by Emma Lathen
“That’s one method of flaunting social invulnerability,” Thatcher commented. “They dress like race-track touts to prove they’re part of the elite.”
“I guess so.” Hedstrom sounded detached. “It was a real eye-opener to me. We don’t see much of that sort of thing in Oak Park.”
Hedstrom was tolerant, and Thatcher honored him for it.
Nevertheless he was inclined to believe that there might be more to Pelham Browne than what met the eye so strikingly.
CHAPTER 21
SKIM THE FAT
MISS CORSA greeted Thatcher’s second return from Maryland with reserve. But when he arrived at his office the following morning without displaying any inclination for further travel, she thawed perceptibly. A second day of commendable attention to desk work, and Miss Corsa unbent enough to cater to weakness.
“I thought you might be interested,” she reported, handing him a newspaper with the relevant item carefully outlined in red.
“Thank you,” he replied docilely, glancing at the headline: “PUBLIC HEALTH PROBE OF CHICKEN TONIGHT.”
“Humph,” said Thatcher, tossing the paper aside without reading on.
Miss Corsa was gratified enough to become reckless.
“Mr. Bowman is just finishing a study of how this hearing will affect Chicken Tonight sales,” she reported. “I’ll bring you a copy as soon as it’s typed.”
“Fine,” said Thatcher. “I’ll look forward to it.”
For, perversely, Thatcher’s rehabilitation in Miss Corsa’s esteem had been accompanied by mounting discontent on his part.
And even Bowman’s forecast that a public which could take poison in stride was not going to boggle at a Public Health hearing did very little to cheer him.
The trouble went deeper. Thatcher lacked Tom Robichaux’s capacity to harrumph his way through life’s vexations. Nor did he resemble his eminent subordinate Everett Gabler, the personification of virtue confronting decay and degeneration. On the contrary, Thatcher was a man to take things as they came. He rarely wasted time or energy on what might have been.
This, he had long since concluded, was not more than efficient, and efficiency went far toward explaining his success on Wall Street. Certainly two other characteristics were no help at all. Thatcher had what he liked to think was a speculative turn of mind (Miss Corsa, he knew, had another name for it). He wanted to know the whys and wherefores of his own back yard. There was, for instance, a small firm in South Dakota, headed by an Armenian-American, staffed by Swedish-Americans, that was currently producing miniature cameras more cheaply than its Japanese competition. Everybody else on Wall Street was happy with Atamian Instruments’ growth and dividends. Not Thatcher. Sooner or later he would find out why this unlikely meld could do what the rest of the Western world found impossible.
Only because his curiosity so often paid off did Wall Street and Miss Corsa tolerate it.
Wall Street and Miss Corsa were divided on Thatcher’s other idiosyncrasy. He was, essentially, a man who liked to complete his packages before they were tied up and put away. Miss Corsa too opposed loose strings, but since she regarded an orderly desk as the outward manifestation of an orderly mind, Thatcher did not earn many credits from her along these lines. With his professional colleagues, the gulf was more profound. Wall Street is, par excellence, the home of fad, passion and craze. Last year’s favorites are not only dropped, they are cut dead. Even Gabler, a walking compendium of little-known facts, immersed himself in what was happening now. The bowling-equipment producers, who had commanded his horrified attention ten years ago, were now only history to him. Although, if prompted, he could still dredge up the bare bones. Robichaux, who had spent countless hours touting bowling leagues and automatic pin setters, would probably deny that such a game had ever existed.
Thatcher not only recalled the bowling mania, he occasionally thought about it. Were fevered hordes still lining up for an alley? What had happened to those ambitious overseas plans to introduce bowling to Manchester, Blackpool and Glasgow? Would he ever know?
So, in the days that followed, Thatcher fell prey to a rare mood of Robichauvian dissatisfaction. Things came to a head with a call from Hedstrom.
“. . . finally turning a corner,” he announced. “We’re getting our first comprehensive reports from New England. Sales are finally beginning to move. In Boston alone . . .”
Thatcher did not repeat Charlie Trinkam’s hypothesis about college youth and zinc salts. Hedstrom continued, “. . . . almost up to seventy percent of normal. That’s way beyond our most optimistic estimates. Our marketing people . . .”
Hedstrom’s marketing people said much what Walter Bowman said.
“The hearing?” Hedstrom asked. “No, we don’t expect it to have much of an impact.”
Thatcher heard him out, offered congratulations, and hung up. He sat for a moment, glowering at a report Trinkam had forwarded on the eccentricities of Texas utility regulation. Then, as an afterthought, he stabbed the buzzer.
“Maitland,” he ordered Miss Corsa. He was tempted to thank her for tearing herself away from the Trinkam Anniversary Committee long enough to devote token attention to his needs.
Instead, he relayed Hedstrom’s good news to Maitland as unencouragingly as possible. Temperately he agreed that Chicken Tonight might be getting out of the woods and that the Sloan’s twelve million dollars looked like a better bet. But, on the subject of the absolution of Maitland and Commercial Credit, he was unforthcoming.
No sooner was this over than he fell back into a steady simmer. The basic trouble was that everything had come to a halt. Three separate police forces were still documenting Clyde Sweeney’s life, career and death. Judging from the story’s steady recession from page one to page twenty-seven in all newspapers, landladies, rented cars, fifty-dollar bills and beery conversations about horses were adding up to very little.
And the forthcoming Public Health hearing was unlikely to explode any bombshells.
In fact, Thatcher thought, Miss Corsa was right: his various forays to warehouses in New Jersey and hunt clubs in Maryland were so much wasted time. There seemed to be a fighting chance that Frank Hedstrom would salvage Chicken Tonight—and the Sloan’s twelve million. Unless, of course, the Public Health people had something sensational up their sleeve. But twelve million dollars alone could not justify Thatcher’s recent activities. Not if they left unanswered the questions plaguing him.
Who had killed Clyde Sweeney? And why?
Thatcher was reflective when Miss Corsa did what no one else in the Trust Division dared. She demanded his attention.
“Yes?” he inquired.
Miss Corsa recognized that this was to be a contest of wills.
“Mr. Thatcher,” she declared. “The Committee would like you to accompany them to the Parke-Bernet Galleries. The selection for Mr. Trinkam has narrowed down . . .”
“I would be delighted,” replied Thatcher, who knew that there are times when only the big lie is enough. “Unfortunately, I have a luncheon appointment. And several afternoon engagements. Important engagements. And I don’t know when I’ll be in tomorrow morning, either.”
While the guardian of his appointment book prepared to remonstrate, Thatcher rose, snatched up hat, topcoat and umbrella, and fled.
He had just challenged fate.
Fate retaliated with a chance luncheon encounter at Eberlin’s.
“. . . tried to be reasonable with her,” Robichaux said, salting his steak with gusto. “But I can’t sit still for this. Not after that damned hairdresser. I ask you, John! A Polish prince!”
He paused, hoping for comment.
“Aren’t Polish princes rather old-fashioned?” Thatcher inquired. But Robichaux swept into a complex discourse centering on the needs, desires and activities which were shortly going to divorce Loël from Robichaux himself, if not from a healthy portion of his income.
Had he been feeling more charitable, Thatcher would have spared a
thought for Francis Devane, Robichaux’s partner and a prominent Quaker. Devane always suffered during these misadventures. Instead, Thatcher recalled his own discomforts and cut into some ribald speculations about European royalty.
“You know I went down to talk to Browne? I saw Ogilvie too,” he said.
“Ogilvie?” said Robichaux blankly. “Oh, Ogilvie. What did you want to do that for?”
“I did not want to do it,” Thatcher growled. “It was a matter of Chicken Tonight—as usual.”
Loël could be expected to monopolize Robichaux for several months henceforth. But he was not as yet fully immersed. To Thatcher’s surprise, he still retained some grasp of the Chicken Tonight situation.
“Why is Ogilvie still hanging around?” he asked. “Everybody knew the merger was off the minute that poisoning broke.”
“Everybody but Ogilvie,” Thatcher remarked.
Possibly because of the Polish prince, Robichaux was taking a large-minded view of all things American. “You know,” he said, “I’m really sorry that merger didn’t come off . . . What’s that, John? No! I am not talking about Robichaux and Devane’s commission. I’m looking at the big picture.”
Thatcher indicated interest in the big picture as Robichaux saw it.
“Well,” Tom ruminated, “you know how some mergers are. But this one would have made everybody happy. Southeastern’s stockholders were going to make money. Hedstrom would have gotten a foot in the financial world, so he wouldn’t have all his eggs in one basket.” He stopped with a vagrant puzzled look. “Now, why does that sound so strange?”
Thatcher ignored this. “Tell me, Tom. During the preliminary negotiations was everybody enthusiastic?”
“Everybody,” said Robichaux firmly, by inclination a sundial who recorded only cloudless hours.
This brought out the worst in Thatcher. “Oh, come on, Tom. You’re not claiming that Ted Young was a booster.”
Robichaux darkened. “Young,” he exclaimed. “A man who can’t control his own wife—”
“Or won’t,” Thatcher interjected, struck by an idea.
Robichaux, possibly reflecting that his current situation left his views on marriage suspect, continued, “Everybody else was for it. And why not? It was a sweet deal. Good God, John, you should see the reports. Hedstrom hired Goodoe and Wiley to give Southeastern the once-over, and what did they find? A conservative outfit. Maybe not making as much as it should, but beautifully situated. It was a perfect setup for Hedstrom. Gave him a good chance to diversify, at a really good price. And Southeastern got Bly Associates to be sure that Chicken Tonight wasn’t some fly-by-night operation. What did they find? Southeastern could become part of a first-rate organization. It was a perfect marriage—”
“Until the poisoning,” said Thatcher, registering the influence of preoccupation on metaphor. “So everybody, except Ted Young, saw all this, and cheered wildly?”
Robichaux shrugged philosophically. “That’s the way it goes. You have to take things as they come. Give a little, take a little . . .”
Rightly assuming that these thoughts derived from Loël rather than Chicken Tonight, Thatcher let the subject drop. But after Tom had bustled off to alert his lawyers, Thatcher was still thinking about Chicken Tonight.
“Hmm,” he said finally.
Outside Eberlin’s, he hesitated for a moment, assailed by impulse. He reminded himself that returning to the Sloan and Miss Corsa would constitute defeat. That was to be avoided at all costs. He turned his steps elsewhere.
“Mr. Hedstrom isn’t in this afternoon,” said the receptionist at Chicken Tonight before Thatcher spoke. “He’s out touring the franchises. I can get in touch with him in Willoughby—”
“No, no,” said Thatcher, docketing the fact that Hedstrom was spreading the good news where it was most useful. “Is Mr. Young in?”
Ted Young, scanning page after typewritten page, was possibly surprised at this unheralded descent, but he was courteous. Abandoning his studies, he welcomed Thatcher, and waited.
“What I’d like to know,” Thatcher began, “will probably seem remote to the situation at hand. But I would like to learn something about your investigation of Southeastern Insurance when you were first considering the merger.”
Young’s response, he would have sworn, was discreet amusement.
“We got a report as thick as the phone book,” Young said. After shouting a request to his secretary, he continued. “We knew everything about them but the color of their eyes. Sales, the staff, their salaries—the works. Goodoe and Wiley are about the best industrial investigators in the business and they didn’t leave out anything. Here it is.” He indicated Thatcher, and the secretary handed over the thick paperbound volume.
Thatcher dutifully flicked pages, noting the endless lists of data. This, however, was not what he had come for. Facts do not determine policy, and it was on policy that Frank Hedstrom and Ted Young differed.
“Why did you dislike the merger?” he asked.
Young’s lips tightened. But twelve million dollars protected Thatcher from the reply he deserved: None of your business. Young chose his words.
“Nothing against Southeastern,” he said. “Somebody could take it over, shake it up and really get it moving. But I felt that until we consolidate our own situation . . .”
It was a careful argument, carefully marshaled. No doubt with Hedstrom, Young had been more emphatic. But Thatcher would be willing to guess that he had been logical then too.
Young was warming to his theme. “I said we weren’t really set up with Chicken Tonight. God, we are—we were—opening so many franchises that we couldn’t really keep tabs on them. Didn’t have enough inspectors to check around. And that’s important in this business, Mr. Thatcher. You’ve got to be sure everybody’s doing things right, so you build the Chicken Tonight name. That’s what I kept telling Frank—when we still had a lot of work to do in our own shop, that was no time to branch out. Oh, sure, once we got in shape here—”
Thatcher watched the younger man halt suddenly.
“Hell,” said Ted Young, almost stricken, “I keep forgetting.”
Thatcher sympathized. “Say what you will, you have your chance to . . . er, consolidate now.”
Young sat absolutely still for a second. Then, straightening his shoulders, he said, “We will, Mr. Thatcher. Did Frank tell you about our New England sales? I think we’re over the worst. By the end of the year . . .”
Thatcher left Chicken Tonight after a brisk sales talk. He left also with a new impression of Ted Young; whatever his wife’s feelings about the role, Young gloried in his position at Chicken Tonight. A less intense man might be concealing resentment, envy, hate. But Young was transparent.
Thatcher was in the lobby when he heard himself hailed.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, finding Joan Hedstrom before him.
“You were thinking hard,” she said in forgiveness.
Thatcher regarded Frank Hedstrom’s wife with approval. Here was a wealthy, uncomplicated woman. No Polish princes here—if several packages from F.A.O. Schwarz meant anything. And, in the midst of a prolonged business crisis, here was a woman who retained serene confidence in her husband and life.
“. . . that terrible weekend,” Mrs. Hedstrom was saying. “You know, I’m not sure that we’re ever going to feel comfortable in that house. Somehow it’s been spoiled.”
Was this Mrs. Hedstrom’s way of preparing to lose the Maryland house, and a good many other things? Aloud, Thatcher said, “I recall that it was your first stay down there. I can sympathize with your feelings.”
She sighed. “It really was an awful disappointment. We’d worked so hard planning it, Iris and I. And it was going to be the perfect weekend—you know. Then, first, there was all the trouble—”
She never got nearer than that to the poisoning of chicken Mexicali, Thatcher realized.
“—and then, well, we thought the boys needed a rest even more. But ever
ything went wrong. First Mr. Ogilvie insisted on talking business. Oh, I know business is important, Mr. Thatcher. But you have to get away from it once in a while.”
Thatcher agreed and she shook her head at him, smiling. “Men! You’re all the same. Still, it really was a silly time to talk business. And getting dragged off to hunt clubs—good heavens, Frank and I aren’t the hunt-club type!”
“Who is?” Thatcher asked.
“Unless,” she said with a twinkle, “I meet a really good dancer, of course. Then it’s different.”
A nice woman, Thatcher thought. For her sake, he hoped that Frank Hedstrom came through his difficulties unscathed.
“Mrs. Hedstrom,” he said. “It occurs to me that you’re just the person I’d like a few words with. Won’t you come and have a drink with me?”
A small, worried frown appeared, but Joan Hedstrom replied promptly, “Of course, but let’s go upstairs instead. We keep a tiny apartment here, because Frank can’t always get home.”
“Well, Mr. Thatcher?” she asked when they were settled in the small living room.
“I’ve just been talking to Ted Young,” he began.
Her expression lightened. Admirably, she did not inquire about the subject of that talk.
“Oh, yes?”
“He’s a very capable man,” said Thatcher.
“I know that Frank would be lost without him,” she replied.
Thatcher doubted this, but he realized that Joan Hedstrom would always say the correct thing.
“I got the impression that he’s happy in his work,” he said.
She was briefly puzzled. Then, with real merriment: “Happy in his—Oh, my goodness! You’re still worrying about what Iris said about second fiddle, aren’t you?”
