Executive Suite

by Cameron Hawley

  6.44 P.M. EDT

  As the wife of the manager of the New York office of the Tredway Corporation, Marian Oldham knew that she had certain responsibilities. She accepted them willingly enough but their discharge was not always easy. There were times when she wondered if Alex really appreciated how difficult her position was. He was right, of course, in saying that they had to keep a cook in order to be able to entertain in the way that his position demanded, yet she doubted whether he understood how hard it was to hold a cook these days if you didn’t keep your promises about meal hours.

  Alex had plopped another ice cube into his glass and was reaching for the bourbon bottle again.

  “Alex, dear,” she asked softly. “Will you be ready to eat before long?”

  His face, when he turned, had the pallor of extreme fatigue and she wished that she hadn’t been forced into asking the question.

  “I’m sorry, dear, but I promised Hilda that she could get away early. This is Friday and she has her club meeting.”

  “All right,” he said, letting his hand fall away from the bottle.

  “Oh, go ahead,” she said, suddenly repentant. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll let Hilda leave and finish things up myself.”

  “No, I’ve had enough. Guess I drink too much of the stuff as it is.”

  “No, you don’t.” She stepped to his side, reaching out for his hand. “You need it—when the bad days come along.”

  “Getting to be too many bad days lately. They’re all bad.”

  “At least, dear, you can forget it now until Monday.”

  “Yes.” It was agreement in word only. “Get dinner on the table. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She watched him cross to the hall and go in the powder room, telling herself again that he was a good husband and rewishing that she might ease his troubles by sharing them. In the beginning, when they had been first married and Alex and been a salesman working out of the St. Louis office, there had been a perfect sharing. When he came home from a trip he would talk far into the night, telling her everything that had happened, every detail of every call. Her interest, sharpened by his enthusiasm, had caused her to memorize the names of all of his customers and the style numbers of every item in the Tredway catalogue. Gradually, as the years had gone by and Alex had risen in the company, her participation in his business life had become less and less. It had not happened, she knew, because of any conscious desire on his part to exclude her, but rather because it had become more and more necessary for him to find hours when he could escape from business.

  There were times now when Marian Oldham felt that her husband would have found more escape through talking to her than by sitting in brooding silence, but she did not dare pick those times. Once in a while—though rarely now—he would tell her about something that had happened in the office. Even then there was a danger. If she tried, for his sake, to divert him and change the subject, there was the chance that he might think she wasn’t interested. Yet if her interest was too evident there was always the inevitable ending when he would cut her off with the feeling that she had somehow harmed him by allowing his troubles to intrude within the haven of his escape.

  Alex was right … there are getting to be too many bad days … too many nights when he came home as he came home tonight … no, not quite as bad as tonight … the days when Mr. Bullard was in New York were always the worst.

  He came into the dining room, blinking his eyes as if they were smarting.

  “I hope jellied consommé is all right, dear?” she asked.

  He nodded, sitting down and starting to eat, staring silently past the rim of his cup.

  She wanted to break the silence but it stretched on and on before she finally thought of something to say that had no business connection.

  “I had a letter from Margie today.”

  “Oh?”

  “She and Jeff are going through town the first week in August on their way to Maine. They’re taking their vacation up there—Kennebunkport.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I wrote and told her that we’d love to see them but that we’d probably be away on our own vacation about that same time.”

  He nodded, silent.

  “Have you thought any more about where you’d like to go, Alex?”

  “Not much.”

  His cup was less than half emptied but she saw that he had stopped eating. “Is there anything wrong with your consommé, dear?”

  “No, it’s fine. Not hungry, that’s all. Too hot, I guess.”

  Hilda came in and they sat in silence until after she had served the lamb chops and the vegetables. There were always lamb chops on nights when Mr. Bullard had been in New York but it was one of the many things that she never called to his attention.

  Suddenly, as if he were continuing a conversation that she hadn’t heard, Alex said, “I’ve never thought much of the idea of taking a vacation with anyone else from the company, but with somebody like the Shaws it would probably be all right. His wife’s folks have this place up on Cape Cod.”

  “The Loren Shaws?”

  He looked up as if to accuse her of not having listened to what he had said before.

  “They’ve invited us to come up there?”

  “Didn’t I tell you about it?”

  She had no choice except to say, “I don’t think you did, dear.”

  “Thought I had. He said something about it when he was up here last week. Nothing final—didn’t actually invite us—but I think they’re going to.”

  “Would you enjoy that, Alex?”

  “Why not?”

  “You aren’t doing it because you think it’s the thing to do, are you—because he’s going to be the new executive vice-president?”

  She thought for a moment that she had said the wrong thing, that he might either flare into anger or relapse into silence, but fortunately he did neither. “No, I wouldn’t do anything for that reason. Life’s too short. Anyway, there’s nothing sure about his being the new executive V.P. It’s just my guess, that’s all.”

  She smiled her relief. “You like him, don’t you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. At least he has some consideration for the way other people think—your ideas mean something—not the way it is with the old man.”

  Marian almost asked a question about Avery Bullard’s visit, but quickly decided against it. “You say the Shaws have a place up on—”

  The telephone bell interrupted her. She pivoted off her chair and went to answer it.

  “This the residence of a Mr. Alex Oldham?” a gruff masculine voice asked.

  “Yes.”

  “He connected with the Tredway Corporation?”

  “Yes. He’s the manager of—”

  “This is the police department. We’d like to talk to him. Is he there?”

  Alex was watching her and a hundred wild thoughts spiraled through her mind in the time that it took him to reach her side. She handed him the receiver whispering, “It’s the police.”

  She backed a step, watching her husband’s face, hunting for clues in his short laconic answers.

  “Yes—yes, that’s right—yes—yes, I understand—yes—what!”

  The last word was a startled exclamation and she saw the thin under-film of color drain from his face.

  “But, it’s—yes, the Chippendale Building—yes, I see—yes—no—yes, I’ll come down—what?—all right—five minutes? Yes, I’ll be ready.”

  He hung up, his hand staying on the instrument as if the brace of his arm were necessary to the support of his body.

  “Alex, what is it?”

  His head turned slowly, hesitating again before he spoke. “Avery Bullard is dead.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Collapsed on the street this afternoon in front of the Chippendale Building. The police have been trying ever since to identify him.”

  “Do you have to go down?”

  “Squad car is picking me up in five minutes.”

  �
��Maybe it isn’t Mr. Bullard. Maybe it’s someone else?”

  “No. Everything checks. Chippendale Building—he was there for lunch with Steigel and Pilcher, I know that. All the description fits. Can’t be anyone else.”

  “Finish your dinner, dear,” she said softly. “There’s nothing you can do until the car gets here.”

  He seemed not to have heard her. “Have to call Millburgh right away.” He started to lift the receiver and then put it down again. “But who the devil do I call?”

  It was a question that did not ask for an answer but anxiety because of his tenseness made her say, “I should think you’d call Mr. Shaw if he’s going to be—”

  She had started to say, “the new executive vice-president,” but she caught herself, realizing that everything was changed now.

  “I suppose Walt Dudley,” Alex said to himself. “He’s the V.P. that I report to. No—forgot—Walt will have left for Chicago already. I talked to him on the phone this morning and he said he was taking an early plane. Alderson or Jesse Grimm, I guess—but which one?”

  She didn’t know what he had decided until she heard him say, “Operator, I want to talk to Don Walling in Millburgh, Pennsylvania. That’s right—person to person—Mr. Don Walling.”

  He offered no explanation but she could understand what he had done. She had done the same thing herself once when a dinner party had presented an unsolvable problem in protocol. No one could object if the person served first was someone to whom first service could not possibly be considered as either an obeisance or an honor.

  6

  MILLBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

  6.56 P.M. EDT

  The route to Maryland was straight down South Water Street, but Jesse Grimm had taken the left fork and gone up Pike Street. He had told himself that the traffic wouldn’t be as bad, a harmless bit of self-deception to excuse the waste of a mile of driving so that he could once again look down on the Pike Street factory from the high cliff edge at the corner of Ridge Road.

  Beauty is measured in the beholder’s eye and, to Jesse Grimm, the Pike Street factory was the most beautiful thing in the world. Avery Bullard had said, on that night when the news had come through that the A-bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, “This is the end of it, Jesse, so let’s get rolling. Take that plot of land up on Pike Street and build yourself the finest damned case-goods factory in the industry.”

  Jesse Grimm had done just that. He knew that he had succeeded. Architects and engineers from all over the country had come to visit and admire and pirate ideas. He had carefully accepted their extravagant praise, never allowing it to produce the slightest break in his sheltering shield of modesty, yet storing the words away as a miser hoards a precious treasure.

  As much as he secretly valued the praise, Jesse Grimm’s greatest satisfaction had come from something that he held even more secret—the way he had managed to keep Don Walling from having any part whatsoever in the planning. From the moment that Avery Bullard had given the order to start work, Jesse Grimm had faced the constant fear that Walling, because he was a graduate architect, would be allowed to intrude. The fact that he had been kept from doing so—that Walling had been held in Pittsburgh until the factory was too far along to permit any change in the plans—was the source of Jesse Grimm’s warmest regard for Avery Bullard.

  Now, slowing to a stop in the turnout area beyond the corner, Jesse Grimm slid across the seat and looked down on the plant. Directly below him was the black expanse of the white-lined parking lot, deserted now except for a scattering of cars down at the far end, a reminder that Walling was having his test run on the molding press tonight.

  Squinting through the haze, he picked out Walling’s sand-colored Buick and then, in the moment of its identification, saw the car start to move. Two other cars were backing out. Another was making the turn out of the lot on to Pike Street. It was obvious that the test had failed. If it hadn’t, Walling wouldn’t be leaving so soon. Jesse Grimm inhaled slowly. The fire in the bowl of his pipe glowed and he drew the warmth within himself, deeper and deeper, indrawn until it finally penetrated the darkest depths of his consciousness. It was there that he had secreted, more hidden than any thought or memory that his mind had ever harbored, his long-standing resentment against Don Walling.

  He knew that the way he felt didn’t make sense. But the knowing changed nothing. It was like a secret vice that generated shame but not the resolution to forego its practice, a deep festering cancer that was no less virulent because it defied diagnosis.

  The closest that Jesse Grimm had ever come to finding an explanation for the way he felt about Don Walling traced back to those first months in Pittsburgh when Walling had tried to palm himself off as a carbon-copy Bullard. He hadn’t let him get away with it … he’d cracked down harder than he’d ever cracked down on anyone else, before or after … and Walling had taken it, too … even thanked him. Walling wasn’t the first green kid that had thanked him for something like that, but with Walling it had come too fast. That was Walling … always too fast, too quick, too sure, too clever.

  There was always that gut-twisting tension when Walling was around … knowing that if you couldn’t give Bullard the answer he wanted, he’d say, “Well, Don, if this thing has Jesse stumped suppose you take a swing at it”… and then that damned Walling luck would go to work! Yes, it was luck. Even if Walling was half as good as Bullard thought he was, a part of it was still luck … like the way that cockeyed backpressure idea had worked on the finishing line … and those crazy roller-skate pallets … and the solvent recovery system. If a thing wasn’t good engineering and it wasn’t good production practice and it still worked, then it had to be luck. What else could it be?

  But it took more than luck to run a factory … a hell of a lot more! Avery Bullard would find that out. It wouldn’t be long now … only four more months.

  Jesse Grimm narrowed his eyes, dimming his view of the Pike Street plant, hardening his resolution to support the decision he had made to retire at sixty instead of waiting until he was sixty-five.

  The worst part of leaving would be knowing that he’d never see this Pike Street factory again. It was his … from the bottom of the footings to the top of the dust collectors on the roof … every brick, every machine, every inch of every production line … the finest furniture factory in the world. Could he leave it?

  The bowl of his pipe dropped as his lips softened. Sure he could leave it! Why not? Nobody would miss him. They didn’t need a real production man any more … just a bunch of college kids clicking stop watches … time and motion studies … industrial engineering … research and development … Walling … a lot of little Wallings running around with their stop watches and their clipboards and their slide rules. They’d change Pike Street … tinker and twist, turn and tear, wreck and rip … and then it wouldn’t be the finest furniture factory in the world. Could he stand that?

  Yes … he wouldn’t know … and what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. He’d leave and he’d never come back … waited too long already … no more time to lose. Even four months was too long to wait … but he had to do that … wait until he was sixty … wouldn’t look right if he didn’t. Yes, he had to hang on for these last four months. But no longer! Nothing could stop him then … nothing! Avery Bullard could argue until he was blue in the face but he wouldn’t change his mind. No, he wouldn’t stay on until he was sixty-five … five more years would be too long to wait … everything was ready down in Maryland … house all remodeled … shop almost built. If the carpenters hadn’t gone fishing again this week the windows should be in by now, and the doors hung. Next week they would start on the workbench and the tool cabinets.

  His hands gripped the steering wheel and his imagination gave it the feel of oil-rubbed steel. It would be good to have tools in his hands again. It was strange how a man could be so blind to what he really wanted … work all his life to get somewhere … be somebody … and then, in the end, find out that the only thin
g that meant anything was what you’d had to start with … a good pair of mechanic’s hands and a shop to use them in. Avery Bullard wouldn’t be able to understand that, not the Avery Bullard of today. The old Avery Bullard might have understood, the Avery Bullard of ten years ago … the Avery Bullard who had stood beside him that night in the Pittsburgh rain, waiting for the streetcar, and said, “You’re my right arm, Jesse, and I’ll never forget it.” Then they’d gone home and Sarah had fixed spareribs and sauerkraut and they’d sat talking half the night.

  Jesse Grimm smiled, pleased that he could. He was learning how to live again. Sometime, just for a joke … after it was all over … he’d say, “Avery, how about coming down home tonight and letting Sarah fix us a mess of spareribs and sauerkraut?”

  His smile broadened as his imagination supplied the look there would be on Avery Bullard’s face. Sarah would be even more shocked. “Jesse, have you gone crazy? We don’t even have spareribs and sauerkraut ourselves any more.”

  “But we will as soon as we’re settled down there in Maryland,” he said to conclude his imaginary conversation with Sarah. “We’ll have spareribs and sauerkraut every Monday night, the way we used to when we were first married.”

  There was a neon-framed clock on a beer joint beside the road … two minutes to seven … Avery Bullard would be sitting down to have his dinner at that fancy restaurant he always ate at in New York, the one up Park Avenue from the Waldorf-Astoria, the place where the whole menu was in French. What would happen if a man went into a place like that and ordered spareribs and sauerkraut?

  Jesse Grimm chuckled at the prospect, letting the sound of laughter come without restraint. There were a lot of funny things in life … all a man had to do was relax enough so he could appreciate them.

  6.59 P.M. EDT

  “You sure that going out Stuart Street won’t take you out of your way, Mr. Walling?” Lundeen asked anxiously, his thin fingers rolling the yellow leather case of his slide rule over and over in his hands.