Gordon certainly hadn’t.
9. The Big Game
I’ll never get over that scream,” said Riley. “He sounded like a gut-shot bear.”
“Do you hunt?” said Kief.
“No, I don’t hunt. It’s inhumane. Those sweet little deer with their wide brown eyes. But I did grow up in Texas.”
“Lot of bear in Texas?”
“Some in the hill country, but I never saw one.”
“Then if you don’t hunt, and you never saw a bear, how do you know what a gut-shot bear sounds like?”
“It sounds like Gordon with his leg waving in the wind,” I said. “Maybe we’ll visit if we have time tomorrow.”
“Hospitals give me the willies,” said Kief.
“You know what gives me the willies?” I said. “Tom Fucking Preston.”
“What he did was cold,” said Riley. “What he did was ice.”
“It was like we were playing Chutes and Ladders,” said Kief, “and Tom was playing Grand Theft Auto.”
The three remaining members of the Last Chance Crew were huddled together on the rooftop patio, preparing for our evening’s competition, which we had been assured would go a long way in determining who Mr. Maambong would end up hiring. The other team, the A team, Tom Preston’s team, was drinking Bert’s drinks, laughing, bonding. Even Don, with the tape on his face, was chuckling away. They had all been invigorated by the morning’s butchery. Tom Preston stood off to the side, a drink in his hand, staring blandly through us.
“He’s not going to stop at Gordon,” I said. “He’s going to take us out one by one if we don’t take him out first.”
“How on earth do we do that?” said Riley.
“Set his bed on fire and kill him in his sleep,” said Kief.
“Snakes sleep with their eyes open,” I said.
“That just means we have to be ninja quiet and ninja quick when we light the match.”
“What do you know about being a ninja, Kief?” said Riley.
“I’ve played as Scorpion on Mortal Kombat.”
“You two can have it out on the Xbox later,” I said, “but right now I think I have a better idea for killing that snake.”
“All of you are wondering what exactly is this job for which you are competing,” Mr. Maambong had said just a few moments before our huddle. We had been assembled on the rooftop for instructions. Mr. Maambong’s white suit and dark glasses glowed orange in the setting sun. “It’s time to let you in on your possible futures. We are what you might call problem solvers. We solve serious problems for a very specialized clientele. It is a service, as you can imagine, that is much in demand.
“Our clients will tell us that money is no object, but of course as soon as we raise a figure they object. And so we must negotiate a fee high enough to make them gulp but not high enough for them to gallop away. And then there are the parties who have the keys to solving our clients’ problems, and who always seem to use the word ‘priceless,’ as if there were ever such a thing. Another negotiation. It would be tiresome if it weren’t so lucrative. The key to our profit, then, as you can see, is our ability to negotiate.
“So this is what we shall do this evening, a simple little exercise. You will each enter a negotiation with the other candidates. Since seven of you are left, that means each will negotiate six times. There will be ten one-hundred-dollar bills at stake in each negotiation and you will have ten minutes to decide who gets how many of the bills. You keep what you agree to, but if no deal is made before the buzzer, then you each get nothing and the bills go back into our pockets. So for each of you, six thousand dollars is in play. Grab as much as you can. After the hour, whoever has the most money wins, and whoever has the least loses. We, in the firm, do not appreciate losers, as Gordon has already discovered. Do we understand each other? Good. We have set up three bargaining locations, which we will be monitoring at all times. There will be seven sessions, and you each will sit out one session. Good luck, though luck, under these conditions, will have nothing to do with it.”
My first negotiation was with Angela, tall, sharp-eyed, whip smart, and smirking. We sat on either side of the granite island in the modern kitchen with sleek black counters and windows overlooking a garden. A stack of ten bills sat in front of us; Ben Franklin stared up at us with bemusement.
“So, Angela,” I said. “What’s your strategy?”
“Ask for everything.”
“Mine too.”
“Except I mean it.”
“Me too.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“Maybe we can come to an accommodation,” I said.
“See, I was right.”
“Just give me six hundred and we’ll call it a deal.”
“Perhaps you didn’t understand.”
“Oh, I understood. Make the wild offer, bicker back and forth, act tough as the clock ticks, then split the difference. The old high-low.”
“No low, just high.”
“We’re going to go back and forth and back and forth and bore each other to tears, but we’ll end up at fifty-fifty.”
“Is that the way it will work?”
“Sure it will, because I won’t accept anything less and I trust that neither will you.”
“But I won’t accept fifty-fifty.”
“Five hundred dollars is better than nothing.”
“But not better than a thousand,” she said.
“In this kind of negotiation, the one thing you can’t ever get is everything. Nothing, yes, but not everything.”
“We’ll see,” she said.
I took a moment to sort the ten bills into stacks of five each. I pushed one of the stacks in front of Angela, removed a bill from her stack and put it on mine, and sat back to let the time tick away, tick tock. The clock was wielding its power. Make a deal by the deadline or lose everything. Tock tick. I had made an offer, it was just a matter of waiting for the inevitable counter. Tick tock.
But then her face betrayed her.
There was the little lip curl of power—the same curl I assumed she flashed before decking an opposing midfielder on the field-hockey pitch—and I knew. Just to be sure I took three bills from my pile and placed them on hers, offering her seven hundred dollars to make a deal. She didn’t flinch, she didn’t show surprise, she wasn’t going to negotiate, she was going to watch me squirm until the buzzer sounded and Mr. Maambong pocketed our money. I did the calculation once and then twice and each time the numbers added up all wrong.
I felt a moment of panic, a moment of coppery rage, a moment where I wanted to strike out savagely at anything close. Control is everything and having lost it I had lost everything. That son of a bitch. I breathed deep and faked a smile, which wasn’t as difficult as it might seem in the circumstances, since all my smiles are fake.
“So that’s the way it’s going to be,” I said with as much calm as I could muster.
“That’s the way it’s going to be.”
“He’s playing you, you know.”
“From here it looks like we’re playing you.”
“There’s no we when it comes to him. He doesn’t have it in him to look out for anyone but himself. He’s playing us all, that’s what he does. But you’re the one doing his bidding.”
“The way I see it, for this game at least we’re in it together.”
I gave my head a kindly shake, as if her gullibility would have been cute if it weren’t so foolish. “Whose idea was this strategy?”
“What does it matter?”
“I guess that’s my answer. How does it feel to be his pawn?”
“Right now it feels fine. But I’m nobody’s pawn. I’ll have my moment.”
“Don’t bet on that. I’d rather lose than be used, but that’s just me. Some people are happier as serfs. Some people like to be kept in their places, sowing fields of wheat for the lord of the manor, until it’s their turn to be buried in those same fields.”
“Bitter are we, Phi
l?”
“Resigned maybe, but not bitter. I’ve seen it before. His turning on you is as inevitable as the dawn. And when he comes for you—and he will come, just ask Gordon if you have any doubt—if I’m still around, give me a heads-up and I’ll do what I can to help.”
She tilted her head at my reasonableness, my composed generosity.
“But my advice would be to take action before that happens,” I said. “My advice would be to run the bastard over with a car while you’re still able.”
She laughed, and then in the shadow of that laughter she looked down at the stack of bills before her. I could see her considering the implications of going off Tom Preston’s reservation, taking the seven hundred, raising her stock on her own. The thought washed across her face like a revelation. The move would satisfy the streak of independence I’d noticed in her the first time we talked, and seven hundred dollars is not nothing. You could buy a whole lot of—
Buzz.
Too late.
My last negotiation of the exercise, if you could call it a negotiation, was with Tom Preston.
We sat across from each other in the soaring living room with a round steel coffee table between our gray chairs. Above us was a camera on the wall, recording our interaction. Beside us was a two-story wall of windows that looked out at the pool, with its tile surround, and the palm trees, and the dark of the water reflecting the resorts across the way bright with light: the stakes, so to speak. On the table, along with a stack of hundred-dollar bills, was a blue glass ashtray.
Tom Preston was handsome, compact. His eyes were like marbles, cold and inhuman; you sensed that if you tapped them with a nail, they would give off a clink. He leaned to the side in his chair, his legs crossed, his gaze not meeting mine, but instead seemingly fixed on the ashtray, as if contemplating the effort it would take to grab hold of it and bury it in my skull. We were minutes into our negotiation and still neither of us had said a word.
The five prior negotiations had been full of language. I learned from Riley that Don had agreed to a fifty-fifty split with her, which meant I was the only target of their ploy, which kind of pissed me off since denying Tom Preston any money in our negotiation had been exactly my plan. I told her, and later Kief, that the jig was up and that she and Kief should make what deals they could with Tom Preston and the others. With each of the frat-boy twins I had made a speech similar to the one I gave Angela, complete with the recommendation of running Tom Preston over with a car, even as they refused to make any deal that would end up with me netting a single hundred of the split. Don, behind the swatch of bandages on his face, merely chuckled at my situation, but Derrick’s face expressed the same inklings of doubt as had Angela’s. Something of what I had said had gotten through.
But with Tom Preston there was only silence, and that seemed fitting. What was there to say?
I speak to plot, to plan, to earn, to cajole, to confuse, to seduce, to handle, to employ. Others maybe speak to release the spark of their inner lives into the world, but I could not imagine anything more useless. In college I read Whitman waxing on—and on—about sounding his barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world, and it was but jabbering nonsense to me. “For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.” Go tell it to the rock crushing your skull. If there is anything that is true in this world, it is our separateness. The only time there is a connection between me and you is when you have something I want. I speak to manipulate, that is all.
And with one look into Tom Preston’s hard glass eyes I knew my words would fall upon him as upon a rock. There was something familiar and cruel in those eyes, like a mirror in a mirror. It was in the calm he showed when shattering Gordon’s leg, in the way he stared through me just a moment into our negotiation before turning his attention to the blue glass ashtray. I mattered to him no more than the inanimate object on the stainless steel between us, and therefore merited not a word. He might as well induce the ashtray to turn into a swan as use his words to control me. I might as well try to convince the opposing king on a chessboard to take its own life as use my words to influence him. Anything either of us said would only be used against us by the other. So we sat silently, waiting out our time together. Three minutes. Five minutes. Seven minutes. The thousand dollars beside the ashtray moved ever closer to Mr. Maambong’s pocket.
“Make an offer,” I said, finally, as if the thought of losing even part of that money had forced me to speak.
“Everything,” he said, as I knew he would.
“Done.”
I stood immediately, before he could change his mind, and without another word headed up the stairs, toward the roof, where Bert would be standing behind the bar, wearing his red plaid vest, ever ready to build a drink.
I sure as hell needed one.
10. Phi Fucka Sandra
I stood off to the side as the party on Mr. Maambong’s roof flowed on. I was already into my fourth Scotch of the night. The good stuff, I kept telling Bert, figuring it would be my last taste of it for a while. I wasn’t surprised when Cassandra appeared at my side.
“Mr. Maambong would like to speak to you,” she said.
“I bet he would.”
“He’s in the second-floor office.”
“I’ll just finish my drink.”
“He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“Doesn’t much matter anymore, does it?” I said. “I’m a loser and there is no room for losers on the Hyena Squad.”
“Where did you hear that name?”
“Oh, it’s floating around the ether.”
“Mr. Maambong doesn’t like it.”
“Every scavenger dreams himself to be a predator, but then a dead carcass presents itself and in he goes. Do you know what I’m going to miss the most around here?”
“The Scotch?”
“You.”
“Now who’s kidding whom?”
“What did you do before this?”
“I was in health care.”
“What happened?”
“Let’s just say it didn’t fit my inclinations.”
“I’m surprised, Cassandra, because I sense in you a great kindness.”
“How many have you had?”
“Enough to see the true measure of your compassion.”
“That’s funny, because I sense in you no compassion at all.”
“And you find that ruggedly attractive.”
“Surprisingly, yes.”
“Then we are the perfect pair, because I was lying.”
I downed the rest of my drink and handed her the glass before heading through the doorway in the wall at the far side of the roof and then down the outdoor circular stairs to Mr. Maambong’s office and my fate.
“What an illuminating display,” Mr. Maambong had said a half hour before when we had all reconvened on the roof in our party clothes. “Thank you all for your wonderful work today. I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to tomorrow, our final day of testing.” And then, with great formality and much aplomb, he gave the results of the negotiation game we had just played. In second place were Riley and Kief, with thirty-two hundred dollars each, which included the extra two hundred I had tossed each of them in our so-called negotiations. Behind them were Don and Derrick and Angela, who had sacrificed themselves to kick me to the curb, which they did with utter success. I came in dead last, as I knew I would, with a measly six hundred dollars in my pocket. Barely a pillow to break my fall; a week at a luxurious Days Inn if I stretched it. “Quite the disappointing number, I must say,” had said Mr. Maambong, and I couldn’t have agreed more.
“And finally in first place,” he had announced, “with an impressive total of thirty-five hundred dollars is Tom Preston. Stand up, Mr. Preston. Let’s all give the winner a round of applause. We can all now understand, I believe, that Mr. Preston is more than just another candidate. He is, in fact, the man to beat. Keep that in mind, the rest of you, as you prepare for our next contest. Those of you
who remain will be going on a scavenger hunt of the most unusual sort. The position you are applying for is very often about recovery and acquisition; we’ll see how well you acquire. Now, drink up. This is a night of unraveling the tensions. As the prophet says, tomorrow will come what may, so tonight we might as well dance.”
Standing off to the side, my back turned just slightly in feigned unconcern, I had kept my eyes on the six remaining candidates as Mr. Maambong declared the results. Riley and Kief were pleased with their placing—Riley lifted her glass in my direction, acknowledging the gifts that had boosted her and Kief’s totals—but it was the reaction of the other three that had gratified me the most. When Tom Preston was announced as the winner with his impressive dollar amount, when Tom Preston stood to receive his applause and be coronated as the front-runner by Mr. Maambong, twitches of consternation marred their features. Angela even glanced my way and I shrugged as if to say, What else could you have expected? The doubts I had placed like earwigs in their brains were starting to do their work, even though it was too late to do me any good.
“We are disappointed, Mr. Kubiak,” said Mr. Maambong, sitting behind a great glass-topped desk in the second-floor office after I had made my way down the circular steps. “We had expected a more robust showing from you.”
“You’re not as disappointed as I am,” I said. The office overlooked the canal and the glittering resorts on the other side. It was minimalist in design, filled with sharp edges and blank walls and glass. It fit my eye.
He patted an envelope as he pushed a document toward me. “This is the thousand dollars we promised you. But to receive it, you’ll need to sign a basic nondisclosure agreement.”
A Filthy Business [Kindle in Motion] Page 7
