Executive Suite (37 page)

Climbing the stairs, Don Walling thought for the first time of what he might say to Alderson. The preplanning of conversation was something that he seldom did, but he was aware now of the special difficulty he faced. He couldn't come right out and say that he—Don Walling—was the man who should be president of the Tredway Corporation. Of course, Alderson had said practically the same thing out there at his house this morning … but he'd have to get Alderson to say it again and then make him see his mistake about Dudley. Yes, that would be the best way to do it … but damn it, he couldn't fool around too long humoring the old codger … there was work to be done!

The cardroom they entered was one of several cubicles that had been sleeping rooms a hundred years ago when the club had been the Federal Tavern. There was little more space than was needed for a round green-felted table and its circle of chairs. Walling brushed the wall as he edged in and sat down. He saw Alderson hesitate and for an instant he thought it was a sign of subservience, waiting to be asked to sit, but a glance at his face erased that possibility. Alderson's hesitance was something else and he couldn't be quite sure what it was.

“Well, what happened?” Walling asked crisply, breaking the silence.

Alderson looked surprised, as if he hadn't expected the question. “I told you. I drove him out to his house.”

“What did he say?”

“Say? I didn't tell him anything, so there wasn't anything for him to say.”

“You must have talked about something.”

There was a rack of poker chips in the center of the table and Alderson reached out and picked a blue chip off the top of the stack. “We—he talked about Avery Bullard.”

Walling leaned forward, his elbows on the table, softening his voice in an uncalculated effort to ease the tenseness. “Fred, I know you must have thought I was crazy, grabbing you at the station like that, but I had to do it. When I got over to the office and started thinking about what the president of the company had to be—the things he'd have to do—damn it, Fred, can't you see it? Walt Dudley couldn't swing it. There just isn't enough there—not enough strength—not enough anything. He can't do it, that's all!”

Alderson was methodically stacking blue chips. “I thought he might—with you there to help him.”

There was the opening!
It had come easier than he expected, sooner than he had anticipated. “All that means, Fred, is that I'd have to do the job.”

“He'd help you,” Alderson said, but without conviction.

“No. That's what I could see after I started to think about it. Walt wouldn't help me. He'd be a hindrance—a millstone around my neck—something that I'd have to push out of the way every time I wanted to get anything done.”

He saw Alderson's trembling hand touch the stack of chips and they fell with a slithering clatter. Why didn't Alderson say something? All right, let him keep quiet … Alderson didn't matter, anyway! Where had he gotten this crazy idea that it was Alderson who would decide … that the presidency was something that Alderson could hand out? Who the hell did Alderson think he was … he'd never been anything but a clerk … nothing but a …

“I'd hoped I wouldn't have to tell you this,” Alderson said, his voice so low that Walling had to relisten to the echoed memory of the words before he could be sure that he had heard them.

“Tell me what?”

Alderson restacked the chips. “I didn't want to tell you this because—because there wasn't anything that could be done about it and—well, I didn't want you to get the wrong idea about Jesse.”

“Jesse?”

“When I called him this morning—”

He saw Alderson's face slacken, as if the words that had come to his lips were too heavy to speak. What was he going to pull now … another one of those cock and bull stories to excuse himself … like that business this morning about his wife not wanting him to …

Alderson took a deep breath and his rising shoulders lifted his head. “When I talked to Jesse this morning, it was my idea to make
you
the new president—but Jesse wouldn't go along.”

The mainspring snapped. “Jesse wouldn't—what do you mean?”

“I've told you that much—suppose I might as well tell you the rest,” Alderson said wearily, his forefinger slowly tapping the top of the chip stack. “Jesse said that he'd vote with me—for whoever I decided—as long as it wasn't either Shaw or you.”

“Shaw or—Fred, I—I can't believe that—Jesse and I have always been friends—worked together—I can't believe that he feels that way about me.”

“Don't ask me why.”

“I
am
asking you why.”

“I don't know.”

“What else did he say?”

“Nothing. I tried to talk to him—but you know how Jesse is.”

Alderson looked at him and there was the misery of compassion in his eyes. “That's one thing you learn when you get to be an old man—the thing I said this morning—I was thinking about this then—you never really know what's in any man's mind. You think you do, but you don't. Sometimes you don't even know what's in your own mind until something comes along and forces you into finding out.”

“I guess that's right,” Don Walling mumbled, staring down at the bull's-eye of a gray ring that someone's highball glass had left on the green felt. “Fred, I owe you an apology. At least—well, I want to thank you for the way you felt about me.”

“Don't feel too badly about Jesse. He's a strange man—always has been.”

The admonition was a reminder, a catalyst that suddenly transformed disappointment into anger. “It's a damned good thing he is retiring! A two-faced bastard that would—”

“Wait!” Alderson said with unexpected sharpness. “There's no reason to—”

“How would you feel if a man you'd trusted stabbed you in the back?”

“That's happened,” Alderson said with disarming mildness.

“I know, but—”

“There's no reason why this has to change anything,” Alderson said. “I'm sorry I had to tell you—I knew how you'd feel—but, at least, you realize now that making Dudley president wasn't just an old man's crazy idea. You'll be executive vice-president and that will put you in a spot where—”

“If Jesse wouldn't vote for me for president, why will he vote for me as executive vice-president?”

Alderson picked up the chips and let them click through the cage of his fingers. “Because there isn't anything else that he can do. It has to be either you or Shaw and—well, I think I can make Jesse see that it ought to be you.”

The chair fell as Walling stood up, crashing into the silence. He made no move to pick it up. “In that case, Jesse can go to hell and you can tell him so with my compliments.”

He kicked the chair out of the way, pushing toward the door.

Another chair fell as Alderson blocked the way. “Don't take it this way, Don. We need you—the company needs you—”

“But I don't need the company,” he flashed. He didn't! No! To hell with it! If that was all he was … a bad second choice for Shaw …

Blindly, he shoved through the door and started down the hall. Alderson's following footsteps were only the pursuit of something that had to be escaped.

10.50 A.M. EDT

Julia Tredway Prince stepped into the closet, her fingertips playing over the hangers. She was trying to decide what dress she would wear. It was a difficult decision to make because she felt impelled to reject what she liked best. It was important not to be too well dressed. That Martin woman would probably turn up in something dull and secretaryish and there would be barrier enough between them without adding the additional block of making her feel self-conscious about her clothes. She had to put her at ease, get her talking. That was why she had told Nina that they would have lunch in the breakfast room … if she decided to have her stay for lunch … and the lunch would be nothing but what a secretary would normally eat, consommé and a chicken salad sandwich.

She pulled out an old black crepe and decided that it would do if she took off the rhinestone clips.

10.54 A.M. EDT

The dregs of anger can be either a sedative or a stimulant, depending upon the mind in which they settle. To Don Walling, as he entered the lobby of the Tredway Tower, they were both in alternation. A dozen times in the last five minutes his emotions had swung the cycle from depression to determination.

He had escaped Alderson with the excuse that he would rather walk than ride, but there was no escape from the memory of Jesse Grimm's treachery. He had coldly and maliciously robbed him of his destiny … destroying the whole point and purpose of his existence … and there was no way to stop him.

Don Walling slumped again with the listlessness of hopeless despair—but then came the quick counterreaction, the surge of fighting spirit that was so close to the basic urge for self-preservation that it took on the same blindly desperate quality. He wouldn't be licked! He couldn't be!

“Miss Martin—she wants to see you right away,” Luigi said as he stepped into the elevator cab.

They were halfway up before the words filtered through to his consciousness.

“You go twenty-four to see Miss Martin?” Luigi was asking.

“All right—twenty-four,” he said, not thinking, his voice directed by the habit of responding to a call from Miss Martin as if it were a call from Avery Bullard himself.

There was the hush of death on the twenty-fourth floor and he regretted his decision, but it was too late to turn down the stairs. Erica Martin had heard the elevator door open and was coming out of her office to meet him.

“Oh, thank you for coming, Mr. Walling. I was afraid that I might not have a chance to see you.”

The words spilled out as if waiting had accumulated an impelling pressure behind them, making them sound strange to him, and they must have sounded strange to her as well because she added quickly, as if it were a needed explanation, “I had a call this morning from Mrs. Prince. I tried to catch you as you were leaving but I was a second too late.”

“A call for me?”

“No, for me. But I wanted your advice. She says there's a box of her personal papers in Mr. Bullard's vault that she wants this morning.”

“Do you know anything about it?”

The instant of hesitation made her admission seem reluctant. “Yes, there's a box with her name on it.”

“Do you know any reason why she shouldn't have it?”

Again there was that almost imperceptible instant of reluctance.

“No, I don't suppose I do.”

This was his chance! He saw it as a boxer sees an opening, a reflex reaction that was faster than thought. A second before he had not known that he wanted to talk to Julia Tredway Prince. Now, instantly, it had become the key maneuver in the first stage of his battle plan. “Suppose you let me take care of it, Miss Martin,” he said. “I'll drop it off on my way home.”

“Would you?” Her reply was a beat too fast, as her other replies had been a beat too slow. “Are you sure you wouldn't mind?”

“Not at all.”

“I'll get it for you.”

She crossed her own office and, with only a suggestion of hesitation, opened the door of Avery Bullard's. Don Walling followed her into the cathedral dusk of the big room. The aura of death hung like a heavy vapor. The curtains were drawn and the only light came from the colored shafts that the high sun sent down through the ports between the heavy ceiling beams.

Erica Martin, moving as a shadow in the darkness, went to the wall safe. The door stood open and her hands found the small black-enameled box as if her eyes were unneeded. She gave it to him. “There's something I suppose you should know, Mr. Walling—in case Mrs. Prince mentions it. She asked me to bring this out myself.”

“Personally?”

“Yes.”

He hesitated, reluctant to lose what he had gained. “Perhaps there are some valuable papers.”

“I don't think so. I suspect that it was simply a way to force me to go to her home.”

“Why would she want to do that?”

“Because—” She caught herself and he knew that what she would say now was not what her first impulse had made her want to say. “I don't know, of course—it's only a suspicion and I may be entirely wrong—but I imagine she wants me to tell her what will happen here. I hardly think that I'm the one who should give information to Mrs. Prince,” and then she added pointedly, a question without a question mark, “—even if I knew anything that I could tell her.”

He mumbled an evasively wordless sound and tucked the black box under his arm.

Even in the semidarkness, he saw her eyes forecast what she was about to ask. “Mr. Walling, is there anything that you
can
tell me? It may be that you'd prefer not to talk to me—if that's the case I'll understand, of course—but if there's anything you can tell me about what's going to happen—please do it, Mr. Walling.”

The last words had been said as a whispered plea, compelling in its earnestness, and he felt that he had to say something. But what? “I suppose you mean who'll be in this office?” he asked slowly, sparring for time.

“You can understand why it's so important to me.”

He waited as long as he dared before he spoke, but there was no gain in the waiting. He still had to say the same thing. “I wish there were something that I could tell you, Miss Martin, but I'm afraid there isn't. As I'm sure you can appreciate, it's a rather scrambled situation. If an executive vice-president had been elected before—”

“Yes, I know.” She sounded curiously self-critical, almost as if she were personally assuming the blame for an executive vice-president not having been selected.

Suddenly, his caution dimmed by the darkness of the room, he heard himself ask, “Miss Martin, did Mr. Bullard ever give you any indication of whom he was intending to select as executive vice-president?”