Magdalene (4 page)

Possibly cruel.

“That happened in the summer of 2004. I
started grad school in 2007, which was about the time everybody
began to figure out that none of the companies that needed Jep’s
products had closed. At first, everyone assumed they were still
working on leftover inventory, so no one thought much about it.
Eventually, they’d have to start buying from Jep’s nearest
competitors.”

“I thought Jep had no competition.”

“In effect. It’s hard to compete when nobody
wants your products because they’re crap.”

“Oh, I see.”

I took another long drink.

“It took a while for people to notice that
none of Jep’s customers had gone out of business and they weren’t
buying the inferior products. Nobody could figure out who was
manufacturing J.I.’s products. It became a brand new situation to
analyze, and I walked right into it.”

Indeed, that puzzle had caught my
imagination nearly immediately, and I watched and listened, picking
up clues here and there long after the furor had died down. The
three years between the closing of J.I. and my entry into the MBA
program had been ones of silent upheaval in the manufacturing
sector and thus, the economy. Only a handful of people had been
witness to it.

I was one of them, albeit in retrospect.

I became an amateur historian, funneling
through all those old records, finding Sebastian Taight and his
family, digging back to his ties with Mitch Hollander, which seemed
to originate in the Mormon church.

That piqued my curiosity to no end, this
tendency I began to see in Mormons to be able to spin gold out of
straw, especially Taight, his mother, and his cousins. Taight
fascinated me simply because he was an enigma to the rest of the
country. There was something there, something in him that I could
hold onto. I knew it was there, and I
would
find it.

And then I did.

It was like finding a snag on a cardigan,
the one thread that, if tugged, will unravel the entire garment in
a single pull.

I’d been with Blackwood Securities barely
six months when Taight’s five-year-long war with Fen Hilliard came
to its shocking head. Jack, Melinda, and I, along with the rest of
the officers and executives of Blackwood Securities had held our
collective breath for a month while we waited for Knox Hilliard to
live or die.

“And how does OKH Enterprises fit into
it?”

“Well, once Hollander had completely
absorbed J.I., he wouldn’t sell his products to OKH out of loyalty
to Sebastian. Now, Fen was clever and he could make do with the
other vendors’ inferior products—better than anybody else could—but
it cost him more in the long run in time and lost
productivity.”

Susan said nothing for several seconds.
“That’s just so...junior high.”

I laughed. “It is, isn’t it? The stakes are
just a lot higher. And so now I’ve told you the story—”

“They didn’t all live happily ever
after?”

I snorted. Cheeky girl. “Yes, but now
Sebastian wants me to go reorganize Hollander Steelworks. What I’m
going to do is detach Jep completely and give it a new corporate
identity. It needs to have something other than ‘The Old Jep
Industries’ as its brand, since
Jep Industries
went out of
business in 2004.”

“Why doesn’t Mr. Taight do it himself? I
mean, that’s what he does, right?”

That was an excellent question.

“I don’t know for sure,” I said, “but I have
a theory. Now. What we’re looking for are the original documents
pertaining to when Hollander Steelworks absorbed Jep. Then I’ll
need you to contact Hollander’s assistant and get the
organization’s charts and— Well, you know what I want. After I have
all that, I can figure out the most efficient way to get it done.”
I looked at her as she sifted furiously through boxes, all business
now that she knew what to look for. “We have a long weekend ahead
of us.”

* * * * *

Cabiria

December 6, 2010

“Cassie, whatever you do, don’t use your
schtick on Mitch Hollander. It won’t work and it’ll annoy him.”

I didn’t bother to look up from my desk,
where I had assembled everything I needed to get this project done.
My boss stood in the threshold of my office, nervous, showing it,
but that didn’t affect me.

“Cass?”

“I heard you, Jack,” I murmured, too
engrossed in preparing for the task ahead to indulge his
insecurities. “You should know me better than that.”

He grunted. “I know you well enough to know
you pull out the sex kitten when it suits you.”

“As I recall, that’s why you hired me.”

“I hired you for your little black book and
your tendency to use it as a weapon.”

Which made me one of the most powerful
people in America. I smirked.

“So let me make this perfectly clear to you:
The man’s a Mormon bishop. It would be like seducing a priest.”

“Did that. Two years, until the archbishop
busted him.”

“Fuck.”

“Yes, but not
badly
. Boringly. I
don’t remember if he got excommunicated or just sent to
Siberia.”

“Cassie. Please?”

I sighed and looked across the room at him,
all five feet and ten inches of barely leashed—usually
cheerful—energy. “Why are you so afraid of Mitch Hollander?”

He waved a hand. “I’m not
afraid
of
him. I
like
him. I
respect
him. He doesn’t like
me
.”

“Okay, then. Why do you need his
approval?”

“Why do you need Clarissa’s?”

Ouch.

“I don’t have time for this,” I said,
getting back to packing my laptop and associated displays. Jack
made fun of me for using paper, but digital presentations kept
people at a distance, and I got in my clients’ faces. Paper suited
my style. “I promise I won’t disgrace you by throwing myself at
Hollander.”

“Thank you,” he breathed, and I shook my
head. Jack’s concern for Hollander’s opinion was so out of
character I had no frame of reference for it.

At a word to my assistant, my things were
taken down to my car while I ate the last of my breakfast.

“And, oh, keep your mitts off the rest of
the pack, too.”

“Why?” I asked around my lox.

“Just— No playtime or side arrangements
amongst my Mormon clientele, okay? It kind of creeps me out.”

“Their morality is their problem,” I said.
“And as to that—except for Hollander, who nobody can figure out
anyway—none of that pack is a shining example of morality. I mean,
look at Hilliard.”

“That’s a rumor.”

“But he’s never denied it.”

I felt a deep affinity for Knox Hilliard, a
man who’d cracked and gone rogue the minute the justice system
failed to deliver justice. Fortunately or unfortunately (I’d never
known which) I hadn’t had Hilliard’s courage and had settled for
dispatching my enemies in less permanent ways.

Even then, while my daughter could overlook
a charismatic law professor’s
alleged
misdeeds (so much she
was willing to follow him to his no-name midwestern college to get
a law degree), she could not forgive me mine.

The ones she knew of, anyway.

Vengeance was far uglier up close and
personal, and did not sit as attractively on my shoulders as it did
on Dr. Hilliard’s, whom she worshipped on a semi-regular basis
whenever he lectured on white-collar crimes at NYU’s criminal
justice program.

“And Taight.”

Jack shrugged. “He’ll tell you he’s still a
cultural Mormon.”

“Doesn’t keep him from fucking half the
world’s women.”

“He’s settled down.”

“Doubt it. A tomcat like that doesn’t just
stay home with the kittens when one particular pussy catches his
fancy.” Jack cleared his throat and I rolled my eyes. “Okay, okay,”
I said, conceding once I remembered Jack’s history, sexual and
otherwise. “I get the point. Unless
you’re
fucking around on
your wife.”

“Would
you
fuck around on my
wife?”

“It would depend on her libido and how good
she is in bed.”

“She’s a raving lunatic. Eat your heart
out.”

That made me laugh. If Eilis Logan had done
for King Midas what Lydia Blackwood had done for Jack, I’d have to
kill my assumptions about his chronic promiscuity.

I looked at my watch and stood to clean
up.

“Cassie, please, let me do that,” Susan said
as she zipped through my office door, past Jack.

“Susan...”

“It’s my job,” she said and glared at me,
her fist propped on her hip. Really, she was too young to be that
bossy, but I acquiesced.

I swept out of my office, Jack’s last-minute
admonitions following me down the hall to the elevator bank. Once
down on Wall Street, I slipped into my waiting car. My driver
closed the door, walked around the car, slid behind the wheel, and
said, “Good morning, Ms. St. James.”

“Good morning, Sheldon. Any news?”

He gave me a few details on my neighbors, my
colleagues, my children—tidbits he’d picked up here and there at
Zabar’s or the dry cleaner’s or wherever he went while waiting for
a call from me or my children. Every day he had at least one small
thing that I could use. Somehow.

“Thank you,” I murmured when he ran out of
on dits
.

“And,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken,
glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “My wife finally got a job.
Really good one, where she can do what she likes and go up the
ladder. Benefits, too. The works. Ms. St. James,” he said
earnestly, “I really want to than—”

“Excellent,” I said, and checked my phone
for messages.

We said nothing else to each other on the
drive to Bethlehem, home of Hollander Steelworks, mostly because I
needed to call the one person guaranteed not to want to talk to
me.

“Cassie!” she hissed, then lowered her
voice. “I’m in class.”

I knew that.

“Question,” I said, disregarding her
irritation. “When do you graduate?”

“In May. Which you know. My graduation
application is posted on the refrigerator.”

“It’s dated two years ago, Clarissa.”

“What do you want?”

“Are you serious about going where Knox
Hilliard teaches?”

“Dammit, Mother. Of course I am. An urban
commuter school—a state one at that—in some hick town in the middle
of nowhere that doesn’t have skiing
or
a beach?”

Her willingness to sacrifice so much for her
educational goals was admirable.

“I mean, for real? As in, you’re going to
work, not simply drool over Professor Hottie and wait for him to
notice you and fall in love with you?”

“I’m going to ignore that and point you to
my 4.0 in a
double
major. Which is criminal justice and
Spanish.
Not
humanities, also known as underwater basket
weaving. Unlike some people I could name.
Mother
.”

She had me there. The snob. “I am on my way
to a meeting at which he will be present. Would you like me to
finesse your name into the conversation? Plant a few seeds?”

I would have thought the call had been
dropped but for the background lecture going on and the rustlings
of students. “What
kind
of meeting, exactly?”

“Not that.”

I could hear her breathe a sigh of relief.
“Thank
God
.”

“Although I might change my mind...”

“Mother! Don’t you think you’ve poached
enough men? You have to move in on my territory, too?”

“A crush on a man old enough to be your
father does not ‘territory’ make.”

“God, you’re a bitch.”

“Isn’t he married? To that gorgeous
redheaded right-wing nut?” Stony silence. “Oh, I remember. We don’t
like to talk about that.”

“Bite me. This conversation is over.”

And it was, because she’d hung up on me.

I attempted to annoy my other three
daughters, but none of them were available. I doubted they were
avoiding me, but I couldn’t rule it out.

My phone rang then— “I’ve Never Been to Me,”
my best friend’s ringtone.

He hates that.

“Where are you?” Nigel demanded.

“About halfway to Lehigh Valley. Why?”

“Word got out that you’re detaching Jep
Industries from Hollander Steelworks, rebranding it, and installing
a COO. Hollander’s bigger customers are biting their
fingernails.”

“Shit, already?” I had hoped that word
wouldn’t get out so soon, but it was inevitable when the CEO of OKH
Enterprises—J.I.’s biggest customer now that Fen Hilliard was
dead—was married to Hollander’s best friend. King Midas probably
didn’t want to piss off his wife by doing the reorganization
himself.

“You’re the wild card in this scenario.”

I would have pinched the bridge of my nose,
but I didn’t want to disturb my makeup. “Keep mum until I can work
Logan around to my point of view.”

Indeed, Sebastian Taight’s wife could be a
right bitch when she was unhappy, and as the CEO of the biggest
metals fabrication plant in the country, her opinions were
critical. The health of OKH’s equipment depended on Jep’s products,
and any change in its leadership could negatively affect her
production lines—which would affect a lot of other companies. Thus,
the manufacturing sector took its cues from her: If Eilis Logan
wasn’t happy, nobody was happy.

Naturally, I’d planned for that.

“I’m not sure how long it will take me to
beat Hollander and his cronies into doing it my way, especially if
she fights me. And God knows how Taight will figure into it. Even
if he likes my plan, he’ll stand with his wife.”

“That’s a helluva conflict.”

“Has that ever stopped the Dunham family
before?”

“Good point,” he said. “Gotta go. Bring all
their balls home in a jar.”

Right.

I looked at my watch. “Damn. Sheldon, could
you drive around Bethlehem and Allentown? I want to see a few
things.”