Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

“Agar? What the hell’s ‘agar’?” he demanded, “and this ‘sorba whatever, something MacConkey’? And what the fuck is ‘smack’? I thought it was some kind of heroin. What the hell kind of equipment is that?” He’d liked this Hindu woman, or whatever the hell she was, at first glance. She was pretty as a picture: dark and sharp featured, with little green stones in her ears and a nice yellow, silky thing hanging off her shoulder. He thought she was supposed to have a dot in the middle of her forehead, but no matter. She looked like a lovely doll and stood a good six inches shorter than him, a difference he enjoyed infrequently. She’d been standing there for half an hour before she had a chance to say a word.

“Sorbitol, Mr. Stein,” she replied in a lilting, chimelike voice. “It’s called a sorbitol-MacConkey agar. That is S-M-A-C, or smack, if you will. As noted in the report before you, the agar itself is made up of agar-agar. It’s-”

“Agar-agar?” he exploded. “Give me a break! And smack is a goddamn illegal drug. Christ, Tom!” he whined, exasperated, appealing to the man on his left. “This sounds like Abbott and fucking Costello. Agar’s on first and agar’s on second.”

Big Irish Tom Maloney shifted position wearily, it seemed to Dr. Ganga Roy, perhaps in an effort to keep his suit jacket from getting stuck beneath his ample backside. She was almost as bemused by her odd little class as she was by her remarkable classroom.

The main section of Nathan Stein’s office, where they were meeting today, was twenty-five feet wide and eighteen feet deep. Its windows looked from the fifty-third floor over Manhattan north of the Battery. Stein’s battleship of a desk occupied the southeast corner of the room, and the light behind him lasted all morning long. He set it up that way purposely. The light was so bright behind him it hid his facial expression from anyone sitting in any of the four leather chairs that lined up to face him across the desk. Ten feet behind them, in the middle of the room, was a brass-fitted glass conference table surrounded by a dozen very different, very expensive chairs. Beneath that grouping a large red Bactrian rug, perhaps a hundred feet square, bespoke the anguished labor of a thousand tiny fingers. At the far end of the office were a black leather sofa, two huge chairs, and a massive sleek black-wood coffee table. Two doors, set off to the right of that furniture, led to Stein’s private bathroom and bedroom, so Dr. Roy supposed, completing his home away from all his other homes.

She’d stood and been ignored for the past twenty minutes, sunlight behind her, an easel at her side. Because she was standing, and because of the easel, where she stood became the head of the table. Tom Maloney faced her from his least favorite chair, the unforgiving mahogany number that forced his body into an awkward forward lean. He was stuck with it because Nathan had chosen the velvet to his right.

Nathan Stein was a genius at making things as difficult as possible. Today he was at the top of his game, and no wonder. The Knowland business had just hit the fan.

Not twenty-four hours ago, when Tom first called Dr. Ganga Roy, he’d modestly introduced himself as Senior Vice President and Director of Mergers and Acquisitions. “Which is,” he said, “when you come right down to it, just a lot of words.” He’d heard from a research director he knew that Dr. Roy was quite good and “quite tiny,” and hoped that the latter might have a soothing effect-that Napoleonfucking Stein, as he was known to so many at Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills Securities, might find her smallness pleasing. This morning Tom had personally helped her set up the flip-chart easel she’d brought. He buzzed around her cheerfully until the others tromped in, none of them extending even the courtesy of a glance her way, and then Tom too acted as if she wasn’t there. She might have been the cleaning woman patiently waiting to make some slight move without causing notice. And so she stood for twenty minutes as the others argued, Tom took his seat, and the spectacle progressed.

She gathered that the big black man, the one Tom told her was Wesley Pitts, had incurred Mr. Stein’s disfavor. The matter had something to do with Houston. “Did you talk to Pat Grath yourself?” Mr. Stein was asking as they entered. Pitts said he’d talked to Grath and Billy MacNeal too. Now they were sitting, and she chose not to. Tom Maloney’s chubby, English-looking cheeks seemed to sag as he followed the conversation. Pitts said, “They’re all scared shitless. They’ve got hundreds of millions at stake.” Now Stein snarled most unbecomingly. “Tell me again,” he demanded.

Pitts’s eyes were large and round, fraught with more than information-bulging with urgency, fighting an anxious tension. “Pat got a call from the plant manager in Tennessee. His name is Ochs.” Pitts’s extraordinarily large hands fumbled through a tiny notepad. “Floyd Ochs. One of his foremen, a guy named Wayne Korman, told him to shut down his line. He, Korman, said something about the readings being incomplete. Stuff was getting by untested. He said they’d been shipping out beef with E. coli bacteria since yesterday. He wanted to clean the whole operation, scrap the meat supply, and get new cattle before they started again. It seems they’ve been running around the clock. Ochs mentioned ‘operator fatigue’ to Grath. Anyway, Ochs told Korman not to do a fucking thing. He told him to take no action. He told him to wait for instructions. Then he called Grath. Grath told Billy Mac and Billy’s shit turned to water. The IPO-that’s all he thinks about. That’s when Pat called me. And that’s it, Nathan. That’s all I’ve got.”

“And what about Hopman?”

“I called Hopman myself,” said Tom Maloney. “He wants to hear what we have to say and that’s why we are sitting here now. That’s why we need to do this now. We need to get a handle on the scope of this problem.”

Silence at last settled into the room. They all looked at Nathan Stein and waited.

“Shit, Maloney!” he suddenly squawked in the strained, unpleasant voice of a student who understands nothing and blames that on the book. “Fucking sonofabitch!”

It surprised Dr. Roy only a little that they’d paid no attention to her, despite her doll-like beauty, despite her unconventional costume and easel. She was, she knew, a kind of servant-however well compensated. What amazed her was how freely these people talked in front of the help. She would certainly have excused her half-deaf Polish cleaning woman to ensure privacy for a sensitive phone conversation or a visit with friends. Where she came from, one accorded servants the very real respect due to those positioned to do one harm. Mid-level managers, research directors, whom she’d met by the many hundreds, did not behave this way. Now she knew those at the top were no different. Even faculty meetings were more discreet.

Now, Stein was looking at her, seeing her in his mind, she sensed, as the only one in the room not yet immersed in the troubles of Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills Securities. “Sorry about all that,” he said, attempting a gracious smile, “and you are Dr. Roy. Am I right?”

Maloney shot to his feet much more limberly than she supposed he could. He ran through her credentials and introduced her to Stein (Vice Chairman of Stein, Gelb, Hector this man, she was sure, could only have gotten his crown by inheritance), and Pitts (described as the firm’s invaluable Vice President for Client Relations, whatever that might mean; he was very likely an ex-athlete, almost certainly some kind of salesman). And then there was the only female at the table, Louise Hollingsworth, a tall, stiff-necked, sharp-featured woman, small shouldered and lean, wiry hair unfortunately blonde, not at all flattered by her rich floral scent, black skirt, pink silk blouse, and heels. Maloney described Louise as “our most Senior Analyst, but in reality, much, much more.” Louise rose uncomfortably, unhappily, to shake hands. Even in her midthirties, even under the corporate get-up and ill-advised touches, Dr. Roy pictured a girl spending her best years free of lipstick and casual friends, haunting the stacks of a cozy New England college-Hampshire, Marlboro, maybe Bard-writing very long papers.