Stuart Woods - Fast and Loose

“For Macher, that would amount to a public shaming. He cares desperately about achieving a business reputation for himself.”

“I don’t have a problem with that.”

“You need to think about this, Stone.”

“You’re against the deal?”

“No, no, I don’t give a shit either way, except for the fun of embarrassing Macher. You just have to understand that if you win, you’ll be making a dangerous enemy.”

“Well, I suppose you don’t win many friends resisting hostile takeovers.”

“Of course not, but this will be of a different order of magnitude, given Macher’s background and, above all, his nature. You had better be ready for a hostile reaction.”

“That’s good advice, Ed, thank you.”

“The least I can do,” Ed said. “See ya.” He hung up.

Stone hung up, too. It occurred to him that, given Ed’s information, it might be better to reconsider how to handle St. Clair’s offer. He called Paul Carlsson.

“Good morning, Stone,” the physician said. “Did you and Marisa enjoy your evening?”

“Very much indeed,” Stone replied.

“I’m so glad. I hope you will forgive her Swedish forthrightness. It has sometimes been a problem for her.”

“Ah, no problem. Paul, I’ve had some new information about the St. Clair offer.”

“Then I’m anxious to hear it. Federal Express picked up the stockholder documents twenty minutes ago. Several of my staff were up most of the night getting them ready to ship, in light of your concern for quick action.”

Stone’s shoulders sagged; too late for restraint. “Paul, my new information is that Erik Macher is personally, deeply invested in his offer for the clinic, and he will be very upset when he hears that he has lost it.”

“Do we care?” Paul asked.

“Not really, but I’ve been advised that we should be prepared for a very strong reaction, possibly a dangerous one.”

Carlsson was quiet for a moment. “I had not anticipated such a thing.”

“Neither had I, though perhaps I should have.”

“Do you have some notion of how we should proceed, given this new information?”

“I believe that for a time, we should hire security professionals to ensure the safety of you and your family.”

“Do you mean bodyguards?”

“Perhaps more subtle than that. I serve on the board of Strategic Services, a large part of whose business is personal protection, and they are very, very good at what they do.”

“What, exactly, will this mean?” Paul asked.

“They will want to install people at the clinic, perhaps under the guise of providing some other business service — computer evaluations, perhaps — something that will give them an excuse to be close to you, then they’ll blend in. Also, it would be best if you all travel in vehicles supplied and driven by them. They will endeavor to be as unobtrusive as possible.”

“All right, I’ll let the kids know. When will this start?”

“Before the day is out. I just have to make the phone call to put everything in place.”

“Then proceed, and thank you for your attention to this.”

“I will do so immediately,” Stone said. He hung up and called Mike Freeman.

Mike listened while Stone outlined the problem. “I’ll put two people with each of them, one to watch the scene, the other to stick close.”

“Uh, Mike, there will be times when the daughter won’t need that coverage.”

“What sort of times?”

“The times when she’s with me.”

“Are you prepared to go armed at those times and explain to her why you’re carrying?”

“It would be better than having a strange man in my bedroom,” Stone replied.

“As you wish. I’ll put Viv Bacchetti in charge of getting a team together. I’ll send a team to the clinic to survey the strengths and weaknesses of the place, and I’ll have personal protection in place by five o’clock today.”

“Make that ten tomorrow morning for Marisa,” Stone said.

“Gotcha. Anything else?”

“It might be a good idea to put one of your shrinks to the task of disassembling Erik Macher’s psyche, with an eye toward predicting his moves.”

“A thoughtful suggestion. They sometimes complain about not being given enough work. Talk to you later.”

Both men hung up.

Joan buzzed. “A Dr. Carlsson on one,” she said.

Stone picked up the phone. “Paul?”

“Not the first time I’ve been mistaken for my father,” Marisa said.

“I was under-informed. I’m sorry.”

“My late appointment has been canceled. May I come to you for a drink before dinner? I want to see how you live.”

“I’d be delighted. Seven o’clock, if Swedes are congenitally punctual, six-thirty if they tend to run late.”

“See you at seven. I have the address.” She hung up.

Stone buzzed Joan. “Next time tell me which Dr. Carlsson,” he said, then hung up before she could come back with a snappy reply.

Marisa was punctual; the bell rang as the second hand reached the top of the clock. Stone let her in the front door, and they kissed lightly.

“So far, so good,” she said. “I like the flowers planted outside — not what you’d expect from a born-again bachelor.”

He led her into the living room, where she stopped and performed a slow 360-degree turn. “This is you, but not entirely you,” she said. “I see a little of an older person. How did you come by this house?”

“I think perhaps I’d better get us a drink before I tell you that story because it’s a few paragraphs long.”

She followed him into the study, looking carefully around.

“What would you like to drink?”

“What was that stuff you asked me for last evening?”

“Knob Creek bourbon.”

“Some of that, please, and put this in your freezer.” She reached into one of her two commodious handbags and extracted a bottle of Akvavit. “For future occasions.”

“Certainly,” he said, opening the door and inserting it, then he poured them both a Knob Creek.

She sniffed it, then had a taste, smacking her lips. “Not as bad as I thought it would be,” she said.

“I’ll let Kentucky know you said so. In addition to being sexually liberated, Swedes are also frank.”

“Germans are frank,” she said. “Swedes are candid.”

“I see.”

“Are these your mother’s paintings?”

“They are. You’re very well informed.”

“I am a researcher by nature.”

“Is that a Swedish trait?”

She took a chair. “More a personal one.”

Stone sat beside her. “You were born and raised in New York, right?”

“Yes.”

“How did you get to be so Swedish?”

“By way of genetics, since both my parents are Swedish, and by nature, acquired in my summers in that country as a girl. I had many opportunities to compare, and I found Swedes to be better role models than Americans.”

“In what ways?”

“First, you were going to tell me the story of how you acquired this house.”

“Ah. By a rather torturous route. My parents were natives of western Massachusetts, where their own parents were engaged in the weaving of woolen cloth, on rather a large scale. The two families were close, and by the time they were teenagers, my father and mother were deeply in love, somewhat to the alarm of their respective parents.”

“Too young?”

“That, and my father’s ambitions. He was destined for the law at Yale, where generations of Barringtons had matriculated, but he wanted more than anything to be a carpenter and a maker of furniture, which they considered to be beneath their station in life. Then there was the subject of his social and political views.”