Free Killer Instinct by Joseph Finder Page A

my head, flushing despite my best efforts. “We’re great.”
    “Your wife sick or something?”
    “She’s fine.” Like: What the hell?
    “You have cancer, maybe?”
    I half smiled, said quietly, “I’m in good health, Gordy, but thanks for asking.”
    “Then what the hell’s your problem?”
    I was silent while I pondered the best way to answer that wouldn’t get me fired.
    “Four years in a row you’re Club 101. Then you’re what? You’re Festino.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Can’t close.”
    “That’s not the case, Gordy. I was Salesman of the Year.”
    “In a great market for plasma and LCDs. Rising tide floats all boats.”
    “My boat floated higher.”
    “Your boat still seaworthy? That’s the question. Look at the last year. See, I’m starting to wonder whether you’re hitting the wall. Happens, sometimes, to sales guys at this point in their careers. Lose that spark. You still have the fire in the belly?”
    It’s called acid reflux, and I was feeling it right now.
    “It’s still there,” I said. “You know, like they say the only thing that counts is how many times you succeed. The more times you fail and keep trying, the more times you succeed.”
    “I don’t want to hear any of that Mark Simkins candy-ass crapola here,” he said. Busted. “He’s full of it. The more times you fail, the more accounts you lose.”
    “I don’t think that’s what he means, Gordy,” I began.
    “‘ Expect good things to happen,’” he said, doing an unexpectedly good imitation of Mark Simkins, halfway between Mister Rogers and the Reverend Billy Graham, if you can imagine that. “Well, in the real world that we’re living in here, I expect a shitstorm every day, and I come prepared with my rubber poncho and galoshes, you get me? That’s how it works in the real world, not in Candy-Ass Land. Now, you and Trevor Allard and Brett Gleason want to do a side-by-side? See who drives a bigger piece of the number? See who’s up-and-coming and who’s history?”
    History. “Trevor got lucky last year. Hyatt started buying big.”
    “Steadman, listen to me, and listen good: You make your own luck.”
    “Gordy,” I said, “you assigned him the better accounts this past year, okay? You gave Trevor all the good chocolates, and you gave me all the ones with the pink coconut centers.”
    He looked up at me abruptly, those ferret eyes glittering. “And there’s a hole in the ozone layer, and you were switched at birth, and you got any other excuses while you’re at it?” His voice got steadily louder until he was shouting. “Let me tell you something. There is shit about to rain down on us from Tokyo, and we don’t even know what kind of shit it is! And if I promote the wrong guy here, it’s my ass on the line!”
    I wanted to say, Hey, I don’t want this stupid promotion anyway. I just want to go home and have a steak and make love to my wife. But I’d suddenly realized that, damn it, I wanted the job. Maybe I didn’t want the job so much as I wanted to get it. I said, “You won’t be making a mistake.”
    He smiled again, and I was really starting to despise his evil little smiles. “It’s survival of the fittest around here, you know that.”
    “Hell, yeah.”
    “But sometimes evolution needs a little help. That’s my job. I promote the fittest. Kill off the weak. And if you get this job, you’ve got to be able to fire people. Lop off the deadwood. Throw the deadweight overboard before it sinks us. Could you fire Festino?”
    “I’d put him on a plan first.” A performance plan was the way the company told you to shape up or beat it. It was usually a fancy way to create a paper trail to fire you, but sometimes you could turn things around.
    “He’s on a plan already, Steadman. He’s deadwood, and you know it. If you get the job, could you fire his ass?”
    “If I had to,” I said.
    “Any member of your team doesn’t perform, you don’t hit your numbers. One weak link,