I looked at my watch. The time was 12.35. Reaching for the telephone I called the American Express and asked for Joe Harkness, the district manager. We had already met and we liked each other. Although we were business rivals there was enough business for both agencies in Paradise City for us to remain relaxed and friendly with each other.
‘Hi, Joe. This is Clay,’ I said when he came on the line. ‘How about eating a sandwich with me at the Howard Johnson?’
‘If I think it is what it is, it’s going to cost you more than a sandwich, buddy,’ Harkness said cheerfully.
‘Okay, you thief. Come on over and I’ll buy you a steak in the grill room.’
‘That’s my boy. See you in half an hour.’ and he hung up.
I studied the paper Dyer had given me.
Henry Vidal lived on Paradise Largo where only the very wealthy had residences. He had three banks: in Paradise City, in Miami and in New York. His attorney was Jason Shackman and his brokers were Trice, Seigler & Joseph.
I joined Sue at her desk.
‘Just having a word with Rhoda,’ I said, ‘then I’m lunching with Harkness in the grill room.’
She nodded.
‘I’ll have this schedule and the estimate ready after lunch.’
I walked down the hotel corridor to The Trendie Miss boutique where Rhoda worked as one of the sales assistants. I found her alone, sitting on a stool, reading a woman’s magazine her favourite pastime.
Rhoda and I had been married now for just over two years. I had met her at the Statler Hilton. Boston at the time I was running the A.T.S. office there and she was assistant with The Trendie Miss boutique whose branches were in every major hotel in every major city. We had more or less drifted into marriage. She had a one room apartment in the high — rise where I lived. I got into the habit of driving her back from the hotel after work. There was a coffee shop in the complex and most nights we had dinner together there. After a while, when we began sleeping together off and on, I picked up her check. She was young, attractive, gay and sexy. It was her idea we should get married. ‘We’ll economise,’ she pointed out. ‘I’ll save rent.’ She didn’t tell me what I would save. I was getting tired of living on my own. I thought maybe if I married her, I would forget about Valerie; a stupid hope but I wanted very badly to forget the girl who had jilted me some four years ago. So I married Rhoda. I then made a depressing discovery. Although pretty, immaculately dressed when at work, her make-up a work of art, Rhoda was at heart a slut. Any kind of housework was her idea of hell. She wouldn’t even make our bed. So I had to hire a woman to come in each day and we still ate our meals at the coffee shop.
When I got offered the Paradise City’s A.T.S. office in the Spanish Bay hotel, Rhoda managed a transfer to The Trendie Miss boutique in the same lush hotel. Our combined earnings enabled us to live well, join the Country Club and even save money, but for me our marriage was no more than a sexual convenience combined with a tolerant association: not what I was hoping for.
‘Rhoda,’ I said, pausing in the shop’s doorway, ‘I can’t lunch with you. I have a business date.’
She dragged her eyes from the magazine.
‘Huh?’
‘I have a business lunch,’ I said patiently. I was used to repeating most things to Rhoda when she was reading.
‘Oh? Well okay. See you at six, huh?’ She went back to her reading.
I took the elevator down to the grill room bar and ordered a Scotch on the rocks, something I seldom did at lunch time. As Sam, the barman, fixed the drink, I said, ‘Ever heard of Mr. Henry Vidal?’
‘Vidal?’ He set the drink before me. ‘Can’t say I have, Mr. Burden.’
‘I’m told he is the most influential man in Florida.’
He grinned.
‘That depends who told you.’
Joe Harkness arrived five minutes later: a short thickest man, around my own age, whose merry eyes and cheerful grin belied a shrewd business brain.
‘That’s for me,’ he said pointing to my glass. ‘Celebrating, Clay?’
‘Maybe or recuperating.’ I signalled to Sam. ‘I’ve just had a visitor.’
‘I know. I had him too. Well, Clay, ol’ son, I’m sorry for you. When the s.o.b. told me he was closing the account with us, I jumped for joy.’
I stared at him.
‘Don’t try to con me, Joe.’
‘It’s a fact. I know it sounds cockeyed to be happy about losing an account worth two hundred thousand, but that’s what I am. I’ve had a gutful of Vidal and Dyer. I’ve had them in my hair for eighteen months... enough’s enough.’
‘Are you telling me the account is really worth two hundred thousand?’
‘Sure and it is creeping up. That was last year’s figure; could be more this year, but don’t imagine you have a bonanza: let me disillusion you.’ He drank half the whisky, then went on, ‘Vidal insists on six month’s credit. In other words he has the use of our money around one hundred thousand for six months. This he invests at seven percent: that gives him three thousand five hundred per six months which we lose, not having the money, before he has to pay us. He also insists on a five percent discount on all business over fifteen thousand per six months we handle for him and that gives him three thousand seven hundred and fifty which we also lose. So at the end of six months the one hundred thousand dollars in business we have handled for him only costs him ninety-two thousand seven hundred and fifty and we’re out seven thousand two hundred and fifty which in a full year comes to around fifteen thousand.’
I grinned at turn.
‘So what? You made the terms. The account is still big. What are you beefing about?’
‘Yeah... what am I beefing about? I’ll tell you. We wanted the account and we expected to pay for it. We reckoned even with a five percent discount and giving him six months’ credit we could still make a fair profit, but how wrong we were!’ He laid his hand on my arm. ‘We don’t want that steak to spoil, do we?’
I paid for the drinks and we went into the grill room.
‘Since this is on your expense account Clay, don’t let’s cut comers,’ Harkness said as he settled at the table. ‘I’ll take smoked salmon and french fries with the steak, and how about a nice bottle of something?’
I told the Maître d to make it two smoked salmons, two steaks and a bottle of California red.
‘Not Bordeaux?’ Harkness said, looking pained.
‘I haven’t got the account yet. Were you telling me you don’t make a profit out of Vidal?’
‘I won’t say that, but we’ll be lucky to make two percent which isn’t good enough if you add the headaches and by God! there are plenty.’
‘Such as?’
‘I lost the best secretary I ever had she quit after five months of Vernon. There is also the expense of keeping Vernon sweet. Then there was an assault case we had to settle out of court. Apart from these little things, Vernon is always belly aching. He’s never satisfied.’
The waiter placed plates of smoked salmon before us.
‘What assault case?’
Harkness grinned.
‘One of my reps, goaded beyond endurance, punched Vernon’s nose. Vernon sued. We settled for five thousand and lost a damn good rep.’
‘What’s this about keeping Vernon sweet?’
‘He never comes to the office. Always meets me at one of the most expensive restaurants when he wants to discuss business and he always leaves me to pick up the tab. I guess I must have spent well over four thousand dollars in eighteen months of feeding that s.o.b.’
We ate for a few minutes while I thought over what he had told me.
‘And Vidal? How do you react to him?’
‘Never seen him. All I know about him is he has a hell of a place on Paradise Largo, owns a yacht, a Rolls convertible, a pretty wife and lots and lots of the green stuff. I’ve never set eyes on him. He only circulates in the very best circles. Our Vernon does the slumming for him.’