The background chorus sounded ominous.
“Today? Now?”
“That would be expecting too much. But soon. Especially in your attempts to straighten out as much as you can while you still have time.”
“Like in that film Anna Maria and I watched the other night, uh, what was the name of it?”
“Flatliners? I trust,” the seraph said with what might have been a smirk, “that you don’t think we had nothing to do with that choice.”
“Anna Maria is an unindicted coconspirator?”
“Not exactly.”
“When you started to talk about my wife, you meant her, didn’t you? And I thought you meant Donna.”
“Obviously Anna Maria is the only wife you have ever had.”
Neenan did not get a chance to question that strange observation.
“We’ve been cleared for landing,” the pilot announced suddenly. “Cabin attendants prepare for landing.”
The plane nosed forward in a sudden lurch, the landing gears crunched into place, and the plane dove into ever thicker clouds. Lighting sparked again and again at the wingtips. Back in coach, cabin passengers gasped. The two cabin attendants, strapped in and facing backward, were pale and tense.
Michael, for his part, smiled benignly, enjoying every minute of the roller-coaster ride.
“Are you on this plane or somewhere else?” Neenan demanded through clenched teeth.
“Indeed, if I am to bring this plane in safely despite the airhead who is flying it, I must be both places,” the seraph said with a light chuckle. “An angel’s life is not an easy one.” He laughed loudly, a warm, rich, friendly laugh.
“The outcome is in doubt?” Neenan begged as the plane sank lower and lower. Still no sign of Chicago. His headache, which he now noticed for the first time, became worse.
“I don’t think so,” the seraph said, and laughed again.
Then, without warning it seemed, the landing gear delivered a ferocious blow to the ground. There was still no sign in the fog of the city or even the airport.
The choristers burst into a paean of joy.
The dim outlines of the O’Hare terminal appeared through the gloom.
“Can’t you keep those guys quiet?”
“Nope. They like to sing and they have the right to sing. You’d better get used to them. Besides, you’re supposed to enjoy classical polyphony.”
“Not all the time.”
The seraph shrugged indifferently.
“How many wives do you have?”
“You mean companions?”
“All right, companions.”
“It has been our experience,” the seraph said, arching his thick eyebrows ruefully, “that one is ordinarily more than enough … . Now listen carefully to me: You are to be polite and considerate to your colleagues. You are not to treat them like they are, to use your vulgarity, assholes. You are to meet with them in the Admirals’ Club so that they can spend some of this glorious autumn afternoon with their families.”
“You call this weather glorious?”
“We don’t know the future,” the seraph said with a frown, “unless we’re told on a ‘need-to-know’ basis. We do pretty well, however, on diagnosing weather fronts. And don’t interrupt me when I’m giving advice, understand?”
“OK.”
“You will treat them like respected and intelligent colleagues, which in fact they are. You need not fear any of them are planning to usurp your position, because they are too loyal even to think of that. You will in particular be nice to your son, who is a very smart young man, if not as reckless or ruthless as you are.”
“I don’t want to do anything of those things,” Neenan replied with a stubborn grimace.
“Nonetheless, you will do them. You might even find that you enjoy them.”
“You don’t have to grab for that damn contract of yours. I didn’t know I’d have to do these foolish things.”
“Small stuff,” the seraph replied with a massive show of his perfect white teeth.
The plane caromed across the airport pavement as if it were searching for every bump. Periodically the pilot slammed on the brakes and waited for an agonizing time before inching forward again.
“Can’t you stop this idiot?” Neenan demanded.
“What’s the point of having a guardian angel if he can’t do something useful?”
“I have no responsibilities on the ground,” Michael said with yet another happy grin. “Not at airports anyway. Others are in charge.”
“I bet.”
“To continue with my advice …”
“Orders.”
“Call them what you want … . You are not to take out your headache, which comes from too much vodka, on them. Rather you are to do your best to be witty and warm. It may be hard on your facial muscles, but you should try to smile on occasion.”
“What about Walter Murtaugh?”
“You don’t need my advice to know how to respond to Mr. Murtaugh’s offer.”
Finally the plane elbowed its way toward the terminal and stopped abruptly a few feet short of the Jetway. Passengers from the coach cabin jumped to their feet, pulled bags from the overhead racks with reckless disregard for life and limb.
“Please remain in your seats till the pilot turns off the fasten-seat-belt sign,” the senior cabin attendant vainly pleaded.
Neenan began to leap out of his seat. What was the point in flying first class if you let coach passengers get a jump on you in the rush to desert the plane? Michael reached out a restraining hand.
“The world will wait, Raymond.”
“I have work to do!”
“That will wait too.”
Before Neenan could dispute the point, the plane pitched forward one last time, throwing a number of passengers off their feet and dumping luggage on their heads.
“See, Raymond?”
The pilot then turned off the seat-belt sign. The cabin attendant rolled her eyes. Neenan grinned at her. Michael nodded his head in approval.
“See how easy it is to be charming without being overtly seductive?”
“When you have a seraph hounding you.”
“You wouldn’t get to first base with her anyway.”
Somehow Neenan’s bag was transferred from the luggage compartment to the floor.
“Neat trick.”
“Elementary.”
Blue sky was sweeping across the airport. The choir greeted it with paroxysms of celebration.
“I hope you’re along on our next adventure,” Neenan said to the young woman.
“Thank you, Mr. Neenan.” She smiled happily. “People like you make this job worthwhile.
“Thank you,” Michael said, tipping his hat.
She couldn’t see him or hear him, but she stared at the empty space next to Neenan with a puzzled smile.
He tripped as he entered the Jetway and steadied himself, waiting for his balance to return. It didn’t.
“See what three vodkas will do?” Michael observed.
“Booze is not one of my problems. It’s your fault anyway. You made it too good to resist.”
“That’s what they all say.”
Nonetheless, Michael touched Neenan’s arm. The headache and the dizziness and the fear flowed out of Neenan’s body, leaving only the still-strong afterglow of his ecstasy and the uncanny sense that he was imploding.
“Now remember,” Michael warned him, “you now have no excuse for not smiling at your colleagues.”
“If you weren’t a seraph, I’d use an obscenity.”
Michael laughed again. As they emerged from the Jetway and he saw his anxious team waiting, Neenan realized that he and the so-called seraph had been bantering.
Not a good idea to banter with angels. It was probably one of their tricks. If there were angels and Michael were really one of them and not an undigested green pepper from his dinner the previous night.
The choristers were fading out, a kind of triumphal exit marc
h. A touch of Handel.
Neenan felt a strong jolt of sexual desire race through his body again. What was happening now?
4
The dour expressions on the faces of the three men and one woman suggested that the angelic decision to stop singing might have been the right one. They were not people for whom you would want to sing, even if they probably couldn’t hear you.
“Nice trip, R. A.?” asked Joe McMahon, his longtime second-in-command.
“So bad that we wouldn’t have made it without the angels,” he replied with a grin.
No one laughed. They never laughed at his jokes, because he never joked with them.
“I’ll draft a letter of complaint to Bob Crandall first thing in the morning,” said Amy Jardine, Neenan’s administrative assistant.
“Tell him that I hope he has to fly with that pilot sometime. Without the angels.”
Michael, who was tagging along despite the absence of a choral background, was laughing, but no one else did. And of course they couldn’t hear his laugh.
“We have another serious offer from Walter Murtaugh, R. A,” Norman Stein, Neenan’s chief financial officer, said, wanting as always to get down to business without any preliminaries. “It’s quite attractive.”
“I’m glad I survived the flight. I’d hate to have died without replying to Walter.”
“Hi, Dad,” said his son Vincent. “Nice to have you back. That was one hell of a storm, wasn’t it?”
Trust Vincent to say something idiotic.
“No problem as long as the angels are watching.”
Charm came naturally to Neenan. He wasn’t quite sure where he had learned it, surely not from his parents. Maybe he had learned charm as a means of survival in the family environment.
However, he suppressed it when he was with his subordinates. Better that they fear you, even Joe, who had been with him from the early days of National Entertainment. If you relaxed with your staff, they might think you were soft, a pushover that they could push over. No way.
“Well,” he said, “let’s get down to the Admiral’s Club and get our work done.”
“I thought we were to work in your car. Peter’s waiting outside.”
“Tell Peter to wait as long as he can and then drive around till we’re finished. No point in you wasting this glorious day driving over to Lake Forest.”
Dead silence.
“They’re going to think you’re sick,” Michael observed.
“I’m doing what you told me to do.”
“And they don’t believe it. It’s not going to be easy for them to realize that you’re treating them like they’re human beings. They may never get used to it.”
“Are you feeling all right, Dad?” Vincent asked.
“Happy to be alive after that plane trip,” he replied. “I want to sign those guardian angels on for our Gulfstream.”
Vincent was the exact opposite of Neenan—a short, skinny man with thick glasses, thin hair, and a receding chin, an inoffensive, nondescript, quiet young man from whom you would not buy a used car, a new computer, or a television station. He was, however, totally loyal and worshiped Neenan with an admiration that Neenan found embarrassing.
Joe McMahon was also short, but unlike Vincent he was fat and bald and loud and loved to chomp on an unlit cigar. He perspired at the slightest pretext and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief that he had carried with him all the years he and Neenan had worked together. He was a highly effective administrator. Nothing went on in the far-flung domain of National Entertainment that he did not know about. He was content with his second-in-command role because he did not like to make decisions and because Neenan paid him half a million a year plus bonuses and stock options. He was worth every penny of it.
Amy Jardine was a hawk-nosed, svelte matron in her midforties, supremely efficient and beyond mistakes. She was not unattractive, but her personality was about as warm as that of a polar bear in the middle of winter. The Pope could learn from her when it came to infallibility. She had a husband and children somewhere, but Neenan had never met them and presumed that he never would.
Norman Stein, a handsome, smooth, intense man with silver hair (like Neenan’s though not as thick), dark skin, and deep brown eyes, always looked as if he had stepped out of a men’s fashion magazine; today he was wearing a dark blue Italian suit with a pinstripe and coordinating light blue shirt with a white collar and a dark blue tie with golden flowers. He always carried a leather briefcase that must have cost at least a thousand dollars.
Vincent didn’t matter, but the other three were worth their weight in precious stones, the kind of stones on which Anna Maria doted.
“OK,” Neenan said when they had arranged themselves in a conference room in the Admiral’s Club executive center and Michael had settled his huge frame into an easy chair and deposited his homburg on a lamp table. “Let’s hear about Walter first. Norman?”
“Basically the offer is for a controlling interest in NE for about one and three-quarters of what our stock is selling for on the market. The stockholders will love it. You would be an extremely wealthy man, R. A. All of us who hold stock in the company would make a lot of money. The contract would guarantee all executive salaries for five years. You would remain as chairman and CEO of NE and report directly to Mr. Murtaugh. It is essentially a better offer than that of Time Warner by about twenty-five percent.”
“And Disney?”
“They insist they want a chance to make their last and best offer.”
“I see … . What do the lawyers say?”
“They say the offer looks ironclad, though we’d want to read the fine print very carefully. They also say that our stockholders would be very upset if we turn down an offer like this. They might go to court to force us to sell.”
“Uh-huh … . What do you think, Norm?”
The CEO looked surprised. “What do I think, R. A.?”
“Yeah, what do you think?”
“I think you have to weigh the monetary gain against the loss of independence and the possible risk of being sold off when WorldCorp needs liquidity.”
“I suppose that’s true … . Joe?”
“There’s a lot of synergy in the deal, R. A. We are in competition with him in only a few major markets. Moreover, the money might give you the opportunity to start your own film production company if you’re tired of working for WorldCorp. It might be time to consider consolidating your interests, which are pretty far-flung now. Finally, you know what Walter is like. You turn him down and he’ll try to make your life miserable with litigation and competition in our best markets.”
“I see … . And what do you personally think, Joe?”
McMahon was startled too. “What do I think?”
“Yeah, what do you think?”
“I think Norm’s right. You have to think about how you trade off the costs and benefits. You lose some independence, but you make a hell of a lot of money.”
“You see,” Michael said, resting his chin on a pyramid constructed by his fingers, “they are all shocked that you asked them what they think.”
“They haven’t told me anything I don’t know yet. Why should I ask them what they think?”
Apparently there was some angelic arrangement that put his conversations with the self-proclaimed seraph in parentheses that others could not hear.
“Because it is the polite thing to do and because they might just have an insight that you don’t have … . Why don’t you ask your son?”
“It is inconceivable that he would have anything important to say.”
“Ask him anyway.”
“Vincent?”
His son did not hesitate. “Fuck Walter Murtaugh.”
Michael whistled.
“Oh?” Neenan said in total surprise.
“And the horse he came in on. You know what it will be like. He’ll move in some vulgar and slimy Brit or Aussie to act as liaison and pretty soon he’ll be running NE instead of you. The
stockholders can sue you till hell freezes over and it won’t do them any good the way you got the company tied up.”
“We don’t use that metaphor much anymore,” Neenan murmured softly.
Vincent ignored him. “Our lawyers are as good as his, maybe better. They can fend off anything he tries in court and make him pay with countersuits. If you can’t beat his shit in our locals, then you’re getting older than I think you are. Let them all bid each other to the sky. Then say, thanks, but no thanks, we’re worth a lot more. Anyone who wants to sell their stock can sell it then. And you look good for facing down the lot of them. It’ll be more fun than watching the Bears.”
“And possibly less than watching the Bulls,” Neenan replied with a slow smile.
His son had delivered his tirade in a calm, matter-of-fact, almost meek voice. The others in the room listened with wide eyes and open mouths.
“Apples,” the seraph field marshal observed, “do not in fact fall very far from the trees.”
“That bastard has run his debt too high anyway,” Vincent continued. “Some one of these days his luck is going to run out. He’s badly leveraged as it is. If we do let him raise the ante, he may go too far. Then he’ll have to sell off NE in little pieces no matter what the contract says. If you’re ready to retire, Dad, I’d say take it. Otherwise, let him walk down to Monroe Street and keep going out into the Lake when he comes to the Yacht Club.”
“Kid, I don’t think your old man is ready to retire yet,” Michael said.
Vincent blinked his eyes as though he’d heard a strange voice from a great distance. Then he shook his head to dismiss the illusion.
The three others said nothing. It was astonishing enough that R. A. had asked for their opinion and even more astonishing that Vincent had offered his. They were not going to push their luck, not just yet anyway.
“Good points, Vincent,” Neenan said, trying not to sound reluctant in his praise. “I don’t think your old man is ready to retire yet.”
A puzzled, déjà vu expression appeared on Vincent’s youthful face. Michael chuckled.
Contract with an Angel Page 4