by Davis Bunn
Mundrose said, “Go on.”
It was all the invitation he was likely to receive. “I suggest that we stop following and start creating. We decide what the next trend is going to be. We shape it. We sell it. We own it.”
His excitement would not allow him to remain still. He started pacing, three tight steps in one direction, three in the other. The acrid electric force was gathered about him, his body a human lightning rod. “Only two issues matter. Can we be first with it—and can we make money from it? The answer to both is an unequivocal yes. But only if we invent the concept.”
Mundrose’s daughter was nodding now, her hair reflecting the light from beyond the windows. “We stop following trends and start designing them.”
“Exactly!” Trent strode to the window and punched the thick glass with his fist. “If all the marketing forces of all our divisions are combined, we have the power to tell the people out there what they are going to believe.”
Barry Mundrose ended the meeting with customary abruptness, rising to his feet. “You. Come with me.”
Darren was caught in mid-rise. “That’s both of us, correct?”
Mundrose did not bother to turn around. “Somebody show that guy the door. Cooper, in here.”
Trent resisted the urge to wave his boss a cheery farewell.
ORLANDO
When Jenny Linn was small, her father had pronounced her Chinese name with pride. Jin-Ahn were the Mandarin characters for “golden peace,” and her father used to sing the words as he danced her on his knee. But her father had moved on to different names for his only child. These days his most common way of referring to Jenny was “troublemaker.”
She pulled up in front of her parents’ home in Isleworth, a prosperous and manicured subdivision south of Orlando’s downtown. She stared at the house for a time. The force that had resonated through her during the morning’s service was still there, but muted now. Which was not altogether a bad thing. Exquisite as it had felt at the time, it had also been equally frightening. As she reached for her purse, she caught sight of the small book her study group had been working through that month. As she rose from her car, she had the distinct impression that the entire month, from reading that first page four weeks earlier, had been leading her to this moment. When she walked up to her front door.
Jenny’s mother, petite and silent and very beautiful, stood on the front portico. Jenny’s great-grandmother had been the daughter of the emperor’s chief advisor, and the first girl child of her lineage whose feet had not been bound, the excruciating process resulting in feet less than four inches long. But the girl’s parents had come to faith in Jesus, and eventually pawned their jewelry to pay for passage to America. Jenny had inherited the fine porcelain skin and silky dark hair and sparkling opal eyes of her mother’s lineage. The tallest woman in her family, Jenny stood just under five feet three inches high.
She had also inherited her father’s iron will. Much to his dismay.
As she climbed the front stairs, Jenny whispered a quick prayer, “Give me the strength to do what you want.”
Her mother kissed Jenny’s cheek and sang the hello that had formed her early life. “Hello, Sunshine.”
Jenny followed her mother into the house. As usual, she felt stifled by the place. The ivory white carpet swallowed every sound. The living room sofa waited to clench her like a suede fist.
Her father wore a dress shirt, white with chalk-blue stripes. Richard Linn liked his shirts starched so they crackled when he put them on. His trousers were from the suit he had worn to church, and his shoes were so polished they glinted.
Jenny crossed the room and kissed his cheek. “Hello, Father.”
He murmured his response, as though absorbed in reading the newspaper. He wore silver reading glasses and he held the paper to catch the light through the family room’s sliding doors. Jenny knew it was all a ruse. He was upset with her, and he used the Wall Street Journal as a means of blocking her out. Such actions were all part of what had become their standard Sunday quarrels. As was her mother’s stance in the parlor’s entryway, ready to serve as mediator when things got hot.
Her father lowered the paper and announced, “Congress has finally forced the IRS to confess they had targeted conservative groups.”
“I heard.”
“I suppose a story that big, even your liberal rag couldn’t ignore it.”
Liberal rag was her father’s way of referring to the New York Times, the only paper Jenny read. “They put it on the front page,” she acknowledged.
He harrumphed his displeasure. “Only after calling it a conspiracy among conservatives for years.”
Jenny was surprised by the lack of her usual response. Instead, she found herself thinking back to the incident that had fueled her father’s current ire. She had traveled to New York to interview for a job. Afterwards she had gone for a long walk, and discovered herself caught up in a liberal political protest rally. Looking back, she knew she probably should have turned away. But Jenny had never run from a fight. Even when this one had gotten her arrested.
Richard Linn had been furious on several levels. He was an archconservative and a leader of the regional Tea Party. But he was also a product of his Chinese heritage, and his daughter’s arrest was for him a public shaming. Jenny had spent four long weeks avoiding this confrontation. As she watched her father carefully fold his paper along the creases and set it on the coffee table, she knew he was preparing himself for another raging argument with his wayward daughter. But there was something else she had never experienced before, an emotional distance that allowed her to observe the moment without her customary indignation. She had not come to argue. And this astonished her almost as much as her certainty that God had spoken to her in church. Leading her to this very moment, when she could calmly meet her father’s gaze.
Her father went on. “The IRS audited our local Tea Party chapter five times in five years. And because I was chairman, they did the same to my business. Five times! I’ve called the congressman’s office and volunteered to testify. I’d give them an earful, I can tell you that.”
Jenny could feel her mother’s strain radiating from the room’s far side. Ready to spring into action the moment Richard brought up the real reason for his pent-up anger. To which Jenny would no doubt respond with anger of her own. Provoking her father’s next salvo, which was when he would call her disrespectful. That one word was the point at which Jenny usually detonated.
Only not today.
Jenny said, “I have come to apologize.”
The request clearly caught Richard flat-footed. Jenny never apologized. She argued. Loudly.
Jenny went on, “I should never have gotten caught up in that march. I had a chance to step away and I did not.”
Richard squinted, as though trying to identify who exactly was addressing him. “You hadn’t gone to New York to attend that rally?”
“No, Pop. I just let myself get swept up in the excitement.”
“Some excitement. Getting yourself arrested.” But his steam had evaporated. He seemed to speak words written by another. “You shamed your family.”
“I know that. And I’m sorry.”
Her mother stepped forward. “Why don’t we sit down? Lunch is ready.”
As Jenny followed her father into the dining room, her mother patted her on the shoulder. A simple gesture, and a rare one.
Their conversation was stilted, but at least it was cordial. The only risky moment came when her mother brought up the new dentist working with her father. “He’s such a charming young man. Isn’t he, dear?”
“Good hands,” her father said. “Excellent with patients.”
“And so handsome. He’s mixed blood, of course. So many young people are these days. His mother is Mandarin, isn’t that right?”
“Shanghai by way of Boston.”
“And his father is from Seoul. He is fluent in both languages.”
Normally any hint of pressure fro
m either parent for her to wed was enough to set her off. Today, however, all Jenny said was, “If he works in Pop’s office, he’s got to share Pop’s politics.”
“I met him at a Tea Party conference,” her father confirmed.
Jenny looked from one to the other. “Do you think I could ever live happily under the same roof with an archconservative? Really?”
They let the matter drop.
As they were clearing away the dishes, Jenny knew she could put it off no longer. “Pop, I was wondering if I could ask your advice.”
The two elders froze. In other circumstances, it would have been comic, both parents motionless in shock. Jenny never asked their opinion about anything. She made her decision, and then she told them what she was going to do. Always.
They gradually regained the function of their limbs. Jenny accompanied them into the kitchen and set her plates in the sink. “I’ve been given my posting in China. It’s in Guangzhou. They want me to start in two months.”
“You know what I think,” her father barked. “If you’re moving overseas, go with a mission organization.”
“We’ve been all through that, Pop. It won’t work.”
“Because you’re too stubborn.”
“No. Well, yes. I am stubborn. But that’s not the reason.”
Her calm replies kept her father off balance. “Well, what is it then?”
“I want to become immersed in the local community. Live with the Chinese, learn from them as much as teach them. This does not fit with most mission organizations’ traditional strategy.”
Again she managed to shock her parents. Her mother said, “You never told us you had even applied to a mission group.”
“I didn’t want to get your hopes up. They didn’t want me, and I had no interest in talking to them further.”
“So you’re going over with that liberal do-gooder group.”
She had to tighten down then, just let the ire rise and then fade away. Her father’s back was to her, as it often was when he shot off one of his broadsides against any program the Democrats had initiated. But her mother saw the effort Jenny was making. And she approved with a tiny nod.
It gave Jenny the strength to reply calmly, “They have offered me a job teaching English lit and language at the local university.”
“My daughter the professor,” her mother murmured.
“It’s a two-year posting,” she went on. “I thought it was what I wanted. But last week I was offered another job.”
That brought her father around. “In China?”
“No, Pop. In New York. That’s why I was up there. The publishers have an opening for a junior editor. I have to go up for one more interview, but the woman who will be my boss has assured me the job is mine if I want it.”
While still in graduate school, Jenny had begun working for one of the largest publishing houses in America. She had started as a freelance reader, wading through the slush pile of manuscripts that flooded in every day. She had gradually risen up to become an outside line editor, and finally she had been brought up to New York and offered a chance to handle a couple of manuscripts that she had brought in herself. One of them was currently on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. As Jenny explained this, she realized it was the first time she had ever mentioned the Times and not sent her father’s blood pressure through the roof.
They were silent for a moment; then her mother asked, “Which job do you want, dear?”
“Both of them. That’s the problem.”
Her father said, “The New York house certainly won’t wait two years for you to start work.”
“No. And if I go to New York, I’m afraid I’ll get caught up in the profession and the city and never leave.”
“It can happen.” Her father’s gaze was keen, but his voice lacked the normal combative edge. “Sometimes you have to accept that you can’t have it all.”
“I guess that’s right. Thank you.” She looked back and forth between them.
He cocked his head. “Have you actually just agreed with me?”
And like that, it was done. The impossible task she had known awaited her, the instant she had heard God’s voice. The change she knew the Lord wanted her to make. The unattainable quest. Make peace with the greatest source of conflict in her life. Her father.
Jenny embraced her mother, and then her father. She felt a surge of the same triumphant power rise up inside her as she gripped him. Jenny was amazed at how easy it was to speak the words, “I love you, Pop.”
4
“Having a form of godliness, but denying its power …”
NEW YORK CITY
Trent followed Barry Mundrose through the adjoining doors leading to his private office. The inner sanctum was larger than the bullpen housing Trent’s entire media advertising group. He watched Barry Mundrose cross the Persian carpet and sink into the chair behind his desk. Trent could see no hint of a limp—which was remarkable. Trent’s research had uncovered something Barry Mundrose normally kept well hidden. The man had been born with a serious spinal distortion, and had spent his first twelve years encased in a steel-framed corset running from hips to shoulders.
Mundrose waved him into a chair. “Take a seat. What do they call you?”
“Trent, sir.” He watched as Barry’s daughter, Edlyn, entered the room. She walked behind her father’s desk and leaned against the bookshelves. To her left stretched an array of six computer screens, all streaming data from various markets. Trent had the impression she perched there a lot.
Barry Mundrose said, “But Trent’s not your first name, is it.”
“No, sir. Middle. My first name is Standish.”
“Pretty awful thing to hang around a kid’s neck, Standish.”
Trent saw no need to respond. The important point of this exchange was that Mundrose had found him of sufficient interest to do some research of his own.
“Okay, Trent. Let’s talk about what’s not there in your report. The concept big enough to justify my going against the grain. You have one, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir. I do.”
“So why didn’t you include it?”
“Because a concept on paper is just words. I want to show them.”
“You want to knock their socks off.”
“Exactly, sir.”
“But you’ll tell me.”
“If you order me to,” Trent replied. His gaze on the daughter. Another silent appeal. “But I’d rather have the chance to wow you as well.”
“I don’t like being blindsided.”
Edlyn said, “He’s not doing that. He’s asking for the chance to prep. Give it to you in Technicolor display.”
Mundrose swiveled around. As he cocked his chin, Trent had a glimpse of the man Mundrose had been before seventy-three years ate away at his vigor.
Barry Mundrose had inherited a played-out gold mine in the northern reaches of Alberta, Canada. When the price of gold skyrocketed, Mundrose reopened the mine and pulled out another sixty thousand ounces. He had taken these profits and bought two near-defunct oil companies, whose only assets were a series of almost-dry wells. But shale-oil refining and rising prices had made the fields hugely profitable. Barry Mundrose was now Canada’s largest independent oil and gas producer, and its fourth largest gold miner. His son ran those operations from their Calgary offices, while Edlyn handled the other side of the business—the one where Barry Mundrose sank most of his time and money these days. Entertainment and advertising and telecommunications. Only Rupert Murdoch and the Bertelsmann family of Germany ran larger organizations, and Mundrose had vowed to overtake them both.
Trent was determined to help make that happen.
“All right, Trent,” Mundrose said. It was decided. “You’ve got two days.”
Edlyn protested, “That’s not enough.”
“It’s fine,” Trent assured them. “Thank you, sir.”
“You can have the desk.”
Trent felt his eyes burn. Whi
ch was absurd. “You won’t regret this.”
“We’ll see.”
Trent took that as his dismissal, and rose to his feet. Edlyn slid down from the ledge and followed him across the carpeted expanse. He was almost at the door when Mundrose called, “How many surgeries did you have as a kid?”
Trent stared back to the man behind the desk. “Nine, sir. The same as you.”
Barry Mundrose’s smile shone across the distance. “We all need a reason to fight for what we want, right?”
“Exactly, sir.” Trent waited until Edlyn shut the door to say, “Thank you. For everything.”
She crossed her arms and waited. Behind him, Trent heard one of the secretaries speaking on the phone, while the receptionist ushered the next set of guests into the conference room. But Edlyn remained intently focused on him. Trent loved how she did that, giving him the green-eyed stare, cold as a leopard. Waiting for him to say the words that had drawn her out this far.
He said it with all the force he could muster. “I owe you.”
She did not acknowledge him in any way. Edlyn simply turned and walked back inside her father’s office.
Only when the door clicked shut did Trent realize he had been holding his breath.
OUTSIDE CLEVELAND
John Jacobs pulled into the parking lot and turned off his motor. He stared at the gates, and decided this was the hardest thing he had ever done. Which was saying a lot.
The Lake Erie penitentiary had earned its reputation as one of the worst prisons in the United States, and for good reason. Several years ago it had become the first one to be sold to a private company, the Corrections Corporation of America. The CCA promised to do it cheaper and better. But since the takeover, the Lake Erie prison racked up a steady stream of failed audits. Over the next two years, they flunked every inspection, nineteen in all. There were documented reports of prisoner abuse, filthy conditions, broken facilities, dangerous food. And still the state kept packing in more inmates. Overcrowding became a national scandal, with single cells holding as many as three inmates, and double cells containing seven. When confronted in a press conference, the governor responded that yes, he was aware of the complaints and the lawsuits, but he simply did not have money to change things.
