The Job (37 page)

“You have no proof,” Ted yelled.

“Her name was Joan Glaston…”

“You know shit.”

“.. . and the only reason she didn’t bring charges was because you bribed her…”

“You watch it.”

“.. . but only after she kicked you in the balls.”

That’s when he went for me, lashing out with both fists. But before he could connect, Jerry jumped between us, grabbing Peterson’s arms in the sort of ferocious grip that he used to employ on the ice.

“I want you out of here,” Jerry barked at me.

“With pleasure,” I said, then turned and threw my drink in Peterson’s face.

“That’s for Ivan.”

“YOU’RE A DEAD MAN,” Peterson screamed, struggling to break free of Jerry’s grip.

“Out, NOW,” Jerry yelled-and the crowd of onlookers parted as I made a dash for the door.

Outside the hotel, I had to lean against a lamppost until I calmed down. Then, once I regained my equilibrium, I began to walk. Heading south on Sixth Avenue, I was so distracted by what had just gone down that I didn’t realize how much ground I was rapidly covering until I looked up and realized I was at Twenty-third Street. I wanted to collapse into a bar and soothe my jangled nerves with half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. But I was still adhering to my clean-and-sober regimen-so I just kept going farther south. Through the Village, past SoHo, into Tribeca, across Wall Street, then finally hitting the end of the line: Battery Park. I wasn’t aware of time, or of the distance involved-because my brain was trying to make sense of everything that had happened today. I could find no logic to what I’d seen and heard.

All I could come up with were questions. Such as: What the hell was Jerry doing, talking to Ted Peterson? .. . Why did he reprimand him so fiercely? .. . Knowing my checkered history with the asshole, why did Jerry never mention the fact that he knew Peterson? … What, in short, was going on between them?

And when I finished pondering these questions, then I had to.

I headed north from Battery Park, walked back through the empty canyons of the financial district, cut east through Chinatown and Little Italy, then finally wended my way back to Wooster Street. Heading down the east side of the block, I could see that the lights were on in the loft. For the first time in around a month, Jerry was home before midnight. I wasn’t surprised. After what I’d pulled in the Parker Meridien, he was obviously lying in wait for me-and planning, no doubt, to fire my ass.

I wanted to dodge this confrontation-to keep on walking through the night in the hope that, come morning, the gravity of my situation might have possibly improved. But I knew that, according to the Ballantinian Principles of Business Management, eluding responsibility (especially after committing an error of judgment) was considered a major mortal sin (almost up there with scoring a touchdown for the other side). “Always face the music, own up to the mistake, take your lumps,” Jack Ballantine advised in The Success Zone, “because when we acknowledge fumbles with manful dignity, we learn.”

There was no getting around it. I would have to “acknowledge the fumble” and then embrace homelessness with manful dignity.

Jerry was seated on the sofa when I entered the loft. He was deep in conversation on the phone, so I headed into my room and began to pack my clothes. After five minutes Jerry walked in. Noticing the open bag on the futon, he asked, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Leaving.”

“Why, for Christ’s sake?”

“I figured, after what happened at the Meridien …”

“What you did was dumb. Totally dumb. But… part of the blame lies with me. Because I should have told you that Peterson was working with us.”

“What?” I managed to say.

“You sound shocked,” Jerry said.

“I am shocked.”

“It’s a recent development. And anyway, he’s just helping us in an advisory capacity. Keeping his ear to the ground for new companies that the fund might want to consider for investment.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because, knowing your past with the guy, I figured you might have taken the news badly.”

“You figured right. I mean … I can’t believe this, Jerry. The guy is my nemesis. Arch Enemy Number One. Not to mention a completely evil fuck. And now you want to work with him?”

“He’s an important player at GBS. He could be very useful to us. And when I met him three weeks ago-” “This has been going on for three weeks’?”

“Ned, cut the betrayed-spouse routine. We’re talking business here. I was introduced to Peterson through a couple of business contacts, he seemed like a smart operator with his finger on the pulse of the industry, so I offered him a consultancy deal with us-which, strictly speaking, is not in line with GBS rules, but all we’re talking about is me taking him out once a month for lunch and picking his brain about new companies. Anyway, knowing how much you loathe Peterson …”

“With good reason.”

“Right, okay, he acted appallingly toward you…. So, knowing {| that, I really didn’t want to get you upset about what was, is, nothing more than a consultancy situation which doesn’t really concern * you. Having said that, what happened tonight changes things a bit.”

“In what way?”

“That was Mr. Ballantine on the phone when you came in. Word’s already gotten back to him about the scene in the ballroom. Know what he told me?

“You’ve got to admire Ned for tearing a strip or two off the bastard. But it was still an asinine call.”

” I shrugged and said, “Guilty as charged. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. And unpack your clothes while you’re at it. Nobody’s firing you.”

“Thanks, Jerry.”

“But we still have a situation on our hands here. GBS is the biggest global player in the computer industry. Ted Peterson is our conduit to them. He may be a sonofabitch, but he’s our sonofabitch. We don’t want to lose him. So here’s what Mr. Ballantine suggests: You take him out to dinner and smooth things over with him….”

“No fucking way!”

“Ned, when Mr. B. ‘suggests’ something, it is tantamount to an order.”

“Does he understand my history with Peterson?”

“Completely. And, of course, he is on your side. But, like I said earlier, this is business-and, as Mr. B. is fond of remarking, in business you often have to sleep with assholes. Anyway, he thinks it would be character building for you to confront Peterson man-to-man over dinner, and reach some sort of detente with the guy.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“C’est la fucking vie, Ned.”

“Say I refuse.”

“Then, I’m afraid, you will be packing your bags.”

It was the response I was expecting. And dreading. I threw my hands up in the air-the universally recognized gesture of capitulation.

“Okay, okay, I’ll meet the guy.”

“Attaboy.”

“But say he refuses to meet me? Especially after the shit I said about him in public?”

“He won’t refuse to meet you.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Because I know he wants this consultancy. Badly. In fact, he really needs it.”

“But why? He’s a big swinging dick at GBS.”

“A big, swinging, overextended dick. With the usual upper-middle-class money problems. Trying to make ends meet on three hundred grand a year. It seems Ted just can’t do it for less than three-seventy-five. Which means he’s got a mounting debt dilemma. A dilemma that could easily be solved by playing swami to our fund.”

The phone rang. Jerry reached for it. He had a fast, hushed conversation with the person on the other end of the line, then hung up.

“That was my date for tonight. My seriously pissed-off date, who I was supposed to have met at the Odeon thirty minutes ago.”

“You can blame me.”

“Believe me, I will. You free tomorrow night?”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“I’m going to try to set up this dinner with Peterson for then. Probably near his office in Stamford. It’s best to get this all behind us as quickly as possible. How was Boston, by the way?”

“I wanted to talk to you about that. The guy I was seeing at Federal and State-” “It’s great you got to see someone there. They’re real comers in the mutual fund game….”

“Yeah, but the guy I saw… Well, he had, uh, a few questions about Excalibur….”

“Look, I really don’t have time to deal with this now.”

“How about tomorrow over breakfast?”

“I’m doing breakfast in Philly. And then I’m off to Wilmington and Baltimore for back-to-back meetings. Won’t hit the city until around ten. But hey, I’ll meet you here at ten-thirty, we’ll catch a drink somewhere, and you can tell me all about what happened in Boston and how you sorted things out with Peterson. I’ll get Peggy to set the dinner up with his secretary-and she’ll call you as soon as she has details of when and where.”

Sure enough, at eleven the next morning the phone rang in my office. Jerry’s secretary, Peggy, came on the line to say that dinner with Mr. Peterson had been arranged for seven that evening in Connecticut in the atrium of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, located on the Post Road in Old Greenwich.

“Mr. Peterson will be driving to the Hyatt directly from his office,” Peggy said.

“But if you catch the six-oh-four Metro-North train from Grand Central, you’ll be in Old Greenwich by six-forty-eight. And then it’s just a ten-minute cab ride to the restaurant. So the two of you should meet right on time.”

That is exactly what should have happened, had the 6:04 from Grand Central not ground to a halt outside of Port Chester for nearly a half hour, thanks to a major signal failure. Using my cell phone I called the restaurant and said I would be late. Already dreading this face-to-face with Peterson, I now felt my apprehension level skyrocket.

At Old Greenwich station I called a cab. It took ten minutes to arrive-which meant that I didn’t reach the Hyatt Regency until nearly 7:45 P.M. The atrium had a themed decor: a suburban Garden of Eden, with a stream, gravel paths, and semitropical trees.

Peterson was seated at a corner table. He looked terrible. His skin was pasty, there were deep black circles of fatigue under his eyes, his fingernails were ravaged. He had the aura of someone who hadn’t slept for days and was in a state of ongoing trepidation. And he was drinking. Heavily. As I sat down at the table, a waitress was placing a fresh Scotch on the rocks in front of him. He already reeked of Johnnie Walker.

“Thanks for being prompt,” he said.

“Didn’t they give you my message? The train…”

“Yeah, I got it. Drink? I’m about three ahead of you.”

“A Perrier, please,” I said to the waitress.

“What are you, a Mormon?”

“I’m just not drinking, Ted.”

“Well, that makes one of us,” he said, taking a deep swig of his Scotch.

“Believe me,” I said, “I don’t want to be here, either.”

“That was some fucking show you put on at the Parker Meri-then last night. I really want to thank you for that.”

“You deserved nothing less.”

“You’re really out to get me, aren’t you?”

“Oh, please. Who made the phone calls to that dweeb at Home Computer Monthly, threatening to pull the GBS account if they didn’t fire Ivan? Who pulled the same shit with Phil Goodwin to keep me out of a job?”

“And who forced my hand on that advertising spread for CompuWorld?”

“You reneged on the deal, remember?”

“And you tried to play hardball with me… which kind of got my back up.”

“Oh, I get it. You’re one of those business is war jerks. If somebody gets your back up, that entitles you to destroy their career….”

“I operate according to a very basic principle: You fuck me, I fuck you. I think it’s called the ‘law of the jungle.”

” “No-it’s the law of immoral assholes like you….”

The drinks arrived, forcing me to bite off that sentence in midstream. As the waitress placed the fresh Scotch in front of Ted, he drained his previous glass.

“Are you going to be ordering dinner?” she asked.

“I’m not hungry,” Ted said.

“Me, neither,” I added.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Ted hissed, “Want to know a little secret? I really don’t give two shits what you think about me. And I really wouldn’t start playing the moral card with me. Especially since I know what you’re up to.”

“I’m up to nothing.”

“Of course you’d say that. But I know …”

“What?”

“.. . the game you’re playing.”

“What goddamn game?”

“Don’t go all naive on me, pal. You don’t think I catch the drift, the subtext of this meeting? Believe me, you can tell your boss, Jerry, I get the point. Loud and clear.”

I stared at him, mystified.

“You’ve lost me here.”

“Have I now?” he said, emitting an acrimonious little laugh.

“Man, you’re better than I thought at the bullshit-spinning game. Then again, I’d expect no less from a true disciple of Jack Ballantine’s.”

I felt a jolt of fear. Ted saw it and smiled. He also snapped his fingers at the waitress and pointed to his now empty glass.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Did Jerry program you to say that?”

“Nobody programs me …”

“Sorry, sorry. I forgot you’re not a Moonie-just a convert to the Church of the Great Motivator.”

“I don’t work for Jack Ballantine.”

“Yes, you do. Because I work for Jack Ballantine, too.”

“Now I’m really lost,” I said.

“Sure you are. You ‘know nothing.” Nothing at all.”

“Really I don’t…”

“Then what are you doing here tonight?”

“Jerry wanted me to see you …”

“There you go.”

“.. . in the hope that we could, maybe, sort things out.”

“Well, you can tell him that I do not automatically bend over when threatened.”

“I am not threatening you.”

“This whole fucking thing is a threat,” he said loudly. Then, noticing that he had attracted the stares of a few nearby diners, he leaned forward and whispered, “Tell Jerry my position hasn’t changed. Two hundred grand up front, an eight percent taste on all future deals. Otherwise…”

His Scotch arrived. He drained it in one gulp.

“Otherwise what?” I asked.

“Otherwise … well, put it this way: Knowledge is power.”