The Heir (5 page)

I merely enjoyed the breeze and motion and hearing her voice and watching the waves. There are so many colors in the water.

When the weather shifted and clouds started piling up in the southwest, I abandoned my torpor and tacked south across the wind toward Block Island. We watched the rain from across the water.

I could have as easily gone north toward home. “Let’s find somewhere to stay tonight,” I said.

Everywhere, sails were scattering, fat sheep in a blue field escaping a pack of hungry squalls. The boat picked up speed, and the storm had no chance of catching us.

When it finally reached us we were ashore, behind a huge window, eating shellfish and drinking wine, with the marina churning below us. Then we went back on the water, just a little way out, for the sunset and the stars, and finally we slept in the boat rocking quietly beside the pier.

4

Sunday morning I cleared the harbor, heading for home, and there was no way to delay it. The breeze was directly behind us.

Katie had been breathtakingly patient, but now she finally inhaled. “Rosita said there have been twenty more calls since yesterday.”

“I thought we were leaving the phone off the hook.”

“I told her to start taking messages again.”

The weekend had been filled with all the happiness money could buy, which was the kind I liked best. Avoiding Monday was something money couldn’t buy.

“I told the phone company to change our number.”

“It takes three days. You can run, Jason, but you can’t hide.”

“They’re not after me. They’re after my wallet.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do when we get home?”

“Yes. I’ll take a shower, have lunch, and call Fred.”

“What will you tell him?”

“I don’t have that part figured out yet.”

“Let me know when you do.” Fred was inescapable, and she wasn’t worried. It was another gorgeous day, and if I’d taken the boat on another tangent somewhere, she wouldn’t have minded. Instead I cut a straight gash through the waves.

I knew a third of the names on Rosita’s list, I knew of another third, and from the messages the last third left, I knew their type.

“I want to meet Melvin’s board members,” I said to Fred on the phone after lunch. “The officers, or whatever. Pick five names to give to Pamela, and she’ll arrange it.”

“My secretary can arrange the meeting.”

I wanted to stay in control. “No, give Pamela the list. But you should be there. And I’m not committing to anything, Fred.”

“I understand.”

“I still plan to be rid of it.” Every time I said it, it meant less. “But I want to do it responsibly.” That would be a new way for me to do anything.

“Of course, Jason. But keep your mind open.”

“It’s so open you could drive a truck through it. It even feels like someone has. I guess I need someone to give me a list of what I own.”

“That would be George Elias. And by the way, has Clinton Grainger called from the governor’s office?”

“You know he has. Lots of people have, but his secretary was first.”

“Yes, I called him immediately after you left on Thursday. We need to discuss your meeting with him, and soon. We should do that tomorrow morning.”

“Did you hear anything I just said?”

“That you are keeping an open mind.”

Dinner was a standoff with Katie. She knew that time was on her side. I was meeting with Fred and with the board members. She just wanted to hear that we were really going to Disney World.

“It won’t be that hard,” she said. “You can hire people to do everything for you.”

We usually eat in the formal dining room. It had been annoying to me at first until I got used to sitting at the head, Katie at my left, the other ten places stretching off into the distance. We never entertained. Katie liked the room, though. Royal blue walls and rococo ornamental plaster, tile floor, Windsor chairs. It made up with elegance what it lacked in geniality. It made a person feel like a king.

“It’s the being, not the doing.”

Philosophy was not the ground she wanted to fight on. “I talked to Angela this afternoon,” she said.

“How is she?”

“She feels very alone.”

“You need friends to not be alone, and she doesn’t want friends. Or she’d at least have to be willing to talk to people,” I said. “Maybe you should have lunch with her.”

“We are tomorrow. I suggested it. Does she get to stay in the house?”

She meant the question to sound innocent, but did she have her eye on the Big House? It was only a matter of time. “All the properties are part of the estate. But Angela has exclusive use of the main house as long as she wants, and she can use any of the other houses.”

“Good. I’d hate to think she’d have to move.” Angela would be a good distraction for Katie.

I excused myself and went looking for my book. I don’t always read so much. I was just in greater need of escape.

But I couldn’t read. After a while I was back in my office. Pamela had me all fixed up with Fred at nine o’clock, with George Elias for lunch, and with the board members at three. Clinton Grainger was open Monday night.

“How did you know that?” I asked the sweet voice on the telephone.

“I talked with his secretary,” she said. “Fred suggested it. I told her you were still very busy with your own people and it would take a couple days for you to be ready for outside meetings.”

I thought about telling Pamela she worked for me and not Fred, but she was just trying to be helpful.

“Okay. I’ll call you after I see Fred tomorrow. Thanks, Pamela.”

“Glad to help, dear.”

5

Riding an elevator thirty floors normally takes a while, but on Monday morning it took forever. At the seventh floor I’d chosen the path of self-preservation and a clockwork fifty thousand a month—that had always been the plan. At the tenth, I decided on an even million a year. It was my own decision, so why not be generous? At the fourteenth, I was wavering. Where was the line? If I could accept a million a year, then I could accept two million. I could accept it all.

Where was the line? It was somewhere around the twenty-third floor, and I crossed it. It really wasn’t a decision. I was only deciding to not decide yet.

Fred saw through me when I dropped, defeated, into the grand armchair throne and put my elbows on his desk and my head in my hands.

I stared down at the floor so I wouldn’t have to see him smirk, and when I finally looked up, he was trying real hard not to.

“Okay,” I said. “Start with Clinton Grainger.”

“Yes, a very good place to start.”

Wasn’t that where Julie Andrews started singing in
The Sound of
Music
? I was having severe concentration problems.

“Governor Bright will be your biggest challenge, and you need to deal with him decisively at the very beginning. He might be too ambitious to be controlled. He is a reckless man.”

“From what I’ve seen on television, the governor doesn’t come across as very bright.”

“Grainger is the brains. The problems come when he can’t control his boss.”

The irony of this statement, spoken to me by Fred Spellman, was not lost on either of us.

“Did you ever have that problem?” I said.

He laughed. “I never controlled your father; he was no one’s fool. I doubt you are, either.”

“I feel like a fool right now.” I did, too. Fred’s office was power, real power. The furniture was a bit worn—not from age or even use, but from weight. Heavy decisions were made there. Important words were spoken. It was serious, the real thing. I was just a little bubble waiting to be popped. “What do I say to Clinton Grainger? I guess I should meet him tonight.”

“Yes, certainly. He will be making his own judgment, whether he thinks you or the governor will likely be stronger.”

“I could just tell him. It’ll be obvious anyway.”

“You may change your mind as the days go by. For now, be direct. Tell him you expect the same working relationship with the governor that your father had.”

“Which was?” I hadn’t played poker since college, and bluffing wasn’t my strong suit.

“You supply him with ample contributions, positive press coverage and union organization during elections, and he keeps the legislature friendly to your business interests and ensures that you receive the major share of state contracts. He also keeps law enforcement agencies from causing you inconvenience.”

So simple, so obvious. What had the citizens done to deserve such a well-run state? And I certainly didn’t want inconvenience.

“Why might the law enforcement agencies be inconvenient?”

Fred sighed, which he could do very deeply. “Your father’s business dealings with the state did not operate within a normal legal framework.”

“So he just built his own.”

“Yes, and therefore any involvement by the state police would be inappropriate.”

What a pile of words. “I’ve inherited this framework?”

“You should be thankful that it is already in place.”

It was all in place, everything. I just needed to take my place inside it. No—I should stand up right now and spit in his eye and tell him I will not defile myself in this swamp. This is what I hated so much about being Melvin, this slimy stew of corruption and power. I will put an end to it!

“Okay, that’s about what I thought,” I said.

“Grainger knows the details intimately. You don’t need to at the beginning, just understand the working relationship.”

I’ll find the details later. I can clean it up then.

“I should avoid saying anything blatantly illegal?” I said.

“Um, yes. He could be recording the meeting.”

“Right.” I don’t want to play this game. Decide. Quit now. “Where should we meet?”

“You select a restaurant, near the capitol.”

Here was another problem: lunch with the accountant, dinner with the chief of staff, and Pamela would have donuts at the board meeting. “I’m going to get fat.”

“Then have fun doing it,” said the three-hundred-pound mound in front of me, and he could just as well have been talking about all the other corruptions he was inducting me into. “Life is short, Jason.”

Life is short. “Who was king before Melvin?” I said.

“King? No one. There were dukes and earls, or whatever. Your grandfather was a minor baron. No, your father created the position of sole ruler.”

“But you say there has to be a king.”

“You can’t go back. The world had changed; your father changed it.”

The metaphor seemed backward. “Once the people have had a king, they’ll always want one?”

“The people have nothing to do with it.” He was amused at the thought, or at my innocence, and it was fascinating to listen to him. I was a rat being hypnotized by a snake. “They are only necessary as an object for power to be wielded over.”

What would a government do without a population to be governed? I repeated the question. “So who needs there to be a king?”

“The men who are strong enough to grasp power. Before your father consolidated his position, no one had been able to accomplish it. Now they know it can be done, and how. There are a million people in this state, and if just one of them, only one, has a desire for power, he will rule the rest. There are many more than one who have the desire.”

“I still don’t think I do, Fred.”

“Then you may be the better man to wield power.”

He didn’t believe that. He knew what it took to wield power. It took determination and purpose, and purpose was what I lacked.

What am I doing here?

I was hoping for a return to sanity as I descended back through the twenty-third floor, but it didn’t come. The line was gone. I looked for it in the lobby, but there was still no sign of it.

I walked the few blocks to the steak place George Elias had suggested, and cleared my head with the exercise. Maybe this would be more fun.

George wasn’t an accountant. He was a major-league investment manager and banker, and it had been his job to shovel Melvin’s cash between vaults whenever one got too full. If the restaurant was expensive, that would mean he managed other people’s investments because he liked being around money. If the place was cheap, that meant he managed other people’s money because they wanted him to.

It was respectable and an excellent value. I decided to give George a raise.

I was ten minutes early, and my guess was he would be five minutes early. When he came in at that, on the dot, I was ready to give him another raise. He was thin, or else everybody seemed to me to be thin after two hours with Fred, and he was friendly but very professional.

“If I’d known beforehand I was going to inherit the estate, I would have made sure I knew more about it,” I said after we’d ordered. Actually, if I’d known beforehand that I was going to inherit, I would have made sure I didn’t. But I was being open-minded. “As it is, I’m pretty much in the dark.”

“I have some papers,” he said. “Do I remember that your degree from Yale is in business administration?”

“Don’t take that too seriously.”

“But you know how to read a balance sheet, and you understand profit and loss, and cash flow statements.”

“I think I can figure them out.”

“Then let’s start with the businesses you own.”

It was not hard to figure out, even for a Yale business major. Through the fog of corporate identities was majority ownership of eleven factories, three construction companies, a trucking company, two distributors—all with over ten thousand direct employees.

“Now, these are your other major investments.”

Lots of stock in the newspaper and Channel Six, in retail chains, hotels, banks, and a little more in anything else there was. And it was all local, everything based inside the state. Through four different real estate holding companies, I owned half the skyline. I owned the building Fred’s office was in, I owned the company that had built it, I owned the company that had paved the road from there to this restaurant, I owned the trucks that delivered the tables we were sitting at, the distributor the tables came from, the contractor who’d installed the air conditioning.

The very air we breathed was mine. Well, more or less.