Sneak Peek | SHADOWS of the CASKE

SHADOWS OF THE CASKET EMPIRE

MARK A. EVANS

This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental or presumed.

This material may not be reprinted or shared in any way or format, without prior, explicit, written authorization from the author.

~~~ For My Family ~~~

CONTENTS

Introduction

Good Ol’ Boys Club
Recruitment Seduction
No Prisoners
Legacy
Great American
DNA
Tycoon
Greed
Entertaining Fools
Entrapment
Convenient Acquisition
Cabo
Unexpected Ally
Dangerous Negotiations
Payback

There is a good reason why they say truth is stranger than fiction.

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It’s been long rumored the great Native American Indians believed whenever a man lost his own sense of worth and self-confidence, that he had been stripped of his shadow. There are those in life who would not hesitate to destroy a man’s shadow to fulfill their own interests. However, they should fear the man who would suffer their foolishness until such a point in time, when he will show his true courage by turning and casting his renewed shadow upon their ill-fated deeds and selfish motives, regardless of risks. Except now, in so doing, the man’s new shadow will shine a blinding, harsh light of truth on their shadowed immoralities and dark corruptions.

INTRODUCTION

Garner McCall had come to love funeral service, not just the business of it, but mostly the tremendous personal societal value that the vast majority of funeral directors delivered for grieving families every day. He saw it up close and personal time after time. He had worked so hard to learn the business and represent the Great American Casket Company as ethically and professionally as he possibly could.

He learned so much about the business, the market drivers, competition, threats, pricing, profit structures, and above all, the people. From amazing funeral home owners and directors, so many of the folks at GAC, to the industry’s power brokers, he spent a decade constantly traversing North America becoming intimately familiar with one of the nation’s oldest industries, which was intentionally kept quiet and under the radar. Mostly he loved the people in the business, inside and out of GAC. Well, at least most of them. So often, he would see how many angelic-minded funeral home owners would time and again provide a loving memorial service for one of their less fortunate neighbors without ever a mention of a bill being sent. Regretfully, however, there would be others who were anything but charitable and kind, as well as a few more that would prove even worse still, only pretending to be decent human beings. He had those stories too. Over his career he had seen it all and loved every minute of it.

After more than a decade of leading hard-charging sales growth for the Great American Casket Company and turning-around one under-performing sales team after another, Garner McCall was about to get royally screwed out of his career and kicked to the bloody curb without ever seeing it coming. Worse still, his family would be harassed and terrorized, and even his own life threatened if he didn’t shut up and go away quietly. There was a much darker side to GAC than McCall had never known, and he was about to find out in a very personal and painful way. But even almighty GAC failed to consider just how McCall was so unlike all the other execs they had destroyed over the years. He had figured out a lot about the deep dark shadows at the Great American Casket Company, especially with certain customers. What Garner McCall knew would prove more worrisome than anything they had ever confronted in protecting their shiny image and profits!

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GOOD ‘OL BOYS CLUB

(excerpt only)

Waging a fight with such a big, powerful company like the Great American Casket Company seemed more and more like a damn good recipe for spending a ton of money, at a time when he wasn’t making any. More depressingly, the likelihood of winning, much less getting a fair trial, seemed increasingly insurmountable with a review of his employment agreement; which stipulated any legal proceedings involving the company must be tried in the same little backwoods Greed County where GAC had been headquartered for the last century. Good luck getting a fair shake there! After weeks on end of countless email and phone messages being ignored, all professional efforts of trying to get GAC to reconsider their termination rational concerning his severance and unvested stock status, Garner was about to give up hope and slink away, as he tried to focus his time on finding another job. It’s funny how the mere mention of the word “casket” can turn off most all prospective employers.

Then one day he realized that Knowledge is Power! He had a ton of knowledge about the goings on at GAC in the funeral industry. He knew he had to fight for what was rightfully his and thought back to his beach epiphany! He knew that he had one last resort to plead his case for some fairness. Perhaps, just one daring call to Renford Kleinmark, the current Chairman Emeritus of the Board and youngest brother of the Founding Kleinmark family, was what it would take to get GAC to finally respond and do what was right. Surely by striking the right tone with Mr. Kleinmark, who always seemed so genteel and conscientious, maybe all of this craziness could be corrected.

Garner was amazed at how easy it was to get a Kleinmark on the phone. A quick internet search on his name, and up popped a direct phone number to Kleinmark Capital Partners, his personal Private Equity investment company out West. The warm, sweet voice of the woman answering the phone was by design to set the intended tone for anyone wanting to speak to Mr. Renford J. Kleinmark. After the mere mention of Great American, instantly Ren Kleinmark was on the end of the line. Garner had only met him briefly at a couple of the board meetings over the past few years, but Kleinmark recognized his name and warmly said hello. Presupposing that Mr. Kleinmark did not waste his time on trivial hellos, Garner got right to the point. He said he was calling because he had some grave concerns to share about the company and involving the board.

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It’s still funny the mere mention of what he learned had happened in Cabo just months earlier captured Kleinmark’s instant attention. When some very top senior GAC execs and another “key associate” took their counterparts from one of their largest customers down to Mexico for an “off-site” meeting, and how it would generate such a quick response. About how some very suspect, and likely illegal, after-dinner activities would wind up getting his immediate serious attention. Garner assured the most senior board chair that he had all of the attendees’ names, dates, hotel info, etc. to email if interested. Showing no regard or interest in such details, Kleinmark began to audibly sigh as he became increasingly uncomfortable hearing of such insidious goings-on about how his family’s company was being run, or maybe he already knew, but didn’t care for having it shoved in his face. Either way, he was apparently above hearing of such trivialities and cut Garner off mid-sentence to try and keep him from telling anymore about it, saying… “Garner, as Chairman Emeritus of the Board, I cannot be in a position to know about any of these kinds of matters. You will need to share them with the company counsel. You understand I’m sure.” Apparently this holier-than-thou bullshit line worked on most. Garner listened but didn’t respond. He knew he would only have this one chance to move Kleinmark enough to make the company respond and hopefully be fair, so he kept going.

There were other incidents too that Kleinmark wouldn’t appreciate having Garner list during the now feverishly hastened, one-sided call. Like concerns of market manipulation; the intentional enormous disparity in some customer’s terms compared to most others; the kinds of activities allowed to go on out at The Ranch, where so many customers visit each year; some of the reasons restricted private back roads between The Ranch and GAC’s private airstrip were used at times; how GAC systematically retains some customer monies and uses the annual price increase initiative to unfairly boost profits; and how the misleading, complex customer agreements had become designed to increase its huge annual free cash generation worth scores of millions in pure profits. Garner assured Kleinmark that he had the clear capability and knowledge to go into great detail about all of these matters, of course only, if and whenever necessary. Garner also knew a few nasty little personal secrets about Kleinmark’s new wet-behind the ears CEO. He would keep that information to himself for now. Those details would only come out if things ever really got so ugly that McCall needed to expose them.

McCall was shooting it all out as fast as he could before he totally choked or Ren Kleinmark hung up. Except, the truth was that Ren Kleinmark was too smart to hang up. This was most certainly not his first rodeo, especially given all the storied dark history at GAC. Garner could tell Kleinmark didn’t like being bothered with this kind of low level nuisance, but it was painfully apparent that his underlings had not effectively dealt with McCall. Kleinmark knew GAC would need to make this go away and the more they understood what McCall knew, the better, so he kept listening, as his secretary secretly recorded the call.

Saving the best for last and what he knew would be his most powerfully, compelling case of corporate public misbehavior, Garner finally made Ren Kleinmark’s voice break and bristle. At the mention of his revered oldest brother, David A. Kleinmark, and particularly how everyone knew of his longstanding escapades and even a very public affair that went on for years, never mind the little wife of course. The numerous stories of rampant infidelities by the man known as “DAK” would no doubt raise eyebrows and questions of rumored improprieties at GAC.

It was well known that the industry’s revered DAK Kleinmark, who was credited for leading the company during its most prosperous period, regularly used the company jets to “entertain” customers with… well let’s just say, his so-called flight attendants, who had their own unique set of “client engagement” skills. Whenever DAK dropped his five-star Falcon jet down into some little, podunk town to smooth over the feelings of a disgruntled, but always sizeable, funeral home owner, or if he ever decided the need to take away a key competitively-held operator, he rarely, if ever, lost. Although, no one ever knew the real secret to DAK’s enviable track record for retaining or landing new, huge clients for Great American.

Garner had heard a lot of these stories involving the man called DAK from some of the elder southern, sales statesmen he had become close with after joining the firm, and who had “worked closely” with the high-powered Kleinmark back in the day. There were some hellacious stories too from the good old days, many of which were about customers who were still around! Turns out old DAK was a real legend in more ways than publicly talked about! “Those were different times”, Kleinmark whispered, almost as if to himself.

By the end of the call, a noticeably shaken Renford Kleinmark, with his ever present solemn voice, assured Garner that he would hear from the company to “review everything very soon and I’m sure work things out.” Garner thought it was only too funny after getting kicked to the curb and being completely ignored for so long, that within a matter of only a few hours after hanging up with Kleinmark, that an email flew in from the company’s top lawyer before the day’s end. Jed Malish, the company’s chief legal officer, sent Garner a very terse email acknowledging the call with Kleinmark and asking to meet as soon as possible in the next few days.

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Garner thought he had finally gotten their attention and that now, maybe just maybe, had them where he wanted them. Surely now they would treat him and his family fairly. Since he’d shared with Kleinmark about why he had been fired based upon being accused of actually not doing something, and how it undoubtedly paled in comparison to so many other questionable activities.

However what he would ultimately learn, in a very hard painful way, was that his family would get treated alright! Like nothing he could ever have imagined!! What had always seemed like an honorable and upstanding company was being led by those who would prove to dispatch the thugs and spiders to crawl and scrape among the slime, if and whenever they felt necessary, to deal with someone they needed to coerce or shut up. He never thought for a million years just how low they would stoop to try and intimidate and torment his family, smear his reputation, and even threaten his life, much less WHO exactly would eventually deliver that threat personally. Garner McCall was about to learn a lot of hard lessons about becoming an exiled corporate executive. All of it would come about in a very personal, hard and painful way! Try they did to intimidate and threaten him, anything to make Garner McCall keep quiet and go away once and for all.

But they underestimated Garner McCall, and by a long damn mile!

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