William Bernhardt - Primary Justice

Ben opened his briefcase and removed a manila file folder. “Taking this thing to the trial stage would consume large amounts of money and time, and even if you won at trial, you wouldn’t get much in damages. I believe you should consider cutting your losses, saving the litigation costs, and giving the woman what she wants. Set her free. Cancel the franchise agreement and start a new operation with someone else. There must be jillions of would-be breakfast food entrepreneurs in Vancouver.”

Sanguine shifted his weight in his chair. “You must realize though, Ben, that with an operation like ours, costs aren’t everything. We have over six hundred franchises scattered across North America. Where would we be if all our franchisors suddenly decided to quit operating their franchise and start operating a competing business under a different name? We’d be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.”

Sanguine dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward across the desk. “Sometimes you have to maintain discipline. Set an example. Tell them in unequivocal terms that if they walk out on Sanguine Enterprises, there’ll be hell to pay.” His eyes met Ben’s. “Nobody messes around with Sanguine. That’s my credo.”

Ben shuffled the papers in his hands and looked away. Propped on the edge of Sanguine’s desk was a flashlight, Ben’s flashlight, standing on end. The flashlight he and Christina had left in Adams’s office the night they broke in.

“Let me shed some light on that,” Sanguine said. He laughed at his own little joke. “I found that in Jonathan Adams’s office a few nights ago. The window was open. Evidently there was a break-in, but no one could find any sign of a forced entry. Or theft. We called the police, but …” He shrugged with an unconvincing lightness. “You don’t know what a prowler would be doing in poor Jonathan’s office, do you?” Sanguine was staring directly at Ben. “I remember you were very anxious to poke around in there.”

Ben squirmed uncomfortably. This was not the direction he wanted the conversation to take. “You were very close to Mr. Adams, weren’t you, sir?” Ben said. “His death must have come as a terrible shock.”

Sanguine cocked his head to one side. “You really want to know the truth? No, we weren’t close at all. I didn’t like him, and he didn’t like me. He didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong in this world . I encouraged him to quit when I bought the company, but he resisted. He wanted a job, he said, not a pension. He had a contract; it was part of the deal. Part of the take-over agreement. I couldn’t make him go. But I could sure make him pay the price of his own stubbornness.”

Ben tried not to react. He had hoped to uncover a motive, but he didn’t expect to have one served to him on a silver platter.

“That’s right,” Sanguine continued. “Look astonished. You’re young. What the hell. Someone dies and everyone’s supposed to act as if he were a saint. Well, Adams wasn’t a saint. Where I came from, we didn’t have time for that kind of hypocritical crap. Where did you grow up, Kincaid?” He quickly corrected himself. “Ben.”

“I grew up in the suburbs of Oklahoma City. Nichols Hills, to be exact.”

“Ah, such a trying childhood. Like something out of David Copperfield. You must have emotional scars through and through.” He leaned forward, pointing with his pencil. “Let me tell you where I grew up. On a Sioux Indian reservation in South Dakota.”

Ben scrutinized Sanguine’s face. His first impression was right. That would explain the kachina dolls and the other scattered Western relics in Sanguine’s office.

“Yes, I’m an Indian. Excuse me, we’re supposed to be called Native Americans now. I keep forgetting. And no, to answer your next question, Sanguine isn’t the name I was born with. It’s Bloodhawk. At least that’s the anglicization. Joseph Paitchee Bloodhawk. My mother was white.” He chortled quietly. “I guess she contributed the Joseph part.”

“I didn’t realize there were Indian reservations anymore.”

“There aren’t any in Oklahoma. Tribal lands, yes, but no reservations as such. Still exist in other states, though. For the most part, still just as dirty and debasing and poverty-blighted as when I grew up. You have any idea what it’s like to grow up in a place like that? Over sixty percent unemployment? Average income about three thousand a year? You have any idea what the odds are against making anything of yourself after a childhood like that? No, of course you don’t. How could you?”

His voice rose in volume. “You don’t know what it’s like to grow up knowing people think you can’t do anything more complicated than running a bingo parlor because you’re just a dumb Indian. And the worst of it, knowing that you really are just a dumb Indian, and that there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

Just at the edge, Sanguine caught himself. He exhaled and fell back into his chair. “But of course,” he said, “you don’t know anything about that. They probably didn’t have any Indians in Nichols Hills, did they? They probably don’t allow such riffraff.”

Ben couldn’t see the point in saying anything. This stream-of-consciousness soliloquy was giving him far more information than he could ever elicit with questions.

“My point is this,” Sanguine said. “I worked very hard to become successful. Against damned near impossible odds. And that’s no exaggeration—I had no breaks, no connections, no education, and no money. But I have been successful. I’m rich. Sanguine Enterprises is in the Fortune Five Hundred and I’m on the list of the hundred richest men in America.” Sanguine’s full attention seemed focused on the pencil he held in his hands. “And I’ve used that success. I’ve tried to make things a little easier for the next Indian in line. And I’m making a difference. Maybe in the next generation, there’ll be more than one Sioux crossing the poverty line. Maybe the next one will be able to do it without changing his name.”

The pencil in Sanguine’s hands suddenly snapped. “But the adversity does not stop, no matter how successful you are. Just when you’ve got a company that seems to work, here comes this man who’s too mired in yesteryear to even consider a change for the better. Every opportunity to diversify, he’s against it. Every idea for increasing efficiency or productivity, he’s against it. That’s why I made Adams vice president of new developments. Sort of a private joke. He knew it was, too, and it stuck in his craw. That’s what I liked best about it.”

Abruptly, Sanguine shifted his gaze to Ben. The pencil pieces fell to the desktop.

“I suppose in your eyes there was something admirable—in a perverse, futile way—about the old geezer’s tenacity. A latter-day Don Quixote. I can almost see it myself. But I would not let him bring down my business. I would not let him tear down everything I had accomplished. I would not .” He pounded his desk to emphasize the final word.

Ben sensed that the conversation was going no further in that direction. “I guess you’ve heard about the adoption hearing,” he said.

Sanguine seemed startled, as if brought out of a trance. “What? Oh, yes. Of course, I bear no malice against the widow . Tough break for her.” For some reason, he laughed quietly.

Ben began to organize his papers and put them back into his briefcase. “Well, I just wanted to make sure you had been informed.”

“What about being a grandparent?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“So the court thinks Mrs. Adams is too old to learn how to be a mommy. No big surprise there. How about getting her appointed as a foster grandparent? Courts do that now; I was just reading about it in Time . It’s supposed to be good for the kid and the elderly person. She wouldn’t get to see the girl every day, but she would get some reasonable visitation rights.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Better than nothing.”