“You-you look great,” I said.
“It’s Dallas,” she shrugged.
“So you’ve got the equivalent of Gordy’s job,” I said.
“I wish that were all there was to it. Most of my job these days is taken up with planning for the integration.”
“Meaning what’s going to happen to your sales force?”
She smiled again. “More like what’s going to happen to your sales force.”
“You look like the cat that got the cream, Joan.” Old Cal Taylor’s line.
“Strictly two percent. You know me.”
“I thought you hated Dallas.”
“Sheila grew up in Austin, you know. So it’s not so bad. They’ve invented something called air-conditioning.”
“They have great steak houses in Dallas.”
“I’m still a vegan.” Her smile faded. “I heard about Phil Rifkin. That was a shock.”
I nodded.
“He was such a nice guy. Brilliant. A little strange, sure, but he never struck me as suicidal.”
“I never thought so either.”
“Very peculiar. And very sad.”
I nodded.
“I saw the press release Dick Hardy put out. I guess Gordy landed a major deal at the Harry Belkin auto dealerships.”
I nodded again. “That was news to me, too,” I said. “I thought I’d done it, but hey, what do I know?”
She drew closer and walked with me out of the booth. “Jason, can I give you some unsolicited advice?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve always liked you. You know that.”
I nodded.
“Get out now, while you can. Before you and all the rest of you are out on the street. It’s much easier to look for a job when you already have one.”
“It’s not a sure thing, Joan,” I said weakly.
“I’m telling you as a friend, Jason. Call me a rat, but I know a sinking ship when I see one.”
I didn’t reply, just looked at her for a few seconds.
“We’ll stay in touch,” she said.
35
When the show was closing for the day, I stopped back in to check in on my guys and see who they’d connected with. Festino had the Purell out and was furiously trying to kill the microbes he’d picked up from the disease-ridden hands of hundreds of customers. Kurt was at work securing the equipment for the night.
“Coming to the big dinner?” I asked Kurt, as he secured the equipment.
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it,” he said.
As I walked back to my room to shower and change into a suit, I saw Trevor Allard standing by the elevator banks. “How’s it going, Trevor?” I said.
He turned to me. “Interesting,” he said. “It’s always nice to run into old friends.”
“Who’d you see?”
The elevator binged, and we got on, the only ones.
“A buddy of mine from Panasonic,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Mm-hmm.” The elevator doors closed.
“He told me you got the Harry Belkin contract because a whole shipment of Panasonic plasmas were DOA.”
I nodded. I was feeling the usual anxiety, being inside the steel coffin, but now I felt a dread of a different sort. “It’s weird,” I said.
“Very weird. Bad for Panasonic. But good for you.”
“And Entronics.”
“Sure enough. Your deal, of course. A huge win for you. Good bit of luck, huh?”
I shrugged. “Hey,” I said, “you make your own luck.” Or someone makes it for you.
“Really got me thinking,” Trevor said carefully. We were both watching the elevator buttons. No elevator TV here, unfortunately. What would the word of the day be? Imputation? Insinuation? “Took me down memory lane. Reminded me of Fidelity. I had a bum monitor, too, remember?”
“We’ve been through that, Trevor.”
“Yep. I lost Fidelity over it. Then there was that car trouble I had a few months ago-I lost Pavilion, remember? Then there was Brett Gleason’s Blue Screen of Death.”
“You’re still harping on this nonsense?”
“Bad things happen to your adversaries, don’t they? There seems to be a real pattern here.”
The elevator binged again, and we’d arrived at our floor.
“Right,” I said. “And even paranoids have enemies.”
“I’m not dropping this, Jason,” he said as he turned right and I turned left to go to our rooms. “Brett and I are going to dig deep. I know you’re behind all this stuff, and I’m going to find out the truth. I promise you.”
36
I called Kate, took a shower, and changed into a suit and tie for dinner. Entronics had taken over one of the Westin ballrooms. Gordy had, as usual, kept the theme of the dinner a secret.
His TechComm dinners were always blowout extravaganzas. The year before, the theme had been The Apprentice, and he got to be Donald Trump, of course. The year before that was Survivor. Everyone got bandanas and was forced to eat a bowl of “dirt,” made of crumbled Oreos and gummy worms. He always gave an over-the-top, borderline-insane talk, a cross between that self-help guru Tony Robbins and Mr. Pink from Reservoir Dogs.
We were all wondering what it would be this year.
When I walked in I saw that the whole place had been decorated, at what had to be enormous expense, to look like a boxing arena. Projected on the walls-using Entronics projectors, no doubt-were all sorts of vintage fight posters, the kind that usually came in mustard yellow with big red-and-white crudely printed letters and monochrome photos of the fighters. There were posters for JERSEY JOE WALCOTT VS. ROCKY MARCIANO and CASSIUS CLAY VS. DONNIE FLEEMAN and SUGAR RAY FORSYTHE VS. HENRY ARMSTRONG.
In the middle of the room was a boxing ring. I’m serious. Gordy had actually had a boxing ring brought in-he must have rented it somewhere in Miami-steel frame and corner posts, covered ropes, canvas floor, wooden stepladder to climb in, even the stools in opposite corners. There was a black steel ring gong mounted on a freestanding wooden post nearby. It sat there in the middle of the banquet hall, surrounded by dining tables.
It looked incredibly stupid.
Kurt saw me enter and came right up to me. “This must have cost a couple of bucks, huh?”
“What’s going on?”
“You’ll see. Gordy asked my advice. I should be flattered.”
“Advice on what.”
“You’ll see.”
“Where’s Gordy?”
“Probably backstage having a last hit of courage. He asked me to go get his Scotch bottle.”
I found my assigned seat, at a table close to the boxing ring. Each of the Band of Brothers was seated, one or two to a table, with important customers.
I just had time to introduce myself to a guy from SignNetwork before the lights went down and a pair of spotlights swung around and stopped at the blue velvet stage curtains at the front of the room. A loud trumpet fanfare blared from loudspeakers: the theme from the movie Rocky.
The curtains parted and two burly guys burst through carrying a throne. On it sat Gordy, wearing a shiny red boxing robe with gold trim and hood, and shiny red boxing gloves. He was wearing black high-top Converse sneakers. The throne was labeled “CHAMP.” In front of them scurried a young woman, flinging rose petals from a basket. Gordy was beaming and punching the air.
The burly guys carried Gordy down a path cleared between the dining tables, while the woman threw rose petals just ahead of them, and “Gonna Fly Now” blared from the speakers.
There was tittering, and some outright laughter, from the tables. People didn’t know what to make of it all.
The guys set the throne down next to the boxing ring, and Gordy rose to his feet, gloves way up in the air, as the music faded.
“Yo, Adrian!” he shouted. The rose-petal woman now busied herself clipping a wireless lapel mike to his robe.
There was laughter. People were starting to roll with it. I still couldn’t believe Gordy was doing this, but he was known to do strange routines at our annual kickoffs.