An hour later, in the bookstore in the underground concourse in Rockefeller Plaza that led to the Corporation building, I bought a Spanish dictionary and book of grammar. Spanish is an easy language compared to German. The verb endings are simpler, the words closer to English. Between the early phone calls, I worked out the message I’d copied from the packet. I was at work on this when Samantha spun into my office on her long heels.
“Here I am,” she announced, lifting her coffee cup.
“Well?” I asked. “Herr Waldhausen?”
“Oh, we just had a drink.” Samantha gave a coy little flip of her hand. She looked great, as usual, in her trim business suit and perfect nails and hair tucked away. “He’s not nearly the man he seems to be. Not like in the meetings. We talked and talked! He has an unhappy marriage, his wife had an affair with the man who drives their children to school, and he’s very upset. I listened”
“Listened.”
“Don’t be silly. It was just a drink.”
“I had to defend your reputation to Beales.”
“Mmmn?” she asked, sipping her coffee.
“He had you scripted for a night at the amusement park.”
“It wasn’t like that. Otto is quite the gentleman.”
Samantha’s eye drifted inward then, just perceptibly.
“He say anything about the meeting?” I asked.
“He said it’s their style to sit back for a few days before warming up. He told me not to worry.”
“You tell this to Morrison?”
“Yes, when he called my apartment last night at eleven.”
“Samantha?”
“Mmn?”
“I just want you to know that I defended your reputation. It was tough but somebody had to do it.”
“I think everybody should know me well enough by now to know.”
“Yes, Samantha.”
“Oh, stop.” She twisted her head to look at my desk. “What’s that? A Spanish dictionary?”
“As a matter of fact.”
“Are you studying Spanish?”
I didn’t want Samantha to know that Dolores was living in my house. “Yes.”
She looked at me slyly.
“Sounds secret.”
“We all have our secrets, Samantha, even you.”
She could see from my face that she wasn’t going to find out. “Well, I suppose so!” And then she jumped up and was gone, her blond hair bouncing after her. I continued translating the words that Dolores carried with her and when done, I was reminded of my father blessing the simple meals he and I had together when I was a boy, just the two of us in his small clapboard house in upstate New York. Dolores’s prayer read, more or less:
Oh potent Charm
for the truth that you
have and that of God,
I ask you to give me luck, peace,
harmony, tranquility,
health, work, property
for me and for mine.
That the evil leaves and that
the good enters as entered Jesus to the sacred house.
My father is a man of God, yet I have never believed in prayers, though I wish I did.
Late that morning, Morrison stomped down the hall, opening office doors and jabbing his index finger toward the conference room. “Meeting. Everybody.” His eyes were wide and despite the robust air-conditioning on the thirty-ninth floor a sheen of sweat glimmered at his temples. I think he’d been drinking too much coffee for so many years that it permanently changed his metabolism. People passed along the carpeted hallway in the hush of emergency. In the conference room there was no time to jockey for the better seats. Morrison, last in, shut the door behind him and began talking: “We have information that within a day or so, Osada Holdings Co. will take a big position in Chukado Electronics Corp. About a three-billion-dollar deal. Chukado bought out MEC Systems in ’91 because they were working on a rival chip. The rival chip was maybe fifteen percent better, I’m told, and they went ahead with it. Maybe you heard of it, the WEKS chip. It’s particularly good at integrating software and digital images. An earlier version was used for—uh, help me here, Samantha—”
She picked up the sentence without so much as a breath of a pause, looking around the room as she began. “It was used for computer-aided animations, in which the computer could take two images of the same object in motion—say a man throwing a ball—and fill in all the images in between, based on an extensive CD-ROM memory of all positions human beings are capable of, the anatomy of the shoulder joint, and so on. A lot of that work is showing up now in the multimedia ROM software products just in the market now, running mostly on DOS-based systems. You get the idea. The chips saved thousands of hours of animation labor. This was in ’90. The one guy—”
“The wacko genius,” Morrison interrupted, squinting his eyes, “there’s always a genius in a story like this—”
“Right, there’s this obscure Japanese guy who supposedly goes on long walks and arranges sticks and fishbones and pieces of grass by himself and then dreams up these brilliant chip ideas,” Samantha reported, unimpressed by the private rituals of inspiration. “Or something like that. He retired after the first chip but they brought him back and now Chukado almost has his new chip ready so now Osada is going to suck up a large part, certainly a controlling interest, maybe forty-five percent.” I wondered if she had ever slept with Morrison. One always wonders if people in the office are doing it, and sometimes they are. Morrison and Samantha had that ease, that tremor of intimacy in their voices when they spoke to each other. On the other hand, it was unlikely. On the third hand, there was my own history with Samantha, which I’ll get around to.
“They saw that chip and got hungry real fast,” Morrison added. “I mean, wham, like a fish hitting a lure. Nobody saw this coming. Three billion. That shows there’s capital out there, guys. Osada already owns what, seventeen, eighteen percent of Volkman-Sakura?”
“Eighteen point six percent,” Samantha answered. “With twelve percent actual voting rights. And V-S owns twenty-nine percent of Osada, from before the merger between Volkman and Sakura.”
Morrison pulled a cigar out of his breast pocket, stuck it in his mouth, and used a silver lighter with his good hand to light it. “Okay,” he puffed, “obviously all these Japanese guys who were all in the navy together fifty years ago still play golf or hang around in steam baths or whatever old guys do in Japan. Osada is going to be able to take the technology from Chukado, specifically this new chip, and give it straight to V-S.”
“Everybody said vertical integration wasn’t going to work, not after the problems Mitsubishi and Sony had,” Beales noted.
“I know,” Morrison said. “You’re right. But a lot of those problems happened when the global economy was starting to contract. It’s wasn’t the idea that was necessarily wrong, it was the timing. The cycle is turning now, anyway.”
“But wait, I still don’t see how the Japanese companies have the cash for these deals,” Beales went on. “Everybody in Japan is half-dead from the stock crash. The real estate market is down something like forty percent.”
“The guys who were shorting the market made billions, Ed,” I said. “The smart guys.”
“Yeah, but those guys aren’t the same guys who—”
“How do you know?”
Beales shot his hands up in the air, a gesture of reasonableness in the face of a madman holding a gun. Like an actor on one of the Corporation’s crummy TV dramas, he shot a meaningful glance at Morrison, but Morrison wasn’t going to help Beales out, he was going to let the two of us go at each other.
“I don’t know for sure,” Beales answered, “but I’m just raising the possibility that we really don’t need to be worried by this thing.”
“We don’t really know who has cash over there, Ed,” I said.
“Remember—somebody started that crash, somebody who everybody was watching sold at the top and sent the signal. I bet one or two of the banks s
old out their Tokyo real estate and then stopped lending. They’ll buy out the bankruptcies at the bottom of the cycle. So—”
“I can’t agree with—” Beales began.
“So, there is cash out there. And, anyway, a lot of the Japanese companies are still making big money in South Korea and Indonesia. These are companies with one-hundred-year plans. We can’t assume any weakness on the part of our competitors.” I addressed the rest of the group. “More generally, I would urge us to ask ourselves, what are these companies trying to achieve? How do their goals conflict with our goals? I think the answer to that is scary, frankly. I really do. They want what we want. They have their own version of it, but ultimately, they want just what we want, the markets, the technologies. And they’re starting to move in on the talent. We’ve had a good grip on that for a while, but that could erode. And this new chip will allow faster manipulation of images—”
“They’ll get the jump on the virtual-reality entertainment programming, those helmets that you can wear that will provide complete sensory range,” Samantha said. “Most of the stuff out there now is pretty crude. But it’s coming, about two or three years away. Jack, you know a lot about this.”
“Yes,” I began, “the technology is developing so quickly that—”
“Wait, we need to stay focused here,” Morrison said. “It’s a huge step, at least in the next six-month time frame. Here’s our problem, as I see it. This information will be around the world within a day. V-S will have the technological means to get out in front within a short period, without buying a ton of our stock in a merger. I think that we need to press our deal harder. We may need to argue for our technology more. We need to figure out what they’re thinking.” Was Morrison going to mention DiFrancesco? I hoped not. It was embarrassing that I was handling it. “We need to get them to stop farting around. Get them interested. We don’t want them to walk away from the table. It could happen. Deals just disappear. And the V-S people may have more confidence in their own new products than in what we can provide them. And also, if they go forward with what this chip can do, that’s going to sop up a lot of their extra cash—”
There was a gentle knock on the conference room door and Helen poked her head in, her eyes searching for me.
“Yes?” Morrison said in great irritation.
“I’m sorry—” Helen began.
“What could it possibly be? Big news?” Morrison asked. “Los Angeles fell into the ocean? No, don’t tell me. Pakistan nuked India? China sold Hong Kong?”
“I have a phone call for Jack,” she answered apologetically.
“Helen,” I said, “can’t you tell him—”
“What is it, an emergency?” Morrison interrupted. “We have our own emergency here, blooming in our faces, like a fireball.”
“I’m sorry. He insists,” Helen protested. “I tried—”
The delay was aggravating the room. I got up and left.
“I told him you were in a meeting,” Helen explained as we walked back to my office. “He was so rude. I told him that you were not to be disturbed but he said you were just pushing around toilet paper from one end of the table to the next. He actually said that.”
I picked up the phone.
“Jack, when will I be free of these troubles that you make for me?” It was Ahmed, speaking with murderous calm. “Today a man comes to my building and he demands to know where the woman is. And I tell him I do not know what woman he means and he says many unpleasant things to me that are disrespectful in front of my men.”
“Was his name Hector?”
“He did not say that he had a name,” Ahmed said. “Now I figured that I would call you, my friend, even though you do not deserve that favor.”
“Thanks. He’s—”
“Do not interrupt, or else I will not remember everything clearly. Then—then we talked about this for a little time. I told him I did not know anything. But he would not leave the office. I said I am a very busy man and he must go. He is welcome to leave his phone number. He says many more things. Lovely things. Sanjay says to the man that he must go. The man says he knows that we know where the woman is and I tell him I do not. Sanjay tells him to get out and he gives Sanjay one very strong blow in the face. And then I understand that this is a very dangerous man and I think that he is the man who broke so much on the top floor and killed the dogs, each one a thousand dollars. I think that even though I am the stronger man that I do not wish to fight this man.” Ahmed paused. “My father taught me that the strongest man knows when not to fight. And then I understood something else, Jack, I understood that this is not my problem, it is yours.”
I sat down heavily in my chair. “You didn’t tell him how to reach me, did you?”
“Yes, Jack, I did.”
“Oh God, Ahmed—”
“I have seven children. Sanjay has three children. If the man has a gun in his pocket and all he wants is a name or a phone number, then I must give it to him. I think to myself this is a man who might have a gun. I cannot have more troubles. I cannot have your troubles, Jack. So I told him your first name and your work number. I said, ‘Call someone named Jack at this number.’ That was all. He asked me for a pen and he wrote it down.”
“You did that?”
“Yes.”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
“Is that all?”
“I asked him if he was her husband. And he said yes. Once I gave him the number he was not so troubled. He said he wanted his wife and child back. I saw that he was no longer a problem to us. I told him that if my wife and children were gone I would look in every room in every building in New York City to find them. I said in my country a man has no honor if he abandons his family. This man shook my hand when I said that. I am telling you these things because I want you to understand that there was something in this man that is not bad. Then I gave him her things.”
“What do you mean?”
“The things that were left in the apartment. Sanjay had them in a bag. Clothing, little things, some children’s crayons. Some of the woman’s makeup I think.”
“He took them with him?”
“He held them and he smelled them.”
“Smelled them?”
“Yes,” Ahmed said, ready now to hang up. “I should expect that he will call you.”
The day was bad, already, but it was going to get worse and I started to swig the thick white antacid goop straight from the bottle, which is not especially good for the stomach either. I’ve gotten sick from that. Morrison, as it turned out, was wrong. The information about Chukado Electronics was worldwide within an hour, not a day, and the price of Osada foreign investment units went up 16 percent, lifting the stock price of V-S by 4 percent. A photocopy of the full story that ran on the Reuters Information Network was on our desks at one. Morrison came into my office later that afternoon as I sat there waiting with equal unease for the Chairman or Hector to call me.
“What was the interruption?” Morrison asked.
“Something private,” I answered.
“I thought you didn’t have a private life.”
“Everyone has a private life,” I said in a low voice.
Morrison looked at me like I was losing my mind, decided to skip past the topic onto more important matters. “Where is the Chairman today?”
“The islands still.”
“You get that fat kid going on the faxes?”
“Yes.” I was still dazed by Ahmed’s phone call.
“This Chukado thing puts even more pressure on us. Lots more heat. V-S is going to have leverage on us.” He meant that V-S could drop us and go after one of the Corporation’s smaller, more easily digestible U.S. competitors such as Disney or Paramount, both of which were very attractive targets.
Morrison came up to my desk. “Jack, a deal is like landing a C-5 military transport, the biggest plane in the world. I’ve seen many land and I’ve seen one crash. It’s the crash I remember. We used to practice
our touchdown bombs with a football inside the fucking empty cargo hold. If you land a C-5 right, everybody gets what they want. Everybody on this floor is working their ass off to see that we make a smooth landing.” Morrison’s mangled hand lay on my desk, twitching. “But one thing must happen. Must, must, must! The Chairman of this corporation must agree to do what we tell him to do. I mean, Jesus, he’s an old man who doesn’t give a damn. He’s not a player anymore, he never does any deals, never pushes the board on a decision, doesn’t do any hard thinking anymore . . . he’s been out of the chase for ten years. His balls are hanging low, he goes and visits his old pals in the Senate.”
“He’s still got some kick left,” I said, thinking of our long evening together. “He can still drink, that’s for sure.”
“I don’t see why it’s such a big problem to move him onto our side of the table,” Morrison complained. “Shit, he makes money on the deal! All those old forty-dollar stock options would have to be accommodated. But without his agreement, we don’t land. We crash. We don’t have wheels. You are the wheels, Jack. You got to get in there and start banging him around.”
Later Samantha opened my door. She was wearing white heels with blue toes. I watched her walk in.
“Where do women learn to walk like that?” I teased her.
“Like how?” She smiled.
“So that the legs sort of cross in front of one another.”
“We learn it when we are fourteen practicing in the mirror after school.” Samantha sat down in front of me. “We learn that and then we learn some other things.”
I had a certain affection for her. Whether this was prudent or not I didn’t know. “One day lollipops and dolls, the next day executives of billion-dollar German companies?”
“One thing has a way of leading to another in life, don’t you agree?” She smoothed her long fingers over her dress. “Now, look, Jack, are you all right? I mean, all this stuff is going on.”
“Stuff?”
“Some woman and her child in your office last week and Spanish dictionaries and then you get called out of a meeting—”
“Don’t ask, Samantha,” I told her.
“No?”
Bodies Electric Page 17
