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  “This,” she said, tugging at an oversize sliding door, “is our packing department.”

  Obediently they examined mountains of corrugated cardboard. Then they watched motherly women perform the usual magic with tabs and slots. Zip, zip, zip—and another Ecker coffeepot was snugly encased.

  On the opposite side of the corridor, the shipping department was monitoring the weather station and the foreman was too busy to talk.

  “Sorry,” he said ten minutes later. “But I wanted to get these trucks up to Albany. There’s snow heading that way.”

  No part of Ecker, it turned out, was too humdrum for Victor Hunnicut. Like a relentless child, he had questions about everything.

  “Have you ever thought of subcontracting your transport?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Tina promptly. “We costed it out and decided it wouldn’t pay.”

  Minutes later he was back at her.

  “I see you’re picking up the full medical insurance.”

  “That’s the way Ecker’s always done it,” she replied with a shade of constraint.

  After health insurance came inventory control. This time Tina contented herself with a nod and hurried them on.

  She was beginning to wonder if she had mistaken Hunnicut’s role. It had seemed clear enough, when he was summoned to talk technicalities with Bob, that he was another faceless corporate aide. Then had come Pepitone’s accolade. And now here was Victor Hunnicut tacitly passing judgment on every aspect of Ecker.

  Fortunately their next move was on to her turf. The change could not have been more graphic.

  “My offices are next door,” she said, then continued blandly, “We’d better go back for our coats before we go outside.”

  Ken and Hunnicut alike were at a loss.

  The boiler house, in the days of steam, had provided the mill with power. Nowadays the small circular building contained the computer center, Tina’s accounting department, and a record depository. Outsiders were usually beguiled by its oddity, but with a biting arctic wind heralding sunset, Ken Nicolls could only say, “This must be wonderful in January and February.”

  Mischievously she replied, “It has its compensations. We get a lot of privacy over here.”

  Except for the masonry, Tina’s domain looked like financial offices everywhere. There is very little to say about white collar workers shuffling memos and punching keyboards. When Tina began introducing Ken Nicolls around, Hunnicut shifted awkwardly, then remembered a more pressing concern.

  “Say, there are a couple of things I didn’t get to ask Bob. I think I’ll see if he can spare me a few minutes more.”

  Tina, Ken, and one of Milo Thompson’s old buddies were so deep in conversation that they barely noticed his departure.

  It was brought to their attention an hour later when Phil Pepitone, replete with the best that Bridgeport had to offer—which was in Westport—arrived.

  “They told me Vic was over here,” he said.

  Tina detached herself from Ken and the financials to reply that Hunnicut was once again closeted with her husband.

  “Do you want me to call him?”

  “Oh, don’t bother,” said Pepitone. “Just tell him I’ve left, will you? But before I go, Mrs. Laverdiere, I want to thank you and your husband for a really useful tour. It’s been a very satisfying day.”

  Chapter 5

  BAD PENNY

  Phil Pepitone was long gone from Bridgeport when Victor Hunnicut finally called it quits. Emerging from Ecker, he sighted Ken Nicolls unlocking his car. And the Sloan Guaranty Trust, Hunnicut reminded himself, was also a player in the merger.

  “Ken!” he yelled on impulse. “How about unwinding over a beer before we hit the traffic?”

  “Oh, hell,” Nicolls muttered under his breath. In Brooklyn Heights, his wife and children were waiting, but downtown was John Putnam Thatcher with his insatiable thirst for information.

  “Fine!” he shouted back. “I’ll meet you at the Holiday Inn.”

  The booth was comfortable, the lighting dim. Hunnicut joined Nicolls with a sigh of relief. Massaging the nape of his neck, he said, “Boy, I can sure use this breather.”

  “It’s always a strain when everybody has to be so careful not to step on toes,” said Ken understandingly. “But by and large, things seemed to go pretty well, didn’t they?”

  “I suppose you could say so,” said Hunnicut.

  He waited until the waitress had unloaded the tray before elaborating. “Maybe I expected too much. I was glad to see that at least the plant’s okay. But, by God, look at how they run it. From the way Laverdiere describes their think session about the merger, you’d take them for a Ma and Pa store.”

  After an ASI, Ken could see why Ecker might look amateurish.

  “But you knew you were dealing with a family firm,” he pointed out.

  “Of course we’d all heard about Douglas Ecker,” Hunnicut assured him. “But who could tell anything about these Laverdieres and Fraynes on the organization chart? If you ask me, even Phil didn’t expect this mob of . . . of whatever you call them.”

  A career at the Sloan helped Ken supply the missing term. “Collaterals?” he suggested.

  “Collaterals,” Hunnicut agreed. “Take Laverdiere, for instance. You probably couldn’t tell, but I got a real whack at him. He doesn’t know which way is up.”

  Hunnicut and Bob Laverdiere had seemed to hit it off in the morning tour. Perhaps, Ken speculated, something had arisen during the afternoon.

  “What makes you say that?”

  Hunching over the table, Hunnicut lowered his voice. “You won’t believe this, but he’s convinced he’s stepped into Doug Ecker’s shoes and that he’s going to stay there, no matter what.”

  “Even if there’s a merger?” Ken asked.

  “You’ve got it in one. He thinks he’s set for life, and whoever takes over will automatically become Santa Claus. I’d be willing to bet he figures on going straight from being an Ecker vice-president to an ASI division manager. Believe me, that’s not how it works.”

  Ken had seen this sort of difficulty resolved. “So he’s in for a disappointment,” he said. “It happens all the time. But Laverdiere’s pretty good at production, isn’t he? ASI might keep him on there.”

  Hunnicut reflected for a moment, then shook his head dubiously.

  “I doubt it,” he finally announced. “As near as I can make out, he got a lot of supervision from Doug Ecker. But now he’s gotten used to being his own boss and he likes it.”

  “Then ASI gives him a golden handshake,” said Ken, tiring of the subject. “That way he’ll go quietly.”

  “Not with that wife of his,” said Hunnicut knowingly.

  Here he was overstepping the mark. Insights into Bob Laverdiere might be Hunnicut’s province, but it was Ken Nicolls who had spent the afternoon with Tina.

  “There’s a lady with a good head on her shoulders,” Ken said sharply. “She’s not living in any dreamworld.”

  Hunnicut was all too ready to agree. “Exactly. That’s what makes her part of the problem. She’s too smart not to realize that she’s married to a second-rater. So she’ll try to protect him by going to work on his uncle.”

  Ken suspected that the young man sitting opposite him was making mountains out of molehills.

  “Maybe Pepitone and Ecker covered all this over lunch,” he said.

  His bland comment was intended to end their discussion. But Hunnicut could discern flaws in his own company’s performance.

  “I’m beginning to think Phil didn’t do enough homework on this one.”

  Suddenly Ken’s suspicion took a new form. “Say, Vic, I never caught what you do at ASI.”

  Fishing out his wallet, Hunnicut produced a business card.

  VICTOR M. HUNNICUT

  Aqua Supplies, Inc.

  Assistant Division Manager

  Water Purification Division 609/256-7713

  To the initiated, this modest legend was h
ighly instructive. If ASI was going to need a new division manager, then Victor M. Hunnicut—like all ASI assistants—must itch to be that man. The kicker, however, was in the lower left-hand corner.

  “‘Water Purification Division,’” Ken read aloud. “That means you’re a chemical engineer. So Ecker really isn’t in your line.”

  Hunnicut was prompt to reject what he interpreted as a reflection on his day’s work. “Oh, I’ve had enough experience with these systems to do an evaluation. And I didn’t see anything, anywhere, worth four stars.”

  “But then you didn’t see Conrad Ecker, did you?” Nicolls reminded him.

  Conrad, of course, was the company’s main attraction, Hunnicut agreed warmly. “. . . but it’s not as if he’s into big technical breakthroughs. He just develops gadgets.”

  Ken shook his head at the hovering waitress. Hunnicut, however, wanted a refill and he was just raising his glass when Ken said, “Ecker’s gadgets sell. And from what I hear, their product line does seem to mesh with ASI’s expansion plans.”

  Hunnicut was unimpressed. “Sure, ideas are what ASI needs,” he said, “but what’s wrong with going into the marketplace and buying them? It makes more sense than spending a mint to acquire a company—”

  In the nick of time he recalled he was talking to Ecker’s banker.

  “—that may not be quite as good as it’s cracked up to be.”

  Nicolls could be blunt, too. “Why doesn’t ASI develop its own new products?”

  As Hunnicut had already intimated, ASI, too, had its weaknesses, among them a research department that had losses and little else.

  “. . . I suppose that’s why Phil got suckered into considering Ecker,” he concluded moodily.

  “He must like what he’s seen. They tell me he’s persuaded Conrad into another round of talks,” said Ken. “But it’s time for me to be hitting the road. You coming?”

  Hunnicut shook his head.

  “Not yet,” he replied. “There are still a few things I’ve got to do in Bridgeport.”

  The following morning, when Nicolls presented himself at John Thatcher’s office, he found Charlie Trinkham wrapping up his own conference.

  “You just back from the boonies, Ken?” he asked the younger man.

  “Connecticut is not Alaska, Charlie,” Thatcher remarked.

  Trinkham, a confirmed urbanite, confined his life to Manhattan whenever possible and persisted in treating Westchester as the beginning of the Frontier.

  “They’ve got electricity and everything, Charlie,” said Ken, absently producing a sheaf of notes.

  “And how did your tour of Ecker go?” asked Thatcher, to signal the end of the preliminaries.

  “Not bad,” said Ken modestly. “In fact, I had a shot at ASI, too. They sent up a scouting party and I got attached.”

  “Two for the price of one, eh?” said Thatcher, pleased. Without ASI in the wings, Ecker scarcely justified the special Sloan attention it was currently enjoying. Walter Bowman’s massive research reports were excellent in their fashion, but personal impressions were always welcome.

  Ken did not get to them until he had finished an exhaustive description of the Ecker system.

  “Sounds more like a nonsystem to me,” Charlie commented.

  Nicolls demurred.

  “It’s deceptive, Charlie, because old man Ecker himself is so offbeat. But take him away, and you’ve got damned efficient manufacturing, both here and down in Texas. And I can tell you that Tina Laverdiere’s running a tight ship with their financials. Everything’s in apple-pie order.”

  “We already knew that,” said Thatcher dampeningly. Sloan clients did not approach the bank with numbers jotted on cocktail napkins. But mention of Mrs. Laverdiere gave him a chance to broach the non-quantifiable. “How did they all survive the first round?”

  “No sweat as far as I could see. Maybe ASI didn’t realize how many relatives there are on the payroll, and maybe the Eckers didn’t know how stratified places like ASI are, but that’s about it.”

  “In other words, the standard misgivings,” said Thatcher. “I suppose they’ll get over them.”

  “They’ll have to,” Nicolls told him. “The brass is going full steam ahead. They’ve set up a meeting in Princeton to start on the real dog work.”

  Thatcher’s head came up. “At which the Sloan will be represented,” he said militantly. “Whether Ecker wants us or not.”

  This firmness was wasted. Both Ecker and ASI wanted and expected their financial advisers aboard.

  “Splendid,” said Thatcher.

  Charlie added a cheerful coda. “So everybody’s happy as a clam about merging?”

  The question was designed to make bankers smile. Especially in family firms, there is always someone whose nose—or pocketbook—is put out of joint.

  Ken painstakingly reviewed his gleanings in Connecticut. Then he said, “I honestly don’t know how to answer that. It’s obvious that the Laverdieres—and Alan Frayne, for that matter—are in a tricky position. There’s always the chance that they’ll lose their jobs, and cushy jobs at that. And naturally they won’t make the big bucks that Conrad and his children will. On the other hand, none of them is clutching up, at least as far as I saw. The only one making noises against the merger is a kid from ASI named Vic Hunnicut. He bent my ear explaining why it’s a major mistake. But then he’s got his own reasons.”

  Charlie was the Sloan’s student of humanity in all its guises.

  “Doesn’t fit in with his agenda?” he asked ironically.

  “Put it this way,” Ken responded. “If ASI decides to put their own man in at Ecker, logically it would be one of their assistant division managers, which is what Hunnicut is. But there are probably a whole slew of them with better qualifications than a chemical engineer, and it’s eating him up.”

  An opportunity for someone else, Thatcher reflected, could be as bad as a defeat for one’s self. “Terrible thing, too much ambition in the young,” he pontificated.

  Ken Nicolls prudently held his tongue, but Charlie advanced another alternative.

  “Or else it was too much beer talking.”

  Thatcher pushed on to the details of that forthcoming meeting.

  “Day after tomorrow,” said Nicolls. “At ASI, this time.”

  “That’s quite a pace they’re setting,” Thatcher mused.

  But as he spoke, the phone in Nicolls’s office was ringing to announce an unforeseen complication.

  Chapter 6

  A HOT PROSPECT

  Earlier that morning, long before dawn, a solitary patrol car had been cruising the back streets of Bridgeport.

  Sleet icing the windshield transformed the world into a gray murk. The only sound was the clanking of trucks already laying sand for the morning traffic. The car had passed most of the Ecker compound when the officer in the passenger seat spoke suddenly.

  “Wait a minute. I think I see something.”

  The driver, simultaneously braking and scrubbing at the misted glass, brought them to a skidding halt.

  “That’s smoke!” he rapped out.

  His companion was already busy on the radio.

  Minutes later the first fire truck arrived and, thanks to a computer memory bank, a fire captain was able to allay some anxiety.

  “You can relax, boys, Ecker’s a clean operation. There won’t be any toxic fumes.”

  “Thank God!”

  The two policemen had not been looking forward to the evacuation of a ten-block area at 4 A.M. in below-freezing conditions.

  “Besides,” the captain continued, stepping aside to permit passage of several hoses, “that building contains offices. We’re in luck. Do you know where they keep the sign with Doug Ecker’s number?”

  “Right by the main gate.”

  Like all such operations, the Ecker Company posted a number to be called in cases of emergency. But this one had undergone revisions. The original line was now a solid black bar with a new number emboss
ed below.

  “That’s right,” the captain reminded himself. “Doug Ecker’s not here anymore.”

  When the phone roused the Laverdieres in Westport, they reacted differently. Bob, his pajama top cast aside, slowed to a standstill.

  “Conrad’s got to know about this. I’d better call him right away.”

  Tina, already snaking into blue jeans, froze.

  “No,” she said instinctively.

  Now, if ever, was the time for Bob to display leadership. She could not, however, put it that way.

  “We don’t want to yank Conrad and Alice out of bed at this hour,” she continued. “They’re old, Bob, that’s why our number is on the sign.”

  The Laverdieres, therefore, were the sole representatives of the Ecker Company on the scene a short time later. But they joined a large crowd. The same people who would have resented forcible evacuation had succumbed to the attraction that all fires exercise. These hardy bystanders, stamping their feet against the cold and muffling their ears, were gaping at a more dramatic spectacle than the thin plume of smoke spotted by the patrol car. Now there were spotlights trained on the building and ladders erected to the upper floor. Fountains of water gushing from every angle had created a widening lake of mud through which booted firemen squelched with their hoses. Even Bob Laverdiere paused in his progress to join the chorus of appreciative moans when tongues of flame burst through a window.

  But he and his wife were all business when they succeeded in pressing their way to the fire captain.

  “How bad is it?” Bob demanded anxiously. “Will it spread to the other buildings?”

  “Is Gus all right?” cried Tina.

  The captain was reassuring.

  “You the Ecker people? It’s not too bad. That fire isn’t going anywhere else and we’ll have it out pretty soon. We won’t be able to tell the final score until things cool off. Of course, between the fire and the water, there’ll be a hell of a lot of interior damage. As for Gus, he’s okay. He was here a couple of minutes ago.”

  Gus, the night watchman shared by Ecker and several smaller companies, was already approaching.