Disclosure: A Novel (23 page)

The cabinet was empty. There were no files there at all. They had taken everything.

He opened the cabinet for the previous year: empty.

The year before: empty.

All the others: empty.

Jesus, he thought. No wonder Cindy had been so cool. They must have had a gang of workmen up there with trolleys, cleaning everything out during the afternoon.

Sanders locked the cabinets again, replaced the key in Cindy's desk, and headed downstairs.

The press office was on the third floor. It was deserted now except for a single assistant, who was closing up. "Oh. Mr. Sanders. I was just getting ready to leave."

"You don't have to stay. I just wanted to check some things. Where do you keep the back issues of ComLine?"

"They're all on that shelf over there." She pointed to a row of stacked issues. "Was there anything in particular?"

"No. You go ahead home."

The assistant seemed reluctant, but she picked up her purse and headed out the door.

Sanders went to the shelf. The issues were arranged in six-month stacks. Just to be safe, he started ten stacks back-five years ago.

He began flipping through the pages, scanning the endless details of game scores and press releases on production figures. After a few minutes, he found it hard to pay attention. And of course he didn't know what he was looking for, although he assumed it was something about Meredith Johnson.

He went through two stacks before he found the first article.

NEW MARKETING ASSISTANT NAMED

Cupertino, May 10: DigiCom President Bob Garvin today announced the appointment of Meredith Johnson as Assistant Director of Marketing and

Promotion for Telecommunications. She will report to Howard Gottfried in M and P. Ms.

Johnson, 30, came to us from her position as Vice President for Marketing at Conrad Computer Systems of Sunnyvale. Before that, she was a senior administrative assistant at the Novell Network Division in Mountain View. Ms. Johnson, who has degrees from Vassar College and Stanford Business School, was recently married to Gary Henley, a marketing executive at CoStar. Congratulations! As a new arrival to DigiCom, Ms.

Johnson . . .

He skipped the rest of the article; it was all PR fluff. The accompanying photo was standard B-school graduate: against a gray background with light coming from behind one shoulder, it showed a young woman with shoulderlength hair in a pageboy style, a direct businesslike stare just shy of harsh, and a firm mouth. But she looked considerably younger than she did now.

Sanders continued to thumb through the issues. He glanced at his watch. It was almost seven, and he wanted to call Bosak. He came to the end of the year, and the pages were nothing but Christmas stuff A picture of Garvin and his family ("Merry Christmas from the Boss! Ho Ho Ho!") caught his attention because it showed Bob with his former wife, along with his three college-age kids, standing around a big tree.

Had Garvin been going out with Emily yet? Nobody ever knew. Garvin was cagey. You never knew what he was up to.

Sanders went to the next stack, for the following year. January sales predictions. ("Let's get out and make it happen!") Opening of the Austin plant to manufacture cellular phones; a photo of Garvin in harsh sunlight, cutting the ribbon. A profile of Mary Anne Hunter that began, "Spunky, athletic Mary Anne Hunter knows what she wants out of life . . ."

They had called her "Spunky" for weeks afterward, until she begged them to give it up.

Sanders flipped pages. Contract with the Irish government to break ground in Cork.

Second-quarter sales figures. Basketball team scores against Aldus. Then a black box: JENNIFER GARVIN

Jennifer Garvin, a third-year student at Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley, died on March 5 in an automobile accident in San Francisco. She was twenty-four years old. Jennifer had been accepted to the firm of Harley, Wayne and Myers following her graduation. A memorial service was held at the Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto for friends of the family and her many classmates. Those wishing to make memorial donations should send contributions to Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. All of us at Digital Communications extend our deepest sympathy to the Garvin family.

Sanders remembered that time as difficult for everyone. Garvin was snappish and withdrawn, drinking too much, and frequently absent from work. Not long afterward, his marital difficulties became public; within two years, he was divorced, and soon after that he married Emily Chen, a young executive in her twenties. But there were other changes, too. Everyone agreed: Garvin was no longer the same boss after the death of his daughter.

Garvin had always been a scrapper, but now he became protective, less ruthless. Some said that Garvin was stopping to smell the roses, but that wasn't it at all. He was newly aware of the arbitrariness of life, and it led him to control things, in a way that hadn't been true before. Garvin had always been Mr. Evolution: put it on the shore and see if it eats or dies. It made him a heartless administrator but a remarkably fair boss. If you did a good job, you were recognized. If you couldn't cut it, you were gone. Everybody understood the rules. But after Jennifer died, all that changed. Now he had overt favorites among staff and programs, and he nurtured those favorites and neglected others, despite the evidence in front of his face. More and more, he made business decisions arbitrarily.

Garvin wanted events to turn out the way he intended them to. It gave him a new kind of fervor, a new sense of what the company should be. But it was also a more difficult place to work. A more political place.

It was a trend that Sanders had ignored. He continued to act as if he still worked at the old DigiCom-the company where all that mattered were results. But clearly, that company was gone.

Sanders continued thumbing through the magazines. Articles about early negotiations for a plant in Malaysia. A photo of Phil Blackburn in Ireland, signing an agreement with the city of Cork. New production figures for the Austin plant. Start of production of the A22

cellular model. Births and deaths and promotions. More DigiCom baseball scores.

JOHNSON TO TAKE OPERATIONS POST

Cupertino, October 20: Meredith Johnson has been named new Assistant Manager for Division Operations in Cupertino, replacing the very popular Harry Warner, who retired after fifteen years of service. The shift to Ops Manager takes Johnson out of marketing, where she has been very effective for the last year, since joining the company. In her new position, she will work closely with Bob Garvin on international operations for DigiCom.

But it was the accompanying picture that caught Sanders's attention. Once again, it was a formal head shot, but Johnson now looked completely different. Her hair was light blond.

Gone was the neat businessschool pageboy. She wore her hair short, in a curly, informal style. She was wearing much less makeup and smiling cheerfully. Overall, the effect was to make her appear much more youthful, open, innocent.

Sanders frowned. Quickly, he flipped back through the issues he had already looked at.

Then he went back to the previous stack, with its year-end Christmas pictures: "Merry Christmas from the Boss! Ho Ho Ho!"

He looked at the family portrait. Garvin standing behind his three children, two sons and a daughter. That must be Jennifer. His wife, Harriet, stood to one side. In the picture, Garvin was smiling, his hand resting lightly on his daughter's shoulder, and she was tall and athleticlooking, with short, light blond, curly hair.

"I'll be damned," he said aloud.

He thumbed back quickly to the first article, to look at the original picture of Johnson. He compared it to the later one. There was no doubt about what she had done. He read the rest of the first article:

As a new arrival to DigiCom, Ms. Johnson brings her considerable business acumen, her sparkling humor, and her sizzling softball pitch. She's a major addition to the DigiCom team! Welcome, Meredith!

Her admiring friends are never surprised to learn that Meredith was once a finalist in the Miss Teen Connecticut contest. In her student days at Vassar, Meredith was a valued member of both the tennis team and the debating society. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, she took her major in psychology, with a minor in abnormal psych. Hope you won't be needing that around here, Meredith! At Stanford, she obtained her MBA with honors, graduating near the top of her class. Meredith told us, “I am delighted to join DigiCom and I look forward to an exciting career with this forward-looking company." We couldn't have said it better, Ms. Johnson!

"No shit," Sanders said. He had known almost none of this. From the start, Meredith had been based in Cupertino; Sanders never saw her. The one time he had run into her was soon after her arrival, before she changed her hair. Her hair and what else?

He looked carefully at the two pictures. Something else was subtly different. Had she had plastic surgery? It was impossible to know. But her appearance was definitely changed between the two portraits.

He moved through the remaining issues of the magazine quickly now, convinced that he had learned what there was to know. Now he skimmed only the headlines: GARVIN SENDS JOHNSON TO TEXAS

FOR AUSTIN PLANT OVERSIGHT

JOHNSON WILL HEAD NEW

OPERATIONS REVIEW UNIT

JOHNSON NAMED OPERATIONS VEEP

TO WORK DIRECTLY UNDER GARVIN

JOHNSON: TRIUMPH IN MALAYSIA

LABOR CONFLICT NOW RESOLVED

MEREDITH JOHNSON OUR RISING STAR

A SUPERB MANAGER; HER SKILL IN

TECHNICAL AREAS VERY STRONG

This final headline ran above a lengthy profile of Johnson, well placed on the second page of the magazine. It had appeared in ComLine only two issues ago. Seeing it now, Sanders realized that the article was intended for internal consumption-softening up the beachhead before the June landing. This article was a trial balloon that Cupertino had floated, to see if Meredith would be acceptable to run the technical divisions in Seattle.

The only trouble was, Sanders never saw it. And nobody had ever mentioned it to him.

The article stressed the technical savvy that Johnson had acquired during her years with the company. She was quoted as saying, "I began my career working in technical areas, back with Novell. The technical fields have always been my first love; I'd love to go back to it. After all, strong technical innovation lies at the heart of a forward-looking company like DigiCom. Any good manager here must be able to run the technical divisions."

There it was.

He looked at the date: May 2. Published six weeks ago. Which meant that the article had been written at least two weeks before that.

As Mark Lewyn had suspected, Meredith Johnson knew she was going to be the head of the Advanced Products Division at least two months ago. Which meant, in turn, that Sanders had never been under consideration to become division head. He had never had a chance.

It was a done deal.

Months ago.

Sanders swore, took the articles over to the xerox machine and copied them, then put the stacks back on the shelf, and left the press office.

He got on the elevator. Mark Lewyn was there. Sanders said, "Hi, Mark." Lewyn didn't answer. Sanders pushed the button for the ground floor.

The doors closed.

"I just hope you know what the fuck you're doing," Lewyn said angrily.

"I think I do."

"Because you could fuck this thing up for everybody. You know that?"

"Fuck what up?"

"Just because you got your ass in the sling, it's not our problem."

"Nobody said it was."

"I don't know what's the matter with you," Lewyn said. "You're late for work, you don't call me when you say you will... What is it, trouble at home? More shit with Susan?"

"This has nothing to do with Susan."

"Yeah? I think it does. You've been late two days running and even when you're here, you walk around like you're dreaming. You're in fucking dreamland, Tom. I mean, what the hell were you doing, going to Meredith's office at night, anyway?"

"She asked me to come to her office. She's the boss. You're saying I shouldn't have gone?"

Lewyn shook his head in disgust. "This innocent act is a lot of crap. Don't you take any responsibility for anything?"

"What-"

"Look, Tom, everybody in the company knows that Meredith is a shark. Meredith Manmuncher, they call her. The Great White. Everybody knows she's protected by Garvin, that she can do what she wants. And what she wants is to play grabass with cute guys who show up in her office at the end of the day. She has a couple of glasses of wine, she gets a little flushed, and she wants service. A delivery boy, a trainee, a young account guy. Whatever. And nobody can say a word because Garvin thinks she walks on water.

So, how come everybody else in the company knows it but you?"

Sanders was stunned. He did not know how to answer. He stared at Lewyn, who stood very close to him, his body hunched, hands in his pockets. He could feel Lewyn's breath on his face. But he could hardly hear Lewyn's words. It was as if they came to him from a great distance.

"Hey, Tom. You walk the same halls, you breathe the same air as the rest of us. You know who's doing what. You go marching up there to her office . . . and you know damned well what's coming. Meredith's done everything but announce to the world that she wants to suck your dick. All day long, she's touching your arm, giving you those meaningful little looks and squeezes. Oh, Tom. So nice to see you again. And now you tell me you didn't know what was coming in that office? Fuck you, Tom. You're an asshole."

The elevator doors opened. Before them, the ground-floor lobby was deserted, growing dark in the fading light of the June evening. A soft rain fell outside. Lewyn started toward the exit, then turned back. His voice echoed in the lobby.

"You realize," he said, "that you're acting like one of those women in all this. The way they always go, `Who, me? I never intended that.' The way they go, Òh, it's not my responsibility. I never thought if I got drunk and kissed him and went to his room and lay down on his bed that he'd fuck me. Oh dear me no.' It's bullshit, Tom. Irresponsible bullshit. And you better think about what I'm saying, because there's a lot of us who have worked every bit as hard as you have in this company, and we don't want to see you screw up this merger and this spin-off for the rest of us. You want to pretend you can't tell when a woman's coming on to you, that's fine. You want to screw up your own life, it's your decision. But you screw up mine, and I'm going to fucking put you away."