Killer Instinct

by Joseph Finder

  He came to the door in a white T-shirt.

  “Welcome to the Fortress of Solitude.” He opened the screen door for me. “I’m upgrading the electrical service.”

  “You’re doing it yourself?”

  He nodded. “It’s a rental, but I got tired of the circuit breakers tripping all the time. Hundred amps just doesn’t cut it. Plus the wiring’s old. So I’m putting in a four-hundred-amp service panel. Figured I’d get rid of the old aluminum branch circuit wiring while I’m at it.”

  He noticed the stack of books in my arms. “Those for me?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said.

  He scanned the stack. “Dog Eat Dog: Surviving the Business World,” he read. “The Take No Prisoners Guide to the Corporation. What’s all this?”

  “Some books I thought you might find useful,” I said, setting them down on the hall table. “Now that you’re working in the corporate world.”

  “Team Secrets of the Navy SEALs: The Elite Military Force’s Leadership Principles for Business,” he said. He seemed amused. “Corporate Warrior. This is all military, chief. I don’t need to read about it. Seen enough.”

  I felt like an idiot. Here was a guy who knew all this stuff from real-world experience, and I was giving him a bunch of books for corporate armchair warriors. Plus, what if he was one of those guys who never read books? “Yeah, but, see, they’re all about how to apply what you already know to a world you don’t.”

  He nodded and said, “I see. Got it.”

  “Check ’em out,” I said. “See what you think.”

  “I will, chief. I will. I’m all about self-improvement.”

  “Cool. Hey, so, listen. I need a favor.”

  “Name it. Come on in. I’ll get you a drink. Show you some of my war trophies.”

  His house was just as neat inside as it was outside. Clean and orderly and plain. Almost a temporary look to it. His refrigerator had nothing in it except bottles of Poland Spring water, Gatorade, and protein shakes. I wouldn’t be getting a Budweiser.

  “Gatorade?”

  “Water’s fine,” I said.

  He tossed me a little bottle of water, took one for himself, and we went to his bare living room—a couch, a recliner, an old TV—and sat down.

  I told him a little about the race for the divisional vice president job, how Gleason had blown off an important presentation at Bank of America and Trevor had lost the Pavilion deal. But Trevor was doing a demo at Fidelity on Monday, I said. That would seal the deal. He’d be back in Gordy’s good graces.

  Then I told him about how Gordy wanted me to recruit Jim Letasky from NEC. “It’s sort of like ‘Bring me the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West,’” I said.

  “How so?”

  “An impossible assignment. He’s setting me up to fail. So he can give the promotion to Trevor.”

  “Why’re you so sure you’re gonna fail?”

  “Because I found out from Gordy’s secretary that Gordy’s tried a bunch of times before, and the guy lives in Chicago with his wife and kids, and he has no reason to move to Boston and start a new job with Entronics.”

  “You senior enough to recruit the guy?”

  “Technically, I guess. I’m a district manager. But I’ve met the guy, and we like each other.”

  “Know him well?”

  “No, that’s the thing. Not well at all. I’ve done the usual research, made a bunch of calls, but I haven’t come up with anything I can really sink my teeth into. You don’t happen to know anyone in NEC corporate security, do you?”

  “Sorry.” He smiled. “Why, you want a backgrounder on him?”

  “Is that even something you can do?”

  “All you gotta know is where to look.”

  “Think you could find out what his exact compensation package is at NEC?”

  “Betcha I can do a lot more than that.”

  “That would be awesome.”

  “Give me a couple days. I’ll see what I can throw together. Actionable intelligence, we used to call it.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  He shrugged. “No thanks required. You put it on the line for me, bro.”

  “Me?”

  “With Scanlon, I mean. You vouched for me.”

  “That? That’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing, Jason,” he said. “It’s not nothing.”

  “Well, happy to do it. So what kind of war trophies do you have?”

  He got up and opened the door to what looked like a spare bedroom. It smelled of gunpowder and other things, acrid and musty at the same time. Arranged on a long bench in neat rows were some strange-looking weapons. He picked up an old rifle with a smooth wooden stock. “Check this out. A World-War-II-vintage Mauser K98. Standard-issue infantry weapon in the Wehrmacht. Bought it off an Iraqi farmer who claimed he shot down one of our Apache helicopters with it.” He chuckled. “Chopper didn’t have a scratch.”

  “Does it work?”

  “No idea. I wouldn’t want to try it.” He picked up a pistol, showed it to me. He seemed to want me to handle it, but I just looked. “Looks like a Beretta Model 1934, right?”

  “Absolutely,” I said with a straight face. “No question.”

  “But check out the slide markings.” He held it close to me. “Made in Pakistan, see? In the hand workshops of Darra Adam Khel.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s a town between Peshawar and Kohat. Famous for making exact replicas of every gun in the world. Armourers to the Pashtun—the Taliban warriors in Stan.”

  “Stan?”

  “What we called Afghanistan. You can tell it’s a Darra special from how poorly the slide stamping is aligned. See?”

  “It’s a fake?”

  “Amazing what you can do with unlimited time, a box of files, and nine sons. And check this out.” He showed me a black rectangle with a bullet hole in the middle of it. “This is a SAPI plate. Small arms protection insert.”

  “Either it’s used or it’s defective.”

  “Saved my life. I’m standing in a tank turret on Highway One in Iraq, and suddenly I’m thrown forward. Sniper got me. Luckily I’d put this in my flak vest. You can see how the bullet pierced it. Even cut through my clothes. Gave me a nasty bruise. Missed my spine, though.”

  “You were allowed to take all this stuff back with you?”

  “Lot of guys did.”

  “Legally?”

  He gave a throaty laugh.

  “Any of it work?”

  “Most of them are replicas. Fakes. Not reliable. You wouldn’t want to use them. They could blow up in your face.”

  I noticed a tray of tubes, like artist’s oil paints. I picked one of the tubes up. It was labeled LIQUID METAL EMBRITTLEMENT AGENT (LME)—MERCURY/INDIUM AMALGAM. It said UNITED STATES ARMY on it. I was about to ask him what it was when he said, “You know how to use a gun?”

  “Point and shoot, right?”

  “Uh, not exactly. Snipers study for years.”

  “Morons who live in trailers married to their cousins seem to be able to use them without much training.”

  “You know about recoil?”

  “Sure. The gun bucks back. I’ve seen Bad Boys like twenty times. Everything I know I learned at the movies.”

  “You want to learn how to shoot a gun? I know a guy, owns a firing range not too far.”

  “Not my thing.”

  “You should, you know. Every guy should learn how to use a gun. This day and age. You’ve got a wife to protect.”

  “When the terrorists come for us, I’ll call you.”

  “Seriously.”

  “No, thanks. Not interested. I’m kinda scared of guns. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “Why do I get a feeling you miss being in the Special Forces?”

  “Changed my life, bro.”

  “How so?”

  “Lousy home life.”

  “Where’d you grow up?”

  “Grand Rapids.
Michigan.”

  “Nice town. I’ve done business with Steelcase.”

  “Not the nice part of Grand Rapids. Wrong side of the tracks.”

  “Sounds like my neighborhood in Worcester.”

  He nodded. “But I was always in some kind of trouble. Never thought I’d amount to anything. Even when I got drafted by the Tigers, I figured I’d never make the majors. Not good enough. Then I joined the army, and I’m finally good at something. Lot of guys volunteer for Special Forces, but most don’t make it through. When I passed the Q Course, I knew I was hot shit. Two-thirds of our class didn’t make it.”

  “The what course?”

  “Q Course. Qualification Course. It’s all about weeding guys out—it’s constant torture, twenty-four hours a day. They let you have an hour of sleep, and then they wake you up at 2:00 A.M. to go to the hand-to-hand combat pit. Every time a guy quits, they play ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ on the loudspeakers, no matter what time of day or night.”

  “I think I know where Gordy gets his management techniques.”

  “You have no idea, man. The last part of the course is called Robin Sage, where they throw you into the middle of five thousand square miles of North Carolina forest to do land nav—land navigation. Not allowed to go on roads. You got to live off nuts and berries, and at the beginning they throw you some animal—a rabbit or a chicken—and that’s your protein. At the end of the week, you’ve got to hand in the hind legs. The guys who make it to the end are the ones who just don’t give up. That’s me.”

  “Sounds like Outward Bound.”

  He made a pfft sound. “Then if you’re lucky, you get to go to one of the real assholes of the universe like Afghanistan or Iraq. If you’re really lucky, like me, both.”

  “Fun.”

  “Yep. You’re in Iraq, in the middle of a sandstorm that just won’t end, the desert’s frickin’ cold at night, which you’d never expect, your hands are so numb you can’t make coffee. Your rations have been cut to one meal a day. There’s not enough water to bathe or shave. Or you’re in some damned camp in Basra, with sand fleas crawling all over you and biting, and there’s mosquitoes carrying malaria, and you’re getting red welts all over, and no matter how much insecticide you spray on yourself and in the air it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference.”

  I nodded, silent for a while. “Man,” I finally said. “You’re going to find your job kind of boring.”

  He shrugged. “Hey, it’s nice to have a real job, finally. Make some money. I can buy a car now. Scanlon wants me to get one, for client meetings and all that. Might even get a new Harley. Save up to buy a house. And maybe someday I’ll meet some chick and decide to get married again.”

  “Didn’t work out last time, huh?”

  “Didn’t even last a year. Not sure I’m cut out for marriage. Most of the guys in SF are divorced. You want a family, Special Forces isn’t for you. So what do you want?”

  “What do I want?”

  “I mean, in life. At work.”

  “Red Sox season tickets. Peace on earth.”

  “You want kids?”

  “Sure.”

  “When?”

  I shrugged, half smiled. “We’ll see.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Big issue for you.”

  “Not an issue.”

  “Yeah, it is. You and your wife are struggling with it. Or you’re trying, and it’s not happening. I can tell from your face.”

  “You got a crystal ball in that room too?”

  “Seriously. You don’t want to talk about it—that’s cool—but I can read it in your face. You know what a ‘tell’ is?”

  “Poker, right? Little signals that tell you if someone’s bluffing.”

  “Exactly. Most people aren’t comfortable with lying. So when they’re bluffing, they smile. Or they get stone-faced. Or they scratch their noses. Some of us in SF took classes in facial expression and threat assessment with this famous psychologist. To learn how to detect deception. Sometimes you want to know if a guy’s going for his gun or just pulling out a stick of Wrigley’s.”

  “I can always tell when Gordy’s lying,” I said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yep. He moves his lips.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He didn’t laugh. “So you want kids. You want a bigger house, a fancier car. More toys.”

  “Don’t forget about world peace. And the Sox tickets.”

  “You want to run Entronics?”

  “Last I looked, I wasn’t Japanese.”

  “You want to run some company, though.”

  “Thought’s crossed my mind. Usually when I’m halfway through a six-pack.”

  He nodded. “You’re an ambitious guy.”

  “My wife thinks I’m about as ambitious as a box turtle.”

  “She underestimates you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, I don’t, man. Said it before and I’ll say it again. I never forget a favor. You’ll see.”

  17

  Saturday morning I called Jim Letasky at home.

  He was surprised to hear from me. We talked a bit. I congratulated him on snagging the Albertson’s deal away from us, then I got to the point.

  “Gordy put you up to this?” Letasky said.

  “We’ve had our eye on you for a while,” I said.

  “My wife loves Chicago.”

  “She’ll love Boston more.”

  “I’m flattered,” he said. “Really. But I already turned down a job offer from Gordy twice already. Three times, come to think of it. No offense, but I love it here. I love my job.”

  “You ever get up to Boston on business?” I said.

  “All the time,” he said. “Once a week. It’s part of my territory.”

  We agreed to meet in a couple of days when he was in Boston. He didn’t want to meet at the Entronics headquarters, where he’d see people he knew, and the word would get back to NEC. We arranged to meet for breakfast at his hotel.

  Early Monday morning Kurt took me to his gym in Somerville. No beautiful women in Lycra bodysuits working out on brand-new elliptical trainers here. No smoothie bar with bottles of Fiji water.

  This was a serious weight lifter’s gym that stank of sweat and leather and adrenaline. The floor was ancient splintery planks. There were racks for speed bags, there were medicine balls and heavy bags and double-end bags, and there was a boxing ring in the center of the room. Guys were jumping rope. They all seemed to know Kurt and like him. The toilet had an old-fashioned wooden cistern up above, and you pulled a chain to flush it. There was a NO SPITTING sign. The locker room was gross.

  But I loved it. It was real, far more real than CorpFit or any of the other “fitness clubs” I’d belonged to and almost never gone to. There were a couple of old treadmills and stair climbers, and racks of free weights.

  We were both on the bikes warming up, Kurt and I, at five-thirty in the morning. Ten or fifteen minutes of hard pedaling to get our blood pumping, Kurt insisted, before we went through the floor workout. Kurt was wearing a black Everlast muscle T. The guy had huge biceps, and delts that bulged out of his sleeveless shirt like grapefruit.

  We talked a bit while we worked out. He told me he was going to initiate an upgrade of the building’s closed-circuit camera system to digital. “All the recordings will be digital,” he said. “Internet-based, too. Then I gotta do something about our access control system.”

  “But we all have those proximity badges,” I said.

  “So do the cleaning people. They can get into any office. And how much do you think it costs to bribe one of those illegal aliens to get their card? A hundred bucks, maybe? We gotta go biometric. Thumb-print or fingerprint readers.”

  “You really think Scanlon’s going to sign on to that?”

  “Not yet. He’s in favor, but it costs a bundle.”

  “Scanlon talk to Gordy about it?”

  “Gordy? Nah, Scanlon says it has to get approved at Dick Hardy’s level. He wants to
wait a few months. See, no one wants to spend on security unless there’s a problem. Money flows only when blood flows.”

  “You’re new,” I said. “You probably shouldn’t twist Scanlon’s arm too hard.”

  “I’m not gonna twist his arm at all. You gotta know when to fight and when to retreat.” He smiled. “One of the first things you learn in the box. It’s in those books you gave me, too.”

  “The box?”

  “Sorry. In country.”

  “Ah. Makes sense.” I was short of breath and trying to economize my words.

  “Hey, I love those corporate warfare books. I get it, man. I really get it.”

  “Yeah,” I panted. “Probably in a way…most corporate executives don’t.”

  “Roger that. All these bogus corporate warriors with all their bullshit about killing the competition. It’s funny.” He jumped off the bike. “Ready for abs?”

  After we’d showered and changed, Kurt handed me a folder. I stood outside on the street in the early morning sunlight, the cars roaring by, and read through it.

  I had no idea how he’d done it, but he’d managed to get the exact dollar figure of Jim Letasky’s take-home for the last four years—salary, commission, and bonuses. He had the amount of Letasky’s mortgage, the monthly payment, the rate, and the balance remaining, plus what he’d paid for his house, in Evanston, and what it was worth now.

  His car payments. The names of his wife and three kids. The fact that Letasky was born and raised in Amarillo, Texas. Kurt had noted that Letasky’s wife didn’t work—outside the home, as they say—and that his three kids were in private school, and what that cost. His checking account balance, how much of a balance he kept on his credit cards, what the major expenditures were. It was scary how much Kurt had found out.

  “How’d you get all this?” I said as we walked to his motorcycle.

  Kurt smiled. “That’s NTK, man.”

  “Huh?”

  “Need-to-know basis. And all you need to know is, you always wanna have better intel than the enemy.”

  Since it was Kurt’s first day on the job, I offered to take him out to lunch to celebrate. But he was tied up with all sorts of paperwork and orientation sessions and the like. When Trevor Allard returned to the office from Fidelity, around noon—earlier than I’d expected—I strolled over to his cubicle, and said, as casually as I could, “How’d it go?”