The Successor (10 page)

“Yeah,” Christian admitted, “she should. But that’s Victoria Graham for you. She didn’t get where she’s gotten by waiting around.”

Early on as chairman of Everest, Christian would have forbidden Allison to meet with Graham. He would have fought being bulldozed like that on principle alone. But, over the years, he’d grown confident in his position. He’d learned when to pick his battles, and this wasn’t one of those times. The thing was, he’d already been planning to make Allison vice chairman anyway. But he’d gotten sidetracked raising the fund after Jesse had named someone else as his VP. “Ms. Graham’s been a good friend of the firm. Besides, I was going to name Allison vice chairman anyway.”

Quentin snapped his fingers. “I knew it. I knew you were thinking about doing that. I can read your mind.”

“Doesn’t bother you, does it?”

“No way,” Quentin said firmly. “Might bother a couple of the other managing partners, but I’m never going to run Everest. I don’t have the connections Allison does, which is what you really need to be on the top rung of a firm like ours.” He hesitated. “Plus, I’ve already way overshot where I thought I’d ever be in life. This is a long way from my gang days in Harlem. I’ve got you to thank for a lot of that.”

Quentin was such a good man. And it was great—therapeutic, in fact—to be able to talk to him about what was going on at Everest and know he’d never tell anybody. “Your grandmother’s more responsible than me,” Christian said. “Without her, I have a feeling you and I never would have met. By the way, I’m going to announce the Laurel Energy distributions tomorrow.” What each person at the firm received as a share of the profits on sold deals was up to Christian and Christian alone. No committees, no input from anyone else, just him.

“I heard about that,” Quentin said, checking the rearview mirror. Eyeing a red sports car that had raced up on their tail.

“Nine hundred million is a lot to divvy up.” But Christian had still been forced to make some tough decisions regarding a few people who weren’t going to be happy tomorrow.

“I can’t even imagine.”

Christian waited for the obvious question: What’s my share? But, of course, that question didn’t come. Others would have asked it right away—but not Quentin. “I’m going to take a hundred of it and make some donations.” Christian was on the board of one of the biggest hospitals in Manhattan, and they’d get the lion’s share of that. “And I’m going to hold back another two hundred million for working capital.” Life in the business world had taught him to always have reserves. He snuck a look at Quentin. He wanted to see the reaction to what he was about to say. “I’m giving you forty million of it.”

Quentin stared blankly at the road ahead for a few moments, then shrugged. As if he didn’t know what else to do. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered, swallowing hard. “I…I…” His voice trailed off.

“Never seen you at a loss for words before.” Christian laughed as the red sports car—an old Austin-Healey—buzzed past them on a short straightaway. The top was down, but he still couldn’t see much of the driver. It looked like a young kid, but whoever it was wore a baseball cap and sunglasses so it was hard to tell. “Never.”

“You’re right, I don’t know what to say. Except thanks.”

“You deserve it.” Christian watched the sports car disappear around the curve ahead. The car was flying. “I’m going to make sure most of the lower-level people make out well, too.” He grinned to himself, thinking about calling Debbie—his executive assistant—into his office tomorrow morning to tell her she was going to get a check for a million dollars. He couldn’t wait. She’d been loyal to him for a long time.

“I agree completely.” Quentin’s voice was still hoarse.

“Good. So, what’s going on with you these days?” Christian asked. That was another good thing about their relationship. They both took a sincere interest in the other’s life. “Is there a future Mrs. Stiles on the horizon? We haven’t talked much about your love life lately.”

“Not even a blip on the radar.” Quentin laughed. “I’m having way too much fun.” He jerked the steering wheel to the left, barely avoiding a squirrel that had scampered a few feet out onto the roadway, then frozen. “How did your meeting with Jesse go?” he asked when he’d brought the car back into the right lane. Quentin never wanted to talk much about the women he was dating.

“Fine.”

“Anything you can tell me?”

“All of this has to stay
just
between us, pal.” Christian knew he didn’t really need to say it about this—Quentin would assume it in this case. Still, it made him feel better after he had. “President Wood asked me to help him with a very sensitive project related to Cuba.”

“Really? That sounds pretty intense.”

“I’ll give you the full download later, but you’re going to help me get a few places without anyone knowing. You’re also going to help a few other people get where they’re going. Even though the president doesn’t know it yet, you’re going to have full discretion over a couple of pieces of this project. If that doesn’t work for Jesse, I won’t help him on this thing.”

“That’s all right up my power alley, my man,” Quentin said, smiling.

Quentin was smiling now, but he wasn’t going to like this next nugget, Christian knew. “You’re going to have to do the background-check thing.” Predictably the smile evaporated.

“
What?
No way. They don’t need to—”

“President’s orders.”

“Hey, I’ve been in the DIA, the Secret Service, the—”

“Then presumably, there won’t be a problem.” Christian had known this was going to be a big issue. “Humor me, okay? Jesse said they’d streamline it for you. No more than a day in Virginia, but he needs that.”

“Okay, okay.” Quentin held up one hand and nodded deferentially. “Was it tough to be friendly to him? I mean, you would have been vice president if he hadn’t changed his mind at the last second. And, hell, if you hadn’t gotten that video of him from those guys in Maine, he never would have been elected. You saved his ass, then he dumped you. Doesn’t that still piss you off?”

Jesse Wood had been a professional tennis star in the early eighties, following his hero, Arthur Ashe, into a lily-white world and winning the U.S. Open and Wimbledon a couple of times. But he’d never used his victories as a platform for his political views, and everyone loved him, especially when he beat a Russian in the finals at Flushing Meadows one year—at the height of the Cold War. The win had ranked right up there with the U.S. hockey team’s victory over the Russians in the semis of the 1980 Olympic hockey tournament. After his tennis days were over, Jesse had become a lawyer, then a senator—from New York—with backing from a powerful group of ex–Black Panthers who had a strict agenda for him to follow after he won election to the White House.

They’d also gotten possession of a video clip of Jesse bashing white voters—when he didn’t know he was on camera. A clip that would have destroyed him if the public had ever seen it. Christian had managed to get that clip—freeing Jesse from the puppet strings. One of the first things Jesse had done after he was out from under the group’s influence was to replace Christian as his running mate.

Christian could understand why Quentin might think he’d be angry, but he wasn’t. “No, it doesn’t really bother me.”

“
Oh, come on.
I mean you—”

“Here’s why. Let’s say we hadn’t gotten that clip, and I had been Jesse’s VP. The guys who were backing Jesse didn’t really want me for the long term. They were going to have me implicated in some trumped-up scandal in the second term. Which we ultimately found out.”

“Well, you don’t know if—”

“They just wanted to use me to get Jesse elected, wanted me to bring the white vote in. Then they wanted me out. They didn’t want any chance of me being president after Jesse’s second term. I wasn’t really Jesse’s choice, so I can’t fault him for wanting someone else.” All that sounded good, but not a day had passed that Christian hadn’t wished he’d been on the ticket. Not for the personal glory, he didn’t care about that. But it would have brought closure for him as far as his father’s death went. It would have fulfilled a dream.

Quentin snorted. “I don’t know, pal. Did he at least apologize?”

“He’s the president of the United States. He doesn’t apologize.”

They blew past a small country store set back from the road, then came around a sharp curve and saw a man up ahead wearing a yellow hard hat and an orange vest. He was holding a stop sign and waving for them to slow down.

Quentin put down his window as they reached the man. “What’s the problem?”

The man leaned over so he was on eye level. “Sorry, guys, but we’ve got a tree down just around this next bend,” he explained, gesturing ahead. “I can’t let you through right now. It’ll be about five, maybe ten minutes.”

Christian touched Quentin’s shoulder. “Let’s go back to that store we just passed and get something to drink.”

“Yeah, sure.” Quentin turned the car around and headed back the way they’d come. “Pretty deserted out here,” he observed, looking around as they rolled into the gravel parking lot. The store seemed like an oasis in the forest. “Son of a bitch.”

“What?”

Quentin pointed. The driver of the Austin-Healey had stopped at the store, too. “I ought to go over there and give that kid a scare. He was riding my ass before he passed us.”

“Don’t go looking for trouble,” Christian pleaded, reaching for the door handle. That was the last thing they needed. “Please.”

“Damn!”

Christian was about to get out of the car, but he recognized that tone in Quentin’s voice: A pretty woman was somewhere in the vicinity. His eyes flashed back toward the Austin-Healey. The driver had climbed out of the car and taken off the baseball cap and sunglasses. He stared for a few moments, transfixed by the beautiful young woman standing beside the car. She had short, dark hair and wore a bright orange tube top above a white miniskirt. He watched her end a call on her cell phone, then toss it back into the car.

“I think I will go over there and talk to her about her driving,” Quentin said with a grin, hopping out of the Integra and jogging across the gravel before Christian could stop him.

“Hey!” Christian called over the roof of the car, rising up out of his side.
“Hey!”
But it was too late. The woman was already laughing at Quentin’s opening line—he was good with those. You had to act fast when Quentin was around, he thought to himself, heading for the store.

As Christian was coming back out a few minutes later, he almost ran into the young woman coming in. “Sorry.” She was even prettier up close. And she seemed vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t place her.

“My fault,” she answered politely, stepping aside so he could come out onto the old covered porch that spanned the front of the building.

“No, no.” Christian stepped back and held the door. “You first.”

“Thanks.” She give him a sweet smile and touched his arm as she moved past.

He watched her for a few moments as she headed toward the refrigerator cases in the back, admiring the way the white miniskirt swayed back and forth high on the backs of her toned, tanned thighs. He couldn’t tell how old she was—she could be anywhere from twenty to thirty. If he had to guess, he’d say younger—twenty-two to twenty-three—but he’d noticed a hard edge hiding in those eyes despite the sweet smile. He wondered if she’d been through something awful somewhere along the way.

He took a step back into the store as she disappeared behind a tall display of soft drinks at the end of the last aisle. The wooden floor creaked under his weight and he glanced up at the elderly woman sitting behind the old manual cash register. She was glaring back, a mean expression on her face. He gave her a quick smile, turned around, and headed out into the sunlight, aware of what she was thinking. Too young for him and he shouldn’t be ogling her.

Quentin was standing beside the open driver’s-side door of the Integra, one foot up on the floor beside the seat, one arm resting on the top of the door.

“Here.” Christian tossed him a cold bottle of Yoo-Hoo, then cracked a Mountain Dew for himself as he headed toward the passenger side. Quentin loved Yoo-Hoo. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

Quentin grinned. “Yeah, I mean, after all, forty million isn’t what it used to be.” He slipped in behind the wheel, shut the door, opened the bottle, and chugged the chocolate drink. “Damn, that’s good.”

Christian glanced up at the porch of the store as he eased into the Integra and took a couple of sips of Mountain Dew. The young woman was just coming through the front door. “How old do you think she is?”

Quentin shoved the empty bottle beneath the seat. “Mmm, twenty-three, twenty-four. But I’m bad at guessing ages these days. I’m usually way over or way under, and I don’t know—” He stopped short, his eyes darting to Christian’s.
“I knew it!”

“What are you talking about? Knew
what
?”

“You’re thinking about dating a younger woman.”

“That’s ridiculous. I just wanted to see if you thought she was the same age I did. I’m getting bad at guessing ages, too.” Christian watched the woman bounce lightly down the steps and head toward the Austin-Healey. She was carrying a beer bottle. “That’s all.”

“Bull,” Quentin retorted. “Look at you, you can’t take your eyes off her.”

“So what? She’s pretty. Just because I’m looking at her doesn’t mean I want to date her.” Christian grinned. “And I’m envious. Must be awesome to be that carefree. Look at her, she’s drinking a beer and driving a sports car on a beautiful spring afternoon. She doesn’t have a care in the world.”

“She’ll have a lot to care about if she gets pulled over drinking that beer.”

“Still. It must be nice not to have to worry about doing something like that. If she gets pulled over, she gets pulled over. Might lose her license for a while, but that’s it. Me? Jesus, I don’t even want to think about it.”

Quentin nodded, understanding. “You’re feeling old, Chris. That’s what all this is about. The living-in-the-moment attitude, the not caring that Jesse dumped you as VP, the younger women. You want to feel young again. And who could blame you? Look at all the pressure you deal with. Any normal person would crack under it. You don’t because mentally you’re very tough, but even tough people need escapes sometimes.”