“You look good without the weight,” he said. “With the short hair and the suit, you finally look like a banker.” He laughed nervously. I’d no security pass and had to sit and wait for Lloyd to clear the matter up. “Come this way, I’ll buy you a coffee,” he said when he had gained my clearance. “We’ve a meeting with the old man this morning.”
I knew he meant Hiroyuki Nakamura, the President of Tappets Electronics, who wasn’t only one of the Stanroids, but also a staunch supporter of Mary. He’d the best of both worlds. He was the most powerful person in Tappets beside my parents and Una.
To my surprise, the building had no cafeteria. Mary’s no-frills philosophy had become ingrained. I feared the worst and decided I’d best keep my identity to myself. The employees might lynch me. When we exited the building at the back, security people scanned us both with electronic wands. A huge sign on the door said, ‘Stop for security check. No exceptions!’ We bought coffee from vendors on wheels. Lloyd offered me a cigarette.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said and refused the offer. I’d never even tried one. Picnic tables had been set along the wall and the property looked westward on a small woodlands which was divided by a ten story apartment complex overshadowed in turn by a high Holiday Inn.
“Did you sincerely like math?” Lloyd asked. I nodded. “I think you’ll be working for Bill Stanton, a controller who worked for Modal and Factory Bright. He is a cool guy. It’s just a suggestion at this stage, but the old guy usually follows my advice. I thought a bit of continent-hopping might do you some good after all that expensive ed-u-ca-tion. Stanton was with Denison’s team back then. Jack Denison is still comptroller and Senior Vice President but everyone considers Hiroyuki the operational VP now. Stanton was sicced on Tay Mines and Tappet Holdings by him against Denison’s wishes. It’s still managed by Gordon Whitley, but Mary wouldn’t call off the dogs. Then the old man kicked Stanton over to Constant Batteries to do the same to Graham Roberts. Something’s up, so keep the blood off your knife.” I must have looked puzzled; I didn’t have the slightest idea of what he meant. “It’s just that anybody looking on Tappets from the outside,” he continued, “would say your mom and dad are at war.”
“It’s peculiar,” I admitted, not understanding it myself.
We’d to use our cards to get back in and Lloyd had the security guard explain to me about the cameras, monitoring devices, phone-recordings and other invasive security equipment. I didn’t know how to feel about this issue. Lloyd gave me a tour of the building. In one part, I stopped to look at a poster of Tappets’ Divisions. No acquisitions had been made for five years and I wondered about that. It was most peculiar. We took the elevator to the third and top floor and followed the sign down the plush carpeted hallway without seeing a single soul. The hallway gleamed in a silver-colored metal and the light was bright. Wood trim accentuated the edging, and the uniform effect fell away and became as though a statement of refinement. Evergreen Bonsai had been strategically placed here and there, and I stopped to look at a couple of them. The idea of artificially dwarfing trees by planting them in small urns, then starving them of nutrients, limiting the space for root growth, and pruning the shoots to create the gnarled appearance of a full-sized tree, seemed to me weird. It was a perplexing thing about Japanese culture, like the Haiku poem or Gagaku music. Several places had wall mirrors, also bordered by thin varnished beechwood, some with stands holding vases of a variety of cut orchids from around the world.
By the door to Nakamura’s outer office, stood two statues of enormous Great Danes on their hinds with their male genitals showing. As we approached, the doors opened automatically. I could see that Hiroyuki obviously didn’t much care for Mary’s austere business philosophy.
“Good morning Mr. Mills,” a plump well-dressed middle-aged woman said from behind her desk. “Hello, Mr. Tappet.”
“Call me, Christian,” I said and shook her hand.
We didn’t have to wait and were greeted at once by Hiroyuki. It seemed that his features had softened since I’d last seen him, but otherwise he was the tall and elegant man I always remembered. His suit was the peak of sophistication and I felt under-dressed. Four large wildlife paintings, I imagined as extravagant as Tappets ever allowed, by a celebrated New York City artist, Caley Quarrellé, hung on his office walls.
“Lloyd, could you see to Mrs. Read,” he said before Lloyd could sit. “She’s in the Conference room with Kyoto and Mike. Make sure they’re comfortable and that the vision-statement brochure is finished up. Stan’s office has inquired after it twice today.”
They shook hands and Lloyd left, but I sensed some tension there or maybe disappointment in Lloyd, but couldn’t put my finger on it. The old man, as Lloyd called him, studied me a moment as I stood there. “Forgive me for staring,” he said.
“When I look at my own reflection now, I feel I barely know myself,” I said softly. “I’ve lost considerable weight and have worked out at the gym, perhaps, one too many times.”
“Few of us, do know ourselves, maybe none of us do. No one has a monopoly on wisdom, Christian. Your father and I debate politics continually. He’s a conservative who promotes fiscal restraint and economic liberalism, many of his ideas aren’t far from Reagan’s. My views wholeheartedly endorse the state, but I’m called a liberal and he isn’t. I believe that without regulation, business would eat itself. However, I greatly admire your father, but neither his nor my view of politics has much to do with running a large non-bureaucratic modern industrial conglomeration that your mother and Una have crafted over decades.”
I caught his eyes and he saw my surprise at such an appraisal. “You and your sister, Sally, who I also greatly admire, must learn the secret to their success. You have access to every level; to Stan, Mary, Una and everyone else. I can tell you, Christian, I don’t envy you the challenge of mastering Tappet Industries. However, I’d like to help you with it, if you so desired.”
My heart-beat began to pick up. He was giving me an inside track, a big break to compete with Sally who was working directly with Mary, but was it too good to be true? Now was the time for courage. Better to be sharpening pencils for Lloyd than to be used as a tool against my family. “Why?”
“It’s no big secret that I’d like to manage the whole enterprise. A possibility exist in the decade before you and Sally are qualified. Mary and Stan may wish to retire early and they trust me. Do you see?” This was as honest as I could expect. I rose and formally bowed, as Stan had taught me. “What has Lloyd told you about your position here?” he asked.
I told him about the Stanton idea. “Bill Stanton is a fine man. He reports strictly to me, as will you. Can you keep confidences from your family until our investigations are complete?”
I swallowed. “I could never betray my family.”
“On the contrary, Christian, this is about helping them.”
“In that case I can report to you in confidence.”
He gave a lightening quick nod of his head. “You understand that you’ll not be working for Bill Stanton, he’ll be working for you.” Again I couldn’t keep the surprise off my face. “If everything goes well, you’ll be a working VP within months, but for now you have the title anyway.”
That night I decided to throw my lot with Hiroyuki Nakamura. When Mary heard about the title I could tell that she was furious, and Una didn’t like it either. The next day, I returned to his offices, to find I’d an office of my own. On the door, Christian Donald Briner Tappet, Vice President, was printed. It felt good. It wasn’t true yet, but I was damn-well going to try to be one. I fumbled with the door. The office had a view of West-Eleventh and the day was bright, so it wasn’t too depressing. The walls were painted in a very light aquamarine and were bare except for a print of the New York City skyline taken from a northern angle. Bill Stanton arrived. He was forty years old or so, and fit and trim. I made coffee and we sat. “So where to from here?” I asked.
“My team’s wrappi
ng things up at Modal. That will take two more days, maybe less, then on to Tonal-Flex, ‘They make verdy-verdy g-o-o-o-d speakers,’” he said mocking a popular jingle.
“Is any of the work here?”
He shook his head. “We have to go to Phili, boss.”
“Call me Christian. I’ll try not to call you boss. If you would help me not to fall flat on my face, I’d be indebted, and you would be richer.”
That afternoon, Bill brought me in the reports on the completed audits for Modal Oil, Factory-Bright, Poss Fast-Discs, Mutual Real Estate, Sursheita, and Spectrum Sound. There were six more divisions to go. I read the Factory-Bright report and it seemed everything was fine. I interrupted Bill’s work to say so, and I’ll never forget his response. “Wrong answer. Keep reading. The old man expects you to find it on your own.”
Sally phoned me that afternoon to tell me that she had a date with Lloyd Friday night and that Mary and Una had that morning, made her a vice-president. I congratulated her, but of course I was dismayed and confused. Lloyd of all people. Like Mary, Sally knew exactly what to do to get to me. The message was clear, capitulate and sleep with her, or lose her to Lloyd.
I returned to the Factory-Bright report and read through the Poss’ report next. Still nothing. That took me until ten o’clock that evening and when I arrived home, I fell asleep without even washing up, and so my days passed by, in between trips to do actual physical audits, reading one report after another, then reading them again. Soon, I became sure something was wrong, but I was unable to see it clearly; no trend existed. Perhaps Una had been right all those years ago, and I was as thick as a brick.
If Hiroyuki grew impatient with me, he never showed it. Maybe he and Bill weren’t sure themselves what to think of the reports. Huge capital funds were flowing between the division at alarming rates, some figures were purposely inflated, some deflated. It made no sense unless it involved a number of senior people, but a conspiracy theory, ugh!
On August 12, Clara died. The funeral ceremony in New York City was the next day. If ever any doubt existed in anyone’s mind of Una’s position inside society, the company, and the Tappet family, it would have been cleared up then with a bang. The outpouring was massive and the turnout for the ceremony, in the thousands.
The family flew with the body to Jamaica and Clara was finally laid to rest on the sixteenth in a gravesite near her own mother in a village just outside Kingston, but we didn’t stay in Jamaica as I had hoped, but immediately returned to our regular lives. I was starting to realize, the heat at Tappets, had been turned up to high, but didn’t know why.
Two months later, Monday, September 15, I flew with Hiroyuki and Bill to Japan to visit Tappet’s Integrated Products Plant in Tokyo, run under the Factory Bright banner. We toured the Integrated Industrial Park. Tappets didn’t own the land nor even most of the companies leased there. It was a huge structural monstrosity connected by bright yellow underground corridors. Nana Sumo and James Nasuko were our guides. Nana, a young Japanese translator with a pretty figure, black hair, and brown eyes, had a reputation of being a witty conversationalist in either language, but I didn’t care about that, I was so randy I could hardly keep my eyes off her and only hoped Hiroyuki didn’t notice my flirting.
Sally had started sleeping with Lloyd and I wanted to return fired so badly that I could hardly control myself. Nana had come to Tappets by way of her father, the vice-president of Sursheita, the quality products division, and the way she smiled at me, I thought she was willing to give it a go. I quickly grew fond of her sense of humor and her ability to keep on reassuring me with her eyes that I wasn’t misreading her.
James Nasuko, a short and young Japanese man, managed the plant. His suit fit perfectly and he wore his hair short, almost a fifty’s style. His eyeglasses accorded him more years than he had and I realized that he wore them for that reason. “My hotel room is at the Meredith on the shore-view,” I said making conversation with Nana as we walked along, “I’ve a room which faces the bay.”
She came closer and lowered her voice. “I’d like to see it.”
For a moment, I’d to take deep breaths to calm myself. The thought of real sex with a female executive inside Tappets to revenge myself against Sally seemed impossibly good. Also, it seemed that I’d never just had sex with somebody in a natural way. With Lloyd, I’d been raped. With Sally, I’d been a kid. The two Koreans were working girls and there had been payment. With the few in between, it had been casual college sex. I wasn’t sure I could even do it on my own with a full mature female. It seemed suddenly rather difficult; what if I failed to please her? I found myself standing all excited about sex next to Hiroyuki in the main auditorium with another Stanroid, John Admen. The crowd before us numbered nearly a thousand, sitting on fold out chairs. John was Stan’s age, also with a full head of grey hair, weighing over two hundred pounds and standing at approximately six-feet tall. He’d a slight belly, but really not too noticeable. Like most of Stan’s war buddies, he smoked and his skin was grey because of it. I’d never seen the man tanned. I don’t think he liked the sun. I knew he was an ardent defender of Stan’s policies, like Ken Roxton, and one of the Tappet’s most loyal and longest standing branch presidents. I looked around to find Nana just behind us. She smiled, and with every bit of my will, I smiled back. When lust fills a man’s heart, it’s hard to smile. It’s almost like being aggravated or angry. You’re like a wolf, and my excitement just wouldn’t recede.
“So what do you think?” John asked, catching me totally distracted. “Did they show you which of the new lines are produced here?” I nodded. He turned to Hiro. “Mr. Nakamura, are you ready to start your speech?” Hiro nodded. “Are you ready with your father’s,” he said to me. I nodded as well. “Well you go first, young man.”
Stan’s speech was short and Nana would translate it from a copy she held. It was a piece of cake. I stepped up to the podium and looked at the crowd. I looked over and scanned Nana’s body. I felt like a complete beast, and sexual excitement lasted through my whole speech. It went on to talk about excellence in production, honesty at work, and pride in a job well done. It sounded inspirational to my ears, and in ten minutes, I’d finished. It had been sheer Stan Tappet, 100%, laced though with my sexual longing. The manufacturing of refrigerators and toaster ovens, had never sounded so seductive.
Stan once told me that if you can make capitalism sound like socialism, the people will embrace it. I’m sure I’d made it sound like getting laid. It was dramatic, liberal, and most importantly, like sex, full of vague promises. Afterwards, we toured the factory floor itself, and when I came to the assembly line where over a hundred employees gathered. They stopped the line and clapped. Both Hiro and I solemnly bowed. I realized they expected greatness of Tappets over the long path of their futures. My goal in life had become to take over Tappets with Sally and make it the number one company in the world.
“You seem lost in thought,” Nana whispered to me as the proceedings finished. “Was it something I said?”
“Do you think we can sneak out of here?” She giggled but didn’t look hopeful. “Mr. Nakamura,” I said, “Would you mind if I took the translator and left.”
Without smiling at my joke, and with a penetrating yet inscrutable expression, he nodded. I turned heels and left with Nana before he changed his mind. When we got to the car, I kissed her and felt great relief when she kissed me back. We stopped on the way to buy condoms and everything went very well in the hotel room. Her body was flawless and much different than any I remembered; it was smaller, softer, and her skin smoother and darker. She smelled of flowers and baby powder.
I took her out that night and we had a great time. I returned home the next day with Hiro and felt happy, but within the next month, I discovered Nana was engaged to be married to an older Japanese man of some standing in Tokyo. I also discovered Sally was sleeping with Lloyd more than casually. These two things put me into a funk.
We soon finished the
Tonal-Flex audit and moved along to Tay Mines. This took much traveling. Afterwards, we audited Tappet-Tapes, Nexus, Constant Batteries, Tappet Holdings, and finally, Tappet Electronics. I’d studied the reports sober, tired, focused, drunk on wine, while eating, hungry, and I’m sure, in my dreams, and after a year and half, April 10, 1987, I visited Hiro in his office with Bill Stanton at my side, to present my analysis. I’d delivered a one-hundred-and-thirty page report and had condensed it down to a few pages of pointers. Hiro indicated that we sit on couches near the windows which overlooked the Hudson. His secretary served us coffee and left.
“What’s discussed here today,” he said in a soft voice, “is to remain completely confidential, until I say so. Okay Christian, go ahead.”
“The flow of currency,” I said, “credits, bond funds, resources, employees, and just about everything else in Tappets, has merged the divisions into one giant cross-pollinating organism, so, a thing like this is hard to uncover. At least it was for me. I first couldn’t see anything wrong at all. Whoever’s behind it, has disguised it well. Let me tell you how it works. Money which eventually would have gone for stock-dividends was hid as a profit-ulterior-event such as acquisition, real-estate, and other expenses, which was then purchased, but never in the quantities reported. Hand in hand with this is the quite-startling fact that the books were cooked, but not enough to raise any alarms. The difference in shrink, loss of goods in theft, and other factors were exaggerated. When I cross-compared outside Tappets, our costs never matched other companies day to day losses.
“This long-term process of constantly skimping profit was done on such a massive scale with so many people involved, that this report can’t conclusively say who knows, who’s involved, and who’s just playing along. Our short list though, includes, Gordon Whitley and others at Tay Mines and Tappet Holdings, Graham Roberts and others at Constant Batteries, Donna Wader and others at Mutual Real Estate, Kyoto Takeshi and others at Sursheita, Cheryl Garland and others at Nexus, and finally, Jack Denison. He’s the reason I believe that this goes back decades. He has covered up for a long time any clarification request from my parents with elaborate excuses.”
Stealing Flowers Page 23