By the time he finally realized he must be watching whatever show Jack Klugman had starred in after The Odd Couple, Gus was hooked. Because while this Quincy guy might not be as lovable as Oscar, what he had to say was as compelling as anything he’d ever seen on TV.
In the show Quincy started off by investigating the tragic death of a teenage boy. But the mystery quickly petered out as the crusading M.E. found the real culprit: a rare disease. Rare but not incurable. There was a drug that could have saved him. Unfortunately there were not enough people suffering from the disease to make it profitable to manufacture the cure for it.
Even as a young boy Gus had been shocked by this revelation. He knew it was wrong and he wanted to do something to change it. And while there wasn’t a whole lot he could do in his preteens, that desire never left him, and had helped move him toward his first job in the pharmaceutical industry.
Now Gus felt the spirit of Jack Klugman flowing through him as he delivered his presentation to the executive committee of Benson Pharmaceuticals. He tried to capture Quincy’s mixture of compassion and outrage, his passionate devotion to the cause with the self-deprecating awareness that he was just one little guy taking on the system. While he was preparing he’d even flirted with the idea of using Quincy’s signature attitude and informing the committee that if they didn’t do exactly what he said thousands of people would die and it would be their fault, but at the last minute he decided that kind of confrontation wouldn’t go over well with D-Bob.
Now that his presentation was almost finished, Gus glanced around the room to see how it was going over. D-Bob was smiling happily and nodding at all of Gus’ key points, but Gus had been at the company long enough to know how little that meant. D-Bob liked ideas, and he liked people who were passionate about them. If Josef Mengele’s grandson had appeared in the boardroom and laid out a case for kidnapping children off the street and conducting medical experiments on them, D-Bob would have smiled and nodded exactly the same way through the presentation. Then, when Mengele Junior was finished, he’d lay into the guy, tear apart every one of his points, and throw him out of the building. He’d probably end up calling the police. But during the presentation he’d be the soul of courtesy.
Gus would find out later what D-Bob thought of his idea. But he wasn’t going to have to wait to learn where his colleagues would come down. They hated his plan. At least that was how they all looked. Gus knew he could be misinterpreting their hostile stares, though. It was just as likely that they hated him, too.
“We are doing well,” Gus said, “but we can do even better by doing good.”
Gus stopped and dropped his hands to show he was finished and ready to field questions. But the three executive vice presidents sitting across the table from him looked like they were more interested in throwing knives than queries.
Of all the angry faces staring at him, none was angrier than that of Stephen Ecclesine, who was in charge of worldwide manufacturing. His shaved scalp had turned bright red, nearly matching the hibiscus flowers in his tie, and even the diamond stud in his nose seemed to glow more brightly than usual. Gus had generally managed to avoid Ecclesine during his tenure at Benson, mostly because until he’d joined the executive committee he was never sure if the bald hipster usually dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans was a member of the team or a local musician hoping to make a few bucks volunteering for clinical trials. But now that Gus had spent a few hours sitting in meetings with Ecclesine, he had seen that the club-crawler outfit was a disguise to hide the classic company man. Ecclesine was interested in only two things in life: the success of his division and the amount of money that success would bring him.
Ecclesine had hated Gus from the first time they met. Not out of any particular animus, but a basic theory that the existence of any other human being could present an obstacle between him and the sack of gold he was searching for. Now that Gus had finished presenting a plan that would cost manufacturing millions in retooling and re-equipping the company’s factories, Ecclesine was just about ready to declare war.
The woman next to Ecclesine presented a much more welcoming face. Like most of the women she hired to work in her sales force, Lena Hollis had spent her teen years on cheer squads, and along with the perpetual tan and the toned muscles she’d never lost that perfectly gleaming cheerleader’s smile. But Gus knew that smile too well, having been on the receiving end of it every time he tried to ask one of his high school’s cheerleaders out on a date, or even offered help with homework. It looked friendly, but the message it sent was You are so far beneath me that it’s not worth my effort to be rude. The fact that she was flashing it at him now was telling him that she considered his plan so pathetic it wasn’t even worth arguing over.
That wasn’t the case with Ed Vollman, but then it never was. Vollman, who was in charge of the company’s worldwide finances and operations, had never found any plan, or any subject for that matter, that was not worth an argument. The oldest person on the executive committee by at least two decades, Vollman tried to show he was as vital as any of his youthful counterparts by staying perpetually angry.
Vollman was capable of flying into a rage over a badly stapled report or a coffee with a micron too little soy milk in it. But Gus had never seen him quite as furious as he was now. The only thing holding him back from exploding into a tantrum was his awareness that D-Bob hadn’t weighed in on Gus’ plan yet.
That was clearly what was keeping the other two at bay, as well. They were all desperate to tear into Gus’ proposal, but they didn’t dare make their opinions known until they knew which way the boss would come down on it. It was true that D-Bob always insisted that there was no penalty for bad ideas at Benson Pharmaceuticals, but it was equally true that it was never a good idea to get too far out of synch with the guy who ran the company.
And so they waited. Gus turned to the end of the table to see if D-Bob was ready to offer an opinion. The broad smile on his face suggested he was.
“That is a profound and moving idea, Gus,” D-Bob said, his ponytail jiggling in agreement. “Everyone in this business is aware of the problems with orphan diseases, of course, and I’ve heard elements of your plan in other presentations. Specifically the notion of encouraging foreign governments to establish crown corporations that we would then run on management contracts is something we have explored in the past and still find potentially interesting. But you’ve managed to put together a lot of diverse ideas in a way that they become complementary pieces of a grander whole, and that is new. Of course what is really fresh and different about your proposal is the idea that we could afford to do all this if we were willing to greatly reduce the profits we make as a company. I’m sure that Ed will have some strong opinions on that score.”
Vollman forced his deep scowl into some semblance of a smile. “I’d like to take a longer look at the numbers before I commit myself,” he said, although Gus was pretty sure that what he really wanted to do was rip out Gus’ throat with his teeth.
“Of course, of course,” D-Bob said with a laugh. “There’s plenty in here to absorb, and we should all take a few days and give it the attention it deserves.”
“Yes,” Ecclesine muttered. “Every bit of attention it deserves.”
“In most companies this wouldn’t be an option,” D-Bob said. “But we are blessed with the freedom of not having shareholders to whom we have to answer. We can do whatever we feel is right for the company, even if it does hurt our short-term profitability. Or even our long-term survival. So as you study Gus’ proposal before our next executive committee meeting, I want you to clear your minds of preconceptions and prejudices. Let’s approach this with open minds and open hearts.”