Executive Suite (16 page)

Marian almost asked a question about Avery Bullard's visit, but quickly decided against it. “You say the Shaws have a place up on—”

The telephone bell interrupted her. She pivoted off her chair and went to answer it.

“This the residence of a Mr. Alex Oldham?” a gruff masculine voice asked.

“Yes.”

“He connected with the Tredway Corporation?”

“Yes. He's the manager of—”

“This is the police department. We'd like to talk to him. Is he there?”

Alex was watching her and a hundred wild thoughts spiraled through her mind in the time that it took him to reach her side. She handed him the receiver whispering, “It's the police.”

She backed a step, watching her husband's face, hunting for clues in his short laconic answers.

“Yes—yes, that's right—yes—yes, I understand—yes—what!”

The last word was a startled exclamation and she saw the thin under-film of color drain from his face.

“But, it's—yes, the Chippendale Building—yes, I see—yes—no—yes, I'll come down—what?—all right—five minutes? Yes, I'll be ready.”

He hung up, his hand staying on the instrument as if the brace of his arm were necessary to the support of his body.

“Alex, what is it?”

His head turned slowly, hesitating again before he spoke. “Avery Bullard is dead.”

“Oh, no!”

“Collapsed on the street this afternoon in front of the Chippendale Building. The police have been trying ever since to identify him.”

“Do you have to go down?”

“Squad car is picking me up in five minutes.”

“Maybe it isn't Mr. Bullard. Maybe it's someone else?”

“No. Everything checks. Chippendale Building—he was there for lunch with Steigel and Pilcher, I know that. All the description fits. Can't be anyone else.”

“Finish your dinner, dear,” she said softly. “There's nothing you can do until the car gets here.”

He seemed not to have heard her. “Have to call Millburgh right away.” He started to lift the receiver and then put it down again. “But who the devil do I call?”

It was a question that did not ask for an answer but anxiety because of his tenseness made her say, “I should think you'd call Mr. Shaw if he's going to be—”

She had started to say, “the new executive vice-president,” but she caught herself, realizing that everything was changed now.

“I suppose Walt Dudley,” Alex said to himself. “He's the V.P. that I report to. No—forgot—Walt will have left for Chicago already. I talked to him on the phone this morning and he said he was taking an early plane. Alderson or Jesse Grimm, I guess—but which one?”

She didn't know what he had decided until she heard him say, “Operator, I want to talk to Don Walling in Millburgh, Pennsylvania. That's right—person to person—Mr. Don Walling.”

He offered no explanation but she could understand what he had done. She had done the same thing herself once when a dinner party had presented an unsolvable problem in protocol. No one could object if the person served first was someone to whom first service could not possibly be considered as either an obeisance or an honor.

6

MILLBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

6.56 P.M. EDT

The route to Maryland was straight down South Water Street, but Jesse Grimm had taken the left fork and gone up Pike Street. He had told himself that the traffic wouldn't be as bad, a harmless bit of self-deception to excuse the waste of a mile of driving so that he could once again look down on the Pike Street factory from the high cliff edge at the corner of Ridge Road.

Beauty is measured in the beholder's eye and, to Jesse Grimm, the Pike Street factory was the most beautiful thing in the world. Avery Bullard had said, on that night when the news had come through that the A-bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, “This is the end of it, Jesse, so let's get rolling. Take that plot of land up on Pike Street and build yourself the finest damned case-goods factory in the industry.”

Jesse Grimm had done just that. He knew that he had succeeded. Architects and engineers from all over the country had come to visit and admire and pirate ideas. He had carefully accepted their extravagant praise, never allowing it to produce the slightest break in his sheltering shield of modesty, yet storing the words away as a miser hoards a precious treasure.

As much as he secretly valued the praise, Jesse Grimm's greatest satisfaction had come from something that he held even more secret—the way he had managed to keep Don Walling from having any part whatsoever in the planning. From the moment that Avery Bullard had given the order to start work, Jesse Grimm had faced the constant fear that Walling, because he was a graduate architect, would be allowed to intrude. The fact that he had been kept from doing so—that Walling had been held in Pittsburgh until the factory was too far along to permit any change in the plans—was the source of Jesse Grimm's warmest regard for Avery Bullard.

Now, slowing to a stop in the turnout area beyond the corner, Jesse Grimm slid across the seat and looked down on the plant. Directly below him was the black expanse of the white-lined parking lot, deserted now except for a scattering of cars down at the far end, a reminder that Walling was having his test run on the molding press tonight.

Squinting through the haze, he picked out Walling's sand-colored Buick and then, in the moment of its identification, saw the car start to move. Two other cars were backing out. Another was making the turn out of the lot on to Pike Street. It was obvious that the test had failed. If it hadn't, Walling wouldn't be leaving so soon. Jesse Grimm inhaled slowly. The fire in the bowl of his pipe glowed and he drew the warmth within himself, deeper and deeper, indrawn until it finally penetrated the darkest depths of his consciousness. It was there that he had secreted, more hidden than any thought or memory that his mind had ever harbored, his long-standing resentment against Don Walling.

He knew that the way he felt didn't make sense. But the knowing changed nothing. It was like a secret vice that generated shame but not the resolution to forego its practice, a deep festering cancer that was no less virulent because it defied diagnosis.

The closest that Jesse Grimm had ever come to finding an explanation for the way he felt about Don Walling traced back to those first months in Pittsburgh when Walling had tried to palm himself off as a carbon-copy Bullard. He hadn't let him get away with it … he'd cracked down harder than he'd ever cracked down on anyone else, before or after … and Walling had taken it, too … even thanked him. Walling wasn't the first green kid that had thanked him for something like that, but with Walling it had come too fast. That was Walling … always too fast, too quick, too sure, too clever.

There was always that gut-twisting tension when Walling was around … knowing that if you couldn't give Bullard the answer he wanted, he'd say, “Well, Don, if this thing has Jesse stumped suppose you take a swing at it”… and then that damned Walling luck would go to work! Yes, it
was
luck. Even if Walling was half as good as Bullard thought he was, a part of it was still luck … like the way that cockeyed backpressure idea had worked on the finishing line … and those crazy roller-skate pallets … and the solvent recovery system. If a thing wasn't good engineering and it wasn't good production practice and it still worked, then it had to be luck. What else could it be?

But it took more than luck to run a factory … a hell of a lot more! Avery Bullard would find that out. It wouldn't be long now … only four more months.

Jesse Grimm narrowed his eyes, dimming his view of the Pike Street plant, hardening his resolution to support the decision he had made to retire at sixty instead of waiting until he was sixty-five.

The worst part of leaving would be knowing that he'd never see this Pike Street factory again. It was
his
… from the bottom of the footings to the top of the dust collectors on the roof … every brick, every machine, every inch of every production line … the finest furniture factory in the world. Could he leave it?

The bowl of his pipe dropped as his lips softened. Sure he could leave it! Why not? Nobody would miss him. They didn't need a real production man any more … just a bunch of college kids clicking stop watches … time and motion studies … industrial engineering … research and development … Walling … a lot of little Wallings running around with their stop watches and their clipboards and their slide rules. They'd change Pike Street … tinker and twist, turn and tear, wreck and rip … and then it wouldn't be the finest furniture factory in the world. Could he stand that?

Yes … he wouldn't know … and what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. He'd leave and he'd never come back … waited too long already … no more time to lose. Even four months was too long to wait … but he had to do that … wait until he was sixty … wouldn't look right if he didn't. Yes, he had to hang on for these last four months. But no longer! Nothing could stop him then … nothing! Avery Bullard could argue until he was blue in the face but he wouldn't change his mind. No, he wouldn't stay on until he was sixty-five … five more years would be too long to wait … everything was ready down in Maryland … house all remodeled … shop almost built. If the carpenters hadn't gone fishing again this week the windows should be in by now, and the doors hung. Next week they would start on the workbench and the tool cabinets.

His hands gripped the steering wheel and his imagination gave it the feel of oil-rubbed steel. It would be good to have tools in his hands again. It was strange how a man could be so blind to what he really wanted … work all his life to get somewhere … be somebody … and then, in the end, find out that the only thing that meant anything was what you'd had to start with … a good pair of mechanic's hands and a shop to use them in. Avery Bullard wouldn't be able to understand that, not the Avery Bullard of today. The old Avery Bullard might have understood, the Avery Bullard of ten years ago … the Avery Bullard who had stood beside him that night in the Pittsburgh rain, waiting for the streetcar, and said, “You're my right arm, Jesse, and I'll never forget it.” Then they'd gone home and Sarah had fixed spareribs and sauerkraut and they'd sat talking half the night.

Jesse Grimm smiled, pleased that he could. He was learning how to live again. Sometime, just for a joke … after it was all over … he'd say, “Avery, how about coming down home tonight and letting Sarah fix us a mess of spareribs and sauerkraut?”

His smile broadened as his imagination supplied the look there would be on Avery Bullard's face. Sarah would be even more shocked. “Jesse, have you gone crazy? We don't even have spareribs and sauerkraut ourselves any more.”

“But we will as soon as we're settled down there in Maryland,” he said to conclude his imaginary conversation with Sarah. “We'll have spareribs and sauerkraut every Monday night, the way we used to when we were first married.”

There was a neon-framed clock on a beer joint beside the road … two minutes to seven … Avery Bullard would be sitting down to have his dinner at that fancy restaurant he always ate at in New York, the one up Park Avenue from the Waldorf-Astoria, the place where the whole menu was in French. What would happen if a man went into a place like that and ordered spareribs and sauerkraut?

Jesse Grimm chuckled at the prospect, letting the sound of laughter come without restraint. There were a lot of funny things in life … all a man had to do was relax enough so he could appreciate them.

6.59 P.M. EDT

“You sure that going out Stuart Street won't take you out of your way, Mr. Walling?” Lundeen asked anxiously, his thin fingers rolling the yellow leather case of his slide rule over and over in his hands.

Walling knew that Bill Lundeen's nervousness was traceable, not to his concern over the car's route, but rather to what had happened on the test run, and he decided that it would be a wise kindness to put the young chemist at his ease.

“Don't worry too much about the way things went tonight, Bill. It wasn't your fault. I'm not blaming you.”

“Thanks, sir,” Lundeen said gratefully. “I know now that I should have stepped up the feed pressure. I thought about it but was afraid to take the gamble that I might back-pressure the whole line and wreck the control instruments.”

“I know,” Walling said patiently. He couldn't tell young Lundeen that he should have taken the gamble. It wasn't Bill's gamble to take … he was a youngster, three years out of college, smart and coming fast, but he couldn't be expected to make management decisions. “Too bad I couldn't have been there myself.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lundeen's nod of acceptance. Bill probably thought he had attended a very important meeting, far more important than one little test run in one corner of one of the nine Tredway factories. There was a temptation to tell him what had really happened, just to give the boy a taste of what life was like up there on the twenty-fourth floor of the Tower, but that was something you couldn't do when you were a vice-president. You kept your mouth shut. There weren't many people you could talk to when you got up on top, the higher the fewer, and you didn't talk to the few there were. You thought you would but you never did. You bottled it up, like acid in a jar, and let it eat your heart out. That was one thing you learned when you were a vice-president … no matter what happened you held your tongue. Avery Bullard called a meeting … you wrecked everything to be there … he didn't show up … so you picked up your toys like a nice little boy and went home. Had there been one word of criticism from any one of the five of them? Not one damned word! No one had even mentioned Avery Bullard's name.

They were on South Front now and the carillon in the Tower was ringing for the hour, the bell sounds wavering against the south wind coming up the river. Involuntarily, Don Walling glanced up at the lance-point of the white shaft and he saw that Lundeen had done the same thing.