by Moriah Jovan
“Clever.”
Indeed.
“All hail King Midas. Again.”
“Oh, no,” I corrected, then took a long drink. I hadn’t talked to anyone for this long in...oh, forever. “Not this time. Everyone was stunned. The employees. Wall Street. Congress. One day J.I. lived and breathed, secure under King Midas’s guidance for at least another year or two, and the next day it was gone. Poof. Left a hole in the manufacturing sector and killed twelve hundred jobs. He made a lot of enemies.”
“Why didn’t he just hold a press conference and explain it?”
That was a good question. The rest of the world assumed it was because Taight never talked at all, which would have been an entirely reasonable thing for them to assume. King Midas’s mystique rested on his refusal to explain how he decided whether to fix or raid a company.
But I’d spent two years studying Taight and his methods, and I knew why he hadn’t said a word about Jep Industries: He wanted to catch the bastards. He had never gone into a company with an embezzlement problem and not come out without getting a few people jailed. To the rest of Corporate America, Jep Industries looked like a triumph. For all I had never met nor conversed with Sebastian Taight, I knew he considered Jep Industries a personal failure.
He’d never failed before or since. It had to grate.
Finally, I said, “He’d rather just keep his reputation for being a ruthless bastard.” Susan nodded. Yes, she would understand because, while I might be King Midas’s heir apparent, I certainly didn’t give companies years to figure out their issues and learn how to be better at their jobs. I had gained a reputation for doing it fast because I was rude.
Possibly cruel.
“That happened in the summer of 2004. I started grad school in 2007, which was about the time everybody began to figure out that none of the companies that needed Jep’s products had closed. At first, everyone assumed they were still working on leftover inventory, so no one thought much about it. Eventually, they’d have to start buying from Jep’s nearest competitors.”
“I thought Jep had no competition.”
“In effect. It’s hard to compete when nobody wants your products because they’re crap.”
“Oh, I see.”
I took another long drink.
“It took a while for people to notice that none of Jep’s customers had gone out of business and they weren’t buying the inferior products. Nobody could figure out who was manufacturing J.I.’s products. It became a brand new situation to analyze, and I walked right into it.”
Indeed, that puzzle had caught my imagination nearly immediately, and I watched and listened, picking up clues here and there long after the furor had died down. The three years between the closing of J.I. and my entry into the MBA program had been ones of silent upheaval in the manufacturing sector and thus, the economy. Only a handful of people had been witness to it.
I was one of them, albeit in retrospect.
I became an amateur historian, funneling through all those old records, finding Sebastian Taight and his family, digging back to his ties with Mitch Hollander, which seemed to originate in the Mormon church.
That piqued my curiosity to no end, this tendency I began to see in Mormons to be able to spin gold out of straw, especially Taight, his mother, and his cousins. Taight fascinated me simply because he was an enigma to the rest of the country. There was something there, something in him that I could hold onto. I knew it was there, and I would find it.
And then I did.
It was like finding a snag on a cardigan, the one thread that, if tugged, will unravel the entire garment in a single pull.
I’d been with Blackwood Securities barely six months when Taight’s five-year-long war with Fen Hilliard came to its shocking head. Jack, Melinda, and I, along with the rest of the officers and executives of Blackwood Securities had held our collective breath for a month while we waited for Knox Hilliard to live or die.
“And how does OKH Enterprises fit into it?”
“Well, once Hollander had completely absorbed J.I., he wouldn’t sell his products to OKH out of loyalty to Sebastian. Now, Fen was clever and he could make do with the other vendors’ inferior products—better than anybody else could—but it cost him more in the long run in time and lost productivity.”
Susan said nothing for several seconds. “That’s just so...junior high.”
I laughed. “It is, isn’t it? The stakes are just a lot higher. And so now I’ve told you the story—”
“They didn’t all live happily ever after?”
I snorted. Cheeky girl. “Yes, but now Sebastian wants me to go reorganize Hollander Steelworks. What I’m going to do is detach Jep completely and give it a new corporate identity. It needs to have something other than ‘The Old Jep Industries’ as its brand, since Jep Industries went out of business in 2004.”
“Why doesn’t Mr. Taight do it himself? I mean, that’s what he does, right?”
That was an excellent question.
“I don’t know for sure,” I said, “but I have a theory. Now. What we’re looking for are the original documents pertaining to when Hollander Steelworks absorbed Jep. Then I’ll need you to contact Hollander’s assistant and get the organization’s charts and— Well, you know what I want. After I have all that, I can figure out the most efficient way to get it done.” I looked at her as she sifted furiously through boxes, all business now that she knew what to look for. “We have a long weekend ahead of us.”
* * * * *
Cabiria
December 6, 2010
“Cassie, whatever you do, don’t use your schtick on Mitch Hollander. It won’t work and it’ll annoy him.”
I didn’t bother to look up from my desk, where I had assembled everything I needed to get this project done. My boss stood in the threshold of my office, nervous, showing it, but that didn’t affect me.
“Cass?”
“I heard you, Jack,” I murmured, too engrossed in preparing for the task ahead to indulge his insecurities. “You should know me better than that.”
He grunted. “I know you well enough to know you pull out the sex kitten when it suits you.”
“As I recall, that’s why you hired me.”
“I hired you for your little black book and your tendency to use it as a weapon.”
Which made me one of the most powerful people in America. I smirked.
“So let me make this perfectly clear to you: The man’s a Mormon bishop. It would be like seducing a priest.”
“Did that. Two years, until the archbishop busted him.”
“Fuck.”
“Yes, but not badly. Boringly. I don’t remember if he got excommunicated or just sent to Siberia.”
“Cassie. Please?”
I sighed and looked across the room at him, all five feet and ten inches of barely leashed—usually cheerful—energy. “Why are you so afraid of Mitch Hollander?”
He waved a hand. “I’m not afraid of him. I like him. I respect him. He doesn’t like me.”
“Okay, then. Why do you need his approval?”
“Why do you need Clarissa’s?”
Ouch.
“I don’t have time for this,” I said, getting back to packing my laptop and associated displays. Jack made fun of me for using paper, but digital presentations kept people at a distance, and I got in my clients’ faces. Paper suited my style. “I promise I won’t disgrace you by throwing myself at Hollander.”
“Thank you,” he breathed, and I shook my head. Jack’s concern for Hollander’s opinion was so out of character I had no frame of reference for it.
At a word to my assistant, my things were taken down to my car while I ate the last of my breakfast.
“And, oh, keep your mitts off the rest of the pack, too.”
“Why?” I asked around my lox.
“Just— No playtime or side arrangements amongst my Mormon clientele, okay? It kind of creeps me out.”
“Their morality is t
heir problem,” I said. “And as to that—except for Hollander, who nobody can figure out anyway—none of that pack is a shining example of morality. I mean, look at Hilliard.”
“That’s a rumor.”
“But he’s never denied it.”
I felt a deep affinity for Knox Hilliard, a man who’d cracked and gone rogue the minute the justice system failed to deliver justice. Fortunately or unfortunately (I’d never known which) I hadn’t had Hilliard’s courage and had settled for dispatching my enemies in less permanent ways.
Even then, while my daughter could overlook a charismatic law professor’s alleged misdeeds (so much she was willing to follow him to his no-name midwestern college to get a law degree), she could not forgive me mine.
The ones she knew of, anyway.
Vengeance was far uglier up close and personal, and did not sit as attractively on my shoulders as it did on Dr. Hilliard’s, whom she worshipped on a semi-regular basis whenever he lectured on white-collar crimes at NYU’s criminal justice program.
“And Taight.”
Jack shrugged. “He’ll tell you he’s still a cultural Mormon.”
“Doesn’t keep him from fucking half the world’s women.”
“He’s settled down.”
“Doubt it. A tomcat like that doesn’t just stay home with the kittens when one particular pussy catches his fancy.” Jack cleared his throat and I rolled my eyes. “Okay, okay,” I said, conceding once I remembered Jack’s history, sexual and otherwise. “I get the point. Unless you’re fucking around on your wife.”
“Would you fuck around on my wife?”
“It would depend on her libido and how good she is in bed.”
“She’s a raving lunatic. Eat your heart out.”
That made me laugh. If Eilis Logan had done for King Midas what Lydia Blackwood had done for Jack, I’d have to kill my assumptions about his chronic promiscuity.
I looked at my watch and stood to clean up.
“Cassie, please, let me do that,” Susan said as she zipped through my office door, past Jack.
“Susan...”
“It’s my job,” she said and glared at me, her fist propped on her hip. Really, she was too young to be that bossy, but I acquiesced.
I swept out of my office, Jack’s last-minute admonitions following me down the hall to the elevator bank. Once down on Wall Street, I slipped into my waiting car. My driver closed the door, walked around the car, slid behind the wheel, and said, “Good morning, Ms. St. James.”
“Good morning, Sheldon. Any news?”
He gave me a few details on my neighbors, my colleagues, my children—tidbits he’d picked up here and there at Zabar’s or the dry cleaner’s or wherever he went while waiting for a call from me or my children. Every day he had at least one small thing that I could use. Somehow.
“Thank you,” I murmured when he ran out of on dits.
“And,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “My wife finally got a job. Really good one, where she can do what she likes and go up the ladder. Benefits, too. The works. Ms. St. James,” he said earnestly, “I really want to than—”
“Excellent,” I said, and checked my phone for messages.
We said nothing else to each other on the drive to Bethlehem, home of Hollander Steelworks, mostly because I needed to call the one person guaranteed not to want to talk to me.
“Cassie!” she hissed, then lowered her voice. “I’m in class.”
I knew that.
“Question,” I said, disregarding her irritation. “When do you graduate?”
“In May. Which you know. My graduation application is posted on the refrigerator.”
“It’s dated two years ago, Clarissa.”
“What do you want?”
“Are you serious about going where Knox Hilliard teaches?”
“Dammit, Mother. Of course I am. An urban commuter school—a state one at that—in some hick town in the middle of nowhere that doesn’t have skiing or a beach?”
Her willingness to sacrifice so much for her educational goals was admirable.
“I mean, for real? As in, you’re going to work, not simply drool over Professor Hottie and wait for him to notice you and fall in love with you?”
“I’m going to ignore that and point you to my 4.0 in a double major. Which is criminal justice and Spanish. Not humanities, also known as underwater basket weaving. Unlike some people I could name. Mother.”
She had me there. The snob. “I am on my way to a meeting at which he will be present. Would you like me to finesse your name into the conversation? Plant a few seeds?”
I would have thought the call had been dropped but for the background lecture going on and the rustlings of students. “What kind of meeting, exactly?”
“Not that.”
I could hear her breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”
“Although I might change my mind...”
“Mother! Don’t you think you’ve poached enough men? You have to move in on my territory, too?”
“A crush on a man old enough to be your father does not ‘territory’ make.”
“God, you’re a bitch.”
“Isn’t he married? To that gorgeous redheaded right-wing nut?” Stony silence. “Oh, I remember. We don’t like to talk about that.”
“Bite me. This conversation is over.”
And it was, because she’d hung up on me.
I attempted to annoy my other three daughters, but none of them were available. I doubted they were avoiding me, but I couldn’t rule it out.
My phone rang then— “I’ve Never Been to Me,” my best friend’s ringtone.
He hates that.
“Where are you?” Nigel demanded.
“About halfway to Lehigh Valley. Why?”
“Word got out that you’re detaching Jep Industries from Hollander Steelworks, rebranding it, and installing a COO. Hollander’s bigger customers are biting their fingernails.”
“Shit, already?” I had hoped that word wouldn’t get out so soon, but it was inevitable when the CEO of OKH Enterprises—J.I.’s biggest customer now that Fen Hilliard was dead—was married to Hollander’s best friend. King Midas probably didn’t want to piss off his wife by doing the reorganization himself.
“You’re the wild card in this scenario.”
I would have pinched the bridge of my nose, but I didn’t want to disturb my makeup. “Keep mum until I can work Logan around to my point of view.”
Indeed, Sebastian Taight’s wife could be a right bitch when she was unhappy, and as the CEO of the biggest metals fabrication plant in the country, her opinions were critical. The health of OKH’s equipment depended on Jep’s products, and any change in its leadership could negatively affect her production lines—which would affect a lot of other companies. Thus, the manufacturing sector took its cues from her: If Eilis Logan wasn’t happy, nobody was happy.
Naturally, I’d planned for that.
“I’m not sure how long it will take me to beat Hollander and his cronies into doing it my way, especially if she fights me. And God knows how Taight will figure into it. Even if he likes my plan, he’ll stand with his wife.”
“That’s a helluva conflict.”
“Has that ever stopped the Dunham family before?”
“Good point,” he said. “Gotta go. Bring all their balls home in a jar.”
Right.
I looked at my watch. “Damn. Sheldon, could you drive around Bethlehem and Allentown? I want to see a few things.”
“Pardon my saying so, Ms. St. James, but won’t that make you late?”
“Yes, Sheldon. Yes, it will. Perhaps...twenty minutes or so?”
“Yes, Ms. St. James.”
* * * * *
Mid-Life Crisis
“Mitch, you okay? The pack’s here.”
He knew that.
From the vantage point of his office three stories up, through floor-to-ceiling plate
glass windows, Mitch had watched his board of directors, his friends-cum-family, drive onto the grounds in two vehicles, then disappear into the parking garage.
It wouldn’t take them long to get to his office once they parked.
Still Mitch stood with his arm pressed against the glass, up over his head, his forehead against his arm. He watched sparks fly out of the massive doors of the foundry half a mile away and regretted the weak winter sun; it was pretty in daylight, but it was spectacular at night. He liked going out and contributing to the creation of those sparks.
In the eternal battle of man against steel, Mitch conquered.
Every minute of every hour of every day, and Hollander Steelworks was a living testament to that.
“I’m fine, Darlene, thanks,” he said without turning. His poor assistant, so worried about him.
But here it was, early December, the ground around the office building covered in white or glittering ice melt. The only grief he could muster today, his wedding anniversary, was that he didn’t remember much about the time before Mina’s disease had really started to drain the life out of her; didn’t remember much about his wife, the woman he’d loved and married twenty-three years before. She had loved him, believed in him, supported him, borne his children. He remembered what she had done, but not who she was.
He only remembered the longsuffering invalid he had nursed so long.
Mitch heard the booming voices and boisterous laughter of four men and three women drawing closer to his office suite.
Still he didn’t move, even when he saw their reflections in the glass.
The big hand of Mitch’s best friend came down hard on his left shoulder and shook him lightly. “Sorry, Elder,” Sebastian murmured. “I didn’t think about the date when I scheduled this. You should have said something.”
Mitch shook his head. “If it bothered me that much, I would’ve.”
Another man approached on his right and halted at the glass, his arms crossed over his chest. “You okay, Mitch?” he rasped.
Second time in five minutes someone had asked him that, but Mitch knew Bryce would understand completely, and he couldn’t lie to Sebastian when it was important.
