The Last Day (6 page)

“Good morning, Leslie.”

“How was the trade show, Mr. McCarty?” she asked him, smiling.

“Busy,” he told her.

“I put the order sheets on your desk,” she said. “I also have a stack of letters for your signature, and the new inventory report. The calls you need to return ASAP are on yellow Post- its, the should-be-returned-at-your-earliest on blue, and
the standard sales calls on green. No personal calls.”

Ward had resisted installing an automated messaging system because he hated listening to a recorded voice and punching numbers to navigate to an actual person. He did have voice mail, but Leslie always asked the caller if she could take a message, or if they wanted to leave a message on Ward's voice mail. Most left a message with her, which further reinforced his belief that given a choice, people preferred to interact with living, breathing humans.
Please listen carefully, as our options have changed. Please press one because we're insensitive assholes who are too cheap to hire an employee to answer your call.

“Very good,” he said. “Listen, Leslie. There's something I want to mention. If a young lady calls to ask for a die- cast car that I offered her for her mother on the flight home, get her name and mailing address.”

“You don't know her name?” Leslie asked, reaching for a pen.

“No. I told her I'd give her a die- cast car if she'd call. Get her name and address for me.”

A look of concern crossed Leslie's features, as
she made a note to herself, then stared at Ward with alert brown eyes.

“Do you want to talk to her?” She was familiar with Ward's slipping memory and she, like everyone else in the offices, knew of his mother's illness. It had crossed his mind more than once that the same disease might be sneaking up on him from behind like an assassin. Ward was too young, wasn't he?

“No. Tell her you'll mail her the car unless she wants to pick it up,” he said, not wanting to chance spooking the girl. That is, if she called.

Ward went to his office, which had remained pretty much the way his father had left it—cluttered but clean. He hadn't cleaned out but a few of his father's personal items, merely introducing a few of his own. Wardo hadn't had a computer in his office, preferring to write out personal correspondence by hand, or type business letters on his Selectric, using carbon paper. In his last years, he'd had his secretary type that which needed formalizing and make copies for files.

Ward, a generation later, had a desktop and a couple of laptops. A picture of his family stood on his desk that had been taken in Killarney
Ireland. Dermott O'caloughan, the owner of the Failte Hotel, had taken it the year before Barney died. Natasha had commented that she'd never visited any place as warm, or any place that had so many tourist shops whose inventory was comprised of so many things she didn't want to own. There was a second picture of Wardo, Mark, and himself taken during a charity tournament on the golf course at the Cabarrus Country Club. All three of the men smiled out from the framed snapshot like successful politicians who hadn't yet been caught at skullduggery.

For an hour Ward took care of necessary business. He was just about to walk to the warehouse to go over the incoming inventory, and to the studio to check the progress of designs on new products, when Leslie appeared at the open door, her long black hair tucked neatly behind her ears.

“Gene Duncan's secretary called to remind you that you're supposed to meet him for lunch at eleven- thirty at the Speedway Club. I don't have it on your planner.”

“Today?” Ward asked. He didn't remember making the appointment.
Christ.
“Tell him I'll see him there.”

As she turned to leave, Ward remembered something. “Leslie, are you still dating that private detective?”

“Yes,” she said. “Todd Hartman.”

“Is he good?”

Her cheeks flushed.

“Sorry, I meant is he a good detective?”

She giggled. “He doesn't brag, but his friends all say he's the best around. He has like two full-time investigators, a secretary, and lots of freelancers he uses. He does a lot of work for lawyers.”

“Does he work for individuals?”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

“And you'd recommend him. Even if you weren't dating?”

“My friend Erica hired Todd to check out a guy she was dating. The guy had just moved to town and he never let her pay for anything. He drove a Mercedes, dressed expensively, wore an expensive watch, was attentive, knew wines, took her to expensive restaurants, was handsome, always said and did the right things. She works, even though she has a large inheritance her aunt left her. When he found that out, he mentioned he was getting a thirty to forty percent
return on some Chinese farm machinery deal a friend of his got him into. She never committed to it, but said she'd think it over. He never tried to push her. One day he left out a check where she'd see it, and it was for two hundred thousand dollars. He said it was a quarterly return on the Chinese deal, which he had a million dollars invested in. He said in four years he'd gotten back his million and everything from there out was profits. She wanted to make that kind of money and he said he'd ask if there was any room for another investor, but he doubted it.

“He told her a week later that he'd convinced his buddies to let her buy in. That wasn't a red flag for her. The red flag was from her lawyer, who wondered why he wasn't involved or married already, and told her that any deal that looked too good to be true was generally a scam. The lawyer hired Todd, and Todd found out that Mr. Perfect was using a false name. He discovered the lover's real identity by collecting his fingerprints. Mr. Wonderful was a con artist, with a wife. The Mercedes was leased and his rap sheet was two feet long. Todd set up a sting using Erica and a dummy bank check for half a million dollars and the cops arrested the guy.
Erica thought I'd like Todd so she set us up on a blind date. I'd recommend him.”

“Well, I've got a little problem. You know the girl I said might call about the die- cast?”

“She hasn't yet.”

Ward told her about the girl and the missing prototype. Leslie listened without interrupting, until Ward said, “Can you give me his phone number and maybe even tell him I'm a nice guy before I call him?”

“Of course.” She scribbled down a phone number. “I know he'll be happy to help you out. I've told him about you. I mean what a nice guy you are.”

Ward hoped Hartman could find the girl and get the model back, because he doubted the police would spend the investigative energy that would be necessary to locate a phantom girl with no contact information to retrieve what amounted to a toy but he figured a private detective would at least make an effort for a fee.

“Sure thing,” Leslie said. “I'm meeting him for lunch.”

“That would be great. And thanks.”

THIRTEEN

Ward had lunch at the Speedway Club two or three times a week because it was convenient and afforded him an opportunity to keep in touch with clients. Except for the occasional race- related traffic delay it was just five minutes from his office. The food was good, they billed him so he had a record for the IRS, and he was on a first- name basis with most of the staff.

The hostess was seated at her ornate desk in the circular marble- floored foyer and greeted him with a warm, familiar smile.

“Mr. McCarty,” she chirped pleasantly. “How's Dr. McCarty?”

“Hello, Crystal. Natasha is fine,” he said. As he walked through the doors the odor of food hit him like a warm wave.

The dining room was beginning to fill up with club members and their guests. Gene Duncan was already seated at a table in the lower level at one of the enormous windows that were canted to damper the vibration from the roaring
engines, overlooking the one-and-a-half-mile oval track.

Ward walked down the wide carpeted stairs and made a beeline for his friend, who was charming a middle- aged waitress from Harrisburg. She had three children and two grandchildren, and was sometimes remiss in having her hair dyed blond. Her uniform accented her large breasts and wide hips but she was light on her sensible black shoes.

Gene Duncan, the end product of a marriage between a Scot and a German (both lawyers— one a superior court judge), and Ward McCarty had been friends since they were in kindergarten. Gene was over six feet tall, weighed two hundred and sixty pounds, and wore his brown hair swept back over the tops of his ears. He had a casual air that seemed in stark contrast to the two- thousand- dollar suits he wore. He looked up at Ward and smiled easily.

“Sweet tea, Mr. McCarty?” the waitress asked Ward. She poured his glass to the brim before jetting off in search of empty glasses on the nearby tables.

“Sweeter the better,” he said to her back.

“How was your trip out west?” Gene asked,
opening his briefcase and taking out a notepad, which he studied with furrowed brows.

Ward knew he'd asked without really caring, so he said, “My plane went down in the Grand Canyon and I had to survive for three days on cactus and rattlesnakes. Luckily the rest of the passengers on board were showgirls. Well, there was Wayne Newton, but his wife was along.”

“Glad to hear it. Couple of things to go over,” Gene said.

Ward looked out the window to his right and spotted a film crew gathered near turn one, probably making a commercial. Ward recognized the car as being Jeff Gordon's. Gordon, recognizable by the race suit, stood against the car. He was a fearless, extremely talented driver, and also a clean, classy, and intelligent man with a sense of humor, possessing the handsome boyish looks of a male model. He was everything brusque billionaire Bruton Smith, the track's owner, could want for NASCAR's image. Recently Smith had threatened to move the track, lock, stock cars, and barrel, because he had started building a huge drag strip on the property and the Concord City Council had mentioned he'd need a building permit. Approval of the council was required since
the constant noise of dragsters thundering down the quarter- mile asphalt might annoy homeowners near the raceway Having NASCAR races twice a year for a few days and nights was one thing, but this new drag strip?

Bruton Smith was not one to ask permission from any council. Once he had cut down one hundred old protected oak trees to add spaces to one of his parking lots. He'd had them cleared late at night and paid the fine instead of seeking permission.

The drag strip fight had been public and, after Smith threatened to move, the city ended up waging a very public and humiliating ass- kissing from the politicians to save the seventy million dollars the races put into the local economy annually. The campaign included small airplanes pulling WE LOVE YOU BRUTON and PLEASE DON T GO
BRUTON
banners, renaming a main street for him, offering tens of millions in infrastructure improvements to be paid for using tax dollars, and more. Natasha had said, only half in jest, that they should watch the “ grovel- to- grovel” coverage of those city council meetings on cable TV

Ward leaned back in his chair, waiting.

“Flash Dibble has fattened his offer.”

“Why would he do that, or better still, why do you keep listening to them and bringing them to me?”

“Because everything is for sale.”

“I am familiar with the adage, but RGI is the sole exception in the known universe.”

“This whole NASCAR thing has been phenomenal for the past few years, but once the yuppies get bored with the smell of gas fumes and burned rubber, it will suffer the same fate as disco music. Jeff Gordon will rank right up there with the Bee Gees. As gas prices and ticket prices rise, profits will continue to go down for speedways. Smell the times, old buddy. Look, Flash says you can run the company just like now, if you want to, and he's offering a million five more as added incentive, plus the thirteen million he already offered for your stock, and he'll pay your uncle seven point five for his,” Gene said. “That's twenty- two million dollars cash!”

“Before taxes,” Ward said, smiling.

“So, it's still a frigging fortune. That's serious fuck- you money any way you look at it. You should seriously consider it. Fourteen and a half million dollars ain't a bad payday. You can retire
at thirty- five. And I think he might agree to pay you a percentage of profits for maybe five years. I know …” Gene raised his hands, palms out.“…He could stack expenses and lower the profits, but we can make that a percentage of gross before expenses. Hell, you could draw your pictures till your fingers bleed and put them in your own gallery and only let your friends in to see them, or just buxom blondes.”

The idea of selling his company and sitting around his house with nowhere to go filled Ward with anxiety. And the idea of selling to Flash Dibble—it would never happen. “And I don't want to throw money into the air and see how much of the floor I can cover. Or drive a Bentley Or play golf.” Leaning in, Ward said, “And what about the video game?”

“He doesn't know about that. We can negotiate that when the time comes. That's
if it
ever gets past the designing stage.”

“I saw the beta in Vegas. Paul assures me it will be finished, bugs out, within the next six months. It is so cool.”

“Christ, Ward. You just repay the money RGI put up for the development, and you'll have nothing to worry about.”

“That game should be part of RGI, and our employees should be rewarded. I still intend to do the profit- sharing thing, and after it's released would be the time to institute that.”

“Your father would spin in his grave,” Gene said, looking down as he said it. The mention of grave brought the same unpleasantness into both their minds. “Like I said. Just think it over.”

“What's to think over? You think Flash Dibble would share profits with our employees?”

“Aside from that. Talk to Natasha. Mark has been there from the start, and he'll sell if he can.”

“You've run the new offer by Unk?” Ward asked, blindsided and suddenly annoyed. “When?”

“We spoke Sunday afternoon at the country club. You were still out of town, and I didn't think you'd mind. Do you?”