Sweet and Low_An Emma Lathen Best Seller Read online

  “That’s another thing. I’m sorry, honey, but we’re going to have to scrub that trip to Sea Island. With Shaw trying to shaft me, I don’t dare take the time off now.” He reached forward to squeeze his wife’s hand nervously.

  “Not go! But we’ve already . . .” Then she conquered her disappointment. “It’s so unfair, but I suppose you’re right. You really think he might be up to something if you weren’t there?”

  Betty’s position was clear. She still wanted to go to Sea Island, but she could be persuaded that it was not in their best interest.

  Gene suppressed a sigh of relief. “There’s just no telling. You see, I can convince Mr. Vandevanter that Shaw’s talking through his hat, if I’m here. And, Mr. Vandevanter might be mad if I took off. You wouldn’t know this, Betty, but the cocoa market’s playing games right now.”

  Unconsciously Orcutt’s chest expanded as he became the man of affairs he could not be in the office.

  “You mean Dreyer has a lot at stake right now?” Betty asked humbly.

  “Yes. The market can only go one of two ways. And somebody’s got to keep an eye on Amory Shaw.”

  Like most brokers, Russ Martini wore two different hats. In the office he was a trader. Outside, he was a salesman. By preference he did most of his selling on the golf course near his home in Tarrytown. Today the late summer daylight was permitting him to try his hand on a local orthodontist.

  “I don’t recommend the commodity market to everyone, Talbott,” he said gravely as they walked to the third green. “It’s true you can make a killing. But you can also drop a bundle a lot faster than on the stock exchange.”

  Like most potential customers, Dr. Talbott was certain that heaven would steer him to the profits, not the losses.

  “It’s not just money,” he said largely. “A lot of guys only want to build a portfolio. But I want excitement, too.”

  Martini considered this judiciously. “There is that, of course,” he agreed at last. “And I grant you can get plenty of excitement out of commodities.”

  Over the years, Martini’s pitch had been cunningly orchestrated to allow for teeing off, searching for lost balls, and blasting out of sand traps.

  Now he waited respectfully while Talbott chose his iron and transformed himself into a pillar of muscle. Then, when the mighty swing had been followed by a painful dribble down the fairway, he resumed.

  “I suppose it boils down to a matter of temperament. Nervous anxious types are better off with something that moves at a slower pace, even if the profits are smaller.” He cast an appraising glance at his companion and his companion’s ball. “But the man who can ride with the punches, the man who can take a disappointment and come right back, he’s a natural for commodities.”

  It was a shame, thought Russ Martini, that the ball had not sailed all the way to the green. He had the perfect sentence for that occasion, centering on the man with real drive, the man with a flair for hurdling obstacles. But if he didn’t get a chance to use it on the third green, it was a cinch that he wasn’t going to get any chance at all.

  Dr. Talbott was proving his ability to come back fighting. It took him eight strokes to battle his way to the hole. Then, tossing the ball rhythmically, he mused: “It’s funny to hear a broker trying to discourage a client.”

  “We have to be selective. A broker makes money out of successful customers,” Martini said, skating lightly over the subject of commissions. “We figure that every new trader is going to take three or four falls at the start. Unless a client takes that into account, he’s going to get discouraged and deal himself out. In my outfit we like to try for long-term relationships, where people know what they’re getting into.”

  Here he seemed to lose interest in the conversation, turning his attention to the perils of the water hole. He knew that Dr. Talbott’s internal dialogue would result in a decision before the sixth green. That would leave time in hand to thrash out remaining details before heading for the clubhouse. Martini always arranged things so that, by the time he was in the bar with a beer, there was no danger of other clients overhearing familiar phrases.

  Today went precisely to schedule. By the sixth hole Dr. Talbott had decided that he was the man for these mountains. By the seventh, they were discussing which peak he would scale.

  “I don’t like the sound of pork bellies,” he confessed.

  This was the literal truth. At Martini & Mears they had long since come to grips with the fact that wheat and platinum are redolent of romance; pork bellies and frozen orange juice are totally devoid of magic.

  By the eighth green, Dr. Talbott was fractiously rejecting all cereal grains. “I thought cocoa was where the action is,” he said wistfully.

  Their progress to the ninth hole was impeded by Russ Martini’s lecture. Oh, yes, there was plenty of action in cocoa right now. Maybe, even, a little too much. A lot of people had gone short. Now the price was falling. And it would keep on falling until one of the big houses moved in to scoop the pool. Salvation was in the hands of one or two traders. Say Amory Shaw, he was the man who bought for Dreyer.

  “Dreyer,” Dr. Talbott breathed the name with a new reverence. “And when they buy, the price will go up?”

  “Yes,” said Martini soberly. “That’s why everyone is watching Amory Shaw.”

  When Leo Gilligan had been a poor man, he occasionally tried selling things to other people. After he made his first million, the situation was reversed. But now he was in a different world entirely. All the nonsense about buying and selling had stopped. People expected him to give money away.

  And, in the first years of plenty, Gilligan’s donations had not been niggardly. But, he asked himself, was now the time to build a hospital wing damn-near single-handed?

  “I’d have to think about that,” he told his dinner host.

  “It would mean so much to have your name, and Mrs. Gilligan’s, of course, at the head of our list of patrons.”

  “I make it a point not to lend my name unless I’m willing to give adequate support to a cause,” stalled Gilligan, trying to calculate how much this would cost.

  “That’s what we all admire so much about your contribution to local activities.” The last thing the host wanted was the Gilligan name without the Gilligan check. He had hoped for a spontaneous, munificent suggestion. Now it looked as if specific sums would have to be bandied about. “The estimate for the new wing is three million dollars.”

  Gilligan smiled inscrutably. “A nice round sum,” he remarked.

  “Naturally we expect to raise a substantial portion by canvassing the community,” his host said unrealistically.

  “Sure.”

  Resentment descended on the host. Why had he been assured that Gilligan was an easy mark? He never would have made this approach except for the impressive list of previous Gilligan benefactions.

  Gilligan got them both off the hook.

  “Tell you what. We’d better let this whole thing ride a while. The cocoa market’s going to hell right now. Makes it hard for me to say exactly where I stand. In a couple of weeks I’ll know, one way or the other. That is,” he added slyly, “if you can wait.”

  “Oh, we’ll wait.” The words came out too quickly. Returning to his urbane tone, the host blundered. “I didn’t realize you were in difficulties.”

  Gilligan’s face hardened. “I’m not in difficulties. I just don’t have a lot of cash to throw around. But I can still pay my way.” He looked contemptuously at the group gathered at the far end of the living room. “Better than most.”

  “Good Lord, I wasn’t suggesting anything.” What have I done? the host thought wildly. Can the man be going bankrupt? He tried to laugh. “It’s hard for the rest of us to realize how you financiers work sometimes. Just put it down to our ignorance. I’m sure I wouldn’t even understand how you’re going to handle these . . . er . . . jitters on the cocoa market.”

  “I’m not going to handle them. Only one man can do that.” Leo Gilligan
pushed back his chair. “Shall we join the others?”

  Amory Shaw had made it a lifelong habit not to let a solitary soul know his plans. He was fully aware that Gene Orcutt, Russ Martini, and Leo Gilligan, not to mention several hundred others, were all waiting to see which way he would jump. In the privacy of his apartment he finished his review of the papers before him, and decided to let them all wait.

  “No, not tomorrow,” he murmured. “That would be too early.”

  Chapter 11

  Shaw’s Last Walk

  Sophisticated techniques do not fundamentally alter human communication. They simply accelerate it past the speed of sound. No one’s voice can keep pace with computer and the Internet. As a result, time is even more relative on Wall Street than elsewhere.

  “Today’s the day,” said the caller on the phone the following afternoon.

  Miss Corsa had already identified Howard Vandevanter. Nevertheless Thatcher found it hard to slow down to the Dreyer Chocolate Company’s tempo. In the past six hours he and the rest of the stock exchange had lived through several days.

  First, before the market opened, came rumors from Beverly Hills and the State of Illinois. Then, like ice breaking up in the Yukon, debris floated downstream. By midmorning, everybody knew: giant, high-flying Union Funding was in trouble. And, even before senior partners at venerable accounting firms and mutual funds could pull themselves together for guarded statements, proof came tumbling down the chute: forged paper, falsified policies, doctored books.

  They were crooks at Union Funding.

  The Sloan Guaranty Trust had always suspected as much.

  “Say what you want,” Walter Bowman, the bank’s chief of research, had put it many months ago, “who needs swingers, when you’re talking about reinsurance? Besides, you know that rate of growth people keep talking about? They do it by revising last year’s figures downward, regular as rain.”

  So, the Sloan was not directly involved in the cataclysm. But the Sloan and Thatcher were involved with many grave, conservative men who did business with Union Funding, who had invested millions of dollars in Union Funding, who were now consulting their grave, conservative lawyers about Union Funding. When a mighty oak crashes there may be stillness in the forest, but not on Wall Street.

  “Some of the biggest names on the Street are getting caught,” indignantly reported Tom Robichaux, of Robichaux & Devane.

  “Well, if that makes you feel better,” said Thatcher with the frankness of an old friend.

  “Better, hell!” said Robichaux stoutly. “You know what the SOBs are doing? They’re refusing to take delivery from us!”

  Big names do not like getting stung any better than anyone else.

  Thatcher had heard from a lot of them by the time Miss Corsa put Vandevanter through. It was not easy to veer from lawsuits, rigged computers, and SEC investigations to candy bars.

  “. . . talked to Curtis Yeoman, who’s fortunately still in town,” Vandevanter was saying.

  “Sorry, I missed that,” said Thatcher simultaneously scanning the note Miss Corsa handed him; consent decrees and incredulity in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago.

  Vandevanter grew impatient. “Tonight’s the night we’re officially launching the advertising campaign for Old Glory. Kanelos had an idea and, as I say, I’ve already spoken to Yeoman about it. This afternoon, we’re going to release a brief statement to the trade . . .”

  Thatcher would have had no compunction about refusing to lend himself to the Dreyer Chocolate Company’s promotional efforts. Financial advice, not a warm body, was what he had agreed to contribute to the Leonard Dreyer Trust. But just then, Charlie Trinkam stuck his head in the door, his face alight with unholy glee.

  “Silverman’s suing Robichaux & Devane! And Stose claims it didn’t have inside information. It was pure coincidence they unloaded Union Funding yesterday!”

  That made up Thatcher’s mind. When big names began turning on big names, he preferred to be elsewhere. Particularly after another face appeared over Charlie’s shoulder.

  “Market’s down 23,” said Walter Bowman. “That damned nitwit up in Boston calls it a crisis in confidence.”

  Thatcher was an old hand at riding out storms. After lengthy instructions to subordinates, he safeguarded himself by leaving.

  Very few people ever stepped so springily from the frying pan into the fire.

  Curtis Yeoman was waiting for him in the lobby of the Cocoa Exchange.

  “I understand that the price of cocoa is still sinking,” he said with the detachment of a neutral. He did not bother to lower his voice, so his words were audible to everybody in the vicinity.

  “We’d better be getting upstairs,” said Thatcher hurriedly. With cocoa futures hitting the lower limit day after day, Yeoman’s tourist approach was about as welcome as stray bird watchers would have been during the battle of Little Big Horn.

  Thatcher had hustled Yeoman into an elevator when they were hailed.

  “Come to watch us bleed, Thatcher?”

  “Hello, Gilligan,” Thatcher replied temperately. “Have you met Governor Yeoman, here?”

  Thatcher planned confining himself to introductions, but Yeoman had less sense. “Pretty exciting time for you cocoa people,” he remarked with tactless geniality.

  Gilligan regarded him sourly. “Oh, it’s exciting all right—like jumping off a cliff.”

  “How do you read the rest of the day, Gilligan?” Thatcher asked, although there was little he wanted less to know. The last hour of trading always makes bad situations worse. But he felt morally bound to intervene. Flesh and blood can stand so much, and men battered by selling waves should not be asked for small talk on the subject. This, incidentally, was a point ignored by too many Wall Street wives, as witness the divorce rate among customers’ men.

  “It all depends on Amory,” Gilligan said harshly. “We’re waiting for him, just the way we waited all day yesterday.”

  “You mean he hasn’t acted yet?” Yeoman asked.

  Gilligan replied: “The whole damned market thought Amory had to move in yesterday. But he just went down, watched—then left. Then this morning—the same thing!”

  The doors oozed open on the fifth floor.

  “So now,” said Gilligan before they stepped out, “I’m going on up to ask Russ when the hell he thinks Amory is going to do something. He’s got Jim down on the floor to spell him while he checks around. But hell, I know what he’s going to tell me. He knows as much about Amory as the rest of us.”

  When they were alone, Yeoman’s curiosity overflowed. He proved startlingly ignorant about the realities of cocoa trading.

  “Everybody here is waiting for Dreyer to start buying, to put some support into this market,” Thatcher was explaining as they turned the corner.

  “You can say that again!” The fervent statement came from a total stranger passing by. “Is Amory down on the floor now?”

  Thatcher replied that he did not know.

  “No, he’s just left,” said a second stranger, coming toward them. “Didn’t do anything, just stood there.”

  “Je-sus!” said Thatcher’s stranger, scuttling off.

  “Good God!” Yeoman exclaimed. “I hadn’t realized the atmosphere down here at all!”

  It had its appeal too, Thatcher could see, but a more humdrum world beckoned from beyond the door: Dreyer Cocoa Purchasing Division. They had not yet made certain necessary changes. There, halfway down a list of names, was—R. Frohlich.

  Thatcher wondered if Curtis Yeoman too had noticed.

  “. . . one of the most dramatic developments in Dreyer’s history!” Mr. Kanelos was already on stage when Thatcher and Yeoman let themselves in. “The Old Glory bar—the finest ten-cent candy bar in American history, and in view of today’s prices, the best bargain the American consumer can get . . .”

  Eight or ten representatives of the trade and financial press, profoundly bored, studied the press release and jotted desultory notes.


  “. . . for a few words, the president of the Dreyer Chocolate Company, Mr. Howard Vandevanter . . .”

  Vandevanter blinked, cleared his throat, and opened his remarks.

  Thatcher listened with half an ear. There was no reason for Dreyer to have a Demosthenes at the helm, but why did Vandevanter always manage to sound like a civil engineer?

  “. . . addition to our line of quality products,” he read without inflection.

  Outside, the turbulent cocoa market churned unnoticed, except presumably by Amory Shaw, whose absence did not surprise Thatcher.

  “. . . a landmark for the Dreyer Chocolate Company. And, as many of you know, for another organization, the Leonard Dreyer Trust. This afternoon two trustees are present and I am going to call upon them . . .”

  Thatcher decided he could safely leave this one to Yeoman. After an initial grunt of outrage the ex-governor let fly with a short, combative response. After the mandatory good wishes, he delivered the warning that should have been unnecessary: any mention of the Leonard Dreyer Trust in connection with commercial promotion of Old Glory would be regarded by the trustees as actionable.

  With that, he sat down.

  “Irresponsible idiots,” he said aloud.

  Thatcher foresaw a session designed to teach Bridges, Gray & Kanelos that it never pays to underestimate the power of a tax-exempt status. It would not be the first time that the optimism and joviality of the press conference held up only until the last reporter left. But the battle royal Thatcher expected after Chocolate News departed never got off the ground.

  “Where’s Amory?” Vandevanter was so preoccupied that he ignored Yeoman’s bristling approach.

  “How do I know?” Yeoman shot back. “Howard, I want to talk—”

  But he was not in a one-on-one confrontation. There was a goodly array of Dreyer small fry present, and they knew which questions to answer.

  “. . . down on the floor, I believe, sir . . .”

  “. . . call Mrs. Macomber, his secretary . . .”