? But three months is what we agreed on—”

  “And Panasonic has the inventory to deliver next week. So I really had no choice.”

  We couldn’t possibly turn around hundreds of plasma monitors in a month, let alone a week. Panasonic must have had a lot of overstock in their Northeast warehouse.

  “But—but it was my idea!” I sputtered. I immediately wished I hadn’t said that. It made me sound like a pouting ten-year-old. “Will you at least give me the chance to see if I can scrape some inventory together?”

  “I think things have progressed beyond that point.” He sounded stiff and formal.

  “Freddy,” I said, “you have to give me the chance to see what I can do. Given that I suggested the idea to you in the first place.”

  “My hands are tied. Sometimes Mr. Belkin makes decisions without consulting me. He’s the boss. And you know what they say. ‘The boss may not always be right, but he’s always the boss.’” He laughed hollowly.

  “Freddy—”

  “I’m sorry, Jason. I’m terribly sorry.”

  I went to see Gordy to see if he could pull any strings, make some swaps, maybe free up a few hundred flat-screen monitors.

  Melanie had gone home, but Gordy was still in his office, on the phone. He was standing, staring at his PictureScreen windows. The ocean waves were crashing against the crystalline white sand. It was strange: In the window by Melanie’s cubicle I could see the fading summer daylight, and just a few feet away was the dazzling artificial midday sunshine of Gordy’s PictureScreen windows. His imaginary world.

  I waited for a few minutes. He happened to turn around, saw me. Didn’t acknowledge me. He guffawed, made large wheeling gestures with his hands. Finally, he hung up, and I went in.

  He had a triumphant look on his face. “Booya, Steadman. Booya! That was Hardy. Sent me a Hardygram and called. And invited me to go for a sail on his new yacht.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “He flipped when I told him about my Harry Belkin idea, Steadman. Putting plasmas in forty-six auto dealerships—I love it.”

  I nodded. I didn’t say thank you, because he wasn’t complimenting me. He was congratulating himself, since this had somehow become his idea.

  He pointed a stubby finger at me. “See, this is what Hardy calls bowling alley positioning, okay? Aim the bowling ball right, and the first pin knocks down all the rest of them.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “It’s a wedge. Once Harry Belkin signs on, then we’ve got every other auto dealership in the country saying, ‘How come I didn’t think of this? Give me some too.’ God, it’s brilliant.”

  “Brilliant,” I said. I wanted to get out of his office and go home.

  “What’s the latest on that?”

  “I’ll—I still have to follow up on that,” I said.

  “For Christ’s sake, close it, man. Close it. I don’t want to lose it. You lock that one down, and get a couple more big contracts, and we’re safe. How’s the Chicago Presbyterian deal coming?”

  “I think I’m close to nailing it.”

  “How about Atlanta airport? You get that, it’s huge. Huge!”

  “Working on that one too.” The Atlanta airport wanted to replace all the monitors used in their flight information display system, which meant hundreds and hundreds of screens.

  “And?”

  “I don’t know yet. Too early.”

  “I want you to do anything to land Atlanta, understand?”

  “I get it,” I said. “I’m all over it. Listen, I want—”

  “You talk to Doug Forsythe?” He tugged on his lapels and straightened his tie.

  “I think that’s a lost cause, Gordy. He’s already made a verbal commitment—”

  “A what? A lost cause? Can you translate that for me, please? I don’t speak that language. That’s not in my vocabulary. Now, if you’re on the G Team, you don’t accept defeat. You make sure Forsythe doesn’t walk. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, Gordy.”

  “Are you on the G Team or not?”

  “Yes, Gordy,” I said. “I’m on the G Team.”

  25

  I drove home too fast, angry and confused. Freddy Naseem had screwed me over, and so had Gordy, and now the deal he’d stolen credit for had fallen through. Maybe there was an irony here, but I didn’t appreciate it. I was too pissed off.

  On the CD player, General Patton was talking about “the predator mind-set.” He growled, “It’s just like the animal kingdom. Ninety percent of us are prey. The other ten percent are predators. Which are you?”

  When I got home I noticed an almost-new-looking black Mustang parked in our narrow brick-topped driveway. Kurt’s. He’d b
ought it from his friend who owned the auto body shop.

  I hurried into the house, wondering why he was here.

  Kurt was sitting in our living room, the formal room we never used, talking to Kate. The two of them were laughing about something. Kate had set out Grammy Spencer’s tea tray with butter cookies.

  “Well, hello,” I said. “Sorry I’m late,” I said to Kate. “Lot happening at the office.”

  “Jason,” Kate said, “you never told me Kurt’s a handyman too.”

  “Amateur,” Kurt said.

  “Hey, Kurt. What a surprise, huh?”

  “Hey, bro. I had to meet with a vendor in Cambridge. I finally got approval for the biometric fingerprint verification system, and I had to finalize some details. I figured since I was in your neck of the woods, I’d give you a lift to the softball game.”

  “Okay, sure,” I said.

  “Though I saw your new Mercedes out front. Nice wheels. Bling for the king, huh?”

  “Will you take a look at the stairs?” Kate said to me. “Take a look at what Kurt did.”

  “Come on,” Kurt said. “It’s no big deal.”

  I followed her to the staircase that led to the second floor. The junky oatmeal-colored carpet had been removed, exposing handsome wood. The old carpet lay in a neat pile, cut up into rectangular sections, next to discarded strips of wood with sharp-looking tacks sticking out from them, also neatly stacked. A crowbar and a utility knife lay on the floor nearby.

  “Can you believe how beautiful that wood is?” Kate said. “You’d never know it, with that gross carpet covering it up.”

  “Wasn’t safe,” Kurt said. “You could break your neck. With Kate pregnant and all, you’ve really got to take care of stuff like that.”

  “Very kind of you,” I said.

  “I’m thinking you should install a runner,” Kurt said.

  “Oh, but I love the wood,” Kate said.

  “Still see it, either side,” Kurt said. “Maybe one of those Axminster oriental rug deals. Good thick padding under it. Safer that way.”

  “And how about brass carpet rods?” Kate said, excited.

  “Easy,” Kurt said.

  “Speak for yourself,” I said, a little peevish. “I had no idea you knew how to do this. You can kill people and remove old carpeting.”

  Kurt ignored the dig. Or maybe it wasn’t a dig to him. “Taking it out’s the easy part,” he said with a modest chuckle. “Worked for a contractor after high school, did a lot of odd jobs.”

  “Could you do that, do you think?” Kate said. “The runner and the carpet rods and everything? We’d pay you, of course. We insist.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Kurt said. “Your husband here got me my job. I owe him.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” I said.

  “Kurt thinks we have way too many things plugged into that power strip thingy in the living room.”

  “Electrical hazard,” Kurt said. “You need another outlet on that wall. Easy to put in.”

  “You’re an electrician too?” Kate said.

  “You don’t have to be a master electrician to put in an electrical outlet. That’s easy.”

  “He just rewired his entire house,” I said, “and it’s not even his house.”

  “God,” Kate said to Kurt, “is there anything you can’t do?”

  Kurt drove his Mustang fast and skillfully. I was impressed. Most drivers who haven’t grown up around Boston get intimidated by the aggressiveness of the native Boston driver. Kurt, who’d grown up in Michigan, handled the traffic like a native.

  We sat in silence for a good ten minutes, and then Kurt said, “Hey, man, did I piss you off?”

  “Piss me off? Why do you say that?”

  “At your house. Like you were ticked off I was there when you got home.”

  “No,” I said in that terse, male way where the tone says it all—you know, what the hell you talkin’ about?

  “Just trying to help you there, bud. With the stairs. I figured, I know how to fix stuff, and you’re a busy executive.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I mean, I appreciate it. Kate did too. You were right—she’s pregnant, and we’ve got to be careful about stuff like that.”

  “All right. Just so long as we’re cool.”

  “Yeah, sure. I just had a bad day at work.” I told him about my big auto-dealership brainstorm and how Gordy had stolen credit for it, and how Harry Belkin had decided to go with Panasonic instead.

  “He’s a snake,” Kurt said.

  “Who, Gordy?”

  “Both of those guys. Gordy we know about. But the Harry Belkin guy—if he’s gonna change the terms of the deal, doesn’t he at least have to give you the chance to bid on it? Since it was your idea?”

  “He should have. But I’d already told him we couldn’t deliver the stuff for a couple of months. That’s standard. Panasonic must have had excess inventory. You know, it’s like when you go test-drive a car and you totally fall in love with it, and then the salesman says, sorry, the waiting list is two months long. And you go, two months? I want it today! Well, Panasonic must have said, ‘This is your lucky day. We happen to have some right here in our warehouse. You can have ’em today!’”

  “That’s not right. That really sucks.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “You’ve gotta do something about that, man.”

  “There’s nothing to do. That’s the problem. We’re at least a month out—we have to get inventory from Tokyo.”

  “Don’t sit back and take it, bro. Go after it.”

  “How? What am I supposed to do, take out one of your replica handguns and put it up to Freddy Naseem’s forehead?”

  “My point is, sometimes the quiet, behind-the-scenes approach is the best way. Like the time when we were in Stan and we found this air base near Kandahar, with a big old Russian chopper. One of our local informants told us some of the top Taliban commanders used the helicopter to head up to their secret headquarters in the mountains. I figured, well, we could just nuke the thing, or we could be clever. So we waited till four in the morning, when there was only one TB sentry on duty.”

  “TB?”

  “Taliban, sorry. I snuck up behind him, garroted him to kill him silently. Then we got inside the base and painted some LME on the tail section near the rear rotor, and the rotor blades. Totally invisible.”

  “LME?”

  “Liquid metal embrittlement agent. Remember that tube you were looking at in my war trophy collection?”

  “I think so.”

  “Very cool stuff. Classified technology. A mix of some liquid metal, like mercury, with some other metal. Copper powder or indium or whatever. Paint it on steel, and it forms a chemical reaction. Turns steel as brittle as a cracker.”

  “Neat.”

  “So the Taliban guys probably did the routine preflight check for bombs and shit, but they didn’t see anything, right? That night, there’s this big crash, and the helicopter just flew apart in the air. Six Taliban generals turned into corned beef hash. Better than just blowing up an empty helicopter, right?”

  “What’s that got to do with Entronics?”

  “My point is that sometimes it’s the covert stuff that’s the real force multiplier. That’s what wins the battle. Not the guns and bombs and mortar rounds.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t garrote Freddy Naseem. Not good for the corporate image.”

  “Forget Freddy Naseem. I’m just saying, there comes a time for behind-the-scenes action.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I’d need to know more. But I’m here to help, whatever it is.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t do underhanded stuff.”

  “What about getting inside dope on Brian Borque at Lockwood Hotels? Or Jim Letasky?”

  I hesitated. “I feel kind of funny about it, to be honest.”

  “And you don’t think Panasonic was being…underhanded, as you put it, fo
r snagging the Harry Belkin deal?”

  “Yeah, they were. But I don’t believe in tit for tat. I don’t want to be a snake.”

  “Let me ask you this. Kill a guy in an alley somewhere, it’s murder, right? But kill a guy in the middle of a battlefield, it’s heroism. What’s the difference.”

  “Simple,” I said. “One’s war, the other’s not.”

  “I thought business is war.” Kurt grinned. “It’s in all those books you gave me. I read ’em cover to cover.”

  “It’s a figure of speech.”

  “Funny,” he said. “I missed that part.”

  That night we played EMC, a giant computer-storage company headquartered in Hopkinton, and once again we won. The guys from EMC must have gotten the word that we were a totally transformed team, so they came to play, as if they’d had a practice before showing up. We were short one player, unfortunately. Doug Forsythe never showed up, which wasn’t a good sign.

  My own softball game had improved, for some reason. When I stepped up to the plate, I didn’t flinch at the pitch anymore. I swung harder and with greater confidence. I felt more relaxed at the plate, and I began hitting them deep. My fielding was better too.

  But a couple of times, Trevor Allard deliberately threw the ball by me and around me, deliberately cutting me off, as if I couldn’t be trusted with the ball. The one time he threw the ball to me was when I wasn’t prepared—I was half turned away—and he almost took off my ear.

  After the game, Kurt and I walked to the parking lot. Trevor was in his Porsche, blasting that Kanye West song, “Gold Digger,” as I passed by—He got that ambition, baby, look in his eyes—and it didn’t seem to be a coincidence.

  I told Kurt I wanted to head right home if he didn’t mind giving me a lift.

  “So you don’t want to go out with the guys?” Kurt said.

  “Nah. Long day. Plus, I told Kate I’d be home. These days she doesn’t like me staying out as late.”

  “Pregnant women need to feel protected,” Kurt said. “Primitive instinct. Listen to me—like I know. She’s a nice chick. Pretty, too.”

  “And mine.”