“Gross misconduct?” Alan shouted.
“What else would you call it?” Beth asked.
“Alan,” Bernie said. “You really don’t have much of a case here.”
Even when a man knows that he is trapped, he doesn’t necessarily submit quietly. Alan was merely venting now. This too, had been expected. Alan knew that some sort of conspiracy had been contrived against him, although he would never be able to prove it to an outside third party—just as he would never be able to justify his heat-of-the-moment decision to follow Claire into the storage room.
And so we let Alan vent for a while. This was a part of the process, too. He had to make a show of indignation. He had to call down every manner of condemnation on Beth, Kurt, and Bernie. And also on me—this witness against him, who seemed to be playing a role that Alan could not quite define.
The three officers of TP Automotive remained impassive while Alan hurled his threats of legal retribution, and his denunciations of treachery and unfair play. Every few minutes, either Beth or Bernie would stop him, and gently guide him back to the contract. It was all about the contract at this point. All about convincing him to sign the document that would assure TP Automotive’s legal loophole.
Alan wasn’t going to do this quietly, and not without unbottling the rage that had been building up inside him for weeks. In the course of my undercover operations, I had seen many corporate employees deliver similar performances.
But in the end, Alan—like almost all of them—signed.
Chapter 35
The matter of Alan Ferguson’s separation from TP Automotive was not complete—not quite yet. Alan had already left the building; but someone needed to explain his sudden departure to Lucy Browning.
This task fell to Beth Fisk.
“What do you mean—Alan is no longer with the company?” Lucy practically shouted inside the closed meeting room. “Alan didn't say anything to me about resigning. And I know that he would have told me.”
“Alan resigned rather suddenly,” Beth explained.
“You mean you fired him.”
“I mean that Alan resigned.”
“Fine. If you aren’t going to tell me the truth, then I’ll call him and ask him.”
“I don’t think that would be a very good use of your time. Alan has signed a non-disclosure agreement. He is prohibited from contact with current employees at UP&S.”
“What are you talking about?” Lucy sputtered. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! I—”
“I’m not going to discuss the details of Alan’s separation from the company with you,” Beth interrupted. “There are confidential matters that must be observed from all sides—including Alan’s side. My purpose here is partly to protect Alan’s privacy.”
“Oh, give me a break!” Lucy said. “I can call Alan tonight, if I want to.”
“Yes,” Beth admitted. “That’s true. But you will be placing Alan’s financial situation in jeopardy if you do. His severance arrangements included a confidentiality agreement. The company would technically have the right to revoke his severance payment in the event of a breach of that contract. You would also be placing yourself in danger.”
“How so?”
“Well, I’m being pretty clear with you here: The company doesn't want you to contact Alan Ferguson. If you insist on doing so, you will be in violation of the company’s trust.”
“’Trust?’” Lucy asked. “How can you mandate that two employees—one of them no longer with the company—are forbidden to talk?”
“You make the decision regarding what you’re willing to risk, Lucy. But keep in mind that when you do so, you’re also deciding for Alan—and he has two children to think about.”
Lucy couldn’t have known if this last remark was a veiled jab at her spinsterhood. She probably also didn’t know that Beth Fisk was employing a standard operating tactic of senior management and HR: Divide and conquer.
The idea is simple, really: If white-collar employees talk among themselves about an unpopular policy or manager, they might possibly orchestrate some collective action to counteract the situation. Management therefore keeps the rank-and-file in individual, isolated silos, so that no single one of them can grasp the entire picture. Like the blind Hindus laying hands on an elephant, each one forms an incomplete—and often contradictory—assessment of the forces arrayed against them.
Divide and conquer doesn't work in the blue-collar world; and it isn’t just because of unions. Blue-collar workers were staging strikes and organizing boycotts long before anyone had ever heard of the United Auto Workers or the AFL-CIO. But blue-collar workers are different. The key difference is that blue-collar workers have a sense of solidarity—imperfect and rife with division as it so often is.
Say the word “solidarity” to an accountant or an engineer, and he’ll roll his eyes. White-collar workers see themselves as locked in an ongoing competition for the next promotion, the next pat on the back, the next advantage over the man or woman in the adjacent cubicle. The perpetual war of all against all. This is one of the factors that makes white-collar workers so easy to manipulate. The average blue-collar worker knows all to well where he stands in the company’s hierarchy. The white-collar folks are far less realistic. Every twenty-four-year-old staff professional with a business administration degree is convinced that the executive boardroom is only a few lucky breaks away.
“Listen, Lucy,” Beth said, taking a more conciliatory tone. “I don't want you to think of me as the enemy here. You and I have more in common than you might think.”
“Really? And what would that be?”
“Think about it, Lucy: We’re both women in a man’s world. I’d like to think that this fact makes it a little easier for you to take my advice.”
This a ploy that women in senior management will often resort to: the notion that they have the unquestioned support of women who are lower on the totem pole. It is a sort of tokenism in reverse. And Lucy’s response indicated that she was not going along with it.
“I don’t believe this. You think you can appeal to the sisterhood here? Why do you think that you have a right to speak for me, simply because you’re a woman? You and I—we’re nothing alike: You’re a tall, beautiful woman on the fast track of a large corporation. I’m overweight, a nobody; and it sounds like my job is being threatened—just like the job of the only coworker whom I really felt a connection with. You people have fired my best friend—a man who contributed to the formation of this company. And you expect me to betray Alan because you’re asking me to, and we’re both women?”
By now Beth was exasperated. She had tried to make Lucy see the light; and her attempt had failed. Perhaps Beth had even been toying with the idea of pleading for a last-minute reprieve for Alan’s female confidant. Clearly there would be no reprieves now.
“I’ve explained the situation to you, Lucy. You decide what you want to do next. But remember: your actions will have consequences.”
Chapter 36
It was 6:30 p.m., and Shawn Myers was sitting at his desk, brooding. He had a great deal to think about—none of it good.
Only three days had passed since the disaster of the monthly meeting. After his humiliating treatment at the hands of his father, he had been forced to endure further humiliation when following through on his old man’s order to apologize to Tom Galloway. Galloway had made a pretense of being gracious, all the while treating Shawn to that infuriating smirk of his. Not for the first time Shawn had imagined how it would feel to slam his fist into the front row of Tom Galloway’s teeth. That would teach the little prick to smirk!
But he would never do that. He would never take action against Tom Galloway, because such a step would be the ultimate defiance of his father. And so he would continue to bow and scrape before Galloway and the other worthless fools of TP Automotive’s senior management team.
He could feel a bruise in the spot where his back had collided with the wall during his
confrontation with Craig Walker. Shawn could still not completely believe that the hired consultant had dared to lay hands on him. Like his father and Tom Galloway, Craig Walker had stolen his manhood and humiliated him. And in front of the girl.
Walker was also clever: It would be difficult for Shawn to retaliate through official channels without exposing his own weakness for Alyssa. He had not yet told his father, Beth, or Bernie about the outrage. Eventually he would tell them. But first he would have to find a way to spin the story to his advantage. The facts as they now stood would not make him look good.
It had been a horrible week. A horrible, humiliating week.
He had also been humiliated by the Alyssa Chalmers. The cleaning woman’s daughter had walked in with her mother about half an hour ago, and the girl had disappeared down one of the adjacent hallways without giving him so much as a nod.
It was one thing to be pushed around by his father or Tom Galloway—or even Craig Walker, for that matter—but what sort of a man would he be if he let a fifteen-year-old girl humiliate him? And wasn't that exactly what she was doing? He had gone out of his way to be nice to her on numerous occasions, and she had repaid his interest only with indifference.
It was time to teach that girl a lesson. But how? So far Alyssa had been impervious to every attempt at verbal persuasion.
Maybe that’s the problem, Shawn thought. You’ve been all talk, when you should be a little more about action.
Shawn had long recognized that some women did not say yes when they really wanted to say yes. What these women really wanted was some help in saying yes.
On a handful of occasions since his early twenties, he had occasionally “helped” women to say yes. There were usually no repercussions. Most had been either too frightened or intimidated to retaliate. (Or perhaps they had been honest with themselves about what they really wanted, he thought.)
But one of them had called him the next morning, screaming that what Shawn had done was “date rape,” and threatening to go to the police. Shawn had shown up at her apartment an hour later with a pair of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, and a rope. He had surprised her at her door, knocking her down and forcing her into the handcuffs before duct-taping her mouth shut. Then he had looped one coil of the rope around her neck. Tightening the rope, Shawn had told her that he could easily snap her neck, and that was exactly what he would do if she went to the police. Then he raped her again on the floor of her living room, without removing either the duct tape or the handcuffs.
“You see what you made me do?” Shawn had asked, pulling up his pants after the act. And there was some truth in this: He had gone to her apartment with the intention of scaring her, but not necessarily of taking her again. But the sight of her helpless, handcuffed and gagged with the rope around her neck—well, that had been too arousing for him to pass up. She had brought that on herself.
As he removed his handcuffs from the woman’s wrists, he had neglected to tell her how lucky she really was: He had not told her that far worse had once befallen two women who had dared to humiliate him.
Shawn stared overhead at the florescent lights of the UP&S office. It all seemed so long ago—that night he had surprised that woman in her apartment with the handcuffs. Looking back, it seemed almost like a dream or a movie that he had once seen. How old had he been then? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?
This remembrance brought back a memory of an even earlier vintage, about the Really Bad Thing that he had done during his student days at the Ohio State University. But hadn’t those two women also had it coming?
Shawn shuddered. Yes, they had had it coming; but that did not make it any less of a mistake. He still recalled the feeling of utter isolation he had felt so many years ago, as he stood in the doorway of that student apartment in Columbus with the bloody crowbar in his hand. But that feeling of isolation had been almost immediately accompanied by a sense of superhuman power.
An odd mix of emotions, to be sure.
The two dead young women had lain on the floor with their heads bashed in, having paid the ultimate price for their bitchiness only hours after they had spoken so rudely to him in the off-campus bar.
Why had he done that—beyond the obvious reasons? Even now there were elements of the incident that remained a mystery to him. It had been a youthful indiscretion, to be sure, but one that had nearly cost him everything.
That was all in the past—the woman he had handcuffed, as well as the two women who had been dead for fifteen years now. But what about Alyssa? She was his immediate concern. Alyssa wasn't yet deserving of a crowbar; but that didn’t mean that he could let her defy him at will, either, did it?
Shawn leaned over in his chair and removed a flask from his attaché case. It was an engraved Tommy Bahama flask with a leather cover. The flask contained about six ounces of 12-year-old Dalmore scotch whiskey. After checking to make sure that he was completely alone in the front office area, Shawn permitted himself a discreet sip.
He screwed the flask shut and returned it to his briefcase, feeling a bit guilty. This was exactly the sort of thing that would set his father off. The old man had spent so many years of his life in the button-down conformity of TP Automotive, that he now no longer understood how to have a good time.
Well, Shawn thought. I do. And I’m not going to let some fifteen year-old girl push me around.
He stood up and noted with satisfaction that Craig Walker had gone home for the evening—along with the other office staff. His father, Beth, and Bernie were also gone. The girl’s mother was in the far hallway.
This meant that he would be able to talk to the girl alone.
But was that really all he was intending to do? Surely he wasn't intending to lay hands on her, was he?
Shawn was acutely aware of the combination of the heat of his desire, his anger, and the whiskey. It was a combination that had proved to be unpredictable in the past, for himself as well as for others.
He told himself that a talk was all he wanted—but this time a talk in which Alyssa treated him respectfully, as was his due.
Donna was in one of UP&S’s utility closets, using a hose to fill a ten-gallon rolling bucket that was equipped with a mop and wringer. As the hot water gurgled from the hose into the bucket, it emitted a corrosive steam, vaporizing traces of the industrial-strength cleaning powder that she had scooped into the bucket before turning on the water.
Donna’s next task was to clean the floor in the north corridor hall between the office and the production area. She turned off the faucet just as she heard her daughter cry out.
She poked her head out of the closet. Alyssa and Shawn Myers were down the hall a short ways, within shouting distance of her. Concealed as she was within the closet, neither one of them had likely been aware of her presence.
Shawn Myers had Alyssa pinned up against one wall. He was trying to kiss her—well—more than kiss her: He held her head back with one hand. His other hand was on her breast. All the while, he was forcibly kissing her, and—by the looks of it—biting her on the neck, face, and ears.
Alyssa was struggling against Myers; but it was a fruitless effort. Shawn easily outweighed her daughter by a hundred pounds, and he was a foot taller.
Donna didn’t even think to call out for Shawn to stop. Her first impulse was to attack; and she quickly looked around for an item that could be used as a weapon. The most obvious one was right there in the utility closet with her: the mop inside the rolling buck.
The mop’s wooden handle was detachable from the mop head. Donna plunged her hands into the steaming, acidic water and found the clip that freed the handle. Thus armed, she bolted out of the closet.
Shawn did not see her coming. Alyssa did not see her coming, either, buried as she was by the man who was pressed up against her, running his hands over her legs, buttocks, breasts, and crotch.
Donna raised the mop handle like a sword, cocking it over her right shoulder to create momentum. Then she swung the mop handle forward in a
downward arc, putting as much of her weight into the swing as possible.
When the mop handle struck Shawn Myers’s back it produced a loud popping sound. Shawn released Alyssa and arched his back reflexively. He whirled on Donna, and she immediately delivered another blow to his abdomen.
He leaned forward, grabbing his abdomen now. Donna did not hesitate: She gave him another whack on the shoulder.
She was vaguely aware of Shawn going down, at least momentarily incapacitated by these three considerable blows. She dropped the mop handle—a mistake that she would not recognize for another minute.
Alyssa was seated on the floor, her body scrunched back against the wall, her face between her raised knees. She was sobbing.
“Are you okay, Alyssa?”
It was a stupid question, of course; and Donna regretted it as soon as it was said. Alyssa was alternately crying and gasping for breath. She swayed to one side, then made as if to keel over. She closed her eyes.
She’s going to go into shock if I don’t do something to prevent it, Donna thought.
“Honey, listen to me,” she said. “I’m going to get you home now.”
That was when Donna heard Shawn say, “You bitch!”
He was clambering to his feet, simultaneously clutching at the discarded mop handle. Donna jumped up and kicked the handle away, snatching it away from the man who towered over her.
Then she began to beat him again. He fell back down onto the floor, placing his hands and forearms protectively over his head.
“Stop it, bitch!”
But she did not stop. She did not stop until finally he grabbed the mop handle away from her. She felt splinters tear the skin on her palms as the handle slid through her fingers.
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