That same day Crusty gave instructions to his lawyer and went over everything with the maintenance couple. He was in his study going through the last of his papers.
Chip Hansen sat in the kitchen with M.J. grabbing a sandwich, and avoiding her eyes, for she was frightened and on tenterhooks.
“Isn’t there someone else?” she blurted.
Chip saw her on the brink of tears.
“No one in the world knows more about air transport than Crusty. We have our backs to the wall.”
She sat opposite him, gripped his wrist. “He has a heart condition, Chip.”
“I know. I hope you can get to Germany as soon as possible and take care of him.”
She got up and tried to work at the sink. He gave up on eating his sandwich. They could hear the car coming down the road.
“Chip, I don’t blame you. Don’t make this your responsibility. You’ve got enough to think about. Anyone in your place would have come for his help and he would have agreed.”
“Thanks, M.J.”
“All right,” Crusty Stonebraker bellowed, “let’s get the goddamned show on the road.”
The driver loaded their bags.
Hiram Stonebraker pushed out his leathery face, looked around the corral and the orchard, and for a long time at the sea. “Don’t worry, M.J.,” he said, “we’ll clean up this mess in two months and we’ll be back here when the yellow tail begin to hit.”
Chapter Seven
CLINTON LOVELESS’S SWIVEL-HIPPED SECRETARY entered his office. “General Stonebraker has arrived,” she said.
Clint sprung from behind his desk, walked the long deep-carpeted corridor hastily, and pushed through the double mahogany doors that led into the plush reception room.
“General Stonebraker! What a wonderful surprise to have you in New York, sir.”
“Hello, Clint.”
He grabbed the general’s arm, led him down the sumptuous corridor to his office. “By golly, I can’t get over how fit you look. How’s Miss Martha Jane?”
“M.J. is fine. She sends you her warmest regards.”
He led Hiram Stonebraker into an office that reeked of prosperity. The general studied its oversimplified elegance that looked down on Madison Avenue from a height of thirty stories.
“You’re looking pretty prosperous yourself, Clint.”
“Not much like the old field shacks on the forward bases of the CBI?”
J. Kenneth Whitcomb III had been alerted to the arrival of General Stonebraker and burst into Clint’s office at that instant. Pudge Whitcomb was an incurable celebrity collector and the acidy old general would be a great name to drop at his club or a cocktail party.
(My good friend, General Hiram Stonebraker, you know ... the boy who engineered the Hump ... well, anyhow, he was just saying to me the other day ... Pudge, I like your new product.)
“General, meet Pudge Whitcomb, president of our firm and my new boss. Pudge, my old boss, General Stonebraker.”
“A pleasure and an honor to meet you, General. Clint told me you were dropping by. Anything we can do for you while you’re in New York? Theater tickets ... limo ...”
“I’m just fine, Mr. Whitcomb. I’ll be leaving for Washington directly after lunch with Clint.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. I was hoping you’d drop by my office and we could exchange views.”
“About what?”
Pudge smiled that smile of his with his face going lopsided as though someone had hacked his mouth on a diagonal angle with a meat cleaver. He excused himself asking Clint to step into the hall.
“Lovable old codger,” Pudge wheezed.
“Like hell he is. He’s one of the meanest sons of bitches who ever crapped between a pair of GI shoes.”
“Well ... time slows them all up, I guess. He’s earned his right to be grumpy.”
“He was born that way. And he also happens to be one of the most brilliant men in our country.”
Pudge did a repeat of his slash-mouth smile, chortled an asthmatic laugh, and slapped Clint on the back. “See you in the A.M. Big, big think session on the Robson account.”
“Check.”
Clint returned to his office, pushed down the intercom button. “Miss Paisley, make luncheon reservations. ‘21’ okay, General?”
“Ate there once. Too goddamned noisy and they ought to be shot for their prices. While you’re at it I don’t want to sit in one of those restaurants where they line you up against the wall like sides of beef in a butcher window.”
“Check. Miss Paisley, try Charles à la Pomme Soufflée. Tell Maurice I want a table so the general and I can sit opposite each other. Yes ... opposite ... not side by side.”
“Well, Clint, what the hell does a production-control man like you do up to your ass in all this carpet and mahogany?”
Clint chuckled. “I head a specialty group. A team of experts in merchandising.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“Whitcomb Associates is the only complete service of its kind in the country. We take a product, build it, beef it, sell it; test market, direct mail campaigns, complete ad agency. The whole works.”
“I guess I follow you.”
They jammed into an elevator which plunged them down to the lobby at a terrifying speed and they became an infinitesimal part of that faceless mass of scurrying ants yelling, ‘Taxi, taxi.”
En route Clint continued his dissertation.
“In this country we build obsolescence into our products. Our national economy is based on waste. People buy because things look good and are packaged attractively. Take toilet paper, for example. We are starting to manufacture it in color. Our test market hops prove conclusively that pale green sells best in St. Louis while pink is big in Boston.”
A look of utter vexation exploded on Hiram Stonebraker’s face.
“We have editors to snag the public by verbal gymnastics; brown isn’t brown, it’s tawny brown. We subtly key in sexually stimulating music to back up radio commercials. We know that men like blue-colored after-shave lotion. Sanitary napkins will soon be packaged in boxes of various shapes with striped and polka-dot wrappings. So who cares how the motor runs as long as the upholstery has eye appeal and the exterior is junked up with enough chrome?”
“What project demands your talents these days, Clint?”
“Television. Big coming field. My team works on visual appeal. Our beer account will have the best-looking foam in the industry.”
They arrived and were seated. General Stonebraker could not believe that the man who sat opposite him was once considered a young genius at locating and solving industrial riddles.
“Clint,” he said sadly, “right after the war you went into a partnership with a real bright guy from Wichita. You formed an efficiency team to fix up sick companies. Clint, I seem to recall that you put a small steel mill back on its feet. What happened?”
Clinton Loveless looked as though he had been struck.
General Stonebraker was telling him now what he had told himself once or twice a month since he came to New York.
The general was intimating that if Whitcomb Associates were blown from the face of the earth, no one would really ever know they were gone.
“The efficiency team was a long time ago, sir. I guess we weren’t doing too badly, but you know how those things are. It would have taken a long time to really get into the black. Anyhow, Pudge Whitcomb tracked me down and made a pretty attractive offer. I guess Judy and I have always wanted New York.”
“Then you’re happy?”