Killer Instinct

by Joseph Finder

  “Come on, Gordy!” Trevor shouted.

  “I’ll spare you,” he said. “Because this is not about Gordy. It’s about the team.” His words seemed to be a little slurred. “The G Team! We’re all team players. And we’re gonna show you now what we mean. Jason, where are you?”

  “Right here,” I said, my stomach sinking.

  “Get up here, sparring partner!”

  I stood up. Was he going to ask me to box him in the ring? Good God. Get me the hell out of here. “Hey, Gordy,” I said.

  “Come on,” he said, waving me toward him with his left glove.

  I approached the ring, and the rose-petal girl came up to me with a glass of raw eggs.

  “Drink it down, Jason,” Gordy said.

  I could hear cheering and laughter.

  I held the glass of eggs, looked at it, smiled like a good sport. I held it up for everyone to see, and I shook my head. “I’ve got high cholesterol,” I said.

  “Aww,” said Trevor, and he was joined by Forsythe and Taminek and then the others.

  “Come on, Tigger,” said Festino.

  “You’re all fired,” I said.

  “Drink up,” Gordy commanded.

  I lifted the glass to my mouth and poured it down my throat and began swallowing. The eggs slid down in a gooey, viscous string. I felt sick, but I kept going. When I handed the empty glass to the rose-petal girl, a cheer arose.

  “All right!” Gordy said. He tapped my head with a glove. “Who’s next? Where’s Forsythe? Where’s Festino?”

  “I don’t want to get salmonella,” Festino said.

  I returned to my table, looking around for the nearest restroom in case I had to hurl.

  “Pussy,” Gordy slurred. “Trevor, show ’em a real man.”

  “I want to see Jason chug another glass.” Trevor laughed.

  Gordy began weaving around the canvas like a real punch-drunk fighter, and I could tell he wasn’t faking it. He was drunk. “See, thing is, wanna know why we invited you all?” he said. “All you customers? Think we invited you because we like spending time with you? Hell, no.”

  There was laughter. Trevor sat down, relieved that the moment had passed.

  “We want every frickin’ last one of you to standardize on Entronics,” Gordy said. “Know why?” He held up his gloves, punched the air. “Because I want the whole G Team to be as rich as me.”

  Some of the Band of Brothers guffawed loudly. So did a few of the customers, only not quite as loudly. Some, however, were not smiling.

  “You know what kind of car Gordy drives?” he said. “A Hummer. Not a Geo Metro. Not a goddamned Toyota. Not a Japmobile. A Hummer. Know what kind of watch Gordy wears? A Rolex. Not a stinking Seiko. It ain’t made in Japan. Where’s Yoshi Tanaka?”

  “Not here,” someone said.

  “Yoshi-san,” Gordy said with a sarcastic twist. “Not here. Good. Fact, I b’lieve none of our Japanese expatriates are here. Prob’ly too busy filing their secret informant reports on us. Sending microdots back to Tokyo. Goddamned spies.”

  There was laughter, but now it was the nervous kind.

  “Japs don’t trust us,” Gordy went on, “but we show them, don’ we? Don’ we, guys?”

  There was rustling, the clinking of forks as the guests quietly ate their salads.

  “They’re slow-kill, those Japs,” he said. “Passive-aggressive. Let the dust pile up in the corner. Never tell you what the hell they’re thinking, those Japs. Inscrutable assholes.”

  “Gordy,” Trevor called out. “Take a seat.”

  Gordy was leaning on the ropes now. “Think it’s easy working for a bunch of slant eyes who want you to fail just because you’re a white guy?” he said. His words were more and more slurred, getting indistinct. “The G Team,” he said.

  Trevor got up, and I did too. “Come on, Gordy,” he called out. “Jesus,” Trevor muttered, “he’s plastered.” We walked over to the ring, and so did Kurt and Forsythe. Gordy was leaning against the ropes, canting all the way over. He looked up and saw us approaching. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot. “The hell away from me,” he said.

  We grabbed him, and he struggled for a few seconds, but not very hard. I heard him mumble, “Wha’ happens in Miami stays in…Miami…” before he passed out.

  As we carried Gordy out of the banquet room, I saw Dick Hardy standing against a wall, his arms folded, his face a dark mask of fury.

  — PART THREE —

  37

  The first thing I did was to get rid of the Caribbean. I had them remove all the PictureScreens from my new office. I wanted to be able to see out of the windows, even if all I could see was the parking lot.

  Everything Gordy used to do I wanted to do the opposite. After all, I was the anti-Gordy. That’s why Dick Hardy had named me the new VP of Sales.

  That and the fact that Entronics was desperate to fill the slot as fast as possible. They wanted to put the Gordy debacle behind them.

  Gordy’s drunken rampage was all over the Internet the next day. The message boards on Yahoo were filled with stories of the Rocky show, the glasses of raw eggs, the Rolex and the Hummer, and especially the anti-Japanese slurs. Gordy, who was well-known in the small world of high-tech sales, had become a celebrity.

  And in Tokyo, the top officers of Entronics were beyond embarrassed. They were livid. They’d been willing to accept Gordy’s private bigotry, but the moment he began spouting publicly, he had to be shot.

  The Entronics Public Relations Manager in Santa Clara put out a press release saying that “Kent Gordon has left Entronics for personal and family reasons.”

  I got a slew of congratulatory phone calls and e-mails—from friends I hadn’t heard from in years, from people who were probably positioning themselves for a job with Entronics, not knowing there might not be any jobs at all soon. Joan Tureck sent me a very nice e-mail congratulating me and adding, ominously, “Good luck. That most of all. You’ll need it.”

  The second thing I did was to call in Yoshi Tanaka and let him know that things were going to be different from now on. Unlike my predecessor, I wanted to work with him. I wanted his input. I wanted to know what he thought. I wanted to know what he thought the guys in Tokyo thought. I spoke slowly, used simple words.

  I won’t say Yoshi smiled at me—his facial muscles apparently didn’t have that ability—but he nodded solemnly and thanked me. I think he understood what I was saying, though I couldn’t be sure.

  The third thing I did was ask Dick Hardy to make a stopover in Boston on his way from New York to Santa Clara. I called all my troops together in our biggest conference room to meet Mister Big and give them a rousing, inspirational speech. I told them my door was always open. I told them they should feel free to come to me with any complaints, that although I expected nothing but the best efforts from them, I wasn’t going to ream them out for telling me when something wasn’t going right, that I was here to help. I announced a small increase in incentive pay and bonuses. This turned out to be a bit more popular with the Band of Brothers than the Queeg Memo.

  Dick Hardy stood next to me in the front of the room, wearing a navy blue suit and crisp white shirt and blue-and-silver-striped rep tie and looking very much the CEO, with his big square jaw and his silver hair combed straight back and the heavy dark pouches under his intense, icy blue eyes. He shook everyone’s hands as they filed in, and said, “Good to know you” to each one as if he really meant it. He told them they were the “lifeblood” of Entronics Visual Systems and that he had “complete confidence” in me.

  Hardy clapped me on both shoulders when we had a few private moments after the staff rally. “It’s been a rough ride,” he said soulfully. “But if anyone can steady the keel, it’s you.” He loved sailing metaphors. He looked directly into my eyes, and said, “Remember: You can’t control the wind. You can only control the sail.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I take heart in your string of successes, though.”


  “I’ve had a nice run of luck,” I said.

  He shook his head solemnly. “As one of my vice presidents, you’re going to get sick of hearing me say it, but I firmly believe you create your own luck.”

  And the fourth thing I did was to promote Trevor Allard to my old job. Why? It’s complicated. I think partly it was to make amends to him. I didn’t like the guy, but if it hadn’t been for Kurt, Trevor would probably have been in Gordy’s office, not me.

  Partly it was because I knew he’d be good at the job, like it or not. And partly, I admit, it was that old saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

  So now I had to work with him. I don’t know who it was most uncomfortable for, him or me. I assigned Gordy’s old assistant, Melanie, to Trevor, which might not have been considerate to her—it was a big step down in prestige—but I knew I could trust her to keep her eyes on him, since she liked me. Plus, she was used to working for jerks. I kept Franny, who’d been around forever and knew how things worked better than anyone else.

  And, finally, I told Kurt that I really didn’t need his help anymore. I didn’t want his inside information; I didn’t want him misusing Corporate Security that way. I sure as hell didn’t want anyone finding out.

  Kurt’s reaction was muted. It was clear that his feelings were hurt, although he wasn’t the type to ever say so.

  I broke it to him early one morning at the gym in Somerville while I was lifting and he was spotting. “I can’t risk it,” I said. On the third set, I wimped out on the sixth rep, my arms trembling, going into muscle failure, and for the first time he didn’t help me finish the set. He also stopped spotting me. He just watched me struggle to raise the bar high enough to replace it in the stand.

  I didn’t make it, and the bar came crashing down on my chest. I groaned. Then he lifted it up and out of my way. “You’re afraid you’re going to get caught?” he said. “That it?”

  “No,” I said. “Because it’s wrong. It creeps me out.”

  “Look who’s suddenly got religion.”

  “Come on,” I said, sitting up, feeling a stabbing pain in my rib cage when I breathed. “I’ve always been…uncomfortable about it.”

  “But you haven’t stopped me.”

  “Like I could.”

  “Not when you really needed my help. You didn’t refuse to read Gordy’s e-mails to Hardy, did you? And believe me, there’s going to be times when you need me again.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I’m just going to have to do without your help.”

  “Now’s when you need me more than ever. You’re running the sales force of a major division of Entronics. You can’t afford to make a wrong move. You need to know everything that’s going on. IFF, we call it.”

  “IFF?”

  “Identity Friend from Foe. Basic procedure. So you shoot your enemies and not your friends. One of the things you learn downrange. Sometimes, when you’re outside the official battle lines, it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Lots of companies hire competitive intelligence firms, you know.”

  “Not like this.”

  “No,” he admitted. “They’re not as good. Not as thorough. Like, for example, you need to know what Yoshi Tanaka’s really up to. He’s the key player here. He’s incredibly powerful. You want to stay on his good side.”

  “I assume he’s working for the top guys, not for me. His loyalty lies in Tokyo. As long as I keep that in mind, I’m fine.”

  “You think that’s all you need to know about Yoshi? What if I told you I’d captured a couple of e-mails he’s sent to Tokyo in the last couple of days? Encrypted, of course—512-bit public-key encryption—but Corporate Security is required to hold one of the keys. Written in Japanese, but I know a Japanese chick. Tell me you don’t want to know what he’s saying about you.” He smiled.

  I hesitated, but only for a second. “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “And your buddy Trevor?”

  I shook my head. I was tempted to tell him about Trevor’s suspicions, but I decided not to. “No,” I said. “No more.”

  His smile looked a little sardonic now. “Up to you, boss.”

  Dick Hardy checked in on me fairly often, by phone or by e-mail. I felt a little like a teenager who’d just been given a learner’s permit and the keys to Dad’s car, and every night Dad checked it over for dings. He went over projections for the third quarter, wanted to make sure they were on target, wanted to see if I could jack them up a bit, wanted to know the status of every major deal. Wanted to make sure I was riding my guys hard enough.

  “You can’t let up, even for a second,” he said on the phone several times. “This is it. This is the big time. Everything’s riding on this. Everything.”

  I told him I understood. I told him I appreciated his faith in me, and he wouldn’t be disappointed.

  I wasn’t sure I believed it myself.

  I was in the restroom taking a pee when Trevor Allard came in. He nodded at me and went to the urinal at the far end of the row.

  He waited for me to talk first, and I waited for him. I was his direct boss now.

  I was perfectly willing to be civil to the guy, but I wasn’t going to extend myself. That was his job. Let him suck up a little.

  We each stared at the walls vacantly, which is what guys do when they urinate. We’re animals that way.

  When I’d finished, I went to the sink to wash my hands, and after I’d dried them and wadded up the paper towel, Trevor spoke.

  “How’s it going, Jason?” His voice echoed.

  “Good, Trevor,” I said. “You?”

  “Fine.”

  I was Jason now, no longer Steadman. That was a start.

  He zipped up, washed his hands, dried them. Then he turned to face me. He spoke softly, quickly. “Brett Gleason went to Corporate Security to ask for copies of the surveillance tapes—the AVI files, actually—for the night and day before his computer got wiped out. And guess what happened to them?”

  “Why are we still talking about this?” I said.

  “They’re gone, Jason. Erased.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Would you like to guess who the last person was to access those files? Just a couple of weeks ago? Whose name do you think was on the log?”

  I said nothing.

  “A guy in Corporate Security named Kurt Semko. Our pitcher. Your asshole buddy.”

  I shrugged, shook my head.

  “So you know what it looks like to me? It looks like you’re abusing Corporate Security to get revenge on people you don’t like. You’re using this guy to do your dirty work, Jason.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t think Kurt was even working here when Brett’s computer crashed. And I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to wipe out a computer. You’re full of it.”

  “Yeah, I bet it was really hard to get Kurt in here before he got his own employee badge. If you think you can get away with using Corporate Security as your personal goon squad, you’ve got your head up your ass.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “A lot of the guys are taken in by you. Your whole Easy Ed act. But I see right through you. Like when I had car trouble two days in a row, made me lose the Pavilion deal. You think I didn’t follow up on that? You think I didn’t call and apologize and tell them what happened? And you know what they told me?”

  I said nothing.

  “They said I called them from a golf club. Like I was playing golf, blowing them off. Well, I know someone who’s a member at Myopia, and I asked around. And the lady who runs the pro shop told me some guy in a leather Harley jacket came in that morning and asked to use the phone. Right around the time Pavilion got that call. She remembers because he didn’t look like a member.”

  “Trevor, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course not. What do they call that—plausible deniability? Well, stay tuned, Jason. There’s more to come. A lot more.”


  38

  Kate wanted to celebrate my latest promotion, but this time she wanted to throw a dinner party for the occasion. She’d hired a caterer, the same one who’d catered several of her friends’ parties.

  I didn’t want to celebrate this promotion. The circumstances were too unpleasant. But it seemed important to Kate. I think she wanted to show off to her friends that I was finally a success. So I said okay.

  If a caterer had come to our old house for a dinner, she’d have run screaming after seeing our kitchen. But the kitchen in our Hilliard Street house was spacious and newly renovated—not concrete, but French tile countertops and island, fairly modern appliances. The caterer and her all-female staff set to work in the kitchen, preparing the grilled fillet of beef in an herbed crust with chanterelle Madeira sauce and Muscovado glazed carrots.

  Or maybe it was grilled beef in a Muscovado sauce and Madeira glazed carrots. Whatever.

  Meanwhile, Kate and I were upstairs getting dressed. I’d brought her a half glass of cold white wine. She liked to have a little wine before people came over, and her obstetrician had told her that a little wine was not a problem. After all, he said, look at all those French and Italian women who drink wine throughout their pregnancies. French and Italian kids come out just fine. If you overlook the fact they can’t speak English.

  She sat on Grammy Spencer’s chaise lounge and watched me undress. “You know, you’ve got a great body.”

  “Are you putting the moves on me, woman?”

  “You do. Look at how you’ve slimmed down. You’ve got pecs and delts and all that. You’re a very sexy guy.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “And don’t say I look great too. I’m fat. I have fat ankles.”

  “Pregnancy becomes you. You’re beautiful.” And yes, you have fat ankles now, but it’s okay. I was never really an ankle man.

  “Are you excited about the baby?” She asked that every forty-eight hours.

  “Of course I’m excited.” I’m terrified. I’m dreading it. When the baby was just hypothetical, no one was more enthusiastic than me. But I was the Senior Vice President of Sales of Entronics USA, and in a few months, I’d have a newborn and be totally sleep-deprived, and I didn’t know how I’d get through. Or I’d be out of a job, and then what?