Killer Instinct (27 page)

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?

“I’m scared,” she said. “I’m terrified.”

I came up to her and kissed her. “Sure you are. So am I. It’s like you’ve got this thing growing inside you that’s going to take us over when it pops out. Like
Alien
.”

“I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“Sorry. Maybe it’s like—it’s like you’re jumping out of a C-141 Starlifter over Iraq. You don’t know if your parachute’s going to malfunction or if you’re going to get shot at on the way down.”

“Yep, that sounds like Kurt,” she said.

I shrugged, embarrassed. “He’s got some great stories. He’s done some amazing stuff.”

“Stuff you’d never want to do.”

“That too. And…some stuff he shouldn’t do.”

“Hmm?”

“He reads people’s e-mail, for one thing.”

“Whose? Yours?”

“Gordy’s.”

“Fine. Anyway, they say you really shouldn’t send anything in an e-mail that you wouldn’t put on a postcard. Isn’t Corporate Security supposed to monitor e-mail?”

I nodded. “I guess.”

“He’s really loyal to you, Jason. He’s a really good friend to you.”

“Maybe too good a friend.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? He’d do anything for you.”

I was quiet for several seconds.
Yeah, “anything” is right.
The “backgrounders”—the inside information he’d gotten me on Brian Borque of Lockwood Hotels and on Jim Letasky—that was borderline acceptable, as far as I was concerned. It made me uncomfortable. But what he’d done to all the Panasonic monitors: That was some kind of lunacy. A felony, probably, given the value of the equipment he’d destroyed. But worse, it was evidence of a strange violent streak, a brazenness. He was dangerous.

And what about Gordy’s drunken tirade? Gordy had asked Kurt to get him the Talisker bottle. Did Kurt spike it with something?

That broke dick’s not going to get away with screwing you over again,
he’d said.

Well, Kurt was right. That was the end of Gordy.

Kurt had boosted me up the corporate ladder, a fact that I never wanted to tell Kate. But now he was out of control. He had to be stopped.

Trevor was digging, and in time he’d unearth proof that Kurt had done some of these things. And I’d be implicated too. I’d go down. It would end my career.

And that I couldn’t afford. Not with this house, this mortgage, car payments, and a baby on the way.

I’d made a terrible mistake getting him a job in the first place. Now I’d have to make things right. I’d have to talk to Dennis Scanlon, Kurt’s boss, and lay it all out.