Termination Man

by Edward Trimnell

  “Well, for what it’s worth,” I said. “I think you’re pretty ‘favored,’ as you put it. Pretty special.”

  “Sweet of you to say so, Craig. But most of the time I don't feel very special. Not when I have to share the world with women like Claire. Sometimes it gets to me, you know. All of it: being alone, being fat and ordinary. One time it really got me down, and I did something bad. I was only nineteen then. But still…”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This is something that I’ve never told anyone,” she said. “Not anyone at work, I mean.” She wiped her eyes with one hand. “But I trust you. You’re the only one I trust—now that Alan is gone. So I guess it’s okay for me to tell you. When I was nineteen, the summer after my freshman year in high school, I got really depressed, and I took a bunch of sleeping pills with half a bottle of wine.”

  “Let me get this straight—you tried to kill yourself when you were a teenager?”

  “That’s right. I think that clinical depression runs in my family. My mom used to tell me that my grandmother was always a gloomy one. And my great-aunt killed herself with pills when she was about my age. I never got the whole story on that: People were ashamed of suicides back in those days. They didn’t talk openly about it, you know?”

  “But you would never do anything like that again, would you, Lucy?”

  She shrugged. “For a long time I’d thought I was past all that. And maybe I was. Throughout most of my twenties, I was able to remain optimistic, to think that something or someone would come my way. That my life might change. But I’ve been spiraling downward again this year.”

  She sobbed once more, wiped her face on a fresh Kleenex, and leaned against my shoulder. If it had been any other woman but Lucy, I would have sworn that there was something romantic about the gesture, but it wasn’t like that. Lucy now regarded me as an older brother, a best friend. Her walls were completely down and her thoughts were laid bare for me.

  What was it Alan had said? Lucy is like an open book.

  A book that Craig Walker Consulting and TP Automotive were preparing to set afire.

  Chapter 56

  I had planned to return to my own hotel room that night; but Lucy’s sobs—and the story of her teenage suicide attempt—had changed my plans. Instead I headed toward the hotel where Claire was staying. I had to talk to her.

  I had given Claire the lead role in building the case against Lucy, as I had been primarily responsible for the strategies regarding Nick King, Michael O’Rourke, and Alan Ferguson. Lucy was the last item on our checklist. With her termination, Craig Walker Consulting’s work at UP&S would be done.

  Given the complications that had arisen, I needed to wrap up this assignment and vacate the UP&S job site. I had already decided that I wouldn't abandon Donna Chalmers; but I was vulnerable and compromised as a TP Automotive consultant with an active contract. I needed to finish up matters at UP&S; then neither Kurt Myers nor anyone else from TP Automotive would have a claim on my time, efforts, or loyalties.

  But I had decided tonight that we couldn’t pull the trigger on Lucy. Not yet—and not this way.

  I was all for getting the wrong people off the organizational bus. I knew how necessary it could be. And it was a trigger that I had pulled many, many times before. But most of those people had been self-assertive malcontents. Many of them went out of their way to thumb their noses at management. In a way, many of my previous targets had practically begged to be fired. They disliked their jobs, detested their bosses, and hated themselves for settling for the mediocrity of their positions. As a result, they weren’t really sorry to lose those jobs—not beyond the temporary inconvenience of being fired. That was one of the ideas that had always allowed me to sleep at night: the idea that Craig Walker Consulting was serving the higher cause of market efficiency.

  But Lucy was different: She was weak, she had a limited concept of herself, and she had few internal or external resources to rely upon. Lucy was a woman who had already made one suicide attempt, and she was now teetering on the edge of an emotional precipice.

  There had to be another way to do this: Perhaps we could take her aside and explain the score to her—maybe even arrange a sit-down with Beth Fisk. I knew that the TP Automotive team would have objections. But why were we taking down Lucy Browning, for goodness sake? She was a shy, diffident woman who had zero self-confidence. She wasn’t going to start a revolution at UP&S. She wasn’t a threat to anyone.

  My first step would be to talk to Claire, though. I didn’t know exactly how far she had gotten. For several days I had been meaning to meet with her for an update. I had been busy, though, with my own part of the job—and with the trouble over Shawn.

  As I pulled into the hotel parking lot, I could anticipate Claire’s response to the change in plans. Claire would protest, of course. She was headstrong and eager to prove herself. And I would listen to her objections as she enumerated them one by one. Then I would overrule her. First of all, because sparing Lucy Browning was the right thing to do. And there was another reason as well—the only one that really made a difference in the final analysis: At the end of the day, I was still the boss when it came to decisions affecting the operational details of Craig Walker Consulting, LLC. I listened to opposing viewpoints, and then I decided. That is what bosses do.

  I was driving past the door to Claire’s first-floor hotel room, planning to swing the car back around and park it in a spot directly in front of her door. That was when the door to Claire’s room opened, and I realized that I would not be the first person to pay Claire a visit tonight.

  There was no mistaking the identity of the man who was leaving Claire's hotel room. Although I had known him for only a few weeks, I would have recognized Shawn Myers anywhere.

  Shawn smiled back at Claire as she closed the door behind him. He was buttoning the top two buttons of his shirt. Just as there could be no mistake about Shawn’s identity, there could be no mistake about what had transpired between them. It has always been my habit to face bad news head-on; and this was a piece of very bad news that I was suddenly forced to face. My employee, Claire Turner, was sleeping with my enemy.

  I slowed the Camry to a near idle. I could see Shawn clearly; he was too absorbed in the moment to notice me. My willingness to face the facts here didn’t blunt their effect. A wholly unpleasant mixture of feelings rushed through me, making me almost physically ill. The first component of this was the normal male resentment of the betrayal. The relationship between Claire and me was not the conventional girlfriend-boyfriend thing. However, there was at least an implied exclusivity about—what would you call it?—our “arrangement.”

  If she was unhappy or unsatisfied, she could have told me before she strayed behind my back. I wouldn’t have been a jerk about it. I wouldn't have threatened her job or anything like that. I knew—just as she did—that I could find other women if I wanted to.

  It wasn’t simply the fact that Claire had chosen another man over me—or in addition to me. The problem was her particular choice. Of all the men she could have chosen to sleep with, Shawn was an only slightly less offensive choice than the latest Middle Eastern terrorist. Like me, Claire had no trouble attracting the interest of the opposite sex. She didn’t need to scrape the bottom of the barrel by taking up with Shawn Myers.

  I knew, though, that Claire’s affair with Shawn Myers was probably not a matter of simple lust—at least not on her part. This was what was referred to in the MBA courses we had both taken as a “power-exchange relationship.”

  Shawn’s motivation was obvious. Claire’s was more problematic: What did she have up her sleeve? What had Shawn promised her? Was she planning to take over the TP Automotive account and then jump to another consulting firm? Or better yet—did Claire Turner intend to start her own consulting firm? Or maybe—despite what she often said about the drudgeries of the corporate insider’s track—Claire was angling for a high-level managerial position inside TP Automotive.


  Any and all of the above were possible.

  I parked my car where Shawn would not see it, in a space that was sufficiently distant from Claire’s room. I watched Shawn climb into his own vehicle—an Audi A8, a car that stickered at around seventy-eight grand. The son-of-a-bitch had made no attempt to be discreet—he had parked in a space right in front of Claire’s hotel room—right beside the one where I had been planning to park only a minute ago.

  As soon as Shawn’s car pulled out of the hotel parking lot, I stepped out of my own, slamming the door a little harder than was necessary. I could feel the blood rushing to my temples as I strode across the pavement. It would not have been a good time for a panhandler to ask me for spare change, or for a motorist to lay on his horn as I crossed the parking lot without looking in either direction. I sensed that my temper was held in check by only a thread right now; and that thread was going to snap at any second.

  I burst into Claire’s room without knocking. She hadn’t yet locked the door. When I stepped inside her room, Claire was making up one of the twin beds.

  “Did you forget something?” she asked. Then she turned and saw that her unannounced visitor was not Shawn Myers.

  “Did you forget your common sense?” I asked. I stepped over to the nearest wall and pounded it once with my fist. I was in one of those moods where I had to strike something. It was inevitable.

  Claire quickly assessed the new situation and went on the offensive. Probably she had prepared her lines in advance—figuring that I would find out about her and Shawn sooner or later.

  “Don’t look at me like that! Who the hell do you think you are, Craig? I never told you that I was the girl for you to bring home to your parents, did I? Did I ever talk like we were a long-term item?”

  “Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean that it’s okay for you to hop into bed with one of our clients!”

  “Oh, is this a discussion about professional standards, Craig? Is that any worse than hopping into bed with your employee?”

  “Okay, Claire, you’ve got me. I’m no angel. What I’ve been doing with you—what we’ve been doing—it’s probably wrong. And no, I don’t have any claim on you. If you want to get a conventional boyfriend or join an Internet dating site, you’ve got my permission. But that’s not what you did. Why did you have to take up with Shawn Myers?”

  “What is it between you and that guy, Craig? Why do you have it out for him like that?”

  “Shawn Myers is the worst son-of-a-bitch I know right now.”

  “And what are you? A boy scout? If you wanted to apply for sainthood Craig, you should have put together a different resume.”

  I let those comments pass. She was partly right—I wasn’t a saint. But I was no Shawn Myers, either.

  “We’re not simply talking about the usual flawed human beings that we work for, Claire. We’re not just talking about using people and getting people fired. Do you know what Shawn is capable of? He’s a rapist, for one thing.”

  “Oh, give me a break, Craig. Are you talking about that bullshit with that cleaning woman’s daughter? Shawn told me all about that. It was a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding that got blown totally out of proportion.”

  “Well, I can also produce a woman who would tell you that Shawn Myers raped her and beat her up in an alleyway in 1997. And there’s even a possibility that he could be a murderer.”

  I realized that I was playing devil’s advocate now. Earlier in the week, I had doubted Tina Shields’s stories about Shawn Myers. I had practically called her a liar, in fact. Now I was taking Tina’s side; and she was not even here to hear to me.

  Claire waved me away. “Murder? You’re talking nonsense, Craig. I’m surprised at you, really. You don’t like Shawn Myers? Fine! You’re mad because I slept with him behind your back? Got it! But that doesn’t mean you have to smear him and tell all these ridiculous stories about him. I happen to know Shawn Myers a lot better than you do. And I can tell you that he can really be very nice. Very sweet.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Just like that guy up in Michigan? Jamie, right?”

  “That was below the belt, Craig. I opened up to you about my past because you seemed to be legitimately interested, and because I thought you’d understand. Not because I wanted to give you tools to use against me in an argument like this.”

  “I’m just saying that you haven’t always shown the best judgment where men are concerned.”

  “I slept with you, didn’t I?”

  I forced myself to stop before replying to that little barb. I was still angry; but the most intense part of my anger had been spent. And I needed to tread carefully here. My position had already been compromised.

  Under normal circumstances, what Claire had done would be considered a grave violation of professional conduct—a firing offense. When you sleep with a client, you expose your employer to all sorts of risk. You compromise the job. But I had erred first by sleeping with my employee—a fact that Claire was not going to let me forget. Nor could I plausibly claim that our trysts had never happened. I thought back on the weeks during which I had been sleeping with Claire. There were numerous emails and text messages that would prove beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that I had been more than simply her boss, and that she had been more than my employee.

  How could I have been so stupid? What an idiot I was.

  Claire had significant leverage over me now—leverage that I had given her. I could discourage her relationship with Shawn; but I could not coerce her into stopping it. If fired her, I would be hearing from an employment lawyer within twenty-four hours.

  “Okay, Claire, listen: This isn’t getting us anywhere. We need to discuss this situation between you and Shawn. I think, however, that we both need a cooling off period first. I actually came here to talk to you about something else: Lucy Browning.”

  “Oh, yeah. Lucy Browning.” Claire seemed eager to change the subject. “That’s all set up. She’ll be gone on Monday.”

  “No. We can’t pull the trigger on Lucy Browning.”

  “But I already have pulled the trigger on Lucy Browning.”

  “I told you to wait until we talked!”

  Claire shrugged. “Well, excuse me for being proactive about my job. If you didn’t want a self-starter, then you should have hired someone else. I recorded a conversation with Lucy over lunch last week. She basically ran them all down—everyone on the UP&S management team from TP Automotive. They’re all ready to let her go now: Beth, Kurt, Bernie—and yes, Shawn too, just in case you’re wondering.”

  “We can’t let that happen!”

  Claire threw her hands up in the air. “Well guess what, Craig? I really don’t think that ‘we’ have much of a choice in the matter. Lucy Browning works for UP&S, which means that she works for TP Automotive. Just like you and me. Have you forgotten who the client is here?”

  “They’re the people we’re not supposed to sleep with,” I said.

  Claire started toward me—ready to scratch my eyes out, I imagine. Then she stopped herself. She put her hands at her sides and clenched her fists.

  “Why don’t you get out of here, Craig? Huh? Get the hell out of my room.”

  Chapter 57

  I arrived at UP&S on Monday morning at 7:30 a.m. I had decided that I would buttonhole Beth Fisk first thing, and tell her that there needed to be a change of plans.

  I was reasonably certain that I would be able to get my TP Automotive clients to listen to reason. I had already formulated my sales pitch: The firing of an unstable employee could have negative repercussions for the company. Suppose that Lucy were to make another attempt on her life—suppose she were to succeed this time. The resultant PR for TP Automotive could be quite negative. There was another way—a better way. Why wouldn't they agree to ease her out instead of firing her?

  But when I arrived at my desk I saw that Lucy’s desk did not quite look the same. Her few personal effects—a framed photo of her dead parents, a smiley face
penholder, and a stone paperweight carved to resemble a cat—were all gone.

  I looked around the office. The only person I saw was Mary Lou Hicks in accounting.

  “Mary Lou,” I said. “Do you know if Beth Fisk has arrived yet?”

  “I saw her a few minutes ago,” Mary Lou said. “I just got here myself. Wait a minute, I’ll check her Lotus Notes calendar for you.”

  Mary Lou looked at her computer screen, navigating to Beth Fisk’s online appointment and activity calendar.

  “Says she’s in a meeting with Kurt Myers in the executive boardroom. Must be something important.”

  “Thank you!”

  I ran toward the west wing of the building. The executive boardroom was located down a long carpeted hallway that gave it a certain separation from both the front office and the factory area. When I arrived, the door was closed. There was a narrow strip of glass window panels on either of the door. I saw Kurt and Beth seated at the room’s big round table, talking.

  I burst in without knocking.

  “Craig, what’s going on?” Kurt began. I had startled him.

  “Lucy Browning,” I said. “Was she let go this morning?”

  Ever the prim and proper one, Beth Fisk replied in an even tone. “Claire gave me the necessary materials concerning Ms. Browning this past Friday.” She gestured to a small black object amid the papers on the tabletop. It was an MP3 player with a tiny embedded speaker. “I thought that you would be aware. Ms. Browning arrived early this morning, so we decided to go ahead and call her in for the termination meeting.”

  “Isn’t that the sort of thing that is usually done at the end of the day?”

  “I have some other meetings scheduled for later in the day. And Kurt and I both believed that was imperative to remove Ms. Browning from the team as soon as possible, given the nature of her recorded comments. Have you listened to the conversation on this device, Craig?”