"Also a bluff. If Beaulieu had anything of substance, I would have heard about it long before this. It's the same sort of crap my father's been pulling since as far back as I can remember."
"Can you handle him?"
"You're damn right I can. There isn't going to be any goddamn audit."
"What?"
"I said I'll take care of it." He cursed his slip, and silently cautioned himself to be more alert. "This is just another of his little tests, " he said. "I've taken them before."
They were underestimating him. Zack, the Judge, even Leigh. They were underestimating him badly, and they would see. They would all see. He was younger and stronger than his father, and he had learned the lessons of the man well. "We're counting on you," Leigh said. "We want this whole business resolved before the board meets."
"It will be."
"Good. I'll be watching. It means a great deal to me to have you do this right. And it goes without saying that it means a great deal to you, too, yes?"
"When this is all over, " Frank said stonily, "I want my goddamn brother out of Ultramed. I would fire him right now, but until this business with my father is resolved, I don't want to make any moves that might set off the Judge all over again."
"I agree. Above all, you've got to keep things cool. Her tone softened.
"… Listen, Frank, you deal with this smoothly and you'll have our blessing to get rid of your brother if that's what you want. In fact, prove you can handle your father, and you can consider your potential with this company unlimited."
She smiled at him. "Unlimited, Frank…"
"I understand."
"Good."
She stood then. "I want to be kept abreast of what's going on."
She nodded toward the Judge's letter. "I don't like surprises."
"I understand, " he said again. "There won't be any."
"In that case, Frank, you have a very bright future with our company. 5@ A minute passed after the door to suite 200 closed behind Frank. Leigh Baron poured a weak bourbon and water from the room's well-stocked credenza. Then she turned to the intercom, inconspicuously placed on an end table. "It's okay, Ed, " she said. "He's gone."
Edison Blair, the CEO of RIATA International, entered the room from the inner office where he had been listening and crossed directly to the bar. He was nearing fifty but looked ten years younger, with close-cut, sandy hair, a lean, almost slight frame, and a deceptively boyish face.
His personal worth, estimated by various sources to be between twenty and thirty million, was actually closer to twice that, and was growing as rapidly as his young corporation. "Unlimited potential. I like that little touch at the end, " he said. "He thinks you were referring to yourself, you know."
"Of course I know. I picked up all the tools I needed to deal with Frank Iverson in Men 101. Take away his vanity, and he's got nothing. With men like him, you've always got to leave the carrot."
"I'll remember that. So, " he went on, "what do you think?"
"Dunno. I have my doubts."
"I've only met this Judge Iverson once, but from what I sensed of the man, my money's on him."
Blair poured a shot of Jose Cuervo Gold Tequila, sniffed it once, and downed it in a single, quick gulp. "I agree, " Leigh said, "but I think it's worth waiting a bit before we play out our hand. Who knows? Maybe Frank'll pull it off. He's been a hell of a surprise so far-to everyone but me, that is."
"It's lucky we don't have too many more surprises like him working for us, Leigh. It's not exactly optimal business practice to carry an administrator who embezzles a quarter of a million dollars from you."
"Come on, Ed.
He's made ten times that much for us already, and you know it. Our accountants haven't found so much as a missing penny since that one time. From the scrambling he's been doing, they think he's buying time to replace that money, and so do I. Either way, it's our ace in the hole."
"So we wait?"
"We wait."
"Leigh, I don't want us losing that hospital."
"We're not going to lose anything. You can count on it."
Edison Blair eyed her for a moment. "I am, " he said. DISAPPOINTMENTS AND hard times had dogged Jack Pearl most of his life. From as far back as he could remember, he had been different-an outsider. For one thing, he was an insomniac, a pathologic insomniac. As a youth, his parents would scold him for being in the basement at four o'clock in the morning, fiddling with his chemistry set. Later that same day, he would be reprimanded and sent home for falling asleep in class. His condition had led to threats of expulsion on any number of occasions, and he well might have been expelled were he not, thanks to an 10 in the 160s, the best student in his school. Making matters even more difficult for Pearl during those school years was the gradual emergence of his homosexuality. And even within that subset he was a fringe player, preferring mueh younger boys and their photographs to any more threatening entanglements. In college, no roommate lasted more than a few weeks with his bizarre biologic rhythms and deepening melancholia.
His dormitory room walls were decorated with posters and photos of his special heroes, Napoleon, Dickens, Edison, Churchill, Kafka, and Proust, none of whom, according to the first of his therapists, had ever enjoyed so much as one normal night's sleep. That an insomniac should have chosen anesthesia as his life's work was one of the few pleasant ironies in Pearl's life, that one should have developed Serenyl, the quintessential sleep-inducing agent, was the ultimate irony of all. The Screnyl odyssey had begun years before, in Iquitos, a jungle village by the headwaters of the Peruvian Amazon, where Pearl had accepted a six-month medical mission appointment as a means of escaping yet another disastrous situation in yet another hospital. Within a few weeks of his arrival, he had developed an intense fascination with the drugs used by medicine men, and in particular, with a plant alkaloid used by the most mystical "doctors" in the region to induce a purgative state of deep hypnosis in their followers. The moment Pearl first witnessed the incredible substance in action, the lack of direction and purpose in his life was at an end. Two years of meticulously dissecting the active component in the alkaloid and modifying its composition led him to the synthesis of Serenyl-a structurally unique anesthe ic, fully as remarkable as was its chemical forebear. Now, for the first time since he conceived of its application, synthesized it, patented it, and adjusted its delivery and dosage in actual O. R. situations, Pearl's Serenyl was under attack. It was five in the morning. An hour before, Pearl had given up trying to sleep and had brewed himself a pot of coffee. In the nearly twenty-four hours since his confrontation with Zack Iverson, he had slept, perhaps, two. Familiar feelings of loneliness and isolation-feelings he had been able to keep reasonably in check since moving to Sterling-had surfaced and were beginning to smother him. The first glow of dawn was spilling over the valley as he wrapped himself in a blanket, padded across his dew-sliced yard, and settled onto a slat-backed chair. He wondered if a sleeping pill of some sort might be in order. With Mainwaring gone to Atlanta, the surgical load was light enough for his associate and their nurse anesthe ist to handle. He could call in sick and take a couple of hundred milligrams of Seconal. It had been years since he had taken a drug of any kind-he hated feeling the loss of control-but this might well be the time. He had been thinking too hard, his mind poring over and over the evidence Frank's brother had thrown at him, frantically trying to assess the extent of the threat and to find fault in the man's logic. Pinpointing even potential errors in Zack Iverson's reasoning had not been easy.
Pearl lit his fifth cigarette of the hour, searched about for a packet of Kleenex, and finally wiped his nose on the corner of the blanket. Why was it, he wondered, that every time life had started looking the least bit bright for him, every goddamn time, something or someone had come along to screw it up? "y?