Cash McCall

by Cameron Hawley

  “Before I leave,” she said, “would you give me some literature on trips around the world?”

  “After Fiascherino?”

  “For my mother and father.”

  Again there was the murmur of his pleasure and the soft glow of approval in his eyes.

  9

  Cash McCall put his napkin beside his empty dessert plate. “Yes, the food here is good. Max is an excellent chef. More coffee?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Gil preceded him into the living room, hoping that now at last there would be a return to the subject that had been so pointedly avoided all during the luncheon. Their conversation, guided by McCall’s rather astounding scope of interest, had ranged all the way from trout fishing to the philosophy of Santayana, from Al Capp to Hemingway, from Purdey shotguns to springer spaniels, but not once had there been a mention of either the Suffolk Moulding Company or the job that Cash McCall had in mind for him.

  The gray clouds outside had thinned and the soft glow of mist-screened sunlight came in through the small-paned windows.

  “Well, what do you think?” McCall asked, his back to the windows, the expression on his face hidden by concealing shadows.

  “About what?”

  “Going to work for me.”

  Gil Clark’s smile came freely, not forced against caution as it would have been an hour ago. “As far as I can see, I have been working for you for some time now.”

  “This wouldn’t be quite the same. You’d leave Corporation Associates.”

  “I’m afraid I’m a little vague about what my job would be.”

  “I’m a little vague myself,” McCall admitted, dropping to the edge of the couch, sprawling his long legs out across the floor. “It would depend on developments. I told you before that I was a dealer in secondhand companies.”

  “Yes.”

  McCall leaned back like a lazily stretching animal, his extended hand picking a thick packet of papers from a shelf behind the couch. “Here’s this week’s crop of reports on companies that can be bought. One of your jobs would be to screen them. When you found one that appeared to offer interesting possibilities, you’d dig in and make a preliminary survey.”

  “I see,” Gil said, disappointed that what McCall had in mind seemed to offer nothing that might lead toward a continued association with the Suffolk Moulding Company.

  “Apparently that doesn’t interest you,” McCall said.

  “I wouldn’t say that it doesn’t interest me,” he said, feeling again that transparency of thought that had bothered him before lunch, McCall’s apparent ability to read anything that was in his mind.

  “It wouldn’t be too different from your present work, would it?” McCall asked. “I am right, that’s what you do now, isn’t it—go into a company and try to find out what’s wrong with it?”

  “Yes, that’s usually the starting point.”

  “That would be the starting point for us, too. When a company is for sale, there’s always a reason, always something wrong. The first order of business is to find out what that something is.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Sometimes it’s a situation that has nothing to do with the company itself—some special circumstance that makes the owner want to sell. These days, it’s usually taxes. If that’s the case, we explore the owner’s tax situation and work out some kind of deal that will solve his problem.”

  “I understand.”

  Cash McCall snapped a light to a cigarette. “Sometimes the company is in trouble. Then we have to decide now much overhauling it would take to put the property in salable condition. Often there’s nothing more needed than a thorough housecleaning—sweep out the dry rot, wash the windows, polish the door handle and invite the right buyer to come over and have a look.”

  “You make it sound easy,” Gil said, violating his resolution to make no further comment but feeling himself forced to break the silence of McCall’s expectant pause.

  A veil of cigarette smoke floated lazily upward from Cash McCall’s lips. “That’s the whole trouble, Gil. In a good many cases it’s too easy. All you wind up with is a chunk of money.”

  “I can think of worse things to wind up with,” Gil smiled.

  “But it’s like trout fishing, Gil. It’s easy enough to make money—like catching trout with worms—but once you’ve graduated to dry flies you lose your taste for worm fishing.”

  “I suppose that’s right,” Gil said uncertainly, unable to believe that Cash McCall had intended the simile to be taken seriously.

  “Does that make me sound like a conceited ass—saying that money is easy to make?”

  Denial threatened to make him sound naïve. “Well, I wouldn’t say that there’d be too many people who’d agree with you.”

  “That’s exactly what makes it so easy—there’s so little competition. Most people have been raised to believe in the old copybook maxims about hard work and frugality. They’ve had it dinned into them since childhood that money’s something that has to be grubbed out, a penny at a time.”

  “I guess I’m one of those people that were raised on the maxims. I’ve known there were ways to make big money but—”

  “But you never realized how easy it was?” McCall supposed.

  “If you’re smart enough to do it.”

  “You don’t even have to be very smart.”

  “I’d argue about that.”

  “No, Gil, it’s easy. The tax structure these days sets things up like pins in a bowling alley. Look—” He sat up and leaned forward, elbows on his knees “—the only way the owner of a small company can cash in these days is to sell out. Isn’t that Austen’s situation?”

  “Of course,” Gil agreed, suddenly realizing that he had momentarily forgotten Grant Austen and the Suffolk Moulding Company.

  “And because of the tax situation the country is full of Austens,” McCall went on, gesturing toward the pile of letters and reports. “There are hundreds of companies for sale, thousands of them.”

  “I know.”

  “And the same tax setup that makes it advantageous for the small company to sell out makes it equally desirable for a big corporation to buy—especially if the companies can be merged to improve the tax base.”

  For an instant, Gil’s mind reverted to the train of thought it had followed on the way to the hotel.

  McCall smiled, mind reading again. “I don’t make the rules, Gil. I only play the game. I never thought much of the kick-for-point after touchdown, either, but as long as it’s in the rule book, that’s the way the game is played.”

  “I suppose so,” Gil said. “But the situation is sure to change. There’ll be a revision of the tax laws one of these days.”

  McCall agreed readily. “Yes, there’ll be some new rules, but it’ll still be essentially the same game. It’s gone on from time immemorial. There’s never been a period in our history, even at the bottom of the depression, when there weren’t men who were making money by the very simple process of buying a company in which someone had lost faith and selling it to someone else who could be made to have faith in it. That’s my business, Gil—and I get a wallop out of it. I think you would, too. That’s why I’ve called you in. I’d like to tackle something bigger than anything I’ve done up to now. If I do, I’ll need some help—an extra pair of hands, someone to feed me ideas, follow through on detail, pick up the ball when I fumble, warn me if I’m about to commit a foul.”

  “That sounds like quite an assignment,” Gil heard himself say, his brain occupied with the thought that what Cash McCall had in mind eliminated all hope that he might work his way into the management of the Suffolk Moulding Company. Disappointment impelled him to ask, somewhat incongruously, “Is that what you have in mind for Suffolk Moulding—to buy it and then sell it?”

  An oddly unreadable expression came to McCall’s face. “I’m not certain that I have anything in mind for Suffolk Moulding.”

  “But I thought from what Mr. Glen
n said that you were interested in buying it—at least that you were at one time.”

  “Yes, at one time. But it was never anything more than a hunch. It just happened that I—”

  Gil had momentarily looked away, but the abrupt break in McCall’s easily flowing voice made him turn back to sense, more than actually see, what seemed to have been a glance toward Lory Austen’s drawing on the wall.

  “What’s your size-up of Suffolk?” McCall asked abruptly.

  Gil was caught off balance. “Well, I—I think it’s a fine company. There are some things about it that—but there’s nothing wrong with Suffolk Moulding that couldn’t be corrected with the right kind of management.”

  “Suppose you were managing it,” McCall bored in. “What would your approach be?”

  He averted his eyes, anxious not to betray the resurrection of his hope.

  “I thought you might have some ideas,” McCall pressed.

  The challenge was unmistakable and Gil rose to it. “I do. Basically what needs to be done is—I don’t know how familiar you are with the molding business but—”

  “Assume that I know nothing,” Cash McCall cut in, lounging back on the couch again. “Go ahead and give me the story.”

  He hesitated, hurriedly collecting usable sentences and phrases out of all the reports. “Well, as you probably know, Suffolk Moulding is one of the oldest molding plants in the country. All of the business is what we call custom molding—making molded plastic parts that are used by manufacturers of finished products.”

  “Like the cabinets for Andscott television sets,” McCall supplied.

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, that’s—well, that’s the whole issue right now.”

  “How so?”

  “Well—”

  “I’m sorry. Don’t let me throw you off the track. Go ahead and give me the background.”

  “Well, there is some background. You see, in the old days Suffolk got most of its business on difficult jobs that required a lot of development work—the kind of molding problems that no one else would tackle. One of the big electric companies, for example, might have its own molding plant, but if they’d run into something that was way off the beaten track, they’d turn it over to Suffolk. A good many times it would mean working out some entirely new production technique or inventing a new kind of a mold. It might even involve building a special press.”

  “Suffolk built those molds and presses itself?”

  “Built the molds and did the development work on the presses. The special presses were usually built by Hartzell-Bauer, but Suffolk did all the engineering.”

  “By Suffolk you mean Grant Austen?”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Gil said, aware that he had made his words sound like a too-reluctant admission. “That was before my time, of course—I can’t speak from personal experience—but, yes, I’d say that Austen was the sparkplug. Apparently he was a good engineer and a clever development man. I know, for example—well, Christiansen of Cavalier Chemical told me one time that some years ago they used the Suffolk Moulding plant almost as if it were their own laboratory—trying new materials, working out the processing bugs, setting production standards, that sort of thing.”

  “And it was Austen who made the place tick?”

  “But there were a lot of other good men around the place, too. Still are, especially in the tool shop.”

  “But the nature of the business itself has changed?”

  “Yes, pretty much. You see, all through the war Suffolk ran chockablock with straight production orders, long runs that racked up a lot of profit without much effort or worry.”

  “And after the war was over, Austen couldn’t get back in the old groove,” McCall supplied. “Or at least he didn’t want to.”

  “That’s about it,” Gil agreed. “By the time I got on the account in ’48, he’d already taken a big Andscott contract at far too low a price. Of course, he excused himself by saying that it absorbed overhead. I’ve battled that until I’m blue in the face. That’s been his excuse for taking all this Andscott business—absorbing overhead.”

  “And now he’s gotten himself in a spot where Andscott is about to absorb the business.”

  “Exactly.” Gil let his thoughts race ahead of his words, preparing an explanation of the Andscott threat that would be honestly factual, yet not too discouraging, and he was caught unaware when Cash McCall suddenly asked, “Does this man Bronson know that Austen is planning to sell?”

  “Paul Bronson? Well, no I don’t think—at least I’m almost certain that he didn’t know when I talked to him yesterday morning.”

  Cash McCall seemed amused. “He’s down here today talking to Andscott about a job.”

  Surprised, Gil said, “Then maybe he does know.”

  “At least it seems to confirm your theory that there’s a deal on,” McCall said. “Might even be wrapped up by now.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it isn’t. I talked to Grant Austen just before I came up here and he gave me a definite promise that he wouldn’t do anything until he talked to me. But it may mean—” He stopped, recognizing the danger of appearing to high-pressure Cash McCall into a fast move, and finished weakly, “I met him downstairs. He’s here in the hotel having lunch with Atherson of the Freeholders Bank.”

  “I may have to move fast if I’m interested, is that it?”

  Gil nodded, impressed again with Cash McCall’s clairvoyance.

  “If I’m interested,” McCall said, suddenly standing. “Frankly, I don’t know whether I am or not.” He walked the length of the room. “You think it’s a good property, don’t you?”

  “Well, that would depend on what you’d have to pay for it,” Gil said, weighing words. “If it could be bought at the right price—and if you could get the right kind of management—well, I’m sure it could be operated at a very handsome profit.”

  McCall swung around sharply. “I thought you understood. I don’t buy companies to operate. I buy them to sell. I’ll let someone else do the operating.”

  A protest leaped to Gil Clark’s lips but Cash McCall’s voice blocked it. “Look, Gil—you like that company and you think Austen has made a mess of it. You think you could take over and square it away. You probably could. But what would you have when you got through? No more than Austen had ten years ago—a nice little company that can get about so big and no bigger.”

  “But it could be built into—”

  “That’s what Austen thought,” Cash McCall snapped. “That’s what the owner of every little one-man business thinks—that he can go on building and building and building. More often than not, he doesn’t think. He just goes on hoping and dreaming, believing in the American legend. Once in a while someone makes it, but not often any more. Successful companies come in two sizes these days—small and large. It’s the medium-sized ones that have the tough go—too big to be handled with one-man management, not big enough to support a real organization. You have to find some way to jump that middle period, Gil, and it’s getting tougher to make the jump all the time. Austen sees that. That’s what’s taken the steam out of him. And it’s no unusual situation. I know a hundred Grant Austens. The country is full of them.”

  Gil Clark found it difficult to accept that too-simple excusing of Grant Austen’s fumbling mismanagement of the Suffolk Moulding Company.

  “I know what you’ve been up against with him,” Cash McCall went on. “It’s a frustrating experience to try to work with a man like that. Makes you want to shove over on the seat and take the wheel out of his hands. But believe me, Gil, you’d be just as frustrated if you did. Suffolk Moulding is about as big as it can get under one-man management. Oh, I don’t say that the profit margin couldn’t be improved a little. It could. But beyond that—” He shook his head. “It’s a rough go, Gil—trying to make that big jump the slow way.”

  “But there has to be some way. After all, small companies do grow into—”

  “Yes, there’s a way. You take the jump in on
e leap—make a big one out of a bunch of little ones.”

  “You mean merge them?”

  “Of course. Isn’t that the way most companies have gotten up the ladder—at least in the last twenty years?”

  “But doesn’t it depend on the kind of business?” Gil countered, feeling solider ground under his feet as he remembered a study he had made last year. “It might be possible, of course, to merge several molding companies, but it’s hard to see how there would be enough advantage to—”

  “I like your other idea better.”

  “Other idea?”

  “Cavalier Chemical.”

  Gil Clark felt himself completely in the dark, in no way enlightened when Cash McCall said approvingly, “That’s exactly the kind of help I want from you, Gil. The Cavalier idea never occurred to me until you mentioned it.” He had crossed the length of the room again and, leaning down, opened a drawer in the cabinet under the bookshelves. Running his hand over the jutting index tabs, he pulled out an inch-thick volume bound in a limp imitation-leather cover. “Just happens that I have a report here on Cavalier Chemical. It’s one of the companies I’ve been watching.”

  Gil saw, before the drawer was closed, that it was packed with similar reports.

  Cash McCall riffled pages, stopping now and then to read briefly, finally locating what seemed to be the object of his search. He slumped down on the couch again, tossing aside the heavy report. “How much do you know about Cavalier Chemical?”

  “Well, not much—except that they produce plastic molding materials. I’ve met Christiansen several times. He’s one of their top men on research. Suffolk uses a lot of their stuff—and, as I said a minute ago, Cavalier used to do development work down at Suffolk.”

  “Yes, that’s the point I’d missed.” Cash McCall stood again, pacing the length of the room. “Let’s think out loud for a minute. But you need a little background that you don’t have. Back in ’48, I happened to pick up the Eagle Harbor Paper Company—had a mill up in Maine. That was the start of Paper Enterprises, the company that bought your uncle’s publishing house. Eagle Harbor had a small subsidiary—Diviso Fiber—that owned a process for fibrating wood. The product it produced was too expensive for papermaking, but I put Aurora Laboratories on the job and they found that the fiber had some special characteristics that made it highly desirable for use in phenolic molding compounds. I eventually sold Diviso to Cavalier Chemical. That’s what originally sparked my interest in the company. Since then I’ve followed it rather closely.”