Earl had the office next door to me, and with that, and with being in the same department, you’d think we’d have become better acquainted. But we never did. Odd to think now. He was a marketing manager and I was a copywriter, but our workdays somehow didn’t intersect. Maybe they would have eventually, but they hadn’t yet, and that’s why it was unusual that the light rapping on the file cabinets behind me came from Earl.
“Hey, want to see something?”
Earl was about my height and had a short scruff of a beard, and a hangover face to match the rumors I’d heard. Thinking back, my image of him when I did see him in the hallway was one of somebody concentrating deeply, because that’s what he needed to do to get where he was going. That could be a bit of backfilling on my part, but that’s how I remember him.
I turned to see him by the file cabinets, and what I saw was a conspiratorial grin, an invitation to mischief. If he’d come up to me on the street at night with the same look, it might have meant he was trying to sell me a watch some oblivious soul thought he still possessed. Or that an accomplice with a blackjack was closing in behind me.
Nah, that’s too much. But he was certainly excited and I recognized this for what it was. He had something he wanted to tell somebody — anybody — and I, at the moment, was the only anybody available, the only one who was not in a meeting or out to lunch.
**********
At that time, the company had the 35th and 37th floors at 41 Madison Avenue, a dark monolith on the northeast corner of Madison Square Park. I was on 35, in an enviable spot for a new guy. Straight out my windows to the left a few midtown blocks away was the Empire State Building. Straight ahead I was eye level with the New York Life Building with its crown of gold shingles that cast a close-the-blinds reflection on sunny days, and its gargoyles that seemed to clutch and shiver in the winter when coated with snow. And to the right, right there, I could identify the windows for our top-floor apartment in Kips Bay.
What made the space almost office-like was the set of side-by-side file cabinets that walled it off from the hallway, five feet tall, with wider drawers because they held mechanical boards for previous print jobs as opposed to folders of 8.5 x 11 papers. (Mechanical boards, folks. There’s another indication of how long ago this happened). A gap between the file cabinets and Earl’s office was my door-less entry. I had more square footage than a few of the real offices around me, including Earl’s. There was a similar space on the other side of the hall that was shared by two sales representatives. I had my spot to myself.
**********
As for the company at that time, even I could tell things were not going well. Being both new and on the lower floor, I was at some remove from most of the mayhem, which seemed to be concentrated on 37 (editorial, finance, executives, and the conference rooms where they battled over the numbers, the plans, the credit, the blame). On 35 (production, marketing, and the mailroom), I didn’t experience any of the chaotic clashes firsthand, but I heard a lot about them afterward. I’d become something of a confidante, someone safe with whom to share whispered, look-around-to-see-who-might-overhear commentaries, judgments, opinions, remedies (I shouldn’t say…they ought to…they never should have…well you know about…).
What I was told was that the current president had been elevated out of the ranks without any executive experience, support from her colleagues, or notable grasp of the overall business, lifted up over other internal candidates who felt themselves far more qualified. Among those sharing this interpretation were a few of those candidates, so I knew to keep that in mind when trying to get a handle on what was really going on. I mean, there had to have been some good reasons for her to be appointed, right? I never heard any, not even that she’d been passable at the job she had before becoming president. But even if the stories I was being told were utterly self-serving, the steady stream of people leaving the company — on their own or otherwise — was pretty compelling evidence that there was a problem at the top.
Somewhere in there were also rumors about the elusive, long lunch-taking, rumpled and wasted-looking Earl. Maybe I wasn’t being fair to him but at a glance they seemed plausible. Still, beyond being able to identify him as Earl if someone asked, “Which one is Earl?,” I didn’t know the guy. Nor, I assumed, did he know much about me.
And yet, here he was, with me his immediate option for sharing what he was eager to share.
**********
When my own time came to be let go, 32 years after this story took place, I was informed by my manager and her HR partner over a video call that my role was eliminated (not me per se, but with no role, well…). They did it as dispassionately as they could, letting me know that this was not performance-based and that I had three weeks left and a severance package, but making it clear that despite my length of service I wasn’t going to be treated any differently than anyone else.
It isn’t a straight comparison. My job loss was part of a larger round of layoffs, and the firings that provide the background for this story seemed to be haphazard, individually targeted acts, this person then that one, then that one, one a day every day or so, three or four in a week, for several months. And how I was informed was downright humane compared to the Great Bloodletting of 1991. Quite a few of the people being let go then were shock-confronted in their offices, given a brief time window to pack up what they could in a single box, and escorted out by building security. Just like that. They’d get a call later to talk about final paychecks and severance and someone would send them anything personal they weren’t able to carry out right then.
As related to me by sources closer to the situation, it was all a reflection on the president being in over her head and more concerned about asserting her authority than figuring out how to turn things around. The financials were bad and she had few allies, and well, for a time, you can pin it on everyone else. For a time. If you’re convinced everyone is actively out to keep you from being successful, then what you see all around you aren’t just underperformers but threats. So she fired people. A lot of them. And sent them home immediately before they make a scene or plot any sabotage. I’m sure that some of them did indeed bear some responsibility for the company’s poor performance, and that some were indeed trying to undermine the president. It couldn’t have all been her fault. But it couldn’t have all been their fault either.
Added to the number of people being fired were some productive employees who didn’t see much of a future at the company and left on their own. Among them were several of the managers in my own department, including the one who hired me. To get the copywriter job, I’d had to interview not just with him but with four other marketing people and one acquisition editor. Within six months, only the acquisition editor remained, the others having found more stable jobs elsewhere.
Overall it took most of the rest of the calendar year for things to settle down. The president was finally — finally! — relieved of duty, the company put in steadier hands and some unexpected successes brought celebrations and relief. At some point, as the madness started tapering off, I got a call from the recruiter who’d recommended me for the job, checking in to see how things were going. I reminded her that she’d told me this was a great place to be and that, quote, “They’re building a fantastic new team.”
I then said, “You didn’t say I was the first-round pick.”
She thought it was funny.
**********
Here’s a detail from those days that is best characterized as — I’m sorry, there’s no other word for it — Kafka-esque. As I’ve written, Freeman had the 35th and 37th floors. Reception was on 37, with the elevator doors opening into the waiting area by the front desk. If I had a visitor, they had to go to 37 and wait and I’d get a call to come up and get them.
On 35, the elevators opened into a hallway with two doors to get into the office, one straight ahead that let you into the production area, one down the hall to the left that let you in by the mailroom. Let you in, that is, if you knew the security code, the sequence to punch into a pad below the door knob. When someone was fired, and it was thought to be a contentious situation (and it almost always was), the code was changed immediately. This inevitably led to people coming back from lunch or from a meeting on 37, and punching the code as they remembered it, only to be denied entry.
Picture it. Someone absentmindedly entering the combination, perhaps without looking, pure muscle memory, but unable to open the door. Trying again, looking this time, rattling the door knob, and again maybe one more time, in denial, a lone figure in the hallway, frustration mounting, maybe starting to wonder with no rational basis for it, “Is it me? Was it me?”
It happened to me a few times, and yes, most of those times, I stubbornly tried the code I knew two or three times, thinking – hoping – there was a mechanical problem or I’d just messed it up. I personally never thought the lock change had been done to keep me out, but it was upsetting nonetheless, knowing something had happened to warrant resetting the code.
A couple of times, at the door closer to the elevator, someone in production heard me trying to get in and opened it for me, but if that didn’t happen, rather than knock sharply and raise my voice, I’d go down the hall to the other door. There was usually someone in the mailroom who’d already led a few people in and was at the ready. And that door had a narrow window so people could see that, okay, it was just me, not a fired person trying to get back in. It got to the point where my first question once inside wasn’t, “What’s the new code?” but simply, “Who?”
**********
“Hey, want to see something?”
Teasing this out, aren’t I? Here’s what Earl wanted me to see. A piece of notepad paper, signed with a thick black pen:
To my new friend, Earl.
Great to meet you. If you ever have any trouble, come to me.
Your friend,
Bruce
I think the paper had some kind of “From the desk of” header but I didn’t need to see that to know who’d just pledged himself to Earl, his new champion.
Bruce Cutler.
As in Bruce Cutler.
The Bruce Culter.
Look him up.
It simply was not possible to be in New York in the early 90s, and be a sentient human being, and not know who Bruce Cutler was. He was John Gotti’s lawyer.
John Gotti.
The John Gotti.
The Dapper Don.
Look him up.
After Gotti’s acquittal in a string of cases, one of the tabloids came up with an all-time nickname for him: The Teflon Don. Because nothing stuck. And as the lawyer responsible for Gotti seeming to be untouchable (at least for a while), Bruce Cutler had become a celebrity in his own right. Representing Gotti – to the public every bit as much to a jury – he was out there, telling a story of his client’s American Dream success and an overzealous vindictive Justice Department, telling it at press conferences, in local news stories and studio segments, in talk radio interviews, in profiles in New York Times and GQ magazine.
Mr. Cutler was the kind of guy that if you were waiting for one of our elevators, in the bank furthest from the lobby, and he came in through the revolving doors at the front of the building, you knew something had just happened. Felt it. And it wasn’t just that his voice carried as he greeted by name whoever was on the lobby desk. (Overhearing him is how I learned a couple of their names). He really did have that kind of presence that parts the air. He was average height but seemed much bigger. Hair close cut but he wasn’t bald, thick necked, chested and armed, much trimmer from the waist down, like he defiantly skipped leg day in the gym. He was always moving quickly but in the few times I encountered him, he was never rude or impatient with anyone , even if they slowed him down a bit.
Cutler’s office was part of a legal practice that took up the entirety of the 34th floor at 41 Madison, one floor below ours. Perhaps not coincidentally, there were offices for the New York State Court of Appeals on the floors above ours, with their actual courtrooms around the corner on 25th Street. Both the law offices and the court offices were accessed by the same elevators we used, and I’d ridden up or down with lawyer-client pairs that looked every bit like they could be involved in a Gotti World case, large men confined in newly bought suits with colorful ties, their attorneys small enough to appear to be sidekicks, me pressed into the corner averting my eyes, projecting — hopefully — an air of oblivious indifference. One time going up, that ride’s version of the larger man leaned over to that ride’s version of the smaller attorney and said, “Yeah, if you could get it down to six months, that would be beautiful.” The attorney glared at him – up at him – and said, “Hmm,” which I took to be his way of reminding his client that he’d been told to keep his mouth shut.
Actually, at the time of this story, Cutler had been disqualified from being Gotti’s lawyer and was himself facing criminal contempt charges. Wiretap recordings from Gotti’s social club in Queens gave the impression that he was well aware of Gotti’s criminal activities, not involved directly but knowledgeable enough to negate attorney-client privilege. He ultimately was sentenced to 90 days house arrest, three years probation, and a 180-day suspension from practicing law in New York State. I had to look that up.
Still, despite his professional issues, apparently Mr. Cutler had been his usual convivial self that morning when he and Earl stepped into the same elevator, and Earl had no problem starting a conversation with him. When they reached the 34th floor, instead of bidding him good day, Mr. Cutler invited Earl to join him in the “inner sanctum” while he (Culter, not Earl) got a shoeshine. As they conversed, an older black man came in with a footrest-on-top kit, and while they spoke, he brushed, polished, and buffed away. Before they parted, Mr. Cutler wrote out and signed the note Earl showed me.
Well, I was indeed impressed. There it was. As solid as a contract. From the man who had defended the Don with red-faced intensity. A man the Don owed! And now, this man had committed himself to coming to Earls aid at the first sign of distress. Someone who could bring a knee-buckling variety of resources – conventional or otherwise – to his defense.
There’s no way Earl could have walked away disappointed for having shared his story with me. My reaction was every bit as overawed and envious as he could have wanted. But even after that, our office dynamic didn’t change. We went right back to being next door neighbors who were cordial and not much more.
And now I think, If I’d been a little more friendly myself, I might have gotten one of those notes. I’d ridden the elevator with Mr. Culter more than once, had exchanged nods of acknowledgement, but hadn’t brought myself to actually speak to him. That video call waiting for me 30 years in the future, the one where I was let go? Imagine if I’d been able to pull out a note like that, to show the people who were ending my time at the company who I had in my corner.
Why yes, I do have an attorney. Maybe you’ve heard of him?
**********
I’m guessing here, but I think it was less than two weeks later that I came back down to 35 from a meeting on 37, only to find I couldn’t get in the door. And yes, again, I tried what I thought was the combination a couple of times, and yes, again, it took longer than it should have for me to realize someone had been fired.
I walked down the hall to the door near the mailroom. As I waited to be let in, I started to think of who it could be. I wasn’t basing this on who I thought might deserve it. I was simply making a mental journey around our floor plan, going desk by desk, door by door. Who was still there, who had left, who was left, who could be next simply not having been fired yet?
Donna. I wondered if it was Donna.
Donna was the lead marketer for our trade subscription series and there was no way she would have been thrown out for not being good at her job. She was someone everyone liked and respected. I knew people who didn’t have much good to say about anybody else in the company but who thought she was terrific, both as a person and as a colleague. Super competent, friendly, the works.
But given how things were at the company at that time, all of those reasons why it couldn’t possibly have been Donna were just as compelling as reasons why it might have been her. I mean, firing the wrong person would have been just another sign of our president’s lack of control, right? Or was it so far-fetched to think the president felt just as threatened by good staffers as bad ones and was working to get rid of anyone whose ability rated higher than her own? Or that at least some of the firings were deliberately inexplicable? That’s a power play too, isn’t it? You! Yeah you! OUT! Butbutbut….BUTBUTBUT NOTHING! OUT! Why? BECAUSE I SAID SO!
Or maybe Donna had joined the ranks of those who left while it was still their decision to make, and was told to leave immediately.
I went down that twisted pathway of thoughts in a matter of seconds as I stood at the door, and before I’d even knocked, I’d become convinced the person who had been fired was Donna. Utterly convinced.
So guess who let me in?
Of course, it was Donna.
She was already laughing as I took a step in, and before I could even say thank you or ask the question, she said, “Nope, it wasn’t me.”
“Okay, well that’s good. Who was it?”
“Earl.”
Uh oh.