Area of Suspicion (13 page)

I leaned back. It was much like old times to be in this office again. On his desk, mounted on a small walnut plaque, was the first piece of war production that had come through the old shop in World War I. It was subassembly, a
portion of the bolt assembly of a machine gun, Browning patent. It used to be on my grandfather’s desk over in the old office building. When my grandfather died, my father had given it to Walter. I guess the first time I ever noticed it was when I had gotten just tall enough to see over the edge of a desk.

“Finances are good, then,” I said, “but we are having a top-level feud. What else is going on?”

“In C Building we’re handling a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract with a price negotiation provision. Colonel Dolson is contracting officer and also a sort of free-lance purchasing agent for a lot of the stuff in the contract, as well as for the expansion of facilities here. And that gentleman can turn a voucher through before you can say, ‘General Accounting Office.’ I feel for the poor taxpayer, boy.”

“I didn’t know they were letting any cost-plus contracts these days.”

“They don’t, on standard items. Tanks, planes, guns, and so on. But there’s no experience factor on the item we’re making. So they’re leaving it cost-plus until we’ve been in production for a while. Then it’ll undoubtedly become fixed price, with a renegotiation clause. How about taking pity on an old man who saw Lincoln shot, boy?”

“What do you mean, Walter?”

“I’ve got all the work I can handle. Just say the word. Karch will put his weight behind you. You can vote yourself right in. Inside of a week you’ll be as nasty as you ever were.”

“It sounds as if you’d been conferring with your Miss Perrit.”

He raised his shaggy white eyebrows. “Hmm! She feel that way too? Bright girl, Gev. Very intelligent. And it sounds to me as if
you’d
been conferring with her yourself. She wouldn’t just up and say a thing like that.”

I hoped the flush didn’t show under my tan. Walter was as sharp as ever.

“Pretty, too,” he said. “If I was thirty years younger I wouldn’t have her around my office. Too distracting. Always had a soft spot for the reheaded gals.” He put his
big white paw on the phone. “Just say the word, Gev. and I’ll have Karch on the line in three minutes. Don’t give yourself time to think.”

“I’m rusty, Walter. I’ve been out too long. Too much has happened.”

He sighed and took his hand from the phone. “When I was a wet-eared kid your grandfather hired me. Later on I worked for your dad. I was glad to take orders from both of them. They had the Dean touch. When you first came in, I didn’t think it was going to work out. You made it work. Now you’re four years older and, I imagine, steadier and stronger. I want you back here. I’ll sleep better nights.”

I picked up the gun part from the walnut plaque. I bounced it gently in my hand. The silence grew. I replaced it on the desk.

“No, Walter.”

He gave a heavy-shouldered shrug. “In the words of my granddaughter, you’ve turned chicken, boy. The job is so big it scares you.”

“Don’t try psychology, Walter.”

He stared at me for a long moment, then picked up a paper on his desk. It was an obvious dismissal. He said, “Well, run along then, and dig around and then choose between Mottling and me.” As I reached the office door he said, “I have a hunch you’ll be wrong either way.”

I walked out, angry at him. I went to my old office. Mottling’s office now. His girl was a stranger, a lean blonde with a beaver-trap mouth and opaque blue eyes, and a pair of astonishing falsies. She gave me smile number seventeen and sent me in.

Mottling had a long leg hooked over the arm of his chair and he was smoking his pipe. Colonel Dolson about-faced from the window.

Mottling waved the pipe stem at me and said in a lazy voice, “Glad you could make it, Gevan. Curt Dolson here has something he wants to get off his chest. Go ahead, Colonel.”

This time I received no dentifice smile. The Colonel locked his hands behind him and stood with polished brown
shoes about eight inches apart. Parade rest, I imagined. He thrust his chin at me.

“Mr. Dean, I think I can save us all a lot of time if I make my position clear. I represent the Pentagon here, Mr. Dean. In fact, you can quite safely say that I
am
the Pentagon insofar as Dean Products, Incorporated, is concerned. I am not going to mince words. There is no time for the niceties. I feel it is my duty to present my point of view straight from the shoulder, with no beating about the bush.”

His tone and manner made the back of my neck tingle. I took a step and a half and perched one haunch on the corner of Mottling’s desk. “If you have something to say, Colonel, I suggest you get to it. So far you’ve told me you’re the Pentagon.” I kept my voice mild. Dolson looked shocked. I heard a soft snort of amusement from Mottling.

Dolson was a brighter shade of pink. “Very well, sir. Your brother was not capable of carrying the load. Backed up by Stanley here, he could manage. According to my orders, I am merely the Contracting Officer here. However, I have an unwritten responsibility to see everything is done to keep this company efficiently managed. I have every confidence in Mr. Mottling. And thus I do not intend to keep my mouth shut and watch a group of reactionary old fuds toss Stanley Mottling out and put in a has-been like Granby. A has-been, or perhaps I should say a never-was.”

“An outrageously senile old man?” I asked him.

He paused for a moment and licked his lips. “Mr. Dean, it is your duty as a patriotic citizen of this country to put your vote solidly in back of Mottling at the Monday meeting. And if you are contemplating anything else, I should very much like to hear your reasons.” He gave me the forward thrust of the chin again and stood there watching me with his clear blue warrior’s eyes.

I sat swinging my leg. I looked at my shoe. I took out a cigarette and lit it and leaned over and tossed the match into Mottling’s ash tray. “I’ll be frank as you have been, Colonel.”

“I expect that of you.”

“You place your weight behind Mottling. In other words, you have taken a direct interest in the internal affairs of this organization.”

“Because it relates directly to production of key items. I will gladly defend my stand on that.”

“For the moment I’ll assume you have both the right and the obligation to meddle in the internal affairs of this company.”

“I do not consider it meddling.”

“There is a gap in your reasoning, Colonel. You claim Mottling is the better man. In other words you are exercising judgment. But how do I know the quality of your judgment, Colonel? On the basis of what past experience do you consider yourself qualified to judge the caliber of executive personnel?”

“I consider myself an excellent judge of human nature, Dean.”

“Have you ever heard anyone admit he was a poor judge? That little egotism seems to be a part of all of us. What experience do you have in industry that makes you a judge of executive ability?”

Dolson spluttered, “Young man, I have been here on the spot. I’ve watched Mottling and Granby at close range. I certainly am capable of judging—”

“Let’s not get off the point, Colonel. I see you’re not wearing a West Point ring. You must have
some
business background. What is it? How has it helped you judge these men?”

“I owned and managed my own business for a good many years.”

“Oh. A manufacturing concern, perhaps?”

He began to look uneasy. “In—in a rather small way, I guess you might call it that.”

“How many employees?”

“I don’t see how that is pertinent.”

“I intend to find out, Colonel, if you don’t see fit to tell me.”

He squared his shoulders “Four. But I don’t see—”

“Colonel, forgive me if I remind you that during World War II Dean Products employed over three thousand persons. The problems are quite different. I can see that you are fond of Mr. Mottling. He is a very likable man. Mr. Granby is not a likable man until you have known him for twenty years. You say you speak for the Pentagon. I imagine you know Major General McGay. He has employed tens of thousand of people in industrial operations, and he has lectured on industrial management at Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. If you want to force an issue on this, Colonel, I would like to fly to Washington with you and listen to you tell General McGay exactly why you have taken sides in a question of the internal management of this company.”

“Are you trying to threaten me, young man?”

“I am threatening you, Colonel. I am speaking as a stockholder in this corporation. As a stockholder, I expect complete impartiality from you. You are the Military. As a stockholder, I am interested in my dividends, and I am interested in my right to elect, or help elect, the officers and directors of this corporation. I resent being pushed, and I resent your pushing other stockholders. There’s the phone. Tell me what you plan to do. I know I can get an appointment with General McGay for tomorrow.” Throughout all this I had kept my voice calm and reasonable. I smiled at him. He looked shaken. I had turned out to be a very different item from what he had imagined.

“I think you should know, Dean, that I have been trying to follow my orders to the best of my ability.”

“And I hope that I am making it clear you are stepping into an area where you don’t belong, Colonel. I question your ability to function in that area. I question your experience. And I question your judgment when you insist on calling me Dean. I’m Mister Dean, Colonel. So step out of this, or we’ll take it to Washington.” The business about the name was childish, but I needed it as an additional jab to keep him off balance.

It took him a long and unhappy twenty seconds. Some of
the military starch wilted. He went over to Mottling and stuck out his hand. “Stanley, I did as much as I could. Good luck to you. And good day to you,
Mr. Dean
.” He walked out without looking back, and closed the door gently behind him.

As soon as he was gone I felt the familiar weakness in my knees, the results of reaction. Mottling knocked his pipe out and started restuffing it. “When you were a kid,” he asked, “did you pull the wings off flies?” He grinned at me.

“All the time.”

“You were right, of course. Absolutely right. He was anxious to back me. I didn’t think it would hurt to let him go ahead. Maybe it did, eh?”

“My reasoning doesn’t run that way, Mr. Mottling. I just wanted him out of the picture.”

“He’s out and that was a thorough enough job to keep him out. Nice technique, Gevan. You didn’t raise your voice once. By the way, who is this McGay? I can’t remember hearing about him.”

“I made him up.”

He stared at me, lighted match poised over his pipe. Then he lowered the match and lit the pipe, making little pah-pah sounds with his lips. He shook the match out. “For God’s sake, don’t ever let Curt Dolson know that.”

“I don’t intend to.”

“And don’t let me ever play poker with you. By the way, are you for me or against me?”

I liked the way he asked that. “I really don’t know yet.”

“Once you make up your mind, I’d appreciate a little advance warning. That is, if you intend to back Granby. Let me know privately and I promise to keep it to myself. You see, if I’m going to be out, I want to get other irons into the fire as quickly as I can.”

“I’ll agree to that.”

“Thanks. You know, I like the way you handled Dolson. I like the way your mind works, Gevan. I can understand better the difference between you and your brother. If I should be put in here as president, I’d like to have you stay around. You could be a big help.”

“I don’t plan to stay around.”

“Going back to Florida?”

“That’s the general idea.”

“Niki told me she hopes you’ll stay in Arland.”

He was working on his pipe again. I couldn’t read him. He seemed too amiable, too pleasant. It was the way perfectly good money seems to change in appearance the moment you begin to suspect it is counterfeit.

“You two are real chummy, I guess.”

He glanced at me. His eye looked cold. “She’s a good friend. Your brother was a good friend.”

I was remembering his manner in the Lime Ridge house, his way of seeming completly familiar with the house, and at ease there. It seemed odd to me that I could handle Dolson in what could have been a most difficult situation, remembering the techniques of four years ago, yet if any personal equation contained the factor named Niki, confidence was gone. It was because the handling of men is a hypocritical operation. You must tailor your approach to the weakness you detect. Jolly some of them along, bully others, alternating fact with fancy. Appeal to fear, competence, loyalty, ambition. But when Niki became a factor, objectivity was lost. That, of all reasons, seemed the most valid one for my having left, four years ago. The loss of her had weakend my most valid function—that of getting the maximum return from the men I employed.

It was time for a neutral mask. I smiled at Mottling. “Niki needs her friends now,” I said.

“Yes. I think she should take an interest in the company. I’ve tried to—well, indoctrinate seems to be the best word. She’s intelligent. And, of course, she does have at least the secretarial slant to begin with.”

“I think I’ll take a look around.”

“I guess you don’t want a licensed guide,” he said smiling.

I saw the cleverness of that. Had he tried to come along with me it would have implied that he was steering me toward what I should see, and away from what I shouldn’t.
Letting me ramble around on my own was a good expression of self-confidence.

“You’ll have to get a shop pass from Dolson’s office,” he said.

“In the old office building, I suppose?”

“Right. If you have any questions afterward, come on back.”

We smiled at each other and I left. Among any group of chickens there is what the behavior specialists call “the pecking order.” Put any batch of chickens together, and within a day or so, after considerable bickering, they will work it out. It is a rigid social system. Chicken number eight can peck chicken number nine without fear of retaliation. And chicken number seven can peck just as freely at chicken number eight. And, in the order, should any chicken develop an illness, an unexpected weakness, the formal caste system will be suspended just long enough for all the others to peck it to death.