Stealing Flowers

by Edward St Amant

  I thought this was both completely true, and inspirational. That night after I was in my bed, I fell asleep dreaming of being a person as great and humble as Stan.

  Chapter Eleven

  Some months later, in January in fact, I received a phone call from Sally. She secured a promise from me to put aside the next Sunday to be with the Tappets at the mansion; I checked it off on the calendar and was about to ring off, when she said; “Are you still single?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve broken off with Lloyd.”

  She immediately hung up. I swore to myself, but when Sunday came, I was good to my word. Una had made a special Jamaican dish for Isaac. Everybody wanted some as soon as it was cooked, but we had to wait until three o’clock when he arrived. He came wearing a crisp, almost silvery, gray suit, but with a multicolored paisley denim-shirt underneath. With his short blond hair gelled to a nice wave and black running shoes with no socks on his feet, he had struck a perfect balance between formal and casual, but in a striking manner.

  As always, he managed to look like a model, and as always, I was jealous. As well, he wore a cologne-fragrance vaguely familiar with the odd combination of the scents of sea-salt, berry, and caramel, but I couldn’t name it. We gathered in the kitchen and Una made places for us at the table. Large white and red chrysanthemums sat on the window sills.

  “I never thanked you enough for looking after the arrangements after Clara died,” Una said to Isaac. “All our friends saw how you were, wonderful, and the folks back home, they thought you were kind and patient, they’ve written me and want to give you their teenage daughters.”

  Everyone laughed. “The people at the airlines were terrific,” Isaac said. I noticed that it was his style to never accept a direct compliment. “Without Mary and Stan,” he said, “I wouldn’t have been allowed the time.”

  “You were just marvelous,” Una insisted. She put a clear crystal plate before us with two hot meat patties on each. “There’s some jerk sauce,” she continued, “watch, the plate is scalding.” She passed us frothing mugs of beer. “You have to have this with cold suds. There’s no rush. Ms. Zucker hasn’t arrived and I’ve to air the Rose Room yet. We don’t use it often. It’s kept just as a war room.”

  “These are fantastic, Una,” I said after a few bites.

  For a few moments, we ate in silence. Sally was pensive and Mary was worried about something. I was afraid she’d heard the rumors from Hiro’s office. I’d discovered Una had friends everywhere in Tappets. One of Mary’s secretaries was a black woman from Jamaica. Una accepted most of Mary’s official invitations to bridal events, baby showers, weddings, and other social events on behalf of Tappets, even, or should I say, especially, of what was called the rank and file ones. She had gotten many of her Jamaican female friends from back home secretarial jobs with the company and she championed many individual causes, such as managerial mistreatment, disputes, grievances, and other matters. She had a reputation as Tappets’ ombudsman.

  Whenever she intervened on behalf of a worker, management immediately changed its tactics. It seemed, from manager to shipping clerk, everyone grasped the situation. Una knew when there were whispers of unionizing and who was organizing it. She kept her disapproval of unions a secret, but Mary and Stan were the beneficiaries of her intelligence operation. She knew when a manager was on a drinking binge, which young women were being sexually harassed, and even when things went missing, but the conspiracy which Bill Stanton had uncovered, the huge amounts of money over periods of decades, she knew nothing about, and probably, like Mary and Stan, wouldn’t have believed it. “More?” she asked us.

  We took second helpings. New phones and monitors had recently been installed for the doorways and garages as part of Peter Burgess’ recent upgrade, but Una still looked out a narrow curtained side-window for company. Una had been dieting for some time, but as far as I was concerned, had shed little weight after the initial loss of thirty pounds, but still, in my eyes, she looked swell. She wore a light red and white summer dress. Her black hair was pinned up today with small four-pronged combs. It was finally starting to show strains of grey.

  “She’s here,” she announced excitedly before the bell rang.

  I laughed to myself. It was the thing I liked most about Una. She was like a kid. A visit from a lawyer was an opportunity for adventure and she was genuinely charged up about it. A stunning blond-haired woman with a slender figure in a grey business suit and a long open overcoat came in with Una. She held a black leather briefcase and she wore her clothes tight, giving the overall impression of simplicity and efficiency. Her body was excellent, but the way her long hair fell along her back, put it over the top.

  “Almost as long as Sally’s,” I said to myself. “Interesting.”

  Introductions were made all around by Una who served coffee and tea in the Rose Room where we all gathered. Mary dressed in a green and white sweater with a tan pair of pants, while Stan wore a beige shirt with dark brown slacks. I’d on a plain white t-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans. Sally dressed in a long grey dress. She was the only one besides Susan and Isaac dressed in anything which could be called formal. Although Isaac looked better than me, especially today, I didn’t really mind him being there. He was no competition for Susan even if he did outclass me. He wasn’t interested in women sexually, I on the other hand was desperately looking for a distraction away from my enchantress.

  When Una had looked after everyone, she sat beside Mary on the couch and watched to see if this perplexed Susan. I knew that it was one of her favorite things, watching the reaction to people who didn’t know her relationship to the family. “We’re ready to begin,” she said.

  “Sally and I have met now four times,” Susan said. I realized the lawyer had already been told by Sally that Una and Isaac were part of the family and that Stan and Mary made few important decisions without them. This ruined Una’s fun, but perhaps Sally had been wise. Lawyers could be particular. “This meeting is for the family to get to know me,” Ms. Zucker continued, “and to ask questions, and plan a strategy. You are a notable family and this litigation procedure will be public. It could become nasty.”

  Una and Mary exchanged glances. “Even in our initial discovery with the Elders of Ashbury Farms,” she said, “my associates referred to what they said seemed like intimidation. Our office since, has received several threats which we take seriously, not only because they don’t even know yet who our clients are, but because these threats showed that they knew our home addresses and other personal information. We’ve contacted the authorities and they’ve put us in touch with ADF in the hope that The Family of Truth broke some gun ordinances, so, you can see, we’re hoping for the best, but the people there said it might even be a problem getting a search warrant.”

  I felt the dread rising in everyone. “These people are dangerous,” Una said and looked at Sally. “They have to be stopped.”

  “They’re as touchy as killer bees,” Susan said, “and they have important friends in New Jersey and elsewhere. They financially support the right to bear arms and freedom of religious organizations. They’ve aligned themselves with groups on the extreme right and call themselves Christians Under Siege. These are politically connected groups. They scream harassment every time anyone goes near them. However, more importantly, the Family has many enemies. Sally’s friends at Focus, Free of Cults in United States, have provided tremendous help with names and addresses of ex-members and we’re off to a good start. Provided there are no objections, we’re going to go public by the end of the week or at least sometime soon. We’ll file with the state court offices in Philadelphia. We have obtained the birth names of the five men who assaulted Sally. We have so far collected three similar stories from ex-members who will testify.”

  “Do you mean against the same men?” Una asked.

  “In some cases, yes. We’ve numerous testimonies of the Family’s practices on recruits from ex-members. We have done some prel
iminary work on tracing the Family’s money from America to Swiss accounts. We have found nine witnesses who will testify about the Family’s general abusive treatment of women.”

  Una clapped her hands together. “Well Sally, you’ve done well. It sounds like Ms. Zucker’s off to a great start.”

  Sally nodded. “Yes, I’m excited.”

  “Sally mentioned earlier to Mary and I,” Stan said, “that we shouldn’t expect the authorities to ever charge these five men?”

  “That’s a guess, Mr. Tappet,” Susan said. “If this has happened before and no charges came of it, then it’s natural to conclude the same for this case. We can’t ever give up, but if we can’t even find any complaints in police records, then I think Sally shouldn’t get her hopes up on that count.”

  “How can that be?” Una asked.

  “The physical evidence of rape is nonexistent, and the state will be reluctant to get involved with a complaint against a church.”

  “A church?” Una interrupted.

  “I think the system recognizes it as a church,” Susan said.

  “I could never understand,” Una said, “why the American Government allows any organization out of the blue to call itself a church?”

  “You would be quite surprised what they allow to be defined as a church,” Susan said. “Virtually any form of worship of anything. They’re just quite jumpy of even opening that box, the separation of state and church stuff.”

  She looked over at Una. So far she had not made eye-contact with me once. “Sally told me you’re originally from Jamaica,” she continued. “You can imagine how much trouble would be caused if they started investigating the Rastifarians.”

  “They should have been stopped right at the beginning,” Una retorted, “now they’re armed and dangerous.”

  Isaac laughed. “Una, then there would have been no Bob Marley.”

  “Mr. Marley converted after he had been singing for some years.”

  “The problem with defining religions,” Susan said, “is that almost any set of beliefs in divinity and any claim of connection with the Divine, is considered legitimate.”

  Una rose. “Look at what they’ve done. These are people who preach about Jesus. This will be hard, but I say, let us stand together. I think The Family of Truth killed Rick Edwards and he was a fine human being.”

  Sally rose and hugged her. “They raped Sally,” I said softly, “and called it the Lord’s will. Let’s help Sally win.”

  “We are proud of you both,” Stan said to Sally and me.

  “I’ll get the champagne,” Una said, “and we’ll pop some cork.”

  Several times I made an effort to talk to Susan that afternoon. She’d no rings on her fingers and Una had said she was single, but she avoided any remark that could be interpreted as inappropriate; however, with her eyes, she clearly seemed interested .

  At the end of September, I saw her again at the offices which Tappets rented in the Vanderbilt Plaza, New York City. She announced to us the launch of the litigation against the Family of Truth and wanted us to read it before it was made public. I received the exact same reaction from her when I talked to her a second time. She was good to go, but under the circumstances would she? So I turned my mind to other things to distract me from Sally.

  Bill Stanton and I used a different strategy for our second company-wide audit, and although it was proving to be effective, it was going slower than we had hoped. I noticed now, lots of management folks were getting the jitters. When we arrived at Constant Batteries to start the second wave, we met with our first full-blown incident. We were refused access and I marched directly to Graham Roberts’ office. “What’s going on?” I asked after the barest social preliminaries.

  “What do you think you’re doing here?” he retorted bluntly.

  I could see he was livid and wanted to give me a piece of his mind. I also noticed his red eyes and the way his fingers trembled slightly. “You’re destroying the morale of the company,” he shouted, “and poisoning the atmosphere. I have to ask you and your team to leave.” His cold bitter eyes were filled with resentment. “If you’re taking your lead from Bill Stanton, he has an agenda. As for Hiroyuki, I can assure you, an embarrassment to the Stanroids would suit Mary’s and his cause fine.”

  We left and Stan had to intervene on my behalf. The audit was delayed for a week and Bill’s auditors in the following weeks were treated shabbily by Graham Roberts’ management team. I met secretly with Peter Burgess and sicced him on Graham. I needed to know more. I told Hiroyuki about it, and he didn’t contradict me.

  One day in November, when I was finishing up the report on Mutual Real Estate, we’d done Constant Batteries, Modal Oil, Factory-Bright, and Poss Fast-Discs so far, Isaac Lamar visited me at Hiro’s offices. He had streaked his short wavy hair with lighter blond areas and tanned his face so much that his bright blue eyes almost radiated. He truly looked fit and healthy, although small stress lines had recently appeared around his eyes. I’d become friends with him. I was pretty sure he wasn’t attracted to me and I had grown comfortable with his presence. Besides, Una trusted him implicitly and that was good enough for me. Like her, he was always willing to speak his mind on topics concerning Tappets, no matter what the cost. I’d heard Sally had tried to steal him from Stan, but that had proved to be futile. Stan just laughed at her.

  Sally called Isaac a workhorse, but I think it was more than that. I believed she was developing a long-term plan of taking over the company with me. She wanted a spy in Stan’s office. I’d also heard Isaac’s recent partner, had been diagnosed with the HIV virus. “Is Stan still in Italy?” I asked after I got him comfortable with coffee in hand.

  “He comes in this afternoon. I have been asked to drop this off to you by Sally.” He handed me the files concerning management’s salaries for the last decade. “Would you like to come with Mary and me to the airport?” he said further.

  “Should I?”

  He shook his head. “It’s nothing special.”

  “I’m meeting Hiro for lunch. Does this suit look okay?”

  I wore a light-blue suit personally tailored for me. “I don’t like the tie,” he said, “but the rest is excellent.” I showed him several other ties and he picked out a grey one with yellow cube-designs which somehow worked. I’d have never put the two together in a thousand tries.

  “Stan will ask me how you’re doing?” Isaac asked. “What should I say?”

  How could I ever tell Stan and Mary that it looked like some of their oldest, most loyal people were robbing them? Enormous sums were missing and had been missing for as long as we had looked back, especially at Nexus Products and Constant Batteries. They’d been reporting profits far below actual results, but there were other discrepancies elsewhere as well. Two enormous problems had presented themselves at exactly the same time. The suit against The Family of Truth and the audit of Tappets. Hiro had whispered to me that both were far more dangerous than they looked. How he knew about the suit against The Family of Truth, I could only imagine. Little got by him. “Tell him that our second audit is way behind. How’s Dave doing?”

  “He’s developed full-blown AIDS. He cheated on me and I feel like kicking him out, but he’s dying and I’m not infected. I guess I’ll be more generous than I ought to be. Tom Robinson is playing the Palace tonight, do you want to go? There’s a new place beside it that I want to check out afterwards. We could have a few drinks.”

  “That would be fine.”

  Indeed, it was a fine night and I met many acquaintances of Isaac’s. I wasn’t to see him again until our company Christmas party at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan. That was Saturday, December 12, 1987, and it had settled into a cold still night. They were forecasting a bad winter storm. Sally and I both planned to stay at the hotel overnight, and before the party, she had invited me up to her room. Her hotel room, similar to mine, held two king size beds and an oak desk against the wall between them. To the side, sat a small sitti
ng-room with a large television and two sofa-chairs. I could tell from the spotless carpets and fine furniture that the hotel ran smoothly. I’d come to think that one day we’d run Tappets that way. I felt I was doing well under Hiro. I was after all working under immense pressure. Hiro thought I was especially adept at being patient and obliging in stressful situations. Already I’d earned a reputation as such. After a glass of wine, I got nervous of Sally. She spoke too softly and touched me too often. I rose to go, then suddenly she kissed me again. This time I lost my resistance at once and soon we were under the covers. As we made love, I found myself crying, and she cried too. I grew alarmed, how would we ever be able to hide our love?

  When we were laying in each other’s arms, she whispered, “Tell me what you and Hiro are up too?”

  “I’m swore to Hiro’s confidence,” I said, “so, this must be kept secret until it’s official. Mom and Dad, ” I corrected myself immediately, “Mary and Stan are being embezzled by a group of their oldest allies. We’ve nothing solid. That’s why we’re doing the second company-wide audit, beating the bushes, you might say. You’ve heard Cheryl Garland has suddenly resigned for health reasons and left the country.”, Cheryl had been the president of Nexus and one of Mary’s closest allies, Sally nodded. “That might explain her and a few others’ sudden departures. Not a word to Una, Mary, or Stan about it for now. As for our litigation against the Family, Hiro thinks it will be years in the courts and that it’s become too dangerous. He thinks you should withdraw the suit.” I looked her in the eyes. “So do I.”

  She shrugged, indicating that she wouldn’t. “Do you have trouble with what we are doing tonight?”

  I shook my head but inside was terrified. “Only my shame dampens my exuberance.”