"We _will_ be able to pull this off."
"That's the spirit."
He'd been provided with a list of all of the other Stores in the United States, as well as a business number for each, but there were no managers' names listed, and he sure didn't want to talk to them while they were at work.
He ended up calling each Store, asking the manager's name, then dialing information for each area and obtaining the managers' home phones. Two were unlisted, and he let those slide. He called the rest individually, at night or in the early morning, and though he was awkward and hesitant at first, not sure how to bring up what he needed to say, it became easier as he went along, and he discovered that most of the managers were like him, forced into their positions, unwilling participants, and most of them secretly hated Newman King.
A few of those he dialed seemed suspicious as he felt them out over the phone, and for those he invented some business-related reason why he'd called.
They might be willing to go along with the scheme, but they might also be King loyalists, and he couldn't take a chance of trusting them if he wasn't a hundred percent positive.
He was lucky that the first manager he called, Mitch Grey, the man to whom he'd spoken most often in the training classes, seemed to hate Newman King almost as much as he himself did. Mitch was now in Ohio, and he caught on to the idea right away. He even offered to help contact other managers.
"I'm going to put together a package," Bill explained. "Send it through the mail to everyone's house. I'll describe what happened here. I'd like to have some sort of simultaneous switchover, a prearranged time when all the managers take over their Stores at once and start rolling back what King's done. I've been doing things gradually here, sequentially, but if we all did that, it might give him time to prepare, time to come up with something, a way to fight us. I'd like to catch him completely by surprise. And I think we really might be able to hurt him if we drain his power all at once."
Mitch was silent for a moment. "What do you think he is?"
"I don't know," Bill admitted.
"Why do you think he's doing this?"
"I don't know."
"You really think we can fight something like that?"
"We can try."
"But do you think we'll win?"
"Yes," Bill said. "I do."
Mass firings, he decided that night, were the best way to signal the start of the war. Get rid of all King loyalists at every Store in one fell swoop, then immediately start cutting back on The Store's power. He wrote out a tentative schedule, an outline, and saved it.
The next morning, he called more managers.
Within two weeks, it was all set.
Videotapes, ostensibly from Sam, had been arriving by Federal Express each day, but he and Ginny destroyed them all without watching them. King called his office daily, left voice mail and E-mail messages, sent unordered merchandise that had to be shipped back, contacted employees at home, ordering them to carry out his will, offering them promotions, did everything he legitimately could to destabilize Bill's power, but Bill had chosen wisely in his Wrings and firings and the loyalty held fast. The Store's influence was almost completely gone outside the borders of its property, and slowly but surely Juniper was sloughing off the yoke of Store oppression.
Not all of the managers were on board, but most were. He and Mitch had together contacted over two hundred managers, and only ten had been so obviously despotic that they hadn't even been approached. Another fifteen seemed borderline, and so, just to be on the safe side, they hadn't mentioned anything to them. But the other 175 were solidly in their corner, willing to do what it took to topple King, willing to endure humiliation and embarrassment, the ravaging of their personal lives, in the service of the greater good.
Bill was proud of them all.
The plan was for the participating Store managers to call a special meeting of all their employees Sunday morning at five o'clock Pacific time, six o'clock Mountain time, seven o'clock Central time, and eight o'clock Eastern time, so that all of the meetings would correspond and occur exactly at the same moment, no matter what time zone the individual Stores were in. Sunday was chosen because it was the day that The Store opened latest.
Besides, Sunday was supposed to be the Lord's day.
And the God connection couldn't hurt.
King's people would be fired at the meetings, directors reassigned, security departments dismantled. Inventory should have been taken at each of the Stores by that time, and the managers would sign chargeback forms and order invoices in order to instantly change, at least on paper, the contents of The Stores' stock.
It was a bold plan, and even if the results didn't turn out exactly the way they intended, it was still a hell of an organizational achievement.
And it was bound to hurt King.
The only question was, how much?
Sunday morning, Bill and Ginny and Shannon awoke early. Ginny made breakfast, Shannon watched TV, Bill read the newspaper, and all three of them tried to pretend that this was an ordinary day, that nothing momentous was going on, but they were all anxious and nervous, quieter than usual, and the countdown to the hour seemed to take forever.
The time came.
Went.
In the kitchen, Ginny washed the dishes; on the television, _Heathcliff_ sequed into _Bugs Bunny_. There was no big change in the fabric of existence, no earthquake or lightning, no killer wind or sonic boom. There was no way to tell if everything had occurred as planned -- or if anything had happened -- and Bill paced nervously around the living room, out of the house, into the garage, down the drive, back to the house, clenching and unclenching his fists, waiting a full forty-five minutes before deciding to call Mitch.
The phone rang just as he was about to pick up the receiver and dial.
He grabbed it excitedly. "Hello?" he said.
"It's done." Mitch. "Everything went according to plan here, and I called a couple other managers and they said the same."
"Everyone's supposed to check in."
"They will."
"Any difference? Any change?"
Mitch was silent for a moment. "I don't know. I didn't _feel_ anything, if that's what you mean. I don't . . . I don't know."
"I guess we'll have to wait."
"You could try calling Dallas, ask to speak to Newman King."
Bill chuckled. "I think I'll wait."
"I'll call back if anything happens."
Over the next hour and a half, they all checked in. Bill didn't know what was going on in Dallas, but in small towns all over the United States, the devolution of The Store's power had begun. He was the impetus behind it, and he felt a surge of pride as the last manager, from a little town in Vermont, checked in.
"What do we do now?" Shannon asked.
"Go on with our lives. And wait."
"For what?"
"Newman King."
"What do you think he's going to do?" Ginny asked.
He shrugged. "We'll have to wait and see."
He called a meeting himself that night, closing The Store early, in order to tell his employees what had happened. He'd shared the news with a few of them throughout the day -- the ones he talked to, the ones with whom he had come into contact -- but he wanted to let them all know that the managers had rebelled, that Stores all over the country had seceded from the corporation. It was possible there were still some King supporters among his employees, but he had no problem with them knowing what went down. The worst they could do was inform on him, tell King. And he had the feeling King already knew everything.
Maybe King was dead, he thought.
He remembered Lamb and Walker and Keyes, falling to the floor.
No. It was too much to hope for.
The CEO would not go so easily.
If King was not dead, he was undoubtedly pissed, and Bill was not at all sure that his power came solely from the Stores he controlled. He thought of that arm with too many bones, those deep wild eyes in the white plastic face, and he shivered.