Run: A Novel

O
N A USUAL MONDAY MORNING, I’D BE THE FIRST TO ARRIVE
.

The gate, which was little more than a hinged version of my client’s corporate logo—the name AmeriTel splashed across the globe with three multi-colored electrons spinning inexplicably around it—would still be closed. Mine would be the only car in the parking lot, except for the night-shift security guard’s—a pink 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Seville, all tailfins and chrome—which the management made him leave in the farthest corner from the door. The official reason was that the car took up too much space. My guess was the fact that it left their bland German status symbols in the shade had more to do with it. But anyway I’d pass the guy, dozing in the otherwise deserted reception area—a double-height triangular wedge driven between the two functional wings of the building like the central tip of a “W,” and crammed with van der Rohe and Le Corbusier in the hope that the smell of money would impress the visitors—and head to the narrow second-floor office I’d requisitioned for the duration of my project. I’d check on the progress of all the new reports I’d left running over the weekend. I’d catch up on email. And I’d line up the jobs I wanted to nail that week.

It wasn’t rocket science, but it worked for me.

Until
that
Monday.

I knew something was up when I couldn’t park in my usual space. It had been taken by a black S-Class Mercedes. Another black Benz was tucked in next to it, and a trio of BMWs was lined up farther along the row. It made the place look more like a funeral home than an office
building. But five big-hitters at work before the first pot of coffee was normally brewed? A sure sign of crisis. Something new and nasty must have hit the fan over the weekend. Not that I was surprised. Everyone knew AmeriTel was struggling. They wouldn’t have hired me if they weren’t having problems. It’s just that I was expecting a more general kind of trouble to have surfaced. Something that had pushed the whole corporation another step closer to the abyss. Not something aimed at me, personally.

The security guard wasn’t half asleep that morning. He was fully awake, waiting near the foot of the stairs with Simon Wakefield, the Chief Operating Officer—his boss, several levels removed—lurking behind him.

“Good morning, Mr. Bowman,” the guard said as I approached. I was surprised. I hadn’t realized he even knew my name. “Would you come with me, please?”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Mr. LeBrock’s waiting for you in the boardroom. He’d like to see you.”

“I know where the boardroom is. I don’t need an escort. But why does he want to see me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Simon?”

Simon Wakefield shrugged and looked away.

“OK, then. I’ll just check on my computers, and I’ll be along in a minute.”

“No, sir.” The guard shook his head.

“What do you mean, no?”

“Mr. LeBrock wants to see you in the boardroom right away, sir.” He started to look a little flustered and tried to gesture subtly at Simon Wakefield. “Mr. LeBrock said I was to take you directly there the moment you arrived.”

Their little reception committee seemed slightly overdramatic—wouldn’t an email or a text have done the job just as well?—but there didn’t seem to be much point in arguing. There was nothing to gain by getting the security guard in trouble. Or landing him in the hospital. He wasn’t a small guy, and the stress of the confrontation—minor as it
was—already had his chest heaving. And Roger LeBrock was the CEO of AmeriTel. I’d known LeBrock for fifteen years. We’d worked together before, and he was the one who’d brought me in when the first potholes started to appear in his latest road to riches. If anyone could explain what was going on that morning, LeBrock could. And he was apparently waiting for me on the second floor, so I wasted no more words on his lackeys and started up the stairs.

THE BUILDING’S ARCHITECTS HAD
been opposed to individual offices. They believed shutting people off from their co-workers discouraged communication, and that putting nameplates on doors fostered elitism, so the entire place was designed to be open-plan. That was fine in theory. And the sense of light and space was very attractive to prospective tenants. But the problems started once the people moved in. Human Resources needed privacy for interviewing new employees, they said. A large alcove at the far end of their section was converted into three separate rooms. And within a week, their director was unofficially but permanently ensconced in one of them. The same thing happened in the Sales area. And Marketing. And Customer Service. And as for the CEO? The boardroom—the whole of the second floor above the reception area—soon became his private domain.

Roger LeBrock was sitting in his customary spot at the far side of the boardroom table—a custom-made granite triangle, cut to match the peculiar shape of the room—when I walked in. He was wearing his signature black and blue Prada, from his glasses to his shoes. But even so, he didn’t seem his normal self. He looked thinner and somehow slightly deflated, a shadow of the grinning man who was shaking hands with Bono and Hillary Clinton and Steve Jobs and a dozen others I vaguely recognized in the photographs on the glory wall behind him.

“Marc!” He stood and moved closer to shake hands. “Good to see you. I’m glad you’re here. How was your weekend?”

“Busy. But good. Yours?”

“It was fine.” He tried to smile but only managed to mobilize one half of his face. “Now, please. Sit. There’s something we need to talk about.”

“Aren’t we waiting for the others?” I gestured to the three sets of papers piled up on the other side of the triangle.

“I don’t think so.” He returned to his chair and waited until I was seated. “They have things to attend to.”

As he spoke, the lower lid of his left eye started to tremble. Very slightly. I’d seen it do that once before. Years ago, when he’d brought me in to run numbers for him at a meeting in St. Louis. He’d been trying to revive a deal that was in danger of going south. And on that occasion, I’d known for certain he was lying through his teeth.

“That sounds ominous.”

He tried his smile again, with even less success.

“There’s no point beating around the bush, I guess, Marc. You knew we were facing some pretty serious challenges when you came on board. I was pretty candid about that, wasn’t I?”

“Where’s this going, Roger?”

“And it’s not just us. The industry as a whole is facing the biggest shakeout in its history. The landscape’s changing faster than ever before. Soon it’s going to be unrecognizable.”