He shook his head emphatically. “Nossir. Only the old man himself gets to see the books.” “He’s dead,” I told him. “Here’s the will.” I showed him the paragraph and my identification. “Well,” he said. “The joy-ride’s over. Or do you keep us going? You see what it says there, Mr. Courtenay? He enjoins you to participate-” “I see it,” I told him. “The books, please.” He got them out of a surprising vault behind a plain door. A mere three hours of backbreaking labor over them showed me that the Institute was in existence solely for holding and voting 56 per cent of the stock of an outfit called General Phosphate Reduction Corporation of Newark according to the whims of Fowler Schocken. I went out into the corridor and said to my guards: “Come on, boys. Newark next.” I won’t bore you with the details. It was single-tracked for three stages and then it split. One of the tracks ended two stages later in the Frankfort Used Machine Tool Brokerage Company, which voted 32 per cent of the Fowler Schocken Associates “public sale” stock. The other track forked again one stage later and wound up eventually in United Concessions Corp. and Waukegan College of Dentistry and Orthodontia, which voted the remainder. Two weeks later on Board morning I walked into the Board room with my guards. Sillery was presiding. He looked haggard and worn, as though he’d been up all night every night for the past couple of weeks looking for something. “Courtenay!” he snarled. “I thought you understood that you were to leave your regiment outside!” I nodded to honest, dumb old Harvey Bruner, whom I’d let in on it. Loyal to Schocken, loyal to me, he bleated: “Mr. Chairman, I move that members be permitted to admit company plant-protection personnel assigned to them in such number as they think necessary for their bodily protection.” “Second the motion, Mr. Chairman,” I said. “Bring them in, boys, will you?” My guards, grinning, began to lug in transfer cases full of proxies to me. Eyes popped and jaws dropped as the pile mounted. It took a long time for them to be counted and authenticated. The final vote
stood: For, 5.73 X 1013; against, 1.27 X 1013. All the Against votes were Sillery’s and Sillery’s alone. There were no abstentions. The others jumped to my side like cats on a griddle. Loyal old Harve moved that chairmanship of the meeting be transferred to me, and it was carried unanimously. He then moved that Sillery be pensioned off, his shares of voting stock to be purchased at par by the firm and deposited in the bonus fund. Carried unanimously. Then-a slash of the whip just to remind them-he moved that one Thomas Heatherby, a junior Art man who had sucked up outrageously to Sillery, be downgraded from Board level and deprived without compensation of his minute block of voting shares. Carried unanimously. Heatherby didn’t even dare scream about it. Haifa loaf is better than none, he may have said to himself, choking down his anger. It was done. I was master of Fowler Schocken Associates. And I had learned to despise everything for which it stood.
sixteen “Flash-flash, Mr. Courtenay,” said my secretary’s voice. I hit the GA button. “Consie arrested Albany on neighbor’s denunciation. Shall I line it up?” “God-damn it!” I exploded. “How many times do I have to give you standing orders? Of course you line it up. Why the hell not?” She quavered: “I’m sorry, Mr. Courtenay-I thought it was kind of far out-” “Stop thinking, then. Arrange the transportation.” Maybe I shouldn’t have been so rough on her-but I wanted to find Kathy, if I had to turn every Consie cell in the country upside down to do it. I had driven Kathy into hiding-out of fear that I would turn her in- now I wanted to get her back. An hour later I was in the Upstate Mutual Protective Association’s HQ. They were a local outfit that had a lot of contracts in the area, including Albany. Their board chairman himself met me and my guards at the elevator. “An honor,” he burbled. “A great, great honor, Mr. Courtenay, and what may I do for you?” “My secretary asked you not to get to work on your Consie suspect until I arrived. Did you?” “Of course not, Mr. Courtenay! Some of the employees may have roughed him up a little, informally, but he’s in quite good shape.” “I want to see him.” He led the way anxiously. He was hoping to get in a word that might grow into a cliency with Fowler Schocken Associates, but he was afraid to speak up.