Murder to Go Page 10

  The meeting had been called by Joe Gatto, and he was in full cry when the Akerses entered the American Legion Hall in Newark that Tuesday.

  “He’s in great form today,” a fellow franchisee whispered as he moved over to make room for Dodie. “He thinks we should start a counterattack.”

  The Akerses listened fatalistically.

  “. . . Hedstrom is out to ruin us little guys and take all the profits for himself. It’s been the same all along. They send out inspectors, they spy on us, they give orders. Who does the work, I ask you that? We do, that’s who! And now who’s getting kicked in the belly? Us! Well, I’m here to tell you I won’t stand for it and I hope you won’t either. There’s no point kidding ourselves. We’re none of us big enough to take on Hedstrom by ourselves. We’ve got to plan things together. . . .”

  As the speaker neared the inevitable conclusion that they were all going to hang separately if they didn’t hang together, Vern raised eloquent eyebrows at Dodie. I hope you’re satisfied, they said. This is what we drove fifty-five miles to listen to.

  Things did not improve when Joe Gatto yielded the floor. The small, rumpled man who took over was hoarse with earnestness.

  “I don’t like to hear you say things like that about Chicken Tonight, I really don’t, Joe. Look at it this way. I didn’t have enough cash to go into any real business by myself. Most of us didn’t. If it hadn’t been for the kind of help we got from Mr. Hedstrom, I’d still be back on the line. Instead I’ve got a fine business.” He scowled at the chorus of derisive cries. “Well, it was fine until a couple of weeks ago. I figure that the people who helped us, the people who got us started, are entitled to their share of the profits. I didn’t have anything to complain about. Bessie and me were doing real good in Scranton.” Here he paused to look defiantly at Gatto. “And I say that anybody who paid attention to the front office’s advice about location, anybody who operated the way they told him to, anybody who really put his back into it, was making out all right.”

  This was the equivalent of challenging Gatto to a duel. Everybody knew that Joe had chosen his location in the teeth of management opposition, that he didn’t go by the CT manual and that he was—in Vern Akers’ words—the laziest s.o.b. to come down the pike in a long time. Happily, before Gatto could lash back, a calmer influence appeared. Chet Brewster, the largest operator in three states, did not descend to personalities.

  “Now let’s put aside any little discontents we may have felt with the management in the past. I don’t say they don’t exist, I guess you all know my own little gripes.” Brewster gave the indulgent chuckle he always used with the smaller operators. He had opened one of the first Chicken Tonights in the Northeast. This gave him all the advantages of getting in on the ground floor. He had always been the man of substance at the area meetings, the man who could understand and appreciate what influenced headquarters. “But I do say that management is just as hard hit by this disaster as we are. This is no time to talk about forcing them to do anything for us. They’ve got enough trouble keeping their heads above water. We’ve got to work with them, not against them. What you may not understand is that a company like this lives by its reputation. Once that goes, you can kiss goodbye to the whole business of Chicken Tonight. If you want the advice of someone who’s been in this business longer than anyone else here, I say this is the time to give our unqualified support to the front office.”

  Chet Brewster had settled everybody’s problems, at least to his own satisfaction. He acknowledged nonexistent applause with a wave of the hand and returned to his seat wrapped in self-satisfaction. There was a long pause, as if forty-two couples were holding their breath. Characteristically, it was a woman who rushed in where angels feared to tread. She did not bother going to the platform. She simply rose and spoke as the spirit moved her.

  “I don’t pretend to understand high finance the way Mr. Brewster and a lot of you do. But I do know one thing. Mr. Brewster’s rich. He can afford to sit this thing out. I suppose Mr. Hedstrom and all the people in the New York offices can, too. But we can’t! Stan and I put our life savings into our franchise. It’s not easy saving up fifteen thousand dollars on a mailman’s pay, not when you’ve got kids to raise, it isn’t. But we did and we never regretted sinking it all into Chicken Tonight. I don’t want you to get the idea that we go along with Joe Gatto here. We were grateful to the front office. They were fair about everything. We knew it would take time to get off the ground, and with Stan’s pension we could manage it. We didn’t do anything wild, we didn’t do anything that wouldn’t work out with a lot of good, hard elbow grease and some patience. All those people who keep checking up on us will tell you that. But we can’t take this!” She reached down to clutch the hand of the man beside her. Then, with renewed determination, she continued more calmly, “I don’t know anything about how we split up here. I know a lot more of you are in our shoes than in Mr. Brewster’s. You know the situation as well as I do. We haven’t done a nickel’s worth of business for two weeks. But we’ve still got payments to meet. They go on and on. Where can we get the money? We’re all going to be wiped out, after we’ve worked so hard. And it isn’t as if we were in this alone. We’ve all had our kids working in our places. A lot of us were hoping to set them up in the same business. It’s so unfair!”

  She sat down, now weeping openly. Several women near her made overtures of comfort. But the rumbling that spread down the rows suggested that most of her audience had been stirred into a more combative mood. Joe Gatto rose to say that Mrs. Horvath had said exactly what he said, that a united front was essential. Chet Brewster, still exuding confidence, denied that riches had cut him off from the problems of the less fortunately circumstanced. Gatto’s foe claimed that Helen Horvath spoke for all of them in expressing gratitude to Chicken Tonight. There was a confused medley of seconding.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Vernon Akers grumbled in an undertone. “I didn’t come here to be cried at by Helen Horvath.”

  “Oh, Vern! You know that every word she said was true. You’re just uncomfortable because she got so emotional about it.” Dodie had put her finger on his trouble. “And why shouldn’t she be emotional? I wouldn’t mind lying down and having a good cry myself.”

  At this ultimate threat, Vern opted for appeasement. “I didn’t say it wasn’t true. I said it wasn’t getting us anywhere. We know all about the payments we’ve got to meet. We should talk about doing something about them.”

  “Then stand up and talk!”

  “Oh, now, Dodie.” Vernon Akers disliked anything in the nature of a public exhibition.

  “No, I mean it, Vern. We drove fifty-five miles in the hope of seeing something accomplished. And we’re not going to if you just let this bunch of blowhards preen themselves. You know that all Gatto and Brewster care about is sounding off. On your feet, Vern.”

  If there was one thing to be said for the Army, Vern Akers thought nostalgically, it was lack of opportunity for public speaking. At least if you were a sergeant. Generals, of course, were born gasbags.

  “You know I can’t talk to meetings, Dodie,” he hedged, convinced that it was exactly what he would soon be doing.

  “I just wanted to suggest that we try a different tack,” he heard his own voice growling as he climbed reluctantly to his feet three minutes later.

  There were sounds of encouragement from the solid cadre of men who shared Vern Akers’ dislike of wasting time.

  “That’s the boy, Vern!” a voice from the back called.

  Akers looked more depressed than ever. But grimly he forged ahead. “I think we should take up where Helen Horvath left off. We’ve got a lot of financial problems. If Chicken Tonight goes under, I guess there isn’t any solution. But if it doesn’t, then most of us could probably survive if we got some help. That’s the line we ought to take with the management. Now, they need us as much as we need them. That stands to reason. If we could work out some kind of deal, if they’ll f
orgive payments until things get better, we might be able to sneak by. Anyway, I think it’s worth a try. There’s no point going to them and hollering a blue streak. We ought to make them see that if they don’t give us a lift we may all end up in bankruptcy. Then they’ll never see their money!”

  This suggestion, introducing concrete detail, immediately prompted embellishment.

  “That’s talking sense, that is,” said a heavyset elderly man. “And there’s another thing. It’s not just the payments on the equipment. We’re going to need credit for supplies. Any cash we’ve got we’re going to need to keep the trucks and the utilities going.”

  “Not to mention the help,” grumbled someone. “It’s hard enough to hire a high-school kid who’ll do the work. He sure as hell isn’t going to do it on an IOU.”

  “And publicity!” squeaked a suburban operator who had retired from the corporate rat race. Notoriously he was a true believer in the powers of advertising. “They’ll have to give it the works! Papers, magazines, radios, even television!” He sat down, lost in the beauty of it all. For two years he had pleaded for a TV commercial.

  “Sure,” said Vern, trying to control the whirlwind he had sown. “But remember, we can’t just ask for pie in the sky. We’ve got to try for as good a deal as we can get.”

  “They’re in no position to fight us,” cried someone who had bounced from despair to euphoria in less than a minute. “We’re their bread and butter.”

  By this time Vern Akers had been carried away by his own arguments. “The carrot and the stick,” he said with misleading clarity. “First we sweet-talk them. If that doesn’t budge them, then we get rougher. Hell, they sent poison into our shops. We could probably sue them!”

  Enthusiasm reigned. There were calls for a lawyer, calls for a committee, calls for a representative to negotiate with Frank Hedstrom himself.

  And, to his unparalleled dismay, Vernon Akers left the building the unanimously elected spokesman of all Chicken Tonight franchises from Boston to Buffalo.

  CHAPTER 11

  RESERVE THE CARCASS

  TWO DAYS later a letter arrived at the headquarters of Chicken Tonight.

  “Nobody loves us any more, Ted,” Frank Hedstrom remarked after rapidly scanning Vernon Akers’ request for an early appointment. “Not even our franchisees. They’ve organized. Here, take a look.”

  He tossed the letter across the desk. Ted Young received it, after a quick look, with a blunt biological statement.

  “Oh, come on, Ted,” Frank reasoned. “They were bound to start sending out SOS’s. At least this way we won’t have the whole bunch trooping in here one by one.”

  Ted Young refused to be jollied up. “It’s not the franchisees that bother me. But they don’t help, coming on top of everything else. This is what I’m worried about.” He brandished a communication on a printed legal form. “‘You are hereby summoned to attend and give witness at a hearing by the Public Health Service in Trenton, New Jersey, . . .’” He mimicked the official language savagely.

  Hedstrom shrugged.

  “It could be worse. I’ve talked with our lawyers. We get a chance to trot out evidence and show them what safeguards we use.”

  “They can massacre us, Frank! Think of the questions they can ask! Why was a discharged driver allowed to hang on to a key? Why didn’t anybody notice that the boxes had been resealed? Why didn’t we withdraw chicken Mexicali as soon as the pilferage was reported?”

  “Sure they can massacre us if they want to,” Hedstrom agreed. “But what makes you think they do want to? They know as well as we do that anybody who’s got a key can get duplicates. They know that pilferage doesn’t normally lead to poisoning. Hell, this could have happened to any food outfit in the country. We’re supposed to take precautions against spoilage and contamination, not against some criminal lunatic!”

  Ted Young shook his head. “What’s so lunatic about it? We’ve got plenty of competitors who’d be glad to put us out of business.”

  “Everybody’s got competitors. For that matter, I’m not so sure that’s the explanation.”

  Young lifted his head sharply. “Not sure? What else could it be?”

  “Well, there was a time when we would have liked to put some of the big boys out of our way. Not so long ago, either. But did something like this ever occur to you? It didn’t to me. You know who stands to gain the most by crippling Chicken Tonight. Can you see any of them pulling this Sweeney stunt?”

  Hedstrom almost smiled as he saw Young struggling with this thought. Ted didn’t take a relaxed view of the competition.

  “I’d have a hard time putting a name to anyone,” Ted admitted at last. “Do you think that’s why the Public Health boys are planning this hearing? Because they have doubts, too?”

  “I don’t think they need any special reason beyond having a couple of hundred people poisoned.” Hedstrom frowned. “I’m not crazy about it myself.”

  Young was exasperated. “So you think we don’t have to worry about this hearing. You think we can work out a deal with the franchise operators. In fact, you think Chicken Tonight has touched bottom and is on the way up. Have you seen the stock-market quotes? I only wish you weren’t a minority of one.”

  “Well,” Hedstrom replied with a half-grin, “there’s always Morgan Ogilvie.”

  “What’s he up to?” Young asked sourly.

  “He called before you got back from lunch. He wants us to drop everything, go down to his country place for the weekend and figure out some way to save the Southeastern merger.”

  “No wonder Southeastern has been losing money for years,” Young snorted. “He must have rocks in his head. Does he think anybody in his right mind would vote to merge with Chicken Tonight now?”

  “He admits that’s the problem. So he wants to work out some scheme to put the whole deal on the back burner for a three- or four-month period.” Now Hedstrom was grinning outright. “He’s sure we’ll be back to normal by then. So I’ve got at least one backer.”

  “Some backer! That’s not the way you handle mergers. If you can’t go through with them when they’re ripe, you drop them. If we’re back to normal in three months—and I think you’re both nuts—then we’ll be looking at something else.”

  “Sure.” Hedstrom nodded peaceably. “But try telling Ogilvie that. For a guy who wasn’t so hot on this merger at the beginning, he sure has warmed up. He was pushing like hell. But I told him we don’t have time to waste right now.”

  Although he did not know it, these sentiments were being echoed at that very moment by Tom Robichaux.

  “You mean come down to Maryland for this weekend?” he was inquiring incredulously into the phone. “Ogilvie, do you realize it’s Friday afternoon?”

  The enormity of the situation rendered Robichaux incapable of further speech, leaving him prey to renewed persuasion. It was five minutes before he could object.

  “I know that you put in a lot of work on this merger. I know Chicken Tonight was offering you a first-rate deal. Good God, man, I was the one who told you so! But the deal is dead now. This is no time to be going into a huddle with Hedstrom.”

  The phone buzzed persistently.

  “But what makes you think Chicken Tonight is ever going to go up? No, Ogilvie, take my advice and thank God you missed this one by the skin of your teeth.”

  The next torrent contained a fact which caught Robichaux’s wandering attention.

  “I didn’t know you had a place on the Eastern Shore,” he said chattily. “I’m sorry I won’t be seeing it. But I have other plans for the weekend.”

  The maxim about dripping water and stone is not entirely without foundation. Twenty minutes later Robichaux was saying wearily, “All right. I’ll see if I can persuade them. Mind you, I can’t promise anything. But one thing I can tell you. Hedstrom won’t make a move on this without the Sloan Guaranty Trust.”

  It was late Saturday afternoon before John Thatcher had an adequate opportunity to rel
ieve his overcharged feelings. The morning had been spent traveling from New York with a disgruntled band consisting of the Hedstroms, the Youngs and Tom Robichaux. They had arrived at the spanking new Hedstrom house barely in time to swallow a pickup luncheon before Morgan Ogilvie had arrived—on a scene of total domestic confusion complete with opened suitcases, a bewildered maid, and Iris Young and Joan Hedstrom seething mutinously in the background. He had hurried the men away to his own home for their first futile session. Now they were back at the Hedstroms’. Still in store lay dinner at the local hunt club to round out the day’s agenda.

  “You know, Tom,” Thatcher began with sinister mildness, “you have a good deal to answer for.”

  From the bathroom there came an anguished protest. “For God’s sake, you don’t think I like this any better than you do? And it’s going to cost me plenty, too. Loël is very upset.”

  Thatcher ignored this tempting bypath. What would Tom consider suitable recompense for disrupting his latest bride’s plans? A diamond necklace? A cruise in Greek waters? Sables?

  “Never mind that,” he admonished sternly. “You can make a start by explaining what we’re doing here in the Hedstrom house.”

  A good deal of petulant splashing preceded the reply. “Hedstrom just built this place. It turned out that the Youngs and the Hedstroms were planning to spend the weekend here. As a sort of housewarming. That’s why they wouldn’t listen to Ogilvie’s invitation. Then Ogilvie found out there was a bare fifteen miles between the two houses. So he said they could combine the two ideas—his and theirs. Then we got tacked on.”

  “But why are we here instead of at Ogilvie’s?”

  “Because Hedstrom wanted you with him.” Robichaux appeared in the doorway clad in an exotic bathrobe. “And if you ask me, I got shifted over because Ogilvie saw his chance to get out from under. Not that these people are set up for this sort of thing.”

  Robichaux ran an appraising eye over their quarters. They had been allotted a suite of two bedrooms and a bathroom. In spite of the total lack of personalia and in spite of normal-sized beds, it was clear that they had commandeered the nursery. Without a word, Thatcher seized the adjustable closet rod, now at waist level, and started jacking it up to a reasonable height.