A Face in the Crowd

the sea of Lennie Wheeler’s ambitions. It could not be allowed.
    He hadn’t opened with Fuck you, Lennie . First he tried the reasonable approach, using the latest spreadsheets to lay out his case. Their market share in New England was due to their ability to rent one-way and at hourly rates the big boys couldn’t match. Because the area they covered was so compact, they could rebalance their entire inventory within three hours, where the big boys couldn’t and had to charge a premium. On September 1, move-in day for the students, Speedy owned Boston. Spread the fleet thin trying to cover the Lower 48 and they’d have the same headaches as U-Haul and Penske—the same lumbering business model they purposely avoided and undersold. Why would they want to be like the other guys when they were killing the other guys? If Wheeler hadn’t noticed, Penske was in Chapter 11, Thrifty too.
    “Precisely,” Wheeler said. “With the big boys on the sidelines, this is the perfect time. We don’t try to be like them, Dean. We chop the country into regions and do what we already do.”
    “How does that work in the Northwest?” Evers asked. “Or the Southwest? Or even the Midwest? The country’s too big.”
    “It may not be as profitable at first, but it won’t take long. You’ve seen our competition. Eighteen months—two years tops—and we’ll be absolutely killing them.”
    “We’re already overextended, and now you want us to take on more debt.”
    As they went back and forth, Evers honestly believed in his argument. Even for a publicly owned company, the problems of capitalization and cash flow were insurmountable—a judgment that would prove devastatingly true two decades later, when the downturn hit. But Lennie Wheeler was used to having his way, and nothing Evers said would dissuade him. Wheeler had already talked with several venture capital concerns and printed up a sleek-looking brochure. He planned to take his proposal directly to the shareholders, over Evers’s protests, if necessary.
    “I don’t think you want to do that,” Evers said.
    “And why’s that, Dean?”
    He’d tried, really tried, to do this ethically, honorably. And he knew he was right; time would prove it. In business everything was a means to one end—survival. Evers felt it urgently then and still thought it true today: He had to save the company. Hence, the nuclear option.
    “I don’t think you want to do that because I don’t think you’d like what I’d take to the shareholders’ meeting. Or should I say, whom.”
    Wheeler laughed, a sick little chuckle. He stared at Evers as if he’d pulled a gun. “Whom?”
    “We both know whom,” Evers said.
    Wheeler slowly rubbed a hand up the side of his face. “I was wondering why you walked in here like you’d already won something.”
    “We’re not winning anything. We’re avoiding a mistake that would lose us everything. I’m sorry it came to this. If you’d have just listened to me—”
    “Fuck you, Dean,” Wheeler said. “Don’t try to apologize for blackmail. It’s bad manners. And since it’s just the two of us, why don’t you roll those spreadsheets tight—that’s the only way you’ll get them up that narrow ass of yours—and admit the truth: you’re a coward. Always were.”
    Within a year, Evers bought him out. The split was expensive, and, in retrospect, a better deal than Wheeler deserved. Lennie left New England, then his wife, and finally, in an ER in Palm Springs, this earthly vale of tears. Out of respect, Evers flew west for the funeral, at which, not surprisingly, there were no lifeguard types, and, of the family, only the daughter, who dryly thanked Evers for coming. He didn’t say the first thought that had come into his mind: Sarcasm doesn’t become fat girls, dear . A few years later, after a thorough vetting of the numbers and fueled by Bain Capital, Speedy actually did go national, using a streamlined version of their old regional plan. That Evers had been right—that it ended with Speedy’s lawyers filing the same Chapter 11 briefs as their vanquished rivals—was little vindication. He came out of it with a goodly sum, however, and that was.
    The funny thing was that with a minimum of digging—an offhand question or three to Martha, a keen read of her blinking—Wheeler could have bought himself an ironclad insurance policy. When Evers realized this, he gently dropped her, which, because they both had a conscience, was