Mind-Altering Murder

Chapter Fifteen

When Gus was little, he had been astonished by the idea of a long-distance phone call. It seemed so miraculous that you could pick up the receiver and talk to someone who was hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

Now Gus found himself astonished by the concept all over again. But it wasn’t because he was able to talk to people in London and Mumbai at the same time. It was because no matter how many times he tried to get off the call, it would never end. Apparently the Indian sales team had some complaint about the British marketing department concerning the rollout of a slightly reformulated version of Nitrozine, Benson’s hugely profitable cold-and-allergy medication, and the Brits were refusing to take them seriously.

That immediately put Gus on their side because he was having trouble taking the whole thing seriously. As far as he could tell the entire squabble would be over if the Brits would change one word in their marketing campaign, or if the Indians would make a slight alteration in their sales plan, but both sides had dug in and neither one was willing to move at all. The angry voices had been blasting out of the speakerphone for more than an hour and Gus still had no idea what anyone wanted him to do.

What he wanted to do was to get off this call. He’d only been in this job for a few weeks and he already had ideas for ways to improve the company. He’d started putting together a presentation for D-Bob on a major alteration to the product mix and even some changes to the firm’s mission statement, which he felt would make them a much more public-oriented business. And the great thing about working here was that he knew his ideas would get a fair hearing and no matter how radical they might seem they’d be taken seriously. Even if D-Bob ended up hating all of them he’d assured Gus that they would still be welcome. Good ideas come out of bad ideas, D-Bob liked to say, and nothing comes out of no ideas. There was no risk to being wrong at Benson and no penalties for thinking outside the box.

The only trouble was finding time to take that step outside the box. From the first moment Gus sat behind his new desk, the phone hadn’t stopped ringing and the memos hadn’t stopped flowing. And that was only the beginning. There were also instant messages, video chats, and tweets, all of which needed to be answered faster than immediately. Gus had found an apartment within easy walking distance of the office, but he frequently found himself wishing he’d moved farther away so that he could catch a quick nap on the BART train, apparently the only place in the city where his cell phone couldn’t find any service bars.

It was so different from all the years he’d spent at Psych. There, his time had been his own-or at least he’d only had to share it with Shawn. Technically it was a job, even a career, but looking back it seemed more like a long vacation. Some mornings when the phone started ringing before his alarm went off, he wondered why he had agreed to leave in the first place.

Until the Benson offer came up, he’d never really thought about it. He assumed that he and Shawn would be together forever. Sometimes, when he was mad at Shawn for some reason, he’d imagine a dramatic breakup for the team-they’d have a huge fight over a case and Gus would leave to set up a competing agency; they’d come to blows over a woman they both loved; Gus would inherit a fortune, but to collect it he’d have to live in an ancient castle in Scotland with distant relatives. But every one of those scenarios eventually led to a reconciliation, just as a TV show’s season-ending cliff-hanger would always be resolved in the first episode of the fall.

But his decision hadn’t been like that at all. He still wasn’t sure exactly when he had decided to leave Psych. It was a thought that had been growing in him for some time, but he couldn’t say when it had changed from a vague idea into a concrete plan. If anything, it was like the point in his life when he’d stopped reading comic books. There had never been a moment when he threw down a particularly badly written issue of Superman and vowed he was done with the form forever. Instead there had been a long period when he kept buying all the new comics, but let them stack up on his shelf without reading most of them. It was only after months of this that he’d realized he was hopelessly out of date on all the story lines in all his favorites-and that he didn’t care enough to catch up.

He supposed this must mean he’d been unhappy at Psych for a while, although he couldn’t put his finger on the moment when it had stopped being fun. Not without devoting more time and effort to the question than he had to spare. Besides, just thinking about the subject made him tired. More than tired; whenever the thought crossed his mind, he could feels his palms begin to sweat and his pulse race. It felt like he was waking up from a nightmare he couldn’t remember. He didn’t understand why this was, and he didn’t have any real desire to. There were far too many other things that were wearing him out now.

There was a faint knocking at the open door. Gus looked up from his desk and saw a head peering in. It had thick gray hair and a broad smile. The slightly stooped body attached to the head was wearing a cheap blue coat and striped tie over a white shirt and gray slacks, but the whole package gave the sense that Gus’ visitor was actually wearing a green hat and smoking an upside-down pipe. There was just something about him that strongly suggested he’d recently escaped from the Old Leprechauns’ Home.

“Mail call,” he whispered.

The aging pixie tiptoed in and placed a stack of envelopes on Gus’ desk, then started to sneak out again. Before he reached the door the speaker erupted in a blast of Hindi that was unmistakably some kind of expletive. Even though he had no idea what the words meant, Gus found himself blushing.

“Sounds like Sanjay is declaring the Mutiny all over again,” the leprechaun whispered.

Gus hit the microphone mute button on his phone. “Do you know him?”

“Never met the man, but I’ve seen his effect on people around here,” the older man said. “If I ever start wishing I were in the executive ranks instead of the mail room, all it takes is one word from Sanjay and I remember why I’m happy where I am.”

“Do you know how the other executives dealt with him?” Gus said, then felt himself blushing all over again. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be bothering you with my problems. Thanks for the mail.”

He reached to hit the microphone button.

“Is he talking to London?” the older man said.

Gus pulled his finger back. “Yeah. To Simon Birnbaum in marketing.”

“That’s when he’s at his worst,” the man said. “He’s got a real colonial subject’s mentality, even though the colony was gone decades before he was born. And it doesn’t help that most of the folks in the London office think nothing’s gone right on the subcontinent since the queen pulled out.”

“So Sanjay thinks he’s being oppressed, and Simon thinks Sanjay’s not being oppressed enough,” Gus said. “Has anyone ever gotten them to work together?”

“Seems to me they did when Bobby handled this account personally.”

“Bobby?” Gus said. “Does he still work here?”

“Don’t know how much work he does, but the sign on his door says he runs the place,” the older man said with a grin. “Calls himself D-Bob now, but I remember when the old man was in charge and young Bobby would tear off his clothes and run through the offices naked.”

“Naked?”

“Completely.” The older man laughed. “Of course, he was only two years old at the time.”

“How long have you been with the company?” Gus said.

“It’s like birthdays,” the older man said. “After you hit a certain number, you stop counting. But it’s been seven years since I got my daughter Chanterelle that job at the front desk, and that feels like a small portion of my tenure here. My name’s Jerry Fellows. Everyone calls me Jerry.”

Gus reached across the desk to offer a hand, which Fellows took and shook heartily. “Burton Guster, but people call me Gus.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Gus,” Fellows said. “May your time here be happy and prosperous.”

“Thanks,” Gus said. “I’d be happy if I could just get these two to stop shouting at each other.”

“Only one thing I know can get two people who hate each other to work together,” Fellows said with a wink.

“What’s that?”

“Someone they both hate more.” Fellows gave Gus a friendly wave and went out to the corridor, where his mail cart was waiting for him. He pushed it down the hall, its wheels squeaking musically.

Gus watched him go, thinking over what he’d said. Then he pressed the microphone button on the phone and waited for a moment when both combatants would have to pause their battle to take a breath.

“Okay,” Gus said. “I’ve listened to you both and I realize there are deep and substantive differences between you that can’t be bridged.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell corporate for a month,” Simon Birnbaum’s plummy accent drawled over the speaker.

“Yes, these people have no idea what will work in India,” Sanjay said.

“The English have always known what works in India,” Birnbaum said. “And that is whatever is run by the English. Whenever the job gets handed off to your lot, it all falls apart.”

“That’s exactly the attitude that’s caused Nitrozine sales to plummet here,” Sanjay said.

“Yes, it was my attitude,” Birnbaum said. “It has nothing to do with a sales force that sleeps half the day and drinks the other half. Or the fact that no product left the warehouse for a week because some cow had decided to lie down in the middle of the road and no one could bring themselves to disturb it.”

Gus cut in before Sanjay could respond. “There’s no need for recriminations,” he said. “I understand that you can’t work together. So instead of wasting time trying to apportion blame, I’m simply going to give both sales and marketing in the Indian region to our Paris branch.”

For the first time in what seemed like hours there was nothing but silence coming from the speaker. Gus started to count slowly to ten. By the time he reached four, Birnbaum’s voice came over the phone.

“You know, I’ve been giving Sanjay’s ideas a good bit of thought and I have to say he’s got a point,” Birnbaum said. “Perhaps our understanding of the local argot is not quite as complete as the natives’.”

“I must say that we in Mumbai are in awe of the brilliant work performed by our counterparts in London,” Sanjay said. “The wit, the humor, the sheer force of creativity. Perhaps we fail to understand the impact of the whole when we focus on such tiny details.”

“No, no,” Birnbaum said quickly. “The whole is only as good as the details that go into it. You were completely right to focus on the little things.”

“So you two think you can work this out on your own?” Gus said. “Because I’d hate to burden Paris with more work if it isn’t necessary.”

“Consider it done,” Birnbaum said.

“Without a doubt,” Sanjay said.

“Good,” Gus said with a smile. “I’ll be looking forward to next month’s sales figures.”

Before either continent could say anything more, Gus hung up. That should keep them quiet for at least a couple of days, he thought, as he reached into his desk to pull out his file of new ideas. Now if everyone else would leave me alone, I could actually get some real work done.

Gus reread the first few pages of his notes and was pleased to see that even though he’d scrawled many of them down just before he was falling asleep, they presented a clear, precise plan. D-Bob was going to be impressed.

At least he was if Gus was ever able to get the damn thing done. But it seemed like every time he managed to get his file open there was some kind of interruption. If it wasn’t an urgent conference call or a crucial meeting, it was a celebration for an office birthday-D-Bob insisted that everyone attend for singing and cake cutting, no matter what kind of business had to be put on hold-or one of D-Bob’s impromptu pep rallies, which happened at least three times every week.

Maybe this time will be the exception that finally lets me finish , Gus thought as he picked up a pen and started to make notes in the margins of his paper. But before he could complete a thought he heard shouts from the other end of the floor and heavy footsteps running down the corridor.

At first Gus thought he’d stay at his desk and work on his project. If he was needed someone would call him. God knew his phone worked.

But then he got a whiff of roasting meat from the spacious kitchen down the hall. This must be one of D-Bob’s surprise bonding lunches, for which he routinely brought in some of San Francisco’s most famous chefs. Gus hadn’t had the opportunity to experience one yet, but everyone he talked to was still buzzing about the last time, when the entire cast of the current Top Chef season prepared tasting menus for all the employees. There was no way Gus was going to miss that.

He shoved his papers back into his drawer, making a silent vow not to go to bed that night until he had finished, and then wandered out into the corridor.

As soon as he stepped through his office door Gus was nearly knocked over by a sales executive who was racing toward the kitchen.

“It can’t be that good,” Gus said jovially. But as soon as the words were out of his mouth he looked at the faces of the people who were running down the corridor. None of them looked like they were anticipating a once-in-a-lifetime dining experience.

They looked scared.

And then he saw Chanterelle coming out of the kitchen. In all the times he’d entered or exited the building, the receptionist had always been wearing two things-a skirt that barely covered her pelvic bone and a smile so appealing he barely noticed her legs. But now she wasn’t smiling. She was crying.

Gus ran toward the kitchen as fast as he could, slaloming around the other employees like a teenager skateboarding through a packed Walmart. There was a crowd clustered in the doorway, but he pushed through them as if they weren’t there.

Once he was inside the kitchen the smell of roasting meat was overwhelming. But it wasn’t coming from the Viking ovens that lined one wall. It seemed to emanate from the coffeemaker.

More precisely, it came from the coffeemaker’s power cord, which was still spitting sparks where it was plugged into the wall.

Gus followed the sparks down as they landed gently on the still-twitching form of Jim Macoby, Benson Pharmaceuticals’ executive vice president of worldwide sales and the man who was directly above him on the corporate ladder. At least he had been before thousands of volts had coursed through his body. Now, as the smells wafting throughout the building proclaimed, he was meat.