Sleepwalk (16 page)

Kendall frowned. “But I already told you—”

“I heard what you said,” Max interrupted. “And it may not make any difference to you and your company, but it makes a hell of a difference to me. I don’t sell shit for the price of fertilizer.”

Kendall’s brows rose slightly, but he followed the secretary out of the office without another word. When the door had closed behind him, Max looked up again, this time fixing his gaze on Greg. “Something’s going on,” he said, his voice dropping. “Take a look at this.”

Greg crossed to his uncle’s desk and leaned over to look at the page that lay exposed in the file folder. The notations on the page were as indecipherable to him as his prescriptions were to his patients. “What is it?”

“The results of the last inspection of the dam, and the orders for repairs that needed to be made Except that what’s here and what I signed are not the same.”

Greg frowned. “I’m not sure I understand …”

Max’s fist clenched angrily. “It means that what I authorized—hell, what I
ordered
—wasn’t done. I may be getting old, but I remember what I read, and what I sign. And what I signed was an order that all the cracks in the main drive flume were to be repaired. But those orders aren’t here. Christ, anyone who looks at this would have to assume I’d lost my grip completely!” His voice was rising now and a vein was beginning to stand out on his forehead. “God damn it—look at this! Here’s Watkins’s report on the damage they found at the last inspection.” He picked up the page and began reading it out loud. “ ‘Transverse cracking at the intake—erosion of the primary casing in the area of the turbine.’ Hell, there’s ten or fifteen items here, and every single one should have been taken care of. But according to this, I didn’t authorize any repairs. Which is a damned lie!” His fist slammed down on the desk and he fairly trembled with rage.

“Now take it easy,” Greg said, alarmed by his uncle’s fury. “You might be wrong. You might have thought you authorized those repairs but forgot—”

“No!” Max roared. “I don’t forget things like that. Not something as important as that dam.” He fell silent for a moment, sitting still, his mind working quickly as he tried to figure out what might have happened.

“All right,” he said, his breathing slowly coming
back to normal as his rage subsided and reason took over. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You tell Kendall he’s going to have to wait until at least tomorrow. And in the meantime I’m going to have a little talk with Otto Kruger. This whole thing smells, and the only thing that could have happened is that Kruger changed the orders after I signed them. And that,” he added, “seems to me like a pretty good indication that someone’s been paying him off.” A cold grin spread across his face and his eyes shifted to the door through which Paul Kendall had passed only a few moments ago. “Now, who do you suppose would have been interested in paying Otto off to sabotage the dam?” he asked. His voice hardened. “If I can pin this on that son of a bitch, we won’t need to sell this company at all.”

“Even if you can prove it, what difference will it make?” Greg asked. “It would mean a lawsuit, and that would drag on for years. We don’t have the time for something like that, let alone the money—”

“We’ll find it,” Max declared, his voice suddenly stronger than Greg had heard it in years. “I’m damned if I’m going to let them just squeeze me out like this.” He picked up the phone and began dialing, then gestured toward the door. “Go on—get rid of Kendall, and don’t say a word about these orders. If I’m right, I want to take him by surprise.”

Greg, knowing there was no point in arguing with his uncle, stood up and left the office. Paul Kendall was waiting in the anteroom beyond the secretary’s office. As he came in, Kendall rose to his feet.

“What’s going on?”

Greg shrugged. “Nothing much. He just wants to find out what happened to the dam. I don’t think anything else is going to happen until tomorrow.”

Kendall eyed Greg shrewdly. “He’s not thinking of backing out of this deal, is he? He’ll never get a better offer.”

Greg shook his head. “That’s not it at all,” he said. “You just don’t know Uncle Max. If the dam’s in really bad shape, he’ll insist on lowering the price of the company.”

“Come off it, Greg,” Kendall replied. “If we’re still willing to pay the price, why should he accept less?”

Greg’s lips curved in a thin smile. “Because that’s the way he is. Maybe he’s the last honest businessman.”

Again Kendall regarded Greg narrowly. “But he’ll go through with the deal?” he pressed.

Greg hesitated, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “He’ll go through with the deal. He’s already signed the papers, and no matter what he thinks, he doesn’t really have much choice, does he?” He offered Kendall his hand. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some things I have to attend to at my office.”

Kendall grasped Greg’s proffered hand, shaking it firmly. “Then I’ll see you here tomorrow.”

Once again Greg nodded. “Tomorrow.”

Max drove slowly, his mind only half concentrating on the road ahead of him. The sun was dropping low, and the sky to the west was beginning to glow a brilliant red, shot through with orange, purple, and magenta But Max saw none of it. Instead, his mind was whirling. Was it really possible, after all these years, that Otto Kruger had betrayed him?

Of course it was. Kruger was as aware as anyone of the financial condition of the company, and Max had
known almost since the day he’d hired Kruger that the man’s number-one interest was himself. If someone had come along and offered him a deal, Kruger wasn’t the sort who would refuse, particularly when the alternative would almost certainly be to end up working for

Frank Arnold. Frank Arnold.

How the hell was he going to explain to Frank what had happened? How many times had he told Frank that when the time came to sell, the employees would have the first opportunity?

But he’d waited too long, and now selling to the employees, no matter the condition of the dam, would be the wrong thing to do. Despite the bravado of his words, he knew that Greg was right.

He had neither the time nor the money for a long legal battle which, in the end, he’d probably lose anyway.

He was on the mesa now, driving along the dirt road that led up to the dam, and as he finally looked out over the canyon, the last of his cold fury drained away from him. It wasn’t just the time and money he was lacking for a fight with UniChem, he realized.

He lacked the stomach for it too.

Better to give it up gracefully, he decided, admit when he’d been beaten. Losing, after all, was losing, whether Kruger had sold out or not. In the end it really didn’t matter, for in the end the condition of the dam was his responsibility, not Kruger’s. He knew what repairs he’d ordered, and he should have been up at the dam to make sure they were done.

If he wasn’t going to do his job, it was time to step down. With a UniChem buyout, at least he could secure the future of all the people who worked for him for
another ten years, and none of them would have to live with the constant specter of debt that had hung over him for more than a decade.

It would be all right, once they got over the shock of it.

And he’d be all right too.

No!

He’d be damned if he would be betrayed like this, and just fade quietly away into oblivion.

Never!

He frowned suddenly as a sharp stab of pain lashed through his head.

His fingers tightened on the wheel and he reflexively closed his eyes for a moment, as if to shut out the searing pain in his skull. A noxious odor, rotten and pervasive, invaded his nostrils. When he opened his eyes, his vision was blurred behind a thick red haze.

The pain slashed at his brain again, even more powerfully this time, and his whole body went into a convulsive spasm.

A second later the spasm passed, and Max’s own weight pulled the steering wheel around as he slumped over into the passenger seat.

The car veered off the road, lurched toward the edge of the canyon, then struck a boulder.

It jerked to a halt, its front end collapsing under the sudden impact. The engine died almost immediately.

The windshield didn’t shatter, and the driver’s door swung open, one of its hinges broken from the stress of the impact.

It would have been easy for anyone to have crawled out of the wreckage, unharmed.

Anyone, that is, except Max Moreland.

For Max, at the age of seventy-five, had already died
even before the car left the road and slammed into the boulder.

Perhaps he’d died even before that.

Perhaps he’d died in his office when he’d finally affixed his signature to the UniChem documents, giving up the company that had been his whole life.

It no longer made any difference
when
Max had died.

The only thing that would make a difference was
how
he had died.

The chill of the desert night had already settled in Frank Arnold lingered in the cab of his pickup truck, gazing at the squat building that had once been the social center of Borrego. Only a few years ago, when the company had been making plenty of money, the union hall had been well-kept, its exterior freshly painted every year, its lawns regularly watered and mowed at least once a week during the summer. Now, even in the shadowed light from a rising moon, the deterioration of the building was visible. The union hall, like the rest of Borrego, was showing the effects of the ill-fortune that had befallen the company. Its paint was beginning to peel away, and the lawns had been allowed to die, slowly becoming overgrown with sagebrush and tumbleweed.

Part of the neglect, Frank knew, was a simple lack of money. As raises had become scarcer—and smaller—but prices had continued to rise, the union’s support from its members had begun to dwindle. The negative attitude had grown slowly, but pervasively: What good
was the union, if it couldn’t win a better standard of living for its members? And so the weekend get-togethers at the hall, the Friday-night dances and the Saturday softball games on the field behind the hall, had slowly dwindled away too, until there were no longer either the funds or the interest to keep them up.

The glare of headlights swept through the cab of the truck as another car pulled into the parking lot and came to a stop a few feet away. Frank stirred, then got out and greeted Tom Kennedy, the attorney who had driven up from Santa Fe to help Frank answer the mass of questions tonight’s meeting would surely generate.

Together the two men went inside the hall, and while Frank turned on the lights and heat, Kennedy began setting up a table on the small platform at the far end of the main meeting room.

“How many do you think will turn up?” Kennedy asked as Frank straightened the rows of folding chairs facing the platform.

“Couple hundred, maybe. I should think a lot of the wives would show up too.”

But half an hour later, when Frank finally banged his gavel on the table and stood to call the meeting to order, he had counted fewer than a hundred people. It was not surprising, really. A rumor that the company had already been sold had spread like wildfire, and even most of the men who had come to the meeting looked as though they didn’t think anything could be done. He knew he had already lost. But still, he had to try. He glanced down at the notes he had put together over dinner that evening, but just as he was about to begin, the door opened and Jerry Polanski stepped into the room, his face pale. He signaled to Frank, but then,
instead of waiting for Frank to come to him, he hurried down the center aisle and leaped up onto the platform.

“Max is dead, Frank,” he said, bending over the table and keeping his voice so low that no one except Frank and Tom Kennedy could hear him.

Frank stared numbly at Polanski.

“They found him half an hour ago,” Polanski went on. “He was on his way to the dam, and his car went off the road.”

Frank’s hands clenched into tight fists, his knuckles turning white. “Jesus,” he breathed, sinking back into his chair.

He struggled against his own emotions for a moment, his eyes moistening as a choking sob rose in his throat. He’d known Max Moreland all his life. He’d both liked and respected the man, and known his feelings had been reciprocated. And even though in recent years they’d often been forced to meet as adversaries, their personal relationship had never changed.

Now Max was gone.

Finally conquering the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him, Frank gazed uncertainly out at the crowd. They were all looking at him with guarded expressions, as if they knew that some new disaster was about to be revealed. His voice shaking slightly, Frank began to speak.

“You all know why I called this meeting,” he began. “It was my hope that we could find a way to buy Borrego Oil from Max Moreland, even though he apparently agreed to sell it to UniChem today.” He hesitated, then forged on. “Tom Kennedy, here, thought there might have been a way, but …” His voice trailed off again, but once more he gripped his emotions in the
vise of his will. “But I’m afraid all that is past us now. I’ve just been told that Max is dead.”

There was a moment of shocked silence in the hall, and then a babble of voices rose. Frank banged the gavel hard on the table. Slowly the rumbling began to subside. “I’m afraid we don’t know exactly what happened,” he went on. “But given the circumstances, I don’t see any reason for this meeting to go on. So, if there is no objection, it’s adjourned.”

He banged the gavel once more, then dropped back into his chair.

Immediately the room came to life. A crowd gathered around the table, and voices shouted questions at Jerry Polanski, who could only repeat what he’d already told Frank. After several minutes Frank leaned over to Tom Kennedy.

“Let’s get out of here. I need a drink.”

As Kennedy began shoving papers in his briefcase, Frank pushed his chair back and began making his way through the crowd, ignoring the hands that plucked at his sleeve and the voices that shouted questions in his ear. Outside the hall, he paused for a moment, taking a deep breath of the cold night air in a vain effort to wash his mind clear of the ugly suspicions that were already beginning to take form in his head.