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time to tidy up for a full-dress inspection. And that kind of thing is worse
than useless.
The receptionist gave me my first setback. She didn't recognize my face and
she didn't recognize my name when I gave it to her. She said lazily: "I'll see
if Mr. Harris is busy, Mr. Connelly."
"Mr. Courtenay, young lady. And I'm Mr. Harris's boss." Kathy and I walked in
on a scene of idleness and slackness that curled my hair.
Harris, with his coat off, was playing cards with two young employees. Two
more were gaping, glassy-eyed, before a hypnoteleset, obviously in trance
state. Another man was lackadaisically punching a calculator, one-finger
system.
"Harris!"
I thundered.
Everybody except the two men in trance swiveled my way, open-mouthed. I walked
to the hypnoteleset and snapped it off. They came to, groggily.
"Mum-mum-mum-mister Courtenay," Harris stuttered. "We didn't expect "
"Obviously. The rest of you, carry on. Harris, let's go into your office."
Unobtrusively, Kathy followed us.
"Harris," I said, "good work excuses a lot. We've been getting damn good work
out of you on this project. I'm disturbed, gravely disturbed, by the slovenly
atmosphere I see here. But that can be corrected "
His phone rang, and I picked it up.
A voice said excitedly: "Ham? He's here. Make it snappy; he took a limousine."
"Thanks," I said and hung up. "Your tipster at the airport," I told Harris. He
went white. "Show me your tally sheets," I said. "Your interview forms. Your
punchcard codes. Your masters. Your sigma-progress charts. The works.
Everything, in short, that you wouldn't expect me to ask to see.
Get them out."
He stood there a long, long time and finally said: "There aren't any."
"What have you got to show me?"
"Finalizations," he muttered. "Composites."
"Fakes, you mean? Fiction, like the stuff you've been feeding us over the
wire?"
He nodded. His face was sick.
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"How could you do it, Harris?" I demanded.
"How could you do it?"
He poured out a confused torrent of words. He hadn't meant to. It was his
first independent job. Maybe he was just no damn good. He'd tried to keep the
lower personnel up to snuff while he was dogging it himself but it couldn't be
done;
they sensed it and took liberties and you didn't dare check them up. His
self-pitying note changed; he became weakly belligerent. What difference did
it make anyway? It was just preliminary paperwork. One man's guess was as good
as another's.
And anyway the whole project might go down the drain. What if he had been
taking it easy; he bet there were plenty of other people who took it easy and
everything came out all right anyway.
"No," I said. "You're wrong and you ought to know you're wrong. Advertising's
an art, but it depends on the sciences of sampling, area-testing, and customer
research. You've knocked the props from under our program. We'll salvage what
we can and start again."
He took a feeble stand: "You're wasting your time if you do that, Mr.
Courtenay. I've been working closely with Mr.
Runstead for a long time. I know what he thinks, and he's as big a shot as you
are. He thinks this paperwork is just a lot of expensive nonsense."
I knew Matt Runstead better than that. I knew he was sound and so did
everybody else. "What," I asked sharply, "have you got to back that statement
up with? Letters? Memos? Taped calls?"
"I must have something like that," he said, and dived into his desk. He
flipped through letters and memos, and played snatches of tape for minutes
while the look of fear and frustration on his face deepened. At last he said
in bewilderment: "I
can't seem to find anything but I'm sure "
Sure he was sure. The highest form of our art is to convince the customer
without letting him know he's being convinced.
This weak sister had been indoctrinated by Runstead with the unrealistic
approach and then sent in on my project, to do a good job of bitching it up.
"You're fired, Harris," I said. "Get out and don't come back. And I wouldn't
advise you to try for a job in the advertising profession after this."
I went out into the office and announced: "You're through. All of you. Collect
your personal stuff and leave the office.
You'll get your checks by mail."
They gaped. Beside me, Kathy murmured: "Mitch, is that really necessary?"
"You're damned right it's necessary. Did one of them tip off the home office
on what was going on? No; they just relaxed and drifted. I said it was an
infection, didn't I? This is it." Ham Harris drifted past us toward the door,
hurt bewilderment on his face. He had been so sure Runstead would back him up.
He had his crammed briefcase in one hand and his raincoat in the other. He
didn't look at me.
I went into his vacated office and picked up the direct wire to New York.
"Hester? This is Mr. Courtenay. I've just fired the entire
San Diego branch. Notify Personnel and have them do whatever's necessary about
their pay. And get me Mr. Runstead on the line."
I drummed my fingers impatiently for a long minute, and then Hester said: "Mr.
Courtenay, I'm sorry to keep you waiting. Mr. Runstead's secretary says he's
left for Little America on one of those tours. She says he cleaned up the
A.I.G.
thing and felt like a rest."
"Felt like a rest. Good God almighty. Hester, get me a New York to Little
America reservation. I'm shooting right back on the next jet. I want to just
barely touch ground before I zip off to the Pole. Got it?"
"Yes, Mr. Courtenay."
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I hung up and found that Kathy was staring at me. "You know, Mitch," she said,
"I've been uncharitable to you in my time. Kicking about your bad temper. I
can see where you got it if this has been a typical operation."
"It's not typical," I said. "It's the worst case of flagrant obstructionism
I've ever seen. But there's a lot of it. Everybody trying to make everybody
else look bad. Darling, I've got to get to the field now and bull my way onto
the next eastbound.
Do you want to come too?"
She hesitated. "You won't mind if I stay and do a little tourist stuff by
myself?"
"No, of course not. You have a good time and when you get back to New York
I'll be there."
We kissed, and I raced out. The office was clear by then and I told the
building manager to lock it until further notice when
Kathy left.
I looked up from the street and she waved at me from the strange, flimsy
building.
SIX
I swung off the ramp at New York, and Hester was right there. "Good girl," I
told her. "When's the Pole rocket shoot off?"
"Twelve minutes, from Strip Six, Mr. Courtenay. Here are your ticket and the
reservation. And some lunch in case "
"Fine. I did miss a meal." We headed for Strip Six, with me chewing a
regenerated cheese sandwich as I walked.
"What's up at jthe office?" I asked indistinctly.
"Big excitement about you firing the San Diego people. Personnel sent up a
complaint to Mr. Schocken and he upheld you approximately Force Four."
That wasn't too good. Force Twelve hurricane would have been a blast from his
office on the order of: "How dare you housekeepers question the decision of a
Board man working on his own project? Never let me catch you " and so on.
Force Four rising gale, small craft make for harbor was something like:
"Gentlemen, I'm sure Mr. Courtenay had perfectly good reasons for doing what
he did. Often the Big Picture is lost to the purely routine workers in our
organization "
I asked Hester: "Is Runstead's secretary just a hired hand or one of his " I
was going to say "stooges" but smoothly reversed my field " one of his
confidants?"
"She's pretty close to him," Hester said cautiously.
"What was her reaction to the San Diego business?"
"Somebody told me she laughed her head off, Mr. Courtenay."
I didn't push it any harder. Finding out where I stood with respect to the big
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