The Job (18 page)

“Thinking about tomorrow?” she asked.

I nodded.

“It’s a big day.”

“You’ll be just fine. But remember: It’s just a job, Ned.”

Sleep eluded me for most of that New Year’s night. When dawn broke, I was slouched on our sofa, staring out at the brightening skyline. I showered, I shaved, I put on a dark gray double-breasted suit, I retreated to the bedroom, where Lizzie was stirring.

“You look like a man in charge,” she said, kissing me lightly on the cheek.

“Good luck.”

It was just seven when I left the apartment. The streets were empty. I didn’t want to get to the office until around ten. Kreplin had mentioned prior to Christmas that he was going to “do the deed” as soon as Chuck walked in at nine, so it was best if I showed up an hour or so after he had been ushered off the premises.

This gave me three hours to kill. It was a radiantly clear morning-the sky cloudless, the chill bracing yet manageable if you kept moving. So I meandered slowly up Fifth Avenue, grabbed a New York Times, ate breakfast in a coffee shop near Grand Central, walked all the way east to the river, then finally ambled back to Third and Forty-sixth. I checked my watch. 9:55. Right. It was time.

I entered our building. I took the elevator up to the 11th floor. The door opened and…

There was Debbie Suarez. She was distraught. Her eyes were red and swollen, as if she had been crying for hours. Next to her stood Hildy Hyman. Her face was a mask of shock. They were both carrying cardboard boxes. Between them was a large, muscular woman with a face like prison bread. She was dressed in a navy-blue uniform and wore a policeman-style cap with a logo-CORP SECURE-below the visor.

“Debbie? Hildy?” I said.

“What’s going…”

Debbie began to sob.

“The assholes. The fucking assholes…”

The security guard nudged them both forward into the elevator.

“They did it to us, Mr. Allen,” Hildy said.

“Just like I said, those German bastards-” The elevator doors slid shut and they were gone. I turned around. In front of me were two male members of Corp Secure standing guard by the main doors to the CompuWorld office. A woman guard was seated behind the reception desk. Through the glass windows separating the reception area I could see several members of my Telesales team being escorted down the corridor by other Corp Secure heavies. I was stunned. Speechless. Rooted to the spot.

Eventually the guard behind the desk said, “May I help you?”

“I work here.”

“You are an employee of CompuWorld Inc.?”

“I’m the regional sales director for-” The guard snapped her fingers impatiently and said, “Employee I.D.”

I pulled out my wallet and handed over the laminated plastic card with the metallic stripe that worked as a key to the CompuWorld offices. The guard placed the card next to a clipboard and traveled down a list of names until she found mine. Then she nodded to one of the armed guards by the door.

“Right, Mr. Allen-Lorenzo here will escort you up to Human Resources.”

Fear hit. Human Resources was death row-the corporate division which specialized in new hires and terminations.

“Can I see my boss, Mr. Zanussi?” I asked.

“Mr. Zanussi no longer works here,” the guard said.

“Well, how about Klaus Kreplin?”

“Mr. Allen, if you will just accompany Lorenzo to Human Resources-” My voice became shrill.

“I’m not going anywhere until I see goddamn Klaus-” Lorenzo came forward and stood in front of me. He was six foot four, very pumped, with a menacing scowl on his face that said one word: Behave. When he spoke, his voice was so quiet I had to strain to hear him.

“I advise you to accompany me upstairs, sir.” Tapping me on the shoulder, he pointed toward the elevator.

“What about my I.D.?” I asked.

“We’ll hold on to that,” Lorenzo said.

We rode in silence to the eighteenth floor. Lorenzo escorted me down a long, narrow corridor of small offices with frosted glass doors. He knocked on one, stuck his head inside, then motioned for me to enter. He shut the door behind me. The office was tiny just big enough for a metal chair facing a functional metal desk. After a moment the door swung open and in came a nondescript man in his forties. Suit, tie, horn-rims, a row of pens in his shirt pocket, sandy hair streaked with gray.

“Sorry to have kept you, Mr. Allen,” he said, seating himself behind the desk.

“Bill Freundlich, Human Resources. Please, take a seat.”

He didn’t offer his hand in greeting; he didn’t make contact with my eyes. Instead he opened the large, thick folder that he was carrying. My photo was pinned to one corner of it. My file.

“You’re probably wondering what’s going on here,” he said in a voice that had been trained to betray no emotion.

“I’m being fired, that’s what’s going on.”

“Not exactly. What has happened is this: CompuWorld Inc. has been sold-” “They sold us?”

I was shouting. The door flew open and Lorenzo stuck his head inside.

“We’re fine here,” Bill Freundlich said to him, then looked at me coolly.

“Aren’t we?”

I sank back into the chair and stared at the floor. Bill Freundlich continued speaking.

“I know this is a shock-but, please, it will be easier for both of us if you just let me explain the sequence of events that are about to unfold.”

He waited for me to respond-but I remained silent, firmly directing my gaze down toward the grubby linoleum.

“As I said, CompuWorld Inc. has been sold as of the start of business this morning, and all employees of the company are hereby terminated. However, the parent company, Kiang-Sanderling, will abide by all the standard New York State provisions for employee termination. You will be paid two weeks’ salary for every year’s service to the company. You will continue to enjoy company medical insurance for the first quarter of this year. After that, you will be entitled to extended coverage for eighteen months, according to COBRA law, but will be responsible for monthly payments. And, as ar executive with CompuWorld Inc.” you will be enrolled in an eight-week executive out placement program-which, put baldly, is there to help you find a position commensurate with your current corporate standing.”

His delivery was anemic, devoid of sympathy. The words washed over me like dirty water. Did blood actually flow through this asshole’s veins?

“Now, you will be pleased to know that the out placement agency to which you’ve been assigned-Gerard Flynn Associates-is, to my mind, one of the truly topflight specialists in executive reinstatement, with a results-oriented approach that, statistically speaking, has yielded first-rate results-” I stopped looking at the linoleum and interrupted him.

“What about our bonuses?”

He paused ever so slightly… but a pause nonetheless.

“I will be covering that issue after I deal with-” “Cover it now,” I said.

“I would rather-” “We’re due fifty percent of our bonus money on January thirty-first….”

“Correction: When your parent company was Kiang-Sanderling, you were due half of last year’s bonus on the thirty-first. But now, as your parent company is Spencer-Rudman …”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Spencer-Rudman was the multinational that owned our number-one competitor, PC Globe.

“I thought we were being closed down. But now you’re saying we’re owned by Spencer-Rudman?”

“It’s very simple,” Bill Freundlich said.

“Kiang-Sanderling has sold CompuWorld Inc. to Spencer-Rudman who, in turn, has decided that CompuWorld will cease to exist.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m afraid I’m very serious, Mr. Allen. But it’s probably best if someone from Spencer-Rudman explained this fully to you.”

Freundlich lifted the phone, dialed three numbers, muttered, “He’s here,” then hung up.

“In fact, the gentleman in question asked me to buzz him when you were in my office.”

A knock on the door. And in walked Chuck Zanussi.

“Hi, Ned,” he said breezily as Freundlich slipped out of the office, closing the door behind him.

“Guess you didn’t expect to see me this morning.”

I’d lost the ability to speak.

“Cat got your tongue, “Herr Publisher’?”

I wanted to run out of the room.

“If you’re surprised, you can’t even begin to imagine how I felt when, the day before Christmas, a friend of mine at Spencer-Rud-man tracked me down in Buffalo to tell me that they were about to buy the CompuWorld title. Guess we were all doing too good a job of invading PC Globe’s market share-because, according to my friend, the guys at Spencer-Rudman were getting worried about the way we were nipping at their heels, and how the ‘commercial arena’ wasn’t really big enough for three computer magazines. So that’s when they decided to buy us up, close us down. And you want to know the really funny thing about all this? It seems they approached Kiang-Sanderling about the sale in the middle of December. Around the same time you were conspiring with Klaus Kreplin to take my job.”

He paused to let that last comment sink in.

I said, “Chuck, believe me, I did not conspire with Kreplin. He wanted you out…”

“.. . and offered you my job, right?”

“I told him…”

“Oh, I can guess what you told him.

“Chuck brought me into the company. Chuck taught me everything I know about sales. Chuck is my friend…”

” He gave me a dark, sour smile.

“Fortunately, my friend at Spencer-Rudman really is my friend. Because he offered me a job. Supervising the closure of CompuWorld, then assuming the role of group publisher for all software and computer magazines at Spencer-Rudman. He even said I could hire a deputy. Naturally, I thought of you-until he gave me a blow-by-blow account of a conversation he had with Kreplin a couple of days ago, after Kiang-Sanderling agreed to the sale.

“Chuck Zanussi, he is a very fortunate man to be hired by you. Because he was to be terminated next week, and Ned Allen had agreed to be his successor.”

” Another uncomfortable pause.

“Well, Ned. as I’m sure you can appreciate. I was just a tad troubled to hear that you were planning to, professionally speaking, have me whacked….”

“Please listen to me. I was not planning-” “I will not listen to you. Because nothing you say matters anymore.” He stood up and leaned over the desk.

“But know this: If I have my way, you will never, ever work in this business again.”

He walked to the door and shot me a final lethal smile.

“Happy New Year, Ned.”

The door closed. I sank back into my chair. I was in a hall of mirrors. A labyrinth without an exit. And the implications-both professional and financial-of what had just gone down were only starting to register in my brain. The world was spinning out of control-and I was so stupefied that I hardly noticed the reentrance of Bill Freundlich. He sat down again and continued his bloodless drone-but I was so far away by that point that I only caught the occasional phrase. Your final paycheck will be mailed… Gerald Flynn Associates will be expecting you on … We do regret the sudden nature of this…

Then Freundlich stood up and Lorenzo entered the room, announcing that he would accompany me to my office, where I would be given fifteen minutes to clear it out. I was so unsteady on my feet that Lorenzo kept one hand under my left elbow as we walked back down the corridor and entered the elevator.

“Y’okay?” he asked as the doors slid closed.

“No,” I managed to say.

We plummeted to the eleventh floor. The doors opened. And there, standing in front of me, was Klaus Kreplin. Initially he recoiled in surprise when he saw me. But then he gave me ache sard, sara shrug, a thin, weaselly smile spreading across his lips.

“What can I say, Edward? Except, sorry, it’s busi-” He never got to finish that sentence. I caught him in the mouth with my right fist, then punched him hard in the stomach. He doubled over. I slammed my fist into his face again. As he hit the floor, I lost all control, kicking him in his chest, his head, his teeth. The entire assault was a mad, delusional rush, lasting no more than five seconds. The Corp Secure guards came rushing forward, and Lorenzo suddenly had my left arm bent upward in a half nelson.

But I was oddly detached from all that was going on around me. It was as if I was hovering above this scene, watching it unfold, an innocent bystander. Until I un flexed my right fist and felt an electric jolt of pain race up my arm. Suddenly I was back on earth, howling in agony.

Then I looked down at the floor. Klaus Kreplin was lying in a pool of blood. And he wasn’t moving.

Nancy Auerbach’s office was spare, utilitarian, institutional. She had a firm handshake and a steady, piercing gaze-the sort of gaze that made you feel as if you were being instantly assessed and evaluated. Which, of course, you were-as it was her job to form a professional opinion about you.

She was all business. Five minutes earlier, when I first walked into her office, she greeted me with a crisp staccato monologue that almost sounded rehearsed.

“Mr. Allen, hello there, I can call you Ned, can’t I? … I’m Nancy Auerbach, your out placement facilitator. Find us okay this morning? … So here we are, and we’re going to be working together for-how long is your program?-right, here it is, eight weeks. Well, we’re certainly going to be getting to know each other over the next two months. Can I get you anything, Ned? Tea? Coffee?”

“Could I have a glass of water, please? I need to take some pills.”

“Water’s no problem,” she said.

“Water we can do.” Swirling around in her desk chair, she reached for a bottle of Perrier and a glass, located on a tray. She swung back and set them in front of me.

“Need a hand?” she asked, glancing down at my right arm. The wrist and the top of the hand were mummified in white surgical tape. My fingers protruded from this medical wrap, but the third, fourth, and fifth ones had been bound together with an elastic bandage.

“No pun intended.”

“I can manage,” I said, using my thumb and forefinger to unscrew the top of the Perrier bottle, then pouring myself a glass with my left hand.