Any Given Moment (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 3)

by Laura Van Wormer

  And so Peter went off to Wharton for the MBA he wanted, got a huge offer from a West Coast brokerage house, and became a Pacific Exchange millionaire in fairly good time. In 1986 he realized his dream and founded his own bank; today it was one of the few with an A rating in the entire state of California.

  Henry heard a car on the gravel drive and walked around the side of the house to see who it was. A cream-colored Mercedes came to a stop and Millicent waved, getting out of the car.

  "How good to see you," he said.

  "Hello, Hill. I brought Doe some plants," Millicent said, ges­turing to the roomy backseat, which was covered with flats. "She told me she gets to start gardening soon, and I know that will prove to be very therapeutic for her."

  "I hope you'll help her," Hill said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. "Between my knees and my back..." Ever since the morn­ing of Dorothy's heart attack, both had been giving him trouble.

  "Growing older is difficult for some, Hill, I know," Millicent said, implying that this was clearly something she did not know anything about.

  They went inside and found Dorothy reading in the living room. It was a large room, with tall windows and padded window ­seats that Dorothy loved to curl up on to read, but today she was on the couch, sunlight streaming in through the bay window behind her. "I'm reading the most wonderful novel," she told them, stretching like a satisfied cat. "Tom Leo and the two Georges sent it over."

  The two Georges, as they were known, were co-owners of three bookstores, and Tom was the longtime manager of one, Book Hampton South, a pleasant, crowded store on Main Street in Southampton.

  "Doesn't she look well?" Henry asked proudly as Millicent bent to kiss Dorothy.

  "The country seems to be agreeing with you, I must say. If this change has been accomplished in only a few days, I can't wait to see you at the end of the summer."

  Bernadette came in and asked if Mrs. Hillings would like her to make tea.

  "Dearest Bernadette," Dorothy said, "you mustn't wait on us hand and foot." She looked at Millicent. "She has been extraordi­narily kind in every way, and I'm quite worried that Henry and I will never get along without her in the future, so dependent have we become."

  Bernadette smiled. "I will make us tea," Dorothy announced happily, putting her book down.

  There was a flurry of protests, but Dorothy won and the group moved into the kitchen to settle around the big round table. They had just started their tea when the phone rang. Henry got up to answer it.

  "Hello, Henry, it's Elizabeth Robinson."

  "Yes, how are you?" he said, careful to keep his face void of any real expression.

  "I need to ask you a question."

  "Fine," he said, turning his back to the breakfast table.

  "Tell me what, if anything, these names mean to you: Galway­ Stephens, Druttington, and Harriot Holt."

  "I need to change phones," he said after a moment. "We have company." He made his excuses to the group and went upstairs to the study. "Okay, hang up!" he called.

  In the kitchen, Bernadette hung up the receiver and sat back down at the table.

  "He thinks I don't know what's going on," Dorothy said matter-­of-factly to Millicent. "That phone call has something to do with the agency."

  Millicent quickly changed the subject by mentioning that she had brought twelve flats of assorted summer flowers.

  "Elizabeth?" Henry was saying upstairs. "Run that list by me again."

  "Galway-Stephens, Druttington, and Harriot Holt."

  "Those are overseas agencies and clients we represented years ago. Where did you get those names from?"

  "Patty saw files with those labels on them yesterday in James Stanley Johnson's office at ICA."

  There was a long silence.

  "Henry?"

  "Yes, Elizabeth, sorry, I'm thinking. So they did get some files out of the offices," he murmured. "Well, if that's what they're after, files like those, then they're out of luck."

  "Why is that?" Elizabeth asked.

  "Because what they have is a mere trifle," he said. "We have literally thousands of old files like those in storage.

  "Hold on a moment, please, Henry." He could hear Elizabeth repeating what he had just said to

  someone else.

  "Henry," Elizabeth said. "Monty's here. He's getting on the extension."

  There was a click. "Henry? Monty here. You've got files in storage they don't know about?"

  "Thousands," he said. "The woman who organized them and shipped them out—Jean Halliday, who worked for us for almost thirty years—passed away about three years ago and her husband came to us with a notebook he'd found. In it was a record of all the old files and how to find them. Which was a darn good thing, I have to say, since we had forgotten all about them."

  "Where's the notebook now?" Elizabeth asked.

  "It's there in the study. In Doe's desk somewhere. Try the middle drawer."

  "Henry, is this giving you any ideas about what they might be after?" Monty asked.

  "Well," Henry sighed, "it does make me think we need to get a list of every property currently under development with ICA. I can't believe they'd be going to all this trouble unless there was quite a lot of money at stake."

  "I found it!" Elizabeth said, excitement in her voice. "The files are in Queens at a place called U-File-With-Us."

  "Listen, Henry," Monty said, "you're not going to like this, but you need to know that Creighton Berns is telling everyone that you and Dorothy are trying to back out of your merger agreement with ICA so you can sell the agency to Ben Rothstein."

  "But that's not true!" Henry said, stunned. "I haven't even talked to Ben!"

  "We know that," Monty said.

  "But this is an outrage!" Henry yelled, hitting the table with his fist. "I have never backed out of an agreement in my life!"

  "Is that Henry shouting?" Dorothy asked her companions down in the kitchen.

  "I didn't hear anything," Millicent lied, asking for more tea and crunching noisily on a chocolate-covered biscuit.

  "Would you like me to go upstairs and see if everything is all right?" Bernadette asked.

  "Only if you do it discreetly, Bernadette," Dorothy said.

  "He has twisted this situation beyond recognition and I not only resent it," Henry fumed, "but I will make him pay for every lie he tells!"

  "What else can he say, though?" Monty said. "When you think about it, it's the only defense he has—to blame you while you're not able to defend yourself."

  "What makes me so goddamn mad is that until I find out what he's after, a lot of people are going to believe his story. And it isn't true, I tell you! Although it's probably a good idea now. Goddamn it, it'll be over my dead body Creighton Berns gets my agency!"

  "Uh-oh," Elizabeth said, "I was afraid of this. Had I known how upset—"

  "Had you known nothing!" Henry came close to yelling, slam­ming his fist on the desk again. "You are to report everything to me, everything, do you hear? And I have half a mind to get on a plane to the West Coast and punch that son of a bitch in the mouth!"

  Bernadette, standing in the hall, blinked several times. And then she went back downstairs to tell Mrs. Hillings what she had heard.

  33

  The new studio head of Metropolis Pictures quietly swore as he sliced the ball and it went sailing off into the rough.

  "That's a tough one," Creighton Berns acknowledged.

  It was Sunday afternoon and they were at the Los Angeles Coun­try Club doing business.

  The top financier behind Metropolis, who was in from Tokyo, teed up next. Creighton and the studio head exchanged discreet glances as the financier went through his meditation, or whatever the hell it was he did before hitting the ball—standing there, club in hand, rock still, closing his eyes (what was that sound coming from his throat?). The financier opened his eyes, looked fiercely at the ball, and then swung and hit it—damn near perfectly.

  "Very nice, very nice," Creighton
murmured, stepping up to the tee. He placed his ball, readied himself, concentrated, and swung, slicing the ball in the same direction as the studio head's.

  "Too bad," the financier said, with a shallow bow. Their fourth, an associate of the financier's, stepped up to drive his ball straight up the fairway.

  "If anything should come to light," the studio head said to Creighton as soon as they were out of earshot, walking off to the rough together, "for God's sake act as though it's news to you, too."

  "Of course," Creighton asked. "But I told you, I can fix it for you."

  The studio head looked at him. "Are you all right?"

  "Yeah, why?" Creighton asked.

  "Got a cold? You look and sound horrible."

  "No—well, yeah. Sinus, you know."

  "Nobody does that stuff anymore, Creighton," the studio head said.

  "Me neither, not anymore," Creighton said, wiping his nose with his handkerchief and jamming it back into his pocket. "How the hell did he get a membership here?" he asked, referring to their host from Tokyo. "Someday we're going to have to clear these guys out, you know? Can't even play golf in our own fucking country."

  "We've got to keep them happy," the studio head reminded him. "We have to have the loan extension.

  "I just wish it didn't mean screwing up my swing on purpose every time you want to talk to me out here,” Creighton growled.

  "Mr. Berns!" the caddie called from the golf cart. He was wav­ing the telephone.

  "Now what?" Creighton jogged back to the cart and took the portable phone. "Yeah?" His expression was impassive as he lis­tened. "Are you sure?" Pause. "And they're still in New York?" Pause. "They're doing what? How the hell do they know?" He was squinting heavily now as if trying to visualize something. "I don't know anything about her, but him..." He frowned. "Okay, fine, bury 'em, I don't care," he said. Pause. "Yeah, Smith's big, but not bigger than me. Get the message across loud and clear—if he wants trouble he's got it, big-time." Pause. "Yeah. Robinson, too. Fuck up her series and let her know why."

  By the time Creighton had disconnected the phone, the studio head had reached him. "What's the problem?"

  "Huh? Nothing," he said, giving the phone back to the caddie. He turned and gave the studio head a slap on the arm. "I told you, you leave it to me. Everything's going to be fine."

  "Sure as hell fucking better be," the studio head said.

  34

  On Monday morning, Patty Kleczak went into work at ICA early. It was a good thing because at ten minutes of nine Marion Ballicutt came tearing into the agents' end of the floor. Patty heard the lawyer bark into one of the offices, "I want whatever we have on Elizabeth Robinson and Montgomery Grant Smith on my desk within the hour."

  The agent said something Patty couldn't hear. And then Balli­cutt said, "Then get on the phone to PBS and find out! And if you can't get anywhere with them, call the BBC. I want that informa­tion—with the contracts—on my desk within the hour." She started to walk down the hall, stopped, and backtracked to the office. "And I want an updated list of every radio station carrying the Mont­gomery Grant Smith Show." She turned on her heel and briskly walked back to her end of the floor.

  "Melanie!" wailed the agent. The secretary next to Patty jumped and went scurrying into the office.

  Patty dashed down to the building lobby and out to the street to find a pay phone. She dialed Joshua Lafayette's number and re­ported everything she had heard.

  "Interesting requests to come from head legal counsel," Joshua commented. "Excellent work, Patty. Talk to you later."

  The demonstration of Hillings & Hillings clients began at noon and created a tremendous traffic jam from one end of Fifty-Seventh Street to the other. People in cars and people on foot rubbernecked to check out whatever it was that had captivated the interest of news cameras and such an enormous crowd near Fifth Avenue.

  Gathered in front of the ICA building was a rather eccentric group of protesters:

  ICA: INTERNATIONAL SECRET AGENTS, said the sign Dick Stone car­ried. The detective novel writer was dressed in a trench coat and wide-brimmed fedora, making him look rather like Humphrey Bo­gart.

  GET SOME MANNERS ICA OR LEAVE THE TABLE! Becky Tomlinson's sign read. She wasn't able to march, so she was sitting in a folding chair with her sign propped up on a pole beside her. Wearing white gloves and a white hat, with a blue suit and matching pocketbook, she was smiling brightly, waving gaily to the crowd. Marta, her companion, was marching in the circle of protesters, carrying a sign that read, GO AWAY BERNS ICA!

  THERE'S NOTHING ROMANTIC ABOUT BAD BUSINESS, Alice Mae Hol­lison's sign said. The lady herself was dressed in a very interesting flowing pink number, featuring feathers around the neck and little spangly things that caught the light. But it was the imitation dia­mond tiara on her head that really made the outfit. Miss Hollison informed the press that it had been presented to her at the very first romantic writer's convention in 1956.

  BAD, ICA, BAD! read the little sandwich cards hanging on either side of tiny Pookiesnips, the little dog Clarky Birkstein was leading about on a leash. Pookiesnips was a crowd pleaser, winning hearts right and left.

  TERMINATOR III—CREIGHTON BERNS, Warren Krebor's sign said. The old science-fiction writer was wearing all of the clothes and gadgets that had been licensed from his Leona Trilogy.

  Sidney Meltner, dressed like Sherlock Holmes and carrying a magnifying glass, held a sign that read, NO MYSTERY WHO THE BAD GUY IS IN THIS CASE.

  Lucy Boyle, still looking rather alarmingly like an old man, was marching about with great gusto in jeans and boots. The sign she carried said, BROADWAY BOOS ICA, and the tape recorder she was car­rying was playing the original recording of Sondheim's "Every Day a Little Death," sung by Patricia Elliott.

  Sissy Connors was marching about like a caricature housewife ready to clean—apron, bandanna over her hair, a mop and pail­ and was carrying a sign that read, HELPFUL HINT #1: CLEAN UP YOUR ACT, lCA!

  Anthony Marcell and John Gabriel Mendez carried no signs and were standing on either side of Claire Spender Holland. Claire was standing on a small carpeted box, addressing the crowd through a microphone. All three were dressed in elegantly somber black cloth­ing, hoping to convey funeral-like melancholy to the crowd.

  "The agreement between the ICA Corporation and Hillings & Hillings spelled out in detail the terms of the transition," Claire's patrician voice rang out. "Suffice it to say, throwing out the chair­man of lCA, Benjamin Rothstein, who had run the company for twenty-seven years, and then physically assaulting the Hillings & Hillings offices here in New York—padlocking doors, ransacking files, stealing confidential client information—was not part of that agreement."

  "Where's Traubner the Trotskyite?" Monty asked Elizabeth as they stood in the crowd, watching. He had waffled all night be­tween his desire to watch the demonstration and his duty to his radio show. To Elizabeth's surprise, the authors' protest had won out. His listeners would have to get along on a "Best of" show today.

  "I don't know where he is," she said.

  They listened to Claire for a while. She was great. She had an Eleanor Roosevelt quality to her speech and deportment that made people take notice.

  "Look," Elizabeth said, "there's the DBS News truck."

  "CBS is over there," Monty said, pointing.

  "Local or national?" she asked, craning her neck to see.

  "I think both," Monty told her.

  "I hope Henry can keep Dorothy from hearing about any of this," Elizabeth worried. "She'd be mortified to see how everyone's protecting her like she's a fragile old lady."

  "Excuse me, Professor Robinson? Mr. Smith?" the DBS re­porter introduced himself and asked if he could ask them a few questions on camera.

  Monty and Elizabeth looked at each other. "Oh, hell, why not join the fray?" Monty said.

  Sure, they told the reporter.

  The floodlights went on, the crowd pressed in around them, and the reporter told his
TV audience with whom he was about to speak. The other protesters looked a bit annoyed as the attention swung away from them and over to Monty and Elizabeth. "Kudos, Big Mont!" people called from the crowd, making Monty smile.

  "Mr. Smith, are you accusing Creighton Berns of ICA of crim­inal intent?" the reporter asked.

  That stopped Monty for a second, but he quickly recovered. "We are protesting the fact that under Mr. Berns's management of ICA, our agents, Dorothy and Henry Hillings, were economically, emotionally, and even physically damaged by ICA's reckless and inappropriate actions. What has happened to them is a crime," he added in a deep voice, "and we are demanding that ICA once more adhere to the transition plan as it was agreed upon."

  "This transition that you say was agreed upon, was it in writ­ing?"

  "It was," Monty said, "but in letter form only, not as a part of the actual contract. Nonetheless, the agreement was binding. Sud­denly the opportunistic new chairman, Creighton Berns, decides to play without rules—the very rules that you and I live our lives by. You and I wouldn't get away with this kind of behavior. Why should he?"

  "Professor Robinson," the reporter said, turning to her, "we've been told that your affiliation with the BBC and PBS may be in jeopardy because of your involvement in this protest. Is that true?"

  Elizabeth blinked. "I have no idea." She looked at Monty.

  "Professor Robinson has always been primarily represented by Hillings & Hillings," Monty explained. "And that makes it very difficult for anyone to know what ICA is or is not doing to Pro­fessor Robinson's career. And may I add, if what you say is true and ICA is involved, they will find themselves with a whopping big lawsuit."

  "The wire services are also reporting that you had a television pilot in the works which has been derailed. Is this true, Mr. Smith?" the reporter asked.

  "Absolutely not," Monty said, smiling into the camera. "As over fifteen million radio listeners out there know, this is America, and America is the most wonderful country on earth. Not even AI Ca­pone could get away with his crimes. I have every confidence Amer­ican ideals will triumph in this situation, too."