E. Godz (4 page)

Teddy Tumtum nodded wisely. "And she told him it's what happened when mommies
and daddies decided they didn't want to be married to each other any more. And that was
when he told her that your mommy would never get a divorce because your mommy
never bothered to get married to either one of your daddies in the first place."

Peez blushed a deeper shade of scarlet. Even after so many years, she was still
sensitive about her mother's Olympic-grade amorous shenanigans. When most children
learn where babies come from, the first thing they do with the information is to search for
exceptions, escape clauses, loopholes, anything to keep them from thinking of their
parents doing something like that. Gross. Peez not only had to contend with the image of
her mother "doing it," but also with the inescapable knowledge that Edwina had "done it"
with enough men to stock a small road company of The Mikado, chorus included.

All of which probably accounted for Peez's own scrupulously preserved virginity,
although her official excuse was that staying a virgin meant she could have direct access
to and participation in some of the more esoteric rites for the pickier sorts of gods. And if
some of her clients chose to believe that she stood ready to offer herself up as an
emergency virgin sacrifice—Do Not Use Except in Case of Imminent Volcano
Eruption—there was no harm in letting them do so. Not while she also had access to a
wide variety of speedy getaway vehicles, anyhow. Peez was all for building customer
confidence, but she wasn't about to die for it.

Teddy Tumtum made a clucking sound of commiseration. It was about as authentic as
a beauty queen's I-want-to-work-with-orphans-and-small-animals speech. "Po' ittoo
Peezie-pie," he said sadly. "No friends then, nothing but business acquaintances now. No
one you can really talk to but me."

"You are not the only one I can talk to," Peez insisted angrily, rising partway out of
her chair. "My life is made up of more than just business acquaintances."

"Of course it is." Teddy Tumtum couldn't blink, lacking eyelids, but he still managed
to project the effect of a Southern belle coyly batting her lashes at some helpless beau.
"There's always your family."

Peez sat down. Hard. Her mouth became a hyphen. Teddy Tumtum smiled. "And how
is your beloved baby brother these days?" he asked, letting syrup drip over every syllable.

"How would I know?" Peez shot back. "The only time I see him or hear from him is
when we need to discuss the business. And that's the only time I want to see or hear from
him, the self-satisfied, smug, egotistical, unbearable little jerk!"

The bear looked bemused. " 'Little'? The last time I saw him, he was taller than you
by a head."

"An empty head," Peez gritted. "Not that it's doing him any harm in the Miami office.
He could have a double lobotomy and still be sharper than half the population of South
Beach." In spite of herself, Peez felt tears rising in her pale blue eyes. Furiously she tried
to fight them back by shouting, "It's not fair, Teddy Tumtum!"

"What's not fair? The fact that Dov's tall and blond, tanned and toned, charming and
handsome? The fact that he's only got to whistle once if he wants to find himself covered
with starlets and supermodels? The fact that from the time you were both kids he always
managed to have friends—real friends—and you couldn't do it to save your life?"

"The hell with all of that." Peez spat. "What fries my tail is the way that bubble-
brained son of a bitch wouldn't recognize what real work looks like if it spat in his silly
face, but Edwina still put him in charge of the Miami office!"

"Is that all you care about?" Teddy Tumtum gave Peez a curious look. "The
business?"

"Why not?" she replied. "The business is all I've got to care about. You just proved
that yourself. And it's the only reason anyone on earth ever cares about me. A kiss is just
a kiss, but if all I can hope to get are kiss-ups, I'm willing to settle for that."

The bear pretended to wipe a tear from its green glass eye. "Ah, my child, you have
learned your lesson well. You can leave the monastery. Do not pass Go, do not collect
two hundred dollars, do not let the doorknob hit you in the butt on your way out."

"Would you just shut the hell—?"

Peez's exasperation was cut short by the hum of the fax machine in the corner. The
silver amulet affixed to the front of the machine added its two cents to the interruption by
announcing: "Personal message from Edwina Godz for your immediate attention and
reply, Ms. Peez."

Peez cast a jaded glance at the fax machine. "Isn't that just like Mother? Probably just
some stupid little nitpicky reminder for me to update the client database when she knows
that I do it automatically twice a week without being told. I'll bet she never bothers Dov
with this kind of garbage, even though he's the one who could use the nudge. Well, this
time she can wait." She sounded as sulky as a two-year-old on a naptime strike.

"No, she can't," said the fax machine amulet.

Peez leveled a warning finger at it. "Don't you start with me. I'm not in the mood."

"Who's starting?" the amulet argued. "I'm just doing my job."

"By enforcing my mother's bidding? By making sure I jump high enough when she
says 'frog'?"

"By making sure you don't get turned into one," the amulet snapped back. "There's a
whole lot of things your brother could do with all that power."

A suspicious look crossed Peez's face. "All what power?"

"Oh, so now you're interested? Well, you'll find out soon enough." The amulet was
gloating. "That is, you'll find out the hard way if you don't get off your ass and read this
message right now, before I invoke a self-destruct spell on it. Hmmm, how did that go
again? Rama-lama-double-slamma ..."

Peez was out of her chair and across the room so fast that the force of her takeoff
knocked Teddy Tumtum backwards off the desk and into the wastepaper basket.
Grabbing the fax from the machine, Peez skimmed her mother's message quickly. With
every line she read her face grew paler, her eyes grew wider, and her brows rose high
enough to apply for membership in her bangs.

At last she was done. The hand holding the message dropped to her side and slowly
began crinkling the paper into a tight little ball. Without thinking, she crammed the wad
of fax paper into the pocket of her dowdy ankle-length skirt. It was made of wrinkly
black cotton, like her blouse, and the whole ensemble made her look like a much-abused
umbrella, but if she'd ever cared about being a fashion plate before this moment, she
certainly didn't care now. She was too angry to care about anything but the obnoxious
possibility of her brother Dov taking over the entire company and most of their
inheritance. The knuckles of both fists turned a livid white and there was a tiny vein just
under her jaw on the right side of her face that was twitching in flamenco tempo.

"No."

That was all she said. She didn't shout it, or shriek it, or moan, groan, or whine it: She
merely said it. She sounded perfectly calm when she said it, too, and yet Teddy Tumtum,
who had almost succeeded in hauling himself out of the wastepaper basket, took one look
at her and promptly dropped back down to safety. He had been with her a long time, long
enough to recognize all the signs that pointed to storms on the horizon. He didn't need the
Weather Channel to tell him that when this one broke, it was going to be a doozy.

Peez Godz strode out of her office and confronted her secretary. Wilma had finished
the filing and was now working diligently at her terminal.

"Wilma, I'm leaving," Peez announced. "Now. I'll be going on an extended business
trip and I don't know when I'll be back. I'd like you to call my place and have Delilah
pack my bags. Tell her to allow for a minimum of one month's absence, to provide
clothing for a wide variety of climates, and to have everything ready to go within fifteen
minutes. Also, tell Frederick that I'll expect him here with the luggage within the half
hour, and that he's to use the town car to take me to the airport."

"Yes, Ms. Godz," Wilma said, her square hands poised just above the keyboard.
"Which airport?"

"Um ..." Peez's air of stone-cold efficiency abruptly deserted her. She looked a little
confused.

"Maybe if you told me where you're going?" Wilma suggested. "I have to order your
tickets, after all."

"Uhhh ..." Peez gnawed her lower lip in thought, then brightened. "Call up the
company records. Make me a list of our top ten power bases derived from cross-
referencing income, population, and demographic impact."

"Impact?" Wilma echoed, puzzled.

"Loudness. Boldness. In-your-faceness. Annual amount of media coverage. It doesn't
matter if a client unit has ten thousand members if they don't do anything, or if they do it
so quietly that hardly anyone knows they're there. Drama counts. Flash works. That's the
sort of thing that attracts new custo—seekers. If the ancient Romans would've left the
early Christians alone, would so many people have become aware of their existence so
fast? A few, sure, but without the Imperial persecutions to keep them in the spotlight,
they probably would've gone the way of the Yellow Turbans in China."

"The what?"

"My point exactly. Instead of ignoring the Christians, those fool Roman emperors set
them on fire, gave them to the gladiators, tossed them to the lions. You can't buy that kind
of publicity! And any fool knows that showmanship always equals money." As usual,
when she spoke about the family business, Peez was transformed from a droopy, rather
nondescript young woman to a soul possessed. There was a fire in her eye that didn't
come from any martyr's pyre: It was all her own inner flame.

Wilma Pilut was the sort of person who knew where all the fire extinguishers were
kept and who had the ability to take them out and use them calmly, where and when
needed. Peez might be swept away by the power of her own oratory, but Wilma wasn't
going anywhere.

"Uh-huh," was all she said in response to her boss's impassioned speech. There was a
momentary blur of flying fingers over the terminal keyboard. "Done," she stated. "You're
booked for a six-stop itinerary that will cover all major power bases within the company."

"Only six? I asked for ten."

Wilma tried to shrug and couldn't. It was a gesture that required having a visible neck.
"That's all there are, according to the search parameters you gave me. I could attach the
next four hits, but as far as income and impact go, they'd just be time-wasters. However,
if you insist ..."

"Hmmm. No, no, don't bother. I guess six will have to be enough."

"Enough?" Wilma repeated. "Enough for what, may I ask, Ms. Godz?"

"Enough for me to put my darling baby brother right where he belongs: out of the
Miami office, out of the company, out of my hair. Plus, if I'm lucky, out of my life." Her
smile was amazingly like Teddy Tumtum's most gut-chilling grin.

Wilma remained indifferent to her employer's diabolical expression. No doubt if Peez
had burst into a melodrama villain's Mwahahahahahaha! the stoic secretary would have
likewise maintained her composure.

"Very good, Ms. Godz," she said. "I've downloaded all the pertinent information to
your laptop and palmtop. Have a nice trip."

Peez snapped her fingers. There was a papery rustling from the inner office as Teddy
Tumtum came floating out to her hand, a few scraps of torn-up phone memo slips and a
used tissue clinging to his fur. He was followed closely by Peez's laptop and palmtop,
both of them among the most recent influx of up-to-the-minute cutting-edge office
equipment that Edwina had given her daughter.

With teddy bear and electronic arsenal in her grasp, Peez turned to leave, then paused
at the door. "If those idiots from Chicago call again, tell them I'm gone and you don't
know when I'll be back."

"That would be lying, Ms. Godz," Wilma reminded her quite needlessly. "The Great
Mother doesn't like—"

"Then just tell them I'm gone. That'll be true enough to suit the Great Mother."

"You can tell them yourself," Wilma said. "They're on the list."

"They're what? But they can't possibly represent more than a handful of—"

"You didn't ask for a search based on numbers alone. Some of the items on the list are
actually individuals. As far as impact goes, the members of the Chicago group are very
good at drawing a crowd, when it suits their purposes. As for income, I checked their
books: They're loaded."

Peez stared, taken aback by this revelation and the manner in which her secretary had
chosen to voice it. Wilma Pilut used slang sparingly, the way some people used profanity,
so that when she did employ it at all, it made a much bigger impression. For Wilma to say
"loaded" rather than "rich" was a red flag of the first order. Attention must be paid.

"Are they now?" Peez said slowly, one eyebrow raised in speculation. "Are they
indeed?" She left E. Godz, Inc.'s New York City office still pondering this information
sotto voce to herself.

The office itself was not located in any of the commercially zoned skyscrapers that
formed the Manhattan skyline, but rather in a residential high-rise on the Upper West
Side. Edwina didn't believe in zoning laws—or any other laws that told her she couldn't
have things her own way—and she had used her magic to establish the two subsidiary
offices of E. Godz, Inc. wherever the hell she wanted them to be. The authorities never
caught wise, and an A.R.S. or Automatic Rationalization Spell kept the residents of the
buildings comfortably clueless.

Thus when Peez stepped onto the elevator, juggling her laptop, her palmtop, and
Teddy Tumtum, the nice little old lady already riding down to the ground floor took one
look and said, "Oh, isn't that nice! You must be going to pick up your child at school and
taking his favorite teddy bear along as a surprise. It's such a joy to see one of you young
women who cares more about your family than some silly little career. I think family is
so important, don't you?"