"Ask Tony Tollini-if he's still alive."
"Meaning?"
"The week after I got promoted to director of product placement, Tony was promoted to VP of systems outreach."
Wendy Wilkerson looked away as if ashamed. She swallowed hard while trying to compose herself.
"Yeah?" Remo prompted.
"He was promoted because as director of sales he had had to let some staff go. Unfortunately, he used the L word."
"L?"
"Lay," said Wendy, "off." She said it as if enunciating two disconnected words not having any remote coincidence in nature or commerce.
"He used that word in public," she went on, "in a press release. When the board heard about it, they promoted him to the south wing so fast he was still in shock when they were moving his personal effects in."
"Time out. You say he screwed up, but then they promoted him?"
"At IDC," said Wendy, "if you screw up, one of two things happens. You get shipped out of Mamaroneck, never to be heard of again, completely derailed from the fast track. Or they promote you to the south wing, which is like a second chance."
"Other than the weak light, how bad can it be?"
Wendy sighed, giving her red hair a toss. "It's hell. First, they give you a title that has no meaning and no concrete job description. Then they ignore you, all the while expecting you to produce for the firm. If you don't, it's like being buried alive, fast-track-wise."
"But you get paid, right?"
"There's more to life than money, I'll have you know," Wendy said tartly. "I lost my secured parking spot and my secretary. I have no perks. The other wings pretend I don't even exist. And worst of all, I've been director of product placement for almost six months and I have no idea what I should be doing. What is product placement, anyway? Do you know?"
Remo frowned. "Isn't it where they sneak things like billboards and soda cans into movies? Kinda like hidden advertising. "
Wendy Wilkerson's green eyes went as wide as if they had detonated. She grabbed Remo's arms in shock.
"You know! I mean, are you sure? Where can I verify this? Oh, my God. In six horrible months you're the first person who has had so much as a clue."
Remo shook off the grasping claws and said, "Let's stick with the subject. Okay, you've been exiled to the dipshit wing of IDC. Where does the Mafia come into this?"
Wendy Wilkerson folded her arms under her breasts, hugging herself. "Tony was made VP of systems outreach. You should have seen him that first week, with a stack of dictionaries, trying to figure out his job description. Finally he gave up. He decided to make things happen, hoping something would click."
"And?"
"Nothing did. At first. We were having lunch one day in his office, just commiserating. You know?"
"Sure. I commiserate all the time. Keeps me from nodding off."
Wendy nodded understandingly. Remo rolled his eyes.
Wendy went on. "The firm had been taking a beating. They announced a new policy. Market-driven. It was revolutionary. Unprecedented. Before this, IDC created systems and then tailored them to customer needs. But the market was too soft to go on that way. The board decided that the customer should dictate his own needs and IDC should try to fill them. Amazing, huh?"
"Isn't that just another way of saying the customer is always right?" Remo asked.
Wendy blinked. "I hadn't thought of that. Maybe it wasn't so revolutionary, after all."
"Guess not," Remo said dryly.
"Anyway," Wendy continued, "Tony and I were discussing the impact this would have on us. I had been watching the Geraldo show that morning. He had on these horrid people from the witness-protection program. Former hitmen and informers. They all wore silly hats and wigs and fake beards."
"Sounds like every other episode," Remo remarked.
"Geraldo asked one if he wasn't afraid of the Mafia catching up to him one day, and the man laughed, you know. He scoffed at the idea. I still remember what he said. He said, 'The Mafia can't do nothing to me. They're still back in the fifties. They got no computers. They cant run license plates. They can't even file their taxes by electronic mail.' The man was very smug about it."
"You don't mean-"
Wendy's green eyes grew reflective as bicycle flashers. "As a joke, I repeated this to Tony. I said the Mafia is a hundred billion-dollar-a-year organization. They need computers. They need faxes. They need word processing. It was a joke, you know? I was just trying to break up the monotony of our corporate exile."
"Don't tell me-"
Wendy nodded. "Tony didn't think it was a joke at all. He immediately saw the possibilities. And he had this uncle, whom he barely knew.
"Uncle?"
"Uncle Fiavorante. He was big in California. Now he's in New York, running things down there."
"Not Don Fiavorante Pubescio?" said Remo, jaw dropping.
"I think that's the name."
"Let me get this straight. The Mafia didn't come to IDC. IDC went to the Mafia?"
"Shhh," said Wendy. "Not so loud. The board still doesn't know. "
"They don't?"
"They always ignore the south wing until it generates revenue or screws up completely. Tony went to his uncle, got an agreement to participate in a pilot program, and the uncle picked Boston as they first city to try out the program."
"LANSCII?"
"That's right." Wendy frowned in surprise. "How did you know? It's supposed to be a trade secret."
"Word is getting out," Remo said dryly.
"Tony had the programmers come up with a super-userfriendly software. It was kind of a joke. Easier to use than VMS. They named it after Meyer Lansky, the old-time mob financial genius."
Remo snapped his fingers. "I knew I'd heard the name before."
"Everything was going fine until the Boston hard disk crashed. It took all their bookkeeping records. Can you imagine those people? Not making backup copies? What could they have been thinking of?"