“Okay,” he said in the darkness.
She slept.
Click.
It was five o’clock, five in the morning. When he finally dozed off, dawn had come into the bedroom like a thief. His last thought was of the Thanksgiving turkey, sitting on the kitchen counter below the glare of the cold fluorescent overhead, dead meat waiting thoughtlessly to be devoured.
November 23, 1973
He drove their two-year-old LTD into Stephan Ordner’s driveway at five minutes of 140
eight and parked it behind Ordner’s bottle-green Delta 88. The house was a rambling fieldstone, discreetly drawn back from Henreid Drive and partially hidden behind a high privet that was now skeletal in the smoky butt end of autumn. He had been here before, and knew it quite well. Downstairs was a massive rock-lined fireplace, and more modest ones in the bedrooms upstairs. They all worked. In the basement there was a Brunswick billiard table, a movie screen for home movies, a KLH sound system that Ordner had converted to quad the year before. Photos from Ordner’s college basketball days dotted the walls-he stood six foot five and still kept in shape. Ordner had to duck his head going through doorways, and he suspected that Ordner was proud of it. Maybe he had had the doorways lowered so he could duck through them. The dining room table was a slab of polished oak, nine feet long. A wormy-oak highboy complimented it, gleaming richly through six or eight coats of varnish. A tall china cabinet at the other end of the room; it stood-oh, about six foot five, wouldn’t you say, Fred? Yes, just about that. Out back there was a sunken barbecue pit almost big enough to broil an uncut dinosaur, and a putting green. No kidney-shaped pool. Kidney-shaped pools were considered jejune these days.
Strictly for the Ra-worshiping Southern California middle-classers. The Ordners had no children, but they supported a Korean kid, a South Vietnamese kid, and were putting a Ugandan through engineering school so he could go back home and build hydroelectric dams. They were Democrats, and had been Democrats for Nixon.
His feet whispered up the walk and he rang the bell. The maid opened the door.
“Mr. Dawes,” he said.
“Of course, sir. I’ll just take your coat. Mr. Ordner is in the study.”
“Thank you.”
He gave her his topcoat and walked down the hall past the kitchen and the dining room. Just a peek at the big table and the Stephan Ordner Memorial Highboy. The rug on the floor ended and he walked down a hallway floored with white-and-black waxed linoleum checks. His feet clicked.
He reached the study door and Ordner opened it just as he was reaching for the knob, as he had known Ordner would.
“Bart!” Ordner said. They shook hands. Ordner was wearing a brown cord jacket with patched elbows, olive slacks, and Burgundy slippers. No tie.
“Hi, Steve. How’s finance?”
Ordner groaned theatrically. “Terrible. Have you looked at the stock market page lately?” He ushered him in and closed the door behind him. The walls were lined with books. To the left there was a small fireplace with an electric log. In the center, a large desk with some papers on it. He knew there was an IBM Selectric buried in that desk someplace; if you pressed the right button it would pop out on top like a sleek-black torpedo.
“The bottom’s falling out,” he said.
Ordner grimaced. “That’s putting it mildly. You can hand it to Nixon, Bart. He finds a use for everything. When they shot the domino theory to hell over in Southeast Asia, he just took it and put it to work on the American economy. Worked lousy over there.
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Works great over here. What are you drinking?”
“Scotch-rocks would be fine.”
“Got it right here.”
He went to a fold-out cabinet, produced a fifth of scotch which returned only pocket change from your ten when purchased in a cut-rate liquor store, and splashed it over two ice cubes in a pony glass. He gave it to him and said, “Let’s sit down. ”
They sat in wing chairs drawn up by the electric fire. He thought: If I tossed my drink in there, I could blow that fucking thing to blazes. He almost did it, too.
“Carla couldn’t be here either,” Ordner said. “One of her groups is sponsoring a fashion show. Proceeds to go to some teenage coffeehouse down in Norton.”
“The fashion show is down there?”
Ordner looked startled. “In Norton? Hell no. Over in Russell. I wouldn’t let Carla down in the Landing Strip with two bodyguards and a police dog. There’s a priest . . .
Drake, I think his name is. Drinks a lot, but those little pick’ninnies love him. He’s sort of a liaison. Street priest.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. ”
They looked into the fire for a minute. He knocked back half of his scotch.
“The question of the Waterford plant came up at the last board meeting,” Ordner said.
“Middle of November. I had to admit my pants were a little loose on the matter. I was given . . . uh, a mandate to find out just what the situation is. No reflection on your management, Bart-”
“None taken,” he said, and knocked back some more scotch. There was nothing left in there now but a few blots of alcohol trapped between the ice cubes and the glass. “It’s always a pleasure when our jobs coincide, Steve.”
Ordner looked pleased. “So what’s the story? Vin Mason was telling me the deal wasn’t closed.”
“Vinnie Mason has got a dead short somewhere between his foot and his mouth. ”
“Then it’s closed?”
“Closing. I expect to sign us into Waterford next Friday, unless something comes up.
”
“I was given to understand that the realtor made you a fairly reasonable offer, which you turned down.”
He looked at Ordner, got up, and freshened the blots. “You didn’t get that from Vinnie Mason.”
“No.”
He returned to the wing-back chair and the electric fire. “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me where you did get it?”
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Ordner spread his hands. “It’s business, Bart. When I hear something, I have to check into it-even if all my personal and professional knowledge of a man indicates that the something must be off-whack. It’s nasty, but that’s no reason to piss it around.”
Freddy, nobody knew about that turn-down except the real estate guy and me. Old Mr. Just Business did a little personal checking, looks like. But that’s no reason to piss it around, right? Right, George. Should I blow him out of the water, Freddy? Better be cool, George. And I’d slow down on the firewater.
“The figure I turned down was four-fifty,” he said. “Just for the record, is that what you heard?”
“That’s about it.”
“And that sounded reasonable to you.”
“Well,” Ordner said, crossing his legs, “actually, it did. The city assessed the old plant at six-twenty, and the boiler can go right across town. Of course, there isn’t quite as much room for expansion, but the boys uptown say that since the main plant had already reached pretty much optimum size, there was no need for the extra room. It looked to me as if we might at least break even, perhaps turn a profit . . . although that wasn’t the main consideration. We’ve got to locate, Bart. And damn quick. ”
“Maybe you heard something else. ”
Ordner recrossed his legs and sighed. “Actually, I did. I heard that you turned down four-fifty and then Thom McAn came along and offered five.”
“A bid the realtor can’t accept, in good faith.”
“Not yet, but our option to buy runs out on Tuesday. You know that. ”
“Yes, I do. Steve, let me make three or four points, okay?”
“Be my guest. ”
“First, Waterford is going to put us three miles away from our industrial contracts-that’s an average. That’s going to send our operating overhead way up. All the motels are out by the Interstate. Worse than that, our service is going to be slower.
Holiday Inn and Hojo are on our backs now when we’re fifteen minutes late with the towels. What’s it going to be like when the tracks have to fight their way through three miles of crosstown traffic?”
Ordner was shaking his head. “Bart, they’re extending the Interstate. That’s why we’re moving, remember? Our boys say there will be no time lost in deliveries. It may even go quicker, using the extension. And they also say the motel corporations have already bought up good land in Waterford and Russell, near what will be the new interchange.
We’re going to improve our position by going into Waterford, not worsen it.”
I stubbed my toe, Freddy. He’s looking at me like I’ve lost all my marbles. Right, George. Kee-rect.
He smiled. “Okay. Point taken. But those other motels won’t be up for a year, maybe two. And if this energy business is as bad as it looks-“