Right on the Money

by Emma Lathen

  Unlike Pepitone, Bradley did not fly into a rage. Instead he withdrew to do some heavy thinking. Obviously one of his foes had decided this was the time to launch a covert attack. As he considered possible instigators and possible reasons, his hand unconsciously groped for a pen. Before he knew it, he was staring at a scratch pad with one bold black line: “The Ecker Company.”

  “Damn them to hell,” he muttered, admitting to himself what he would deny aloud. Ecker was not only putting him into an invidious position, it was shadowing his future.

  As a general rule Sam Bradley preferred to sit tight during crises, living to fight another day. Now he felt so threatened he prepared to abandon precedent.

  First he dialed his home number.

  “Eunice? Listen, something just came up. I’m going to be in the city until late. Don’t keep dinner.”

  Questions were inevitable.

  “No, it isn’t anything important,” he said, wishing this were true. “I’ll be looking in on the Javits Center. We’re exhibiting at the trade show this year and I want to make sure we’re respectable.”

  But concern for the trade show was absent from his instructions to his assistant.

  “Hugh, I’ll be taking off now. Make sure Emerson finishes his report, will you?”

  Urgent demands on Bradley’s attention elsewhere were a commonplace to Hugh.

  “It’ll be on your desk by morning,” he promised.

  “Fine,” said Bradley, already thinking ahead to routes north of the Javits Center.

  There was no reason to conceal a trip to the Ecker Company, but instinct told him that there was nothing to be gained from broadcasting it, either.

  Later in the day, after making recklessly good time to Bridgeport, Bradley found his forebodings justified. There were no vacancies in the modest strip of guest parking, so his final approach was on foot, through an industrial landscape light-years from Princeton.

  Phil Pepitone and Victor Hunnicut, interested primarily in manufacturing capability, had taken their first exposure to the old mill in stride. But Sam Bradley found it unsettling in more ways than one. Harsh comparisons would inevitably be drawn between the track records of this nineteenth-century remnant and his own sleek facilities. Furthermore, he was used to maneuvering in the antiseptic gloss of ASI. Here, Bradley realized with dismay, he would not be dealing with a paper bureaucracy.

  Within, however, Bradley was reassured to learn that the distraction he had sensed in Tina Laverdiere’s voice was due to the stress of housekeeping.

  “As I told you on the phone, everything’s still in a terrible mess,” she lamented when he finally located her. “We’re doing our best to pull together temporary quarters, but it isn’t easy. Particularly when all the strong backs are loading our exhibits for the trade show.”

  Ready to seize on any occasion to establish fraternity, Bradley said, “I didn’t realize Ecker was going to be at Javits. We’ll see each other there. This is the first year ASI will have a display and we’ve been having problems, too.”

  “It’s pretty much routine with us,” she replied. “We’ve been there for fifteen years.”

  Bradley wanted no part of a situation in which ASI was cast as the novice. Fortunately, before he had to formulate a reply, a procession entered, burdened with yet more cardboard boxes. Supervising the parade was a stout, gray-haired woman.

  “Just put them anywhere,” she directed her helpers. “When Tina decides where she wants things, you can come back.”

  Tina introduced Marilyn Burrus, the office manager.

  “. . . but actually everybody’s housemother here at Ecker. Marilyn, this is Sam Bradley, from ASI.”

  “Happy to meet you, Sam,” said Mrs. Burrus casually. Then, after allowing him to shake her hand, she marched off.

  Bradley, accustomed to rigid stratification at ASI, was taken aback. Seeing this, Tina explained the local hierarchy.

  “Our job titles don’t matter. The people who rank are the ones who were here at the beginning. And we’ve still got a lot of them.”

  Bradley thought he saw his opportunity. “That can be a strength—or a weakness,” he said heavily.

  Tina blinked and drew back.

  “Now what can I do for you?” she said briskly. “When you called I didn’t quite catch what you want. Is it the grand tour?”

  “Oh, that would be too much of an imposition. What I’d really like to see is Ecker’s test lab.”

  Before he could say another word, Tina cut in, “Fine. The man you want is Alan Frayne. I don’t have phones yet, so I’ll take you over.”

  Where Tina had been crisp, Frayne was blunt.

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” he said after Tina introduced them and sped off. “I’ll show you around the test lab. But there’s not a chance in hell you’re going to see our current projects. I know ASI’s cozying up to Ecker, but until it’s a done deal, I’m not handing over the keys to the safe.”

  Bradley recognized lines drawn in the sand.

  “Good God, no!” he said reassuringly. “I know the rules of the game, and I’ll tell you what I’m really interested in—how you develop Ecker’s original concepts to the point where production is viable. With a one-man show, it’s got to be different than what I’m used to. Any product that’s already being marketed would do as an example. For that matter, I’d even be interested in the ones that were scrapped.”

  Relaxing, Frayne smiled. “Well, that’s what my job is all about. Come to my shop and I’ll show you the test-run material on the food processor. As for the no-shows, most of that stuff went up in smoke but we should be able to dig up something for you.”

  Happy to have banished the specter of industrial espionage, Bradley continued his questions as he was ushered down a corridor.

  “No,” Frayne corrected almost instantly. “Conrad takes things further than the drawing board. He has a rough working model by the time he comes to me. Then my crew gets busy mocking up a prototype, so we can get started on the gut work. We iron out the bugs, beef up the parts that will wear out, slim down the whole thing as much as possible, and design the casing. You could call that the first half of the operation.”

  “You mean you’re still just dealing with a laboratory archetype?”

  Pausing to stiff-arm a door that separated offices from utility space, Frayne nodded. “Then, if the thing has survived that far, I call in my pattern makers to design a production process. The final step is costing out the whole thing and making a decision. Often it would just be too expensive for the market. That’s when I have to give Conrad the bad news.”

  Sam Bradley lived in a world where lines of authority were carefully demarcated. He was at a loss to imagine how you told the chief stockholder that his idea was no good.

  “That can’t be easy.”

  Frayne grinned. “I’m an old hand at it by now. Besides, years ago, we had a wonderful object lesson. I’d put the kibosh on his food smoker, and then someone else brought out almost the same thing. Damned if Conrad didn’t take it to pieces. When he saw what they had to do to bring it in at the right price, he figured he’d had a lucky escape. Here we are.”

  They had arrived at Frayne’s office, the most noticeable feature of which was a dazzling array of the entire Ecker line. In spite of himself Bradley was impressed.

  “I’ve never seen them all together.” His gaze swept from the famous coffeemaker to toasters, can openers, blenders, food processors. “My God, some of them have become real classics.”

  “People don’t want everything to be trendy. Take this item, for instance,” said Frayne, affectionately stroking the can opener with his finger. “People bought it because of those ratcheting jaws at the bottom of the housing. They really will open any jar in the kitchen. Of course a lot of clones came out in three or four years, but we’d already established a helluva reputation for durability. You could buy one of these things when you got married and never think about can openers again.”


  Bradley shook his head. “But what about the coffeepot? There are fancy European models that become popular all the time.”

  “Not really. They’re all right to impress guests after dinner, but in the morning everybody wants something fast, easy and foolproof. Our only real competition is instant coffee. But come on into the lab and I’ll show you the work we did on the food processor.”

  Fifteen minutes later Bradley was murmuring appreciatively as he laid down the last of the lab books.

  “. . . and the punch-button controls are more hightech than what you did before.”

  “Just because Conrad’s a rough diamond socially, people get the wrong idea. He took a first-class engineering degree and he keeps up-to-date. For instance, he had this great idea twenty-five years ago. You wanted to see something that didn’t make it into production, didn’t you?”

  Frayne led the way to what looked like the standard Ecker blender. Then he produced a flexible power takeoff that slipped into a small jack.

  “There were a bunch of bits that you could use to grate nutmeg and squeeze garlic and shave chocolate. But it involved too much fussing. We never could simplify it enough. You’re in luck on this one, I can show you the work we did. Normally our old lab books are over at the boiler house, but one of my people had pulled this file to take a look at it.”

  Bradley accepted this explanation blandly. Nonetheless he noticed that Alan Frayne was showing him a product made obsolete by the food processor.

  “Very interesting,” he said. Now might be the moment, he thought, to nudge Frayne into a discussion of the ASI inspection tour. “This must have been an eye-opener for Phil Pepitone. I know he considered a good many candidates for merger, but here at Ecker, he found a place that’s ready to forgo short-term gains in order to concentrate on growth.”

  With a sardonic gleam in his eye, Frayne began to frame a reply. Then an internal censor clicked in and he bit down hard.

  Sam Bradley dearly wished to know what that comment would have been, but Frayne, after briefly stating that Pepitone had been occupied with the production line, was making farewell noises.

  “I’m glad you saw what you wanted,” he said, rising. “Let me show you the way out.”

  This left Bradley with a haul that scarcely justified the effort of leaving Princeton. It did, however, reinforce his conviction that he had nothing to fear from the Ecker Company. Alan Frayne’s chief value was his ability to handle a very old man. The threat came from ASI, as Bradley soon learned from the least-reserved member of the Ecker management.

  Bob Laverdiere, taking the corner too fast, nearly cannoned into them.

  “Oops!” he exclaimed breezily. “Sorry about that, Alan.”

  Before he could pass, Frayne detained him. “Have you met Sam Bradley, Bob? He’s from ASI.”

  “Come to talk to Conrad?” Laverdiere guessed with cheerful nonchalance.

  “Just taking a look around,” Bradley replied.

  “You guys are coming in waves,” said Laverdiere. “Well, I’ve got to—”

  But Frayne had clamped a heavy hand on his elbow, preventing movement. “Sam was just asking where Conrad does his work. Why don’t you take a minute to show him? Meanwhile, I’ve got to get back to my desk. See you around, Sam.”

  As subtle as a herd of elephants, he handed off Sam Bradley, then disappeared down the hall.

  Laverdiere was momentarily disconcerted, but he did his best to cover. “Glad to see anybody from ASI,” he announced. “You know Phil Pepitone was here the other day?”

  “Yes, and he was very impressed,” Bradley replied automatically. He was busy being grateful that Alan Frayne, in his haste, had not identified Bradley’s role at ASI.

  “You’ll laugh when you see what Conrad calls his shop,” Laverdiere said. “It’s down these stairs.”

  Sam Bradley had already seen enough of Ecker’s ramshackle facilities. But Bob Laverdiere was the first talker he had encountered and, with any luck, an imprudent one.

  However, conversation did not flourish as they stood in the doorway surveying Conrad Ecker’s domain.

  “Good God!” Bradley finally said, astonished. He was looking at working surfaces, tools and furniture that conjured up Thomas Alva Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. A thick layer of dust substituted for the sepia of ancient photographs.

  “Conrad won’t let anybody in to clean up,” Laverdiere informed him. “Not that it really matters. He does most of his best work at home.”

  At ASI, the newest hire would walk out if asked to work in conditions like these.

  “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d never believe it,” Bradley said with absolute sincerity.

  “You and everybody else,” said Bob Laverdiere. “People always say it’s the kind of thing they’ve read about. Particularly if they come from big glitzy research operations like yours.”

  Bradley looked at him narrowly. Had Pepitone been discussing ASI’s research division? “You haven’t visited ASI, have you?” he asked.

  “Nope,” said Laverdiere. “But the way Vic Hunnicut described your equipment and staffing, it sounds like the twenty-first century compared to what we’ve got.”

  “I’m not surprised he bragged a little.” Then Bradley added deliberately, “We’re proud of our research facilities.”

  The dangling bait was successful. Innocently Bob Laverdiere continued his recollection.

  “Of course it takes more than facilities. Vic was telling me that the main reason ASI is interested in Ecker is because they haven’t come out with any winners themselves.”

  Victor Hunnicut! Bradley hastily readjusted his preconceptions.

  “Did he now?”

  Something in Bradley’s tone made even Bob Laverdiere pause. “Of course Vic seems to be taking an interest in every aspect of Ecker, not just our production system,” he said vaguely. “Tina told me he was even trying to get into some accounting problems that he really didn’t understand. But then that’s not so surprising. Phil told us he was one of your bright M.B.A. crowd.”

  This was intended as a tribute to ASI’s management sophistication, but Bradley barely heard it.

  “Hunnicut may not be as bright as he thinks,” he was saying to himself.

  “You mean you didn’t know he was head of ASI research?” said Tina that evening when she and Bob were comparing notes over pot roast. It was a matter of pride to her that only true emergencies brought on Chinese takeout or pizzas. “I’ll bet he was livid.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Laverdiere, sponging up gravy. “He’s pretty easygoing. But he was flabbergasted by Conrad’s little cave. Not snooty, or anything, just surprised.”

  “Bradley can’t afford to be snooty, from what they tell me.”

  Bob ducked the issue. “He seemed like a nice guy, though.”

  “You say that about everyone,” she said with affectionate derision.

  “Adolf Hitler? Saddam Hussein? That jerk Tom Herz, who stripped the pump this morning? I’m not the world’s patsy, Tina.”

  He was, however, happy and contented enough to take kindly to his fellowman. He had already put Sam Bradley from his mind.

  Not so Tina, visualizing Sam Bradley back in Princeton after learning that Victor Hunnicut had spilled the beans.

  “He’ll be mad enough to murder,” she said with considerable relish. Then she corrected the exaggeration. “At least, he’ll give Hunnicut a rough time.”

  “I don’t know why you’re so hard on Vic,” her husband said mildly. “He’s harmless.”

  Bob Laverdiere was just about to learn better.

  Chapter 10

  TO MARKET, TO MARKET

  The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center is enough to bring tears to Russian eyes. Located on the West Side, it is one vast marketplace where, depending on which trade show is in town, the visitor can wander through twenty-two acres of computers, dental equipment, shoes, or costume jewelry.

  The National Association of Kitchen
Suppliers brought out the usual hordes. Besides eighteen hundred exhibitors, the building teemed with salesmen, demonstrators, and buyers, all ready to deal. Since many audio-visual presentations were also vying for attention, the resultant din put a modern twist on Adam Smith. These days when men of the same trade gather, they make a tremendous racket.

  Ken Nicolls entered this hive of esoteric activity with more confidence than he brought to most trade shows for the Sloan. He knew that his one-day exposure to the Ecker Company did not make him a match for a manufacturer’s rep or a peddler of low-cost gadgets. But he had one ace up his sleeve. Three years earlier he and his wife had undertaken heavy research before remodeling their kitchen.

  On the whole, he preferred to forget the subsequent ordeal. For months, chaos had engulfed the entire first floor. Men with jackhammers and circular saws arrived at dawn to pursue mysterious occupations. Every morning the Nicolls parents, bleary from lack of sleep, groveled on the living-room floor to plug in the coffeepot. Every evening they escorted their children to a restaurant. But grim and expensive as the entire process had been, it had left a useful legacy. Ken could approach his current task as a knowledgeable consumer.

  Before an hour had passed, he realized he was deluding himself. Unbelievingly, he stared at a refrigerator equipped with a control panel worthy of the Concorde. Even microwave ovens had soared into complexity beyond his comprehension. Worst of all, however, was the display of kitchen cabinets. Here Nicolls discovered that there was some fatal, although unspecified, flaw in his own hinges.

  In fact, Ken was as much at sea in the world of range hoods and dishwashers as he would have been in the midst of milling machines or smokestack scrubbers. The only familiar feature was the age-old interaction between buyer and seller. There was the usual electrical current when a major prospect appeared. There were the same smiles and offers of hospitality. And there was the nonstop chatter about warranties, credit terms, quality control.

  Ken was two-thirds of the way through his tour before he recognized a face. ASI had gone whole hog, not only taking a row of stalls, but bringing out its big guns. Phil Pepitone was prominently to the fore, ready to beam at anyone, even a lowly junior from the Sloan.