Madison's Avenue

by Mike Brogan

  “Jesus....”

  Madison pointed to a phone number tucked next to Burkett’s. “Whose number is this?”

  Kevin stared at the number and frowned. “It seems familiar.”

  “Dial it.”

  He took out his cell phone, punched in the numbers and waited. Seconds later, he turned toward her, his eyes wide open.

  “What?”

  He shook his head from side to side.

  Sixty Five

  The EVP straightened her Hermes scarf as she watched Madison McKean walk into the board of directors meeting called to vote on the ComGlobe merger.

  Congratulations, Madison, on escaping Eugene P. Smith last night. But your luck is about to run out.

  “The meeting will now come to order,” Madison announced in a no-nonsense tone as she sat at the head of the long mahogany conference table. Her hair was pulled back and held tight by a silver clasp. She wore a white silk blouse, silver necklace and a serious pin-striped business suit in midnight black.

  The perfect color, Madison, for the funeral of Turner Advertising as an independent agency.

  The murmurs quieted down and Madison nodded to Evan Carswell, the vice chairman, to begin.

  “Madam Chairwoman,” Carswell said, “I move that we waive the minutes and all regular business and vote now on the final merger offer made to us by ComGlobe on May 21.”

  “Seconded,” said Raymond Sanders, corporate counsel.

  All heads nodded agreement.

  “The merger offer is now open for discussion.”

  Discussion is irrelevant, the EVP thought. In business, only one thing counts – leverage. And I’ve got it!

  As Evan Carswell began rambling on about why he thought the ComGlobe merger was wrong, her mind drifted to her new life, a life she’d planned meticulously over the last seventeen years in Turner Advertising.

  A life that would begin in six hours when she belted herself into the plush seat of her chartered Gulfstream. The jet would fly her to the Bahamas and from there to her favorite non-extradition country, Cuba, where she’d secured a 75-year lease on her new home, La Casa de Campo. She pictured the 12,000-square-foot villa with its nine bedrooms, Olympic-size swimming pool, cabanas, tennis court – all nestled into a hillside overlooking the blue-green Caribbean. She visualized her Miros on the walls, her French wines in the cellar, and her personal trainer, Carlos, in her bed, exercising her in a delightfully personal way.

  A loud cough jolted her back to the meeting.

  “Any more discussion?” Madison asked.

  No one raised their hand.

  “Then let’s vote,” she said, “As you know, our bylaws permit us to vote anonymously. No signature required. So please take the sheet of white paper in front of you and simply write down either FOR or AGAINST. Then fold your paper and pass it up here.”

  Each director quickly wrote down their vote and passed it forward until all eleven ballots were stacked in front of Madison.

  The EVP watched Madison unfold the top vote, read it, then frown.

  “FOR the merger.”

  She opened the next ballot and her eyes dimmed further. “FOR the merger.”

  Brace yourself, Madison. This is going to feel like someone’s hammering bamboo splints under your fingernails.

  The vote was off to a bad start, Madison realized, as she handed yet another FOR the merger ballot to Sanders.

  Madison looked around the table and noticed Harold Cummings and Keith Davidson. Both looked extremely uncomfortable. A few days ago, they’d assured her they would vote against the merger. But this morning, they’d been avoiding eye contact with her. Obviously, they’d voted for it, most probably because they were blackmailed.

  And, Madison knew who the blackmailer was....

  She turned and looked at the woman, the same woman she’d seen in the library video – wearing, oddly enough, the same purple scarf around her neck. Madison wanted to walk over and tighten the scarf until the woman turned purple. She also wanted to ask her, How did your phone number wind up in the little black book of Eugene P. Smith, an assassin hired to kill my father, two bankers, Kevin and me?

  But Madison didn’t ask her. Instead, she opened another vote and read, “FOR the merger.”

  The blackmailer’s lips creased in a faint smile.

  The EVP was enjoying Madison’s humiliating defeat far more than she’d anticipated. She watched her unfold another ballot. “AGAINST the merger.”

  Don’t raise your hopes, Madison. It’s already four to one in favor of the merger.

  Again, her mind drifted to this evening when she would order the Curacao banker to transfer the 8.7 million dollars to the Nederlandse Privé Bank in the Dutch Antilles where she had an account. That money would be added to the $10 million dollar fee from ComGlobe’s Peter Gunther and her upcoming IPO stock sale money, roughly $18 million.

  For a grand total of nearly $40 million. Not a bad retirement package.

  “What’s the count, please?” Madison asked Raymond Sanders.

  Sanders looked at his tally sheet. “Five FOR the merger, four AGAINST, two votes left.”

  Madison opened the next ballot. “AGAINST the merger.”

  “Five-five tie. One ballot remaining,” Sanders said, dabbing sweat from his brow.

  All noise in the boardroom ceased. Tension crackled like static electricity. Each director stared at the final folded ballot.

  Slowly, Madison picked it up.

  Sorry, Madison, but that ballot is mine. See my big blue X on the corner?

  Madison opened the ballot and slumped down in her chair.

  “FOR the merger.”

  The room was graveyard quiet.

  Raymond Sanders whispered, “Six FOR the merger, five AGAINST. The ComGlobe merger motion passes. I’ll ask our attorneys to prepare the paperwork immediately.”

  Madison looked over at the blackmailer, the woman who was responsible for killing Madison’s father and two Caribbean bankers. The woman who’d attempted to kill her and Kevin. The woman who’d blackmailed her fellow directors.

  But now, the woman was about to meet someone she could not blackmail.

  Right on cue, there was a knock on the boardroom door. The room fell silent.

  Madison knew that Detectives Loomis and Doolin were about to walk in and arrest the woman.

  Madison walked slowly over to the door.

  She opened it, looked at the men on the other side – and felt her knees buckle. She grabbed the doorknob to steady herself. She was hallucinating! But why now? Behind her, the directors gasped.

  Her father, Mark McKean, several pounds thinner and using a cane, limped into the room, living and breathing and smiling right at her.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said.

  When he pulled her into his arms and she smelled his Dunhill pipe tobacco, she realized he was real, and that real tears were spilling from her eyes, and from his.

  This was not a cruel hallucination.

  Her father was alive!

  “I’m so sorry, Madison,” he whispered, “so very sorry. And I can explain everything.”

  The astounded directors gathered around him, smiling, shaking his hand, patting his back.

  But one director remained seated. Her eyes, like empty black pits, stared in utter disbelief at Mark McKean, resurrected from the dead.

  Detectives Loomis and Doolin walked over to her and flashed their NYPD badges.

  “Alison Whitaker,” Loomis said, “We’re placing you under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder, blackmail and other felonies to be named....”

  Everyone stared at her in shock.

  The same shock Madison felt this morning when she showed Professor Tom Maynard a photo of the board of directors and he identified Alison Whitaker as the woman he’d known as Blanchector.

  “This is absurd!” Whitaker shouted.

  “You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Anything you say may –”

&n
bsp; “You’re making a mistake!”

  “No – we’re makin’ an arrest!” Doolin said, starting to cuff her.

  “Get your goddammed hands off me!” Whitaker said, yanking her arm away.

  “Resisting arrest is another crime, ma’am,” Doolin said, pulling her wrists behind her back and cuffing her.

  “You’ll hear from my attorneys!” Whitaker screamed, struggling to free herself. “I’ll sue you bastards for every cent this city has! I know the governor!” A fat vein bulged like a trapped worm on her forehead.

  Madison watched the two detectives drag the screaming executive from the room.

  Carswell closed the door, but Madison could still here Whitaker shouting obscenities.

  “Madam Chairwoman...,” Carswell said.

  “Yes,” Madison said, still clutching her father’s arm to keep him from vanishing again.

  “As Detective Loomis just indicated, we learned this morning that Alison Whitaker blackmailed some of our directors to vote for the merger. Whoever you are, relax. The court has enjoined Whitaker from using any information she might have intended to use to blackmail you. All her files, hard copies, and online documents, both here in the office and at her Park Avenue apartment, are now being confiscated by the authority of the District Attorney who will hold them under lock and key. You may retrieve the files related to you at a later date.”

  Madison heard sighs of relief.

  “And because your ComGlobe votes were made under duress,” Carswell said, “I move that the merger vote be reconsidered, and that we take another vote on the ComGlobe offer at this time.”

  “Seconded,” Raymond Sanders said.

  “Let’s keep it simple,” Carswell continued. “All those in favor of accepting the ComGlobe merger offer, please raise your right hand.”

  Three people slowly raised their hands.

  “And all those against the merger?”

  Seven people shot their hands into the air.

  “The motion fails. The ComGlobe merger offer is defeated seven to three.”

  Madison felt hot tears fill her eyes.

  Sixty Six

  Mark McKean limped toward the conference room table, pain shooting up his legs with each step.

  “Who beat the crap out of you?” Evan Carswell said.

  “Abra de San Nicolas.”

  “Who?”

  “A mountain!”

  The directors stared back, waiting for an explanation.

  McKean shifted weight from his bad, throbbing leg to the less throbbing leg that only had a six-inch gash. After more than two weeks lying comatose in an Acapulco hospital, his sixty-five-year-old body had awakened early this morning with more aches and pains than an NFL running back on Monday morning. Now, here in the boardroom, all he felt was overwhelming joy at seeing his daughter alive.

  “Where should I begin...?” he asked them.

  “I like when you died and I took over,” Carswell said.

  More laughs.

  McKean managed a smile, remembering the fun times he’d had with these smart, talented people over the years.

  “I’ll begin just prior to my unfortunate demise,” McKean said. He took Madison’s hand in his and again felt an overwhelming sense of guilt for the pain his suicide letter and his fake “death” undoubtedly had caused her and her brother. His well intentioned, but quickly conceived plan to fix the problem had failed miserably.

  Yet, here she was, his beautiful daughter, smiling at him with forgiveness in her eyes.

  “It all started with an unsigned, untraceable e-mail I received,” McKean said. “The one I mentioned to you, Madison. The e-mail accused me of misappropriating $8.7 million from our company and demanded that I return the money and resign immediately.” His throat was raspy from not speaking for weeks. He sipped some coffee and it helped.

  “I have not misappropriated one red cent from Turner Advertising. Frankly, I don’t need the money. And as many of you know, I’m not sophisticated enough in high finance to misappropriate that much money without getting caught!”

  “That last bit’s true,” Carswell mumbled.

  More smiles.

  “How did you answer the e-mail?” Carswell asked.

  “As it demanded. By e-mail. I said I did not misappropriate any funds and I refused to resign.”

  He sipped more coffee.

  “What happened then?”

  “I got a second e-mail.” McKean looked at Madison and placed his hand on her shoulder. “That e-mail gave me a choice: resign ... or attend my daughter’s funeral.”

  Several people gasped.

  “Did you know that when we talked on the phone?” Madison asked.

  “No.”

  She nodded. “You told me you had a vague memory of seeing the $8.7 million figure somewhere in the agency.”

  “Yes. I thought I saw it in our financial books, but couldn’t remember exactly where. Then, after I spoke to you, I remembered. It wasn’t in our financial books at all.”

  The directors leaned forward, waiting....

  “I saw the $8.7 million on a printout of a bank statement. The statement was sticking out from a file folder on the desk of Alison Whitaker. So I hurried down to her office to ask her about it.”

  Suddenly, pain shot up his leg and he had to sit down.

  “What’d Whitaker say?” Carswell asked.

  “Nothing. She was in Boston! Where you lived, Madison. That’s when I panicked. I thought she was up there hiring someone to come after you. I phoned to warn you, but you didn’t answer.”

  “I was probably on the way to the airport.”

  He nodded. “So my next step was clear. Resign. I started writing my letter of resignation. But as I wrote, I realized something: Whitaker would not kill you if she thought I was dead.”

  The room went silent.

  “So you faked your own suicide?” Carswell said.

  McKean nodded. “I wrote my suicide letter, set up the rowboat with my coat and wallet in the East River, then caught a flight to Chicago and from there to Mexico. I used fake ID so no one could trace me. In Chicago I used a pre-paid phone to call you to explain everything, Madison, but you didn’t pick up. Then I phoned you again when I landed in Acapulco, but the phone company said the phone was off the hook.”

  “I knocked it off during the night.”

  Mark McKean felt more guilt.

  “Dad, why didn’t you just leave me a voice message that you were OK?”

  “Because the detectives would have listened to it and known I was still alive. Then, your life would be in danger again.”

  She nodded, but still looked puzzled. “But it’s been over two weeks. Why didn’t you phone me?”

  “I couldn’t.” He pointed to the large bandage at the side of his head. “The doctor told me there’s a hole in my skull beneath this bandage. The hole relieved pressure on my brain. When I woke up this morning at 3 a.m. in the Acapulco hospital, the doctor said I’ve been in a coma for the last sixteen days.”

  Madison tightened her grip on his hand.

  “I’m OK now, sorta. Anyway, the police said that when the taxi was driving me from the Acapulco airport, a drunk driver forced us off the road. We flipped and bounced about two hundred feet down the side of the Abra de San Nicolas mountains, then slammed against some boulders. I don’t remember any of it. The taxi driver was killed and I was knocked unconscious, then slipped into a coma. This morning, when I came out of it, the doctor told me the date. I told him I had to get back here for today’s ComGlobe vote. He refused to discharge me, so I discharged myself, chartered a jet and landed at LaGuardia about forty-five minutes ago.”

  The directors stared at him in amazement.

  McKean looked at his daughter. “I’m so sorry, Madison. But I decided the only way to save your life was to fake my death. Once I knew you were safe, I was going to tell the police about Whitaker. Instead ... I wound up in a coma.”

  Madison put her arms around him and h
e felt waves of relief ripple through him.

  “I have just one request,” Mark McKean said.

  “What now? Death benefits?” Carswell joked.

  “Hey – I’ve got my death certificate!” McKean shot back, smiling. “But what I really want, and this is important, is for Madison to remain as chairwoman of Turner Advertising. As you know, I’m retiring in eleven months anyway, and I think it’s better that we don’t disrupt our clients with another major change in top management. Is that acceptable?”

  Heads nodded.

  “Not with me,” Madison said.

  Her response jolted him. “Why not?”

  “I’ll stay,” she said, “but only on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you remain as, ah ... let’s say, co-vice chairman with Evan Carswell until you retire.”

  Mark McKean smiled at his daughter. “OK, if the board agrees.”

  “The board and I happily agree, for chrissakes,” Carswell shouted.

  “No, wait!” said Raymond Sanders. “We have to make this official!” He tapped his tattered edition of Robert’s Rules of Order. “I move that we retain Madison McKean as our chairwoman, and second, that we retain Mark McKean as our co-vice chairman for the next eleven months.”

  “Seconded,” several others shouted.

  “Any discussion?” Carswell said.

  There was none.

  “All in favor?”

  Unanimous “Ayes” bounced off the walls.

  “This meeting is adjourned,” Carswell said. “Roll in the champagne.”

  “We serve champagne now?” Mark McKean asked.

  Madison started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” McKean asked.

  “ComGlobe sent it over,” she said.

  Mark McKean smiled.

  “Cocky bastards! Let’s drink it anyway.”

  Epilogue

  What’s our speed up to?” Madison asked Kevin as she squinted through the evergreen branches at the shimmering blue lake. “About three miles an hour! Buckle your belt!”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Jehosaphat’s wearing it!”

  They smiled at the belt-harness wrapped around Jehosaphat, the big, beautiful chestnut horse, pulling their carriage down Main Street on Mackinac Island, a small island nestled in Lake Huron between Michigan’s lower and upper peninsulas. A gentle breeze brushed across her face.