by John Saul
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.
Chapter 11
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.
An hour later, he sat by himself at a table in the bar at the back of the café Tom Kennedy, Jerry Polanski, Carlos Alvarez, and a few other men sat at other tables, the faces changing as they drifted from spot to spot Frank stared at the shot glass in front of him, which contained the first half of his fourth boilermaker. He was looking for numbness in the liquor, a cessation of thought. So far, though, his mind was still clear.
Clear, and functioning all too well.
He knocked back the whiskey, then took three fast swallows of beer, finally banging the stein down on the table with a force that silenced the conversation.
“They killed him,” he said, giving voice for the first time to the suspicions that had been roiling in his mind since the moment he’d left the union hall.
One of the recent arrivals—Jesus Hernandez, an electrician from the dam—heard his remark and stared at him, his mouth twisting into a half-drunken grin. “Killed him? C’mon, Frank,” he mumbled. “Why the hell would anyone wanta kill ol’ Max? He was a good ol’ boy.” He raised an arm and waved to the waitress. “Hey, Katie. Bring us another round, and come listen to what ol’ Frank says.”
Katie Alvarez came over with a tray of drinks. After she’d placed glasses on several tables and another boilermaker in front of Frank, she shifted her attention to Jesus Hernandez. “So what’s Frank say that I’ve got to hear?” she asked, feigning more interest than she actually felt. She’d learned long ago that customers left better tips if you listened to their hard-luck stories.
“He thinks the guys from UniChem killed Max Moreland,” Hernandez replied, downing half his fresh drink. “Can you believe that?”
For the first time in weeks something a customer said finally seized Katie’s attention. “Killed him?” she repeated, echoing Hernandez’s words. “Why would they want to do that?”
Frank tossed back his fifth shot of whiskey, chased it with a gulp of beer, then wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve.
“Keep him from making trouble,” he said, his words slurring now as the alcohol in his blood began to penetrate his brain. “I coulda talked him out of it, and everybody knew it,” he went on. “I told Kruger that just the other day. Told him I could figure out a way. So they fixed it so I couldn’t even talk to ’im.” His eyes wandered over the messy tabletop. “Bastards,” he mumbled, only half aloud. “The bastards jus’ went ahead an’ killed ol’ Max.”
Katie glanced around the bar nervously. If what he’d said got back to UniChem, Frank would be fired for sure, but no one at any of the other tables seemed to have heard. If she could get him to go home and sleep it off … “Come on, Frank,” she said. “You’ve had too much to drink, and you’re just upset. That’s crazy talk, and you don’t believe it any more than anyone else does.” She had a hand on his arm now and was easing him gently to his feet. “Now, why don’t you just go on home and get some sleep. Okay?”
Frank shook her hand off, then wheeled around to glare drunkenly at her. He staggered, then braced himself against the table to keep from falling. “I’m telling you,” he said. “Somethin’s goin’ on around here.” His eyes narrowed and he searched Katie’s face. “What are you, part of the whole thing?” he asked. “You got something goin’ with that guy from UniChem—what’s his name? Kendall?”
Katie felt her temper rise. She knew what a lot of people in town thought of her; it was no different from what people thought of cocktail waitresses everywhere. But she’d thought Frank Arnold was different. Then she remembered that he was drunk. “Right,” she said, forcing herself to grin at him. “I’ve never even met the man, but I’m screwing his brains out every night. Okay? Now come on.” She took his arm again, steering him gently toward the door, and by the time she got him outside, he seemed to have steadied slightly. “You think you can drive?” she asked. “I can get someone to take you.”
But Frank shook his head. “I’m okay,” he said, taking a deep breath of air, then shaking his whole body almost like a dog ridding itself of water. He pulled open the door of the truck and swung up into the cab. Then he rolled down the window and spoke to Katie once more. “Sorry about what I said in there. I guess maybe I’ve had too much to drink.”
Katie chuckled. “I guess maybe you have,” she agreed, then patted his arm reassuringly. “Look, Frank, take it easy, okay? Drive carefully, and don’t go shooting your mouth off about Max. If what you said in there gets back to UniChem or Otto Kruger, they might can you.”
“Kruger’ll try to do that anyhow,” Frank replied. “But he can’t, ’cause I won’t give him any reason to. That’s what the union’s for, right?”
Katie shook her head in mock despair, but decided to have one last try at reasoning with him. “Frank, you don’t know what happened to Max. But if you start telling everyone he was killed, that’s libel, or slander, or something, and I bet they can fire you for it.”
“They can’t if it’s true,” Frank growled. He slammed the truck into gear, his rear wheels spinning in the loose gravel as he took off. The free-spinning tires screeched in protest when they finally hit the pavement, then they caught and the truck jackrabbited across the road. For a split second Katie thought Frank had lost control completely, but then the vehicle swerved around, straightened out, and took off down the street. She watched him go until he turned the corner two blocks away, then shook her head tiredly and went back into the café. She had a feeling Frank Arnold wasn’t the only drunk she was going to have to deal with that night. The bar seemed to be full of them.
Frank rolled both windows down, and the cold air washed over his face, sobering him slightly. He was driving well, keeping his speed ten miles below the limit, and the steering steady. But on
e more drink and he wouldn’t have been able to drive at all.
It was another five minutes before he realized where he was going, although as he turned onto the long gravel drive that led up a rise to the foot of the mesa where Max Moreland’s parents had built their great Victorian pile of a house so many years ago, he knew he’d decided to come out here as soon as he’d left the café.
He wanted to talk to Judith Sheffield, wanted her to listen to him, to believe him.
And besides, he rationalized, the least he could do right now was pay his respects to Rita Moreland.
Kill two birds with one stone. The trite words seemed to slur even in his mind.
He pulled unsteadily up in front of the house, slewing his truck in next to Greg Moreland’s worn Jeep Wagoneer. He climbed the steep flight of steps to the wide veranda that fronted the house, then leaned heavily against the doorframe for a moment as a wave of dizziness swept over him. Maybe, after all, he shouldn’t have come out here. But then the door opened and Judith Sheffield, her face ashen and streaked with tears, looked out at him.
They stared at each other wordlessly for a moment, then Judith took a step forward Frank’s arms slid around her, and her face pressed against his chest. A single sob shook her, and then she felt Frank gently stroking her hair. Regaining her composure, she stepped back. “I—I’m so glad you’re here. It’s terrible.”
Frank, feeling suddenly sober, nodded. “How’s Rita taking it?”
Judith managed a weak smile. “On the surface, better than I am, I guess. But you know Rita—no matter what happens, she never loses her composure. She’s in the living room.” Taking Frank’s hand, she led him into the house.
Rita Moreland, her lean body held erect and every strand of her white hair in place, stood up as they entered. “Frank,” she said, taking his hand and clasping it tightly. “I’m so glad you’ve come. I was going to call you, but …” Her voice trailed off.
“I should have called you, Rita,” Frank replied. “In fact, I should have come out as soon as I heard.”
