Death Trance (13 page)
Randolph said, 'Sure,’ and then, 'sure.’
Sergeant Allinson put in, 'We have to take a statement if you can manage to give it to us, sir. Simply describe what happened when you went on vacation, how you left your family, and why.’
'Of course,’ Randolph agreed. Then he rubbed his forehead abstractedly as if he were thinking about something else altogether, which he was. He could almost see her, Marmie, walking across the sunlit lawns towards him, wearing her wide-brimmed summer hat, the one she always wore when she was gardening, and carrying her basket filled with blue flags, the state flower of Tennessee. He could almost hear her voice calling him. But her voice was not quite audible, and then the sky was scratched by the sound of a 727 landing at Memphis International and the moment was over. Marmie was gone. Inspector Dulac said, 'It won't take long, Mr Clare. We can do it inside if you wish.’
'Are you too hot out here?’ Randolph asked. 'I'm sorry, I should have thought.’
They were walking back into the house when Charles came out and said, 'There's a telephone call for you, Mr Clare. The caller says it's urgent.’
'Do you know who it is?’
'He said Stanley. He said you'd know which Stanley.’
Randolph said, 'Excuse me one moment,’ to Inspector Dulac and went through to the library and picked up the phone.
'Mr Clare?’ said Stanley.
That's right. Have you heard something? The Canadian police are here.’
'Listen, Mr Clare, don't involve no police, not yet. There's a rumour been goin' around and so far I ain't been able to substantiate it. I didn't pick it up from no cottonseed executives, nothin' like that. Come right out of the gutter, if you get my meanin'. There's somebody who may want to talk about your family, but he's shy and he's nervous, and he wants to see you in person and discuss the pecuniary side of it too.’
'Who is he?’
'He asked me not to say, but his name's Jimmy the Rib. Can you come downtown and meet him? Say, nine o'clock at the Walker Rooms on Beale Street?’
'Stanley,’ Randolph insisted before Stanley could hang up. 'Stanley, does he know who did it?’
'He wouldn't say, not direct. But I think he might.’
'All right,’ said Randolph. ‘I’ll see you later, at nine.’
'Take a regular cab,’ Stanley suggested. 'You don't want to make this no circus by showing up in a limo. And I think it's better if too many people don't see that Randolph Clare keeps on ridin' in Stanley Vergo's cab, if you get my drift.’
'What sort of people?’ Randolph wanted to know. 'What's going on here?’
'I gotta go,’ said Stanley and hung up. Randolph slowly put down the phone and saw Inspector Dulac and Sergeant Allinson waiting for him in the dark-panelled hallway.
'Whenever you're ready, Mr Clare,’ said Inspector Dulac.
After the two policemen left at three-thirty in the afternoon, Randolph went back to the library with a glass of chilled Chablis to write a few personal letters. He spent most of the time, however, with his pen poised two inches above the paper, staring out the window and thinking about Marmie and the children. 'Dear Sophie…’ his first letter began, and he tried to think of all the sad and elegant ways in which he could express his distress at his family's deaths. But he could see only those bruised and swollen eyes, those bloody and strangulated necks, those arms viciously tied with cords.
At five o'clock Neil Sleaman arrived, leaving his new white Corvette parked under the pergola in front of the garage. He sat confidently cross-legged in the green-leather armchair on the other side of the room and gave Randolph a lengthy report on the emergency repair work at Raleigh and on general production figures. Then, with a directness he had obviously been practising all afternoon, he said, 'You're going to kill me for bringing this up at this particular moment, Mr Clare. Perhaps it's insensitive of me, but life has to go on.’
Randolph's glass was empty and his pipe had just gone out. He blinked at Neil and said, 'What do you mean, life has to go on?’
'Well, sir, the unavoidable fact of the matter is that unless we can get substantial assistance from the Association, we will be totally unable to meet our promised quota to Sun-Taste.’
'What will the shortfall be?’
'Twenty-two per cent by week's end, Mr Clare. Maybe as much as thirty-three per cent by the time we get the Raleigh factory back on line. And we have no capacity to make the shortfall good, even by working treble shifts.’
'So what is your suggested solution?’
'I know that joining the Association has always been anathema to you -’
'You're damned right it has,’ Randolph interrupted.
'But, Mr Clare, there really isn't any other way. If we lose Sun-Taste, we won't be able to support our investment programme and the next thing we know, we'll have to start closing plants.’
'Neil,’ said Randolph, 'this company was founded on the philosophy of independence and free competition and as long as I'm in charge of it, it's going to stay true to that philosophy.’
'I'm sorry, Mr Clare, but right now I believe that the philosophy of independence and free competition - at least in the case of Clare Cottonseed - is pretty well bankrupt. And so will the company be if we don't wake up to the fact that times have changed and that we're part of an interdependent industry.’
'The strong helping the weak, is that it?’ Randolph asked, sarcastically quoting Waverley Graceworthy.
'Well, if you like,’ Neil agreed, oblivious to the bitterness in Randolph's voice. 'The business community pulling together for the greater good of every participating member -’
'Neil, you're beginning to sound like an after-dinner speech at the Memphis Chamber of Commerce.’
'But there isn't
any future
in remaining independent, Mr Clare,’ Neil protested, sitting forward in his chair. 'And after everything that's happened - your family, the fire out at Raleigh -’
Randolph leaped to his feet with such violence that he knocked his chair over. He could feel the fury roaring up inside of him, so hot and spontaneous that he was almost blinded by it. He was not furious with Neil alone. He was furious with everything and everybody. With Marmie's murder most of all; with the killing of his children; with the factory fire that had forced him to abandon his family and destroyed years of skilful and patient work; with Orbus Greene and Waverley Graceworthy; with the heat; with the wine that had gone to his head; and with the whole damned world in which he had suddenly found himself alone. With God.
'Do you think for one moment that losing my family and losing the most important business contract we've had in seventeen years is going to do anything -
anything! -
but make me ten times more determined?’ he shouted.
Neil edged back on the seat of his chair and dropped his gaze to the floor. I’m sorry, Mr Clare. I should have realized that you weren't ready to discuss this yet.’
Randolph was picking up his chair. 'Neil, you listen. I'm not ready today, and I won't be ready tomorrow, and I won't be ready the day after that, nor ever. This company stays independent and that's all there is to it.’
Neil said nothing but fiddled with the binding of the file he was holding on his lap.
'I simply won't discuss it,’ Randolph shouted.
'And what if the other plants catch fire? The Frank C. Pidgeon plant? The Harbor Plant? What then?’
Randolph slowly sat down again. The sun was beginning to sink westward towards the city skyline and to make sparkling patterns in the leaves of the tulip trees. A strange time of day, he thought: gentle and regretful. He watched Neil sharply, feeling oddly suspicious of him now, and in a way, almost frightened.
'You'll have to make yourself clearer,’ he said.
'How clear does anything have to be?’ Neil demanded. 'It was clear from the moment you undercut the Association's prices that they were going to want to put you out of business. I told you that myself, sir, when you recruited me from Chickasaw. All you could say was, "There's room for everybody to make a buck," the same thing your father used to say. Well, I have news for you, Mr Clare. The cottonseed business has changed since your father's day. There just aren't enough bucks to go around.’
Randolph said, 'You don't have to give me a grade-school lesson in modern commodities, thank you, Neil. When I asked you to make yourself clearer, I was asking you if you thought the Association was really behind that fire at Raleigh.’
'You seemed to be pretty convinced yourself that it was when you talked to Orbus Greene out at the factory.’
'Having an opinion is not the same as having legal evidence, Neil. Besides, Orbus Greene always provokes me.’
'Well, I don't have any legal evidence, Mr Clare, and Orbus Greene didn't necessarily set that fire or have anything to do with it. Almost all of the smaller processors feel aggrieved by the tactics you've been using: undercutting their prices, headhunting their staff. Every ounce of cottonseed that we process at rock-bottom prices means one ounce less of business for Chickasaw Cotton, or De-Witt Mills, or Mississippi Natural Fibers, or any of those medium- to small-sized plants.’
'That's still no justification for arson.’
'No, sir, it isn't. But it's an explanation.’
Randolph was silent for a moment. Then he said, 'It's no justification for homicide either.’
'Sir?’ asked Neil, frowning.
'Why are you so surprised?’ Randolph asked. He felt as if he were swimming through dangerous waters now, untried currents, but he had plunged in and there was no choice left to him but to continue. 'If anyone from one of those medium- to small-sized plants felt sufficiently aggrieved to set fire to my wintering plant at Raleigh and sacrifice the lives of three of my process workers, why shouldn't that same individual feel that a very effective way of warning me off in person would be multiple homicide? Murdering my family while I was busy taking care of the fire. I mean, has that thought ever occurred to you, Neil? That the fire was not only set to disrupt our production of processed cottonseed oil, but to make it imperative for me to leave my family all alone in an isolated cabin in a remote part of the Laurentide forest? Or maybe that was the
sole
purpose of the fire at Raleigh: a diversion to bring me rushing back to Memphis.’
'Mr Clare, I think you've been suffering quite a lot of stress,’ Neil said in a gentle and whispery voice. 'Maybe we'd better finish this discussion tomorrow.’
'Well, Neil, that may not be such a bad idea,’ Randolph told him. The fact is, I'm going to go meet my taxi-driver friend tonight. He called me earlier this afternoon and said he had some interesting information about the men who killed Marmie and my children.’
Neil tilted his head to one side as if he found this news of only minimal interest. 'You should be careful of people like that, Mr Clare,’ he advised solemnly. 'After all, what can he know, a Memphis taxi driver, about a homicide that happened all the way up in Quebec?’
'That's what I hope to find out,’ Randolph said. 'Will you have a glass of wine?’
'Well, no, I don't think so,’ Neil replied. 'I have to have a clear head this evening. We're running through the distillation figures.’
Randolph said, I’m sorry I'm not much use right now, but I'll be back at my desk by Monday.’
'You would have been away on vacation anyway,’ Neil reminded him. 'All the arrangements you made for three weeks of delegated management are still in force.’
'Neil -’ Randolph began but then waved his hand as if he were erasing Neil's name from a blackboard.
'I know things are difficult for you, sir,’ Neil told him, 'but I would like you to apply your mind to how we're going to cope with the Sun-Taste supply crisis.’
Randolph sat back in his chair and made a face. 'We could of course put our pride in our pockets and join the Association.’
'Do you mean that?’ Neil asked, half-believing him. 'Oh, sure,’ said Randolph. 'Pride never counted for much in this company, did it? Pride in product, pride in efficiency, pride in freedom and independence?’
'Mr Clare -’ Neil began.
'Mr Clare nothing,’ Randolph retorted. 'I've listened to your recommendations to join the Association because it's your duty and your job to make recommendations. But let me make it one hundred and one per cent clear to you here and now that the only way Clare Cottonseed is going to affiliate itself with the Association is over my dead body. Not my family's dead bodies, and not those of my managers and my workers either. Mine.’
Neil closed his file and tucked his gold Gucci pencil back in his pocket. The late afternoon sun slanted through the library window and partly dazzled him, making his eyes water. He looked like a young cave animal emerging into the light for the first time.
'Yes, sir,’ he said. 'I understand.’
Randolph sat thinking for a long time after Neil left. He knew that technically Neil was right and that the sooner they came to terms with the Association, the better their chances of financial survival. But how could he possibly stomach the prospect of working and socializing with Orbus Greene, Waverley Graceworthy and all those small-time processors who had long ago surrendered their pride and independence in favour of continuously smoking chimneys?
On the other hand, was his own personal pride worth more than the jobs of the seventeen hundred men and women who worked for him? Was his own personal pride worth more than the prosperity of Memphis and the cotton plantations that supplied him with seed?
Thoughtfully he bit at his lip. Then he flicked his telephone switch and called Wanda at the office downtown.
'Wanda? This is Randolph Clare.’
'Oh, Mr Clare. How are you feeling? Did Mr Sleaman come out to see you?’
'Yes, he did. He just left. Listen, Wanda, I should be back in the office on Monday. But do you think you could connect me through to Orbus Greene at Brooks?’
'Yes, sir, no problem. Could you hold the line for just a moment?’
While Randolph waited, Charles came in to see if there was anything he wanted and he gestured that he would not object to another glass of wine. 'Is Herbert back yet?’ he asked.
'Yes, sir.’
'Well, tell Herbert to call the Yellow Cab Company for me and arrange for a taxi to call at eight forty-five.’
'Yes, sir.’
Just then Orbus Greene came on the phone. There was a lot of background noise on the line - talking, sirens, typing- which indicated to Randolph that Orbus was using his desk amplifier. Orbus found that keeping his arms lifted to hold up a telephone receiver was too strenuous.
'Randolph,’ breathed Orbus, 'I heard the tragic news. I want to tell you how grieved we all are here at Brooks. Marmie was such a honey.’
Thank you,’ Randolph said, trying not to sound offended at Orbus's oleaginous pronunciation of Marmie's name. 'It was quite a shock, I can tell you.’
'Is there anything I can do to help you?’
'Well, I wanted to talk over some business possibilities more than anything else.’
'I'm open to suggestions,’ Orbus replied.
Randolph said cautiously, 'I think you probably know as well as I do that Tuesday's fire out at Raleigh has seriously affected our capacity.’
Orbus cleared his throat. 'That's the intelligence
I
received, yes. One estimate I had was that you could be as much as a third down on production.’
'Well, Orbus, it's possible that it may be worse than that, but a third is the chalked-up figure I'm working to.’
Orbus said with obviously deliberate blandness, 'I suppose it's too much to hope that you might have changed your mind about joining our select little band at the Cottonseed Association.’
'Joining you? No.’ Randolph watched as Charles poured him another glass of wine. 'I'm afraid there isn't any chance of that, Orbus. But I'm willing to make a practical suggestion. If the Association can help me overcome this temporary shortfall, I won't bid against you when the Western Cattle contract comes up for renewal in September, and I'll buy in an equivalent amount of unprocessed oil from Association members to make up on other contracts.’