Contract with an Angel

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “No problem.”

  The seraph touched Neenan’s head and the pain disappeared. Not bad.

  The car phone rang.

  “Neenan.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Terrible.”

  “As you expected?”

  “Worse, Anna Maria,” he said, “a lot worse.”

  At the last minute he cut off his flow of anger. No point in making her angry too.

  “Well, I just wanted to thank you for the flowers. They are very lovely.”

  “I’m glad you like them.”

  “You will be home for supper tonight?”

  “I sure will.”

  “Wonderful! You sound like you’ll need a good meal.”

  “I sure will.”

  “I’ll tell Maeve to cook something special.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  “I’ll take that comment on its face value.”

  Ms. Jardine was waiting for him in the office with more news.

  “Ms. Honoria Smythe will be in Chicago tomorrow and wants to have lunch with you to discuss your potential purchase of NorthCal cable.”

  “Wonderful,” he said with notable lack of enthusiasm. At the end of last week he would eagerly have looked forward to a tête-à-tête with that gorgeous woman whom he felt he could buy along with her company. Now neither purchase seemed all that appealing.

  He summoned Joe McMahon and Norm Stein and discussed with them his inclination to settle the pension suit, his offer to Bennett Harvey, and the likelihood that Honoria Smythe was ready to sell for the right price.

  Joe ran down the list. “It’s a good deal to get out of the suit if Timmy Walsh can talk his way out of the mess he got himself into. We shouldn’t have tried that in the first place, I guess.”

  “Not in this day and age anyway,” Norm agreed. “Anyway a settlement is the cheapest way out.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to try to hold on to Ben,” Joe continued, “though he probably could do a good job on the DTV project. I don’t trust him much. I’d say let WorldCorp have him.”

  “I wouldn’t be unhappy to see him go,” Norm said. “WorldCorp is welcome to him.”

  “Well, we’ll have to see what happens,” Neenan observed. “I guess his departure wouldn’t break my heart either.”

  However, in his heart he did in fact want to make some kind of restitution to Harvey for having taken his firm away from him.

  “Now as to the lovely Honoria,” Joe continued, “how much is she worth?”

  “Fifty, seventy-five million, a hundred at the most,” Norm Stein replied. “She has a nice unit up there in northern California and southern Oregon. Steady moneymaker. Someone is going to gobble her up. And it might as well be us if the price isn’t too exorbitant.”

  Neenan nodded. “I agree.”

  He wondered to himself what good would come of gobbling up efficient local organizations and merging them with larger and perhaps not so efficient ones. Such thoughts had never occurred to him before. The seraph was probably getting to him. Or the thought that his life would soon be over.

  “We keep her on as president with a solid salary?” Joe asked.

  “Why not? She’ll decorate our offices very nicely when she comes to Chicago.”

  They all laughed, a mildly chauvinist laugh.

  Michael, who had drifted in toward the end of the conversation, frowned disapprovingly at the laugh.

  “That part of your life is over, R. A.,” he would say as they were working out in the health club later.

  The exercise had not improved Neenan’s disposition. “You might have waited till after I bought her,” he said sadly.

  “Don’t even think of that. Remember Anna Maria.”

  “That’s right,” he agreed reluctantly.

  “Finally,” Neenan said now to his colleagues, “I think we have to face the fact that WorldCorp is out to get us. They have lots of money even though they are heavily leveraged. Our statement this morning that we are flattered but not interested is hardly likely to keep them off. They want into cable in this country. They’ll pay a lot of money for NE and then spin off everything but our cable holdings.”

  “Eat us alive and then dismember us,” McMahon agreed.

  “They’ll probably go after every executive they think they can buy away from us,” Stein warned.

  “How can they hope to win?” Neenan asked. “They’d have to buy me out. I control the stock and the board. The company is profitable.”

  “They will try to harass us to death, steal our executives, buy our directors and producers, dig for dirt about us, sue us for the slightest pretext. They might figure that you’ll be so fed up that you’ll take their money and run.”

  “Get our lawyers working on suits we can file against them. Accuse them of trying to steal our executives. Play hardball with their stations in our markets.”

  “Start our own network to rival WBC?” McMahon suggested.

  “I don’t think so. We could overextend ourselves that way, which is what they want us to do. If they can harass us, we can harass them.”

  “What did you find out on Friday at the FCC?” Stein asked.

  “They are not likely to oppose our purchase of the station in Topeka, even though we have cable rights in that market.”

  “Buy some more stations where WBC has a station and go after them?”

  “I’m wary of spending too much money in those tactics. We don’t need any more stations. We need a hit miniseries.”

  Neenan asked McMahon to remain in the office for a few minutes and gave him a copy of the Howatch miniseries.

  “See what you think of this,” he said. “It may be worth a hell of a lot of money.

  “Anna Maria like it?”

  “She’s very positive about it.”

  Michael waited till McMahon had left the office.

  “How is the firm going to resist WorldCorp when you’re not here anymore?”

  “You had to remind me of that.”

  “It would be wrong not to plan ahead.”

  “I understand … . How much time do I have?”

  “You don’t have any time to waste.”

  Neenan had been afraid of that. Yet he lacked the zest to engage in an all-out battle with WorldCorp. Why put time into a foolish fight when he had so little time?

  That night, after he had eaten with great relish a vast Irish beef stew that Maeve had proudly served, he and Anna Maria withdrew early to their joint bedroom.

  His wife slowly doffed all her clothes, to the accompaniment of angelic music that seemed rather more lascivious than one would expect from such a choir. Then she spun around a couple of times so he could admire her from every angle. Then she knelt next to him and cuddled him in her arms. She kissed him and caressed him and soothed him and sang lullabies to him.

  Not to be outdone, the angelic chorus chimed in with its own exuberant lullabies.

  He felt happy for the first time that day.

  “You’re making me feel like a twelve-year-old,” he protested with little conviction as she undressed him.

  “Sometimes the poor, battered twelve-year-old in all of us needs soothing,” she said.

  10

  Honoria Smythe was dazzling. Moreover she left no doubt that she was part of the package along with NorthCal. Neenan’s hands were wet and his breath was coming rapidly. Worse, Michael had deserted him.

  “You’re on your own, boyo,” the seraph had announced when Neenan was preparing to leave his office for the walk over to the Chicago Club on Michigan Avenue. “If you’re going to fight that one off, you’ll have to do it on your own.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  Honoria Smythe was in her middle thirties, divorced, tall, blond, and with a model’s well-molded body about which there was no doubt because of her form-fitting navy blue knit dress. She had a trick of standing close to him in the elevator, so close that he was absorbed in her fragrance and enchanted by the
movements of her breathing.

  She was pure California, if the adjective pure could be used of her. While there was still a “glass ceiling” above women in the corporate world, some younger women were bright enough and crafty enough to fashion their own companies in small markets and become both successful and wealthy.

  When he had walked with her into the grillroom of the club, perhaps the most solemn and pompous eating place in the city, every head had turned to take her in, including the heads of the few women who were present.

  Outside, a chill wind from off the lake was blowing curtains of rain against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the club, rattling them in a chorus like the interlude of a Berio opera. Inside, Honoria suggested radiant warmth and bright sunlight.

  They chatted aimlessly for a few moments. Her body movements and her flickering blue eyes—a little too icy perhaps—left no doubt about her sexual availability. Indeed they seemed to hint that she was hungry for him.

  Her slow, sensuous smile suggested not only longing but admiration. Neenan wasn’t sure that she was capable of really desiring a man, yet he was mesmerized by her and was willing to believe that she was obsessed by a craving for him. She was the most seductive of the “interesting” women he had pursued during his life of hunting.

  Anna Maria seemed far away. So too did his seraphic majesty.

  “Well, what about it, R. A.?” she said with a lazy, inviting smile. “Are you interested in buying me?”

  “I assume you mean NorthCal.”

  “Certainly that.”

  “It is,” he said, shifting in his chair, “an attractive prize. One must, however, consider the cost.”

  “Not all that much, considering the value of the prize,” she said easily. “I should tell you, however, that WorldCorp has offered us a hundred and seventy-five million dollars.”

  “Have they now?” WorldCorp was everywhere.

  She turned on her radiant smile. “I would hardly expect that much from NE, but I think their offer shows what NorthCal is worth in the marketplace.”

  About twice as much as it was really worth. And maybe fifty million more than WorldCorp would eventually pay. One twenty-five was more like it. Still, WorldCorp was obviously bent on harassment. Their spies were pretty good too, though it was no secret that NE was interested in picking up as many small and successful cable companies as it could, when the market shook itself out.

  “What would your bottom line be?” he asked cautiously.

  “One and a half. In that area.”

  “We were willing to go eighty,” he said, lifting a piece of calamari to his lips.

  They were playing a game of poker, made all the more interesting because the other player was beautiful as well as shrewd.

  Not shrewd enough. And today, as opposed to last week, not beautiful enough either.

  Or so he uneasily hoped.

  Actually as he had said to his staff, he thought NorthCal was worth a hundred at the most. He started out with eighty, hoping that she might be willing to negotiate down to a hundred and ten, which was his absolute high.

  “That’s less than half, Ray,” she said with a small pout as she poured cream and sugar into her coffee, large amounts of both.

  “We could begin negotiating the difference.”

  “I would like to work with you, Ray. You know that. I realize that you can trust WorldCorp just so far. Yet if you consider my position, it doesn’t make much difference if they drop me in a year or two. With that kind of money I won’t have to worry about money for the rest of my life. I can sit back and relax.”

  “And surf every day.”

  “Not in my part of California!”

  “You’re willing to make a financial sacrifice of twenty-five million to work with NE?”

  He waved off the waiter, who was hovering for a possible desert order. The rain continued to slash against the windows.

  “To work with you, Ray,” she said with, sweet, shy smile, about as persuasive to Neenan as the smile of a woman computer salesperson.

  “OK,” he said with a deep breath. “We’ll make a sacrifice too. A hundred and five.”

  “Ray”—she shook her head sadly, her blond hair rearranging itself and then falling into place—“that’s not enough.”

  “That’s not true,” he said, trying to control his temper. “It’s an offer which, as it is, overestimates NorthCal’s profitability.”

  “WorldCorp doesn’t think so,” she said with a sad, vulnerable smile.

  “Then they read your numbers differently than we do. Maybe they’re right. Or maybe it’s worth that kind of money for them to get another foothold in the cable field. They might well figure that if they spin it off in a year or two and take a loss it has been a good investment in opening up the cable market. I don’t know how many such losses a company can take, but they’ve been successful at such tactics in the past.”

  “That’s very cruel, Ray.”

  Neenan’s desire for her had become insistent, demanding. Where is that damn seraph when I really need him?

  “Honoria, I congratulate you on the huge financial gain WorldCorp is offering you. However, you should consider all the small print. For example, what will be your annual salary and how long is their contract?”

  “I’m afraid,” she said, “that’s privileged information.”

  “We’ll give you a five-year contract and fifty percent more than they’re offering you.”

  “Only five years?” She leaned close to him. Her fragrance hit him like a mountain avalanche.

  “Ten years if you want. You know that I don’t dump senior executives of acquired companies.”

  “You keep them on, like Ben Harvey, in empty jobs.”

  So Ben Harvey was involved in this, was he? Had he become WorldCorp’s point man? Pretty dumb choice. But that’s what happened when a company got too big and its CEO was out of touch with the quality of his lower-ranking but important subordinates.

  He drew back from her, so he could think more clearly.

  “You’re a lot brighter than Ben is and a much better administrator. Even if his job doesn’t mean much, it pays him a huge salary for very little work.”

  “I won’t be just an ornament for NE, Ray,” she begged, her mournful eyes searching his face, “much less a bargain-basement ornament. I’ve worked too hard and sacrificed too much to let that happen.”

  She had said earlier that she was staying at the Four Seasons, a short cab ride away up Michigan Avenue. She would be available for lovemaking much of the afternoon. Neenan’s lips and throat became dry.

  “I have never thought of you, Honoria, as an ornament.”

  “But you do think of me as a good investment, don’t you?”

  “I certainly respect you as a businessperson,” he said, trying to choose his words carefully, “and I admire you as a human being and a woman. The price is still too high.”

  “I guess that’s all.” She gathered her purse and stood up. “I’m really sorry, Ray, and, frankly, disappointed.”

  Her enticing bodily movements as she rose unleashed a shiver of longing that raced through his body.

  He signed the check, with which the waiter had raced up.

  “Everything all right, Mr. Neenan?”

  “Everything is fine, Cesar.”

  She had walked out of the grillroom ahead of him, attracting once again every eye in the place.

  The word courtesan flashed through his mind.

  “I so much wanted to work with you, Ray,” she said sorrowfully as they rode down on the elevator

  “It would have been very nice,” he replied, “very nice indeed.”

  Outside, the wind was blowing the rain sideways, slicing mercilessly into pedestrians.

  “I have a car,” she said as Neenan helped her into a white leather raincoat. “Can I give you a lift back to Sears Tower?”

  Neenan fantasized for a moment about the delights of such a ride.

  “I think I’ll walk
. I need the exercise … . Promise me you’ll think over the things I’ve said before you make a final decision.”

  “I will certainly promise that, Ray … . Are you sure you don’t want a ride?”

  The doorman and the driver of a white stretch limo raced to provide an umbrella to convey her to the car.

  “No thanks, I like to walk in the rain.”

  She laughed at him, mockingly he thought, as she entered the car.

  He huddled inside his raincoat and wished he had brought an umbrella.

  “Taxi, Mr. Neenan?” the doorman asked.

  “No thanks, I like rainstorms.”

  The doorman did not laugh.

  Then someone held an umbrella over his head. The rain rushed all around him, but did not touch him. He was pretty sure who was holding the umbrella.

  “You guys really do like to show off, don’t you?”

  “It’s fun,” the seraph admitted. “If you got it, flaunt it.”

  “I’m in a very bad mood,” Neenan said grimly.

  “Really?” the seraph said. “Because you turned down the ride back to the Four Seasons?”

  “How do you know that? I thought you weren’t going to listen to the conversation.”

  “I didn’t listen, but I saw the little scene in front of the Chicago Club. I was impressed by your virtuous restraint.”

  The angel was clad in an enormous black rain cloak that made him look like a huge and healthy Count Dracula, or maybe the Count on Sesame Street.

  “Shit! I’m worn-out. I feel like I played thirty-six holes on a hot summer day.”

  “She was determined to seduce you?”

  “For maybe fifty million to match WorldCorp’s offer.”

  “Hardly worth it.”

  “No, but appealing just the same. I’m disgusted with myself for missing such an opportunity and disgusted because I regret the lost opportunity.”

  “You read Browning?”

  “Elizabeth or Robert?”

  “Either.”

  “Neither, except for a poem or two in anthologies when I was in college.”

  “He wrote an epic poem called The Ring and the Book, the first mystery novel ever produced in this solar system. The detective was the bishop of Rome, a certain Innocent, the twelfth of that name.”

  “Good miniseries?”