Beauty

by Frederick Dillen

  The comforting thing was that the officers of the plant, all but one with the company for decades, had stayed through the corporate changes. These had been the local owners, and presumably they would have had a chance to pull out with both the Germans and the Japanese. Which told Carol that the owner-­executives, and all the line workers, too (neighbors after all), might have a sentimental interest in keeping the company on an even keel as she dismantled and disposed. There were valuable physical assets, and she believed she could keep processing frozen fish, of which there seemed to be a fair amount, as she negotiated the sales of the lines and whatever else. It wouldn’t hurt to be able to tell buyers that the lines were operating. It wouldn’t hurt the locals to pocket a few more paychecks before the final severance.

  Carol could hardly believe this was her last burial. As she said that to herself again, something clicked into place. Baxter’s noise in the conference room had been his way of showing everybody that, after all her years as an undertaker, Carol was tough enough to take the heat as a CEO.

  Pine and fir began to green the roadside woods, and the sun was out, so she got off the freeway to drive the two-lane roads. She drove east and a bit north, as best she could determine. She drove without the clutch for the fun of it.

  When she crossed the short bridge over the channel that made Elizabeth Island, she saw signs to the industrial park, which was not big but which was real enough to look familiar. It had an engineering group and a circle with medical offices; it had professionals and contractors and somebody’s little tech component division. It had the new plant for Elizabeth’s Fish and its latest corporate mask, Elizabeth Seafood Products.

  Carol drove past the corporate offices and the executive parking. She drove around behind the plant itself, which was a good-size box.

  Here was a two-hundred-year-old company, originally a family company, with brand-new parking for at least a hundred cars, all the lines still bright and white on uncracked asphalt after a first winter, the earth still raw where the edges met the woods and where the snow was gone except for the plow leavings. It was very nice and very ample parking for a very shiny new plant that Carol knew had state-of-the-art equipment, from its processing lines to its wrap-and-stack to its cold facilities, which included some tricky automated truck-to-freezer cold receiving and pallet-to-truck cold load. It was a new turnkey plant with great employee parking.

  And twenty cars in the lot. More parking lot than employees. More building than employees.

  Carol would have expected the plant to have lost a shift or two, but she had also assumed there would be a sizable workforce to keep the place generating the profits, however meager, it was declaring. Whatever their respective faults, the Germans and Japanese were not likely to have been knowing stewards of a completely fraudulent factory. They would both, however, have relied on the operational reports from the local management.

  Carol came to any burial with questions. This time she had more than usual because Baxter Blume had bought the company so cheaply and so quickly that due diligence had gone out the window. But Carol’s strength, “her meal ticket,” as Baxter liked to say so frequently, was her “knee-jerk” sense of things. That was Baxter’s way of saying that it didn’t matter if Carol couldn’t read a sophisticated balance sheet because at the undertaker level of things, common sense was more useful.

  What was her knee-jerk here?

  On the map, Elizabeth Island was a small fist of land that pushed out of far northeast Massachusetts into the Atlantic. It had a harbor that used to support a substantial fishing industry, but that industry had been declining for more than twenty years and had been all but gone for at least five.

  Yet here was a brand-new, state-of-the-art fish plant, in the woods no less, all but idle.

  Carol would have to bury the company no matter what, but she’d want to get senior management away from the cash register in the next ten or fifteen minutes.

  She circled back to the front, where the executive parking lot was sparsely but expensively stocked and where six landscape guys with a flatbed and a pickup and a mini-backhoe were getting the Elizabeth Seafood Products (ESP) public grounds ready for spring sod.

  And here came—who? The president of ESP? She thought so. Another call came in from Remy, but she didn’t answer. She was into it now, whatever the problem might be. She took her time getting out of the car and putting on her jacket, and she locked the car before facing the president. She let him come to her.

  She smiled and walked a few steps to meet the president, to show him some respect, to honor the fact that he’d come out in shirtsleeves on a cold afternoon.

  “Carol,” he said in a good imitation of a down-market Baxter, and they met beside a midsize Mercedes. Maybe it was his Mercedes, and maybe, Carol thought, that made him feel okay. He smiled and held out his hand.

  She shook it and said, “Mr. Mathews?”

  “Pete, please. We didn’t think we’d see you until tomorrow, but I’ve had my assistant keeping an eye out the window for prowlers. Nice little vehicle you have. How do you like the looks of our new home? Come on inside. It’s the end of the day, but you can take a peek and meet some of us. We’re eager as can be about the new association with Baxter Blume.”

  She let him take her elbow and guide her at the grand entrance to ESP, but after a few steps, she pointed over at the landscapers.

  He stopped. “Getting ready to decorate with some sod. A frill, maybe, but at not much expense, and I’ve found it makes a difference in morale and in relationships. May I call you Carol?”

  She said, “Why don’t we send them home?” He flinched, and covered it.

  “They’re almost on their way right now. They usually break at four thirty. Come on inside so the team doesn’t have to squint through the blinds to check you out.” Mathews chuckled.

  “Let’s send them home for good, Mathews.”

  “Yep. Fair enough. You’ve found a soft spot in your first five minutes, Carol, but I think it’s the only one you’re going to find. We’ve always run a tight ship here, no pun intended, and we’ve been able to tighten up considerably since the Japanese ownership began pulling back. We can talk to you about that for the rest of the afternoon and all day tomorrow. I’ll get my assistant to send out the facilities guy and we’ll go to gravel and be the better for it. I think we’re all going to be on the same page in this thing, Carol, and we’re going to benefit from your good eye. Costs. Yep, there will be things we’ve overlooked in the forest because we’re too close to the trees. But not many, I think you’ll find.”

  Carol stood her ground and watched him talk. He knew. She said, “Let’s you and I go right now and get it over with.” She pried his hand off her elbow and took hold of his elbow. “Come on,” she said and pulled him toward the landscapers’ trucks. “Hold on a minute, men,” she called.

  The foreman waited for them by the door of the flatbed.

  “Marco,” Mathews said. “We’re going to go with the gravel. I know we talked about sod and you’ve been getting ready for the sod, but we’re cutting back all over and we’ve decided to pull back out here as well. I’ll have somebody call your office and work it out first thing in the morning. The gravel is going to look fine with everything else you’ve already done. Okay? Thank you, Marco, and excuse us. We’ve got a lot on our plate.”

  Mathews started away, but Carol held him where he was. She said to Marco, who was not yet able to read things clearly, “No gravel. Nothing. You’re done here. Any charges will need to be thoroughly detailed. I have to tell you we’ll be looking closely and arguing wherever we can.”

  “Mr. Mathews?” Marco said. He was figuring it out now, at one level or another.

  Mathews had turned most of the way back around toward the building, but she still had his elbow. She gave him a squeeze, and he looked back at Marco and nodded and said, “Let’s leave it at that, Marco
. That makes the best sense. Let’s just shut it down for now.”

  Marco might have been sorry to lose his contract, but he looked glad to see Mathews take it in the shorts. Once in a while when the Beast was on duty, people could be glad. Carol said, “Let’s go meet the team, shall we?”

  They went into the executive offices, and Mathews gave Carol a quick look down into the plant from the second floor. Carol didn’t know fish from flamingos, but she saw what had to be six lines and everything necessary to support a three-shift operation. She wondered if she was going to be able to find a buyer to take all of it. Wouldn’t that be nice? Mathews wanted to talk, and she paid no attention and he shut up. He’d done all his kidding outside. Five of his lines were quiet, and obviously there wouldn’t be other shifts. Even with the limited information she had, she could connect plenty of dots.

  As she and Mathews walked to his suite at the end of the hall, the other guys appeared out of their office doors and fell in behind. There were times when it was sad with the officers, when you knew they were doing their best and doing, all things considered, not a bad job. There were also other times. There were always surprises.

  Some of the surprises could be chalked up to the turnovers in ownership. The Germans were a packaging outfit, and they packaged foods among other things. They were coming unraveled, and this was where it became guesswork for Carol. There wasn’t enough due diligence. So although she wasn’t clear on the time line or how ESP came to their attention, the Germans seemed to have noticed and appreciated the little bit of cash reserves that the fish company had at the time. Carol guessed that, as the German unraveling picked up speed, somebody at Elizabeth’s Fish, Mathews presumably, persuaded somebody in Bremen that those slight cash reserves could be leveraged into a new plant that would yield significant positive cash flow. How would he have made that persuasion? Leaving aside the shrinkage of groundfish stocks in the ocean, Elizabeth’s Fish must have long been suffering from margin shrinkage in a competition with much larger fish processors. Soon its cash reserves were going to be needed just to keep the business afloat. Carol imagined Mathews coming up against the wall and realizing the Germans themselves were fractured enough to grab at straws. Let’s build a new plant. Who cares if it won’t be large enough to go against industry leaders? Those reserves, and the dollars they leveraged, could be channeled through grateful pockets as opposed to a sinkhole operation. It must have been a surprise when the Japanese took over the company, however briefly. The Japanese knew fish, but they may have also, as Baxter Blume did, simply taken Elizabeth’s Fish off the Germans’ hands in order to close on an acquisition of other divisions.

  Surprise: Mathews had a very nice office.

  He offered Carol the low sofa, but she went and stood behind his desk and watched the rest of the fat boys file in. Mathews introduced the financial officer, the production manager, and the sales and marketing guy. If there was an HR guy, he was missing. Carol didn’t speak. She looked at each one in turn, and they sat. All of them knew she was there to pull the plug on the company. Mathews’s pretense aside, they were ready. They’d set themselves up comfortably. They were a foursome for the golf course.

  Carol sat in the president’s chair and still said nothing. CFO and Production looked at the silenced Mathews and said nothing themselves. Sales and Marketing tried on his smile and leaned forward with an elbow on one knee, then thought better of it. Carol had long since learned that silence worked better than inviting nervous, assertive executive bullshit. Mathews looked out the window at the Mercedes he got to keep and the sod he hadn’t quite got placed.

  A sequence of quick banters signaled someone coming down the hall toward the open door. That would be Human Resources, and apparently he had a word for every assistant in every open door. Either he was a jerk or they liked him. Neither of which made him honest, but if Carol had to keep one of these guys around, he might be the one. He was the one officer who had not been with the company forever, which could put him outside the golf foursome in ways that would be helpful to her.

  He came in, checked out his colleagues sitting on their hands like felons, and walked across the room to her, smiled, and said, “You must be Carol MacLean. I’m Dave Parks. You’ve figured out I’m HR. Sorry to hold you up. Somebody has a medical insurance emergency.”

  He had his hand out to shake, and when she didn’t look at it, he put it in his pocket.

  “Okay,” he said. “No talking. I get it,” but he looked her in the eye and kept a pleasant smile as he sat down among the others.

  When he was down and the smile was gone, Carol stood and said, “We’re going to get some packing boxes, and then we’re all going to go together to each of your offices so you can gather your belongings and leave the property. Computers stay. If your car is a company lease, call a taxi.”

  Elizabeth Island was not corporate heartland, and Elizabeth’s Fish was a corporate minnow, but these were still grown men at the top of the local pile. Wherever the golf course was, they belonged, and most of them had to have second homes and boats. Even so, it was only Production who stood up indignant. Then Mathews stood because he had to. Sales and Marketing spread his arms and made an incredulous face and stayed down. Hard to figure HR, though he stayed down, too. The chief financial officer looked ready to curl up in a ball.

  Production said, “What the hell are you talking about?” and managed to say it like he meant it.

  This was one of many times when the Beast thing worked for her. She wasn’t taller than he was, but she was as tall, and she said quietly, “Everybody sit down, and I’ll remind you what I’m talking about. The short version.”

  Production put his hands on his hips and stared at her, and she stood still and straight and watched him.

  Mathews sat, and Production sat.

  Since she lacked necessary background, Carol would have to bullshit now. But it wouldn’t have been hard to read this group even if you’d just wandered in out of the rain.

  She said, “As soon as the German group started to come apart, you found someone under the radar there to okay your plant and help you leverage your reserves. You moved that money through local real estate interests and local builders and local landscapers and local anybody else with an understanding of happy billing. Your salaries rose to match the prestige of ESP and your new facility. When you needed more money, you borrowed more, enough finally that Baxter Blume probably can’t pile any new debt on the company. None of which addresses the hardware in the plant; when I tackle the reselling of all that new equipment, I won’t be surprised to find verifiable evidence of sweetheart markups, which could be an easy prosecution. You’ve put up a perfectly useless plant under the noses of distracted Germans but Germans just the same. Which means you did things carefully. All told, a fair amount of money disappeared into your pockets, but it isn’t going to be worth filing charges unless there are flags. Since you guys are smarter than I am, and you knew the territory, there probably won’t be flags. For now, I only want to get you out of the building and then check to be sure all your private cash flow spigots have been shut off. If anybody has anything to say about that, I will begin investigations in order to prosecute. Let’s do HR’s office last.”

  They helped each other gather and sort, packing one another’s souvenir hats and portrait photographs. Carol watched the packing and watched Parks.

  When they got to Human Resources, to Parks, she asked him to hold up on the packing and wait in his office for her while she walked the rest of them downstairs and out. The offices wing was not big, and it was mostly emptied for the end of the day. The line workers from the plant were long gone. But there were a few people in the executive parking lot to watch the parade.

  Once she had them out the door, Carol watched from inside the lobby with its shimmering fish wallpaper and its sepia blowups of historic waterfront scenes. The CFO was bent over with fear, but the other three held their
heads high and walked to their cars with a little bounce, Mathews a big bounce, not only as if he’d figured this would happen and didn’t care, but as if they still had good things coming to them. Somewhere inside the company, they had definitely left a few spigots open for themselves.

  The Ghosts of Fish

  Dave Parks watched out his window as the guys drove away. Maybe Mathews was as glad as he said he was, just to finally have it over. It could also be that he and the other guys had something extra working. Dave didn’t want to know about that. He hadn’t wanted to stay on when plans for a ridiculous new plant surfaced, already in an advanced stage, but they offered him straight salary for what everybody sensed was a few more years. It was enough to pad the nut for the rest of his life, and he took it. He did an honest day’s work, and it let his wife, Barbara, continue to comfortably run her nice little diet center—nice because it brought in pocket money for her and comfortable because she didn’t feel she had to do it, something she might have felt if he hadn’t taken his extra years.

  Carol MacLean wouldn’t know anything about that, but she had figured that he was the outsider on the executive team. That had to be why she wanted him to stay behind, to help her shut things down honestly. Not something to jump up and down about, but a few more months of salary wouldn’t hurt, and he wouldn’t mind honoring the good years he’d spent at the old plant. Besides that, MacLean looked like a working-class kid made good, which was a point in her favor as far as Dave, a working-­class kid himself, was concerned.