The Secret

by Harold Robbins

  “People are enslaved!” she shrieked.

  “Not … by … us,” he said coldly. “Where we’ve found deplorable conditions, we’ve withdrawn our business, in New York and in Asia. And … and now, Ariana, I have another appointment.” He tore up her letter and tossed it in the trash. He smiled and locked his blue eyes on hers. “Keep up the good work. Find out what you can. I know you can learn a whole lot without going out to the Pacific at the company’s expense. Keep me informed. I do read your memos.”

  He stood. The interview was over.

  * * *

  After I was, in effect, retired from the business, I bought a home in Fort Lauderdale, on a canal, and Therèse and I went down for the winter. I really had enjoyed fishing, and I took up surf casting. One night I had a chilling nightmare that I reeled in the corpse of Filly. But I did not give up fishing.

  Len was on the telephone to me almost daily. He replaced eighteen store managers and three regional managers. He bought four stores that competed with us, at least in a sense, turned two of them into Cheeks stores, and closed the other two. He began to talk about going public with a stock issue—a subject on which I had to defer to him, since I knew little about it.

  Len had become single-focused. He lived and breathed the business. He had developed an incredible discipline—which he had not inherited from me.

  In January I went up to New York for a few days to attend the annual meetings of the stockholders and directors of Gazelle, Incorporated. It was nothing very fancy, since I owned 5,500 of the ten thousand shares of stock, Sal owned 2,500, Len and Vicky owned one thousand and one thousand were retained by the company as treasury shares. We sat down at a table in a small conference room. Roger Middleton, Richard Pincus, and Hugh Scheck were also present.

  Len could vote 3,500 shares, actually, since before I went to Florida I had given him my proxy to vote 2,500 of my shares—so Sal could not outvote him in a stockholders’ meeting, in case one had to be held suddenly or in case one had to be held with me in a hospital. Though I was present at the January meeting, I did not revoke the proxy. If Len was going to run the company, let him run the company.

  As soon as the formalities of a stockholders’ meeting were finished, Len nominated a slate of directors. There had always been five directors: he and I, Vicky, Sal, and Roger. He nominated a slate of seven, adding Pincus and Scheck. The slate was elected.

  We adjourned the stockholders’ meeting and convened a meeting of the board of directors.

  Len nominated a slate of officers. He omitted nominating Sal as a vice president.

  “What is this?” Sal asked angrily. “You squeezin’ me out, son?”

  Len shook his head. “Sal, you’ve never functioned as an officer of this company—”

  “I was a partner.”

  “When it was a partnership, which it hasn’t been since 1989. You rarely take part in anything. You rarely even come to the offices. What difference does it make? You’ll still get your dividends.”

  “But my name won’t be on the fuckin’ door!”

  “Neither will mine,” said Len calmly. “Nobody’s name is on the fuckin’ door.”

  Sal turned to me. “Proxy or no fuckin’ proxy, you can vote three thousand shares, and I can vote twenty-five hundred. You goin’ along with this?”

  “Sal…” Len said with the air of a man whose patience endures but is being tried. “Stockholders elect directors. Directors elect officers. We’ve already elected the directors. If they want you to continue as a vice president, they’ll elect you.”

  “Fat fuckin’ chance,” Sal grunted, glancing at the directors seated around the table. Then he glared at me. “Thanks, partner.”

  Son of a bitch! I’d been had by my own son. I had not realized that the majority stockholder in a corporation might lose the power to elect its officers.

  I could have called for a special stockholders’ meeting a little later. But I didn’t.

  Late that night Sal was hauled to the Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in an emergency-squad ambulance. By the time I heard of it and arrived the next morning, he was going. It wasn’t a heart attack. It was a stroke.

  I sat down beside his bed. That was when he told me he was the man who had pulled the trigger on Jimmy Hoffa. That’s when he told me that whole story, in a weak voice but with an apparently lucid mind.

  “Len’s fucked me,” he whispered. “Maybe you let him.”

  “I didn’t mean to fuck you, partner,” I said quietly. “You were right about one thing, wrong about another. Len’s as cold as a whore’s tit. But he’s got guts.”

  I wasn’t sure Sal was conscious and heard me, but he said, “Wait’n see.”

  “We’ve always been very different guys, Sal.”

  “Not so different. They will say kaddish for me. I hope you can be there.”

  I was there. He was lowered into a simple earth grave, in a simple pine box, and the mourners did our best to follow and join in the words of the kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.

  * * *

  By now I was not sure if I could take control of my company back from my son. Well … of course I could have, but it would have involved a bitter confrontation, not just with Len but with Vicky.

  She and I sat down over a steak at Peter Luger’s one day when Len was in a meeting with the lawyers.

  “There’s no point in a bitter fight, Jerry,” she said. “You’d win, but you’d lose.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Oh, you can take back control of the business. There’s no question about that. And then what? You know Len. You know he won’t sit in an office and draw a salary and not run things. Not anymore. If you take back control, he’ll leave the company. And he won’t go back to his law firm, because its best men now work for the company.”

  “So, he’ll—?”

  “He’ll come with me at Interboro Fruit.”

  “And be bitter,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “He’ll hate me.”

  “No, he’ll never hate you. But he will be bitter.”

  “Meaning I won’t see him and you as much, meaning I won’t see the grandkids.”

  “Meaning you’ll have won but you’ll have lost,” she said.

  “I’ve already done something he won’t like,” I told her. “I bought Sal’s stock from his sons. Len bid for them, but I bid higher. Tell him he’ll get them in my will. Maybe he’ll get them sooner.”

  * * *

  So Len stayed where he was. I didn’t try to put him down.

  He and Hugh explained to me their plan to take our shares public. The more they explained it, the more I didn’t understand it. They wanted to raise capital. I understood that. Why? Because they had plans for Gazelle, Incorporated, to buy new businesses. They had targets. Some of them, as I pointed out, were in no business even vaguely related to ours. Among the businesses they were thinking of buying was the foundry that stamped out our handcuffs, along with a hundred totally unrelated products such as a respected brand of kitchen knives. They had eyes on a chain of health-food stores—most of whose merchandise was, in my judgment, nothing but scams. I couldn’t believe that they were also looking at a small, Midwestern commuter airline.

  Well, why not? I had tried to sell French spring water.

  I felt control slipping away from me. It was damn tough. I’m not the kind of guy who gives up on things. But I supposed I could let my son have his head, so long as he used good judgment.

  Then suddenly I learned he wasn’t using good judgment.

  Her name was Susan Gillis. She was a thirty-four-year-old public-relations expert who had worked for us for a while and then had been brought into the company by Len, who said he valued her skills.

  She had skills, I have no doubt. But they weren’t the skills he admitted to admiring.

  She had smoothly styled blond hair. Her eyes were dark green with flecks of brown. Her lips were sensual. Her understated makeup enhanced her beauty. She wore
knit dresses, short and tight, clinging to a voluptuous figure. Damn her. She was an uncomfortable reminder of Filly. It looked as if Len and I had similar tastes in women.

  I had only to observe the significant glances that passed between them to know what was going on. What was more, I wasn’t the only one who could see it.

  I made myself comfortable in a chair facing his desk and accepted a cup of coffee. Then I asked him, “What’s between you and Ms. Gillis?”

  “Look,” Len said. He loved to begin conversations by saying “look,” as if he were about to explain something to someone he was not sure could understand it. “When your chief business is Cheeks stores—”

  “Our only business,” I corrected him.

  “When your business is selling our lines, you need to build respectability. I mean … on Wall Street, we are only tolerated.”

  “They like our money.”

  “Okay. But to build a diversified business, you need a better image. That’s what Susan is for. I send her to meetings of bankers, brokers, and so on. She is our image. And I like the image she’s helping us build.”

  “You’re fuckin’ her, Len.”

  His eyes turned hard and cold. “That’s none of your business.”

  “You’re fuckin’ her.”

  “Dad … yeah, okay, I’ve been with her once or twice. Just for fun.”

  “I was married to your mother for eighteen years. During that time I never once had ‘fun’ with another woman.”

  “We’re of different generations,” he said, as if that closed the conversation.

  “You’ve been married to Vicky for three years. She’s the mother of your children. Of course … she’s fifty years old. Doesn’t she take care of you anymore?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “What’s gonna happen when she finds out? You think she’s not gonna find out?”

  “You going to tell her?”

  “I won’t have to.”

  “What’ll she do, put out a contract on me?”

  I threw my coffee cup across the room. It left a trail of coffee across his white carpet, and shards of cup scattered at the base of the wall where it hit. “Sal said something to me about you,” I growled at Len. “I deeply resented it at the time, but he was right. He said you were a spoiled brat who’d been given everything and never had to work or take a risk for anything. He also said you were colder than a whore’s tit. It doesn’t even occur to you, does it, how much this is gonna hurt Vicky? I know she came on to you hard when she met you, but she married you and has been as good a wife as a man could ask for, and—”

  “You think you can run my life the way you’ve always run the business—hands-on personal management.”

  “Until you’re man enough to run it yourself,” I said coldly.

  He was silent for a moment, then asked, “What do you expect me to do?”

  “Go out there and tell Ms. Gillis that she’s fired. Tell her the chief executive officer ordered you to fire her.”

  “I can’t do that!”

  “Then the chief executive officer gives you another order. Clean out your desk and be out of here in an hour.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I own eighty percent of the stock in this company. If I can’t get you out of here in an hour, I sure as hell can get you out a little later. You might use corporation law to frustrate me for a little while, but not for long.”

  Len was tough. I had seen that when he faced down the fag proctor-instructor at Lodge. The man had been a bully, but Len literally destroyed him. I remembered that now. I should have judged that correctly at the time—that there is no honor in beating up cripples.

  Len conceded nothing. “If you turn me out of the company, how will either one of us explain that to Vicky?”

  “I’ll leave that to you,” I said.

  “But Susan … I can’t. Jesus Christ!”

  I was adamant.

  “If we fire her, she might sue for sexual harassment.”

  “Let’s hear what Hugh has to say about that. He’s our general counsel.”

  Hugh Scheck lumbered in, walking with his two canes, and dropped on a couch. Len described the situation very briefly. It was apparent to me that Hugh already knew about Miss Gillis

  “There is a perfectly simple solution,” said Hugh, fixing a quizzical eye on the trail of spilled coffee and the shattered cup. “We get rid of the young woman by promoting her. You fired your regional manager in San Francisco. Send Ms. Gillis out there as his replacement. She’s capable. She can handle it.”

  And so it was done.

  Len remained as the company’s chief operating officer. But he understood which side his bread was buttered on. I figured by the time I had to stop interfering he would have matured; he would be ready to run the business on his own.

  * * *

  Therèse and I had dinner with Vicky and Len that evening. A heavy snow was falling in New York, and I was glad we had two tickets for Fort Lauderdale on a flight leaving before noon the next day.

  Len was glum, but I was in a jolly mood. When we had our before-dinner drinks in hand, I raised my glass and proposed a toast. “To the business that’s gonna grow beyond any dream I ever had. To my son, who’s gonna lead that growth. And—” I paused and laughed. “To my Uncle Harry! Thank you, Uncle Harry, for teaching your nephew to be a fucker and not a fuckee!”

  The three others frowned. Vicky and Therèse had no idea what I meant. Len did, sort of. Vicky would insist that he explain, and he’d have to use what was in his genes to put a gloss on what I’d said. It was a good test.

  I knew he could do it. He’d better use what was in his genes, because he was going to face other problems damned soon.

  47

  LEN

  As more and more of our manufacturing shifted to the Far East, I spent more and more time in Hong Kong. Our apartment there was in Mid-Levels, a name that refers to the mountainous nature of Hong Kong. The waterfront districts of the city are called Sheung Wan, Admiralty, Central, Wan Chair, and Causeway Bay. Upward there is Mid-Levels, and far above is the Peak. The Peak is the home of the beyond-luxurious estates of Hong Kong’s many billionaires.

  Our apartment was in a building on Arbuthnot Street, about a hundred yards up the street from a grim, gray stone building called Victoria Prison. A little more down the slope one came to Hollywood Road. A short walk on that brought one to an interesting feature of Hong Kong: a mile-long escalator that carries people up and down from the upper ends of Mid-Levels to the waterfront.

  The apartment was on the twenty-third floor of a thirty-story building. It was nicely appointed, with parquet floors and modern appliances. Real estate is grotesquely expensive per square foot in Hong Kong, so what was really a luxury apartment had only one bathroom. The building had just two apartments on each floor, and when the apartment across the hall became available, we took it too.

  That gave us room for something we very much needed: a maid and nanny. The girl we hired was, naturally, a Filipino. She spoke fluent Spanish, reasonably good English, and a bit of Chinese. We gave her a room in the second apartment and generally left the doors open between the two, though we locked them at night and when all of us were away, since the elevator did stop in the foyer between the apartments. The children played happily back and forth between the apartments.

  I converted the living room of the second apartment into an office.

  We also had enough space for Therèse and my father to live with us when they came out.

  Our quarters were idiosyncratic but comfortable. We spent four months of the year in Hong Kong at first, then more.

  We tried to avoid the summer months, when the heat and humidity were oppressive. We had to remember that this was a subtropical city, with a climate not unlike Miami’s.

  Naturally, I spent much time with Charlie Han. He was our man in Hong Kong, to begin with, but he was also my entry into Hong Kong business.

  Speaking Chinese wa
s not the point. Every businessman in Hong Kong spoke perfect English. Their secretaries spoke English. The clerks in stores spoke English. The only language inconvenience I ever had was with cab drivers. Sometimes Charlie would scribble where I wanted to go in Chinese characters, and I would show his note to the driver.

  Though my son Jerry, whom we called J. J., was not yet three years old, Vicky decided he should learn Chinese. The earlier a child begins to learn a language, the easier it is for him. Therèse thought he should learn French, but Vicky pointed out that for every one person who could speak French, fifty could speak Chinese. English and Chinese, she said, were the languages of the future and would be essential in business.

  I won’t go into the next big question: whether J. J. should be introduced to Cantonese or Mandarin. Vicky decided that, too. It was to be Mandarin Chinese, which eighty or ninety percent of the Chinese spoke.

  Vicky began to absorb herself in Chinese culture—something unhappily reminiscent to me of Sue Ellen.

  “We’ve got to see something of that country, Len.”

  “We’ll go on a tour sometime,” I said.

  “Sometime soon.”

  “Sometime soon.”

  I had business in China. With Charlie Han along to be my interpreter, I made my first venture onto the Mainland by boarding a train at Kowloon Station and traveling about forty minutes through the New Territories and across the border to Shenzhen.

  That city was astonishing. In the course of no more than five years it had grown from a town of a few thousand people to a city of three and a half million. This was the result of Deng Xiaoping’s creation of the New Economic Zone, a free-enterprise and free-trade zone in Guangzhou Province. Capitalism flourished there as it flourished nowhere else in the world—for the time being.

  Shenzhen was a city of high-rise buildings and luxury hotels, plus of course gridlock traffic made more difficult by tens of thousands of motorbikes and bicycles weaving through the lines of cars and trucks.

  We had come there to meet a businessman by the name of Bai Fuyuan, and we did meet him in the dining room of our hotel. The Guangdong Hotel is as luxurious as the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, which means as luxurious as any hotel in the States or Europe.