Till the Butchers Cut Him Down

by Marcia Muller

  I stared along the rails, envisioning the journey he described. I’d never seen the tunnel, but I’d been aware of its existence as well as that of another near Potrero Hill, both over a hundred years old. San Francisco’s location behind a ridge of hills at the tip of a long narrow peninsula had always made for problematical rail access and, in part, had contributed to our port’s decline.

  “So what about the tunnel?” I asked.

  “Trouble is, it’s outmoded. Railways started double-stacking ocean-freight containers years ago—saves time and money—but the tunnel’s not large enough to accommodate them. So it seems to me that deepening it is the key to keeping at least part of the waterfront in maritime use. I’ve worked a deal with the Southern Pacific and the port where I’ll match funds and take responsibility for having the work done.”

  “How much will that cost you?”

  “Oh, six mil, give or take.”

  “My God.”

  “It’s nothing. The return on investment’ll wipe out the cost in no time.”

  It all sounded so plausible—or would have, had anyone but Suitcase Gordon proposed it. Or was I underestimating him?

  Finally I said, “Okay, you’ve filled me in on the history of Golden Gate Lines and your plans for it. But aside from the incident at Miranda’s, which could have just been a mugging that got out of hand, you haven’t given me much proof that somebody’s trying to kill you.”

  “Come on.” He started toward the waiting JetRanger.

  I hesitated, then followed. There was a definite danger in associating with Suits: what if he succeeded in training me not only to refrain from asking questions but also to take orders?

  * * *

  “It happened approximately the way Mr. Gordon described it to you.”

  I caught a note of reserve in Dick Farley’s voice and glanced up at the manager of the Jack London Terminal on Oakland’s Inner Harbor, which handled Golden Gate Lines’ freight. Under the rim of his hard hat, Farley’s weather-browned face was expressionless.

  Suits had had Josh Haddon set the helicopter down there half an hour before, then made me don a hard hat and dragged me along a pier to Berth Three, where the office said Farley could be found conferring with one of his longshoremen. Ostensibly the purpose of our visit was so Farley could tell me in his own words about the accident two weeks before when Suits claimed he was almost killed by a wrench falling from a crane offloading GGL’s Napa Harvest. But Suits hadn’t let the man talk, had instead described the incident himself in dramatic detail. He’d just reached the story’s culmination—“Only grazed my shoulder, but it hurt like hell for days. All I could think was that it could’ve been my head, split open like a ripe melon!”—when a beeper in the zipper pocket of his sweatshirt went off and he excused himself to find a phone.

  Now Farley and I were walking back along the pier toward the terminal offices. To our left towered the curving white sides of a vessel laden with stacked containers; to our right lay an enormous expanse of concrete where more containers, semitrailers, forklifts, and cranes were parked. The roar of diesel engines and the creak of heavy equipment drowned out all but the loudest voice. I raised mine and shouted, “Approximately?”

  Farley nodded.

  I waited until we’d come out of the hard hat area, took mine off, and shook out my hair. It fell neatly to my shoulders, just as the stylist who had shorn my former long tresses over a month ago had guaranteed. Farley removed his hat too, passing his hand over an iron-gray military cut. He motioned to me, and we went to stand pierside where the din was less intrusive.

  I said, “I suppose the incident wasn’t as life-threatening as Mr. Gordon made it out to be.”

  “Well, any time you have an accident out here it can be damned serious. And Mr. Gordon had neglected to put on his hard hat.” He thumped a knuckle on his own. “But the injury to his shoulder was minimal.”

  A minimal injury that “hurt like hell for days.” I was beginning to think my old friend suffered from a touch of hypochondria.

  “You investigated the accident?” I asked.

  “We conduct a thorough investigation of every accident, no matter how insignificant. And of course Mr. Gordon demanded a full-scale inquisition.” Farley smiled faintly, then squinted down at me to see how I’d taken the comment.

  I smiled too.

  “It was an accident, plain and simple,” he went on. “We determined who left the wrench up there, and he’s been disciplined. As for it falling, the vibration of the crane caused that. Operator confirms it, and he’s one of our most trusted employees.”

  “So as far as you know, no one connected with the terminal was trying to harm Mr. Gordon.”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Is there anyone working here who might have reason to harm him?”

  “… Well, men like him make enemies. He could have stepped on some toes. But as to whose …” He shrugged.

  “Are you aware of his plans for GGL?”

  “Yes, he’s been up-front all along.”

  “Don’t those plans pose a threat to the Port of Oakland?”

  “Well …” Farley thought, placing the hard hat under his arm and balancing it against one lean hip. “There’s no doubt that the port’s in trouble. Last year APL—American President Lines—chose to expand its terminals at Seattle and L.A. rather than Oakland. That was partly the port’s fault; it failed to put together the parcel of land they needed for their expansion. But the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA are responsible, too; they’ve delayed their scheduled dredging of Bay channels, and we can’t accommodate the new larger vessels.”

  “I thought the Inner Harbor dredging project was done.”

  “Only the first phase. Now the EPA’s concerned about finding appropriate dump sites for the rest of the silt. Typical bureaucracy—didn’t think it through beforehand—and the delay’ll cost the city millions of tax dollars and thousands of jobs. But that’s got nothing to do with GGL. Fact is, they aren’t a power in the industry, haven’t been for some time. I’d say their loss will have a negligible effect on the port’s income and the city’s economy.”

  “What about its effect on your terminal?”

  “Well, naturally we wish they’d stay. It’s always hard to lose a major customer. But they’re only one of many lines that use our facilities, and like I said, Mr. Gordon’s been up-front, given us enough time to work on attracting others.”

  “Mr. Farley, is there anything else you can tell me about the accident? Or about Mr. Gordon’s relationships with your employees?”

  He shifted his weight, eyes troubled. “About the accident, no. About your Mr. Gordon …”

  “You can be frank with me.”

  “I don’t like to carry tales, but … he’s touchy. Imagines slights. Flies off the handle without much provocation. They tell me he’s a smart businessman, but he’s not going about his business in a very smart way.”

  I was about to ask for specific examples when I heard Suits calling me. “Got to get moving fast. They need me at the office.”

  I took out one of my cards and handed it to Farley. “May I call you to discuss this further?”

  “Like I said, I don’t want to carry tales.”

  “Anything you tell me will be held in confidence.”

  He nodded curtly, pocketed the card, and relieved me of the hard hat.

  “Sherry-O, come on!”

  I took my time getting to the JetRanger, to punish him for continuing to use the hated nickname.

  * * *

  Our next stop was the roof of a downtown office building within blocks of Oakland’s convention center. The elevator that Suits and I took down, an ancient cage replete with an accordion grille that had to be yanked open by hand, creaked and wheezed and bounced ominously when it reached the fifth floor. Suits hauled at the lever on the grille, pushed open the door, and preceded me into a dingy green hallway with scarred wainscoting and doors with pebbled-glass windows and transo
ms. I felt as though I’d stepped back into the forties.

  “Guess GGL really was in trouble before they called on you,” I commented.

  Suits gave the elevator door a shove; it caught on a curled square of linoleum. He threw his hands up and started down the hall. “They damned well were in trouble. Had three floors of offices at One Kaiser Plaza. Rosewood and Oriental rugs up the wazoo.”

  “You moved them from Kaiser Plaza to this?”

  He stopped before an unmarked door at the end of the corridor. “First tenet of turnaround: slash costs. Second tenet: scare ’em. I slashed costs by cutting office rent to a third. And I scared ’em by moving to a slummy building with no carpeting and exposed pipes on the ceiling.” He laughed, a whoop that echoed off the bare walls. “The dickhead contingent put up a fuss, of course. ‘But our image,’ they said. ‘What image?’ I said. ‘Everybody in town knows you’re up to your asses in unpaid invoices.’ At that point a couple of the dickheads threw in the towel and went back to Ohio. Kirk Cameron stayed, but he’s taken to seriously working on his golf game. But most of the admin staff and operations people stuck by me.”

  He threw open the door and extended his hand toward the room beyond it. I stepped inside, saw two rows of steel desks topped by computer terminals and covered with papers and files. Most of the desks were occupied, and all the occupants were busy. Suits led me down the center aisle toward a cubicle at the rear, calling greetings to people as he passed. I watched their responses, trying to gauge how they felt about him; they ranged from cordiality to wariness.

  The cubicle was small, its walls topped with more pebbled glass. Suits motioned at its Spartan furnishings and said, “Not much of an office for the head honcho, huh?”

  “It’s worse than the closet under the stairs that I used to work in at All Souls.”

  “Third tenet of turnaround: don’t give yourself perks when you’re taking them away from everybody else. Besides, I do most of my work in the bird or at the condo.” He sprawled in the swivel chair, propping his feet on the desk, and pointed at the straight-back across from him. “Sit.”

  “I thought you had urgent business to attend to.”

  “It can wait a minute. First I want to introduce you to a couple of my people.”

  I glanced at my watch. Almost five. By now, I hoped, Mick would have put my offices in order. No doubt at this moment he was ensconced on the new sofa studying … what? Methods of Disguise? Games Criminals Play? When I’d seen those two titles in the gym bag he carried, the thought of how he might apply the knowledge had made me cringe.

  Suits saw me checking the time, but chose to ignore my concern. “One team member that I asked to stop in is … here right now.”

  A tall woman with closely clipped blond hair stopped on the threshold of the cubicle. Suits got up, indicating she should take his chair. She remained where she was, frowning in disapproval. “They’re waiting for you down in Legal.”

  “On my way. This is the investigator I told you about, Sharon McCone. Sharon, Carole Lattimer, my chief financial officer.”

  I rose and shook Lattimer’s hand, secretly amused that the “finance guy” from Chicago whom Suits had said he called upon was a woman.

  Suits squeezed past Lattimer, calling over his shoulder, “I asked Russ to stop in, too. You three can talk about me. Tell Sharon what a terrific guy I am to work with.”

  Lattimer shook her head and grinned wryly at me. She was young for her position—perhaps in her late twenties—and wore a very short black dress, matching tights, and suede flats decorated with a swirl of amber beading that complemented her jewelry. Hardly banker’s attire, I thought, and in a meeting with the moneymen, as Suits called them, it would send the message that she was too confident to be hampered by tradition.

  “So are you going to do that?” I asked. “Tell me how terrific he is?”

  She sat down on the edge of the desk, crossing her ankles and swinging her legs. “I could. Working with him’s a unique experience, and T.J.’s an original, for sure. You’ve known him a long time?”

  “Yes, but until today I hadn’t seen him in over fifteen years. I had no idea he’d become such a power in the business world.”

  “Really? I’ve always assumed that T.J.’s been wheeling and dealing his whole life.”

  I commandeered Suit’s chair, which looked more comfortable than the one I’d occupied. “Now that you mention it,” I said, “I suppose that in his own way he has. How long have you been associated with him?”

  “Around five years. I helped him turn Lost Hope, Nevada.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A town in the desert between Reno and Las Vegas. It was dying; now it’s a thriving midpoint stop on the north-south route.”

  “Gambling town?” I asked, wondering if Suits had somehow gotten mixed up with organized crime.

  Lattimer shook her head. “Some gambling, but it’s more tourist- and family-oriented.”

  “What other kinds of turnarounds has T.J. done?”

  “Well, there was a steel mill, and a large financial corporation—wish I’d gotten in on that one. An equipment company that had something to do with the film industry; a firm in Colorado … mining? You’d have to ask him about that.”

  “Isn’t it unusual for somebody to walk into an organization or a town that he’s got no experience with and know how to turn it?”

  “Very. That’s one of the things that make T.J. an original. Most turnaround pros stick to an industry or a type of business that they know inside and out—manufacturing, services, finance, whatever. But T.J.’s jumped all over the board. He’s an inexhaustible researcher, has a photographic memory, and is an incredibly quick study. And he has an instinctive grasp of nuance.”

  “Isn’t his personality …” I hesitated, wanting to phrase the question delicately.

  Lattimer grinned. “You mean his stunning lack of tact and polish? His way of stirring people up until they’re practically running amok in the streets? Actually you’d be surprised how closely he fits the profile of turnaround pros.”

  “What’s the profile?”

  She began to trace patterns in the dust on the desk with her forefinger. “They’re top-flight people, of course. Usually well educated, but they’ve come up the hard way. Generally they’re not very … attractive. They don’t do well at cocktail parties, don’t have many friends. Most of them are aware they don’t fit in, but they don’t want to, anyway. They’re insensitive to other people’s needs, except when satisfying them will get them what they want. They expect excellence of themselves and of the people who work for them; they don’t tolerate others’ shortcomings, don’t suffer fools. And they’re very, very focused, to the exclusion of everything but the job at hand.” She paused. “Frankly, they’re a pain in the ass, and everybody’s happy when the job’s done and they go away.”

  Yes, Suits was a close fit for the profile. “So why would anybody—you, for instance—want to work for someone like that?”

  “Money. Stock options. The chance to watch somebody who’s the absolute best there is do his thing. And the challenge of being part of that thing. But you go into it aware that you have to draw lines.”

  “Such as?”

  “Take the relationship between T.J. and me: He knows I’m tops at what I do. He knows he can count on my total commitment and loyalty. I know I can count on the same from him. I know he’ll keep his promises. But that doesn’t mean we’re friends. It doesn’t even mean we like each other. We don’t do lunch; I don’t invite him to my home. It’s business, plain and simple, and it wouldn’t work otherwise.”

  In a cold, practical way, that made sense. “Okay, you’ve mentioned one thing that makes him an original. What’re the others?”

  “The major one is vision. T.J. sees possibilities that you or I wouldn’t even dream of. He can look at a disaster area like the Hunters Point base and visualize a rebirth of the Port of San Francisco. Initially his concepts may seem skew
ed, but in the end he makes them work.”

  A voice from the door said, “Often by force of his own pigheadedness.”

  I looked over there at a stocky, round-faced man with a mop of black hair. “Nice kudos to T.J., Carole,” he added, “but it won’t earn you any additional perks unless he’s hiding under the desk.”

  “Ah, Russ.” There was an edge to Lattimer’s greeting and little warmth as she performed the introductions. Russ Zola, she explained, was Suits’s organizational strategist and had been with him “forever.”

  Zola turned the straight-backed chair around and straddled it, his forearms resting on the crosspiece. Diamond-studded links winked from the cuffs of his white shirt, and a diamond-and-onyx ring gleamed on his right hand. “What’re you trying to do, Carole?” he asked easily. “Make me out to be older than God?”

  Lattimer didn’t reply.

  I asked, “What does an organizational strategist do, specifically?”

  “I look at the overall structure of the corporation, decide what can be changed to facilitate efficiency. I make recommendations, help implement them, monitor progress, make constant adjustments.”

  “In short,” Lattimer said, “Russ is T.J.’s executioner.”

  “Thank you, Carole. Such a dramatic job description.” He smiled at me and changed the subject. “So you’re the investigator who’s going to save T.J. from the alleged assassin.”

  “Russ.” Lattimer’s voice held a warning note.

  “What—we’re supposed to pretend we don’t know why she’s here?”

  “I believe that’s a confidential matter between T.J. and Ms. McCone.” Now her tone was markedly chilly. “When you came in, we were discussing what makes T.J. unique as a turnaround pro. We talked about his lack of specialization and, as you heard, his vision. Since you’ve been with him so long, I’m sure you have something to add to that.”

  Zola rolled his eyes, obviously amused at her stiff manner. The subject to which she’d attempted to redirect the conversation seemed to interest him, though; he considered before speaking, his expression thoughtful. “The speed of T.J.’s turnarounds is pretty damned impressive. The average pro will do four or five in a lifetime. T.J.’s been operating for around fourteen years now, and he’s already up to half a dozen.”