The Autobiography of Benjamin Abbott - Chapter 27: The Deal
I was sitting comfortably next to a peace delegation from the Middle East on the couch that was bigger than my apartment, my feet up on the glass coffee table that was bigger than the couch that was bigger than my apartment reading the Arts & Leisure section of that morning’s Los Angeles Times. There was a full-page ad across from the movie listings for Bakers Grocery Stores with the smiling chimp. He was now holding two bags of potato chips and they had changed their slogan. The chimp now said “Buy more more food!” They had added a more (along with the extra bag of potato chips).
I liked the symmetry of seeing my old friend chimpanzee again while I waited for Humphrey. I knew him so well and was so fond of him, I really wished Fingers and I had figured out his name, so I could address him appropriately. Oh wait! His name is Baker. Baker the chimp. I get it now. That explains the font and the placement of the name in all of the ads. That’s such a weight off my mind. My friend, Baker the chimpanzee.
The receptionist kept looking over at me suspiciously like I wasn’t supposed to be there, like I didn’t really have an emergency appointment with Humphrey as I had said. He was in a meeting, his first meeting since returning from Europe the night before, so she had to wait to check with him but that didn’t stop her from having doubts. It was much easier to get passed her doppelganger on the 177th floor. After all, she hadn’t seen me dragged from Humphrey’s office as he screamed, she may have heard about it but if she had I don’t think she was able to put the name to the face, instead she remembered my pleasant face from my earlier meetings with Humphrey, so she believed me when I said he had called me in for an emergency early morning meeting as one of his first acts since returning from Europe.
178th floor remembered my name and the dragging and the Humphrey screaming, however, and thus her suspicions but she was paralyzed until she heard from Humphrey himself, he could be capricious like all bosses, and certainly was when it came to me, and she didn’t want to lose her job over a silly error in protocol.
I smiled at her again, not giving up in my efforts to win her back to my side. It didn’t work, she scrunched up her face and looked at the professional wrestler who was working security in front of the special elevator. I suppose I should have looked at him with an equal amount of concern to her suspicion, since she was certain I didn’t have an emergency meeting with Humphrey and she knew as soon as he heard my name he would be as adamant about my lack of an appointment as she now felt. But I was confident, and with my confidence serving as my only protection kept smiling at her over the paper trying to puncture her certainty with my charming dimples of doubt.
After 15 minutes, a group of executives (3 of the gang of 5), left Humphrey’s office apparently leaving Humphrey alone inside. I got up expectantly from the couch as the receptionist dialed in to Humphrey. She looked at the security guard again, the phone to her ear, confidence swelling in her breast, only waiting for Humphrey to confirm her suspicions. I was standing at her desk and smiling lightly like a floating butterfly.
“Mr. Humphrey, there’s a Benjamin Abbott here to see you.” I edged my way to the office door. “He says you made an appointment to see him this morning.” Pause as I kept edging to Humphrey’s door. “Yes, that Mr. Benjamin Abbott.” Another pause. I was in place, edging complete.
Curiosity is (rather redundantly) a curious thing. It makes most of us do the dumbest things. It makes us look in places we know we shouldn’t look in, put our hands in areas where they are likely to get pinched or burned, and taste things we already know taste awful. In fact, the more we suspect a disastrous outcome will result from a specific action we intellectually know is a bad idea, the more this strangely increases our innate curiosity and makes us liable to do that specific (and usually rather stupid) action.
This is why my classmate Colin burned his tongue on his family’s new electric stove when he was 14 (an age when he definitely should have known better). And it is why after he hung up on his receptionist without giving her a concrete answer, David Humphrey’s door opened a crack, just a crack, to take a peek out into the reception room. If someone had told you there was a ghost waiting to see you on the other side of your office door, wouldn’t you be curious as well, wouldn’t you take a peek as well (before throwing the ghost out of the building) so you could see what a ghost really looks like, to see if ghosts are in fact real. Humphrey probably thought he was living a Dickens morality tale when he first heard my name on the phone. But it wasn’t Christmas and I wasn’t there on behalf of Tiny Tim, we had other matters to discuss.
Humphrey couldn’t see me with the first crack of his door because of how I had strategically placed myself next to his door and out of his line of vision. Of course, he opened his door a little more, just enough to see more of the reception area, and this was enough for me to stick my right foot in, so I did. And turned to face Humphrey with my smiling good-natured face. “Mr. Humphrey, I’m glad you made it back safely from Europe.” He didn’t say anything. I continued through gritted teeth because of the pain of the door trying to close on my jammed (and now throbbing) foot. “I’m here for the emergency meeting you called this morning.”
The Middle Eastern Peace Delegation on the couch seemed to be getting a little agitated with our jostling, so Humphrey stopped trying to close the door on my foot and looked into my eyes, my happy face, for the first time in a long time.
“What do you want.” He said sharply.
“Our meeting, you haven’t forgotten about our meeting. I have some important information regarding a mutual friend of ours.”
“We don’t have any mutual friends.” He looked down at my foot, then up to the confused delegation on the couch, then to the doorknob, debating whether to resume our struggle over the door.
“Sure we do. Louie DePaula. Louie wanted me to give you a special message.”
The shine of Humphrey’s botox lost its luster. “I don’t know who that is.”
I cocked my head to the side without answering him, letting Humphrey work through the options himself.
“I don’t know who that is but get in here anyway.” He made the right choice. I knew Louie’s name would be my password inside.
The door opened just enough for me to squeeze my body in and Humphrey quickly closed it behind us and just as quickly walked over to his desk, behind his desk, as though the marble was going to somehow protect him from the coming accusations.
“Why are you here? What do you want?”
“Oh, the same as any chap, a sweet bonny lass in my bed every night, a villa on the beach in Tenerife, and Rangers beating Celtic.”
“You have 3 seconds before I’m calling security.”
“That was a joke. I was joking. Don’t worry, I’m here as a friend. We’re friends now.”
“We’re not friends.”
I sat down in one of the sawed-off chairs in front of his desk and made myself at home and looked up at Humphrey as he stood against the diminishing blue light of his office window.
“If you want to call security, I won’t stop you. You can call them, you can call the police if you want. Actually, I prefer the police, that way when they show up, I can tell them how you hired not one, not 2, but 3 different people to kill me.”
“That’s a lie.”
“What? Is this place bugged? Because David if this place isn’t bugged, there’s no reason to keep up the façade, we both know the truth, and I think it will make it easier for us to have a decent conversation if we’re honest with each other.”
“That’s a lie.” He repeated disappointingly, still referring to my earlier statement.
“There are no recording devices on me, you can pat me down if you want, I’ll strip naked if you want, no tricks, I’m here to have a nice chat about our future together.”
He picked up the phone ready to dial whatever number gets the receptionist and security. “I’m not putting up with any more of this.”
“Have it your way, but I think it would be better for both of us if I didn’t have to tell the cops about the 3 dead bodies on your Malibu estate.”
“What?”
“It’s harder to deny dead bodies, isn’t it? I probably should have started with the dead bodies.” I reached for the porcelain dish expecting to get a chocolate bar of some kind, but the chocolate bars were gone, replaced by a translucent rainbow assortment of Jolly Ranchers, out of their wrappers of course. I wondered if he made his receptionist unwrap all of the different treats that got put into that dish each morning or maybe he had a secret team of elves stashed away near the liquor cabinet who’s only job was to supply Humphrey’s desk with unwrapped sugared goodies for decoration. I picked out a bright green sour apple Jolly Rancher and popped it into my mouth and made a sucking face as the sourness of the sour apple and the stickiness of the sticky Rancher hit me at the same time. I started to make the same teeth and lip movements a horse makes when you give it something with peanut butter on it as I tried to remove the Jolly Rancher from my left incisor without using my fingers.
“I was out of the country.”
“Wmmph.” I was still fighting the Jolly Rancher.
“I was out of the country.”
“Oh, come on, Dave.” Success, my teeth were now freed. The stickiness of the Jolly Rancher no longer rubber cement like now just sticky. “I think even under the best circumstances no one would expect you to pull the trigger yourself. You may be a vicious bastard when it comes to business, but we both know you’re not going to get your hands dirty. That’s what Louie DePaula is for.”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
I gave Humphrey a withering look of moral disapproval.
“You can’t tie any of this to me.” He was still standing, I really wished he would sit down so we could talk like civilized people.
“Did I mention I have 2 witnesses besides Louie, 2 others who can testify to the dead bodies on the grounds of your mansion, 2 others who will claim you hired men to kill me.”
“No one will believe them, Louie’s a scumbag. I’m sure they’re all scumbags. It’ll be their word against mine. Anybody could have broken onto my grounds while I was gone.”
“With a key?”
Anybody can steal a key.”
“And the security tapes.”
“The security tapes?”
I bit into my Jolly Rancher breaking what was left of it in half. Humphrey finally sat down.
“Let’s say, hypothetically of course, that there were security tapes that covered the grounds of your mansion and the inside of your mansion and if one of those security tapes from a week ago showed Louie showing up at your house and meeting with you in your rose garden next to your tennis court, that may give some credence to Louie’s testimony, and then let’s say, again hypothetically, that there are more tapes that show a couple of thugs arriving at your house with a female hostage, entering through the front gate with a key and then engaging in a shootout inside the mansion until there were three dead bodies in your excessively large foyer under that hideous painting you paid $10 million for, and then let’s say these somewhat incriminating tapes were to find their way into the wrong hands, and then perhaps such evidence would lead to a more exhaustive investigation into your past conduct by the local police or more likely the FBI. I’m sure there might be a paper trail of payments, of bank withdrawals, a digital trail of cell phone calls, maybe even money laundering, I’m sure there are other activities you and Louie have engaged in that the authorities would like to know about, I’m sure there are illegal activities that Louie doesn’t know about that might be found.
“You may control a lot of the media, Dave, but there are still parts you don’t control, that you’re not friendly with and I think they would like a story like this. Media linchpin caught in triple homicide. And you may have very good lawyers, you may have great lawyers, you may not even serve 20-30 years in prison, although if you are convicted we’re not exactly talking about a white collar crime; murder, murder-for-hire, I think we’re looking at maximum security prison, and I know they’d love you in there, Dave, a prominent man like yourself, what a mark you would be for the entrepreneurial types, but you might get off that’s true, maybe the jury will look into those kind eyes of yours and come back with a not guilty verdict. Of course, you’d still lose your job, your name would still be dragged through the mud for months, years, they may forgive a lot of things in this town, but 3 dead bodies on your estate, 3 dead bodies of underworld figures, no less, and witnesses that will testify you hired 3 different hitmen to kill me; it has a nice symmetry to it, don’t you think, there may not be enough to convict in a court of law, although the corroboratory, is that the right word, corroboratory evidence is quite persuasive, but I think there’s certainly enough to convict you in the court of public opinion, I don’t think your shareholders would like that at all.”
“If you have all this against me, why haven’t you called the cops yet?”
“Because I’m willing to offer you a deal.”
“A deal?”
“A better deal than you’ve ever offered me. The 3 people who are buried on your estate won’t be missed by anybody. In fact, I would say the world is a better place without them, and the witnesses, I’m on friendly terms with them, and the tapes, I might be able to ensure the hypothetical tapes stay hypothetical, in fact, I’m not sure any of this needs to come to light at all. I’m willing to let our entire past be forgotten, the men that you hired to kill me, they are nothing, just an unfortunate bump in our relationship.
Like I said when I sat down, Dave, I want to be friends again, I think we should be friends again, and as a sign of our renewed friendship I think it would only be appropriate for you to take me under your wing and name me as Vice President of Information Gathering.”
“That’s absurd.”
“And then in 3-5 years you decide you’re tired of running such a large and demanding corporation, that it’s time for you to strap into your golden parachute and jump towards a new relaxing, yet rewarding life of a philanthropist, naming me as your successor.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Maybe you’ll say you’re burned out, I think everyone would believe that, you’re burned out and you want to spend more time with the family, that you want to dedicate the rest of your life to your wife and kids and to charity, just think of the glowing press, such a feel good story.”
“I’m never giving you my company.”
I stood up and put my hands on the hard marbleness of his desk and looked down at Humphrey.
“The way I see it, Dave, is you have 2 options. One, you can fight me on this, we call the cops, they dig up the bodies, the witnesses come forward, the security tapes are made public, all of your unsavory activities are found out, your rivals use this to take advantage of you, to destroy you, to take over Landmark. Then we go to court, maybe you may win, but maybe you don’t, maybe you go to jail and learn how the other half live, maybe you pay protection money to a guy named Gus who’s missing a thumb and has a bleached eye but knows how to handle himself, maybe your bank accounts are frozen and you don’t have enough to pay protection money to Gus so he refuses to help you every night all night as you are beaten and bruised and taken advantage of in every way. And even if you do win, you’d still be ruined, your name would be a joke, a punchline, your job, this job, would not be waiting for you, Landmark would not be waiting for you, it might not even exist anymore, either way your career would be over.
Or there’s the other option; a simple naming of another executive to join the legions of Vice-Presidents already at Landmark and an early exit from the company you helped build, leaving that company in a position of strength to take advantage of its rivals instead of the other way around. You get to keep your reputation, your reputation will grow, you will become a respected, even a revered figure in the community, in the nation. Wall Street and Silicon Valley will come to you for advice. Junior Corporate types and those who desperately want to improve their portfolio will buy your leadership books. Presidents and foreign leaders will welcome your sage pronouncements every year at ski resorts in Switzerland. It’s not bad if you think about it in a certain way, might even be better than your current job.
“But I guess if we call the cops you’ll get to hurt me. Although I think you have a lot more to lose than I do and technically I haven’t done anything illegal, at least until this friendly conversation which is more a necessary courtesy than an actual extortion attempt, while you definitely have done lots of illegal activities. But a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.” I picked up Humphrey’s phone and pressed 9 to get an outside line. Then I pressed another 9 and a 1. My finger hovered, ready to repeat the 1 to complete the call when hands flew into the air.
“Wait!”