Джон Макдональд - A Key to the Suite

“That makes sense.”

“He goes next week. Plaque, citation, tears and full retirement.”

“Full?”

“He’s only two years off it now, so what does it cost for a gesture? An extra seven hundred a year. We did the same thing for Lane, remember? It buys a little loyalty, and leaves me with no guilt. In fact, one of my boys is down at that convention making a final confidential report on him.”

“Good God, John, what do you need with another report? That man has never...”

“Whoa! I sent Hubbard over there, for a good reason.”

“Hubbard? Hubbard? Is that the one you were telling me about in New York a couple of months ago? Some kind of technical fellow?”

“Metallurgical engineer. I called him in and conned him. I told him we still weren’t certain about Mulaney. I said the evidence was against the man, but he was reputed to do us a lot of good at conventions and things like that. I told him his report would be the final deciding factor in whether we live out the two years with him, gradually transferring responsibility and authority or get rid of him right now.”

“With a man like Mulaney, you can’t take things away piece by piece. He’d bitch up the whole...”

“I know that, Harry. And so do you. This Floyd Hubbard was one hell of a find. He’s got first class organizational instincts. He’s shrewd about people. He can work like a horse and shrug off the pressure. I’ve been sticking him into some very hairy situations, and he’s done damn well. But they’ve been office-hours problems, without the social overtones. I have one doubt in my mind about him. I don’t know if he’s rough enough. I have a hunch he is, but he has yet to find that out about himself. Do you understand?”

“You’ve set him up?”

“Like a target. Mulaney has a smarter wife than he deserves. And he has a merciless bunch of old buddies working for him. And I made sure the word got spread around that Hubbard was sent to do the final hatchet work on Mulaney. So I’ll find out what some new pressures can do to my boy. If he weasels the report, I’ll know the basic toughness isn’t there. I’ll still have some use for him, but it’ll be limited. There’s only one answer he can give me, but he doesn’t know that Mulaney is out whatever he says. If Hubbard makes like a sailor on a pass, I’ll know about that, too, and put a lid on his future accordingly. But if it works out, Harry, I’ll have me a man better than... Harris or Lunt or Tomaselli. I’ll have me a man that’ll be pressing me hard in a few years, so hard maybe I’ll wish I never found him in this outfit.”

“In some ways, John, you are a mean son of a bitch.”

Camplin grinned. “I’m doing a mean job, thanks to you. Hubbard would understand exactly what I’m doing. This is a hardness test, Harry. That would be right up his alley. A piece of bar stock can look just fine. But you don’t know what you’ve really got until you take it into the testing lab and see what it reads on the scale. The world is full of sweet bright young men, Harry. With big warm hearts. Group-adjusted. Group-oriented. Christ, we recruit them in carload lots. But if you ask any one of them to fire another, he’ll turn ashen and collapse. I sent Hubbard to Seattle to see if he had any ideas about tightening up that warehouse operation. A week later he sent me a wire from Los Angeles. It said, ‘Close that crummy mess up there and consolidate here. Figures follow.’ I wired him back. ‘Close it yourself.’ He wired me. ‘Send me a lawyer.’ Two weeks later he came wandering in, grinning, and told me that he’d discovered the secret of going without sleep. Just never get within forty feet of a bed. Accounting says the move will save us upwards of a hundred thousand a year, even including the additional freight charges.”

“Isn’t that enough? Did you have to con him on Mulaney?”

“I don’t want to be almost positive. I have to be dead certain.”

At ten-thirty Cory Barlund was drinking black coffee with Alma Bender in the paneled kitchen of Alma’s apartment. Had Alma’s hair not been dyed a dark and rather poisonous red, she could have posed for a granny’s baked-goods advertisement.

“Pete Stormlander will have the letter ready for me to pick it up,” Cory said. “Big problem. If I asked him, he’d type up his own suicide note for me and bring it across town on his hands and knees. Through traffic. He sickens me.”

“Cory, dear, you are in your usual happy frame of mind. And your lovely eyes are just a little puffy.”

“Somehow I didn’t sleep very well. What I should have done was keep on walking right out that door when that Frick animal started panting and drooling.”

“Freddy isn’t that bad, sweetie. But you don’t think you’ll have any trouble with the Hubbard fellow?”

“He’s a sitting duck, Alma.” Cory looked at the older woman pleadingly. “But he’s such a good man. Such a damned good man!”

“But this saint will climb into the sack quick enough, won’t he?”

“Yes. But I’ve got to provide all the rationalizations, and all the little accidents, and take it all off his shoulders. There’s a strong physical attraction. Stronger than... anything in a long time. Damn it, I want to be girly about it. You know? Sweet and sighing and submissive, and let myself cry if I want to.”

“Wouldn’t that just make it worse?”

Cory sighed. “Probably. So he’ll get the complete deluxe deal. But one little bonus I’m giving myself, Alma. No faking. I’m going to get just as much as I give and maybe more.”

“Which, as you damn well know, is stupid and dangerous. You act half in love with this convention clown already, sweetie. Do you want to make it worse? The smart whore hates every customer, and that’s all he is, you know.”

“He doesn’t know it.”

“But he’ll guess it sooner or later.”

“I hope to God I never have to see his face after he does.”

“Cory, baby, how come you have such a talent for getting all screwed up?”

“Screwed, at least.”

“Don’t talk smart and dirty in my home, thank you.”

“I’m sorry, Alma. I’m just upset about this. Sometimes, lately, I think I’d have been better off if you... hadn’t happened along when you did.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to say to me!”

“I shouldn’t have said it.”

“You’re more problem than any other four girls I’ve ever worked with, sweetie. If I had better sense, and if I didn’t like you, I’d have let you go it alone a long time ago. And with your judgment, you’d be working the five o’clock in a cocktail bar by now, shook down by every cop in the precinct and clapped up three times a year and ready to go off a causeway bridge. And such a hell of a waste that would be.” She grasped Cory’s hand. “Don’t try to dream, sweetie. Don’t try to sell yourself that heart-of-gold routine. You got a heart like a stone or you wouldn’t be in the trade. Take your fun if you have to, but I’d say you’d be better off without it. Just keep in mind that this saintly man is hot to put it into a girl the second day he knows her, and he and Freddy Frick are a lot more alike than they are different from each other. And remember you’ll be doing a favor for an old friend of mine.”

“Mulaney seems to be a slob.”

“Of course he is, sweetie. Of course he is. But he’s been generous to me, and I kind of like the old bastard. So you just drive this Hubbard half out of his mind, and then make a jackass of him in public.” She lowered her voice. “You know what I’ve always told you. Pretend he’s Ralph.”

Cory snatched her hand away, closed her eyes, swallowed hard and swayed in the chair for a moment. Her color returned and she opened eyes like blue porcelain, a deep, hard, inhuman blue. “I’ll spoil him,” she whispered. “Ah, I’ll spoil him.”