The Dinosaur Club Page 19

  “What! Who the hell says that?” Wally demanded. “I’m not sharing my goddamned secretary, or assistant, or whatever, with you or anybody else.” He turned to Fallon, as did Malloy. “What the hell is this, Jack?”

  Fallon looked from one to the other. “Damned if I know.” The fact suddenly registered and anger took hold. “And I damned well should,” he snapped. He moved past Malloy, snatched up the phone, and telephoned his own assistant, then listened—incredulous—as she explained. “Switch me over to that smarmy little S.O.B.,” he said.

  When Willis Chambers’s assistant answered, Fallon growled into the phone. “This is Jack Fallon. Tell Willis I need to speak to him. Now!”

  Fallon glowered at the wall, shifted his weight several times, and waited. Two minutes passed before Chambers picked up his extension with a bright “Good afternoon, Jack.” Fallon was certain he could hear a sneer behind the words.

  He didn’t wait, he simply launched. “What the hell is this crap about Jim Malloy’s assistant, Willis? I’m told it was your directive.”

  “Costs, Jack,” Chambers answered. “I’ve been told to thin support staff wherever possible.”

  “By whom?” Fallon snapped.

  “The directive came straight from Carter Bennett,” Chambers said smugly.

  “Well, I’m countermanding it. I want Malloy’s assistant back at her desk before lunch. And don’t you ever usurp your way into my division like that again.”

  There were several long seconds of dead air. “I wish I could oblige, Jack. But there’s also a second directive. This one from Mr. Waters himself.” He paused, allowing the second deity to register.

  “And what does that say?” Fallon snapped.

  “Well, it seems Carter has been named by Mr. Waters to study the need for a personnel surplus reduction. In light of that, all department heads have been ordered to report directly to him. I would interpret that to mean that only Carter can countermand orders for the present. I’m sorry, Jack. I’d like to help, but my hands appear to be tied.”

  Fallon ground his teeth, then spoke through them. “Have your assistant switch me over to Carter’s office.”

  Chambers let out a breath. “I’m afraid she’s tied up on the other line. Couldn’t you just call him directly?”

  “I’m not in my goddamn office, Willis. I’m at the Plattsburgh plant. Please ask her to get off the other line and transfer me. Or do it yourself. It’s not that complicated.”

  Chambers paused. “What are you doing in Plattsburgh, Jack?” he finally asked.

  “Never mind what the hell I’m doing here. Just transfer the damn call.”

  Another silence. “Certainly, Jack.” Chambers let the seconds play. “It may take a few minutes,” he added, then punched the hold button.

  Minutes passed again. Fallon had no doubt Chambers was trying to phone Bennett and warn him. When the woman in Bennett’s office finally answered, Fallon found himself placed on hold yet again.

  Time dragged once more—a full five minutes before Bennett came on. He ignored all amenities. “What is it, Fallon?” he demanded. It was the schoolmaster challenging the recalcitrant child. Fallon bristled, but held his temper.

  “I’m calling because Willis Chambers eliminated Jim Malloy’s assistant. Apparently, in his wisdom, he expects him to share one with Wally Green. He did this without consulting, or even advising, me.”

  “And you consider that a problem?” Bennett asked.

  “You bet your ass I do. First, Jim is in charge of all government sales. He’s running eight sales execs, and the whole group is burdened with government regs and specs. Wally’s running seven men, who deal with phone companies and a shitload of private firms. Now Willis expects both of them to handle their staffs and everything needed to support them with one person. It just won’t work, Carter. And what it saves in one salary will be lost two or three times over in productivity.” Fallon listened to dead air, then continued, “It also pisses me off that things are being changed in my division without the courtesy of speaking to me.”

  “I’m sorry you’re offended,” Bennett said. “But let’s settle it quickly. I stand by Willis’s decision. We’re cutting costs, and your people will have to live with it along with everyone else.”

  Whatever patience Fallon still had evaporated. “That’s bullshit, Carter. Willis doesn’t know a thing about our operation, or our needs, and he’s making decisions without even trying to find out.”

  “Willis is following my directives. So let’s be clear about what and whom you’re questioning.”

  “Oh, I see,” Fallon snapped. “And that alone is supposed to eliminate the bullshit quotient?”

  “My orders come directly from Charlie Waters,” Bennett snapped back.

  “That still doesn’t change the fact it’s a bad decision, and one I should have been consulted about before Willis started fucking around with my division and my people.”

  “The decision stands, Fallon. If you have a problem with that I suggest you consult Waters himself.”

  “You can bet your bippie on that one, Carter.”

  “Good luck, Fallon.” Bennett paused, and his malicious grin could be felt across the line. “By the way, what are you doing in Plattsburgh?”

  Fallon did another slow burn. “I’m surprised Willis didn’t have that information for you. He seems to know everything else about my division.”

  “I’d like an answer to my question.”

  “I’m sure you would,” Fallon said. “I suggest you check with Willis. He seems to be the resident authority on everything you need to know.”

  Fallon replaced the phone and glared at it, as though ready to smash it with something heavy. “That goddamned snake,” he hissed. He turned back to the others.

  Malloy stared at him. “So Bennett’s backing Chambers?”

  “I think Chambers is just following orders. Bennett’s orders. It seems everyone reports to Carter now. Myself included. It’s all part of a study he’s doing on the possible need for a personnel surplus reduction.” He ground his teeth. “I should have seen it coming. Annie picked up something about it when she had her ear pressed to the heating duct.”

  Malloy interrupted him, his face ashen. “Wait a minute, Jack. What the hell is this personnel surplus reduction crap?”

  “Don’t get bent out of shape. You know what it is. We all knew it was coming. They’re just throwing out some hints.”

  “Getting their ducks lined up is more like it,” Wally said.

  “Well, if that’s what they’re doing, we’re the ducks,” Malloy added.

  Wally ground his teeth. “First they reduce our support staff. Next that little shit will have us sharing toilet paper. You think maybe Carter’s trying to tell us we should look for work elsewhere? Personnel surplus reduction. Where do they get these bullshit terms? Why can’t they just say, fired, axed, laid off, for chrissake?” He offered up an evil grin. “We oughta just turn Georgie Valasquez loose and let him shoot those Ivy League sonsabitches. Put large holes in both of them. Except he’d have to call it something else. Maybe, involuntary ventilations.”

  Malloy drew a deep breath, and Fallon could see the fear in his eyes. “I think Wally’s right. I think this is the first step to get us to pack up and leave, and I’ve been elected to go first,” he said.

  Fallon had little doubt it was, but forced any confirmation away. He needed cool heads, especially his own. “Look, let’s not jump to any conclusions,” he said. “We’ll straighten it out when we get back to New York.”

  Jim Malloy and Wally Green stared at him. Each looked far from convinced.

  Stuart Robaire flipped through computer printouts of earlier tests, as Fallon, Malloy, and Green peered over his shoulder. Robaire was a small, slender man in his mid-forties. He had a pinched, narrow face, set off by bottle-glass lenses perched on a large nose that hooked down toward his upper lip. A protruding Adam’s apple added to the picture of a man who spent his days hidden a
way in an electronics laboratory. The final touch was a white lab coat, replete with pocket protector stuffed with pens.

  Robaire ran a finger along a row of figures. “As you can see, each run is meeting manufacturing specs. All tolerances should fall well within acceptable limits.” The man’s voice was high and squeaky, naturally defensive. As head of the plant’s technical services department, he was repeatedly accused of failing to discover problems that affected sales.

  “Could the specs be wrong?” Fallon asked. They were still in the mini conference room, just off the laboratory. It was furnished with institutional metal furniture crammed into a small space, and Robaire took a step back as if trapped in a closet.

  “The specs were set by Mr. Waters himself,” he said. “He spent weeks down here overseeing all the engineering that went into them.”

  “Well, shit. I guess we don’t have to worry they might be wrong.”

  Robaire glared at Wally Green. “Why don’t you try your sarcasm on him?” he snapped.

  Wally pulled his own printout from his briefcase and a specimen of wire he had brought from Sprint. “These are the recent set of screwups we ran into when Sprint did some controlled tests of our wire,” he said. “And this is a product sample. We’re running into similar problems on the gyroscope tests that Jim is running with the air force. Why don’t we run some new tests to see if we can duplicate those problems. Maybe we’ll have a revelation, some little epiphany as to what’s going wrong.”

  Fallon raised a hand, stopping the sarcasm, then took Robaire by the arm and led him to a window that overlooked the rolling fields that surrounded the plant. A light rain had fallen that morning and the meadows were wet and glistening under the sunlight that had now broken through the clouds. A quarter mile distant, a trout stream snaked through the terrain, and he fixed his eyes on it as he spoke.

  “Everybody’s a bit on edge, Stuart,” he began. “We’re getting our tails kicked, and the cause always comes right back to product. We haven’t run comparative tests on end-user results. So let’s do them. What the hell can we lose?”

  Robaire twisted nervously. “You want to tell Mr. Waters his specs are crap?” he asked.

  Fallon let out a soft laugh. Back in the early days he had done just that—he and Waters had debated engineering points endlessly. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said now. It was a pleasant memory, quickly killed. That was a long time ago, and too much had changed. Waters would not react well to being told he was wrong. Especially now. Especially by Jack Fallon. “Look, I’m not half the engineer Charlie is,” he said. “And it’s been a lot of years since I worked this end. But that doesn’t mean Charlie can’t make mistakes. All I’m suggesting is that we check. And if there is something wrong, I’ll tell him. Then we’ll fix it and climb out of this mess we’re in. Okay?”

  “You’ll authorize the tests?”

  Fallon held back a smile. “They’ll be on my head, Stuart.”

  Robaire thought about it, then said, “I’ll need a memo covering it.”

  “You got it.”

  Robaire hesitated again, then spoke in a lower voice. “I don’t mean to be a shit about this, Jack. But we hear the rumors up here, too.” He pulled a folded paper from his lab-coat pocket and showed it to Fallon. It was a copy of The Daily Downsizer. Jim Hartman had obviously gotten the first edition out by E-mail. “Have you seen this?” he asked.

  Fallon fought back a grin. “I’ve seen it,” he said.

  “I’m not trying to be a hard-ass, Jack. But I’ve got a kid in college, and another ready to start next year.”

  Fallon squeezed his arm. “I understand, Stuart. I’ll take the heat if anything hits the fan.”

  Robaire drew a breath. “Shit,” he said. “I do not want to do this.” He shook his head. “But we might as well find out. Let’s go into the lab.”

  They were in shirtsleeves, huddled around a lab table, as Robaire fed the needed information into a computer. He compared the data on the screen to the computer printout Wally had provided.

  “Make sense?” Wally asked.

  Robaire nodded. Despite the air-conditioning he was sweating. “Some of the same questions were raised before the first gyroscope production run,” he said.

  “And?” Fallon asked.

  “The concerns were not well received.”

  “So what’s your best guess.”

  Robaire shook his head. “I think Sprint may have gotten the wrong product. I think they may have gotten stuff intended for the gyroscope research contract. But I’d have to run more tests to prove it.”

  “So let’s run them.”

  The telephone rang, and Robaire went to a nearby desk to answer it.

  “Yes. I’ll take the call here.”

  He was silent as the call was transferred, then again as he listened.

  “Sales requested the tests to resolve some end-user problems. We’re just setting it up now.”

  Robaire listened again, bit on his lower lip. “Do you want to speak to our salespeople?” he asked at length. “Jack Fallon is here.” Robaire stiffened slightly. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll tell them.”

  Robaire replaced the phone, let out a long breath, and turned to Fallon. “No tests,” he said.

  “Who the hell says so?” Wally snapped.

  “That was Carter Bennett,” Robaire said. “He says nothing will be run without his, or Mr. Waters’s approval. He suggests you check with him before you order anything in future.”

  “How the hell are we supposed to do this job?” Malloy spun toward Fallon. “How, Jack? Tell me.”

  Fallon glared at the top of the lab table. The muscles in his jaw danced against the bone. “I guess we’re not. That seems to be Carter’s message. Not unless he tells us to.”

  “And we’re supposed to work that way?” Wally asked.

  “Let’s get back to New York,” he said. He extended a hand to Robaire. “I’ll make it clear I authorized this,” he said. “With any luck we’ll be back.”

  He could tell by the look in Robaire’s eyes that he hoped that would not happen.

  12

  FALLON GOT BACK TO HIS OFFICE AT FOUR-THIRTY. Carol seemed nervous, perhaps even a bit fearful. He decided that the “all girl grapevine” that Annie Schwartz touted so highly had already passed on the news of his Plattsburgh debacle.

  “See if you can get me an appointment with Charlie Waters,” he said. “And stop looking like your cat just died.”

  Fallon entered his office and fell into his chair. Carol came in a few minutes later and found him leaning back, staring at the ceiling.

  “Mr. Waters is in a meeting with Carter Bennett,” she said. “His assistant said it could run late, and suggested you try again tomorrow.”

  “Do you know if she told Charlie I wanted to see him?” Fallon asked.

  Carol seemed embarrassed—for him, he thought. “Yes, I think she did,” she answered.

  Fallon stared at the top of his desk. “Try again in the morning,” he said.

  Carol avoided his eyes. “Samantha Moore called. And Warren Montague, the administrator at your mother’s nursing home called again. He said it was extremely important that he reach you.”

  Fallon closed his eyes. He had completely forgotten the earlier call from Montague. He tried to picture the man; the image of someone tall, slender and graying came to mind—a well-dressed man, despite his somewhat rakish choice of combining perennially dark suits with a flowing, British-style, military mustache—sort of a cross between a GQ funeral director and a Parisian pimp.

  “I’ll call him,” Fallon said. He added tomorrow to himself.

  Carol hesitated. He had always encouraged her to speak freely with him, and she always had.

  “What is it, Carol?” he asked.

  “I guess that’s what I need to know from you,” she said. “What’s going on in this company. We all hear the rumors, but now—with Jim’s assistant being transferred, and Mr. Waters apparently
avoiding you …” She hesitated. “And I heard what happened in Plattsburgh.”

  Fallon came to a quick decision. The woman had a right to know. “I think the company’s headed toward a big downsizing, Carol. I think this is just the beginning of it.”

  “But it’s not going to affect you, is it? I mean you’re …”

  “Don’t count on that saving me,” he said. He tried to soften the words with a smile. Then he thought of Samantha’s projection—a one-third reduction in the workforce. Carol was from his own generation. And she had two teenage sons at home.

  She seemed to sense his thoughts. “Does that mean I’ll be going, too?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I don’t know who’ll be hit and who won’t. But I think the numbers are going to be high.”

  “Those bastards,” she snapped. “How can they do that to people?”

  “It’s like a disease going around,” Fallon said. “And they’ve obviously caught it.”

  Carol let out an angry breath. “If there’s anything I can do, please tell me.”

  Fallon was touched by the generosity of her offer. He smiled at her. He considered telling her about Annie Schwartz’s ladies’ room listening post. “Just keep your ears open,” he said. “Executive assistants usually hear things before anyone else.”

  “I’ll do better than that,” she said. “I’ll talk to the other assistants and get them all to keep their ears open. If anything happens, we’ll know it first.”

  Fallon smiled again. Add a few more dinosaurs to the club, he told himself.

  When Carol retreated, Fallon picked up his phone and dialed Samantha.

  “How went the trip to Plattsburgh?” she asked without preamble.

  “I should of stood in bed,” Fallon said.

  Fallon told her about the aborted tests, and the surprise Willis Chambers had laid on Jim Malloy.

  “None of that makes any sense,” Samantha said. She seemed to hesitate, and Fallon jumped in.

  “It does if Carter Bennett is sharpening his ax.” Silence came from the other end of the phone. “Anyway,” Fallon continued, “I’ve got no choice but to go to Charlie Waters. All I have to do now is get in to see him, and that’s not proving too easy.”