The Dinosaur Club
Page 10
“The important thing is that we keep them off-balance,” Fallon said. “Keep them wondering what’s really going on. And that we keep track of what they’re up to.”
Annie let out a low chuckle. “I know one way to do that.” She glanced at each of them. “Did you guys know that early in the mornings—before everything gets too chaotic—if you put your ear real close to certain heating ducts you can hear conversations in some of the executive offices?” Now she grinned at each of them in turn. “The woman’s john on the twenty-ninth floor has especially good reception.”
Fallon stared at her, then at Wally. “Remind me to block off my heating duct the next time we do personnel evaluations,” he said.
“Speaking of personnel, I heard something interesting today,” Annie added. She gave Fallon another grin. “But I heard it through the all-girl grapevine, not the heating duct. According to my information, our legal department asked human resources for a breakdown of employees based on their ages.”
“What are you talking about?” Fallon asked.
“There’s this woman who works there—Miriam Silver. A few years back she was running that intern program we were involved in, and she and I became friendly. This morning I ran into her in the hall, and she told me that legal was asking for a breakdown of employees by age groups. She overheard her boss talking about it, and when she asked him later, he claimed it was for some demographic study, but Miriam thinks that’s a lot of B.S. She’s fifty, and she’s scared witless about losing her job. But what really ticked her off was that it was another woman asking for it.”
Fallon stiffened slightly. “Which one? Did she say?”
“Samantha somebody. Miriam didn’t know her last name. She only said she was ‘some cutsie-putsie named Samantha.’”
Fallon felt stunned, then angry. He realized Annie was still talking to him, and he hadn’t heard what she had said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t hear you.”
Annie was grinning at him. “I said, so what about other departments? Manufacturing, whatever? Do we try to bring them in on this plan of ours?”
Fallon pushed away what he had just heard and struggled to refocus. “That’ll be harder,” he said. “We may not even hear what’s going on there. That’s where the company has an edge. They’ve already got us divided, and most of us don’t even know people in other departments that well. But we can try. Get the word out as best we can. If we start putting out a phony newsletter we can send it by E-mail; send it to the plants and the other offices. The important thing is that we stick together. Our division. Sales. If we can add anyone else, great.” He looked around the table. “But we can’t trust anyone else. Maybe it will snowball all by itself if people in other divisions see what we’re doing. But the important thing”—he waved his hand again, taking in the group—”is that the seven of us stick together and run our own tight little show; watch Carter Bennett’s little maneuvers and fight the sonofabitch in whatever way we can.”
“Maybe we should skip all the bullshit and just shoot the sonofabitch right between the eyes.”
It was George Valasquez again. Fallon stared at the man, saw the uncontrolled rage that had reasserted itself, and again realized just how close to the edge George really stood. He felt his stomach tighten, and he suddenly wished Carter Bennett could see George’s face, and understand what it meant. He wished his old friend Charlie Waters could see it, too. And Samantha Moore. See just what their little plan had wrought.
Wally Green slumped into the chair that Les Gavin had occupied earlier that day. He had closed the door to Fallon’s office.
“So tell me, Jack. You think we have a shot at beating this little prick Bennett?”
Fallon leaned back in his leather executive chair. “Depends on what you mean, Wally. You mean stop his plan, keep him from getting rid of us? No, I don’t think we can beat him that way.” He saw an almost imperceptible sag come over Wally’s face, and hurried on. “But if you mean we get everything out of it we possibly can, then, yeah, I think we can do that. And I think we will.”
The answer didn’t seem to hit the way Fallon had hoped it would. He leaned forward, intertwined his fingers. “Look, Wally, have you ever seen a prizefight where one of the fighters was really outclassed, just didn’t have the tools to win, but still wouldn’t go down? Just wouldn’t quit?” He watched Wally nod his head. “Okay. So in the end, what happened? The stronger fighter, he got to raise his hand and hear all his fans cheering for him. But when he did, he also felt all the hurt the other guy had laid on him.” He smiled across the desk. “Well, that’s us, Wally. You have to face reality. We’re outclassed in this fight. But if we stick together and fight back, then we’re going to lay a lot of hurt on Carter Bennett. And then we’re going to walk away with our prize money.”
“Yeah, but it’s gonna be the loser’s share of the gate, isn’t it?”
Fallon inclined his head in a modified shrug. “Sometimes you have to take what you can get, Wally.” He smiled again. “Then walk away. How do they say it? Bloody but unbowed?”
Wally imitated Fallon’s gesture, inclined his own head as if saying: Yeah, okay. Then his face broke into a grin. “Hey, maybe it won’t come to that,” he said. “Maybe Georgie Valasquez will shoot the sonofabitch first.”
Fallon blew out a breath. “You know, he scares me a little bit. He reminds me of guys I saw in Nam. What’s going on with him? I know he doesn’t have any kids, but he seems even more shook up than the rest of us.”
Wally wrinkled up his nose. “The poor bastard just found out his wife has cancer. He’s probably scared shitless that he’ll lose his medical benefits along with his job.”
“Jesus, I didn’t know. And damn it, I should have.”
Wally shook his head. “He just found out, Jack. Look, don’t worry about Georgie doing anything crazy. It’s just Spanish machismo. All that hot blood, that’s all. That, and all the other crap he’s got coming down right now.”
“You may think it’s machismo,” Fallon said. “But I’ve seen that look before. I’m about ready to refer George to a shrink who wrote me today.”
Wally raised his eyebrows. “How come you’re getting letters from shrinks?”
Fallon glanced at the letter that lay on his desk. It had arrived that morning, written by the therapist Trisha had been seeing. It was solicitous and—he was sure—well meaning. But it had angered him on first reading. Then it had made him laugh out loud.
“It seems to have been Trish’s idea. The shrink is her therapist. Apparently my soon-to-be-ex wife expressed concern about my mental health. She seems to think the breakup of our marriage will leave me at loose ends and feeling unfulfilled. Her therapist is offering to recommend someone I can go to for counseling.”
“Jesus Christ,” Wally said. “Janice never offered to send me to a shrink. And she thought I was as crazy as a bedbug.”
Fallon grinned. “Are you feeling unfulfilled?”
“The last time I felt unfulfilled was when I was married to Janice.” Wally’s face suddenly brightened. “Hey, speaking of unfulfilled, you remember that woman from the other night? The one sitting down the bar from us at Café des Artistes?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Fallon said. He sat back in his chair, awaiting Wally’s story, George Valasquez and Samantha Moore almost forgotten.
Wally rolled his eyes. “What a fiasco. You sure made the right move when you left.”
Fallon started to laugh. “Tell me,” he said.
Wally glanced over his shoulder, as if someone might be listening, then leaned farther forward, lowered his voice another notch. “Well, after you leave, I figure: What the hell, and I go up to her, okay? And, right away, I put on my best moves.”
Fallon imagined Wally’s best moves and fought off a smile.
Wally began rolling his hands and shoulders in a circular motion. “Well, we’re getting along great. I tell her all about myself; the divorce, everything. She tells me all about herself. S
ame goddamned story, you know? Then I’m schmoozing, she’s laughing, so I decide it’s time to turn this conversation to the real subject. So I tell her about this special set of exercises I do every morning: how I do pushups with my goddamned tongue. And I think I see this little light come into her eyes, and I figure, right then and there, that old Wally is about to get his dicky dipped. I figure, screw my ex-wife; screw her car salesman boyfriend; screw the Rolls-Royce I keep telling myself she wants to buy—old Wally is about to get laid.”
Fallon leaned his head back and started to laugh. “So what happened?” he finally asked.
“What happened? What happened? I’ll tell you what happened. The woman turns out to be the queen of barracudas, that’s what happened.” He shook his head, pushed himself forward even more, his protruding paunch almost touching his thighs. “This lunatic, she reaches over and pinches my cheek, then gives me that quote from Macbeth—the one about booze lighting the fire of lust but not fueling performance. Then she picks up her drink and pours it over my head.”
5
THE REALITY OF WHAT SHE WAS READING HIT HOME, AND Samantha Moore looked at her notes with a sinking feeling she could not seem to shake. Carter had used the Chase/Chemical Bank buyout as the model for his own proposal. It called for a flat payment of three weeks’ salary for each year of service, an additional twenty-six weeks for those employed twenty years or more, and a twenty-five-hundred-dollar flat grant toward retraining for a new job. She punched up the personnel records she had been given access to on her computer screen, then typed in the code for the sales division. She had chosen it, in part, because of her interest in Jack Fallon, but also because its employees carried some of the higher salaries within the company. She scanned down the list, stopping at Wally Green.
As New York district manager, Green earned a base salary of seventy-eight thousand dollars, plus a yearly bonus based on his district’s overall sales performance. In recent years that had put him in a low six-figure range. But bonuses were not factored into Carter’s plan, and Green—like most employees in this twenty-three-year-old company—did not qualify for the additional buyout for twenty or more years of service. Employees who fell into the forty-five to sixty-year-old hit-list spectrum, she had found, had on average eighteen years with the company.
Samantha pulled a small calculator from her desk and punched in the numbers. That would mean the company could rid itself of Wally Green with a flat payment of sixty-seven thousand five hundred dollars. Even with the twenty-five-hundred-dollar retraining grant thrown in, that would still be eight thousand dollars short of his annual base income. She closed her eyes, tapped her fingers on the desk. Green, should he make Carter’s list, also wouldn’t be able to touch his vested pension until he reached age fifty-nine. The defined benefit package the company operated under limited the portability of those funds. It was a system most major corporations had opted to use, for the simple reason that it kept the maximum amount of money in their pension plans, which, if the plans performed well, lowered the amount those companies had to contribute. In short, Mr. Green would have his vested pension; he simply would not have access to it until it had served its maximum use for the company that had just put him out of work. And he would also have to start paying for his own health insurance unless he was lucky enough to find another job where it was offered.
She went back to the computer screen and pulled up Jack Fallon’s file, then began punching numbers into her calculator. Fallon’s base salary was one hundred and fifty thousand, with annual bonuses that had pushed it to around two and a quarter a year. He was also eligible for the additional twenty-year-service payment. Using Carter’s buyout figures, Fallon would walk away with slightly less than three hundred thousand dollars—certainly much better than Wally Green, but a far cry from real retirement money. And, like Green, he would be unable to touch his pension for another ten years. She closed her eyes; thought of Fallon’s upcoming divorce, which would probably cost him half of that settlement package. Then there was the continued expense of educating his children. No, she decided. He wouldn’t be much better off than Wally Green. She kept her eyes closed and silently hoped the higher cost of pushing Fallon out the door might give Carter pause. She did some quick mental calculations. Assume they replaced Fallon with a younger man, whom they could probably hire at a base salary of one hundred thousand dollars. Then factor in lower benefit costs at about 30 percent, and it would mean they could supplant Jack Fallon at an annual savings of about sixty-five thousand dollars. She knew it would be the only figure Carter Bennett would consider.
She looked back to her own notes. Carter had asked her to calculate how many younger employees the company would have to destaff—his word—to avoid the perception of age discrimination. She had done that and had found a simple formula that would work. He had also asked her to itemize some added perks that would make the company appear generous to the courts. She had come up with psychological counseling, temporary off-site office space and secretarial assistance to help with letters and résumés, and a six-month extension of health benefits. It would be expensive, but not prohibitively so when compared to the cost of a losing court battle. And it might even serve to avoid litigation. But it was also a hoax, a blatant placebo, designed to obscure the human wreckage the plan would leave scattered in its wake. Wreckage like Jack Fallon.
Samantha sat back in her chair. Why was she fixating on this one man? They had had a drink together, nothing more. Had she been that attracted to him? And why, knowing what she knew, had she agreed to have dinner with him?
She shook her head. Face the facts. There is nothing you can do.
You could warn him. Give him a running start to either fight it or find another job. The sound of that inner voice shocked her. The company was her client. And its stockholders. So how did professional ethics square with that misguided scenario?
The word seemed to stick in her throat as she repeated it aloud. “Ethics.” And how do you apply that lofty word to what you’re doing now—helping your client subvert the laws governing age discrimination?
She stiffened slightly and pushed the thought away, relegated it to its place of origin: law school debates among temporarily ardent students, who—diplomas in hand—would sacrifice both scruples and sense of culpability and move on to more important matters. She looked back at the computer screen and stared at Jack Fallon’s name and tried not to think of the man. Just do your job, she told herself, and forget this byzantine twist you’re trying to inject into your life.
Her intercom buzzed, and she pressed a button; listened to her assistant explain that a Mr. Fallon had just called to cancel their dinner engagement.
What was this? Telepathy? She felt a sudden rush of something she couldn’t quite identify. Was it guilt? “Did he suggest another time?”
“I asked him about that,” her assistant answered. “He just said, ‘No, no other time.’”
She felt inexplicably hurt, and immediately dismissed it. “Very well. Thank you.” She sat back in her chair. She had a sudden urge to go to Fallon’s office. “What are you thinking?” she whispered to herself. She shook her head, surrendered hope of understanding her decision, then stood and walked out her door.
The door to Fallon’s inner office was open, and Samantha could see him standing behind his desk, talking on the phone. His face seemed dark and angry, and she felt a momentary urge to turn and leave.
He put the phone down, looked up, and saw her standing there. His features softened slightly; the anger replaced by what seemed to her curiosity tinged with suspicion. She stepped through the door.
“My assistant tells me you’re standing me up,” she said. She forced a smile as she stopped in front of his desk.
“I can’t talk about it right now.” He glanced back at his phone as if that somehow explained his words. “I just got a call from a neighbor. A half dozen movers are cleaning out my house. I have to get up there and toss their butts into the street.”
She was stunned by her own words and could see they had had the same effect on him. He hesitated, seemed to come to a decision. “Sure. But I have to leave now.”
“Just let me call my assistant. She’ll have to reschedule a meeting.” She decided not to tell him the meeting was with Carter Bennett.
They rode the Metro North train, enduring great gaps of silence, as each tried to understand why they were making this trip together.
Fallon knew he was attracted to the woman; even strongly attracted would not have been an inaccurate description. But he also knew he couldn’t trust her. Not after the bit of information he had picked up from Annie Schwartz. Her offer had taken him by surprise, but he had told himself that he could use the opportunity to pump her; to find out exactly what she was doing for Carter Bennett. It had been an impulsive decision, and he wondered about it now. But, what the hell. She was a lawyer, and maybe he could use her in any battle with the movers.
Throughout the train ride, whenever they did speak, he tried to keep the conversation light; to keep his suspicions hidden. He made small talk, pointed out various towns along the way, and explained what they did and did not offer to the commuter class who lived there.
Samantha, for her part, avoided any legal advice about the movers, explaining that it would be better to wait and see exactly what the situation was. To herself, she simply rationalized that she was helping someone she liked. She intentionally ignored the small voice in the back of her mind that also told her it would be a perfect opportunity to warn Jack Fallon about the dangers that lay ahead.
They left the train and made their way to Fallon’s car in the Bedford Station parking lot. It was a year-old Mercury Marquis, the company’s car of choice for executives whose jobs warranted one. Fallon continued to make small talk, but she thought it seemed strained, halfhearted. She told herself his mind was elsewhere—at his house, his home, where unknown men were carting his possessions away.