Bitter Business (13 page)

“So what’s your alternative?” I asked. “You’ve got another year to go in your residency.”

Claudia shook her head and drained her beer.

“Do you know that I’ve lost my beeper, my lab coat, my stethoscope, and two pairs of glasses—all in the last week.”

“That’s just a sign that you’re focused on what’s really important—your work,” I said. “Believe me, if I didn’t have Cheryl, I’d do the same thing. Actually, I have

Cheryl keeping track of me and I still lose things and forget what day it is.”

“It’s worse than that,” complained Claudia. “This afternoon I assisted on a bowel resection; it was my fifth or sixth case of the day, I can’t remember. The attending asked me to go out to the waiting room and talk to the family and let them know how everything went. So I take off my bloody scrubs and go out into the family waiting room and go up to a middle-aged woman and her two grown daughters. I tell them that the procedure went well, the resection was without complication, and their loved one was in post-op and doing just fine.”

“So what happened?” I asked, dreading the answer. The currency of Claudia’s work—and her stories—was so often life and death.

“Tonight, after evening rounds, I finally got off my rotation. I put my coat on to go home and I was walking through the lobby when the middle-aged woman I’d spoken to earlier walks up to me. ‘Doctor,’ she says kindly, ‘I just thought you’d like to know that our son was in surgery for a hip replacement operation, not a bowel resection.’ ”

“You’re kidding!” I exclaimed. “I can’t believe she let you go on about the wrong surgery. Why didn’t she say anything when you were going on about the bowel resection?”

“I asked her that,” Claudia replied with a weary shrug. “She told me she didn’t say anything because she felt sorry for me—I looked so tired.”

10

The phone woke me from the darkness. I blinked, struggling to focus on the glowing numbers on the clock radio. It was a quarter to six.

“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 back 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.