At the bus station, the young bank officer lost Mr. Densen. He could have sworn he saw him waiting in line. And then there was no one.
Dr. Harold Smith walked out of the Minneapolis bus terminal, mildly amused by the young man's attempt to follow him.
CHAPTER TEN
Of course he would wear a suit, but should it be black? Black might look like instant mourning, and perhaps that was just a shade too obsequious a posture to be adopted by the man who would be the next president of IDC. On the other hand, a light-colored suit might be considered frivolous by Holly Broon in her state of grief over her father's death.
After weighing his options, considering the variables, the upside potential and the downside risks, Blake Corbish decided to wear a black suit with a blue pinstripe. The black covered the mourning, the stripe showed that Corbish was not a man to stand on inane ceremonies, not when the world's greatest corporation was in need of effective leadership. He hoped the point would not be lost on Holly Broon.
He dressed quickly, his mind on T.L.'s daughter and what he knew of her. Indeterminately thirtyish. Pictures in the beautiful people magazines. Inside talk was that she was at least as much the brains of IDC as her father.
Corbish had never met her, but one of the lower-ranking vice presidents had.
He had come into Corbish's office after that meeting six months before. He had wiped sweat from his brow, sighed, lit a cigarette, exhaled the smoke and said, "What a bitch."
Corbish knew whom he meant, but one could never tell what was real or what was a setup, so he asked simply, "Who?"
"That Holly Broon," the other young V.P. had said. "She just cut off my balls and barbecued them."
The vice president had been in charge of a narrow-goaled program to buy up European germanium for use in transistors. It was supposed to be done quietly, but the previous day a line had been dropped into the Wall Street Journal mentioning IDC's interest in European suppliers. This of course had the immediate effect of jamming up the price so that IDC would realize no savings by going overseas.
The idea for the program apparently had been Holly Broon's. The young vice president had met with her that day in T.L.'s Mamaroneck office, in the presence of old T.L. himself.
Corbish remembered thinking that it was odd the young vice president hadn't mentioned T.L. at all. Just Holly Broon. She had impressed him and frightened him. Corbish had listened to the story but he'd said nothing, not wishing to commit himself. Later, he gave his immediate superior hints of the comments made by the young vice president. As he knew it would, the story was passed on to T.L. Soon after, the young vice president was gone.
That was all Corbish knew about her, except of course the pictures he had seen of her. They made her look beautiful. Well, he would wait to see about that. He had seen too many stunning pictures of corporate women who turned out to have all the beauty of footprints, to be impressed by what the camera said.
He glanced at his watch, sneaked a look into his bedroom where Teri had collapsed back onto the bed, her martini spilled on the carpet, its contents darkening the light blue wool. He shook his head and left. There would be time to deal with Teri after he was president of IDC.
When Corbish drove his own Cadillac through the gates, he warned the head guard, "A Miss Broon is coming to see me. Let her right in, then call me."
"Yes sir, Mr. Corbish."
Corbish had his secretary prepare two pots, one of coffee and one of tea, and gave her orders to keep both hot, and to bring them in on a silver service when he buzzed on the intercom.
He buzzed as soon as the guard called him, and by the time Holly Broon swirled into his office, the silver service was sitting on one corner of the conference table. A class touch, Corbish thought, looking at it. A presidential-class touch.
He rose.
"Good morning, Miss Broon, I can't tell you how…"
"Then don't try, Corbish," she said. "We've got work to do." She looked at the silver service. "Coffee and tea?"
"Yes. Which would you…?"
"Have any vodka?"
There was, he knew, liquor in one of the cabinets, but now he wondered with some anguish what to do. He had not expected a morning drinker. He did not want to look like a boozer himself by going right to the liquor cabinet. On the other hand, if he delayed getting the drink, it might looked as if he lacked social grace.
He picked up the phone and called his secretary.
"I ordered some liquor the other day for guests. Where is it? Thank you."
He hung up. "It's over here," he said to Holly Broon. "I didn't know where they had put it." There. Social grace and teetotalling in the office.
As he walked to the cabinet, Holly Broon slumped down in one of the large leather chairs facing him across the table. She called out to his back, "A double in a big glass. No ice. No mix."
Another problem. Should he drink with her? Let her drink alone? Oh, the difficulties in drawing the line between corporate image and personal pushiness.
He poured Holly Broon's drink, using a shot glass to measure out exactly two ounces, decided on coffee for himself, but changed his mind at the last minute and poured himself tea. Coffee was so… so, plebeian.
Holly had taken her drink from his hand and when he turned toward her with his teacup, her glass was half empty.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
He had anticipated that question all the way over in his car. And even though Holly Broon now stood to inherit control of ten percent of IDC's outstanding stock, and could guarantee him the corporate presidency, he had decided to tell her as little as he could get away with.
"Before your father's untimely demise," he said, "He put me in charge of a special computer operation. This is where it's headquartered."
How much did she know? Were the stories true about her being old T.L.'s brains? If they were, then she already knew what he was up to. His answer was bland enough to go either way if she gave him any inkling of how much she knew.
He met her eyes straight on, which he knew was the right thing to do, and raised the teacup to his lips so she could not see any telltale expression around his mouth. The eyes can usually disguise a lie, but the mouth rarely can.
"I know you were put in charge. What have you produced?"
"I was working on personal orders from T.L., Miss Broon. It was kind of a novel approach to corporate problems but one with great promise and that showed genius. T.L. wanted a computerized setup of the entire country… interrelationships between private industry and government at all levels, the impact of law enforcement, the courts, the unions, yes, even of the criminal element." There. That still gave away nothing.
"Why?" she said. She was making it difficult
"IDC needed to have solid information on the social structure of the country in order to make sensible long-range decisions based upon our very best planning."
Holly drained the rest of her glass and without a word held it out to Corbish for a refill. As he took the glass from her hand, she said, "You're full of shit."
He turned toward the liquor cabinet before saying, "I beg your pardon."
"I said, you're full of shit. First, T.L., didn't give a rat's ass about social structures. He wanted to sell computers. Second, even if he did, it's hardly likely that he would have bought you this mausoleum to fool around in. Why this place?"
As he refilled the glass, Corbish smiled slightly to himself. "Actually," he said, "this place has been kind of a testing ground for IDC computers for some time. All our latest models are here, even the newest generation that isn't on the market yet. I gather that this place was formerly some kind of government information-gathering network. Much of the information T.L. wanted was already in the computers here, and he sent me up to plug into it for maximum utilization."
He turned with the drink. Holly took the glass and nodded. She held it between the fingertips of both hands and looked over it at Corbish, her head tilted down, her heavy-lashed eyes fixed on him, seductively showing whites under her irises.
Corbish recognized the look and knew he had her. She had given up trying to break him; now she was going to use feminine wiles on him. Why, this would be a piece of cake, he thought.
"How would you like to be the next president of IDC?" she asked.
He lifted then put down his teacup and walked around behind his desk. "I'm overwhelmed, Miss Broon. I never…"