“Hello,” I croaked.
“Have you read this morning’s Wall Street Journal?” It was Jack Cavanaugh. He did not sound happy.
“No. I don’t read in my sleep. Besides, I have it delivered to the office.”
“Well, you’d better go and get yourself a copy,” he barked as a prelude to slamming down the receiver.
“Shit,” I mumbled, forcing myself out of bed and dragging myself into the kitchen. Claudia was already gone, her episode of introspection ended by the inevitability of patients that would not—could not—wait. I could never be a doctor, I reflected numbly as I stumbled into the kitchen. It wasn’t the crushing hours—I worked almost as many hours as Claudia. It was the early starting times.
Fumbling with the water and the filter, I managed to put some coffee on to brew. While I waited I leaned up against the kitchen sink and glared through the steel bars of the burglar grille at the lone houseplant perched on the windowsill. It was a housewarming present from our landlord, and incredibly, three years later it still clung to life, fed only on cold coffee and neglect.
When there was an inch of dark liquid in the bottom of the pot I poured it into my cup while the fresh coffee hissed and sputtered onto the heating element. It took me two full cups before I was sufficiently conscious to get my sweats on and my running shoes laced up. On my way out the door I remembered to take a five-dollar bill out of my purse, fold it up, and slip it into my pocket along with my key.
The air was clear and cold, the sky still gray as the pale sun struggled to bum its way through the clouds. About an inch of new snow crunched under my feet. I touched my toes, decided that I’d done enough stretching, and set off at a slow trot toward the Museum of Science and Industry. By the time I got to Fifty-seventh Street, I was sufficiently awake to notice that I was freezing, so I picked up the pace. I pushed through the rest of my usual loop along the lake to Fifty-first Street, propelled as much by the cold as by my curiosity about what had prompted Jack Cavanaugh’s wake-up call.
Panting and with a stitch in my side, I stopped at the newsstand under the viaduct at Fifty-third Street and bought that morning’s Wall Street Journal. Walking slowly, I crossed Lake Park and scanned the front page for whatever might have set Jack Cavanaugh off, but I didn’t see anything. I tucked the paper under my arm and walked the half block to Starbucks and ordered a double latte. Then, cup in hand, I retired to a stool at the counter by the window to search the paper in earnest.
I found what I was looking for on page fourteen. It was a small item that ran under the headline SHARES OFFERED IN ILLINOIS PLATING AND SPECIALTY CHEMICALS COMPANY. The article went on briefly to describe Superior Plating’s operations and assets. It also quoted Mark Hoffenberg, Lydia’s investment banker from First Chicago, as saying that “Ms. Cavanaugh-Wallace is actively soliciting buyers for her shares in the company.” In the stripped-down jargon of the business press, it was Lydia’s formal announcement that she was serious about selling her shares. Under the circumstances, I found it impossible to decide whether Lydia’s decision to sell her interest in the family business was an act of self-immolation or revenge.
Leaving Cheryl to fend off hysterical Cavanaughs as best she could, I stopped at the hospital on my way to the office to see Daniel Babbage. After Jack Cavanaugh’s wake-up call, I was anxious to hear whatever advice Daniel might be able to offer about how to handle his old friend.
I eased my car into a quasi-legal parking place on the other side of the Midway, the wide swath of grass that separates the law school from the rest of the University of Chicago. Now covered in snow, it lay like a white carpet at the feet of the University, which stood majestic and incongruous in the pale morning light—quadrangles of medieval splendor in the heart of the city.
But all the gargoyles in the world don’t change the fact that once you walk through the double doors on Cottage Grove, you’re in a large, urban teaching hospital. I hadn’t been there since Russell died and my reaction was visceral and overwhelming. My step slowed. Memory squeezed my chest so fiercely that for a split second I fought for air. I didn’t need to ask directions to the oncology service. I knew the way by heart. Indeed, on bad nights, I still walked it in my dreams.
Visiting hours were still half a day away, but in my suit and high heels I went unchallenged, taken no doubt for some sort of administrator. I found Daniel’s room with no difficulty. One of the partners at Callahan was a trustee of the hospital and consequently Babbage had been assigned the equivalent of the presidential suite—a double room that held only one bed and boasted cheesy aqua curtains on the window and industrial-grade carpet of the same shade on the floor. Everywhere you looked there were flowers and cards from friends filled with best wishes.
Daniel had clearly taken a turn for the worse. His cheeks seemed to have caved in and his skin was unmistakably yellowed by jaundice. I knocked softly on the door frame. His eyes opened in an instant.
“I was just pretending to be asleep,” he said, struggling to sit up a little. “Damn nurse always comes and tries to poke and prod every time I turn around. I don’t see why they can’t just leave me to die in peace. The doctor says he’s going to come by and talk to me about some new chemotherapy protocol. Doctor! You should see him. He’s just a kid. Ten to one he doesn’t shave yet. I told the nurse I don’t want to see him. I won’t be turned into a guinea pig. I just want to be left alone.”
“Is there anything I can get for you?”
“How about a bottle of single-malt scotch and a good cigar, though I don’t think they’ll let me smoke it.”
“There’s a lounge on the seventh floor where I know you can smoke. I’ll talk to the nurse. I’ll bring the cigars and we’ll get you down there.”
“You’ve got a deal. How are things going with the Cavanaughs?”
“It depends on which Cavanaugh you’re talking about. I had dinner last night with Dagny. It was one of the nicest evenings I’d spent in a year. I also met with Lydia yesterday morning.”
“So how did that meeting go?”
“On a scale of one to ten, with one being as normal as you and me talking and ten being a conversation with a hallucinating psychotic in a straitjacket, it was about a six.”
“Did she come alone or did she bring Arthur with her?”
“She brought him. You know, if I were trying to invent the man most likely to annoy Jack Cavanaugh, I’d end up with Arthur Wallace.”
“Why else do you think she married him?” countered Babbage with a little bit of his usual elfishness. “But you know, when it comes to the present generation, Jack Cavanaugh should consider himself lucky if she marries someone of the same color and the opposite sex! Fathers like Jack always hate their sons-in-law. They invariably think that they’re gorillas—hairy, stupid men who marry their babies for their money. I have to tell you, Lydia’s seemed much more well-adjusted since she married Arthur.”
“That can’t be possible. I spent an hour with her yesterday, and after the first two minutes I could tell she is one seriously disturbed individual. I can’t even imagine what she must have been like if this is an improvement.”
“You should have met her right after her second divorce. She was a total malcontent. On her bad days she would lash out at anyone and everyone. On her good days she would sink into a terrible depression. She had absolutely no idea how to go about leading her life. It was frightening to witness. Whatever Arthur’s motives, he’s the first one who’s given Lydia the attention and emotional stability that she craves.”
“But at what price?” I reached into my purse, pulled out a copy of that morning’s Wall Street Journal, and read him the piece about Lydia and her shares.
“Has Jack seen this?” Daniel demanded when I’d finished.
“He called me at home this morning and woke me up.”
“You have to admit that it was clever of the boys from First Chicago to get her to agree to an item in the Journal. It just makes it that much harder for her to ba
ck down. What did Jack have to say?”
“I haven’t discussed it with him. I wanted to talk to you first, but from his brief call this morning I’d guess he’s furious. I have to be honest with you. I don’t have any sense of how to handle all of them. It’s like herding cats. They all have their own agendas.”
“Let me tell you what the engine is that really drives a family-owned business. It’s a combination of three parts: love, power, and habit. Jack loves his children, he holds great power over them, but he is in the habit of seeing them in the same way as he did when they were little. He is a shrewd businessman, but he’s got this one big blind spot and that’s his family. Sometimes I think it’s a universal trait that parents don’t ever seem able to see their offspring for what they really are. Maybe that’s what keeps parents from murdering their children—who knows?”
“But if Jack insists on refusing to believe his daughter is really going to sell her shares and she does go ahead with it—and with Mark Hoffenberg and First Chicago behind her, you’ve got to admit that they’ll generate quite a bit of momentum—Jack Cavanaugh is going to have a much more painful reality to confront than the fact that his daughter no longer cares to be a shareholder.”
“Do you really think that they’ll be able to find a buyer?” asked Daniel, struggling to reach the plastic water jug on his bedside. I poured him a glass and handed it to him. He drank it while I pretended not to notice how badly his hands shook and how much the simple task of raising a glass to his lips seemed to exhaust him.
“That depends,” I said. “Granted, I do agree with you that the piece in this morning’s Journal is a clever negotiating tactic—a way to light a fire under the rest of the Cavanaughs and possibly push up the price. After all, there aren’t a tremendous number of investors who’ll find a minority interest in a family-owned company an attractive opportunity. But there’s been quite a bit of renewed interest in manufacturing companies and Superior Plating is an attractive operation. For someone who’s not looking to make a killing in the short term, someone who might be looking to gain control of the company in five or ten years, it could be a smart move. I’ve got to tell you, Daniel. I have a bad feeling about this. If Jack doesn’t get on the stick and at least talk to Lydia about this in a realistic way, he’s going to be sitting across the table from some stranger who owns twelve percent of his company.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll come around. When is Dagny planning on giving him her ultimatum?”
“Tonight. She’s invited her dad and Peaches to dinner. The question is, will it work?”
“Given the choice between losing Lydia as a shareholder and Dagny as a chief financial officer, I think Jack will stick with Dagny.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then you’ll have to find some other way to convince him. I have to tell you, Kate, there will be no peace in the Cavanaugh family until Lydia is out of the company.”
“And if Jack won’t buy her out?”
“Then believe me, there will be no limit to the price he will be asked to pay.”
I spent the rest of the day trying to push ahead on other matters, but every time the phone rang it was another Cavanaugh. Philip, furious, reported that his phone was ringing off the hook with investment bankers either volunteering their services or requesting information about the company. Jack called twice, and even though I spent more than half an hour on the phone with him, each time I hung up wondering why he’d called, other than to vent his frustration. I even talked to Peaches, who suggested in her sweet southern drawl that I knock some sense into her stepdaughter Lydia before she drove Jack into coronary arrest.
I didn’t hear from Dagny until lunchtime and then it was only to remind me about Cecilia Dobson’s funeral, which I had already forgotten about completely.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t mind swinging by the plant and picking me up,” Dagny ventured. “That way I’d have an excuse for not going with my father or Philip. They’re both insane about the article in the Journal this morning and I’m frankly sick of hearing about it.”
“I’d be happy to. What time do you want me to be there?”
“I’ll wait for you in front of the building at three-thirty,” said Dagny. “You won’t even have to get out of the car.”
I asked Cheryl to hold my calls and I shut the door. I kicked off my shoes, dragged my disc player out from my bottom drawer, and pulled a CD from the pile—The Smiths, as it turned out. Cranking up the volume, I happily immersed myself in the Frostman Refrigeration file—a dull-as-dishwater corporate restructuring, blessedly devoid of any and all family entanglements.
When it was time to leave and pick Dagny up, I’d gotten the Frostman memo and a full third of the other tasks off my most urgent to-do pile. So it was with a much lighter heart than at any other time in that horror show of a week that I set off to Cecilia Dobson’s funeral.
As I drove south on State Street, with its odd assortment of auto parts stores and wig emporiums, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that I really needed to get rid of my old Volvo and buy a new car. Russell and I had picked out the station wagon, a wedding present to ourselves that we planned on filling up with dogs and kids. For a long time after his death it really was sentiment that made me hang on to it. Recently, I realized, it was more like entropy.
I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d had it washed. The man in the parking garage in my building offers—no, I take that back—begs me to let him wash it. But I’ve let it go for so long that I’m almost afraid of what I’ll see once all the layers of urban grime are rinsed away. Besides, if he washed the outside, then I’d have to do something about the interior, too.
I glanced over my shoulder at the backseat. I saw old newspapers, a dirty blanket, a crumpled bag from Harold’s Fried Chicken, and so many empty Diet Coke cans that every time I hit a pothole I heard a tinny clang. If a car could have mice, I concluded, mine would.
I pulled into the Superior Plating lot, grateful for being a few minutes early. The lot was almost completely empty and I remembered what Dagny had said about closing early in order to let employees attend the funeral. I spent the next few minutes frantically cleaning up the worst of the mess in my car, including some McDonald’s wrappers of uncertain provenance and more empty bags of M&M’s than I’d like to confess to. That done, I checked the front door, but there was no sign of Dagny.
She had said that the cemetery was close to the plant, so I waited a few more minutes, growing increasingly uncertain. Perhaps I’d gotten the time wrong or misunderstood her directions about where to meet. There was a reason, I realized, that I usually left these kinds of arrangements to Cheryl. I picked up my car phone—a concession to the firm’s obsession with having partners constantly available—and dialed the Superior Plating number, but got their after-hours recording.
Finally, not knowing what else to do, I got out of my car and went into the building to look for Dagny. The front door was open, but the reception desk was empty. I made my way through the deserted administrative wing toward Dagny’s office, passing no one. The door was closed. I knocked.
“Dagny?” I called.
There was no answer.
Afraid that I’d hopelessly screwed up, I turned the handle and pushed the door open. I could not believe what I saw.
Dagny Cavanaugh lay on the floor of her office— facedown.
11
For a minute, maybe longer, I just stood there. It was all too much to absorb. Dagny Cavanaugh sprawled facedown on the carpet. Just like Cecilia Dobson.
Then she moved.
Her arms and legs jerked as if she were a rag doll being shaken by some invisible hand. Suddenly her limbs twitched in an uncoordinated spasm. Then, just as suddenly, they were still.
Relief flooded through me. At least she was alive.
I ran to her side, dropped to my knees, and rolled her onto her back, calling her name. She didn’t respond, but she didn’t look all that bad. Her cheeks we
re pink. Her skin was warm. There were flecks of white foam on her lips and her eyelids fluttered uncontrollably. I checked her throat for a pulse and found none. I watched her chest and put my hand above her mouth—but no air moved and as I put my face near hers the unmistakably sour smell of vomit mingled with her perfume.
I shouted for help, but knew that no one would hear me. They’d all gone to the funeral. I willed myself to be calm. I had to call 911 before I began CPR.
Suddenly Dagny’s arms shot out and she clutched me in an iron grip. Startled, I cried out. My heart was beating wildly. I looked at Dagny. Her face was convulsed in terrible pain, her mouth moving as if she were trying to speak. I bent closer in order to hear her.
Without warning, her back arched up off the floor as if her body were being electrified by some internal agony. Her head jerked up violently, hitting mine and knocking me back onto my heels. From her mouth came a hideous, wordless roar that seemed to rise up out of her throat from some primitive source. It was a sound I shall never forget—a rasping, whooping cry like a rusty door being pulled from its hinges, like a desperately wounded animal giving voice to unspeakable torment.
And then she fell silent, her body completely slack. Frantically, I bent over her and called her name. Her eyes were open but vacant. In them I searched desperately for some glimmer of the woman whom the night before I’d rejoiced in as a friend. Instead, all I saw was the face of a corpse. Blue eyes fixed under half lids in an expression of vague wonder, like a flustered schoolchild to whom the logic of a simple equation has just been revealed. It was the same look of sudden, silent comprehension that I had last seen on the face of Cecilia Dobson.
I watched it all like a movie I had seen before—the tube down the throat, the IV drip, the same futile search for pulse, reflexes, respiration. I stood out of the way, an onlooker on these last pointless efforts. Sweat was pouring off my face and the thin silk of my blouse was as cold and wet as if I’d been caught in the rain.
Bitter Business Page 10
