by John McEvoy
Rexroth jumped to his feet. “Stoner,” he said to his assistant, “write that down and have bumper stickers made of it for every RexCom employee. Display will be mandatory on each employee’s vehicle. Have the bumper stickers distributed along with paychecks. They’ll be taken more seriously that way.”
Rexroth shook his head, recalling past promotional and motivational schemes that had fallen short of his expectations. “It’s a shame, I sometimes think, that you have to have people working for you in order to run a business.”
Doyle remembered reading, in the background information on Rexroth that the FBI had given him, how the RexCom chairman made it a practice of once each year arriving at each of his major corporate offices to harangue the employees-his “troops.” as he referred to them-while dressed like his hero, General George S. Patton. Rexroth would strut up and down the auditorium stage in front of a huge American flag, snapping a riding crop against his polished boots, bald dome covered by a gleaming silver helmet.
Attendance was mandatory at these performances, so much so that one worried RexCom office manager, hospitalized for hemorrhoid surgery, had himself delivered by ambulance to the auditorium one year in an attempt to demonstrate his fealty. Rexroth fired him anyway once the man had returned to his job. “The troops were paying more attention to that suckass Schullman that day than they were to me,” Rexroth said, in explaining this dismissal.
After Rexroth had riffled through papers that Doyle recognized as his phonied-up resume created by the FBI agents with the cooperation of some prominent West Coast breeders who were eager to be of aid to the agency, the publisher again turned his attention to Doyle.
“I see that Aldous Bolger knows you,” Rexroth said. “He’s quite complimentary about your abilities.”
“Aldous and I go back a long way,” said Doyle, lying resolutely. He then went on to mention other aspects of his fictional career on some of California’s leading horse farms.
“Have you ever trained horses?” Rexroth asked.
“I’ve had some experience on the racetrack,” Doyle replied truthfully, “but I got tired of the traveling around. I’m engaged to be married,” he lied again, “and I thought it was time I tried to find a job with more permanence to it.” He gave Rexroth his most sincere, polished at Serafin Ltd., look. Rexroth didn’t seem either impressed or unimpressed. He looked more uninterested than anything else.
“You know the salary,” he said. “I’ll review your performance with Bolger after your first month, and we’ll see where we stand. Welcome to Willowdale,” Rexroth added, dismissing Doyle as he turned to pick up the slightly damp cellular phone.
Stoner accompanied Doyle out of the pool area and toward the front door. He must have read his boss’ body language, for he said, “Congratulations on your new job, Mr. Doyle.”
Doyle nodded. Then he said to Stoner, “Is that some sort of whirling harem Rexroth has going back there?”
“No, not necessarily. I wouldn’t describe the situation quite in those terms,” the secretary replied. “It’s true that one of the girls occasionally falls into what might be termed Rexrothian favor, and as a result takes up residence in the house. But, by and large, these women are hired for exactly what you see them doing.
“In addition to the rollerblading,” he continued, “Mr. Rexroth’s favorite of their public exercises, they also perform aerobic routines during the course of the day. He insists that the sight of them, the aesthetically pleasing counterpoint they provide to the labors required of him in operating a giant business enterprise, serve to sharpen his acumen.”
“That redhead would have my acumen standing at attention,” Doyle remarked. Stoner ignored it. He said, “Mr. Rexroth does, however, as is quite widely known, have a mistress at his New York City residence, another one on the old family homestead in Montana.” Stoner supplied this information with a touch of pride, perhaps even the hint of a vicarious thrill of possession, Doyle thought.
“Has Rexroth ever been married?”
“No, he has not.” He paused.
“As Mr. Rexroth has commented on more than one occasion, a man of his financial stature has to be extremely cautious. At the same time, as he puts it, the thought of a prenuptial agreement, something de riguer in his level of society these days, causes his ‘cock to shrivel up like a retractable telescope.’
“Not a condition a man with Mr. Rexroth’s appetites would relish,” he added.
As Doyle took one more glance back toward the girl circling the track, he saw a portly black woman, dressed as a hospital attendant, wheeling a food cart toward Rexroth’s desk. Once she’d reached it, the woman lifted a tray off the cart and placed it before Rexroth, who was rubbing his hands in anticipation. He looked up at the black woman, said something to her that Doyle could not hear, gave her a broad smile, then dismissed her with a wave of his hand. Rexroth then began to eat, with obvious relish.
Doyle looked inquiringly at Stoner. The secretary was silent, but Doyle saw that Stoner was watching him out of the corner of his eye. Stoner was waiting for Doyle to bite on this, Doyle just knew it.
“Dare I ask?…” Doyle began, but Stoner interrupted him, perhaps eager to get this explanation over with.
“Since a childhood skiing accident that put him in the hospital for an extended period,” Stoner said, “Mr. Rexroth’s favorite food has been…hospital food. He likes the servers to be as authentic as possible as well.”
Doyle said, “You’re jerking my chain here, aren’t you, Stoner?”
“I am not making this up,” the secretary hissed, shaking his head from side to side.
Doyle said, “Hospital food? In the tradition of, well, hospital food? We’re talking mystery meat, vegetable remnants, jello parts? That’s what you’re telling me?”
Stoner nodded, shrugging his narrow shoulders. In defense of his employer, he said, “It’s obviously one of those acquired tastes that few people ever acquire.”
Stoner smiled thinly as he waited on the front door threshold for Doyle to descend the broad steps of the mansion to his car. The smile left his face as Doyle’s car disappeared down the long drive, and Stoner frowned as he re-entered the mansion and walked to his office. There was something about Jack Doyle-he couldn’t put his finger on it, but it was there-that Stoner found troubling. This, despite the fact that Doyle’s impressive resume and list of references checked out perfectly.
Byron Stoner came from a business background in Toronto where he had worked in RexCom’s Canadian division, specializing in labor relations. Later, this field changed into “human relations,” but the work remained the same: finding the most effective ways to beat down the unions and slash personnel costs.
Stoner’s successes in Toronto brought him to the attention of Harvey Rexroth, and Stoner accepted the offer to become the publisher’s executive assistant, i.e. number one trouble shooter. A lifelong bachelor, with no close family remaining, Stoner had no compunction about crossing the border and eventually becoming engaged in far more serious acts than framing union officials or bribing shop stewards.
Rexroth realized early on that Stoner could be entrusted to do anything, thus leaving his employer at a presumably safe legal remove from possible recriminations. Rexroth once remarked to the little Canadian, “I’m not sure I understand how you know the kind of people we occasionally need to hire for special jobs.”
“Oh, I don’t, Mr. Rexroth,” Stoner had replied. “But I know how to find people who do know what we’re looking for. For the money you’re willing to pay, we can find people willing to do just about anything.”
Rexroth took great pride in having secured the services of Byron Stoner. “Look at him,” Rexroth once commented, “with his thinning hair and those glasses, that expressionless face, he looks like the chief accountant in some backwater button factory. But he’s got no more morals than a musk melon.”
When Stoner entered his office, his phone message light beaconed. It was time for the various
RexCom managers to deliver their midday business reports. Stoner was soon immersed in his work, thoughts of Jack Doyle dismissed.
Chapter 13
Among the numerous targets of RexCom’s recent cost-cutting program was Thaddeus “Red” Marchik, a thirty-year veteran of racing journalism who had been in RexCom’s employ for nearly five years, and fully expected to remain therein until the arrival of what he deemed to be his well-earned retirement.
The “well-earned,” however, was not an assessment shared by Marchik’s immediate supervisor, managing editor Paul Lipscomb. When Lipscomb had received the most recent staff reduction order from RexCom corporate headquarters, he began to compile a list of potential firees. Marchik’s name led off.
As Lipscomb told one of his assistants, “I don’t know why in hell we’ve kept him as long as we have. Marchik has been dogging it since Lassie was a pup. No matter where we assign him, he finds a way to slow down the pace, all the while complaining about how he’s overworked and underpaid. We used to have a summer intern take care of all the racing commission rulings that we publish in two hours a day. Marchik has somehow managed to turn this function-an almost mindless function, I might add-into a full-time operation requiring overtime, for Chrissakes! ”
He drew breath. “Marchik has got to go.”
Co-workers who heard the howl that erupted from Marchik upon being informed of his firing cowered in their cubicles. “You can’t treat a Navy veteran like this,” Marchik shouted, pounding a large fist on Lipscomb’s desk. A broad-shouldered six-footer, Marchik, even at age fifty-nine, made for a formidable sight with his sweaty face as bright as his full head of red hair.
“Red, face the facts here,” Lipscomb advised. “You just haven’t worked out for us. I couldn’t do anything to save you if I wanted to,” Lipscomb lied. “These are orders from the top.”
Marchik looked at him incredulously. “You mean Mr. Rexroth himself?”
In an attempt to mollify Marchik by making him feel important enough to be a personal concern of the media kingpin, and also anxious to get Marchik out of his office, Lipscomb nodded his head affirmatively. “He just felt it would be best for all concerned if you took your talents elsewhere.” Lipscomb struggled to keep a straight face.
Red Marchik rose to his full height. “That tub of guts will regret the day he decided that. He’ll learn you can’t fuck over a Navy veteran.” He then stormed out of Lipscomb’s office.
“Send in the next sheep for slaughter,” Lipscomb said into the intercom on his desk.
Red Marchik came from an extended family of occupational malingerers, one dotted by union officials with phony jobs, ghost payrollers on the municipal side, and a couple of cousins whose careers had been devoted to winning phony accident lawsuits against insurance companies.
Those members of the Marchik family who, like Red, actually held real jobs, usually considered these positions to be either “beneath them,” or “too much for them,” or flagrantly ill-paying. Their working lives were replete with indignation at what they considered to be slights or insults suffered at the hands of supervisors who had no business giving orders.
Someone once said of the late television announcer Howard Cosell that, if he were a sport, “he’d be roller derby.” Similarly, if the Marchiks were considered as an historical entity, they’d be seen as a continually pissed-off but immobilized peasantry.
Later on the day he’d been dismissed by Lipscomb, while sitting at the poker table in the basement recreation room of his modest ranch home on Louisville’s west side, Red Marchik pondered his fate as he tossed down a succession of shots of Jim Beam followed by gulps of Pabst Blue Ribbon. His berating of his former employer become increasingly embittered as the afternoon, and the alcohol, wore on. But no matter how loudly he decried his fate, Red’s wife, Wanda, maintained her composure. She sat across from Red at the felt-covered table, rolling and smoking one marijuana joint after another and nodding her head in agreement at her irate husband.
The recreation room, refinished by Wanda years ago, was the Marchiks’ pride and joy. On shelves dotting the fake knotty-pine paneled walls sat an amazing array of stuffed carcasses-raccoons, coyotes, various other mammals-along with the head of a small deer.
The prized trophy, an albino squirrel with a strikingly malicious look in its eyes, held center stage between a huge National Rifle Association poster and a blown-up photo of one-time Nixon henchman Charles Colson, whom the Marchiks were convinced had been railroaded to prison where he became a born-again Christian.
Red peered blearily at Wanda. “They’re not gonna get away with doing this to me, Wanda. They’re going to pay for this.” He again recounted to her his meeting earlier that day with a member of RexCom’s Human Resources Department. “They ripped me off on severance pay, insurance, pension-the whole eleven yards, the bastards.
“Human Resources, hah! What a fuckin’ name for what they do! Their motto should be Bend Over and Spread Those Cheeks.”
Wanda Marchik was used to hearing such tirades from her husband of twenty-three years, and paid them no heed. She looked upon Red as a delightfully harmless, terribly attractive man, one she had been crazy about since literally bumping into him one night between beer frames at JJ’s Bowling Lanes many years earlier. Wanda didn’t spend time analyzing why she adored her lazy, perpetually put-upon husband. “There’s no explaining it,” she often told her girl friends. “He’s just a beautiful hunk of man, isn’t he?”
Wanda, a diminutive brunette, had wide-ranging interests that Red would have been hard put to explain, had he been asked. He just accepted them. In addition to owning and operating a thriving carpet-cleaning business, one that employed a battalion of industrious Polish immigrants, Wanda was an active member of the NRA, the Sierra Club, the Coalition for the Retention of the Death Penalty, Planned Parenthood-the Marchiks themselves were childless, the result of what Red openly admitted was his “shooting blanks in the sperm division”-and the National Association to Legalize Marijuana.
Such a diverse dossier of memberships never struck either of the Marchiks as unusual; this undoubtedly explained the theme of mutual content that permeated their marriage. Some people are indeed “just made for each other,” and the Marchiks-Red, a lifelong malingerer and discontent, and the ambitious Wanda-qualified on these counts.
Wanda rolled up the sleeves of her Chicago Bears sweatshirt. She then started rolling another joint. “Honey, you really don’t have to work anymore. My business is going great. You’re getting close to retirement anyway. Why not just sit back and enjoy this? Why are you making this so, you know, personal with Mr. Rexroth?
“Those big companies dump people all the time. Good people like you,” Wanda quickly added.
“That tubby turd is going to pay for this,” Red vowed. “Stay out of my way on this one, Wanda.” Red lurched to his feet and stumbled toward the plastic-covered white couch that faced the forty-two-inch color television set. After flopping down, he quickly went to sleep, still muttering.
Wanda smiled fondly at the love of her life. She had heard Red promise punishment to a variety of employers, or foremen, or co-workers, over the course of his career spent performing the simplest tasks in a variety of small-time journalistic jobs. Frankly, she had been surprised when Red had landed-through the help of a friend of his, Chester Langenbach-a position on the Horse Racing Journal, part of the Rexroth empire. Wanda was further surprised that Red had lasted in the job so long, considering what she tolerantly accepted to be his combination of semi-ineptitude and bilious attitude toward work.
“Oh, you’ll get over this, too, honey,” Wanda whispered to her hubby as he rested peacefully beneath a haze of marijuana smoke and a small cloud of beer and bourbon fumes.
Ordinarily an accurate assessor of her mate’s moods and intentions, Wanda Marchik proved to be way off the mark this time.
As the weeks following his firing by RexCom went by, and his severance pay dwindled, Red Marchik’s fury
lingered. Predictably, his half-hearted attempts to find another job produced nothing, and Red appeared to be home free with his twenty-six weeks of unemployment checks. Wanda’s business continued to thrive, so the Marchiks were not confronted by financial worries. It was the bitterness billowing from what he considered to be the huge personal insult that was his firing that stoked Red’s anger. Try as he might, he could discern no reason why he should have been found wanting at this stage of his working life. “I wasn’t doing any better-or any worse-than I ever did,” he repeatedly complained to Wanda.
In the second month of his forced retirement, Red began to soothe his ego with the theory that his firing had been “a goddam hate crime by that fucking Rexroth.” The more he thought about it, the more sense it made to him. Over the course of several days one week, Red struggled to compose a letter to his former employer.
“You will soon hear from my attorney regarding charges of age discrimination and ethnic prejudice that I intend to bring against you,” the letter began. It continued:
If you think that you can operate your evil conglomerate without fear of reprisal, think again. Understand that fighting evil is nothing new to me. I am a U.S. Navy veteran.
After my years of dedicated service to RexCom, I was abruptly terminated. The only reason I can think of for my firing is that you have carried too far your hatred of Lithuanian Americans. I proudly happen to be one. It was not lost on me that another employee fired, Mr. Harry Lopke, has a widowed mother he supports, she, too, being of Lithuanian-American heritage.
If you think you can get away with your cancerous practices, think again. Your prejudicial perpertrations are comparable to those fostered in years past in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, and today in sinkholes like Chile and China. I will show that your vicious actions have caused me to suffer a near heart attack, tremendous emotional and mental stress, and a condition of semi-impotency. I shall prove that my wife and I were almost hospitalized as a result.
