The Road To Ruin

28

IN A WAY, Marcie felt sorry for Monroe Hall. In the seventeen years she’d worked as an interviewer for Cooper Placement Service, she’d never seen an employer who was so thoroughly disliked. How bad could the man be?

Mostly, particularly in a rural area like this one, people just sucked it up and got on with it. “What the heck, it’s a job,” was the general opinion about almost anything. In her time, she’d placed personal maids with Iranian ex-wives, chauffeurs who were required to wear bulletproof vests when on the job for notorious drug dealers, gardeners for the weekend houses of top-level fashionistas out of New York, cooks for Ecuadorian aristocrats, dressers for rock stars, secretaries to disgraced politicians writing their truthless memoirs, and not one of those people had ever produced as negative a reaction in a prospective employee as almost everybody gave to the name Monroe Hall.

“Oh, no, not there, I don’t need a job that bad.”

“But what’s wrong with—”

“Let me put it this way, miss. I wouldn’t go to work for that bastard if he paid me.”

“He will pay you, it’s a job, you can—”

“Not for me. What else chu got?”

“Archivist for a professional wrestler called UltraMud.”

“Oh, I heard a him! Sure! What the heck, it’s a job.”

How many vacancies were there out to Monroe Hall’s place by now? Attrition was just steadily eating into the workforce out there. Marcie believed, as of this morning, Tuesday, June 14, there were seventeen job slots unfilled out at the estate. Even two openings in security, and you were never supposed to run short on security applicants, particularly if you didn’t worry too much about the prior-convictions check.

What it added up to, a girl could find herself feeling sorry for Monroe Hall. Oh, of course, only theoretically. She herself wouldn’t work for the son of a bitch on a bet, the way he rode roughshod over family, friend, employee, and the government alike. She was perfectly happy right where she was at Cooper Placement Service, and even if she weren’t, she’d rather work at the Last Call coal mine over in Golgotha City, where filling out your last will and testament was part of the job application, than work for that—

“Don’tcha have anything else?”

The applicant’s question snapped Marcie out of her woolgathering. She shouldn’t be thinking about the dreadful if pathetic Monroe Hall; she should be thinking about a job for the gentleman across the desk from her in her cubicle, uh… Fred Blanchard, most recently a private secretary for a foreign diplomat down in Washington, D.C., now returning to her desk the list of current job availabilities she’d shown him.

Time to get down to business. “Well, I’m surprised, Mr. Blanchard,” she said, “you haven’t pursued your job search in the greater Washington area. We have fine people in this part of Pennsylvania, but not many international diplomats.”

“That’s good,” Blanchard told her. He was a cheerful, sharp-featured guy with an easygoing manner. “I’ve had enough of international intrigue for a while,” he told her. “I got family up around here, I thought I’d like a little more laid-back a setting. You’ve gotta have some rich people around here, need a private secretary, somebody to field the phone calls and the correspondence, deal with the press, take care of the archives.”

“Well, yes, but someone just at the moment in need—”

He watched her, bright-eyed as a bird. “You thought of something?”

She leaned closer to him. As neutrally as she possibly could, she spoke the name: “Monroe Hall.”

He didn’t even blink. Still smiling, he said, “Is that the kind of guy I’m talking about?”

“Oh, yes, he is,” she said, but then doubt scudded like a cloud across her features. “Have you never heard of him? Monroe Hall?”

He thought, his smile turning quizzical, “Should I?”

“His name was in the paper for a while.”

“Oh, the paper.” Blanchard brushed the fourth estate to one side. “At the embassy,” he said, “we only watched International CNN.”

“Would you—would you like me to set up an appointment?”

“Why not?” he said.

•

Talk about lightning strikes twice. Hardly was Marcie back from lunch, not two hours after sending Fred Blanchard up to talk to Monroe Hall—and how would that work out and did she hope he’d get the job or refuse it? — here came another one. His name was Warren Gillette, and the first thing she noticed about him was that he used to be the chauffeur for Jer Crumbie, who just happened to be one of Marcie’s most favorite movie stars. “My goodness,” she said, “You know Jer Crumbie?”

“Mostly in the rearview mirror,” he said, “Nice fella, though. Not one of your uppity types.”

She was very glad to hear that. “I see he gives you a wonderful recommendation.”

“Yeah, I know.” Gillette chuckled. “It couldn’t of been better if I wrote it myself.”

“But why did you leave?”

“I didn’t,” Gillette said, and shrugged. “He left me. Gave up his New York place and went back to the Coast. For his career, you know.”

“Oh, I see.” She opened the lower right drawer of her desk and pulled a folder from it. “We have a number of driver-type openings. Not movie stars, though.”

Another chuckle. “I guess I’ve had enough movie stars for a while.”

“Fine. Here’s a delivery van, furniture store.”

He made a little grimace. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I’m spoiled or something, but I like to drive for one person, you know. And a good car. Jer always surrounded himself with very good cars.”

“Oh, my goodness,” she said, with sudden realization. “We have someone, very local, who’s famous for wonderful cars, and I know he’s right now looking for a new chauffeur.”

“Well, this is my lucky day,” Gillette said. “Who is he?”

Marcie squinched her eyes up, half in expectation of some sort of explosion. “Monroe Hall,” she said.

“And he’s a rich man with a lot of cars, you say.” Gillette nodded. “What kinda business he in?”

Marcie said, “You never heard of Monroe Hall?”

“Not another showbiz guy, I hope.”

“He was all over the newspapers,” Marcie told him, “and the television.”

“At Jer’s house,” Gillette said, “all we ever looked at was the trades. Unless they’re doing a TV docudrama on this guy’s life, I doubt I’ve heard of him.”

“I bet they will,” Marcie said. “He’s a businessman, stole from his stockholders, stole from his employees, stole from his family, stole from the government.”

Gillette nodded through all this; then, “Well, nobody’s perfect,” he said.

•

Meanwhile, in another cubicle down the line, an applicant named Judson Swope, rather a fearsome large creature, was telling a wee little employee named Penelope, “Yeah, sure, I know who he is. Monroe Hall. Put it over on everybody. Listen, I don’t care what he done. If he pays me, I work for him. People don’t like him, so somebody’s gotta be there to bust heads. I like to bust heads, and I like it best when I get paid to do it. Sign me up.”

“Yes, sir,” whispered Penelope, while in the cubicle behind her a hangdog sort of man with his hat in his hands was saying, “I was a butler in my previous employment.”

Daisy, for this was Daisy’s cubicle, looked at him in some surprise. “You were?” It seemed so improbable.

“I open a mean door,” he assured her. “Here’s the form I filled out, and my references.”

Daisy studied the form first. John Rumsey, with a temporary address with friends over in Shickshinny. Good work history, excellent reference from the Honorable Hildorg Chk, Vostkojekian ambassador to the United States.

“A guy I worked with there, at the embassy,” Rumsey said, “he come in here this morning, you got him a job, he said maybe you could get me one, too.”

“What name?”

“Fred Blanchard.”

“One of the other interviewers must have handled him. Where did we place Mr. Blanchard?”

“With somebody called Monroe Hall.”

“Mon—His name is Blanchard?”

“Yeah.”

“One moment. Just—One moment.”

She hurried away and it didn’t take long to find Marcie, and then it took no time at all to get John Rumsey signed up to apply for the job of butler out at the Hall estate. If John Rumsey didn’t look to Daisy a heck of a lot like her idea of a butler, so what? He’d been good enough for Ambassador Chk. He’d be good enough for Monroe Hall.

•

“Monroe?”

A very guarded “Yes.”

“This is Henry, Monroe.” Blank silence. “Henry Cooper.”

“Ah! Reconsidered Henry? Ready to sell that agency, turn it over to fresh blood?”

“I just wanted you to know, I’m in the process of sending four new employees out to you today.”

“Four?”

Expecting gratitude, possibly even fawning gratitude, Cooper enumerated them: “Chauffeur, butler, private secretary, and a security man.”

“So,” Monroe said, even more snottily than usual, “you can do it when I goose you a little, can’t you?”

“What?”

“If I hadn’t called, called your bluff, offered to take that do-nothing agency off your hands, get somebody eager in there, you still wouldn’t be doing a goddamn thing but rest on your laurels.”

“Monroe—”

“Your problem, Henry, is, you spend too much time at the golf course and not enough time taking care of business. I’ll be giving these fellas a very careful once-over, I want you to know that. We’ll see if you’re trying to palm anything off on us.”

“Mon—”

But he’d hung up, so Cooper did, too. Then he pushed the button to summon Bernice.

“Yes, sir?”

“Tell the girls, Bernice, we won’t be sending people over to Monroe Hall’s place any more.”

“No, sir?”

“No. Fuck him.”

“Yes, sir.”