Termination Man: a novel (27 page)

It’s different at the fringes of society, where a star athlete might also be a pothead, a drunk, or even a criminal. I could easily picture this Jamie Watkins. I had never met him; but I had known plenty of his kind during my own growing-up years.

“Did you get into drugs too?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Hell, no. I always knew that that would have been a point of no return for me. I did get really into Jamie, though. He was tall, and broad-shouldered, and he had a pouty smile that could melt your heart.”

“Gag,” I teased.

She swatted playfully at me. “He was also great in bed.”

“Not better than me.”

Claire rubbed the moist skin on my chest. “It would be a close contest. Jamie would have given even you a run for your money.”

“So how did he mess things up for you?” I asked, not wanting to hear anything more about Jamie’s body, or his pouty smile, or his performance in bed.

“Well, we started going together during our senior year. I had been accepted at Michigan State; but he talked me into hanging around in that damned town for an extra year. We moved into this little trailer that he rented on the outskirts of town. He couldn’t hold a job, of course. Mostly he supported himself by selling drugs.”

“Is that why you bought the pistol?” I asked. “Because you were afraid of the shady characters who were buying drugs from your boyfriend?”

“No,” she said. Claire rolled away from me and gazed up at the ceiling. “I bought the gun because I was afraid of Jamie. After only a few months, things started going badly for him. He had this vision of himself as a kingpin. You know—like all the ‘gangstas’ you see in MTV rap videos. But in real-life, it didn’t work out like that for him. He wasn’t making much money, and he had these people threatening him all the time. So he started to become really depressed, moody. He would pound the walls of our trailer sometimes at night.”

She let out a long sigh. “Then came the day when he started pounding on me. It was just a slap her and there, at first. Then one day I said something that he didn’t like, and he beat the shit out of me.”

I was almost incredulous. There was no way that I could reconcile the present-day image of Claire the Ice Queen with a small-town girl who allowed her dropout boyfriend to use her for a punching bag.

She looked at me. “I guess you want to know why I put up with it.”

“Yeah. Why did you put up with it?”

“I tried to leave, actually, several times. But then he would track me down at a friend’s house or wherever I was staying. He would make nice, giving me another glimpse of the old Jamie. Then I would move back in and the cycle would begin again.

“But one night he was drinking and high, and he started talking all this crazy shit, and I was scared to even be in the trailer with him. I made some excuse to leave.  Said I had to go visit my parents. And Jamie says, ‘You lying bitch, you hate your parents. You’re not going anywhere.’ And so I tried to leave anyway, and he grabbed me and started beating me.

“When I woke up, I was in a bed in the county hospital. He had beaten me unconscious, and I guess he was afraid that he had crossed the line this time and actually killed me.

“A county sheriff’s deputy took him into custody that very night. The deputy asked me if I wanted to file a formal complaint and I said ‘Hell, yes’—even though I knew that Jamie would be out in a few months, at the most.

“When they discharged me from the hospital, the first thing I did was buy the gun. A week later Jamie came looking for me. The sheriff had let him out on bail, of course. He found me at my cousin’s place when there was no one else around. I walked out on the front porch and he was there with a bouquet of flowers. I guess he believed that even though he had put me in the hospital, we were going to begin the whole thing again.” Claire laughed bitterly. “Sure he did. That’s exactly what he thought.”

“So what did you do?” I asked.

“I walked out onto the front porch with the gun behind my back. I was smiling like I was going to come back to him. And then when I got close, I pulled out the gun and rammed it up against his throat, so that if it went off, it would have taken off the top of his head. And I said, ‘Jamie, if you ever come near me again, it will be the last thing you ever do. Because I’m going to put six holes in you, and then I’m going to reload and put six more holes in.”

She rolled back against me. “Jamie’s face turned white. He went away. I could see him shaking as he walked toward his car. After that I never saw him again.”

“That’s one hell of a restraining order,” I said.

“Yeah, well, it got that son of a bitch out of my life forever. Since then I’ve always kept the gun with me. But I don’t really need it for protection anymore. Not in the circles that I move in now. Today it’s more of a good luck charm, a reminder that I’ll never be a victim again.”

Interesting
, I thought. Most women would carry a piece of jewelry or a family photo around as a good luck charm. Claire’s good luck charm was the .38 special that she had used to threaten her abusive ex-boyfriend.

“Anyway, she said. “Enough about me. What got you so fired up tonight?”

“Shawn Myers,” I said. “I had a little discussion with him that didn’t go so well.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“No. Not really.”

I decided that I shouldn’t tell Claire what I had seen tonight—or what I had done. Not yet. I was still assessing the situation. My conflict with Shawn Myers might escalate from here, and it might blow over. Nothing was to be gained at this point by making Claire aware of these details.

Nor was I worried about Shawn attempting to press himself on Claire, even though she was easily the most attractive female at UP&S. Claire Turner was nothing like the daughter of the cleaning woman. The preceding story had only reinforced my belief that Claire Turner could take care of herself.

Let
Shawn
try
, I thought.
Claire would give him a lot more than he bargained for. 

“Shawn is strong-willed,” Claire said. “They all are, those TP Automotive people.”

“Shawn is a complete asshole,” I said.

“I’m going to take that as a definite sign that you don’t like him.”

“You could say that.”

I let the matter drop at that. Further discussion of Shawn Myers would have only worsened my mood, which had been partially uplifted by a vigorous session of sex with Claire. Most of the muscles in my body ached pleasantly; and Shawn Myers was far from this hotel room. Almost far enough to allow me to forget about him.

We sprung the trap on Alan the very next day. Like I
’ve
said, Alan was not the sort of man who could be fooled for long. Sooner or later, he would have put the pieces together.

We executed the plan around 1:00 p.m., shortly after everyone had returned from the lunch break. Alan studiously tried to ignore Claire as she approached his desk. As she walked in his direction, he bent forward in the direction of his computer screen. His nose might have been touching the display. But none of this was very convincing. Alan had noticed Claire the moment she had arisen from her desk, on the other side of the room.

She walked around behind his desk and spoke quietly into his ear. I knew exactly what Claire was saying to Alan in that low whisper, because I had scripted her words for her: She was saying:
“Come on, Alan. It’s now or never. I know a place in one of the storage rooms. A place where we can be alone.”

You might say that Alan should have seen through the ploy. If given several hours to contemplate the situation, I have no doubt that he would have decided to side with his sense of caution. But ego and libido will overpower most men in the heat of the moment. And you also have to consider the unique circumstances of Alan Ferguson, the man who had struggled to believe that Claire Turner would be interested in him. His hopes had been raised and then shattered. Now they were being unexpectedly lifted again. Alan wasn’t thinking about long-term consequences.

As he stood up from his desk to follow Claire, even I was surprised at the degree to which he seemed ruled by his emotions. The look on his face could be fairly described as a thousand-yard stare. We had placed before him a temptation that he could not resist.
How long had it been since Alan Ferguson had been with a woman,
I wondered.

I waited until both of them had disappeared into the narrow passageway that led to the factory area. Then I stood up from my desk and sent Beth Fisk a text message: “In play.” It was another quasi-coded message, another step to establish plausible deniability in the unlikely event that our machinations were ever discovered or suspected.

Beth’s reply was a bit less discreet: “Let’s go get him.”

I cringed at her overeagerness. In operations like this, haste could bring ruin to the most carefully laid plans. Haste could lead to a lawsuit. In a worst-case scenario, haste could even land someone in jail.

So I typed my response: “5 minutes. Wait for my signal.”

I waited five minutes and sent Beth a third te
x
t message: one word, “Now.” Per our prearrangements, I stood up from my desk and walked into the factory area. I passed through the little hallway where Alan had begun the plant tour on my first day at UP&S. I avoided looking at the trophies and company photograph
s
that had apparently meant so much to him. That had been a different company; and he had
ultimately
gained nothing by his attachment to it. In fact, his excessive nostalgia for the old days of management by GM and Takada Press had become the cause of his complete ruination.

I approached the place where Alan and Claire would be via the cordoned-off walkway that led down the eastern half of the plant floor. I knew that Beth, Bernie, and Kurt Myers would be approaching from the walkway on the opposite side.

We tracked them to their rendezvous site: a large storage closet at the rear of the factory. The ultimate cliché. But it was the ideal place for our purposes: It was the perfect size for a tryst, and it was sufficiently remote from the plant assembly lines.

Kurt Myers yanked open the door of the storage room just as Claire, her blouse partially open, was violently twisting away from Alan. She shrieked on cue, and shoved Alan away. Then she bolted from the storage room, but not before pausing to give Alan a slap across the face.

Alan was breathing heavily. His gaze moved from Claire, who was now staring at him with a look of indignant but manufactured shock, to the little gaggle of witnesses that were gathered outside the storage room door. And I knew that we would not be the only witnesses for long. Within a minute or two, employees on the factory floor would begin to abandon their workstations and gravitate toward the spectacle.
How do I know this?
I had been through similar scenarios before.

Within five minutes the five of us were sequestered away in a meeting room: Kurt, Bernie, Beth, Alan—and myself. Only one relevant party was missing: Claire.

Claire had walked away almost as soon as the scene in the storage room had unfolded, barely waiting for Beth to tell her to go. This detail, too, was previously rehearsed and planned: Claire would serve no purpose in Alan’s termination meeting. In fact, her presence could even complicate matters.

Beth closed the door of the meeting room and joined everyone else at the table. We had walked back to this chamber in silence; now it was time for Alan to learn of his fate.

It was ugly; but not as ugly as it might have been. Alan could see that he had placed himself in a corner. He had been caught in a storage room with a disheveled woman who now accused him of sexual harassment—sexual assault, in fact. It was the sort of thing that would never hold up in a criminal case; but in the corporate world, lesser standards of proof suffice.

Employment-at-will means that either side can end the relationship, with or without cause or explanation. You can stand up from your desk or workstation at three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon and quit, with or without notice. Likewise, your employer can at any time tell you to gather up your personal belongings and vacate the premises. They don’t need a reason—they can simply say that you “weren’t a good fit for the organization.”

In practice, of course, the break is not always as clean and complete as that. Moreover, the terminated employee isn’t always the party that desperately wants to hold on. On occasion the jilted employer is the clingy one.

Sometimes employers pressure new employees into signing non-compete contracts, in which they agree not to accept employment with a competitor in the event that they leave their current job—for any reason. This means that an employer can effectively have its hooks in an ex-employee whom it has fired, in the event that the ex-employee goes to work for a rival firm.

A terminated employee can find ways to make the pain linger for an ex-employer as well. There are a few situations that automatically nullify the doctrine of employment-at-will: evidence of racial or gender discrimination, the firing of an employee who has blown the whistle on corporate fraud, etc.