The Dinosaur Club Page 9

  As they sat across from each other now, Fallon realized what a curious group they were—a mix of sales and sales management—all approximately the same age, all hovering around or just past fifty; each with a similar lifestyle, similar problems: kids in school, large mortgages, too many bills to pay, all the time-honored trappings of middle-class success. And, now, each one terrified it was going to end; all of them looking to him for salvation.

  “So what’s the picture as you see it, Jack?” It was Ben Constantini, a short, squarely built man, who had joined the company after putting in twenty years in the army. Constantini, Fallon knew, had once flown helicopters, had risen to the rank of chief warrant officer, then had spent his last five years at the Pentagon working in military procurement until Waters Cable had lured him away. At fifty-five, he was the oldest of the group but had the least seniority. With sixteen years in, he was four years away from a full company pension, and Fallon knew he was terrified.

  Fallon momentarily lowered his eyes. “I’m not going to dance around it,” he began. “I think they want us all gone—all of you, and me—everyone in our age group, no matter how well or how poorly we’ve performed recently.” Fallon allowed the shock of his words to settle in. He realized he had to soften them to some degree; make them less personal. “But it’s not just us. I’m sure they’ll hit other departments, not only sales.” He raised his hands, let them drop back to the table. “What I don’t know is who’ll be first, or if they’ll hit everyone at once.”

  “Wait a minute. Wait a minute.” It was Jim Malloy, who headed up the Washington sales group for which Constantini worked. He was a tall, rawboned Irishman, with a shock of red hair, and a florid face that always made him seem on the verge of a stroke. Six years ago Fallon had recognized him as a chronic alcoholic and, despite the man’s abilities, had given him a choice: clean up your act, or hit the bricks. Malloy had heeded the warning and had joined Alcoholics Anonymous. To Fallon’s knowledge he hadn’t touched a drink since.

  “Look, I know that everybody’s into this downsizing crap,” Malloy continued. “But what you’re talking about would be suicidal for this company. Especially now. Without experienced people sales would take a nosedive. Everything would. They have to know that.”

  Malloy’s color had deepened, the clusters of burst capillaries that filled his cheeks turning a rosy red. Fallon eyed the glass of sparkling water that sat before the man and wondered if Carter Bennett’s little plan would soon drive him back to bourbon instead.

  “I don’t think that matters, Jim. We’re not talking about productivity. It’s not a question of whether our sales are up or down.”

  Fallon was greeted with stony silence, which was what he wanted. It was time for sobering reality.

  “Then what the hell are we talking about?” Malloy finally asked.

  Fallon offered a wry smile; wondered if he really knew the answer. “I can only tell you what I think, Jim. Look, the people who are making this decision know sales will drop even further if they bounce their most experienced people. And they know it will take time to build it back up again. But it will go back up. And in the meantime, they’ll have cut some large salaries. In the long term they’ll be way ahead. And that’s what matters to them. It’s pure bottom line, simple profitability that we’re talking about.”

  “You almost sound as if you agree with them.” It was Annie Schwartz this time, and she was eyeing Fallon with a mix of confusion and suspicion. Annie covered New England for Wally Green, part of what Wally called his Jewish army. Born with an acid tongue, Annie fought a constant but successful battle with her weight. She was an attractive midde-aged woman, with soft features and bright red hair, and there was a definite aura of sex appeal about her, which she used unabashedly when wining and dining corporate clients.

  “Look, I just came back from a vacation. So now you’re telling me I spent a fortune this past week on body slimmers, hair dye, body waxing, and every cosmetic treatment known to man, and these schmucks are gonna dump me because I’m too old?”

  “You should invest in Valium, instead,” Wally suggested.

  Annie glared at him. Then she spread her arms so everyone could take in the new her. “They fire these gorgeous, middle-aged buns, I’ll need something a lot stronger than Valium,” she snapped.

  Fallon smiled across the table. He knew the life Annie faced at home. She had a husband who had suffered a serious coronary and was no longer able to work. She had two daughters in their mid-twenties, still living in the family nest. She had once told Fallon that going on the road was the only thing that maintained her sanity. “Understanding their argument, and agreeing with it, are two different things, Annie. And, for us, it’s also moot.” He paused a beat; forced the smile again. “Me? I think Carter Bennett’s downsizing plan stinks. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s pushing it.” He paused again for effect. “Or that Charlie Waters seems to have bought into it.” Fallon drummed his fingers on the table. “How they’re going to do it is the question. Whether we can fight them off, or just make them pay for the privilege of canning us, is another.”

  “So you think it’s a done deal?”

  Fallon turned to Joe Hartman, another of Wally’s men. Did he think that? He had denied even the idea of it for so long now. Rumors of Bennett’s plan had begun circulating at his level of management almost a year ago, and Fallon had dismissed them as the plottings of a young Turk who had been named chief financial officer and was flexing his newly acquired muscle. Then, only two months ago, Charlie Waters had dropped the other shoe. It had happened at the company’s annual golf outing, or rather at the dinner that had followed it. They had all gathered in the country club dining room and Waters had given his little speech. He had talked about the company’s past, and the new directions it must now take if it was to continue to prosper and grow, and he had taken time to praise the old hands, as he had called them, for bringing the company so far. Then the tone had changed, as Waters singled out the new “young fighter pilots on our team,” as he pointedly proclaimed them the future of the company to whom the baton would soon be passed. The message had been clear and cutting, and Fallon could still remember the look on Carter Bennett’s face. He had sat there at Waters’s right hand, looking like a puffed-up bantam rooster that had just killed off a rival and now had the chicken coop all to itself.

  “Yeah, I think it’s a fait accompli,” Fallon said. He stared at Joe Hartman, raised his hands, then let them fall back to the table. “There’s no sense kidding ourselves, Joe. It’s probably six months off, but it’s going to happen.” He watched Hartman’s eyes flicker with fear, then harden. He was, perhaps, in the worst predicament of them all. Having already raised three daughters, he had divorced, remarried, and now had two young sons who had just started school, together with an older stepson who in a few short years would have his eyes on college. He was also faced with the first major financial insecurity of his adult life, and Fallon could see him beginning to wilt with the pressure. Now his square face sagged just a bit, and his blocky body seemed somewhat smaller in his pin-striped suit. Hartman had switched companies ten years ago when he had switched wives, and like Constantini, he was short on time and would lose the bulk of the pension money he had counted on if pushed out early. What he wasn’t short of—like all the others—was the debts and obligations accumulated by men who had expected their livelihoods to continue, and who had based their retirements and their savings on the assumption that their jobs would remain secure until they hit their sixties.

  “It’s all Bennett’s doing. The little Princeton prick is trying to make his bones by tossing us on the goddamned trash heap. I’d like to walk into his office and blow his goddamned brains out.”

  The anger seemed to erupt, to come out of nowhere. The vehemence, the pure, undiluted hatred made Fallon’s head snap around. George Valasquez glared back at him, still seething with the words he had just spoken. “And why haven’t you gone to Waters personally, J
ack?” he snapped. “You’re one of the few people he’d listen to. Christ, you’ve been with him right from the start.”

  Wally Green leaned forward and jabbed a finger at Valasquez. “Cool it, George,” he ordered. “Jack’s in the same boat as the rest of us. We start fighting among ourselves, we’re not going to accomplish one damned thing.”

  Fallon raised his hands, asking both men for quiet. He thought, Maybe George was right. Maybe he should see Charlie. Lay it out for him. If nothing else, force him to acknowledge what he was doing to these people—people who had worked their tails off for a lot of years. He stared at George Valasquez. He was a short, thin, normally docile man, with prematurely white hair, who at fifty-two looked ten years older. Fallon studied his slender, hawk-nosed face. The usually soft brown eyes were blazing, and he suddenly had no doubt that George could do exactly what he had said. He wondered what else was going on in George’s life. He had seen that look years ago in Vietnam, men who had been terrified to the point of irrationality, and who wanted to strike out wildly at the source of their fear.

  “I’ll go and see him, George. Actually, it’s a good idea. And who knows?” He watched a glimmer of hope come to the man’s eyes, and decided not to say anything that would drive it away. How could he explain that his old friend Charlie had all but ignored him for the better part of a decade? No, he’d see the man; talk to him, even if he had to grab him in the lobby. He owed these people that much effort.

  Fallon leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “But let’s also look at some contingencies,” he said. Fallon noticed that George Valasquez wasn’t listening. He was still hanging on to the proffered hope, allowing it to ease his personal terrors.

  “Exactly what contingencies are you talking about?” Jim Malloy’s red face stared across the table like a beacon.

  “Bennett’s contingencies,” Fallon said. He watched confusion spread across their faces; satisfied himself they were all hooked, then continued, “I’m talking about the chances we might give him; make it easier for him to pull this off.”

  Wally Green turned to him. His face was fixed in a wide, confused grin. “Jack, what the hell are you talking about? You’re starting to sound like my ex-wife’s lawyer.”

  Annie grinned at him. “Pay the alimony, Wally. Janice put up with you for God knows how many years. She deserves every penny.”

  Wally threw her a mock glare and jabbed his thumb into his chest. “Hey, don’t forget I’m your boss.”

  “This week,” Annie said. “If you’re still here next week, I’ll bow down.”

  Fallon grinned at the banter, the sense of camaraderie that just might hold them together. “Look, I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “Or rather, trying to think about it the way I think Bennett would.” He picked up a chopstick and began lightly tapping it against the table. “First, Bennett knows he’s targeting one specific group—a specific age bracket—and he’s doing it for one reason, and only one reason: to cut out some heavy salaries and benefit packages that he considers burdensome.” Fallon waved the chopstick; he had everyone’s attention. “But he knows this isn’t completely kosher; he knows it could end up as a very messy fight, even as a class-action lawsuit that could cost the company some big bucks.”

  “Not to mention that it will make them look like a bunch of scumbags when it hits the newspapers.” Wally added the observation with a self-satisfied smirk.

  Fallon laughed at the joy it seemed to give him. He gestured at Wally with the chopstick. “You’re right, Wally. But I don’t think they care about that. I don’t think the board of directors, who’ll eventually have to okay Bennett’s plan, will give a rat’s ass about the public. They’ll look at it and see that it’s the same game a lot of other companies have played. Hell, AT and ? laid off forty thousand, and the public didn’t rush off to sign up with Sprint. And our guys will expect the public to look at this the same way and be damned happy it isn’t happening where they work.” He paused. “And you know what? They’ll probably be right.”

  He watched Wally slowly deflate and immediately wished he had allowed him to enjoy his media fantasy for a while. “But I do think they’d like to avoid both a fight or a lawsuit,” he added. “Not just because of the money. I think Bennett’s factored that in; made it part of the overall equation and convinced everyone it still makes financial sense.” Fallon looked at each of them. “But why risk it if you don’t have to?” he continued. “Or, at least, why not limit the number of people involved?”

  “I still don’t understand, Jack.” It was Ben Constantini this time. He was leaning across the table, his whole body seeming to ask the question.

  “What I mean, Ben, is that if I were Bennett, the first thing I’d try to do is force as many of us out as possible. Just make life so miserable that some of us—maybe even a lot of us—would just pack up and leave.” He held up his hands, holding off any comments. “Now this can do a lot of things for Bennett. First, if they go to court and lose, it can cut down the cost of any judgment. Just by cutting down the number of people. It might even avoid a lawsuit altogether if enough people pack up and quit.” Fallon waited again, allowing his initial points to sink in. “And it can also save them money in other ways.”

  “How?” George Valasquez asked. He was back with them now, and the anger had returned to his eyes.

  Fallon turned to him. “When companies do this type of thing, George, they like to mask it as voluntary retirements, right?” He smiled at the phrase, watched George nod in agreement. “In corporate terms, that means you put a financial gun to someone’s head, then show them a fistful of money and ask them which they’d rather have. It’s called a buyout. Sort of a corporate term for extortion.” He smiled again; waited again. “It’s usually a nice-sized fistful that’s based on the number of years of individual service. But you have to offer it only to the people you haven’t driven off first. Anybody who’s left voluntarily, well, they’re just screwed.”

  “And you think Bennett plans to screw as many of us as possible,” Wally said.

  Fallon turned to him; raised his eyebrows. “You know Carter, Wally. And you’ve seen him operate. What do you think he’ll do?”

  Wally shook his head, the heavy jowls waving under his chin. Then he spread his arms, clearing an imaginary spot on the table. “I’d like to lay the bastard out right here. Do a goddamned sex change on him.”

  “You’d have to find his little wee-wee first,” Annie snapped.

  “You get him and I’ll hold him down,” Fallon said. “Then the two of you can look for it.” He laughed as Annie wrinkled her nose in disgust. He shook his head, then waved his hand, as if driving off their combined insanity. “But the point is, we don’t let that happen. No matter who they single out, no matter what they pull, we recognize it for what it is, and we sit tight.” He looked at each of them again. “Can we agree on that?” He waited; watched everyone nod; could almost hear the gulps in each of their throats.

  Fallon leaned into the table, as if trying to weld them together. “There’re some other things we can do, too. First, we can really start watching our backs. You all know what a snakepit an office can be, especially when someone is considered vulnerable. People start taking credit for other people’s work, or they come in on Saturdays so they can read someone’s mail, or maybe steal a crucial memo or two. They even start rumors to denigrate someone’s job performance. It’s a whole bag of tricks, and at some point we’ve all seen them used. But when people in upper management start doing it, it can be done a lot more effectively, and with a lot more power.

  “So how do you stop it?” It was Joe Hartman, looking even more frightened now.

  “You don’t stop it,” Fallon said. “You expect it to happen, you protect yourself against it, and you use it.”

  “How?” Jim Malloy asked.

  “We’ve got to turn it back on them. First, we’ve got to make them think there’s more organized resistance to their plan than there is.
And that it’s broad-based. We’ve got to make them believe the price is going to be very high if they try to pull this off. Maybe even too high.

  “Look, we can start our own little false-rumor department. We can even start sending out phony memos, maybe even a one-or two-page newsletter. We can start leaving things around that we know Carter and his minions will pick up on. But not just in our own offices. In other people’s offices, too. Especially people Carter would expect to be on his side. In the military they call this kind of thing psyops.”

  Fallon placed on the table a small bag he had brought with him. Early that morning he had gone into his basement and rummaged through some old boxes of childhood toys. Back when his son, Mike, had been four or five, he had become dinosaur crazy, and had begun collecting plastic models. For almost a year he and his son had spent countless hours playing with them; even bringing books home from the library so they could identify the various types.

  Fallon dumped the plastic toys out. “Pick one,” he said. “Keep them on your desks for Carter’s spies to find. Hell, put some on other people’s desks.”

  Joe Hartman snorted. “Maybe I’ll mail one to Charlie Waters. One with a noose around its neck.”

  Ben Constantini nodded. “Couldn’t hurt.”

  “Hell, forget the dinosaur. Put the noose around Charlie’s neck,” Jim Malloy added.

  “And Bennett’s,” George Valasquez chimed in.