Green Grow the Dollars

by Emma Lathen

  Mr. Elliman, Head of Sloan travel department seeking to broaden the horizons of Sloan executives business travels by including sightseeing, and usually failing.

  Characters only in Green Grow the Dollars

  Earl Sanders, Standard Foods contact with Vandam Nursery, its newly acquired division, and owner of Numero Uno contested tomato patents.

  David Vandam Maynard, Director of Vandam’s Consumer Relations Department.

  Hendrik’s son Richard, Dick, the current CEO of Vandam, who organized the sale to Standard Foods (SF). A bit stiff, with a nice wife, Gloria, wishing he was a bit more of a drinking man to take his mind off things with a pitcher of martinis.

  Edward L. (Ned) Ackerman and Scott Wenzel, the two principals in Wisconsin Seedsmen, suing Vandam’s, who had done it all on a shoe string.

  Paul Jackson, Wisconsin’s savvy patent lawyer, who John Thatcher knew well and respected accordingly.

  Howard Pendleton, plant expert, who developed Numero Uno in his distinguished and well-appointed lab, IPR.

  Fran Pendleton was a well-known geneticist, wife of Howard, and copartner in their R & D venture.

  Eric Most, Howard Pendleton’s latest research assistant at IPR who had aspirations for more.

  Jason Vandam Ingersoll, young Turk with big plans for himself at Vandam.

  Cousin Milton Vandam, the old relative in charge, now on the outs.

  Barbara Gunn, Wisconsin Seedsmen’s Office Manager, concerned about her deposition and involvement in the legal tangle with Vandam.

  Edgar Brown, Midwestern Trust, Banker and noteholder of Wenonah Industries, an overexpanded RV firm, in conjunction with the Sloan. Presiding leader and terror to its borrowers and others.

  Vince Mancuso, Midwestern contact to the Wholesale Produce market.

  Mrs. Mary Larrabee, winner of the $10,000 Vandam Award for her Firecracker sweet pea, and traveler to the Wholesale Produce Market.

  Captain McNabb, Policeman working on the Chicago murder.

  Hilary Davis, lawyer and Scott Wenzel girlfriend.

  Emma Lathen Political Mysteries

  As R. B. Dominic

  31. Murder Sunny Side Up 1968. Agriculture.

  32. Murder in High Place 1969. Overseas Travelers.

  33. There is No Justice 1971. Supreme Court.

  34. Epitaph for a Lobbyist 1974. Lobbyists.

  35. Murder Out of Commission 1976. Nuke Plants.

  36. The Attending Physician 1980. Health Care.

  37. Unexpected Developments 1983. Military.

  Tom Walker Mysteries

  Patricia Highsmith Style

  Deaver Brown, Author

  01. 18. Football & Superbowl.

  02. Abduct. Sexual Misconduct.

  03. Body. Planned Eliminations for Money.

  04. Comfortable. Avoiding Consequences.

  05. Death. Wrong Place at the Wrong Time.

  06. Enthusiast. Opportunity Murder.

  07. Fraud. Taking Your Chances.

  08. Greed. Heirs Who Know Better.

  09. Heat. Heir Arrogance.

  10. Island. Startup.

  A similarly popular Simply Media mystery series.

  Financial & Other Facts

  Emma Lathen and Tom Walker

  are about money and emotion.

  Simply Media will be offering Emma Lathen and Tom Walker

  eBook Collections at a discount.

  Thank you for reading our series.

  Enjoy and prosper!

  Deaver Brown, Publisher & Editor.

  www.simplymedia.com

  Chapter 1

  Prepare Plot Thoroughly

  ON Wall Street, where paper money is still highly regarded, flights into gold rarely pick up much speed. True, some venerable and blue-blooded brokers persist in holding the abrogation of the gold clause responsible for the Decline and Fall of the Republic, and otherwise respectable institutions harbor a few gold bugs. But, apart from these oddities, most of Wall Street, most of the time, looks on gold as just another precious metal.

  At the Sloan Guaranty Trust, for example, weeks and months could pass with only routine mention of London fixings and Hong Kong closings, despite the considerable participation in overseas finance enjoyed by the third largest bank in the world.

  Currently, however, John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice president, was getting hourly reports about bullion. He was getting reports about other things too because, at the rarefied level at which he and the Sloan functioned, gyrations in the price of gold had implications beyond the melting down of candlesticks.

  “. . . the dollar’s strong. Dwayne says that the Bundesbank is in with heavy support,” said the clipped voice from the Sloan’s Money Desk. “Also, there’s a rumor in Brussels that Kuwait is raising the price of crude.”

  “Tell Wybell to check that out,” said Thatcher, replacing the phone and shifting from offshore chaos to the homegrown variety. “Go on, McAdoo.”

  McAdoo was detailing a disquieting outflow from savings when Walter Bowman, the Sloan’s weighty chief of research, suddenly interrupted. “John,” he called unceremoniously from the door, “they’ve just announced a three- billion-dollar error in M-2. There are rumors about Manny Hanover’s reports, but I don’t have anything solid yet. I’ll get back as soon as I have more on it.”

  With that, he disappeared. McAdoo, blinking nervously, remained.

  “Go on, McAdoo,” said Thatcher.

  In minutes, they were again deep in CD’s, Federal Funds, and M’s –1, –2, and –3. This tumult and shouting had been continuing for days now, and gave no sign of abating. Contrary to appearances, it did not mean that the Sloan was tottering on the brink of ruin. To date, performance had been exemplary and Thatcher, who had recruited and coached most of the team, had every reason for satisfaction. During uneventful prosperity, almost any bank or banker can flourish. There had been profitable doldrums in the recent past when Thatcher could have left the Sloan to run itself, or even left it in the uncertain custody of its president, Bradford Withers.

  But with conditions at home and abroad changing by the minute, and rarely for the better, the best bank or banker could stumble, as tidings from Philadelphia, Chicago, and points between demonstrated. In the cause of averting major and minor mishaps, Thatcher was putting in longer-than usual hours in his sixth-floor suite. He himself regarded this as simple prudence but he did not regret the sense of urgency it conveyed through the ranks. Infusions of adrenaline never hurt.

  He did, however, discourage heroics. “No, McAdoo, now is not the time to revise the formula,” he said. “We’ll set the prime the usual way this Friday. Just leave those papers for me, will you? Yes, Miss Corsa, what is it now?”

  His secretary, arriving in time to speed McAdoo on his way, was peerless as a bearer of tidings, good or bad. Miss Corsa was accurate, efficient, and completely detached. Should enemy bombs ever fall on Alabama, Thatcher hoped the news would come through her. She could reduce Armageddon to manageable proportions.

  “This just came. I knew you would want to see it immediately, Mr. Thatcher.”

  After that touch of drama, the document she handed him was an anticlimax. At first glance it seemed to be routine.

  “By order of the U.S. District Court,” Thatcher read aloud, skimming down the text. When he had grasped the gist, he looked up at the waiting Miss Corsa. “This is only a court order freezing the account of Vandam Nursery & Seed Company,” he said.

  She nodded vigorously. “Yes, it arrived this morning. Naturally, I noticed it on the list at once.”

  Bank accounts are sitting ducks. Death, taxes, divorce, litigation, or any combination thereof, focus attention on assets. An institution like the Sloan required a special desk in Commercial Deposits to accept legal paper, oversee compliance and circularize internal staff.

  Solely because Miss Corsa expected it, Thatcher delved deeper. “This order is in connection with the lawsuit by . . . let’s see . . . someone called Wisconsin S
eedsmen, Inc. Against the Vandam Nursery & Seed Company. The basis of the suit ...”

  She did not regard the specifics as her province, as she informed him. “The minute I saw it was Vandam’s, I brought it right in to you.”

  Thatcher digested this. Miss Corsa, unmoved by municipal default from Cleveland to Waco, indifferent to a total shutdown of the Board of Trade, assumed that anything happening to the Vandam Company deserved Mr. Thatcher’s attention. Why?

  Walter Bowman, fitly enough, supplied the answer. Bouncing in again, he said, “They’re still sweating it out over at Manny Hanover, John. Meanwhile, the Fed will get revisions out after close of business. Boy, there’ll be hell to pay in the bond market tomorrow.” Then, having said what he had come to say, he impenitently added, “Sorry, am I interrupting anything important?”

  “No,” said Thatcher, incurring a reproachful look from his secretary. “Or rather, Miss Corsa and I were just discussing a court order we’ve received freezing an account of the Vandam Company.”

  Bowman more than compensated for Thatcher’s deficiencies. “Vandam’s?” he said alertly. “I was thinking about them just last weekend. Now that Lordmas is over, the Vandam catalog should come any day. This year, I’m going into vegetables in a big way.”

  Some circles maintained that Bowman did everything in a big way.

  “Last season,” said Miss Corsa with modest pride, “we canned a dozen quarts of string beans.”

  “Should I try Vandam Verdipod?” Walter asked humbly.

  Miss Corsa’s grandfather, she replied, swore by Vandam Sugarina.

  Thatcher, who resided in a Manhattan apartment-hotel, did not beguile his sleet-sodden Januarys with dreams of spring planting. This, he could see, might be the minority position.

  “What’s happening to Vandam’s?” Bowman inquired after Miss Corsa withdrew.

  “Nothing cataclysmic,” said Thatcher. “After all, we’re not Vandam’s main bank. They’re somewhere in Illinois, aren’t they? I assume they keep a small account with us for import-export dealings.”

  Bowman had been thinking, and not about green beans. “You’re not forgetting that Standard Foods took them over last year, are you, John?”

  “I believe I was,” Thatcher said, stirring some mental embers. Standard Foods, already a giant in food processing from soup to nuts, had recently launched a whirlwind of acquisitions: Mother Stella’s Fish Cakes, Old Homestead Pizza Pies, Pretty Pussy Cat Food, and, yes indeed, the Vandam Nursery & Seed Company.

  And Standard Foods was a large and valued Sloan client.

  “Which,” Thatcher was the first to admit, “puts another complexion on Miss Corsa’s eagle eye, doesn’t it?”

  The Sloan habitually informed depositors when the law stepped between them and their bank accounts. Nine times out of ten, this was empty courtesy, since frozen assets tend to come after, not before, other troubles.

  But a customer as profitable to the Sloan as Standard Foods called for more than pro forma notification. Personal attention is one of the indubitable advantages of multimillion-dollar status and not simply, as politicians insist on reiterating, because life is unfair. It was very possible that Standard Foods knew nothing about this wrinkle; with countless operating divisions, and God knew how many bank accounts, Wisconsin Seedsmen v. Vandam could easily have slipped through the cracks. So SF was going to hear directly from its friend at the Sloan.

  The decision made itself and, despite other calls on his time, Thatcher did not regret it. However, he still needed more data.

  “Exactly whom should I contact at SF, Walter?” he asked.

  “Let me think,” said Bowman.

  Going straight to the top is a stratagem best left to amateurs. The president and the chairman of the board of Standard Foods resembled the Joint Chiefs of Staff, too wise, too farseeing, and too remote for the nuts-and-bolts working of their complex apparatus.

  Walter Bowman saw the problem and made short work of it. “Earl Sanders is the man you want,” he said. “I know he handled the Vandam takeover. And SF’s acquisitions department has a New York office.”

  “Better and better,” said Thatcher, buzzing Miss Corsa.

  “I’ll get right to it, Mr. Thatcher,” she said, sinking whole clutches of his crowded docket.

  He was sure she would. Events, or at least Earl Sanders, conspired to help her surpass herself. Two hours later, she was ushering the man himself into Thatcher’s office. Sanders, a small dapper man, was by choice, if not by nature, a smiler. His entrance, his recognition of Walter Bowman, his introduction to John Thatcher, were all a genuine pleasure to judge from his mouth. His eyes were not quite so guileless.

  “No, no,” he assured them. “No trouble at all to drop by the Sloan, although I was surprised to hear from you. Vandam’s is headquartered in downstate Illinois, and they’ve always banked at Midwestern Trust, you know. When we took over, we didn’t alter those arrangements.”

  Handing Sanders the court order, Thatcher said, “I assumed as much, which is why I expect this is no more than a nuisance suit of some sort. I’m not familiar with the seed or nursery business, but I suppose they’re just as bedeviled as everybody else.”

  “I guess so,” said Sanders vaguely. Then, on a gust of genial frankness, he confided, “To tell you the truth, I don’t know the ins and outs of running a big seed and nursery business myself.”

  “You knew enough about Vandam’s to snap them up for SF,” Bowman chimed in.

  This could have been, and was, interpreted as a compliment by Earl Sanders. Not so by Thatcher, who knew Walter too well. Quite apart from warmth about Vandam’s, or about the Vandam spring catalog, there was the man’s beaver nature. When Walter advised the Sloan to buy anything, he had to be forcibly prevented from sharing every minute detail. The whole Investment Division had reeled under nautical gear when he recommended Acadia Marine.

  But Sanders was still preening himself on the acumen he had shown. “Yes,” he said, with the broadest smile yet. “Vandam’s is going to be one of our sensational acquisitions. Of course, the financials were all right, too.”

  Walter’s nose all but twitched. In general, financial statements are not an afterthought with sensational buys. Even a non-zealot like Thatcher felt some curiosity.

  “When you bought it out, Vandam’s was a family firm, wasn’t it?” he asked, unashamedly fishing.

  “Oh boy, was it!” Sanders chortled. “They’re a family firm and an American institution, too.”

  “The catalog—” Bowman began.

  Sanders laughed aloud. “To hear the Vandams, their catalog ranks just next to the Bible.”

  “Did the family want to sell, or have to sell?” Thatcher asked.

  “It depends on which Vandam you’re talking to,” said Sanders. But, as Thatcher had anticipated, he could not resist the temptation to unburden himself and, stripped of editorial asides, a coherent and familiar saga emerged.

  The founder, Cornelius Vandam, had begun with a farm- supply outfit in Rowe, Illinois, since renamed Vandamia. His firm prospered, and within his lifetime Vandam Nursery & Seed Company became a mail-order business. Cornelius’ son, Hendrik, expanded into bulbs and nursery stock, with production fields stretching from California to Pennsylvania. Year in and year out, sales skyrocketed and the catalog grew glossier and glossier.

  “But the trouble started with the third generation,” Sanders said.

  “It frequently does,” said Thatcher encouragingly.

  Hendrik Vandam II inherited the largest mail-order nursery business in the world, and a mountain of headaches. Both the company and the family had changed since Cornelius’ days. Vandam’s had become a huge enterprise, too diversified for the modest administrative talents that Cornelius’ many descendants had inherited. Furthermore, unbroken affluence had changed the Vandams, who no longer regarded flowers, vegetables, and seeds as their immutable destiny. With the Vandam money behind them, heirs wanted to go into publishing, heiresses
married college instructors, and one great-granddaughter was a professional basketball player.

  “So, Hendrik the Second decided to sell out?” Thatcher hazarded.

  “No,” Sanders told him. “He simply retired. The Vandam who was running the show and who decided to accept our offer was Hendrik’s son, Richard. He has a good fat management contract from us, and so do too many other Vandams, I don’t mind telling you.”

  Sanders’ sketch of this lesser American dynasty was new to Thatcher, although the outlines were predictable. He had long since suspended disbelief at what the descendants of Pittsburgh steel, Detroit cars, and Texas oil chose to do with their wealth. The Vandams sticking with the firm were more down his alley.

  Bowman had not been attending closely. He probably knew more about the Vandams than Earl Sanders did. But he had not let an opportunity to inform himself pass. While Sanders expounded, Walter plucked the court order from his hand and began leafing through it. As usual, he hit pay dirt.

  “. . . to insure compliance with the court decree enjoining commercial exploitation of the tomato herein referred to as Numero Uno, it is . . .”

  Sanders stiffened. “What was that?” he barked. “Did you say Numero Uno? My God, here—let me see that!”

  He grabbed the court order from Bowman and excitedly began scanning it. “It can’t be Numero Uno,” he muttered to himself. “But if it is . . . where the hell . . . oh, here it is. Wisconsin Seedsmen . . . contesting patent application . . . oh, my God!”

  The distress, which reduced Sanders to unintelligible gabbling, told Thatcher a lot, about the Sloan, as well as Standard Foods. The standard operating procedure that had induced him to call Sanders had just paid off. Standard Foods had not known. And, as Sanders’ anxious scowl demonstrated, Standard Foods was deeply concerned.

  This, in turn, might explain why SF had bought Vandam’s in the first place. All the enthusiasm so conspicuously lacking in Sanders’ account of the firm, its history, its market position, and its management, seemed concentrated on this one product.