by Stuart Woods
—
MARISA WAS PUNCTUAL; the bell rang as the second hand reached the top of the clock. Stone let her in the front door, and they kissed lightly.
“So far, so good,” she said. “I like the flowers planted outside—not what you’d expect from a born-again bachelor.”
He led her into the living room, where she stopped and performed a slow 360-degree turn. “This is you, but not entirely you,” she said. “I see a little of an older person. How did you come by this house?”
“I think perhaps I’d better get us a drink before I tell you that story because it’s a few paragraphs long.”
She followed him into the study, looking carefully around.
“What would you like to drink?”
“What was that stuff you asked me for last evening?”
“Knob Creek bourbon.”
“Some of that, please, and put this in your freezer.” She reached into one of her two commodious handbags and extracted a bottle of Akvavit. “For future occasions.”
“Certainly,” he said, opening the door and inserting it, then he poured them both a Knob Creek.
She sniffed it, then had a taste, smacking her lips. “Not as bad as I thought it would be,” she said.
“I’ll let Kentucky know you said so. In addition to being sexually liberated, Swedes are also frank.”
“Germans are frank,” she said. “Swedes are candid.”
“I see.”
“Are these your mother’s paintings?”
“They are. You’re very well informed.”
“I am a researcher by nature.”
“Is that a Swedish trait?”
She took a chair. “More a personal one.”
Stone sat beside her. “You were born and raised in New York, right?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get to be so Swedish?”
“By way of genetics, since both my parents are Swedish, and by nature, acquired in my summers in that country as a girl. I had many opportunities to compare, and I found Swedes to be better role models than Americans.”
“In what ways?”
“First, you were going to tell me the story of how you acquired this house.”
“Ah. By a rather torturous route. My parents were natives of western Massachusetts, where their own parents were engaged in the weaving of woolen cloth, on rather a large scale. The two families were close, and by the time they were teenagers, my father and mother were deeply in love, somewhat to the alarm of their respective parents.”
“Too young?”
“That, and my father’s ambitions. He was destined for the law at Yale, where generations of Barringtons had matriculated, but he wanted more than anything to be a carpenter and a maker of furniture, which they considered to be beneath their station in life. Then there was the subject of his social and political views.”
“Which were?”
“Probably more Swedish than American—very left-leaning. The two young people were forbidden to marry. By this time my father was professing communism, in its purer form. This caused my father’s parents to disown him.”
“How harsh!”
“It was. Then they eloped, and my mother was disowned by her parents for marrying my father, and the schism was complete. They moved to Greenwich Village, where my mother’s gift for painting blossomed, and my father became a handyman, calling door-to-door at people’s houses, toting his toolbox, seeking work and finding enough to allow him to, eventually, acquire his own woodworking shop and to begin thinking about having me. During those early years they were secretly helped along by my maternal grandmother’s widowed sister, her aunt Eloise, who owned and lived in this house.
“Eloise helped them most by commissioning my father to make all the doors, bookcases, and wood furniture for the house, over a period of years. It became a showcase for him and allowed him to add the word ‘designer’ to his job title. When Aunt Eloise died, in her nineties, she willed the house to me.”
“How lovely!”
“It was lovely, but in her later years the infrastructure had aged along with her, so a very thorough renovation was required, and having trained at my father’s knee, I did much of the work myself, getting into considerable debt along the way.
“Then, when I was rescued from the NYPD by Woodman & Weld, I earned enough to pay off the debt and complete the job. Recently, the smaller house next door was for sale, and I bought it to house my secretary, housekeeper, and butler.”
“You have a butler?”
“Yes, he was originally a gift from a French friend of mine, who sent him to me for a year, then I hired him. His name is Fred, and you’ll meet him when he drives us to dinner.”
“This bourbon drink is getting better,” she said, glancing at her watch, “but I think we should have our second one at the restaurant.”
“Ever punctual,” Stone said, ringing for Fred.
14
Fred dropped them at Patroon, and they found Dino and Viv waiting for them. “Marisa, you remember Dino and Viv from our dinner in Maine.”
“Of course,” Marisa replied, shaking their hands and sitting.
“I ordered you both a Knob Creek,” Dino said.
“Then it’s a good thing that Marisa is a new convert to bourbon, or I’d have to drink it myself.”
“You’ll get around to it anyway.”
“Marisa,” Viv said, “you spoke so little at our introductory dinner that we hardly got to know you. I’m glad you’re here tonight, so we can make up for that.”
“You are very kind,” Marisa replied.
Their drinks arrived.
“Skoal,” Dino said, and they raised their glasses.
“By the way,” Viv said to Marisa, “I’m personally handling your security, so please call me if there’s something you’d like changed.” She pushed her business card across the table. “Our company name is Strategic Services.”
“Security?” Marisa asked. “What does that mean?”
“People with guns,” Viv replied, “except when you’re with Stone.”
“Do you have a gun?” Marisa asked Stone.
“I do.”
“I don’t see it.”
“It’s cleverly concealed.”
“This is all very un-Swedish,” she replied.
“You’re in New York, not Stockholm,” Viv said. “Sometimes we have to take precautions.”
Stone pushed her drink at her. “It will be easier to tolerate once you’ve had a drink.”
She laughed and took a big swig of the bourbon.
“You see?” Stone said. “She’s thoroughly acclimated.”
“What does this ‘security’ entail, besides men with guns?”
“You, your father and two brothers will have two people each,” Viv said. “I’ve arranged for both of yours to be women—it makes things less tense in the ladies’ room.”
“Also,” Stone said, “except when Fred is driving us, when you leave the clinic you will always travel in a Strategic Services car.”
“Is all this really necessary?”
“We very much hope not,” Viv said, “but we must, in the circumstances, be prepared should it become necessary.”
“For how long?”
“At least until the stock buyout is complete,” Stone said. “Perhaps a bit longer.”
“Is doing business always this dangerous?”
“It’s not about business,” Stone said, “it’s about the ego of one man, a fellow called Erik Macher, who recently took charge of St. Clair Enterprises after the untimely death of Christian St. Clair.”
“Untimely? Does that mean violent?”
“Unfortunately, yes. He opened a package that contained a bomb.”
“Who sent the bomb?”
“It was an integral part of the package and would have been safe, if he had known the procedure for opening it.”
“I’m sorry, none of this makes any sense at all,” Marisa said. “Perhaps we should
change the subject.”
“Willingly,” Stone said. “Marisa was brought up in both New York and in Sweden, and she takes the Swedish part to heart, especially about being candid.”
“Are the rumors true about Swedish women?” Dino asked.
Viv kicked him under the table.
“What? I’m just curious.”
“The rumors are all true, Dino,” Marisa said. “But Stone and I have already got over that hump.” She caught herself. “So to speak.”
Everybody laughed, and what with the drinks, all tensions disappeared.
—
FRED DROVE THEM HOME, and Stone took Marisa up in the elevator to the master suite. “The intervening floors are guest quarters,” Stone explained.
“I hope I’m not being relegated to a guest room.”
“Certainly not!” The elevator door opened and he led her to the master suite.
“Oh, this is very nice! And I get my own dressing room and bath?”
“You do,” Stone said, placing her bag inside.
“Does this mean we can’t undress together?” she asked. “I like watching you undress.”
“You are welcome in my dressing room anytime,” Stone said. “It’s right over there.” He pointed.
She stepped inside her dressing room and undressed, emerging quite naked. “I didn’t bring a nightgown,” she said.
“That’s just fine. I would only have to remove it, anyway.” He stepped into his dressing room and took his clothes off, while she watched approvingly.
“I think we are a good match,” she said. “Everything is the right size—you, me, everything.”
Stone led her to the bed and pulled back the covers. “Let’s see how we fit together.”
And they did.
—
THE FOLLOWING MORNING she woke him, and they made love before breakfast, then again, afterward.
They lay on their backs, panting and perspiring.
“It’s a good thing you have to go to work,” Stone said. “I’m not sure I could survive your day off.”
She laughed. “You underestimate yourself.”
“You may overestimate me.”
“We shall see.”
—
WHEN THEY HAD dressed, he walked her downstairs and had a good look around the neighborhood, then put her into the waiting Bentley, and Fred drove off with her.
Stone went to his office, through the outside entrance, passing Joan’s desk on the way. “For future reference,” he said, “there are four Dr. Carlssons—Paul, the father; Nihls and Sven, the brothers; and Marisa.”
“I’ll make a note of that,” she said. “I suppose we’ll be seeing a lot of Marisa.”
“We will,” Stone said, then went to his desk and pretended to be an attorney for the rest of the morning.
—
SHORTLY BEFORE LUNCH, he got a call from Ed Rawls. “Good morning, Stone.”
“Good morning, Ed.”
“I am reliably informed that news of the counter offer for the stock has reached the ears of Erik Macher—almost as soon as it reached the stockholders.”
“I believe we are ready for him,” Stone said.
“I hope to God you’re right,” Ed said, then hung up.
15
Erik Macher read the note on his desk. He hammered his fist on the buttons before him, and people appeared from everywhere.
“What the hell is this?” he demanded of them.
Glances were exchanged, then a young man got brave. “It’s in this morning’s Wall Street Journal,” he said.
Macher grabbed the unread paper on his desk and saw the front-page headline. “Someone has offered fifty percent more than our offer?”
“The Carlsson family has made the offer,” the young man said.
“What is your name?”
“Charles Fox,” he replied.
“How can we stop this?”
“We can’t stop it,” Fox said, “we can only outbid them.”
“I had figured on a twenty-five percent increase, if we encountered opposition among the stockholders,” Macher said, “but fifty percent?”
“You could offer seventy-five percent more.”
“Not a chance!”
“Well, the article does quote an unnamed source as saying that they are likely to get enough shares from this offer for the family to hold a majority, as they once did.”
“Is the clinic worth seventy-five percent more?”
“Perhaps,” Fox said, “but if you offer that, the clinic could still top it. It’s probably worth more to the family than to St. Clair.”
“Such a prestigious name, though.”
“The article says that stockholders will receive the offer this morning, and that the Carlssons have included a FedEx return envelope, so if they respond quickly, there may not even be time to increase our offer.”
“But our offer doesn’t expire for, what, another two or three weeks?”
“It doesn’t matter, they don’t have to respond. They can just take the Carlssons’ offer.”
Macher was visibly fuming. “What should I do?”
Fox kept quiet.
“Well?”
“Perhaps look for another investment,” Fox said at last.
“How long have you been here, Fox?”
“Mr. St. Clair hired me two weeks before he … left us.”
“Why shouldn’t I bid higher?”
“Mr. St. Clair acted unilaterally,” Fox said, “as I’m told he often did. I’ve checked, and we don’t have any documents that would substantiate what the clinic is worth. Either he had inside information, or he just made a guess. An increase in your offer might do it, or it might not—it’s a toss-up.”
Macher thought about it; he did not relish telling the board that he had gambled on a guess about the value of the clinic.
“In the circumstances, it’s possible,” Fox said, “that the clinic isn’t worth what Mr. St. Clair bid for it. We have no way of knowing.”
“What did St. Clair hire you to do?” Macher asked.
“I think just as a general executive. I’ve been working at Goldman Sachs since college.”
“Were you a partner?”
“Yes, but his offer was so good, I took it.”
“What are we paying you?”
Fox told him.
Macher was impressed; this kid was earning almost as much as he was before his ascension to CEO. “Well,” he said, “you’d better earn it. Get out of here, Fox.”
—
CHARLES FOX left the room and returned to his office next door. He was glad Macher had not grilled him on his job before Goldman Sachs. He closed his office door, sat down at his desk, removed a burner cell phone from a desk drawer, and pressed a button.
“I’m here,” Ed Rawls said.
“I thought you’d like to know that Macher read the Journal piece and hit the roof.”
“What do you think he’ll do?”
“I’m not sure, but he may just drop out. In any case, by tomorrow the Carlssons could have a majority again. I did what I could to discourage a better offer, but he could jump either way. I don’t know him well enough to predict his actions.”
“Thanks, kid. Keep in touch.”
“Sure.” Fox hung up. Christian St. Clair had promised him the moon to get him away from Goldman Sachs, but as far as he could tell, St. Clair had not mentioned his hiring to anyone else, let alone told them about the promises he had made to him. Fox had expected to be running the place in a year or two, but now Macher sat where he wanted to sit, and he was going to have to get the man out before he could advance.
—
ED RAWLS IMMEDIATELY called Stone Barrington and told him what he’d learned.
“That’s good news,” Stone said. “I’m glad we rushed the offer. This guy of yours must be very well placed.”
“He is very well placed, indeed,” Ed said.
“Come on, Ed, tell me his name. If you walk in
front of a bus I don’t want to lose the guy.”
“I don’t want you communicating with him directly,” Rawls said.
“I promise not to without your permission, or until you turn up your toes.”
“I’ll think about it,” Ed said.
“Is your line of communication two-way?”
“It is. Either of us can communicate at will. I should also mention that he has an ‘in’ at the Wall Street Journal. That’s how the story got on the front page this morning.”
“What story?” Stone asked.
“Read the paper.” Rawls hung up.
Stone found his copy and read the story. Oh, this was good; Macher must have choked on his breakfast when he saw this. He called Paul Carlsson.
“Good morning, Stone.”
“Good morning, Paul. Have you read the Wall Street Journal this morning?”
“I have. I assume you planted the story.”
“I wish I’d thought of it, but I didn’t.”
“Then who did?”
“An acquaintance of an acquaintance of mine.”
“I take it you don’t want to tell me who.”
“It’s not someone you know in any case. Suffice it to say he has at least one friend at St. Clair Enterprises.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, it’s all third party.”
“I must admit, Stone, I’m anxious about the counter offer.”
“We should have some idea of how we’re doing when FedEx delivers tomorrow morning,” Stone replied.
“I’ll try and be patient,” Paul said.
“So will I.” They said goodbye and hung up.
16
Stone was at his desk the following morning when Joan buzzed. “The elder, male Dr. Carlsson on one.”
He pressed the button. “Yes, Paul?”
“Good morning, Stone.”
“Good morning.”
“FedEx delivered half an hour ago, and about half the stockholders have accepted. Their checks are being written as we speak. We now own fifty-three percent of the clinic, and of course there could be more tomorrow.”
“Congratulations, Paul.”
“Thank you. May we now dispense with the armed guards?”
“No, you may not. This may set Macher off. Let’s look at it again in a week.”
“Thank you again, Stone.”
“You are entirely welcome.”
“I promise you, the family will never again own less than fifty percent of the stock.”