The Art of War
THE ART OF WAR
My enemy’s enemy is my friend.
—MERCEDES BAXTER, BY WAY OF SUN TZU
January 1984
Mercedes Baxter listened as the board deliberated via speakerphone on how to fairly compensate Mike Barron, who had already gotten quite a generous year-end bonus, but was still burned that Jamie Garland had been given the job and, more importantly, the title he’d been promised. Mike’s father, Leo Barron, who like Joseph Kennedy ruled his son from a distance, had made it known that his boy was still not happy, and expected the board to do right by him. “Otherwise…” Leo warned, letting his words trail off with the veiled threat implied. Leo Barron, an old-time movie producer, had been a close friend of Harvey Khan’s. They shared a past and rather dubious business associations that kept Leo out of the limelight but allowed his son to shine.
Harvey Khan had a gun to his head. He knew it. And Leo knew it.
This pissed Khan off even more. He couldn’t afford to lose Mike Barron, despite the secretarial turnover and complaints against him. In less than ten years, the Alliance Group had not only caught up to Light but had surpassed them. Khan was cornered.
“We’ll take this up next week,” he told the board, disconnecting the speakerphone and leaning back in his chair, thoroughly frustrated.
Mercedes walked over to him and began massaging his shoulders. “Close your eyes, sweetie,” she told him. “It’s not worth the aggravation.”
He knew she was right and tried to let it go. “I just hate that this kid and his fucking father have us over a barrel,” he said, finally relaxing into her hands.
“I don’t think they do, my love,” she whispered, which brought him out of his reverie. Khan opened his eyes and looked up at her. “I’ve been thinking about this situation,” she continued, still rubbing his shoulders. “I may have figured out a way for you to trump Mike Barron and his father.”
Khan sat up, more amused than annoyed. “Oh, I see,” he said, “so you’ve solved something on your own that the board cannot?”
“Yes,” she told him stoically, “I think I have.”
He shooed her away. “Stop the nonsense. You don’t understand how it works.” He picked up his reading glasses and reached for the mail.
Mercedes, offended, pulled the mail back. “How do you know what I do or I do not understand?” she asked.
He sighed; he wasn’t in the mood for an argument. “It’s complicated,” he said gently, reaching his arms out for her to come to him.
“Don’t patronize me,” she told him, walking away.
Khan, who had been hoping for a quickie before lunch, was exasperated. “There are politics here I couldn’t possibly explain,” he told her.
She stared at him. Hard. It was a mistake to underestimate Mercedes Baxter. After all, she had been weaned on the art of leveraging private information for personal gain and had pieced together a good amount of information on the bad-boy agent. She had a deep understanding of who he was and, more importantly, what he was hiding. Mercedes Baxter had done her research.
Mike Barron, who started in the Sylvan Light mailroom in 1978, had, thanks to his father’s associations with Harvey Khan, been able to quickly leverage his way into a choice position working for Bryan Forester, a red-hot television packaging agent.
“You keep your mouth shut and your ears open,” Leo had told his son on his first day as Bryan’s trainee. Since there was a toggle switch on the phone of any agent who had a trainee, the trainee could listen in on phone calls and learn the art of negotiation. A good trainee, knowing that he shouldn’t listen when the door was closed, used discretion.
Mike Barron was neither good nor discreet. He was an opportunist sitting outside the office of a man many believed was being groomed for the future at Sylvan Light.
And then another future called.
His name was Steiglitz.
Forester listened.
So did Barron.
“Matt Stieglitz is courting my boss,” Mike dutifully told his father, reporting that Bryan had agreed to meet on the condition that they also meet his East Coast partner Kevin Lewis. Though located on different coasts, the two agents, one from Baton Rouge, the other from Yonkers, had equal parts integrity and ambition. Sharing not only clients but philosophies, they agreed early on that if one left, the other would as well. “They’re meeting at Shipp’s house Friday afternoon,” Mike told his father. David Shipp was the good cop to Matt Stieglitz’s bad.
“Okay,” Leo said. “Don’t say a word. I’ll take it from here.”
At 9:15 Friday morning, Mike Barron stood in front of Harvey Khan, Sam Lesser, Stu Lonshien, and Gil Amati, telling them about the pending meeting with Steiglitz and Shipp, and adding, as his father had advised, that though he didn’t personally hear it, he wouldn’t be surprised if the two agents had already started calling clients.
It was like a knife to the gut as the senior agents, saying little, sat stunned. Stieglitz and Shipp had already wounded the venerable agency when they along with five other top young men walked out three years earlier and formed the Alliance Group, claiming that the old guard at Light were too stodgy, too set in their ways. The board of directors belittled them at the time, and tried to pretend it was business as usual, but Alliance began making not only headway but inroads, signing many of Light’s bigger clients, and now, apparently, key agents. If this was true, what young Mike Barron had heard, then history was repeating. Homegrown young men were jumping ship; worse, they were jumping to the mutineers. Where three years earlier they had ignored the rumors, this time they could not. Immediate action was required, and two hours later, though they had yet to take the meeting, nor call a client, Bryan Forester and Kevin Lewis were escorted out of the building.
It was assumed someone had snitched. People were pointing fingers, but no one pointed them more aggressively than Mike Barron.
Calling Bryan Forester at home that evening, Mike told him he wouldn’t rest until he found out who’d betrayed them, but he confided, confidentially, that he’d heard it had come from someone inside Alliance. He volunteered that along with Bryan’s personal effects, he was going to sneak him his Rolodex.
Nothing was more important to an agent than the spinning wheels of little white cards containing precious personal information. So the gesture Barron made was not only germane, but it was his way, he believed, of successfully covering his tracks, showing his loyalty, and creating an opening, should he need one, with the competition.
“We have to close that opening,” Mercedes said, after recounting the facts to Khan as she knew them.
Khan was surprised, not just with the information she’d gathered, but the accuracy.
When had she done this research? he thought. And why had she done it?
He looked at her, astonished, as she took a seat on the other side of his desk. It was both presumptive and annoying that she thought she could help.
“We can’t let the competition hire him,” she said, snapping Khan back to reality.
He sighed. “Okay, so, what? I call Stieglitz and tell him not to hire Mike Barron?” he said, pushing his chair back, signaling an end to this nonsense.
But Mercedes was just getting started. “In an industry where talent is rewarded, betrayal is punished,” she told him, adding that Mike Barron had snitched on Bryan and Kevin and pointed the finger at everyone else in order to exonerate himself.
“That was five years ago,” he reminded her. “No one cares.”
Mercedes disagreed. “Disloyalty has no expiration date,” she said, referring to Benedict Arnold. “Maybe it’s time to let it be known that Mike Barron, like his father, is a man of questionable character.”
Khan shook his head, growing annoyed once again. “What don’t you understand? I’d be eating my own,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to destroy the boy’s reputation; after all, Mike Barron was a valuable asset to the company.
“His reputation as an agent has nothing to do with his reputation as an employee,” she argued, saying that while clients wouldn’t care about whether or not he had snitched, agents would, most especially those whom he’d snitched on. She leaned on the desk and drove her point home. “Mike Barron has gotten by because no one has confirmed a truth many have suspected.” She stared at Khan hard. “It’s time to confirm it,” she said, then outlined a plan that was cunning in its simplicity. “I’ll schedule separate lunches with Barry Hirsch, Skip Brittingham, and Tom Pollack,” she told him. “It’ll be a catch-up, no specific agenda, but at those lunches you should casually ask what they think of Barron. Tell them you’re considering promoting him, but that you’re worried about his loyalty, letting it slip that after all, he was the one who snitched on Forester and Lewis. Say it matter-of-factly, as if you assumed they knew,” she said. “They’ll do the rest.”
It was a genius idea.
Hirsch, Brittingham, and Pollack were widely respected top entertainment attorneys who had relationships with all industry leaders. They would, of course, tell all the heads of all the agencies, staining Mike Barron’s reputation enough to make them think twice, but not so much as to affect the clients he serviced.
Khan stared at his muse with both awe and fear.
“You will wound him enough to maim, but not kill,” she said, walking over to his side of the desk and standing before him. “And in that way, keep him on a short leash for life.”
Harvey Khan was flabbergasted. Mercedes Baxter had demonstrated that she not only understood the rules but could twist them to her benefit, and as long as she was on his side, to his benefit as well.
Kneeling in front of him now, Mercedes unzipped his fly and took out his penis, flicking her tongue over the tip. “My enemy’s enemy is my friend,” she said teasingly.
Then she stopped talking.