Contrary Pleasure (11 page)

When the porter pushed the button
that sounded the buzzer inside Roomette 8 of Car 801 on the advance section of
the Commodore Vanderbilt, eastbound, at ten minutes of eight on a Thursday
morning in June, forty minutes outside of Stockton, New York, the occupant of
the roomette, Thomas Marin Griffin, awoke immediately and was immediately aware
of his precise location in time and space. He answered the porter at once,
pinched the shade latch, and slid it up. The fields were June-green, gently
rolling, sprawling ripe in the morning sun.

Griffin slid the mirrored door open, backed against the zippered curtain,
and slid the bed up so that it banged and latched itself into the wall. He
moved with a deliberate precision that gave him a look of slowness, yet he
accomplished all routine tasks with an astonishing quickness because there was
no waste, no blundering, no pauses.

Trains and the roomettes on trains pleased him. It was stainless,
functional design. The train rode on straight rails. You knew where the rails
went. Air travel did not please him. There was a formlessness about it. In the
air you were given no privacy, no steel place in which to work. At forty
Griffin could have been a youthful fifty, or a tired thirty. He was of middle
height, and weighed within five pounds of what he had weighed at twenty. His
hair was very black, and though it was a heavy growth that gave his forehead a
narrow look, there was a
lusterlessness
about it that
made it seem
wiglike
, unreal. His skin was very
white, with a look of transparency. His eyes were a pale gray-blue, meaningless
as marbles. There was a look of Irish about him, a suggestion of the black
Irish in the jut of blue-shadowed chin. And a look of remoteness and
dedication. There was something
priestlike
about him.
Only the most unimaginative were ever at ease with him. He seemed always to be
watching and condemning. He wore dark clothing, subdued neckties. He should
have been invisible in any crowd, and yet he never was. He was always noticed.
And many people speculated about him. And they were nearly always wrong.

After he had shaved and dressed and closed his suitcase and unzipped the
green curtain, the train was ten minutes out of Stockton. He sat with his
briefcase on his lap, opened it, and took out a Manila folder. He looked at the
balance sheet of the Stockton Knitting Company. SK stock was not listed. It was
not offered for sale. With Delevan ownership of the stock, the firm was under
no obligation to make their financial affairs a matter of public record.
Griffin had gone to considerable effort to construct this balance sheet, and
the accompanying profit and loss statement. He knew they were inaccurate. And
he knew the inaccuracies were most probably minor.

When he felt the train begin to slow down, he closed the briefcase. The
conductor hurried down the aisle announcing the stop at Stockton. Thomas Marin
Griffin put on his hat and waited a few minutes, then walked down the car after
the porter had taken his suitcase forward. He stepped down onto the morning
platform, tipped the porter, picked up his suitcase, and walked through the big
gloomy bad-smelling station, past the golden oak of the scarred benches, the
grubby marble. The hotel where he had stayed before, the Brigadier, was just
three blocks from the station. He walked swiftly, carrying the heavy suitcase
with ease. His reservation was in order. There was a bulky Manila envelope from
the office. He sent the bellhop up to the room with suitcase and hat. He took
his briefcase into the dining room, opened the envelope after ordering his
breakfast. Miss
Vidranian
had arranged things the way
he liked them. Letters and memorandums in increasing order of importance, so
that the top letter was almost, but not quite, within the range of Miss
Vidranian’s
authority to have handled herself. He went
quickly through the stack. He set some aside for dictation. On others he wrote
marginal comments to guide Miss
Vidranian
in
answering them herself. His pen had a very fine nib, and he used jet-black ink.
His writing was small, angular, precise, unanimated—and very fast. The last
item in the group was the unopened envelope containing the confidential
information he had requested from Credit Search on the Delevan family. He was
glad it had arrived. He decided he would read that in his room.

When he had returned to the room, he unpacked quickly, placing the small
dictation machine on the desk. He did his long distance telephoning first,
then, adjusting the small flexible belt in the machine, he dictated answers to
three of the letters Miss
Vidranian
had sent and
dictated memos on two of the three phone calls. She had enclosed a Manila
envelope addressed to his office. Before he sealed the two flexible belts, the
memos, and the correspondence in the envelope, he placed a call to his own
office.

“Good morning, Mr. Griffin.”

“Good morning, Miss
Vidranian
. I’ll mail the
correspondence back to you this morning. I just finished handling it. Anything
special this morning?” His voice was soft, polite.

“A Mr. Henry Parks phoned from Washington. Mr. Tomlinson has approved the
container project. Dr.
Garsh
is anxious to see you
again. There’s nothing else of any importance.”

“If Parks phones again, turn him over to Gary. Wire the Acme people about
Tomlinson’s approval. And phone Dr.
Garsh
and tell
him I’ll phone him when I get back to town. Have you got that?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and sounded a bit upset that he should have asked.
Of course she got it. And in addition to her notes she would have a tape of the
phone call in case there was any question in her mind.

“Good-bye,” he said, and hung up before there was time to hear her
response. He sealed the envelope and placed it beside his hat.

Then he opened the Credit Search envelope. He had requested a detailed
report. Intensive coverage. For such reports—and they were expensive—Credit
Search supplemented the information on file and brought it up to date by either
sending their own people or employing local agencies for an on-the-spot survey.
Following the theory that a person’s credit is influenced by many other
factors, their investigations were often quite personal. And Credit Search had
had three months to do a thorough job.

Griffin scanned the report and then read it more slowly. When he folded
it back into the envelope marked for his personal attention, he had
inadvertently committed large portions of it to memory. The report contained
many factors which could be considered favorable to his plans. He phoned the
Stockton Knitting Company. He asked for Mr. Benjamin Delevan. A young-voiced
girl requested his name. In a few moments Mr. Benjamin Delevan was on the line.

“Mr. Thomas Griffin? Is that the Griffin of Thomas Marin Griffin
Associates?”

“Yes it is, Mr. Delevan. My office was suppose to have arranged for an
appointment with you today. I find there has been a slip-up. I wonder if you
could fit me in. I know it’s an imposition.”

“Just a moment, please.”

Griffin held the phone with monumental patience. Delevan came back on.
“Would quarter of eleven this morning be convenient for you, Mr. Griffith?
Good. I’ll be expecting you then.”

Later, on the taxi ride out to the Stockton mill, Griffin remembered the
revealing change in the tone of Benjamin Delevan’s voice. It was something that
happened more frequently these days. It is pleasing, yet handicapping, to be
well on your way to becoming a legend in your own time. He remembered a lunch
in New York, a dark upstairs place, expensive, with the very best of food and
service, and the heavy half-drunk voice from the neighboring table.

“That Griffin son of a bitch. That sly bastard. Never know what he’s up
to. Know what, though? Whatever he does, it comes out like Fort Knox. That
Associates outfit of his is turning into a holding company, that’s what it’s
doing. You read that thing they had on him in
Newsweek?
What the hell
was it they called him? The doctor for sick corporations. Okay, so he does
help, but the bill is too high for my taste. He does business for a
stock-purchase concession. Offer him cash sometime and I bet he’d laugh in your
face. I happen to know for a definite fact, see, that that stone-faced
character has cut himself a piece of some of the fastest-growing outfits in the
country, and furthermore…”

The man with Griffin had been painfully embarrassed. But Griffin was
sorry the noisy man had lowered his voice. There could have been useful
information. It was too bad people thought of him that way. It made them
difficult to deal with. Suspicious of his motives.

Griffin had tried the corporate world from the other side of the desk.
And at twenty-seven had become an executive vice-president of a Michigan
corporation that manufactured fork-lift trucks and special conveyor equipment.
And had been bored. And had known that it was the wrong way to climb—if you wanted
both money and power. This was better.

When he walked into Delevan’s office, he sensed the wariness. The girl
who had let him in closed the office door behind him. Benjamin Delevan came
around his desk, shook hands. There was wariness there and, confirmed by his
investigations, considerable shrewdness.

“This is a pleasure, Mr. Griffin. I’ve heard a great deal about your
work. Sit down, please.”

Griffin sat down and put his briefcase beside his chair. He said, “This
is my third visit to Stockton this year.”

“I’m disappointed that you didn’t stop in before. Or at least let me know
you were in town. I could have gotten you a temporary card at the club and—”

“I’m not much of a one for clubs, Mr. Delevan. I’m comfortable at the
Brigadier.”

“Well-run, that hotel. Old-fashioned, but they do things right.”

“That’s my impression too.”

“Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Griffin?”

Griffin inwardly admired the way Delevan handled himself. No questions
about the other trips. “There may be, Mr. Delevan. I have a client-firm.
Varnen
Textiles. They’ve gotten themselves into a spot of
trouble. They are prepared to accept my recommendations as to the way to get
out of trouble. I’ll have to tell you the situation. I’d like it to be
confidential.”

“It will be, of course.”

“They built the new Tennessee plant four years ago. Woolens on a large
scale. Bad timing. You know the picture in woolens, of course. Short runs. The
plant isn’t suited for that sort of thing. They want to make a switch to a
synthetic. They’ve made a licensing deal. If their production people try to
feed synthetics in with the woolens, it is going to make the expense of
operation too high. New equipment will be needed. It would imperil the woolen
production. They don’t want to do that because they need the income from
woolens.” He saw the sudden awareness in Delevan’s eyes, quickly hidden. So he
said, “Do you have any guesses now?”

“Do you want us to contract to plug gaps in their line?”

“I’m afraid
Varnen
wouldn’t play on that basis.
They have to control the manufacture of their own lines. When I took them on as
a client-firm they had the idea of building another plant, smaller, more
flexible, for the shrinking woolen line. In Tennessee. I investigated it and
ruled that out.”

“Would you mind telling me why?”

“Expensive. A lengthy operation.”

Delevan leaned back. His face was still. “You recommended they buy a mill
in the North.”

“I recommended that they retain me and let me and my people look into the
possibility of buying a mill in the North. Someplace where there would be a
trained labor pool, an existing plant, a flexibility of operation, a backlog of
existing business. You have those things right here. Plus some desirable brand
names, old names in the field. I am not a salesman, Mr. Delevan. I have told
you your own advantages first. There is another side to the coin. This mill is
not big enough. You have quite an obsolescence problem. You have been
modernizing slowly but too slowly. A recession of any duration would give you
serious problems. You deal in high-style items, with the appropriate percentage
of net for such risk, but you have been consistently outguessing the market.
Your speculations in inventory have been, unfortunately, necessary. And fortunately
successful. I do not think the mill could pass a rigid safety inspection at the
moment. It is too much of a one-man operation. Too much depends on your
judgment. I admire your shrewdness, Mr. Delevan. You have done remarkably well
with an operation which ignored normal maintenance and modernization for far
too many years. Those are the handicaps.”

“You don’t make us sound very desirable, Mr. Griffin.”

“There are other factors. The place would have to be enlarged. The room
for expansion is there. And I have been assured by your Chamber of Commerce
that they are eager for expanded business in town. So eager that they will
cooperate with the county and city governments and get a good break for
Varnen
on property taxes. I was in Washington a few weeks
ago. They are aware of the difficulties in the textile industry. Construction
costs can be written off very quickly.
Varnen
would
start shifting woolen production up here as soon as feasible. Existing
equipment would be moved into the addition to this mill from the Tennessee
mill.”

There was silence in the office for a short time. Delevan smiled a bit
wearily and said, “This company is family owned. You have no idea of our
financial situation at the moment. I fail to see how you can do all this…
conjecturing without knowing at least our net worth here.”