Accounting for Murder Page 10

  Before Miss Corsa had finished bringing Consolidated Edison to its senses, Bradford Withers, president of the Sloan Guaranty Trust, hurried down from his penthouse office to reveal that he had been receiving urgent telephone calls.

  “From Mason, and from Frank Devane,” he said portentously. “And old Mike Perkins, and Fletcher, over at Asprey Brothers. . . .”

  Since this enumeration could continue indefinitely, Thatcher interrupted to ask what the callers wanted.

  Withers shot his cuffs. “The general feeling, as I gather it, John, is that perhaps there is something that the Sloan and other interested parties can do to shore up National during this storm.”

  “Yes?” said Thatcher cautiously while Charlie Trinkam, a participant in the conference, frowned.

  “I told Devane to get in touch with you,” Withers continued. “We’ll want to do what we can, of course.”

  This pronouncement was a figure of speech. Withers, having given the Sloan the benefit of his executive decision, immediately departed for a long weekend in Shaftesbury, Connecticut, leaving his staff to attend to the details.

  They were many; conferences, telephone calls, and appointments—between the Sloan, Robichaux and Devane, large numbers of lawyers, two members of the Board of Governors of the New York Stock Exchange, and several Board members from National Calculating. All these parties gathered at a culminating session late Sunday night, held at Robichaux’s Long Island home to elude the press which was having a field day with National’s secretarial staff and with accountants who did not want to be quoted. If the police were making any progress, they were keeping it from the newspaper-reading public.

  Since Robichaux’s estate on the North Shore was conspicuously inaccessible, and since not a single man sitting in the timbered library was in his first youth, the whole conclave reminded John Thatcher of an eccentric memorial for a departed friend.

  Nevertheless, business was transacted. It was decided that Clarence Fortinbras’s audit should continue, under the aegis of the Sloan and Robichaux and Devane, representing the several interested parties.

  “That way we’ll restore confidence in the stock,” said the man from the Stock Exchange.

  His exhausted companions looked at him.

  “Well, it can’t hurt,” he countered defensively.

  Chip Mason roused himself from his stupor. Staring resentfully at the glass of milk on a silver salver just handed him by the houseboy, he protested. National Calculating had nothing to hide, but they had the police in and out of every office, asking people damned fool questions, questions like where had they gone to lunch on Wednesday, when had they last seen Clarence Fortinbras. The last thing National Calculating needed was more outsiders asking more questions. His board members exchanged looks and spoke peremptorily. Looking fretful, Mason subsided.

  Tom Robichaux, splendid in a preposterous smoking jacket, took pity on him. With an expansive wave of his glass he said, “Now listen, Chip, it’s got to be. But I can see that you’re worried about breaking it to your people, so I’ll tell you what we’ll do. John and I will come down first thing in the morning. We’ll have a little front office meeting, and put it on the line to them . . .”

  There was a general murmur of approval from the assembly, but Chip Mason did not look particularly grateful, Thatcher thought. He himself was resigned. Robichaux, however, was smiling genially as he accompanied those of his guests who were departing to their transport. At the door, he turned to urge his house guests to make free with nightcaps.

  The man from the Stock Exchange took him at his word. “Just a short one, Thatcher? No? Probably you’re right. Look at what late hours and brandy have done to poor old Tom. I’ve always maintained that that explains . . .” He coughed and broke off. “Still, I’m glad that you’ll be sitting in on that meeting tomorrow.”

  “You mean better me than you?” Thatcher replied.

  “Exactly,” said the Stock Exchange man candidly.

  His frankness proved justified. By Monday morning, Tom Robichaux’s Napoleonic phase was over. But, as he told Thatcher on the interminable drive from Long Island to the Southern Bourbon Building, somebody had to crack the whip at National Calculating.

  “Somebody has,” Thatcher pointed out acidly.

  “I’ll just lay it on the line,” said Robichaux resolutely.

  This he did as soon as he and Thatcher had been ushered into the sixteenth-floor conference room where Charles Mason and his associates waited. National Calculating was not greeting its distinguished visitors warmly, Thatcher saw as he took his place at the table, but despite the almost palpable atmosphere of tension, Robichaux proceeded to deliver himself of a brief homily centering on the financial repercussions of Clarence Fortinbras’s murder, and the consequent need for a continuation of the audit. He could not complain that his audience was unresponsive.

  “I don’t like it. We’re being thrown to the wolves.” Harry Blaney’s voice was perilously close to hysteria, and there was an uneasy stir in the room.

  Robichaux was vexed. “But we’re not throwing anybody to the wolves. That’s the point! We want to protect National Calculating . . .”

  “As much as we legitimately can,” Thatcher interposed smoothly. This produced appraisal from Jay Rutledge, who was sitting next to him, then depressed silence.

  Robichaux looked around. “Does anybody else have any objections?”

  From the far end of the table, Morris Richter spoke. “Why should we? For God’s sake, it’s perfectly clear that we’re all in a mess. Fortinbras was killed while he was going over the books. Our only defense is to insist that somebody continue that audit, otherwise we’re all under a cloud, and not in the stock market! God knows what the police are going to come up with!”

  Harry Blaney, sitting across the table, drew his mouth into a derisive smile. Allen Hammond frowned at Richter. Richter himself simply glared. Discovering Clarence Fortinbras’s body had shaken him, as had the discovery that the New York City Police Department questions everybody, including brilliant scientists. Belatedly, and under trying circumstances, he was growing up.

  “Well?” he demanded challengingly.

  “I think you’re right,” said Mrs. Cobb in an emotionless voice. Looking straight at Harry Blaney, she added, “What else can we do?”

  Thatcher studied Mrs. Cobb for a moment. She seemed in control of herself, but he heard a constricted note in her voice. The murder of Clarence Fortinbras had touched everybody at National.

  Harry Blaney scowled. “My God! Another audit? Do you have any idea of what that means? Fortinbras turned the whole division upside down. Snatched files, grabbed secretaries. He was going out to the Jersey - plant to take a physical inventory! He would have put production back by at least 20 percent . . .”

  “All right!” Thatcher snapped as Blaney’s voice mounted into a reedy chant. “Chip has already told us that Fortinbras went too far. He was probably human enough to react to your hostility . . .”

  “Hostility!” Chip Mason squeaked while a murmur of protest went around the table. “What do you expect? We tried to remain courteous, but the man made it impossible!”

  “Chip,” said Thatcher wearily, “why don’t you all forget your complaints about Clarence Fortinbras, and concentrate on the current dilemma?”

  This produced another depressed silence. Blaney was saying something under his breath. Allen Hammond, Mrs. Cobb, and Jay Rutledge had retreated into their own thoughts. Morris Richter hated the world. Chip Mason was near tears.

  Thatcher was irritated by all this self-pity. Moreover, he had rather liked Clarence Fortinbras. “Remember that the police will demand an official audit. If we’re already proceeding with one, they may . . . er, modify the rigors of their own investigation.”

  The good sense of this observation was not without effect, but instinctively his co-workers wafted for Harry Blaney’s response.

  He looked up. “Sure. O.K. If it’s going to be, it’s going to
be. But I want to register a protest at the way the ball is bouncing around here!”

  “Now, Harry,” Mason began.

  Blaney, consulting his watch, shrugged insubordinately.

  “I’ve got an important meeting.” He was on his feet and striding to the door. Just before he left the room, he said, “I’ll cooperate.” Then they could hear him pounding down the hall.

  Jay Rutledge chose his words with care. “Commercial Sales bore the brunt of Fortinbras. That’s why Harry is so mad about this new audit.”

  Thatcher looked at him thoughtfully, but Robichaux was more receptive. “Don’t blame him,” he said simply. “Now, are there any more objections, or will the rest of you cooperate? I think I can promise you that we won’t be as disruptive as Fortinbras was.”

  There was a confused murmur of assent.

  “Still don’t like it,” Mason muttered. “Letting Harry down . . .”

  Mrs. Cobb cut in like a ruthless schoolmistress. “It isn’t a question of letting Harry down, Charles. It’s a question of simple survival. We have to go along.”

  Again, Jay Rutledge added his support. “I’m willing to cooperate with a normal businesslike audit,” he said. “Always have been.”

  Allen Hammond promised cooperation insofar as his cooperation was called for. Morris Richter shrugged to indicate that any alternative was unthinkable. The meeting was over.

  Charles Mason was so doleful that his nephew was moved to a rare touch of sympathy. “Cheer up, Uncle Chas,” he said. “We’ll come through. There’s always General Cartwright.”

  Mason brightened faintly and turned to Rutledge who was just rising to leave. “Sure. This ruckus didn’t help,” he said, “but we turn out a mighty good piece of work. And Cartwright knows it. Unless something else happens . . .”

  Tom Robichaux was beautifully blunt. “Well, for God’s sake, let’s see that nothing else does happen!”

  They left Mason relapsed into gloom.

  Thatcher taxied back to Wall Street with Robichaux.

  “We’ll send Addison in tomorrow,” he said reminding himself to tell Miss Corsa that he wanted to talk to the Sloan’s accountant before he went to National.

  “Fine,” said Robichaux absently. “That press release can go out this afternoon, then. Well, we’ve done what we can.” He paused, then added, “What a bunch! What did you think?”

  Thatcher tugged at an earlobe and compromised on evasion. “They weren’t at their best, of course.”

  Robichaux’s financial commitments disposed him to grasp at straws. “Still, as Rutledge said, they’ve got a good product. And Government Contracts Division is first-rate . . .”

  Mmm,” said Thatcher. “Well, if we’ve convinced that first-rate division and all the rest of them to try to get on with their work, we’ll have made a significant contribution to National Calculating.”

  Chapter 10

  Thrift, Thrift, Horatio!

  At National Calculating Corporation, the work did go on, considerably hampered by the cyclonic activities connected with Clarence Fortinbras’s murder, and interrupted by inconvenient queries from the New York City Police Department, the press, and every brokerage house in the country. “This is the time,” said the Memorandum to Staff, Executive and Support, “to put our shoulders to the wheel and march down the field.” The author of this rallying cry then resisted the temptation to take his milk and Gelusil in the tranquility of Westport, and indeed surpassed himself in the number of forays he made, chiefly into the Law Department.

  “Nobody can say that old Chip doesn’t have grit,” Kellog said ruminatively to one of his subordinates.

  “But is grit enough?” his junior replied.

  Happily, the terrifying spectacle of National’s president resolutely trying to radiate confident strength was not visited on most of his staff, who were all fully occupied by their own difficulties. Jay Rutledge, thinner and more hatchet like than ever, could be seen tirelessly ushering General Cartwright in and out of Government Contracts Division while his staff produced a whole literature on the TCR. Morris Richter, ferocious with resolution, abandoned casual charm, and retreated into the recesses of the R & D Division to tyrannize his underlings with cold comments on projects-in-process. Mrs. Cobb grimly soothed ruffled scientific sensibilities.

  Harry Blaney plunged in and out of the Commercial Sales Division with unpredictable speed, alternating open savagery with sudden moods of wistfulness that reduced his secretary to complete helplessness.

  In the PR Department, Andrew L. Andrews drafted seven versions of “A Letter to Our Stockholders,” 132 press releases, and went without sleep for five consecutive nights, at the end of which period he collapsed in exhaustion, and was removed on a stretcher, exciting considerable alarm in the elevator as he was borne away.

  There was much activity among the secretarial staff concerning floral offerings to the bereaved Mrs. Fortinbras.

  Local 747, United Electrical Workers of America, staged a wildcat protest strike in Elkhart, Indiana, and since nobody was very clear what they were protesting, the Controller felt that it was his duty to prolong his absence from the home office, thus confirming his colleagues’ suspicion that he had an abnormally keen instinct for self-preservation.

  Miss Quackenbush, the office manager, chose this period to institute a new supply room control system, designed to cut down the pilfering of ball-point pens, and created so complex a procedure that for several days it was impossible to obtain any carbon paper without requisitioning it on seven carbons, a self-defeating aspect of the scheme that had escaped her.

  In short, National Calculating was a hive of brisk stridings, muted clackings, and demonic dictations, all conveying to the uninitiated the impression that the show was going on with its usual efficiency.

  There was just one small pool of repose.

  Sitting in one corner of the Accounting Department on the fifteenth floor on Wednesday morning, untouched by the bursts of activity eddying around them, sat three men calmly drinking their morning coffee, not from paper cups but from china mugs produced as a token of respect and cooperation by the sixteenth floor. They moved with unhurried self-assurance or at least two of them did and spoke with the elliptic, low-voiced portentousness of surgeons conferring at a particularly interesting incision.

  They were the accountants: Henry Addison, detailed from the Sloan to continue Fortinbras’s work on behalf of the Bank and Robichaux and Devane; Fred Cohen representing the New York City Police Department who had arrived on Addison’s heels the day before; and again detailed to provide, aid, comfort, and what assistance he could, young Stanley Draper, whose first-hand knowledge of notable accountants were being considerably enlarged at the expense of his mastery of the intricacies of Petty Cash and Expense Accounts.

  Punctilious politeness was the order of the day where lesser men might have found some awkwardness. Mr. Cohen, who had the authority of Authority behind him, had not needed instructions from above to offer complete cooperation with Mr. Addison; Mr. Addison, representing the Sloan, a not insignificant contributor to the Police Athletic League, was personally delighted to comply with Mr. Thatcher’s instructions to cooperate with the police. The specialists entered into a completely satisfactory division of labor at once, united by their common interests in the ways in which quite clever people make mistakes. On paper.

  “Of course, I haven’t had your opportunity to do a lot of that sort of work,” Addison said generously.

  Cohen made a pleased noise. In cooperation with certain Federal authorities, he had just effected the deportation of a surprised New Yorker who, if he was the beer salesman he claimed, had been able to afford some startlingly high-priced legal talent.

  “You’d think that Capone would have taught all of these people a lesson,” Stanley said naively.

  The remark pleased the older man. “Oh, they’re careful,” Cohen said with a comfortable laugh. “But not careful enough for us. For example, when we came across
that deferred interest charge, we knew we had him. It was just a question of finding out where he’d deposited his bonds.”

  “Very, very nice,” said Addison. It was the tribute of one master to another.

  Neither Addison nor Cohen was of the Fortinbras breed. Perhaps because they were not academics, they lacked his high vocalism. On the contrary, they were both notably sparing of words, and Stanley, who had spent a hopeful Tuesday with them pointing out Mr. Fortinbras’s accumulation, and Wednesday morning showing them Commercial Sales’ current files, had not yet heard any dicta. Naturally, he was grateful for the opportunity to observe such noted practioners of his art, but he felt slightly disappointed.

  “Interesting,” Mr. Addison would comment, handing Mr. Cohen a clutch of canceled checks.

  Cohen would flip through them, frown, and jot down a few figures. “I see what you mean.”

  An ambitious young man could learn little from this except by confessing total confusion. Stanley could not complain that either man lacked courtesy in spelling out his conclusions upon request, but it was apparent that they lacked Clarence Fortinbras’s pedagogic zeal.

  Stanley harbored the uncomfortable impression that if he had not known Clarence Fortinbras, Mr. Addison and Mr. Cohen would be treating him as no more than a junior official in the Accounting Department, in charge of Petty Cash and Expense Accounts.

  But neither of them had been acquainted with Clarence Fortinbras, and they were naturally interested in what Stanley so artlessly told them about the dean of accounting. The more so, as he had been found with the cord of his own adding machine wrapped around his neck.

  “I never thought that being an accountant was a particularly dangerous profession.” Fred Cohen remarked, shifting easily. He was a steady worker when he worked, and a complete relaxer when he relaxed. “Tony Panelli shot at me once, but that was during Prohibition, and I’ve always maintained he was aiming at Captain Pettley. That’s who he got, anyway.”