Man of the Hour (14 page)

Lancaster, Inc., was owned by a middle-aged man and his wife, a fashion-conscious socialite. Although public shares were issued, it was basically a family-held company, and Lang liked the owners at first sight. They were straightforward about his duties and salary, and they made him feel welcome.

He was introduced to his immediate staff, a veteran ex-cop and a woman who was ex-military, two very capable individuals who had been running the operation since the previous security chief left because he couldn’t take the pressure.

“Couldn’t stand the sight of blood,” Edna Riley said with faint contempt. She looked at Lang curiously. “I hear you were CIA.”

He nodded. “That’s right.”

“And before that?”

“I was a street cop on the San Antonio police force.”

Edna grinned. “Well, well.”

Tory Madison grinned, too. “Sure, I remember you,” he said. “I retired about the same time you joined. But I couldn’t stay quit. Inactivity was killing me. I can’t keep up with the younger ones, but I know a few things that help keep the greenhorns out of trouble. I’m administrative, but that’s okay. I like my job.”

Lang smiled at him. “When I’ve had time to look over the operation, I may have some changes in mind. Nothing drastic,” he said when they looked worried, “like sweeping the ranks clean and starting over, so don’t worry about that, okay?”

They all relaxed. “Okay.”

“But we do need to keep up with new methods in the business,” he added. “I’m pretty up-to-date on that since I’ve just come back from the front.”

“We’d love to have coffee with you and hear all about it,” Edna murmured, tongue in cheek.

“Everything I know is classified,” Lang said. “But I can sure tell you about weapons technology.”

“Oh, we learned all about that by watching the latest
Lethal Weapon
movie,” Edna informed him.

“Not quite.” He glanced at the dilapidated coffee machine. “First thing we’re going to do is replace that.”

Edna spread-eagled her thin frame in front of it. “Over my dead body!” she exclaimed. “If it goes, I go.”

Lang peered down at her. “Makes good coffee, does it?”

“The best,” she assured him.

“Prove it,” he challenged.

Her dark eyes sparkled. “My pleasure,” she said, and proceeded to crank up the veteran machine.

Ten minutes later, Lang had to agree that they couldn’t take a chance on a new coffeemaker being up to those standards. His co-workers chuckled, and decided that the new addition might not be such a pain, after all.

The next day, dressed in his best gray suit, red-striped tie and neatly pressed cotton shirt, Lang made a tour of the five companies under the Lancaster, Incorporated umbrella.

The first was Lancaster, Inc., itself, which owned and was located in a huge office complex that served as headquarters for several other San Antonio companies. There were ten security people, five day and five night, who looked after the safety of the various buildings. One did nothing but assure the safety of the parking garage adjacent to it, and inspected the parking permits of the complex’s occupants. The others patrolled in cars and on foot, maintaining a high level of security.

He interviewed the personnel and found one particular man not at all to his liking. There was something about the security officer that disturbed him, more so when Lang caught him calling out a very personal remark to one of the women who worked in the building. Perhaps they were friends, because the
woman smiled wanly and kept walking. But Lang remembered the incident later, when he was talking to the building’s main security officer.

Two of the headquarters’ offices located in this complex—one a canning concern and the other a meat packer—had been targeted by protestors from various radical groups, Lang was told by the main security officer, a man younger than Lang. Security was responsible for seeing to it that none of the tenants got hurt. Lang asked casually if the man had any problems with his personnel. There was a pregnant pause, and he told Lang that he’d had a complaint or two about one of the men, but he was keeping a close eye on him. Lang didn’t like the sound of that.

Lang’s second charge was a department store of vintage age, where two stories of fine clothing were under the care of two day-security people and one night guard. The younger of the three was a little cocky until he learned Lang’s background, and then it was amusing to watch him backpedal and try to make amends.

The third of the businesses was a small garment company that manufactured blue jeans. It had only one security guard for day and one for night. Lang liked the night man, who was a veteran of the Drug Enforcement Administration. He’d have to make a point of stopping by one night to talk over old times with him.

The fourth company was a licensed warehouse where imported goods were brought and stored until they cleared customs.

And the fifth company under the umbrella of Lancaster, Inc.’s security network was a new and thriving company called Contacts Unlimited. It boasted six executives and ten employ
ees in the Lancaster, Inc. office complex where Lang had started out investigating his security force that morning.

Lang spoke to the company president, Mack Dunlap, about any complaints he might have with the company’s security. It was a follow-up to the talk he’d already had with the complex’s main security official, who was under Lang’s authority now.

“Not me,” Mack, a tall balding man, said brightly. “But one of our vice presidents says that one of the day-security men made a very suggestive remark to her.”

Lang’s eyes narrowed. “Did he, now?” he asked. “I’d like a word with her. Naturally I’m going to take such complaints very seriously.”

Mack’s eyebrows went up. “That’s new. Old Baxter, who had the job before you, just laughed. He said women should get used to that sort of talk. She had words with him, let me tell you.”

“I can’t do anything about Baxter, but I can promise you that a new yardstick will be used to measure our security people from now on.”

Mack smiled. “Thanks. Uh, right down there, second door to the left. She’s in this afternoon.”

“I’ll only take a minute of her time,” Lang said with formal politeness.

He went to the door, not really noticing the nameplate, and knocked.

“Come in,” came a poised, quietly feminine voice.

He opened the door and froze in the doorway.

She was dressed in an off-white linen suit with a pea green
blouse that just matched her eyes. Her blond hair was cut short around her face, curling toward high cheekbones and a bow-shaped mouth.

She was looking down at a spreadsheet, her thin eyebrows drawn into a slight frown as she tried to unravel some figures that had her puzzled.

“What can I do for you, Mack?” she asked absently, without looking up.

Lang’s hand tightened on the doorknob. All the memories were rushing back at him from out of the past, stinging his heart, his mind, making him hoarse. Bob’s grinning face flashed in his mind, and now he knew why his brother had reacted so strongly to news that Lang was going to work for Lancaster, Inc.

“I said…” Kirry looked up, and those green eyes went from shock to fascination to sheer hatred in a split second. She stood up, as slender and pretty as ever, but with a new maturity about her.

“Hello, Kirry,” Lang said quietly, forcing himself to smile with careless indifference. “Long time no see.”

“What is the CIA doing here?” she wanted to know.

Lang looked around. “What CIA?”

“You!”

“Oh. I’m not CIA. Well, not anymore,” he replied. “I just went to work for Lancaster, Inc. I’m their new chief of security.” He grinned from ear to ear at her discomfort. “Isn’t it a small world!”

K
irry sat back down, as gracefully as she could with her heart breaking inside her body. She forced a smile, almost as careless as Lang’s.

“Yes,” she said, “it is a small world. What can I do for you, Lang?”

“Your boss says you’ve had some problems with one of our security people.”

“Oh.”

He stuck his hands into his pockets. “Well?”

So he hadn’t found out where she worked and come just to see her. It was business. That shouldn’t have disappointed her. After all, it was five years ago when he stormed out of her life. But it did disappoint her.

He wasn’t smoking. In the old days, there had always been a cigarette dangling from his fingers. She wondered why he’d
given it up. Perhaps they didn’t let secret agents smoke or practice any other addictions that might put the job at risk.

“Mr. Erikson seems to find it amusing to make vulgar remarks to me,” she said, easing down into her chair with assumed nonchalance.

“Tell Mr. Erikson to cut it out.”

“I have. He can’t understand why I should find it offensive. I am a woman, after all. Women were created, or so he says, for man’s pleasure,” she added meaningfully.

He pursed his lips. “I see. How old a man are we discussing?”

“He’s somewhere near fifty, I guess.”

“He should know better.”

“I hope you’ll make that clear. I came very close to filing charges against him yesterday.”

“For what?”

She didn’t like discussing it with Lang. She hesitated.

“We were friends once,” he reminded her.

“He was making remarks about the size of my foundation garments and whether or not I wore black ones. Then he proceeded to say,” she said, taking a breath, “that he’d buy me one if I’d put it on for him.”

Lang didn’t like that, and it showed. “I’ll have to have a little talk with him. If it happens again, I want to know.”

She met his eyes levelly. “If it does, I’ll have him prosecuted. Nobody should have to take that kind of abuse just to hold down a job. This is a good job, too. I don’t want to lose it.”

“You won’t.” He turned back toward the door, his hand on
the knob, and looked back at her quietly. “How’s your mother?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” she replied coolly. “The last I heard, she and her fourth husband were living in Denmark.”

He averted his eyes and left without a conventional goodbye.

Kirry unclasped her hands and discovered that they were cold and shaking. It had been a long time since she’d let her nerves affect her like this. Even finals every semester at college hadn’t rattled her this badly. Of course, Lang was much worse than tests.

She tried to concentrate on her work, but her mind kept returning to the turbulent days before Lang had left town. She made a cursory examination of a new file, but she couldn’t keep her mind on it.

She turned her swivel chair around and looked out the window. Lang had just left the building. He was getting into a late-model car with Lancaster, Inc., Security written on the side of it. His dark hair had the sheen of a raven’s wing in the sun. She remembered how it had felt to touch it, to let it ripple through her fingers in the darkness of a parked car. So many years ago….

The buzzer distracted her. She picked up the receiver. “Yes?”

“It’s me, Kirry. Betty,” her friend said, identifying herself. “You really get results, don’t you?” She laughed.

“What do you mean?”

“Our friend Erikson just got the boot. He mouthed off at Daddy Lancaster’s new security chief about women being fair game for any man. His jaw is still dangling.”

Kirry caught her breath. “Lang fired him!”

“Lang?”

“Lang Patton. The new security chief. I…used to know him, when I was younger.”

“Ah, so that’s how the wind blows.”

“You didn’t think I was going to take it much longer?” she asked.

“No. And I wasn’t, either. All of us were sick of Erikson’s innuendos. We’re going to take you out to lunch. Just think, maybe Mr. Patton will send us somebody young and handsome and single.”

“He’ll probably send you an ex-marine with a sweet tooth.” Kirry chuckled.

“Spoilsport. Listen, Erikson’s pretty mad. You should steer clear of this area until he leaves.”

“I’m not afraid of him.”

“Well, you might be wise to avoid him, just the same. See you later.”

Betty hung up and Kirry bit her lower lip. She hadn’t wanted to cause trouble. Most men were polite and courteous. But Erickson had been menacing with his remarks and the way he looked at women. Kirry felt unclean when she had to pass him in the hall.

At first she’d thought that perhaps she was overreacting. After all, she’d just come from university, where men and women enjoyed an intellectual kinship that usually precluded sexist remarks on either side. But in the real world there were men
still mentally living in an age when women were treated as sexual property. It had come as a shock to Kirry to find herself working in the same close area with a man who felt free to make suggestive remarks to any woman he chose.

Erikson had actually pinched Betty on the buttocks, and when she’d slapped him, he’d laughed and said wasn’t that cute. Women always meant yes, even when they said no, he added.

Kirry could have told Lang a lot more than she had, but apparently he’d found out Erikson for himself. She felt both relieved and sick at the firing. Erikson had no family, but he was an older man and he might have a hard time finding another job. For that, she felt guilty. Even knowing that the man had brought it on himself didn’t make her feel a lot better.

The phone rang and Kirry picked it up.

“Don’t think you’re going to get away with it, telling all those lies about me,” Erikson’s harsh voice informed her. “I’ll get you. Count on it.”

The receiver went down and Kirry felt a curl of real fear. Surely it was just bad temper. He’d get over it. But in the meantime, she was going to make sure that she never presented him with any opportunities to make his threat known. And perhaps she should mention it to Lang. Just in case.

That evening when she went home, she made sure that she left in broad daylight. There would be no more working late, she told her boss, until the threat was over, and Mack had agreed wholeheartedly.

It was a long walk from the parking lot into her apartment building. She looked around, but she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She went inside, grateful that there was a security man even here, and quickly went up to her apartment on the second floor.

She’d decorated it with a lot of greenery and simple furniture. It was a lonely apartment, but very pretty, and she had her own little kitchenette. Not only that, there was a balcony. The balcony had been the drawing card when she settled here. It overlooked the Alamo in the distance, and she had a mesquite tree just outside it, with long feathery fronds of greenery trailing to the ground. She loved the tree and the view. She had a lounge chair out there, so she could laze in the spring sunlight.

After she changed into jeans and a loose-knit blouse, she fixed herself a cup of coffee and slid onto the lounger. The sun, late afternoon though it was, felt good on her face.

She remembered another spring afternoon, the day she’d realized that she was falling in love with Lang Patton. She’d been lazing away in the tree in her front yard in Floresville. She’d been just sixteen years old. The Campbell house in those days was just down the street from the Patton home place. Lang was out of school by then and working with the San Antonio police force, but he came home on weekends sometimes to visit his parents and his brother. He’d been going with a model named Lorna McLane, but they’d just broken up. He was alone now when he came home. Kirry was glad. She didn’t like the superior way Lorna looked down her nose at people.

Kirry had always known Lang. He’d been like a big brother to her most of her life.

“Get down out of there before you kill yourself,” he’d called up to her, grinning as he stood below in a black T-shirt and blue jeans. He was powerfully built and she loved to look at him. It made her tingle all over.

“It isn’t against the law to climb trees,” she informed him pertly, laughing. “Go arrest somebody else.”

“I’m very happy where I am, thanks.” He looked for footholds and handholds, and a minute later he was up in the next limb, leaning back against the big oak’s trunk. “Here. Have a pear.” He produced one from his pocket and retrieved his own from the other.

Lang had noticed her, too, that day. His eyes had been slow and bold on her long, tanned legs and the thrust of her breasts in the front-tied blouse she was wearing with her cutoffs. He hadn’t made a move in her direction. But after that day, he’d teased her and their relationship had turned to friendship.

How long ago it seemed that Lang had made time to listen to her problems at school. Her mother was too busy getting married and divorced to pay Kirry much attention, and she had no other relatives. She gravitated toward the Patton place. Lang’s mother had been dead for years. Nobody ever talked about her, least of all Lang. When Lang’s father died suddenly of a heart attack, Kirry was there with quiet sympathy and compassion. She sat and held Lang’s hand all during the funeral. When Bob and Connie’s son Mikey had been born, Kirry had gone with
Lang to the christening. And all at once, Lang was everywhere she went….

The ringing of the telephone made her jump. She went to answer it and hesitated uncharacteristically. Surely it wouldn’t be Erikson. Would it?

Her heart was pounding as she lifted the receiver.

“Kirry?”

It was Lang. She relaxed, but only a little. “Hi, Lang.”

“I thought you should know that I fired Erikson this afternoon,” he said quietly. “He was pretty mad. If he gives you any trouble, I want to know about it.”

“He called me before he left,” she returned. “He said he was going to ‘get me.’”

There was a pause. “Did that frighten you?”

She smiled, and twirled the phone cord around her fingers. “A little.”

“Really?” There was a smile in his voice. “The girl I used to know would have laid his head open with a baseball bat.”

“My mother never cared about me enough to fight my battles. I had to grow up tough.”

“I fought some of them for you,” he reminded her.

“Oh, yes. You were my friend.” The eyes he couldn’t see were sad, full of bad memories. “I have to go, Lang.”

“Wait.”

“We have nothing to say,” she replied sadly.

“I’m sorry you wouldn’t read the letter I sent you, Kirry,” he said after a minute.

“You didn’t trust me,” she reminded him. “You thought that I was a two-timing playgirl.”

“I was crazy with jealousy,” he replied. “Didn’t you know that I’d cool down and come to my senses eventually?”

She laughed bitterly. “By the time you did, I’d stopped caring. I was dating a new guy at college and enjoying myself,” she lied with finesse. Not for worlds would she tell him how it had really been when he refused to listen to her explanations.

Lang froze inside. He’d thought Kirry loved him. If she’d taken up with someone else so quickly, she couldn’t have. It was an unexpected blow to his ego. “Then it was just as well that you refused to accept it.”

“Was there anything else?” she asked politely.

“Yes. Let me know if you have any more contact with Erikson,” he replied. “He’s mixed up with a couple of the local outer-fringe elements. I think he’s loopy.”

“Nice word.”

“Do you think so?” he said, grinning. “I’m thinking of buying the rights to it.”

“I’ll call you if I have any trouble. Thanks for checking, Lang.”

“Sure.”

She put down the receiver, idly caressing it as she thought about how it had felt to kiss Lang. Pipe dreams, she reminded herself. She couldn’t afford to go that route again. It had really broken her up to lose him, especially since her mother had been in the throes of another divorce at the time. Her home life had been virtually nonexistent, and that was one reason she’d gone
off to university without a protest. It seemed like a lifetime ago now. She had to make sure that it stayed that way.

Lang settled in at his hotel and went to work. Within a week he had a grasp on the security setup within the Lancaster organization, and he was confident that he could upgrade it to a more efficient level.

Kirry worried him, though. She’d been very cautious in her movements for a few days after Erikson was fired, but she’d suddenly grown careless. Today she was working late, and it was already dark. Lang knew for a fact that her parking lot would be deserted. He decided that in the interest of keeping her safe, he’d better check on her.

Sure enough, the parking lot
was
deserted, except for an older-model blue sedan with a familiar face in it.

Confrontation, Lang had found, was the best way to avoid real trouble. He pulled up beside the blue sedan and got out of his security car. He was wearing an automatic under his arm, a necessity in his new line of work. He hoped he wouldn’t have to pull it.

“What are you doing here, Erikson?” Lang asked. “You’re on private property.”

Erikson, a thin, cold-eyed man, looked vaguely disconcerted by Lang’s direct approach. “I’m enjoying the view.”

“Enjoy it from another perspective,” Lang suggested to him with a dangerous smile. “And in case you have any ideas about retribution, you’d do better to forget them. You may have had a
few years experience in the army and as a security guard, but I was CIA for five years. I’ve forgotten tricks you never even learned.”

The implied threat seemed to be enough. Without a reply, Erikson started his car and pulled out of the parking lot, giving Lang a resentful glare on the way.

Lang watched him drive out of sight before he turned and went into the building.

Kirry was at her desk, talking on the phone to someone who was obviously a client.

“You have nothing to worry about!” she was reassuring the party at the end of the line. “Honestly, it’s all under control. That’s right. We’ll take care of everything. All you have to do is just show up, okay? Okay. We’ll take good care of you. Yes. Yes. Certainly. Thank
you!
Goodbye.”