Cash McCall

by Cameron Hawley

  He tried now to find relief in knowing that the burden of the decision could be shifted to Cash McCall, but he could not blank his mind to the bad personal impression that he himself must be making, still seeing the image of his face in the bathroom mirror, haggard and red-eyed, unshaven, the frayed collar of his old flannel bathrobe. A quick eye-sweep took in the room, seeing it as Cash McCall must be seeing it—the tangled ragheap of the bed, the scatter of clothing, a pair of soggy socks coiled blackly on the threadbare carpet.

  Cash McCall came into the room. “This place is really a dump, isn’t it?”

  “Well, it’s not the Ivanhoe,” Gil said, attempting lightness to cover his embarrassed retrieving of the pair of shorts that, aimlessly tossed last night, were now hanging from the spear-headed bedpost. “There’s not much choice—only hotel in town.”

  “Funny thing,” McCall said, sniffing. “Every old hotel always has this same odor. You even catch a whiff of it now and then around the back halls of the Ivanhoe. Strange how they all manage to stew up the same smell.”

  Gil turned nervously to the window. “Guess I ought to get some air in here—so fagged when I turned in last night that I forgot to open—”

  The sash stuck and then, suddenly releasing, sent him sprawling awkwardly across the window sill as the shade snapped to the top with a rifle shot report.

  “Take it easy, Gil,” Cash McCall laughed.

  The suggestion had an effect opposite to its obvious intention, making him even more acutely aware of how badly he was concealing his discomfiture, how horrifyingly inadequate he must seem to Cash McCall.

  “You look as if you’d had a bad night, Gil.”

  “Up a little late, that’s all.”

  “Didn’t get too much sleep myself.” Cash McCall’s eyes lifted to the top of the unshaded window. “Flew in from Chicago. Nice up there this morning. Clear as a bell all the way. Kind of morning that makes a man glad to be alive.”

  Gil nodded, conscious of the hypocrisy of agreement, then pointlessly diverted by recalling that there had been a B-26 in his nightmare.

  Cash said casually, “I gather from what Conway told me over the phone this morning that you’ve been having a little difficulty.”

  Gil felt a constriction in his throat, something to be swallowed, “I didn’t know that Mr. Conway knew how to get in touch with you. I’ve been trying all week, calling the Ivanhoe, but—”

  A fleeting expression on Cash McCall’s face made Gil wish that he had stopped to think before he had spoken, realizing now that he had lost stature by making himself sound petulantly complaining … a man who was worth twenty-five thousand a year didn’t belly-crawl.

  “It was I who called him,” McCall explained easily, “—when I touched down in Pittsburgh this morning for a cup of coffee. The old boy was grumpy as the devil about my waking him up at five-thirty. Said you’d had him up until after midnight.”

  “Yes, I—well, he had Austen in his room and I had to wait until after he left. I was working on the presentation for Cavalier and there were a couple of things that I wanted to clear.”

  “Cavalier?” McCall asked, vaguely, then nodding as if he had suddenly recalled an almost lost memory. “Forget that Cavalier idea, Gil. We can do better than that. What’s this trouble you’ve been having with Austen?”

  Cash McCall’s offhand dismissal of the possibility of a Cavalier-Suffolk merger was a tangling upset of every thought in Gil Clark’s mind. “Then you—you’ve got something else in mind—I mean if the Cavalier thing is out?”

  A screeching protest came from the wicker chair as Cash McCall sat down. “No, nothing in mind. But there’s plenty of time for that. What about this trouble with Austen? I gather that it had something to do with the transfer of stock to his daughter.”

  Gil cleared a place to sit on the edge of the bed, an excuse to flip the faded green cover over the snarl of gray sheets. “Yes—particularly the shares that were in the Manson estate.”

  “Manson was her grandfather?” McCall checked.

  “That’s right,” Gil said, composure partially regained. “Alvin T. Manson—Mrs. Austen’s father.”

  “As I got the story from Conway, there was a question about the manner in which Manson’s estate was probated.”

  “Yes—well, as Mr. Conway probably told you, Austen had given a block of stock to his father-in-law, supposedly with an agreement that it was to come back to Lory after Manson’s death. But there was nothing in writing and Manson died without a will. It did look a little shaky—the direct transfer of the stock to Lory—but Mr. Conway dug into it and he says everything is in the clear.”

  “The probate court accepted Austen’s story of the verbal agreement?”

  “Apparently—but as Mr. Conway says, it wouldn’t have made too much difference, one way or the other. Mrs. Austen was her father’s only heir so whether the stock went to her or her daughter was six of one and half a dozen of the other.”

  “Do you think Austen may have been a little fast on his feet?”

  His recognized prejudice against Grant Austen made Gil hesitate. “I don’t know. Possibly. But as far as Lory’s legal ownership of the stock is concerned—well, there doesn’t seem to be any question there.”

  “That isn’t all the stock she owns?”

  “Oh no. He’s been giving her stock for a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “Oh, it goes back quite a few years. He started with a block of five hundred shares when she was eighteen. Fortunately, there’s a record of that one so—”

  “Eighteen?” McCall interrupted. “How old is she now?”

  “Now?” Gil puzzled, trying to determine the pertinency of the question. “Well, let’s see—twenty-six or twenty-seven.”

  The odd flash of interest had already faded from Cash McCall’s face. “Go ahead, Gil—just hit the high spots.”

  He felt himself fumbling, his thought stream broken by the interruption. “Yes, well—no, I don’t suppose the detail is too important. The main point is that after that first five hundred shares he kept giving her more stock, several different blocks.”

  “Without compensating the corporation?”

  “He claims that he paid for it by leaving her dividends in the company.”

  “Can’t that be substantiated?”

  “Yes and no. The difficulty is that a lot of the corporate records are in pretty bad shape. There are some credits to the capital account but Thompson has been having trouble trying to make them check out with recorded declarations of dividends. You see, there are no minutes for some of the directors’ meetings. Austen admits that sometimes there actually weren’t any meetings.”

  McCall shrugged. “A directors’ meeting in a company like that is only a formality, anyway.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Wasn’t it, for all practical purposes, just a sole proprietorship? Or at most, a family partnership?”

  Gil held his answer to a silent nod, relieved, feeling now that he had finally achieved self-control, catching himself before he made the stupid error of trying to give Cash McCall a freshman business-law lecture on the difference between a sole proprietorship and an incorporated enterprise.

  The wicker chair creaked. “Was Austen really off base?”

  “Off base?”

  “Did he do anything wrong, either in the transfer of this stock to his daughter or this business of settling his father-in-law’s estate?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Morally wrong,” McCall emphasized. “Oh, I know he made a few legal fumbles—didn’t cross a few t’s and forgot to dot some i’s—but do you think he did anything wrong?”

  Gil Clark hesitated, less from nervousness than from the difficulty he always found in drawing a clear line through the twilight area between right and wrong. “I guess it’s one of those borderline cases,” he said carefully. “But, as Conway says, the only real question from our standpoint is establishment of the legal ownership
of Lory’s stock. That’s been cleared, so I guess there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “There’s been no change in the amount of stock that’s in Lory’s name?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Gil said, surprised by the question. “At least I haven’t heard about anything like that. I do know that Mr. Conway has worked out some kind of plan for Austen—paying some extra gift tax on a block of stock he gave her last year, something like that.”

  Preoccupied, Cash McCall sat looking out of the window, finally turning back to ask, “Are you in agreement with Conway’s proposal—the basis on which the final closing is set up? As I get it, we’re paying him an extra twenty thousand to cover the increased valuation since the first of the year.”

  Gil weighed his words. “Actually, it’s more than I felt was necessary, but Mr. Conway said that he was sure you’d want to settle on the generous side so I rode along—naturally.”

  “What about Austen? Is he satisfied?”

  “Satisfied? Of course. I’m sure that it was more than he expected.”

  “And Lory?”

  “Lory? Well, I took it for granted that her father was representing her interests, too, so—”

  “She hasn’t been in on any of your sessions?”

  “No, but I’m sure you don’t have to worry about the Austen family being satisfied. Why shouldn’t they be? Two million is a lot of money for—”

  The quick dart of Cash McCall’s eyes was a warning and Gil reacted instantly, letting his voice die off, then bracing himself for the consequence of having foolishly talked out of turn again.

  Surprisingly, Cash McCall smiled. “I know that I could have bought Suffolk Moulding for less, Gil. If I’d put the pressure on Austen, I might have squeezed the price down a couple hundred thousand dollars, perhaps more. I know that. And if it’s any consolation, Conway agrees with you that I was a fool to pay as much as I did.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that Mr. Conway—well, I know he admires the way—”

  Cash McCall had leaned forward, a strange smile playing around his deep blue eyes. “There’s only one way that I can get a wallop out of a deal like this, Gil. And that’s by knowing that I haven’t dug money out of another man’s hide. If I’d put Austen through the wringer and then turned around afterward and resold his company at a profit—” He spread his long-fingered hands in a gesture of rejection. “As it is, he’s got no kick coming. He got his asking price. I didn’t chisel him for a penny. No man can expect more than that. Understand?”

  Gil nodded, feeling again what had drawn him to Cash McCall on that first day at the Hotel Ivanhoe, wishing that he dared attempt an expression of admiration, yet knowing that he’d botch it if he did, forced to content himself with an inadequate nod.

  McCall lighted a cigarette. “What’s worrying you, Gil?”

  He felt himself snatched back to an awareness of danger. “Worrying me? Well, there is one thing—one situation.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know how much Grant Austen told you when you bought the company,” he said cautiously, attempting to avoid any implication of rancor at not having been brought into the negotiations nor, afterwards, told anything about them. “He may have explained the situation with Andscott, I don’t know.”

  “He told me nothing,” McCall said. “But don’t blame him for that. I didn’t give him a chance. He made the offer and I accepted it. What about Andscott?”

  Gil Clark hesitated, attempting to resurrect the smooth-flowing words of explanation that he had rehearsed last night. “You probably remember that talk we had in your apartment, my mentioning that Andscott was after Austen to put in a new press to make a television cabinet for them?”

  “Yes, I recall.”

  “Well, what I didn’t know then—this is what I’ve been trying to get in touch with you about all week—is that Andscott had given Austen an April first deadline.”

  Cash McCall’s poise was unbroken, but there did seem to be a sharpening of interest.

  “That’s today,” Gil pressed on. “We have to let them know before tonight whether we’re going ahead or not. If we don’t, it means losing all of their business. That’s a good half of the plant’s volume.”

  “Don’t blame Austen for not telling me,” McCall said. “I asked no questions so I got no answers.”

  “I understand that but—well, it is a rather tough situation.”

  “What’s your idea, Gil?”

  “Well, I don’t know now,” he said after a momentary pause. “I’ve been thinking all the time about the Cavalier merger. If that were still in the wood, it would be different. But if you’re going to have to go on operating the company—”

  “Not having memory trouble, are you, Gil?”

  “No, I—”

  “I don’t buy companies to operate. I buy them to sell.”

  He felt himself pinned down by the intense surveillance of Cash McCall’s eyes, so expressive that he could almost hear the accusation that he was still sheltering, deep in his heart, the hope that Cash McCall would give him a chance to take over and run the Suffolk Moulding Company. “I haven’t forgotten,” he said defensively, but the retort was recognizably stronger than should have been necessary if he were completely innocent.

  “We’ll have to go ahead until something turns up,” Cash McCall acknowledged. “But we’ll just hold the line—operate the company as it’s been operating.”

  “That’s the point,” Gil said cautiously. “I mean, we can’t run the company as it’s been run, not without the Andscott business. That’s the backbone of—”

  Cash McCall ground out the stub of a half-smoked cigarette in an ash tray tottering precariously on top of the radiator. “Who handled the Andscott account—Austen himself?”

  “No, not as far as calling on them. Paul Bronson did that.”

  “Then it was Bronson who brought back this story about Andscott’s threat to pull all their business?”

  “Yes—yes, I’m sure it was.”

  “And it was Bronson who was trying to get a job with Andscott?”

  Gil took a moment to consider the implication of Cash McCall’s question. “I don’t think there was anything off base there. Paul was completely honest with me about trying to get that job. He talked to me about it the first day after I got back here—brought it up himself without my even mentioning it. The only reason he was looking around was because he was fed up with Austen’s kind of management. I can’t really blame him for that.”

  “Then he hasn’t taken another job?”

  “No—and I’ve had the finest kind of co-operation from him all week. Naturally, he’s concerned about what’s going to happen but—”

  “How strong a man is he?” Cash McCall cut in. “Strong enough to take over and run the place?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” he said slowly, stalling for time, attempting to submerge the thrusting resurgence of his own hope. “In some ways, he’s a good man.”

  “Do you think it might be better if you stayed on the job yourself for a while—at least until we know where we’re going?”

  “Maybe it would,” he said quickly, hoping that he had gotten the words out before they could be tainted with excitement.

  “It would mean you’d have to stay on here for a few weeks. Wouldn’t your wife object to that?”

  “No, she—” He knew now that he was betraying his eagerness. “Well, she’s down in Florida now—spending a little time with her folks—but it wouldn’t make any difference, anyway.”

  There was a screech of relief from the wicker chair as Cash McCall stood up. “All right, we’ll leave it that way. Where’s Conway’s room?”

  “Twenty-seven. It’s the last one on—”

  “Might as well get the papers and wind this thing up.”

  “Are you thinking of making the settlement right now?” Gil asked anxiously.

  Cash McCall, starting for the door, broke his stride and turned back. “Of course.
Why not?”

  “Well, we didn’t know when you were coming—when to expect you—so Mr. Conway told Austen not to bother to come down until after lunch. I suppose we could call and have him come—”

  “No need of that. I’ll pick up the papers and go out to his house.” He started again for the door.

  “You’ll be back?”

  Cash McCall pivoted with his hand on the door frame. “Back? No, I’ll have to get away as soon as I can. But I’ll be in touch with you in a few days.”

  “But what about Andscott?”

  “You mean whether or not we put in that press?”

  “Well, if we don’t—”

  “—we lose their business,” Cash McCall acknowledged. “All right, let’s lose it. There’s nothing else to do, Gil. If we go any farther in turning the plant into what Andscott wants it to be, it will be tailor-made for them and no one else will want it. The only thing we could do then would be to sell out to them. No fun in that.”

  “Then I’m to tell them—when they call—that we aren’t going ahead?”

  “Look, Gil—” Cash McCall began and then, oddly, almost as if he were considering a change of mind, stood staring past him. “No, don’t wait for them to call you. You call them—nine o’clock—as soon as they’re in the office. Tell them that we’re washing out their business right now.”

  “But do you think—?”

  “I’m not thinking anything—except that I don’t like the Andscott way of doing business.”

  Gil watched as Cash McCall strode off down the hall toward the door of Conway’s room. There was no temptation to stop him, to call after him, to change anything that had been done. A wonderful sense of lightness welled up within him. Suffolk Moulding was his … maybe for only a few weeks … but that might be long enough. If he could prove that Cash could make more money by letting him go on operating … if they could just find some new business to replace the Andscott volume …