Julia Spencer-Fleming - To Darkness And To Death

Shaun glared at his son. “Don’t call your stepmother that.”

“She’s five years older than I am, Dad. I’m not going to call her Mom.” Jeremy threw himself onto the couch in exactly the same position Shaun had flung himself into earlier.

“We’ve had this talk before. Call her Courtney.”

“Is she going to wear that slinky black dress tonight? The one that shows off her…” Jeremy made the universal male gesture for breasts.

“Goddammit! Show my wife some respect.”

“Sorry, sorry. I got carried away. Really, I came to offer help. Let me get you up at the head table. Courtney, too.”

Shaun sat heavily in his chair. “Listen to you. Making table arrangements. I can’t believe you got an MBA for this.”

“I’m getting the ground-floor view of a growing business. This year, I’m in charge of visitor satisfaction. Two years from now, I’ll be the assistant manager. Two years from that, I plan on being the manager, and from there, who knows? BWI/Opperman has resorts all over the country.”

“The hospitality industry.” Shaun spat the words out. It always sounded like a fancy term for prostitution to him.

Jeremy ignored his sour tone. “The future of the Adirondacks, and of the country, isn’t in manufacturing, Dad. It’s in experiences. Tourism, hospitality, entertainment, games-that’s where the money is.” He waved a languid hand at the office around them. “Unionized labor, taxes, high transportation costs-Reid-Gruyn’s cost per ream of paper produced is almost twice that of GWP’s.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

Jeremy lifted his head. “I pay attention, Dad. I’m a shareholder, remember? I stand to make a lot of money if GWP tenders a good offer.”

Shaun felt as if a live wire had just made contact with his spine. “You can’t be serious. You wouldn’t vote for selling the company.”

“GWP could be the best thing to happen to Reid-Gruyn. They can afford to update the specialty milling presses, they can funnel cheap pulp our way… hell, they can even bring in workers if the union threatens to get out of hand.”

Shaun circled his desk. “This mill has been in our family since 1872! I can’t-that you would even think of throwing it away to those… those… Malaysians!”

Jeremy sat up. “Dad?”

Shaun could only gape at him, his mouth working, trying to find words for the perfidy.

Jeremy stood up and gripped Shaun’s arm. “Dad. Serious. I don’t really want to see the old place get sold. But once that Haudenosaunee timber is taken off the market, our production costs are going to rise. With everything that’s going on in the Middle East, fuel prices aren’t going anywhere but up. Even if you can float the costs for a year or two, eventually they’ll slice so far into the profit margin, Reid-Gruyn will start bleeding red ink.”

“You talk just like my banker.” His voice sounded sulky, even to his own ears.

Jeremy shook him slightly, and Shaun had the inverted sense that he was the child and Jeremy the adult. “This day has been coming ever since you and Grandpa sold off the last of the Reid-Gruyn timberlands in the eighties. You left yourself at the mercy of the landholders, and sooner or later, all land goes for its best and highest use.”

Was this what B-school had done to his son? Bled off all his sentiment and turned him into a living economics textbook? It made him glad he had never gotten an MBA. The import of what Jeremy said sank in slowly.

“Maybe that’s it,” Shaun said, twitching his shoulder enough to break his son’s hold. “Maybe we ought to buy back our own timberland.”

Jeremy’s laugh was abrupt. “You’ve got to be kidding. The tax burden alone would sink your profits. I wasn’t criticizing what you and Grandpa did. It was the right move. Staying in your core business.”

Shaun returned to his desk and began sweeping the papers and spreadsheets and P and L statements into a folder. “I’m not kidding. Haven’t you ever heard of vertical integration? Owning the raw material, the manufacturing plant, and the means to transport it to the market. It could work.”

Jeremy shook his head. “You’ve lost it. The board would never vote to acquire forest land. And anyway, there isn’t timberland anywhere near Washington County that’s for sale.”

Shaun grinned at his son. “Oh, yes, there is. Haudenosaunee.”

D itch the car. Ditch the car. But where? Randy’s mind ran round and round like a gerbil on a wheel. The sound of the tires on pavement thrumming the question What to do? What to do? What to do?

At one point, he realized it was the car, and not him, shaking. He checked the speedometer. He was doing seventy, twenty miles over the limit. His heart flipped over and he slammed on the brakes, a cold sweat shocking the back of his neck and his underarms. Jesus. A cop could have been hiding in a speed trap and he would have blown right by. Wouldn’t have even noticed until he was pulled over. After that, he kept his eyes on the gauges.

That didn’t solve his problem, though. He needed to dump the car. Someplace where it wouldn’t get found for a while. Someplace that wouldn’t lead the cops to him when they found it. Someplace where he could walk to Mike’s.

The sign for Lick Springs Road gave him the idea. It ran from the mountains down through rolling pastures and teed at Route 57. Route 57 rambled alongside the river that gave Millers Kill its name, through the town and east toward Glens Falls.

And the Reid-Gruyn mill was right off it.

He didn’t stop to ponder the idea. He spun the wheel and heeled the little car onto Lick Springs Road. He wouldn’t leave the car at the plant; that would be stupid. But he could pull in behind the old part of the mill, where nobody ever went, and where no one would see him. He could hike to Mike’s from there.

The only traffic on Lick Springs Road was a minivan with Vermont plates and a tractor hauling a boxy load of hay at the far edge of the breakdown lane. Good. The fewer people who saw him driving this car, the better. Traffic along Route 57 was similarly quiet. His racing heart slowed down. He stopped sweating. No one should be entering or leaving the mill’s parking lot at this time of day. He was in the clear. He slowed as the gate came into sight.

And slowed even further when he saw two cars approaching it from the parking lot. He grunted. How could anyone have such shit luck? He braked hard, yanking the little Prius to the side of the road. There were several maps in the driver’s-door pocket, and he yanked one out, snapping it open in front of his face. I’m a tourist, he thought, just an out-of-towner checking out my map before I get back on the road. I’m a tourist, don’t notice me…

He peeked out behind one edge of the map. A little BMW coupe was easing through the gate. He recognized the driver. Jeremy Reid, the boss’s son. Jeremy had been in his class at Millers Kill High School. Look at the redheaded sonofabitch, driving a car that cost as much as Randy and Lisa made in a year combined. Jeremy accelerated up the road without so much as glancing in Randy’s direction. That was good, that was what he wanted, but it pissed him off anyway.

Randy recognized the next car before he could make out the driver. Mr. Reid’s Mercedes. Oh, he remembered that car. The Joes that made Reid’s money for him would be stumbling across the employee parking lot, clutching their lunches in paper bags, and Mr. Reid would be getting out of that big German car, his cashmere coat sliding off of the leather seat. There may have been some serious belt-tightening at the mill, like Lewis Johnson said, but it sure as hell wasn’t pinching Reid.