Sweet and Low_An Emma Lathen Best Seller

by Emma Lathen

  Udall was not fooled for a minute. The young man had been conscious of a visitor from the first squeak of the door. Maybe he did want the columns aligned, but he was playing to the audience, too, putting over the role of dynamic executive demanding topnotch performance. Since Shirley was a good twenty years older than he was, she didn’t like it one single bit.

  “Are you Mr. Amory Shaw?”

  Shirley snorted in derision.

  “No,” the young man snapped. “I’m Gene Orcutt, Mr. Shaw’s assistant.”

  Anybody snapped at by Orcutt was a friend of Shirley’s. “I’m Mrs. Macomber, Mr. Shaw’s secretary.” She beamed. “Mr. Shaw is down on the floor. Is there anything I can do?”

  Udall identified himself and explained his interest in Dick Frohlich.

  “Wasn’t that just awful?” Shirley cried.

  “Thursday, you say?” Orcutt frowned in deep thought. “Let me see . . .”

  Mrs. Macomber did not give him a chance to perform. “Mr. Frohlich was here with Mr. Shaw just before lunch.”

  “Oh, yes,” Orcutt said majestically. “He was telling us about the crop yields in Ghana.”

  Mrs. Macomber had other words for it. “He was reporting to Mr. Shaw.”

  Hostility between middle-aged secretaries and pompous young men is nothing new. It remained to be seen, thought Udall, if the cross fire could be turned to useful purposes.

  “Do you remember what time Frohlich got here?” he asked impartially.

  Orcutt guessed it was about noon.

  “Could you get closer than that?”

  Orcutt hemmed and hawed, said he knew it was before he went to lunch, and finally looked doubtfully at Shirley.

  Mrs. Macomber studied the ceiling.

  “I can’t put a minute to it,” Orcutt was saying when the door squeaked again.

  As if by magic the two disputants disappeared, to be replaced by entirely different characters. Shirley, sitting four-square at her typewriter, was now the efficient secretary. Orcutt was the deferential subordinate advancing to receive commands.

  “Any messages, Mrs. Macomber?” said the newcomer by way of greeting.

  As the list was read, he trained a calm, dispassionate gaze on Udall. The total lack of curiosity was not arrogance, but assurance. If the visitor mattered, somebody would tell Amory Shaw who he was.

  “Mr. Shaw,” said Orcutt, eager to get in first, “this is Detective Udall from the police department. About Dick Frohlich—”

  “Of course,” said Shaw, nodding somberly to Udall. “You’re checking on Dick’s movements last Thursday. I saw him here around noon. Apparently he was looking for me later that day. But I went back onto the floor that afternoon. And I didn’t get to Dreyer until later than I had planned. So I’m afraid I can’t help you very much.”

  Without the slightest effort this lean, colorless man dominated his surroundings so effectively that all eyes were on him as he spoke.

  “I would like to get a little closer on times, if possible,” Udall persisted.

  Shaw nodded, accepting the justice of the request. “I would say that he arrived at approximately twelve-fifteen. How long he stayed is more difficult. We talked for quite a while, I remember. Even after he had completed his report. Certainly nothing seemed to be troubling him. Now let me think . . .”

  But when it was Mr. Shaw who required assistance, there was no nonsense about looking at the ceiling.

  “Oh, Mr. Shaw, he was still with you when the docking took place. And that was at exactly twelve-thirty-six,” Shirley Macomber exclaimed.

  Not to be outdone, young Orcutt made a contribution. “Yes,” he said excitedly. “And you were both still in there when the American and Russian astronauts issued that joint message for universal brotherhood. I was here, listening to Shirley’s radio and waiting for Frohlich to leave. Somebody will know the exact time of that, too.”

  Amory Shaw blinked at this outburst of enthusiasm from all sides. But he agreed with his assistants. “That’s quite correct. The news of the docking came over the tape. And I remember that Dick was interested.”

  “What did he say?” asked Udall, largely to keep Shaw talking.

  Shaw hesitated. “He made a pungent biological comparison,” he said at last.

  Udall suspected that in more unbuttoned surroundings Amory Shaw would have detailed the particulars of that comparison—but not with Mrs. Macomber and Gene Orcutt hanging on every word.

  “Well, thank you very much, Mr. Shaw. I think that does tie it up. We can get the exact times from the news services. Would you say roughly twelve-fifteen to twelve-forty-five?”

  “Yes. And I did phone in a few orders while Dick was with me. So if you have any trouble with the docking times, I could look those up for you.”

  “I’m sure that won’t be necessary. But I would like to go over Frohlich’s second visit.”

  “Certainly. Orcutt and Mrs. Macomber will do what they can to help you.” Metaphorically Shaw’s voice picked up his two assistants and cast them at Udall’s feet. He himself turned for his own office, saying something about keeping up with the quotes.

  “I was alone when Mr. Frohlich came the second time,” Shirley volunteered. “He got here at two and asked for Mr. Shaw again. He was still here when Mr. Orcutt came back from lunch about five minutes later.”

  “That’s right,” said Orcutt hastily. “He was waiting in Mr. Shaw’s office. We talked for a few minutes, then he left. That’s the last time I saw him.”

  Udall was still hoping that he was going to get a crack at Mrs. Macomber alone. “Frohlich didn’t happen to mention where he had been, did he?” he asked, stalling for time.

  “What? . . . Oh, no, no.”

  “He didn’t tell me, but I know,” said Mrs. Macomber creamily. “I happened to be talking to Jeanne Jesilko later. She said that Mr. Frohlich had been in to see Mr. Martini.”

  Orcutt was sticking like glue to Shirley’s desk.

  “Mr. Martini?” Udall asked resignedly.

  Martini & Mears, Shirley informed him, was down the hall.

  “Well, thank you,” said Udall, snapping his notebook shut.

  “Martini & Mears,” read the legend on the frosted door. “Commodity Brokers.”

  Mr. Martini, the girl informed him, was on the floor.

  “And when will he be back?”

  “When the market closes,” she said with an impudent twinkle. Then, relenting, she told him, “That’s three o’clock.”

  Udall had a hunch. “Are you Jeanne Jesilko?” he asked and barely waited for her nod. “You free for lunch, Jeanne?”

  She was sorry, she was meeting a friend.

  As he had hoped, the friend was Shirley Macomber.

  Russ Martini, commodity broker, proved to be a chunky balding man who moved with vigorous decision. He was riffling through a file of papers and giving directions to a miniskirted girl when Detective Udall finally got back to him.

  “. . . and check with the cashier . . . oh, yes, Mr. Udall. Jeanne said you were here earlier.”

  Just then, a head was stuck in the door.

  “I’ll be with you in a little while, Jim,” said Martini. “This is the police, asking about last Thursday.”

  “Last Thursday!” said Jim with a groan. “Don’t remind me. That was another Shaw Special.”

  “This is about Frohlich,” explained Martini.

  Jim sobered instantly. “God! What a helluva thing to happen! Well, do what you can, Russ.”

  “My partner,” Martini identified the disappearing head. “Jim and I usually get together after the market closes. But anything I can do for you. As Jim says . . .”

  A shrug and an eloquent palms-up gesture concluded the sentence.

  “What’s a Shaw Special?” Udall asked curiously.

  Martini smiled. “When the market is slipping and everybody is waiting for the big buyers to come in, all eyes are on Amory Shaw. So he makes a big thing of not showing himself on the floor un
til he’s ready to act. The tension can be quite a strain. Last Thursday Jim spent most of the day waiting for Amory. Ask anybody in cocoa about a Shaw Special.”

  “Thank you. Now I understand that Frohlich came by here last Thursday?”

  Martini’s smooth round head bobbed energetically. “That’s right,” he said. “Came in—oh, I’d say about one-thirty. We chewed the fat for a little, then cleaned up some loose ends in his account that had developed while he was out of the country. He left after about 20 minutes. He seemed the same as usual to me. I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything else—or even be more specific. But things get pretty hectic around here, particularly during a Shaw Special . . .”

  Udall was pleased at the way the times were slotting into the schedule.

  “That’s all right, sir. Now you say he had an account here?”

  “Yes, he . . . excuse me . . .” Martini was already answering the phone. His side of the subsequent conversation was unintelligible to Udall although individual words were simple enough: December contracts, hit the limit, delivery day.

  “Sorry,” said Martini, writing furiously. “That’s one of my biggest customers. He’s crazy—but he can afford to be. Where was I? Oh, Dick. He took a little flyer every so often. I can show you his account if you want—”

  “No, no,” said Udall, rising to his feet. “That won’t be necessary right now. In fact, we may not need it at all.”

  He did not add that future events might depend on the information he had already transmitted to headquarters, after a very successful luncheon for three.

  “Frohlich was all right when he arrived. Oh, maybe he was a little tired, but he was calm enough. He just wanted to look over some of the day’s buy orders,” Shirley Macomber had said over her chef’s salad. “Then that little snot Orcutt went into the office and closed the door behind him. Pretty soon the yelling started. Honest to God, it sounded to me like they were going to square off. That’s why I’m so sure how long it lasted. I said to myself if it went on for over ten minutes, I was going to get some help. But even though they made plenty of noise, and every now and then somebody slammed something down, I couldn’t make out what they were really saying. I’m sorry about that.”

  “Not half as sorry as I am,” Udall told her.

  “But before the ten minutes were up, Frohlich came storming out. He was really worked up by then. He stood by my desk for a while with his jaw kind of tight, getting himself under control. Then he said that it was absolutely urgent that he talk with Mr. Shaw as soon as possible. I didn’t know then that Mr. Shaw would delay his flight to Dreyer. So I reminded Frohlich that they’d be meeting at the banquet. That seemed to relax him and he left.”

  Jeanne Jesilko emerged from her lasagna long enough to make one of her rare contributions to the conversation. “Then later on, when Mr. Shaw came back, you tried to get Mr. Frohlich.”

  “That’s right,” Shirley agreed. “I called the fifth floor and the girl there told me that Frohlich had left for the day. But I thought he might drop in on Mr. Martini. So I tried Jeanne. That’s when I found out Frohlich had been there much earlier.”

  Udall tried to balance what he recognized as biased testimony. “But it boils down to the same thing, doesn’t it? Frohlich came to your office at two o’clock in order to see Mr. Shaw. When he left, he still wanted to see Mr. Shaw.”

  “No.” Shirley was very convincing. “When Frohlich came in, he was much more casual. It wasn’t until after his fight with Orcutt that he was burning to see Mr. Shaw.”

  Chapter 5

  Commodities & Jobbers

  John Thatcher had been wrong about the response from Dick Frohlich’s co-workers and the metropolitan police. His batting average was just as bad when it came to the larger financial world. He had not expected murder in an upstate motel to make waves on Wall Street. Dick Frohlich had not been a major force in American industry. His death would not trigger Senate hearings or solve the energy crisis. And these days that seemed to be all that people were talking about.

  He discovered his error on Tuesday.

  “It’s Mr. Trinkam on the phone,” announced Miss Corsa.

  “John!” bawled Charlie. “Leo says you’re not being very friendly. He tried to get you all day yesterday and you never returned his call.”

  “I didn’t get back to the office from uptown,” Thatcher defended himself as he thumbed through the messages on his spike. Good heavens! Leo Gilligan had called four times. “Why is he calling me? He’s your client.”

  “He’s the Sloan’s client,” said Charlie, sounding like Everett Gabler. “And I can’t help him. He wants the inside dope on that murder you attended. He’s here in my office now. Can you spare a couple of minutes?”

  Thatcher agreed to come right along. Marching down the corridor, he tried to remember what he knew about Gilligan. As a special favor he had handled the account during Charlie’s last vacation. Gilligan was one of Trinkam’s favorite clients because . . . of course, that was it! Normally Charlie had to satisfy his taste for flamboyant personalities after hours. But Leo Gilligan was the exception. He was the financial buccaneer in Charlie’s life. He had no use for carefully vetted blue chips and AAA bonds. Short-term treasuries left him cold. He did not believe in charts, in analysts, or even in price/earnings ratios. Leo Gilligan had made several fortunes as a commodity speculator.

  Like termites, speculators do not enjoy general esteem. At regular intervals, they are excoriated by West German finance ministers and United States undersecretaries as enemies of basically sound structures. Besides their other nameless crimes, speculators are held responsible for the devaluation of the dollar, the pollution of the Mediterranean, and all British budgets since 1947.

  At the Sloan Guaranty Trust such austere views did not obtain. No bank harbors a congenital aversion to the spectacle of money making money. All the same, Charlie Trinkam, financially conservative to his very marrow, followed Leo Gilligan’s high-wire feats with awe.

  In person Gilligan was a shrewd, thrusting little man who wore the kind of clothes most other men reserve for the country club. Today he was sporting a plaid vest and white spats.

  He went straight to the point. “John, I hear you were up in Dreyer when Dick Frohlich was murdered.”

  “That’s right,” Thatcher admitted.

  “You know how it is,” said Gilligan. “Anything that happens to Dreyer keeps the boys humming. Hell, when Amory Shaw sneezes . . .”

  A roll of Gilligan’s eyes told what happened at the New York Cocoa Exchange, and the London Cocoa Terminal Market, too, when Amory Shaw sneezed.

  “Just like civil war in Nigeria,” offered Charlie sagely.

  Gilligan treated this seriously. Nodding, he said: “Only more so. Hell, all that business with the Ibos just confused half the guys down there! But everybody knows Amory. Russ Martini was saying just this morning . . .”

  Gilligan, cluing Charlie in on what cocoa brokers were telling each other, was a talker. But his talk was not idle gossip. Gilligan made money because of one brute fact: the price of cocoa beans is set by supply and demand. As a result it goes up and, as so many people are chagrined to discover, it goes down.

  Despite appearances, the essence of future trading is simple. If, like Dick Frohlich, you go to Ghana with a bulging wallet and buy a ton of beans, you have bought cocoa. The trade calls this the spot, or cash, market. Very few people are involved in it. The New York Cocoa Exchange exists to accommodate all the other people who want to buy contracts for cocoa several months in the future. The last thing Leo Gilligan wanted on his lawn in Darien was thirty thousand pounds of cocoa beans. It was-those gyrating prices that engrossed his attention and kept him hopping. More specifically, it was the price that cocoa would be—next December.

  If you enter into a contract to buy cocoa next December at 87 cents a pound and the price rises until it finally reaches 92 cents, somebody will buy your interest and you have made a killing.

  But
what about the poor wretch who thought December prices would tumble? He has agreed to sell and, when December comes, he still has to deliver at 87. To put it in the language of the exchange, he takes a bath in cocoa. Or loses his shirt.

  Of course the basic simplicity has thousands of ramifications. That contract for December delivery does not sit around in a drawer. People buy in and buy out many times every single day. And a customer may be involved in contracts with dozens of varying delivery dates. This is a futures exchange—a concourse of buyers and sellers, trading even more vigorously than people do on stock markets.

  But while this dizzying activity might be meat and drink to Leo Gilligan, it was anathema to the Dreyer Chocolate Company. How can you plan the production of a ten-cent candy bar when inventory costs are bouncing around like so many Ping-Pong balls? So Dreyer is also forced into the futures market. As all commodity exchanges explain in glossy brochures, futures trading is not just an extension of Las Vegas. It is socially defensible because it enables Dreyer to shift the risk of cocoa price variations onto the shoulders of speculators. Thus Dreyer hedges against inventory loss and is free to concentrate on selling candy. In the textbooks, hedging is as good as speculating is bad.

  Naturally, the perfect hedge that guarantees stabilization of costs is pure fantasy. Commodity users are happy to rack up any profits they can.

  “And Amory Shaw has been making a mint for Dreyer longer than I can remember,” said Leo Gilligan reverently.

  “Well, he’s got a built-in edge, doesn’t he?” argued Charlie. “What Dreyer itself does affects the market.”

  “Oh sure. And with people like Dick Frohlich reporting to him, Amory knows more about the outlook than most. But still, he’s got the real touch. He was born knowing when to stop.”

  Thatcher remembered the lean contained quality of Amory Shaw. “That could be native caution.”

  “No, Amory takes plenty of chances,” Gilligan said stubbornly. “You know the old saying—be a bull, be a bear, but don’t be a hog. That’s Amory all over. And it’s what’s holding the New York cocoa market together at the moment. If anything’s going to give, I’d like to know about it.”