If I Should Die Before I Die (22 page)

“You know,” she said, looking up at her audience through the round glasses, “where I come from … in Europe … they do these things differently. They do them behind closed doors. You would never know what happened, good or bad, until it was over. But I am proud to be in America, to do things the American way, to work to find an American-style solution.”

She paused, her arms spread out. Damned if her eyes weren't moist and if that wasn't the picture most widely used by the media.

“This is why we, members of the Magister family, make the following announcement,” she went on. “We are asking the Board of Directors of Magister Companies to convene a special stockholders' meeting no later than forty-five days from today. We are prepared to put forth our detailed plan for the restructuring and reorganization of the Company and the election of a new Board of Directors. At this meeting, and then only, we recommend that the stockholders consider and vote upon any other serious proposals concerning the future of Magister.”

Another pause. Then (tilting her glasses up on her head): “Thank you again for coming. We will be glad to answer any questions.”

There were a lot of questions and they came in a hurry, monitored by one of the PR people who ran the meeting and who also organized the so-called photo ops when the questions were over. What was in their detailed plan? It would be exposed at the proper time, to the proper people. Had the request already been submitted to the Board of Directors? Yes. Had the Board responded? Not yet. How did she think they would respond? She didn't know, they should ask the Board that question. How well did she know Raffy Goldsmith? She'd never met the man. Had she ever heard of him? Yes, she thought she had, but she'd never heard of Steelstar Investing before that morning. Did she consider him a financial vulture? She thought the media would have a more informed opinion of that than she would. Had the Magister brothers invited him in? If they had, they hadn't told her.

Sally Magister, though, drew the biggest laugh.

She was asked what she thought of her brothers.

She said she'd already been widely quoted on the subject.

“But what do you think of them today?” came the next question. “Has there been any change in your attitude?”

“Yes,” she answered, stony-faced. “I think there's been some change. But if I told you what it was, you wouldn't be permitted to print it and we'd be bleeped off the ‘Six O'Clock News.'”

Vincent Angus Halloran, meanwhile, seemed to suffer through it all, standing next to Margie with little change in expression or posture. He didn't look like he was paying attention. He also, I thought, didn't look like the type who beat people up in school yards. I tried for eye contact with him and failed, even though from where I was standing, right behind the last row of chairs, we had a clear view of each other.

Only then …

I'd been distracted, I guess, by what somebody in the audience was saying. But when I glanced back at Halloran, he was staring at me all right, eyes locked on mine, and I saw him half-smile, not so that his lips came apart but enough to break one plane of his face. But what it meant—recognition, mockery, challenge, whatever—I couldn't have told you.

Chairs scraped, people stood up between us, there were outbreaks of applause, and somebody in front of me called out, “Give 'em hell, Margie.” The media had gotten their story, and by that time Roy Barger had worked his way through the crowd and joined me, hands clapping enthusiastically.

“What did you think, Phil?” he asked.

“It'll make good copy,” I answered.

“Is that all?” He looked at me in surprise.

“No. She's good at it.”

“Good? I'd say she's terrific! Look at her now, she has them eating out of her hand.”

Even though Margie had declared the meeting over, she continued to hold court by the fireplace, talking animatedly and posing without seeming to pose, while the cameras closed in on her.

“If you've got a few minutes, Phil,” Roy Barger was saying, “please stick around. There's something we'd like to discuss with you after everybody's gone.”

I told him I had a few minutes. Then he left me, and, curious, I watched him glad-handing members of the media he appeared to know, escorting them through the French doors toward the entrance hall with his arms around their shoulders.

Halloran had disappeared. So had his mother. So, finally, had Margie. Even so, it took a while to clear the room, and some workers had already come in and begun to fold and stack chairs by the time Barger waved to me from the French doors.

In the entrance hall, people still clustered by the elevator doors. Barger led me past them, down a hallway and into another room where Margie Magister, in stockinged feet and minus her glasses, came toward me, hands outstretched to take mine and saying:

“Philip! I'm so glad you could come.”

It was either her bedroom or her boudoir, I've never exactly understood the difference between the two. At least it contained a bed, a large one with a brocade cover and an inlaid wood canopy above it, but also an arrangement of upholstered chairs and matching loveseat in front of French windows which gave out onto the terrace and a stunning view of the city skyline heading toward sunset. That's where we sat, Barger and I in chairs, while a young and good-looking houseman offered us tea or drinks from a bar trolley.

Margie Magister ordered tea, Barger a Perrier with lime, I a beer.

“I'm exhausted,” Margie Magister said. “At least it's over. Forgive me for taking my shoes off, but I'm … how do you say? … all in. Now, Philip, before I forget: How is Charles?”

“Mr. Camelot?” I started, but that's as far as I got.

Halloran had just walked into the room.

“Ah, Vincent, there you are!” Margie called out, pronouncing his name in French. “Pour yourself a drink and come join us.”

She watched him approvingly while he made a drink at the bar trolley. It looked to me like straight gin on the rocks. With a twist.

“Do you two know each other?” Margie asked, crossing her legs and patting the empty space on the loveseat.

“We've met,” Halloran said, sitting down next to her. He'd taken his tie off and unbuttoned the top buttons of his white shirt. He lifted his glass to no one in particular and drank.

“Well, now,” Margie said, looking across at me, “where was I? What did you think, Philip? Of the press conference?”

“I thought you were wonderful,” I said back. As for her being “all in,” maybe so on the inside, but you'd never have known it from her quick gestures or the flush in her cheeks. If anything, being in public seemed to have turned her on.

“Let's get to the point, Margie,” Roy Barger interrupted. “Our friend Phil is a busy young man, and if he's kind enough to give us these few minutes out of …”

“
Ach
,” she said, flinging her hands up, “you Americans and your schedules, you're worse than the Germans. Well,” with a pout and tossing her head, “go ahead then, Roy. Get on to your point.”

Barger shifted in his chair and leaned toward me, hands on his knees.

“This may come as a surprise to you, Phil, but we have a proposition to make. It may have been pure luck that you called today, but we agreed—Margie and I, Vince too—to seize the opportunity.”

I didn't immediately understand, and then, a moment later, I understood less.

“We're ready to entertain a buy-out,” Barger went on. “All our combined interest in Magister. At the right price, of course, and under the right conditions.”

“You're what?” I think I said. Then, after he assured me they were serious: “But what was all this about? The press conference and all the rest of it?”

“Come, come, Philip,” Barger said with a smile, “you can't expect us to put all our eggs in one basket. Mind you, we're fully prepared to go through with a proxy fight if we have to, and we believe we'll win if it goes that far. But we don't want it to go that far. We don't want to force the price so high that nobody will be able to buy Magister without selling off pieces of it.”

“My husband would never have stood for that,” Margie put in softly. “I don't think even Young Bob would want that to happen, would he?”

“You know as well as I do,” Barger went on, “that anything is for sale, at the right price. So the question is: at what price and under what conditions? I'll tell you straight out. Based on our analysis of the company's fair value, we want $72 per share. We don't insist on all cash up front. We would be prepared to take, say, today's closing price in cash … I believe that was $49 a share … and be flexible about the manner and timing of the balance. Our main condition is that Sally remain in charge of the magazine division and that, if the magazines are to be sold off, she be given first option to acquire, at fair market.”

“I take it she's agreed to this?” I asked, looking across at Halloran.

“She doesn't know about it yet,” he said. “But she'll do what we tell her to do.”

I wondered about that, also the scornful confidence with which he said it. How loyal a member was Sally of the Margie Magister Fan Club? I did some quick calculating, though. At over 200 percent from what the stock had been worth the day before, maybe she would have no argument. Magister had never, even in its best days, ever traded anywhere near that high. But given what she thought about her brothers, would Sally sell to them at
any
price?

I could see one reason they hadn't told her. Once Margie sold out, Sally could either accept the same terms or be left at the mercy of the new owners.

And if I'd had any doubts which side Vince Halloran was on, I got the answer when, in the course of conversation, I saw Margie take his hand in hers.

I still didn't get it, though. I'd heard her say she wanted to run the company, and I'd just seen her hold forth before the media. True, the Counselor thought she was capable of losing interest, but losing it even before she'd gotten started?

I remember looking at her and she looking straight back at me, unblinking.

“I think I'm unrealistic, Philip,” she said, like she'd just read my thoughts. “If the company cannot hold together …? Roy and Vincent think it cannot. What do you think? Wouldn't I rather have my money and enjoy it and be finished with lawyers and fighting and everything?”

“I'm not sure I take that as a compliment,” Roy Barger said with a chuckle. “Of course, Phil, any contest over the will would have to be dropped and releases signed to that effect. But that's lawyers' work and I see no problem. More important is that, if word of this leaks out, we will simply deny this little meeting ever took place. It would be just another lie, invented by the Magister brothers, in an attempt to discredit us.”

That, it went without saying, was the reason they'd picked me as their messenger rather than trying to approach the brothers directly.

“Well, what do you think, Revere?” Vince Halloran said. “Do you think it'll fly?”

He said it without any particular emphasis, like he didn't much care what my opinion was.

“I don't know,” I said. “It sounds expensive.”

“That it is,” Halloran said.

“It could also turn out to be cheap,” Roy Barger put in.

And that, I thought, would be up to the brothers to evaluate, not me.

“I also think they may want to see it in writing,” I said.

Barger shook his head.

“No way,” he said. “For obvious reasons. Not at least until we get a yes in principle. But you can take it as
bona fide
, Phil. We won't back off.”

In that case, I said, I thought it was at least worth passing on to the brothers, though how they'd react I couldn't predict.

“That's all we ask of you,” Roy Barger said. “I also happen to think it'll fly.”

“I do too,” echoed Margie, standing to escort me out, while Halloran got up too and headed for the bar trolley. “It will fly because Philip and Charles will make it fly.”

Alone with her in the entrance hall, waiting for the elevator to come, I remembered the effect she'd had on the Counselor that other time. Now it was my turn. Still in stockinged feet, she held both of my hands firmly and gazed upward at me from under the bangs. Then she stood on tiptoe, as though for a closer look. Her eyes were animated pools, and when you were alone with her, when that dark-eyed concentrated intensity was focused on you, well, she wasn't the kind of woman you could say no to easily.

As for me, it was impossible.

“I want to see you alone, Philip,” she said. “Without the others.”

Somewhere, from way out beyond Pluto somewhere, a voice was calling: Do you really want to be added to her life list?

“Well, and why not?” she said, laughing, like she could hear the voice too. “But anyway, I need to see you alone. I am troubled, Philip. Tonight, could you come for supper? I've the theater. I will come home immediately. Say, eleven o'clock? Here at eleven?”

Like I said: for me, impossible.

CHAPTER

13

The Counselor encouraged me to go ahead. In addition, no sooner had I reported Margie's offer to sell than he was on the phone to McClintock, and within the hour McClintock and Hank Rand were sitting in his office.

McClintock saw the offer as a breakthrough.

The Counselor thought it was a trap.

Why a trap?

“Because nobody's going to pay $72 a share for Magister,” the Counselor said. “Nobody in his right mind, that is.”

“Then maybe she'll take less,” McClintock said. “At least it's opening the door to negotiation, isn't it?”

“I doubt it,” the Counselor said. “Did they say anything, Phil, to indicate they'd negotiate the price?”

“No, they didn't,” I answered.