by Hal Ross
For a moment she just stood in front of the Javits Convention Center, letting the frigid February wind beat against her.
Years ago, Hart Toy and many others still had permanent offices and showrooms in the original Toy building, located at 200 5th Avenue, a building that dated back to the early nineteen hundreds, once a hotel and host to Mark Twain, the Prince of Wales and various presidents.
Today, the massive Javits Center stood as an impersonal reminder of how the toy industry had changed, forsaking valuable tradition along with it.
Ann looked around. Where was Jonathan? He had said he’d meet her here.
They’d fought—one of their good, old fashioned, teeth-baring spats—over the issue of how overprotective he was being, and how she needed her space.
Ann heard the sound of a car stopping behind her. She pivoted on a heel. Jonathan, finally. Stepping out of a cab.
“You’re late,” she said.
“The muse flew in from Bangladesh this morning.”
This was good. To the best of her knowledge, he hadn’t lifted a paintbrush since their trip to Canada to film the TV commercial. But when she’d left his place this morning to swing by her apartment and pick up some things, he’d been in a strange, pensive mood.
He leaned in to kiss her hello. “Sorry. I lost track of time.”
Since they’d returned from Hong Kong, they’d settled into what Ann thought of as their New York Relationship. It was marginally different from their Traveling Relationship, and it was comfortable … to a point. More and more lately Jonathan had become obsessed with her safety. He attributed it to what had happened to her in Hong Kong, but she suspected there was more to it then that. The attack on Verna had shaken everyone. Maybe he assumed she would be next.
Now, they began jostling their way through the crowds, aiming for the nearest entrance they could find. See and be seen, Ann thought. She hadn’t missed a Toy Fair since the first one Felicia had brought her to. And while there was far less importance placed on Toy Fair, this year, more than ever, she wanted to make an impact.
A clown shoved a balloon in her face. She hitched back a step, but Jonathan reached out and palmed it. “I’m a kid at heart,” he said, seeing her expression. Then he took her hand.
They dodged Disney and Sesame Street characters handing out buttons and brochures. An actor on stilts was plugging a new children’s game. A shivering model in a red mini-skirt was trying to lure buyers to a company showroom.
“There’s a thought,” Jonathan said, eyeing her. “Maybe we need to get you out here in that blue bikini. Might drum up a little business.”
Ann slid a jaundiced look at him.
They finally made it inside and were practically crushed by the crowd. Jonathan tried to stay connected to her, but she was being pulled in a half-dozen directions by various buyers and executives greeting her as she entered their midst.
Her energy began to surge.
“So many people…” Jonathan commented as they left one group and moved on.
“Not as many as a few years ago.” She elbowed past someone trying to get to the main hall.
“You’re kidding.” He felt someone’s arm collide with his back, heard a quick apology before the voice resumed hyping some toy product to a clutch of Asian men.
“Not kidding. Adding a show in October was bad enough. Then being forced out of the Toy Building and moving to Javits. The whole situation has discouraged not only buyers but some major manufacturers from attending. Pretty soon, there won’t be a Toy Fair at all.”
They finally arrived at their destination. Javits allowed those companies willing to spend the money to put up temporary showrooms with a guarantee of privacy. The cost was alarming but Ann considered it a necessity.
She tossed her briefcase on the desk in her closet-sized office. “C’mon,” she said looking at her watch. “Let’s go see how things are going.”
Inside their showroom, in the children’s bedroom they’d constructed, Baby Talk N Glow was everywhere. On the bed, on the dresser, on the desk.
Ann assigned one of their salesmen to handle the flow of traffic. Only one major buyer would be permitted in at a time. At the moment, it was Alison Steinfeld from Toys ‘R’ Us.
Lisette Smile, the girl from the commercial, was hosting the presentation. The child was completely calm and at ease. No wonder, Ann thought, her mother was nowhere to be seen. Lisette was inviting people to have a seat in her “bedroom.” The lights dimmed. A spotlight came on, and Lisette began demonstrating Baby Talk N Glow. She was rewarded with scattered applause.
Then the seductive and attention-getting voice of the WNBC announcer they’d hired cut in, explaining the miniature nickel cadmium battery and its five-year shelf life.
Lisette carried the doll to Alison Steinfeld.
Ann held her breath. The child caught the buyer’s hand and put it to the doll’s lips.
“Hello, Alison,” Baby Talk N Glow said. “Thank you for visiting us today. Would you please touch my heart?”
Steinfeld smiled and followed the instructions asked of her.
“Can you feel it beating?” the doll asked.
Steinfeld jolted a little. “Yes,” she said—as though the doll could understand her.
“I hope you’ll carry me at Toys ‘R’ Us, Alison,” Baby Talk N Glow said. “I love you.”
Steinfeld laughed out loud. “I love you, too.”
“Hey, that’s pretty good,” Jonathan whispered.
Ann nodded absently. And there, she thought, went thousands of dollars. Other companies might have used a similar concept in the past, but never in such an elaborate manner. She’d had recordings personalized for each of the top twenty buyers. The secret was in the voice, pumped in through the doll by wireless transmitter, monitored by a technician.
Soon afterwards, Steinfeld talked about possibly upping her commitment … a little. Maybe to seventy-five thousand pieces from fifty. Ann told herself it was still nowhere near what it should be, but at least it was something.
The day wore on. Byron Young of Walmart was a no-show and Ann wondered if he was still bothered by the things she’d said to him when they met in Arkansas. Then Tom Carlisle of Kmart arrived.
He’d been the first buyer to come through for her. Ann hoped her greeting wasn’t fawning. Maybe it was, she thought five minutes later, because something was definitely off with the man. Carlisle went through the motions of his own presentation, but he showed none of his earlier delight in the doll.
Gerry McGuire from Brown’s showed up at the same time, apparently to schmooze with Ann and Jonathan as if they had become his best friends. Ann was trying to ease away from him when Carlisle quietly slipped out the showroom door.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Ann muttered to herself.
She left Jonathan and Gerry abruptly to follow Carlisle into the hall. Where had he gone? She looked right, left, then saw him approaching a competitor’s showroom. Ann sprinted to catch up. “Tom! Wait!”
He looked back at her. She reached him just as he was pushing the door open.
“What is it?” she demanded. “Is something wrong? You can’t hold up your end of the commitment? What?”
“It’s nothing, Ann. You’re fine. Calm down.”
She had known him too long, had been doing business with him for too many years, to believe that. He was acting odd. “Something’s up,” she said.
He hesitated. “It shouldn’t affect you in the least.”
“What shouldn’t?”
Carlisle let out a breath. “Kmart’s asking me to take early retirement. I’ll bring the new guy around to see you tomorrow.”
“Is my commitment safe?” she asked. And Ann immediately had a mental image of herself shriveling down to something the size of a worm. “Tom, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Business is business. As I said, you’re okay, as far as I know.”
As far as I know. Something else to tie her in knots. “What about you? W
hat are you going to do? Are you going to be okay?” All the questions she should have asked before talking about his commitment, Ann thought.
He lifted his hands in supplication, maybe in resignation.
“This is ridiculous,” Ann said. “You’re far too young to retire.”
“I’m also too damned honorable,” Carlisle added.
“What does that mean?” Ann watched a play of contradictions cross his face. She thought at first that he was going to turn away, but there was nowhere for him to go.
“Tom, talk to me, please. There’s something more to this, isn’t there?”
He looked over her shoulder. Ann actually pivoted to see who he was staring at. No one in the hall seemed to warrant undue attention. “Rumor had it that you were going under with the doll,” he said.
“Rumor is wrong,” she snapped. “Patrick Morhardt was arrested but it was all a misunderstanding. You know the press—quick to accuse, much slower to recant.”
“Still, I heard someone else was going to get Baby Talk N Glow.”
“Not true. “She shook her head.
“You had ownership problems.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Had, Tom. Past tense. It’s all straightened out. Sure, everyone in the industry tried to take her off our hands for a while. But they’ve backed off.”
He looked away again. What was he afraid of? What—who—was he looking for?
“Someone did more than try,” he said. “He pretty much promised us that he had her. He was offering huge bonuses if we’d hold off, wait and commit to him instead of you.”
A moment of dizziness swept over Ann as she tried to put together what he was saying.
Carlisle leaned closer to her. His breath smelled of salsa and onions. “Ann, didn’t you wonder why I turned you down at first?”
Of course, she had. That whole trip to the American retailers had been absurdly abysmal. “I thought you were out of your mind.”
“How did it go with the other buyers on that trip?”
“Like crap.”
He turned to move away. Ann grabbed his arm. “Please…”
He shook her grip off. “I don’t have much left to lose, Ann. I’m going to be out of this business within a few weeks. But I’ve got my family, damn it, and I’m not going to go out on a limb. Think about it. That’s all I can say.”
Out on a limb? For her? “Someone twisted your arm into turning me down? Tried to bribe you?” Her thoughts leaped. “And now they’re forcing you out of the company because you went ahead and gave me an order anyway? Who?”
Chow, she answered herself, as she sagged one shoulder against the nearest wall.
“Good luck,” Carlisle said as he opened the door to her competitor’s showroom. “That doll is the best thing I’ve seen in a long time. Under normal circumstances, I would have given you twice the commitment I did. But we all thought it was risky with this other guy involved.”
“Tom, please. You’ve got to give me more.” Ann knew she was begging, but she didn’t care. Edmund Chow hadn’t just sold her a bogus deal. He hadn’t just tried to frame Patrick. He hadn’t just tried to kill her. He’d been one move ahead all the way.
Carlisle stepped halfway inside.
For a moment, Ann thought of pulling him back. “Just tell me one thing,” she said. “He’s Chinese, right?”
The buyer’s face slackened briefly with surprise.
“No.”
“No?”
“Hardly. He’s from New York. Now, Ann, that’s all I’m going to say.” He headed inside the showroom and closed the door behind him.
Ann jerked back. Chow didn’t have a New York accent, she thought, not even close. Someone else, then. Someone else had sabotaged her buyers?
She should have known all along that there was a great deal more at play. Chow’s behavior alone just didn’t make sense. But what? What did this mean?
CHAPTER 51
Jonathan was stuck. After Ann left the showroom, Gerry McGuire went through the presentation and asked questions he didn’t know the answers to. Then Byron Young of Walmart turned up with his merchandising manager in tow.
Where was Ann? He started to get that pressured feeling in his chest again, the one he first felt after visiting Verna in the hospital. There were too many people around here. Any one of them could grab her, hurt her.
When she finally burst through the door of the showroom, he knew immediately that something was wrong. Her face was near white, with too much pink just under the surface. She had that smile on that could cut glass. He watched her press a hand to her stomach.
Jonathan tried to push his way through the crowd to reach her, but by the time he got to her side she had hooked up with Byron Young. Later, her eyes told him.
“Sorry about missing my appointment,” Young was saying. “I should have called with our change of plans.”
“It’s fine,” Ann replied. “We can squeeze you in now.”
Lisette launched herself into the demonstration. As Ann stepped back to observe, Jonathan caught her arm and pulled her a little closer to his side. “What’s going on?” he asked in an undertone.
She shook her head fretfully, then pushed her hair back from her cheek. “I’ll fill you in afterwards. But I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that Byron Young ends up giving us a firm commitment today.”
That surprised him. From the looks of her, he’d thought something bad had happened, that something else had come undone. “How do you know that?”
“He brought that other guy with him,” she said. “The merchandise manager of Walmart only turns up if a company has something unique to offer.”
When the presentation was over, Young and the other man approached them. Ann rocked back on her heels a little as she waited, then she caught sight of Linda Figgures from Target out in the hallway. She wasn’t scheduled until later in the week, but she was trying to get Ann’s attention now.
Whoever their competitor was, Ann thought, whatever he had promised the buyers, the doll was hers. And the buyers from the major retailers were anxious to meet with her. She’d won a huge battle without even understanding the terms and conditions.
But who the hell was he, if not Chow? Her thoughts moved to Patrick. He grew up in New York. Had he crawled into bed with Chow, somehow? Had he tried to wiggle out of a deal they’d made—or had he become too much of a liability—so Chow tried to get him out of the picture?
She had to put it out of her mind for now, Ann thought. The Walmart merchandise manager was talking to her, telling her that he and his buyer felt her doll was revolutionary. “Are your legal problems are all cleared up?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” Ann said. “We were able to purchase the rights to the doll directly from the inventor.”
“If you can provide a notarized letter to that effect, then we’re prepared to commit.”
“I will,” Ann replied.
“We want to feature her on the cover of our December Tab,” Byron Young added quickly.
Ann felt herself fighting for balance. “How many pieces?”
“You suggested what? Two hundred and fifty thousand?”
Ann merely nodded, not wanting to rock the boat.
“We’ll up that by another fifty thousand,” the merchandise manager said.
Ann held out her hand to shake on it. “Great. This is fabulous. Welcome on board.” She was fluttering inside.
“Ann, excuse me, can I have a word with you?”
She looked around quickly. It was Linda Figgures, pressing in from her right.
Ann held up one finger to urge her to wait and promised Young she would be in touch.
The Target buyer approached her with great energy and enthusiasm. Instead of threatening to narrow Target’s vendor base and cut Hart Toy out, she wanted to run the doll in more than one ad during the upcoming fall season.
Ann didn’t have to force her smile. She thanked the buyer and watched her leave, then she motioned to Jonatha
n and headed back to her office.
“What’s happening?” he demanded as soon as the door closed.
Ann groaned a little and dropped into her chair. Her shoes came off. “Remember our trip to the American retailers?”
“Arkansas, Chicago, all that? Yeah.” He began to nervously shift his legs, as if he were uncomfortable.
“I couldn’t understand why it went so badly,” she said.
He nodded. “I remember.”
“Jonathan, things went so badly because someone was after us.”
He stopped fidgeting. “What?”
“Someone else had already been in touch with the buyers, had told them we wouldn’t be able to hold on to the doll. He offered them a better deal—with God knows what incentives—if they committed directly to him.”
“At that point we didn’t know what Chow was up to, so we never suspected.”
“It wasn’t Chow.”
Jonathan made a low sound of disbelief in his throat. “Not Chow? Who else could have known that we were going to have problems?”
“I don’t know. But he isn’t Chinese. Tom Carlisle told me he was a native New Yorker. Tom’s reliable and I trust him.” Her neck began to hurt and she started to rub it. “They pushed Carlisle out,” she said. “Upper management. He was the first of the buyers to come around and give us a commitment. Do you remember? I would guess that he told our anonymous competitor to get lost. Now he’s being forced into early retirement.”
“Management there still thinks they can get our doll on better terms from the other guy?” Jonathan asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe somebody just pulled a few strings to punish Carlisle. We’ll find out when Tom brings the new buyer around tomorrow.”
“Kmart—they’re Kmart, right?—can’t afford to be the only chain that’s not carrying the doll.”
He’d learned a lot these last months, Ann realized.
Abruptly, Jonathan said, “Turn around.”
He had read her mind. His hands came down on her neck and gently massaged. Vibrations of pleasure sizzled inside. “Don’t stop, please don’t stop.”