The smile flickered out so quickly it seemed as if a plug had been pulled. “I’m afraid I don’t have the authority to approve anything like that,” she said.
“How about Malcolm Dutton? Is he here?”
The name seemed to reassure her and the smile came back, but not as enthusiastic as before.
“I’ll call him,” she said.
I waited while she announced me. I could see she was surprised by the telephoned reaction she got from Dutton. The smile melted into a nervous frown. “He’ll be right here,” she said to me, then made herself visibly busy so that any further conversation was impossible.
Dutton charged through a door like a fighting bull entering the arena.
His eyes glittered with hostility. “What is it that you want, Sloan?” he demanded.
“It’s good to see you again, too,” I replied, using my own professional smile, though it had no effect on him. “I’d like to look around Harrison Harwell’s office.”
“Why?”
“I have my reasons.”
“This is a business office. Unless you have a court order, I —”
“I don’t, but if you like I can call Robin. Until this place is sold I presume she’s still the boss.”
His eyes narrowed and the muscles around his jaw twitched. Then he spoke, with icy control. “That won’t be necessary. I can let you in there for a few minutes, I suppose, but you can’t take anything, not without a court order.”
“Fair enough.”
He turned to the receptionist, who was looking extremely uncomfortable.
“Have Max Webster take him there.”
He bolted back through the door without a word. If I’m ever cold and hungry, I won’t expect to be rescued by Malcolm Dutton. He still considered me an obstacle between himself and the Widow Harwell.
I was, of course.
The receptionist made another call and after a few minutes an elderly man, rail thin, with a weather-roughened face, came through the same door Dutton had used. His light blue sports jacket, the same color as the factory, looked as if it had been intended for a much larger person.
“I’m Max Webster,” he said, extending his left hand. I glanced at his right. It couldn’t be called a hand. All that was left was a battered thumb sticking out from a scarred ball that had once had fingers.
I shook his left hand as I introduced myself. He had a very strong grip.
“Come on with me,” he said, holding the door to the inner offices open.
“How’s Angel and Mrs. Harwell doing?” he asked as he led me down a long hall past rows of small identical offices. The people inside had no privacy since the offices were almost all glass.
“Do you know them?”
He nodded. “Oh yeah. I’ve been here a very long time. I knew Angel’s mother better than I do the new wife. I suppose I should say widow now, eh?”
“Did Angel come here often?”
“Sure, but not lately. I mean, not for the last ten years or so, I guess. She used to come here as a kid. Her grandfather liked having her around. He stopped at the end of the hall. Like the others, the office was almost all glass, only it was much larger. He opened the door and stood aside as I entered.
The desk was a duplicate of the one Harrison Harwell had in his house. There was no wall space to hang pictures. However, a very small, expensive-looking Japanese knife lay on a wooden tray on top of the desk. There was one picture in a silver frame, a smaller duplicate of the photo in his home office — Harwell in naval uniform, glaring out at the world.
“What was he like?” I asked, nodding toward the photo.
He hesitated, then smiled. “Oh, like most of us, he had his good points and his bad. I liked him.”
“What were his bad points, Mr. Webster?”
“Call me Max. Everyone does. I’m head of security here. I been doing security work here for I guess almost twenty years, ever since I sawed off my fool hand.”
“What happened?”
He shrugged and examined the stump as if he had just discovered it was there. “We used a lot of hand-held power saws in the old days. Most everything is stamped out by machines now. But then we usually cut and shaped wood and fiberglass by hand. A man had to be careful. I wasn’t and ended up seeing my fingers on the floor.
“Old man Harwell, Harrison’s father, was running things then. He didn’t relish paying me workmen’s compensation for the rest of my life, so he offered to hire me as a security guard. Wasn’t much a one-handed man could do then, at least one without much education, so I jumped at the offer. I’ve been doing it ever since. I’ll retire as soon as this takeover gets done. I don’t think working here will be the same under the new people.”
“Tell me about Harrison Harwell, Max.”
He sat down on the blue leather couch. I perched myself on the desk.
“I always felt a little sorry for Harrison. He lived in his father’s shadow even after the old man died. Maybe it’s that way whenever a son takes over a business the father built. Everybody measures the boy against the man. Anyway, it was that way with Harrison. He knew it.”
“Did he get along with his father? I understand he worked here for years before his father died.”
Max shrugged again. “He got along as well as anyone could. The old man was hell on wheels. He could do every job in this plant and do it better than anyone else. He was a rough-cut old guy. He never finished the eighth grade but it never bothered him.” He smiled. “They used to call him the Henry Ford of the Waterways, and I guess he was. Like old Henry, he sometimes got a little odd, but he built this and other factories from nothing but scratch and sweat. The old man was tough, and he could be bone mean. Harrison never inherited that toughness or that streak of hard meanness, although he tried to imitate it. Harrison was cut from different cloth, so he never quite brought it off.”
“You said you liked Harrison.”
“I did. I think I understood him better than most. He tried to be something he wasn’t. He would swagger around and try’ to give the impression he was a tough guy like his father. Mostly, it was just bluff. He was one of those men who probably would have done better at something else. He probably should have sold the business after his father died. He would have been happier. He didn’t have much of a head for business. Too much bluff and not enough brains, I’m afraid. At least no business sense like his old man.”
I smiled. “Harrison doesn’t sound very lovable to me.”
Max laughed. “Well, I suppose he doesn’t. But we became sort of work friends, he and I. After hours we’d sit around here and talk. Could be anything — sports, hunting, whatever interested him at the moment. I don’t think he talked to many people like that. He didn’t have many friends.”
“You said he tried to be mean. Did you ever hear of him hitting his wife?”
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Harrison!” Then he chuckled. “Not him. He might have strutted around like John Wayne but I don’t think there was much violence in the man. At least, I never saw any. Besides, he loved the Japanese and tried to live like he thought they did. He would have considered hitting a woman dishonorable, I think. Even when he was drinking.”
“Did he have a problem?”
“Depends on your definition. It’s tough being daddy’s boy. We used to sit in this office after everyone left and have a few belts. He got stiff once in a while. But he was more of a crying drunk than a fighting drunk, if you’ve had any experience with people who drink.”
I smiled. “A little. How about his daughter? How did he get along with her?”
“All right, I guess. Angel was more the blessed granddaughter, to tell you the truth. The old man thought the sun rose and set on her. I don’t think Harrison understood the father business any too well, either. He tried, but he was the kind of man who had problems establishing relationships, even with Angel. Anyway, that’s how it looked from my point of view.”
“How was his mental attitude after he got in
to business difficulty?”
Max sighed. “He was always in business difficulty. He wanted to expand for the sake of expanding, to build something bigger and better than daddy did. It caught up to him in the end. He borrowed too much and couldn’t raise enough to pay back in time. He really began to drink when he knew he’d have to sell the business or go belly-up. I saw him one night in here crying his eyes out. He didn’t see me so I just slipped out of the building.”
“Do you think he was capable of suicide?”
Max paused. “I don’t know. Maybe. God knows, he talked about it often enough.”
“He did?”
“He loved the Japanese ways, you know. He would have run around in sandals and a silk robe if he thought he could have gotten away with it. Japanese people, if they fail and lose face, have a way of knocking themselves off. It’s a matter of pride. He spoke of that. He admired it.”
“And he said this to you.”
Max nodded. “Yes.”
“Would you consider being a witness at Angel’s trial? To testify to what he said to you about suicide?”
Max Webster frowned. “Do you really think he might have killed himself?”
“I think it’s a good possibility.”
He paused, thinking, then he spoke. “That’s about all I could testify to, is what he told me about his ideas on suicide.”
“When was the last time you talked to him about it?”
“That night.”
“What night?”
“The night he died. I was the last one around here when he left. He talked about it then, before he went home.”
14
I RETURNED TO MY CAR IN THE PARKING LOT OUTSIDE the administration building. A big Cadillac pulled in next to my old Ford. The driver hopped out, glanced my way, then at the Ford. He was about my age, blond but tan as an old walnut. He wore white sailor’s jeans and a tailored pullover with one of those little decorator animals over the left breast. I could read the frank appraisal in his eyes. He instantly dismissed me as someone not worth his attention.
His passenger climbed out of the Cadillac, but much more slowly. I recognized Amos Gillespie, the man who was about to become the owner of the Harwell Company.
He looked even thinner than he had at the funeral home. He flipped away the stub of a cigarette and smiled.
“Well, we meet again. You’re Angel’s lawyer, right?”
“Charley Sloan,” I said.
He turned to the driver. “Go on in, Cecil,” he said to the driver. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Then he looked at me. “That’s Cecil Benton, the current king of boat racing. I use him as a spokesman for our product, and,” he chuckled, “as a part-time chauffeur.”
Gillespie lit another cigarette. “How’s it going with little Angel? She got a chance now?”
“I think so.”
He nodded. “What brings you out here?”
“Just checking a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Mr. Gillespie, how did Harrison Harwell seem to you when you were negotiating to buy his company?”
“How do you mean?”
“Mentally. I think he may have committed suicide.”
Gillespie took a deep drag on the cigarette, his eyes fixed on mine. Then he spoke, smoke wisping out with each word.
“Mostly the lawyers handled things. Harwell and I had very little personal contact. When we did, he was so pissed he could hardly talk. He was enraged about having to sell to me, like I told you at the funeral home, but I don’t think he was the kind to kill himself over something like that. He liked himself too much.”
“So you observed nothing unusual?”
He shrugged. “Harwell was a pompous pain in the neck, just like always. Same as his damn sister.”
“She’s suing you, I’m told.”
“Until Friday, then both she and her lawsuit are going out on their ass.”
“You sound very sure about that.”
“It’s strictly a nuisance thing. The woman has no legal standing. She owns a few shares of stock but that’s all. She’s asked for an injunction to stop the sale. She’s not being hurt, nor is anyone else, so our lawyers say the court will toss her case out as soon as the motion is heard.”
“If she’s not hurt, why is she trying to stop the sale?”
The American Cancer Society’s warnings hadn’t made much of an impression on Amos Gillespie. He inhaled deeply enough on the cigarette to suck smoke down into his toes. Then he smiled.
“She hated Harrison while he was alive, and I think she hates him even more now that he’s dead. It’s like his dying robbed her of her revenge for being tossed out of the company. She’d dig him up and knock hell out of his corpse if she could. This lawsuit is a substitute for that. She wants the world to know what a jackass Harrison really was.”
“That’s her only reason?”
“Mostly. She hates Harrison’s widow. I think she hates Angel too, although she makes a lot of mouth music about looking out for the kid’s interests.”
He flipped this cigarette away too. “She’s a lot like Harrison, all puffed up with herself. That kind of misplaced pride can get you into big trouble if you aren’t careful.”
“Mr. Gillespie, would you like to help Angel?”
He shrugged. “I suppose I would if I could. Why?”
“Your testimony about Harrison Harwell’s inflated sense of pride and how the sale was a crushing defeat for him might help convince the jury he did kill himself.”
“I don’t like to go to court, son. Even when you win, you get hurt.”
“This would be just as a witness.”
“When’s the trial?”
“August.”
“I really don’t think you want me as a witness.”
“Why?”
He chuckled. “Oh, I sure can lay it on about the crushing defeat stuff. Hell, I loved that. But if anyone asks me, I’d have to say I don’t think Harrison killed himself. I doubt if you’d want that.”
He was right. Still, it might be a good thing to have him in reserve. Just in case Max Webster wasn’t enough.
“If it came down to it, would you testify?”
“Maybe. I’d have to check it out with my lawyers first.”
“I could subpoena you. Then you’d have to.”
“Don’t you have enough enemies now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Robin Harwell’s lawyer, for one. What’s his name?”
“Nate Golden?”
He nodded. “Yeah, him. He’s handling this injunction business. I’ve talked with him a few times. I gather he isn’t your greatest fan.”
“That’s a pretty safe bet.”
Gillespie laughed. “Yeah, it is. In fact, if I were you, I’d stick a pie plate over my ass. I don’t know why, but this Golden really wants to carve you up. He will, if he gets the chance. Does that worry you?”
“Some.”
He lit yet another cigarette. “That shows you got some smarts. A man should know who his enemies are so he can keep an eye on them. Well, I’ve got to tend to business.”
“Thanks for your time.”
He smiled. “I hope you can do something for Angel.”
“So do I.”
*
THERE were some messages on my answering machine when I got back to my office. One was from an insurance agent selling malpractice insurance. In the few seconds allowed on the tape for a recorded message he managed to squeeze in all the dreadful things that might happen to me if I was left without the protection of his company. I didn’t call him back.
Two calls were from reporters. I jotted down the numbers.
Mary Beth Needham had called. Her recorded voice didn’t sound as if it was anything urgent so I presumed it was just another attempt to enlist me as a secret source for her book. That was another call I didn’t plan to return.
Mixed among the other messages were two from the same person,
a young woman who sounded nervous and unsure, perhaps afraid. “I’m not any place where you can call me back,” she said the first time. “I’ll call again.” She didn’t leave a name. I didn’t recognize the voice. Her second message was identical. Her tone had a haunting quality, the sound of someone who really needed help but was reluctant to ask.
A Mrs. Magdelan Freeman called. She said she wanted to retain me as her lawyer. Her I called immediately.
She answered and judging from her voice she was a very dignified older lady.
“This is Charles Sloan,” I said. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Freeman?”
“Are you the lawyer on the television? The one defending the Harwell girl?”
“Yes.”
“I saw you. I was very impressed. I need someone intelligent who knows how to handle himself in court.”
“I try, Mrs. Freeman. What’s this all about?”
“I know Angel Harwell. A very nice young lady. I’m sure she’d have the very best lawyer. That’s why I picked you.”
“You know Angel?”
“Yes. Mr. Sloan, I presume you know who Howard Hughes was?”
“Howard Hughes, the millionaire?”
“Billionaire,” she corrected me.
“I know of him.”
“He’s very famous.”
“Yes he is, or was.”
“I’m his daughter,” she said.
“I didn’t know he had children.”
“Just one. Me. But that’s the problem.”
“What is?”
“The people handling my father’s estate deny that I’m his daughter. They don’t want me to have the money, you see. Very greedy, don’t you agree?”
“Sounds that way. Mrs. Freeman, how do you happen to know Angel Harwell?”
“Angel is a lovely girl. So pretty.”
“Yes. But how do you know her?”
“We met at the hospital.”
That figured.
“What hospital?”
“Buckingham. It’s a lovely place. One of the nicest around. Very expensive. Of course we were on different floors.”
“Buckingham.” I was almost about to say mental hospital but I realized that would be a mistake. “They treat nervous disorders there, isn’t that right?”
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