Right on the Money

by Emma Lathen

  The more vocal faction insisted that it was all Phil Pepitone’s fault. Their carping had never weighed heavily on him. Since Sparling, a minor specialty operation, was too small to merit top-echelon attention, he dismissed lower-level criticism as petty backbiting. Privately, Pepitone remained confident that, in the fullness of time, he could take care of both Sparling and his detractors.

  The shattering news from Muncie had just wrecked this game plan. Sparling was no longer a troublesome thorn in Pepitone’s side; it was an ASI emergency.

  “Thank God, we’ve got the policy in place,” Gardner Ives congratulated himself.

  The working party nodded dutifully, although damage control was not a popular assignment. But too many oil spills, chemical explosions, and doctored cough drops have encouraged companies like ASI to brace for any contingency.

  “You all know the drill,” Ives continued, impersonating a squadron leader.

  The team’s practical experience was limited. Nonetheless, preparations promptly got under way. The strategists pondered how and when to launch overtures to the governmental agencies pursuing Sparling. To neutralize adverse public reaction, press releases were stockpiled, describing ASI as a tower of integrity, a victim of misplaced trust or—in the worst-case scenario—a penitent sinner. Finally, an elite unit was readied for a rescue mission to Muncie. These operations were conducted on a need-to-know basis.

  “They’re trying to play it close to the chest,” said Ken Nicolls, phoning the Sloan from his cubbyhole at ASI. “Of course everybody knows.”

  “Of course,” Thatcher repeated with some asperity. Earlier in the morning he had digested situation reports from the Ecker Company that included, above and beyond the arrest of Bob Laverdiere, serious internecine fighting and a no-holds-barred insurance inquisition. Even without unsavory developments at the ASI end, Tom Robichaux’s golden merger was beginning to look like Sloan time and money wasted.

  And, as Ken Nicolls assured him, there was more to come.

  “Nobody’s admitting anything,” said Ken, conjuring up tight-lipped men who knew all and said nothing, “but it’s the girls who do the typing. Everybody in the place is waiting for Sparling to explode like a bomb.”

  The impossibility of keeping secrets is a recurring shock to some minds. Thatcher simply accepted Ken Nicolls’s hearsay at face value. Even when the boys do the typing, there will be leaks.

  “They may be overreacting,” he observed, looking without much success for a rosy lining. “It isn’t as if ASI is a titan of American industry.”

  From his ringside seat Nicolls respectfully disagreed.

  “Maybe,” he said, “but even if there aren’t major convulsions when the news breaks, ASI’s already all steamed up. They’re pretty close to panic here.”

  “That,” said Thatcher grimly, “is all we need. One merger partner is in the thick of a murder and the other is semi-hysterical. Remind me to avoid Robichaux for a while.”

  Apart from the imminence of pyrotechnics, Nicolls had little to add about ASI. His own research into ASI’s pension funding, as it would impact Ecker, was proceeding. The police, who had been omnipresent for a few days, had disappeared since Laverdiere’s arrest. All was calm, except for the tom-toms beating up in Gardner Ives’s neck of the woods.

  “They’re locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen,” Thatcher reflected aloud.

  Nicolls was not sure that he followed.

  “If a little of this effort you describe had been expended on supervising Sparling,” Thatcher explained, “these dramatics might have been avoided.”

  “Well, they’re scurrying now,” Nicolls told him.

  “I’m sure that will be a great comfort for Robichaux and Devane.”

  The Sloan Guaranty Trust, it went without saying, was reserving judgment.

  The activity level at ASI was high, and rising. Adhoc conferences cluttered the hallways while last-minute typing kept the Princeton lights burning late. People rushed in and out of Ives’s office at all hours, with adrenaline pumping.

  Conspicuously absent from the loop was Phil Pepitone. His opinion was not solicited and progress reports bypassed his desk.

  “Hell, you’d think I was the only one responsible for picking up Sparling,” he grumbled. “People want to forget that the board went along, just like Ives. Now, you’d think I was contagious.”

  Pepitone’s allies recognized his wisdom in downplaying a pivotal role in the Sparling purchase. Less comprehensible was his current placidity. Apart from complaints to his closer associates—and to Irene—Pepitone endured his internal exile stoically. Necessity distanced him from Gardner Ives and the Sparling salvage mission. Otherwise he remained as vigorous as usual, and even somewhat more genial. His behavior prompted some misguided allusions to grace under pressure, but Phil Pepitone could not play nature’s nobleman if he tried.

  He did, however, expect to emerge from this flap with a whole skin.

  “I can sit this one out, if I have to wait until hell freezes over.”

  Long before that, fatigue began taking its toll on Gardner Ives.

  “Is that the best you can do?” he demanded.

  Through pleas, threats, and cajolery, his hard-pressed staff was making perceptible progress. Legal proceedings remained inescapable, as did severe financial penalties. But the burden of delinquency was firmly attached to Sparling, with barely a mention of ASI. The much-feared PR bloodbath was fizzling. Few Americans are mesmerized by industrial piping, and really juicy scandals need the human touch that both ASI and Sparling lacked.

  For Ives, anything short of perfection left a bad taste.

  “It’s giving me some second thoughts,” he said, after most of his lieutenants had filed back to the treadmill.

  The man sitting where Phil Pepitone usually sat read him perfectly.

  “About Phil?” he suggested.

  “About Phil—and about Ecker, too,” said Ives repressively. Like everybody else, he had convinced himself that Pepitone was the sole author of the Sparling troubles. Beyond that, he did not care to comment aloud.

  “Look, Gardner, give the guy a break. So, Sparling was a bummer. Everybody makes mistakes. What’s past is past. We should put Sparling behind us as soon as we can—and let Phil off the hook right now.”

  Ives sighed, reminded once more that quarantining Pepitone had cost him the sharpest intelligence at ASI. Any dolt could sermonize about forgiving nasty revelations from the past. As Phil Pepitone would have been first to point out, it was the future, and the Ecker Company, that counted now.

  In most corners of ASI, Sparling was somebody else’s problem. One of these remote outposts was Sam Bradley’s lab. There, sublime ignorance about infractions of the law was balanced by vast authority about mankind.

  “Somebody’s head will have to roll,” predicted one owlish researcher. “My guess is that Pepitone’s days are numbered. Oh, he could tough it out when people were just talking about Sparling. Now that it’s blown up in his face, he doesn’t have a future here.”

  A colleague quarreled with this analysis.

  “You’re oversimplifying, Stanley. Sure, people would like to give Pepitone the shove, wrap him and Sparling up in the same package. But don’t forget Ecker. Because canning Phil would mean that Ives is ready to scratch Ecker. And I don’t see him doing that. In fact, Sparling actually helps Phil’s position. It shows how ASI really has to broaden into the consumer field. Diversification is the only insurance against risks like these.”

  Sam Bradley, without openly encouraging idle speculation, helped it along.

  “What makes you think Phil’s in trouble?” he asked, as if he did not already know.

  “God, Sam. They’re treating him like an untouchable already,” said the expert.

  “People always have their ups and downs here at ASI,” said Bradley, tolerant of human frailty. Few of them, he did not add, were as resilient as Pepitone. “I wouldn’t count Phil out too soon.”
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  However, once the possibility was raised, it proved difficult to dislodge. Deep in calculation, Bradley retreated to his office where, quite coolly, he contemplated an ASI without Phil Pepitone. Then he moved on to an ASI without the Ecker Company, and his detachment began to falter.

  “Who cares if Pepitone comes or goes!” Fred Uhlrich fulminated. “I’d trade the whole front office to get Vic Hunnicut back.”

  This was not his eulogy to the departed. The murder had left Uhlrich’s Water Purification Division short-handed during a hiring freeze. So he was sedulously cultivating every assistant division manager he could collar, seeking a replacement. His current catch was finishing lunch in the cafeteria.

  “One of you guys should put in for it,” Uhlrich said, reverting to his main theme. By transferring into Water Purification, some assistant would be making a smart career move. Familiarity with one of ASI’s most profitable divisions would look good when the time came for promotion. And, to sweeten the pot, Uhlrich thought he could wangle a tidy little raise.

  For a variety of reasons, his arguments fell on deaf ears. Technical qualifications are not as easily interchanged as Uhlrich wanted to pretend. Water Purification was too blue-collar for some tastes. And while Uhlrich was appealing to prudence, the young men he was exhorting had bigger ideas.

  “Good old Fred,” said one of them when Uhlrich left to pursue his quest elsewhere. “Solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.”

  “Particularly between the ears.”

  “Oh, come on,” Wiley Quinn protested. “Fred’s the best damned division manager at ASI, and you know it.”

  “So why don’t you take him up?” replied his companion. “Transfer into Purification, work your tail off for ten years, and chalk up enough brownie points to get promoted before you retire. Who’re you kidding, Wiley? That’s Fred’s style—not yours and mine.”

  Quinn had to agree. He was less disrespectful than some of his contemporaries, but he was of their generation. And the new wave at ASI, like new waves everywhere, had a lot to teach its elders.

  “Poor Fred doesn’t realize that if Pepitone’s really riding for a fall, the whole equation here gets rewritten,” said Wiley’s tablemate, resuming the discussion Uhlrich had interrupted.

  Exchanging generalizations came naturally to Quinn and his friends, but Phil Pepitone brought them to a subject that caused more constraint.

  Quinn finally broke the ice. “If Pepitone’s on the way out, where do you think that leaves the Ecker merger?”

  “Oh, I think Ecker would still be on,” said his colleague airily. Like Quinn and every other assistant, he viewed Ecker through a private prism. It was the only fast track in sight. “That’s always supposing that the Laverdiere arrest doesn’t sour things. I suppose you’re real relieved that they’re off your case, Wiley.”

  Wiley Quinn ignored the jibe. Luck had given him an advantage over his rivals. Being present at Javits when Hunnicut was cut down had singled him out of the crowd. Gardner Ives and Sam Bradley and Phil Pepitone all knew who he was, which was more than most assistants could claim.

  Unfortunately, the police did, too. Quinn told himself that this no longer posed any threat. But, since it always pays to be prepared, he began thinking of ways to deflect a threat, should the need arise.

  Chapter 19

  NOTICE OF REDEMPTION

  While ASI was still waiting for attacks from outside, the enemy was already within the gates at Ecker. The Winstead Insurance Group had descended like a wolf on the fold. They had been received with arctic civility by Tina Laverdiere. She introduced them to her assistants, delivered a short lecture on the location of key documents, and then, her back like a ramrod, stalked to her car and swept out of the compound.

  She was not the only one lying low. For several days there was not a peep from Conrad himself. Immersed in his workshop at home, he simply ignored the occupying forces. He was not hiding from Winstead; he was trying to avoid the Laverdieres.

  Alan Frayne, therefore, was the only member of Ecker’s top management who remained at his post during the invasion. Whenever he emerged from his test laboratory, he saw accountants in every nook and cranny of the company, file clerks stacking invoices, and strangers monopolizing the phones. On the third day they even penetrated his own domain.

  “Examine anything you want,” he invited gruffly.

  “We won’t disturb you long,” the leader promised. “Just a quick look at your current records.”

  “Sure,” Frayne grunted with a jaundiced smile.

  He was no longer the calm reassuring presence to which his co-workers had become accustomed. When he encountered Marilyn, carrying a pile of ledgers, he could not restrain a grimace.

  “More fodder for their mill?”

  She shrugged. “Conrad said to show them everything.”

  “I know. He’s even letting them see the results on stuff that isn’t patented yet. God knows I don’t blame him for being out of his mind with worry, but I don’t see how we’ll ever get back to normal.”

  “One of them told me they’ll be gone by the end of the week.”

  Frayne rejected this offering.

  “I’m not talking about them, Marilyn. I’m talking about us. Bob and Conrad still aren’t talking to each other. I went over to Bob’s place last night but it was a waste of time. There’s no reasoning with him.”

  “At least he’s got some excuse. He’s been arrested for murder. But Conrad is such a stubborn old fool!” she said tartly. “When he called this morning he just refused to discuss it with me.”

  “Well, we’ve got a great future,” Frayne sighed. “The chairman of the board and the president are both holed up, hiding from each other, and an insurance company is putting us through the wringer.”

  Alan Frayne saw only the immediate convulsions, but the ripples spread far beyond the confines of the Ecker compound. There is, after all, a basic arithmetic to all manufacturing operations. The production of goods entails certain costs. The sale of those goods generates income. The difference is profit. Of course there are niceties, such as deciding whether inventory will be valued on a FIFO basis: first in, first out; or a LIFO basis: last in, first out. These and other subtleties offer opportunities for the enterprising felon. But the basic simplicity remains.

  Once the Winstead team had assembled the numbers available in Bridgeport, they turned their attention to corroborative sources of information. But wherever they went, the story was the same. Suppliers confirmed Ecker’s purchases, customers confirmed its sales, the union confirmed its payroll. And very few of those contacted could resist praising Conrad Ecker and all his works.

  In New York the buyer for a major chain of department stores produced his records, then scoffed at the suggestion of manufacturing defects.

  “Are you crazy? That is one company that stands behind its products. Why, I remember once about five years ago,” he said, waxing nostalgic, “some idiot woman returned a can opener saying it didn’t work. She must have had it for twenty years because it was gummed up with the filth of ages. But I asked Conrad how he wanted to handle it, and do you know what he did? He had the damned thing steam-cleaned and returned it with a polite note suggesting that if she brushed out the dirt every couple of years, it would work forever.”

  In California the representative of a federation of independently owned hardware stores was more interested in extracting information than furnishing it.

  “Say, do you actually know Conrad Ecker? What’s he like? I’ve just seen him on TV,” he said chattily to the phone. “Doug Ecker used to come out here once a year, but I’ve never met the old man. I’m real sorry I didn’t make it to the New York trade show this year.”

  Upon being pressed for any negative experience with Ecker goods, he simply snorted.

  “Hell, I’ve had one of their coffeepots myself for ten years and it’s still got the original glass bubble.”

  A supplier in Chicago produced a backhanded compliment.

/>   “The only thing wrong with Ecker is that they’re so damned picky. If our stuff isn’t well within specs, they ship it right back to me. Of course,” he continued reflectively, “I don’t put up a fight. Somebody else’ll take it.”

  As an afterthought he admitted that Ecker was otherwise irreproachable. They ordered with sufficient lead time and they paid on the dot.

  At the union office in Hartford they chortled at the notion that Ecker might be shortchanging the pension fund.

  “You’ve got to be kidding. That’s the kind of thing we notice. Every penny is paid when due.” With some difficulty the muscular speaker rose above his parochial concerns. “At least that’s the way it is with our fund. I wouldn’t know about the management fund. But who cares about that? If you ask me, the old man is overpaying them anyway.”

  But nowhere were they more indignant at the possibility of irregularity than at Bridgeport City Hall. In an ancient mill town with a crumbling industrial economy, a local son had fathered a flourishing enterprise and become a major employer. The Ecker Company contributed to municipal coffers in many guises. Conrad had always been regarded with respect in the city treasurer’s office. Since his emergence as a national personality, they were inclined to be reverential.

  “It’s more than that,” they said after assuring Winstead that all taxes were up-to-date. “They do a lot for this town. They gave us the land for the East End Park, the company sponsors a Little League team, and Mrs. Ecker was vice-chairman of the Heart Fund this year.”

  And the many professionals employed to assist Ecker merely swelled the chorus. The auditors reported that all was sweetness and light with the Internal Revenue Service. The lawyers saw no problems on any distant horizon. The bankers affirmed that all accounts were in order.

  “. . . what’s more,” Thatcher informed Winstead’s New York representative, “Milo Thompson always rated Ecker as one of our most creditworthy clients. We’ve had no reason to change that evaluation.”