Paul Robertson: The Heir

“I could just tell him. It’ll be obvious anyway.”

“You may change your mind as the days go by. For now, be direct. Tell him you expect the same working relationship with the governor that your father had.”

“Which was?” I hadn’t played poker since college, and bluffing wasn’t my strong suit.

“You supply him with ample contributions, positive press coverage and union organization during elections, and he keeps the legislature friendly to your business interests and ensures that you receive the major share of state contracts. He also keeps law enforcement agencies from causing you inconvenience.”

So simple, so obvious. What had the citizens done to deserve such a well-run state? And I certainly didn’t want inconvenience.

“Why might the law enforcement agencies be inconvenient?”

Fred sighed, which he could do very deeply. “Your father’s business dealings with the state did not operate within a normal legal framework.”

“So he just built his own.”

“Yes, and therefore any involvement by the state police would be inappropriate.”

What a pile of words. “I’ve inherited this framework?”

“You should be thankful that it is already in place.”

It was all in place, everything. I just needed to take my place inside it. No-I should stand up right now and spit in his eye and tell him I will not defile myself in this swamp. This is what I hated so much about being Melvin, this slimy stew of corruption and power. I will put an end to it!

“Okay, that’s about what I thought,” I said.

“Grainger knows the details intimately. You don’t need to at the beginning, just understand the working relationship.”

I’ll find the details later. I can clean it up then.

“I should avoid saying anything blatantly illegal?” I said.

“Um, yes. He could be recording the meeting.”

“Right.” I don’t want to play this game. Decide. Quit now. “Where should we meet?”

“You select a restaurant, near the capitol.”

Here was another problem: lunch with the accountant, dinner with the chief of staff, and Pamela would have donuts at the board meeting. “I’m going to get fat.”

“Then have fun doing it,” said the three-hundred-pound mound in front of me, and he could just as well have been talking about all the other corruptions he was inducting me into. “Life is short, Jason.”

Life is short. “Who was king before Melvin?” I said.

“King? No one. There were dukes and earls, or whatever. Your grandfather was a minor baron. No, your father created the position of sole ruler.”

“But you say there has to be a king.”

“You can’t go back. The world had changed; your father changed it.”

The metaphor seemed backward. “Once the people have had a king, they’ll always want one?”

“The people have nothing to do with it.” He was amused at the thought, or at my innocence, and it was fascinating to listen to him. I was a rat being hypnotized by a snake. “They are only necessary as an object for power to be wielded over.”

What would a government do without a population to be governed? I repeated the question. “So who needs there to be a king?”

“The men who are strong enough to grasp power. Before your father consolidated his position, no one had been able to accomplish it. Now they know it can be done, and how. There are a million people in this state, and if just one of them, only one, has a desire for power, he will rule the rest. There are many more than one who have the desire.”

“I still don’t think I do, Fred.”

“Then you may be the better man to wield power.”

He didn’t believe that. He knew what it took to wield power. It took determination and purpose, and purpose was what I lacked.

What am I doing here?

I was hoping for a return to sanity as I descended back through the twenty-third floor, but it didn’t come. The line was gone. I looked for it in the lobby, but there was still no sign of it.

I walked the few blocks to the steak place George Elias had suggested, and cleared my head with the exercise. Maybe this would be more fun.

George wasn’t an accountant. He was a major-league investment manager and banker, and it had been his job to shovel Melvin’s cash between vaults whenever one got too full. If the restaurant was expensive, that would mean he managed other people’s investments because he liked being around money. If the place was cheap, that meant he managed other people’s money because they wanted him to.

It was respectable and an excellent value. I decided to give George a raise.

I was ten minutes early, and my guess was he would be five minutes early. When he came in at that, on the dot, I was ready to give him another raise. He was thin, or else everybody seemed to me to be thin after two hours with Fred, and he was friendly but very professional.

“If I’d known beforehand I was going to inherit the estate, I would have made sure I knew more about it,” I said after we’d ordered. Actually, if I’d known beforehand that I was going to inherit, I would have made sure I didn’t. But I was being open-minded. “As it is, I’m pretty much in the dark.”

“I have some papers,” he said. “Do I remember that your degree from Yale is in business administration?”

“Don’t take that too seriously.”

“But you know how to read a balance sheet, and you understand profit and loss, and cash flow statements.”

“I think I can figure them out.”

“Then let’s start with the businesses you own.”

It was not hard to figure out, even for a Yale business major. Through the fog of corporate identities was majority ownership of eleven factories, three construction companies, a trucking company, two distributors-all with over ten thousand direct employees.

“Now, these are your other major investments.”

Lots of stock in the newspaper and Channel Six, in retail chains, hotels, banks, and a little more in anything else there was. And it was all local, everything based inside the state. Through four different real estate holding companies, I owned half the skyline. I owned the building Fred’s office was in, I owned the company that had built it, I owned the company that had paved the road from there to this restaurant, I owned the trucks that delivered the tables we were sitting at, the distributor the tables came from, the contractor who’d installed the air conditioning.

The very air we breathed was mine. Well, more or less.

The balance sheets dealt with some real big numbers, and they weren’t in the debit column. The cash flows looked like Niagara Falls. These were companies that did not keep their market share by cutting costs and competing on price. These were companies that didn’t bother with competing at all. But of course, these businesses did not operate in a normal framework. It would be very important to keep a close working relationship with the governor.

George handed me the next sheets. “You may be familiar with the personal real estate you own.”

There was the big house and the townhouse in Washington. He hadn’t used the other houses much, except as knickknack shelves to set Angela in when he wanted to pretend they were vacationing. She’d jet off for a few weeks, and he’d drop in for a couple weekends.

“And here are a few other assets.”

The cars, the library, the art.

“I own a Matisse?”

George laughed. “Not a significant one. I believe it’s in the Washington townhouse. Most of the art is impressionist and later, but nothing very modern. There are three that are very valuable-a Monet, a Cezanne, and a Picasso. They’re in the main house.”

I probably had seen them. “I never thought of him as a collector.”