Princess Daisy (45 page)

“Western?”

“Damn right—the thing’s got everything but its own still and an outside crapper.”

“A car and driver will be waiting for you. When will you get in?”

“Nine sharp, give or take an hour waiting for landing clearance.”

“See you tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it”

“You bet.”

Supracorp’s New York offices occupied five full floors at 630 Fifth Avenue, where the great bronze statue of Atlas, bearing the globe on his shoulders, guards the enormous doors. Ham Short stepped out of the elevator on the tenth floor to find himself in a world designed by Everett Brown to combine drama with rich spaciousness. The receptionist sat behind a twenty-foot semicircular desk made from glowing white oak which curved in front of a wall of bronze mirrors. On either side of the huge reception room were floor-to-ceiling, free-standing columns of stainless and Plexiglas steel in which were displayed examples of Supracorp’s products.

Ham gave his name to the receptionist and turned to inspect the columns. Before two minutes had passed, he was gratified and surprised to see Pat Shannon, in shirtsleeves, the knot of his tie off center and the top button of his shirt undone, appear to greet him. They passed through wide corridors carpeted in deep brown, so well lit and humming with invisible energy that Ham felt as if he were on a spaceship. Shannon ushered him through a large room with yellow linen walls in which three women were busily telephoning or typing, each at her own large rosewood desk, and on into his own office. Ham, anticipating an expansion of the refined, subdued, but unembarrassed opulence he had just glimpsed, was astonished to find himself in a room which could have been in a ranch house in Sante Fe. Shannon gestured toward a pair of deeply tufted, pleasantly worn leather chairs and poured Ham a cup of coffee from a large thermos which stood on a low pine table.

“What’s this? Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations?” Short asked.

The lines on either side of Shannon’s mouth deepened in amusement. “Beats the hell out of me how a man can get a day’s work done in a jacket. As for the three generations—I’ll never know. You’re looking at a genuine orphan, Ham.”

“Don’t look to me for a drop of sympathy. I left home at twelve—always wished I’d been an orphan. Still do—I’m supporting two dozen no-goods back in Arkansas,” Ham said, still inspecting the room. The walls were simply painted in a calm, pale gray. It was sparely furnished with a few mellow, not exceptional pieces of pine furniture, and several Navaho rugs were hung on the walls. The door was covered with adobe tile. It was so clearly a room that had been designed by the man who used it, and only for his
comfort, that even Ham Short was impressed. This lack of pretension was more meaningful than the most magnificent office would have been. There wasn’t even any art—only a few large chunks of quartz and a number of American Indian blankets. Ham, looking through three big, uncurtained windows at a startling view of the spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral directly across the street, thought that this had to be one of the most expensive pieces of office space in the world.

“How much do you know about Supracorp, Ham?” Pat Shannon looked even younger than he had in Middleburg. The informality of his open shirt, the obvious comfort he took in his old chair, the lack of any attempt to disguise his intensity, his focus on Ham Short, the glint of playfulness in his eyes, all made Ham feel as if he were meeting a good friend rather than someone with whom he was merely having an exploratory business discussion. He remembered, looking at Patrick’s muscular neck and the big, hearty Irish smile of the man, that he’d been one hell of a linebacker when he’d played for Tulane. Ham Short felt very much at ease.

“Only what I read in
The Wall Street Journal
. Not a tenth of what you fellas must have found out about my little outfit.”

“You and your outfit interest us a lot, Ham.”

“I gather so. How come you picked on me?” Short was quite as wary as he was flattered.

“Obviously we want to get into shopping malls. We already have a real-estate division and it’s healthy and growing. There are many real-estate operations we could be interested in besides yours. But it’s Ham Short we want to acquire, as much, and, in fact, more than your property. We admire the way you’ve built your business, we like your brains, we like your methods, we like the way you operate and we like your results. We need a man like you.”

“Don’t beat about the bush much, do you?”

“It takes too much time. A lengthy courtship isn’t necessary when two people want the same thing. But there’s no point in talking specifics unless you’re interested as well, and that’s why I asked you up to visit—to show you what we’re about. If we bought your company, Ham, you’d not only double your net worth within a few years, as one of the largest single stockholders in Supracorp, but you’d be on our board of directors and we’d be able to get
the benefit of your thinking in operating all of our various divisions. Hell, Ham, we’d pick your brains like a bunch of vultures. And, of course, you’d continue to run your own show with the advantage of our lines of credit and the profits we’re sitting on, ready to invest.”

“Reporting to you?” Short said flatly.

“Yes. And I report to the stockholders. I don’t believe you and I would have problems getting along.”

“Hmmm.” Ham Short liked Shannon, but he had never reported to anyone in his life. Still, he had always been intrigued by the activities of the large, varied conglomerates. He felt he was ready to spread his wings over a great deal more space than that covered by mere shopping malls.

“Come on—let’s take a walk around.” Pat Shannon knew just how bitter a pill he’d just given Short to chew on and he didn’t want to leave him too much time to taste it On the other hand, it had to be said, and the sooner the better. There was only room for one man at the top. He led Ham out of his office, this time stopping briefly to introduce Short to his three secretaries.

“Some of our divisions are based here,” Shannon explained as they walked on down the corridor. “Lexington Pharmaceuticals, which was Nat Temple’s first baby, has its main office on the next floor up—did you ever hear the story of how this whole company was founded on a cough drop? Nat Temple cooked it up on his mother’s wood-burning stove and was the first person to give the Smith Brothers real competition. Now Lexington makes everything from miracle drugs to … Hi, Jim.” Shannon stopped a man passing in the hall. “Ham, this is Jim Golden, one of the vice-presidents of Lexington Pharmaceuticals. Jim, Hamilton Short.”

“Mr. Short, it’s a pleasure. Pat, how was Paris? When’d you get back?”

“Yesterday. And Paris was as usual—two full days of meetings. Choiseul and O’Hara, our wine and liquor importing division, is based there,” he explained to Ham. “For every one taste of the new vintages I must have had a bottle of water. We’re looking to buy a big natural source water but the one I liked best wasn’t for sale—belongs to the government.”

“No jet lag?” Ham asked, with curiosity.

“No, almost none. I have them put all their watches on New York time when I get there and stay on New York
time until I leave, so it doesn’t hit me. It’s a necessity. Yesterday, only hours after I got back, I was the guest speaker at the New York Society of Security Analysts, and last night was the opening of a Broadway musical to which we own the movie rights, and I’d invited a few senators and their wives up from Washington, so I had to be awake.”

“But what about meals? Don’t your French people get mixed up?”

“They’re used to it by now. They don’t complain so I assume they don’t mind. When I fly to Japan—we have four hundred people in the office there—I do the same thing.”

“And they don’t complain either?” Ham asked, looking suspicious.

“Not so you’d notice. But I don’t stay more than three days at a time—they manage. Now, let’s take a look at Troy Communications. It’s our entertainment division. The film studio and the television production company are both based on the Coast, of course, but the paperback publishing house is right here, two floors up, and the main offices for our seven radio stations and our TV stations are in this building too. Next year we’re thinking of getting into hardcover publishing.”

“I thought publishing was strictly a gentleman’s business, and a dying one at that,” Ham said.

“Not anymore, Ham.” Both Shannon and Jim Golden laughed. “If it were, you can be sure Supracorp wouldn’t be in it. We’ve only got one division that’s doing badly; Elstree Cosmetics.”

“Elstree? The English firm? Seems to me my mother used Elstree.”

“That’s the problem. It’s even more ancient and venerable and respectable than Yardley or Roger et Gallet. Everybody’s mother used it, but nobody’s
daughter
is using it. We bought them almost two years ago and we haven’t been able to turn them around yet. Elstree lost over thirty million last year. I’m going to get involved personally in the new advertising campaign. The whole line is being redesigned—again.”

“Pat,” Jim Golden said, “I know you’re busy, but when you get a chance, would you drop into Dan’s office?”

“Problem?”

“Big, big problem.”

“Why didn’t you call me sooner? Let’s do it now,” Shannon said impatiently. Walking quickly, he
guided
Ham and Golden straight past the bank of elevators and took the fire stairs, two at a time, to the floor above. Quickly he threaded his way through the maze of handsome corridors and went straight into the offices of Dan Camden, president of Lexington Pharmaceuticals. Ham Short was fascinated to note that the large office, which had the same view as Shannon’s, was furnished in an all but overpowering mixture of jewel-hued damask and eighteenth-century antiques. He felt so strongly that he could have been at home at Fairfax Plantation that he knew the antiques were genuine. Stepping from behind an enormous Chippendale desk, a small, bespectacled man welcomed them with a worried and preoccupied air. Almost immediately he directed their attention to a large white square that lay on top of his desk.

“Pat, this is one of the first completed samples. In my opinion the last layer simply isn’t as good as the lab boys thought it was. Six months of testing and they haven’t got it right! Now these first five layers here are all right, they perform to specifications perfectly. So far, so good. We could wipe the competition off the map, except that the last and crucial layer doesn’t work. Or, let me put it this way, it works, but just not well enough to justify the claims we plan to make.”

“Got any water?” Pat asked quietly.

“Right here—I’ve been working with it all morning.” The three men stood dripping water, drop by drop, onto the first layer of the white square. They all watched a large desk clock as, patiently, carefully, with intense concentration, they bent over the desk for long minutes. Ham Short sat down and watched the utter intensity on the faces of each of the three men. Patrick Shannon’s gaze never left his task. Ham felt himself dozing off.

“There!”
Dan Camden exclaimed at last. Ham sat up with a jerk to see the man pointing an accusing finger at a tiny bead of moisture on the highly polished wood of his desk. “It’s at least two or two and a half minutes too soon.”

“Shit,” Shannon said in a soft voice. “Dan, you assured me only ten days ago that the tests looked good and you know that I went before the stockholders at the meeting last week and told them that we were planning to grab a
large chunk of the market with this new product. We’re not just looking at three million dollars of lab work that doesn’t come up to the mark, and we’re not just talking about a well-plotted media campaign to test the market in twenty cities which will now have to be postponed, we’re talking about the expectations you let me present to our stockholders, not one of whom will forget them.” He spoke quietly and calmly, but the flush which Ham Short noticed on his neck gave away his controlled anger.

“Pat, I’m just as upset about this you are,” Camden protested, wiping his glasses in agitation.

“Not really. You only have me to contend with and I’m perfectly capable of understanding how the lab could fuck up—which, as it happens, I do. But I’ve got those bloodthirsty stockholders to deal with and I relied on
your
advice and
your
documentation. Next time, don’t give me a green light until you’re absolutely sure. Personally sure. Don’t take anyone’s word for it.”

“The chief chemist …”

“Not even the chief witch doctor’s. Understood? Now I want those lab people over here from Jersey and in my office at four sharp this afternoon, so make sure they’re all present and accounted for, Dan. We’ll go into this then. See you later.”

He turned away from the president of the giant pharmaceutical company who was, once again, absorbed in the white square on his desk.

“Come on, Ham, we’ve still got a lot of touring to do.”

“What was all that about?” Ham asked, once they were out of earshot of the secretaries working in the outer office. “Some sort of new invention?”

“When it works, and it
has to
, it’ll be the softest disposable diaper on the market. But it’ll never sell if the mother has to change her baby too often. We have to have a minimum of another three minutes of resistance in the outer layer and we can give Pampers a run for their money.” Pat’s jaw was set in determination as he talked.

“Hmmm,” grunted Ham Short

“Now, let’s go up to Troy Communications. I’ll give you a quick tour before lunch.”

“Sure.” Lunch sounded like a good idea and the sooner the better. Later that afternoon Ham had an appointment at his investment banker’s and he planned to ask the man what he thought of Shannon … personally.

“He’s a damn
privateer!
” Reginald Stein said.

“Didn’t strike me that way,” Ham Short commented.

“Listen, Ham, he’s a damned riverboat gambler, or halfway to it. He’s too bold, takes too many risks for my taste and I’ve got too much Supracorp stock not to be worried about him.”

“But look at the growth of the corporation,” Ham protested.