Termination Man: a novel by Edward Trimnell Read Free Book Online Page B

payrolls: large, intimidating men who are skilled in the arts of physical coercion. Many have experience working within the penitentiary system. These sorts of bruisers can be sent to a client’s location in the event that trouble is anticipated. These are the men who are placed on duty on those days when volatile employees are told that their services are no longer needed.
    But that was all behind us for today. Beth adjourned the meeting, and we left Kevin Lang to whatever future awaited him among the want ads. His termination was technically voluntary; he could truthfully tell other employers that he had resigned of his own free will—as if blue-collar workers make a habit of quitting their jobs on a lark in a poor economy. Any interviewer worth his or her salt would suspect the truth; but perhaps one of them would give him the benefit of the doubt. More importantly, the voluntary resignation meant that TP Automotive would be able to deny Kevin unemployment, should he attempt to file for it. And of course Bernie’s document contained a clause that prevented Kevin from attempting any sort of wrongful termination suit.
    I was about to take my leave of them, when Kurt Myers instructed me to stay.
    “ Do you have a moment, Craig? I’d like a word with you.” When Bernie, Beth, and his son made as if to retake their seats, Kurt genially waved them off. “No, no—just Craig and I.”
    This brought about an awkward silence, a feeling of heaviness that descended over the room and hung there. At the higher levels of corporate management, there are no meaningless words or deeds. A seemingly casual remark or gesture might presage a firing, a promotion, or a shift in who is favored by the company’s higher-ups. The players who make it to the executive boardrooms are all finely attuned to these subtle currents and undercurrents, like a herd of gazelles who can detect the scent of an approaching predator.
    And right now Bernie and Beth were both wondering why Kurt Myers was deliberately excluding them from a meeting with an outside consultant. After all, Beth had been my main contact at TP Automotive thus far, even though Kurt had been present in a number of our meetings. Nor did Bernie like being excluded. Lawyers don’t like to be excluded from anything.
    And Shawn Myers: He was staring at me with an expression that was a complex mixture of filial and professional jealousy. Kurt was his father; and Shawn and I were roughly the same age. I had the feeling that Kurt knew that his son had some serious issues. And his son knew that his father knew.
    Nevertheless, challenging a direct order from the top man in the room was beyond question. Reluctantly they all filed out—despite their obvious reservations.
    When they were gone, Kurt asked: “Care to go for a walk, Craig?”
    “I’d assumed that you wanted to talk here.”
    “The walls have ears,” Kurt said cryptically.
    I shrugged and stood up. Kurt wouldn’t be the first high-ranking executive I’d met who had a quirky side. In a lot of ways, in fact, Kurt was milder than many of them. He was always superficially polite; and I had never heard him raise his voice—even when he was skewering a soon-to-be-ex-employee like Kevin Lang.
    I followed Kurt out of the executive meeting room. I half-expected to find Beth, Bernie, and Shawn hovering just outside the door eavesdropping; but they were nowhere to be seen.
    I wondered: Did Kurt suspect that the boardroom was bugged? That sort of thing was not exactly common—but not exactly unheard of, either. I had done a job for a company up in Grand Rapids once, where I discovered that one of the second-tier executives had covertly installed a listening device in the private office of the CEO. You’d be surprised to learn about the things that go on in those cloistered halls of power, where everyone wears thousand-dollar suits and holds an MBA from a top university. The dirty tricks in these environments are no less dirty than the