“And if you hadn’t you’d be dead,” he shot back.
Neither wanted to admit that the other was right.
Eventually, I was released from the hospital and took a taxi home, forced to lean forward onto the passenger seat because it was too painful to lean back.
I returned to work after a few days and had to explain in detail the reasons behind my unexpected leave of absence. Each detail felt like yet another pinprick in the trial balloon of my attempt to earn the leadership role of the department.
Pat Faber eventually set up a meeting for early Tuesday morning. We terminated people on Tuesdays so the selection of this day caused me concern. He greeted me without his usual banter and somberly waved me over to a seat in his office. He waited a moment to collect his thoughts. In that time I scanned the shelves behind him. They, too, were lined with crystal trophies and awards just as Bob Gershon’s shelves had been. I wondered if they were legitimate.
The firm would never terminate me because I lost the bid to take the leadership role but they would make it clear that my future there was not a long-term option. I would scuffle along for a few years and then quietly be forced out. But I was too young to retire and would have to reinvent myself with all the youthful energy and drive it takes to reestablish a career. That thought made me sick to my stomach.
“There’s a stretch of country behind my house in Palm Desert,” he began and I thought to myself, this bastard has more houses than hairs on his head. I also pondered the fact that I had heard every single one of Pat’s folksy metaphors but I had never heard this one. “It’s named after an old prospector who tried to make his fortune in the hills. There are still remnants of his work — old wash planes, pick axes, tunnels carved out of the scrabble. I take Bessie back there and let her run. She loves the open country as do I.”
“Me, too,” I think I muttered, but Pat ignored me. He even looked a little miffed that I was interfering with his rhythm.
“There’s one cave in particular back there,” he began again. “Bessie stumbled upon it. It’s up a narrow canyon that I’m sure no one has seen except for the man who made it. And me.” There was a thick vein of pride in his voice. “The front is collapsed, the beams forming a big X, but you can see somewhat in there, depending on the time of day. If you shout inside it takes a long time for your echo to come back. It’s deep. I can’t tell you how many times I have stood in front of that cave. Bessie, the old girl, she won’t go near it. It scares her. It intrigues her but it scares her. At some point in life, Chuck, a man is going to come upon a cave like this one.”
My mind raced with the possibilities of what the cave stood for. Was it my career — abandoned, hopeless, a hole of lost dreams? Was it Pat’s delusional self-journey — daring, solitary, the pinnacle of his life’s work?
“And you have a decision to make. The hardest decision in your life because the cave has so many unknowns.” My heart sank with each additional line. “Chuck, I stood there this past weekend and stared at that entrance for an hour. And a single thought came to me.
“A black rock isn’t black in the dark,” he stated, and paused long enough for those profound words to sink in. I found myself nodding along with him despite not understanding anything that was coming out of his mouth.
“Chuck, you are the man to lead this group. Congratulations,” he said and rose to shake my hand.
I rose to accept with a handshake and squeezed harder than I needed to. “Pat, I know this wasn’t an easy decision,” I told him. He brushed it off but I could tell he was very proud of the “courage” he exhibited in selecting me. “You made the right decision.”
Not one to miss an opportunity to cut someone down a peg, he shot back, “Then you have your mission. Prove it to me.”
We chatted a little bit further about the group and direction it needed to go in but he had no time for petty details. His work was done and it was time to get another coffee. At the door, I turned back to ask the question that was gnawing at me.
“Hey Pat, if you don’t mind telling me, what was it that made you go with me?”
He thought about it a moment, then said:
“You were very honest in your interview.”
The truth would be revealed some time later when I discovered the real reason I got the job. It had nothing to do with my answer in the interview but everything to do with a few well-placed telephone calls by Carl Valenti to a few select, influential men at the firm. But I wasn’t disappointed in the least. I had always believed that career success was driven by ten percent skill and ninety percent luck. I would forever be grateful for the opportunity to enter into that rarified air of upper management where one’s entire role was just to be — to be and to give opinion.
My old boss Bob Gershon questioned this foundation but that was his biggest mistake. He searched for value, for meaning in the role. The value was simply having the role in the first place.
Later that day I got Paul’s concession speech. He came into my office and gushed on and on about how happy he was for me, but I didn’t believe it for a second. I would in time hear about how Paul had done everything in his power to discredit me with anyone who would listen during the run-up to the interviews. This was revealed to me on numerous occasions after I got the promotion. It was standard corporate operating procedure to curry favor with the new lead by bad-mouthing the guy who had bad-mouthed me.
But I was the victor and needed to display a modicum of humility and to rise above it all and be the better man; righteousness came easily when I had all the power. I put out my hand and Paul, in typical Paul fashion, took hold of it and pulled me in close for a big man-hug. He slapped me hard on my back, too hard, and I winced from the still lingering pain from the hammer blows.
“Paul, let’s meet next week to discuss the obesity campaign,” I offered as an olive branch. Paul accepted it enthusiastically and rattled off several new ideas on how to make it a success. I just smiled to myself because I knew that my very first decision as head of the group was to cancel all work on the campaign. Paul’s rabid pursuit of anyone over a hundred and fifty pounds would finally come to an end, and the one great accomplishment of my career would be what I chose not to pursue.
I had other designs for Paul. And decorum be damned, I was going to make his life a living hell. His first job for me was to make a recommendation on whether we should renew the contract with Badger as our lead investigator. I would let him do the due diligence he needed to discover all of the unseemly details about Badger. I would let him passionately recommend that we terminate relations with him and his firm. And I would wait until the very end before I over-ruled him without even the slightest of reasons why. Badger was someone I wanted around.
No one wanted Sami Halilayen around. He was convicted of the murder of Morgan McIlroy and sentenced to life. Police easily pieced together the events that led to her being strangled in the back seat of her own car and it ended up being a fast trial. Morgan was one of Sami’s many conquests, one of several involving underage girls. Upon learning about his relationship with Jeanette, she confronted him in a meeting at the parking lot in Chinatown. She threatened to dismantle whatever fragile spiritual empire he was building, never mind the threat to land him in state prison for statutory rape, and for that she had to be killed.
There never was any link between Sami and Tala’s activities to extort money. As far as the police were concerned, they were separate incidents. There were surprisingly few details about Morgan’s murder in the press and no charges were ever filed for the illegal acts he performed on underage girls, one of which resulted in a baby boy. For once the influence of the powerful resulted in a good deed — it was better for all involved if the past remained in the past.
As for Valenti and the others, it became clear that they didn’t want me around much either. I tried several times to connect with the Valenti clan but all of my feelers went unanswered. It felt like a non-verbal dismissal. I instead followed their lives from afar through the press.