Bitter Business Page 2

  No matter what I do, there will always be people who will not be able to look at me without seeing my entire family tree spread out behind me. There will always be rumblings that my success is not really my own—that it’s been bought and paid for with generations of Millholland money. Over the last few years, as I’ve grown more sure of myself and my talents as an attorney, I’ve become less hysterical about that stuff. Recently I’d been too busy to give it much thought at all. I was taking on new clients and new cases at a frightening rate. I’d begun to feel like a juggler who suddenly finds herself in the spotlight with one too many chain saws in the air. And that was before Daniel Babbage and his Cavanaughs.

  I was flattered that Daniel had asked me to take over the Superior Plating file. But I confess that I was puzzled, too. I am a deal lawyer, a specialist. Someone you call in to orchestrate a complex transaction or craft the terms of a tricky acquisition. My strengths are my technical knowledge of securities law and my tenacity as a negotiator. I’m the person you call in when you need your lawyer to play hardball with their lawyer, not when you need your client’s hand held.

  On my way to my first meeting with Jack Cavanaugh, as the bitter wind tossed snowflakes like confetti into the air, I realized that try as I might, I could not think of one good reason why Daniel Babbage would choose me to take over the Superior Plating and Specialty Chemicals file.

  2

  Jack Cavanaugh’s house was one of those mansions that are all the more remarkable for being in the center of the city. On the corner of Schiller and Astor, just a few blocks from the thrumming commerce of Michigan Avenue, it was a tutn-of-the-century brick pile with a deep porch, tall windows, and massive pillars of red granite that had been polished to the color of dark blood.

  I paid the cabdriver, climbed the wide stone steps, and rang the bell. From deep inside the house I heard the high-pitched barking of a small dog. The yapping grew louder and more hysterical until the door was finally opened by a very pretty woman, not much older than me. She had classic features, long blond hair swept straight back from a high forehead, and skin that had no pores that anyone had ever noticed. She wore a red-and-black suit that I recognized from Escada’s spring line. Whenever she moved there was the faint jingle of expensive jewelry.

  “You must be Kate Millholland,” she practically purred, stooping to pick up the silly powder puff of a dog in time to prevent it from sinking its teeth into my ankle. “I’m Peaches,” she said, holding the shih tzu up next to her face. “I’m Jack’s wife.”

  Daniel hadn’t said anything about a current Mrs. Cavanaugh and I certainly hadn’t anticipated the elegant confection before me. But even in the half-light of the entryway, I realized that I’d seen her somewhere before. It took me a couple of seconds to figure it out. Once I did, I felt stupid. After all, during my first year at Callahan Ross, I’d driven past a sixty-foot billboard of her face every night on my way home from work. She had been Peaches Parkenhurst back then, the anchor of the six o’clock news.

  “Let me take your coat,” she offered. “I’m so glad you’re here. Ever since Jack got that hateful letter from Lydia, he’s been in an absolute state—just storming around the house. I’m just thankful that he wasn’t planning on going into the office today. He and Philip are flying to Dallas to visit a customer. It’s a good thing, too. In the mood Jack’s in there’s no telling what he might do. I almost feel sorry for Philip.” Her voice was wonderful, silky and melodious with a subtle undercurrent of the South. She played with it as she spoke, pitching it at different levels to keep it interesting. “But I don’t know what I must be thinking, chattering away like this,” she declared as if the thought had suddenly occurred to her. “We don’t want to keep Jack waiting.”

  I followed in the wake of her expensive perfume. She led me through the heart of the house into a high-ceilinged room that was decorated like a department-store version of a drawing room at Versailles.

  Jack Cavanaugh was forty years older than his wife and a full head shorter. A muscular bulldog of a man, his gray hair was brushed straight back from his face. He seemed every bit as tough as I remembered, wearing his dark suit like a mantle and carrying himself with the quiet authority of a man who knows that other men fear him. He did not smile, but shook my hand with a fierce grip while his black eyes fixed on me with the disconcerting intensity of a shark circling its dinner.

  “What can I get you to drink, Kate?” he asked once Peaches had withdrawn, leaving us to perch on her bandy-legged furniture and discuss business. His voice was gruff, flat, and stripped of pretense.

  “I’ll have a Diet Coke if you have one,” I replied. “If not, water is fine.”

  Jack Cavanaugh got up, crossed the room to an ornately carved armoire, which, when opened, revealed a fully stocked bar. He took two glasses down from the shelf, dropped a handful of ice cubes into each one, and proceeded to drown them in bourbon. He handed me a drink, sat down in his chair, and drained half his glass in one long swallow. It was one o’clock in the afternoon and I hadn’t yet had anything to eat. I took a sip and suppressed a shudder.

  “I don’t know what Daniel’s told you about me,” he said, “but if you’re going to be my lawyer, there’s something you and I had better get straight from the start. Superior Plating is my company and at my company things get done my way. That applies to all of my employees from the guy who sweeps the floor to my lawyer. And it applies double to my children. I don’t give a rat’s ass about anything Lydia or her lawyers have to say. There is no way that I’m going to let a panty-waist little schemer like Arthur Wallace hoodwink my daughter and cheat my grandchildren out of their birthright.”

  I took a swallow of bourbon and looked Jack Cavanaugh in the eye.

  “Who,” I demanded, “is Arthur Wallace?”

  Jack Cavanaugh poured himself another bourbon and walked over to the window.

  “My daughter Lydia has rotten luck and piss-poor taste in men,” he explained. “She’s been married three times and every time’s been a bigger mistake than the one before. Arthur Wallace is mistake number three.”

  “So you think that Lydia’s husband is behind her decision to sell her shares?” I ventured.

  “Lydia doesn’t really want to sell her shares. What could she gain from it? She already has everything she could possibly want. Believe me, this is all Arthur’s doing. He’s been trying to figure out a way to get his hands on Lydia’s money from the minute he first laid eyes on her. I’ve told her so a hundred times, but she won’t listen.”

  “How long have they been married?”

  “It’ll be two years in October. The twins were born six months after the wedding. What a mess.”

  “So you don’t think Lydia herself is interested in the money? She doesn’t have any liquidity issues or big expenses...

  “Oh, Lydia always has big expenses. I’ve never seen anyone spend money like she does, but she knows that she can always come to me for money.”

  “What does Arthur do for a living?”

  “He’s some kind of stockbroker. That’s why this whole thing doesn’t surprise me. He thinks that I don’t see it, but he’s been snooping around for months, asking questions, trying to figure out what Lydia’s shares are worth.”

  “What are they worth?” I asked.

  “I have no idea and I don’t care. Why put a price on something that’s not for sale?”

  “That may be, but when Daniel and I discussed Lydia’s letter this morning, we agreed that our first step should be to bring in a team of investment bankers to do a valuation of the company’s assets. I know that Lydia has never signed any kind of buyback agreement, but I assume that she’d still be willing to entertain an offer from the family, especially if the price was right.”

  “You must not have heard me,” Cavanaugh growled. “I told you, Lydia’s not going to sell her shares.”

  “I understand that as her father you know much better than I do what’s going on in her mind. But look
at it another way. She hasn’t signed the buyback. She’s hired a lawyer. I’d say it’s just prudent to be prepared.”

  “And I’m telling you that there is no way that Lydia is ever going to sell those shares.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I demanded.

  “Because,” Jack Cavanaugh announced grimly, “I’ll bum the whole damn company to the ground before I let that happen.”

  When I got back to my office I found my secretary, Cheryl, waiting for me with a stack of messages and a pained expression on her face.

  “Who are these Cavanaughs who keep calling?” she demanded, waving a wad of pink message slips at me as I passed her desk. “The phone has been ringing off the hook since you left. You’ve got messages from Dagny, Eugene, and someone named Philip, who is in need of some serious sphincter relaxation exercises. Are these people all related or something?”

  “It’s a file I’ve picked up from Daniel Babbage,” I replied somewhat incoherently as I plunked myself down onto the familiar worn leather of my desk chair.

  “Oh gee, just what we need around here, more work.” My secretary sighed, taking her customary seat and casting a weary glance at the files that lay in ramparts across my desk. “So what’s the deal with the Cavanaughs?”

  “They own the Superior Plating and Specialty Chemicals Company. This morning one of the CEO’s children, his youngest daughter, Lydia, sent everyone a letter saying that she’s planning on selling her shares. I just came from a meeting with him.”

  “How did it go?”

  “I suggest you buckle up. This one’s going to be a royal pain in the ass.”

  “Speaking of pains, your mother called while you were out.”

  “What did she want?”

  “You know she’d never tell me. She doesn’t believe in fraternizing with the help. She did say that she wants you to call her—it’s very, very important.” Cheryl rolled her eyes. “Ten to one they just got a new shipment of shoes at Neiman Marcus.”

  Cheryl was a smart kid from Bridgeport who went to Loyola Law School at night. She’d been my secretary since I came to Callahan, and over the years had managed to develop her own brand of mother-daughter relationship with my mother, that is to say, Mother drove her crazy, too.

  “What makes you think the Cavanaughs are going to be a pain?” demanded Cheryl. “I mean, besides the fact that they keep calling all the time.”

  “So far I’ve only met Jack, but if he’s any indication, I’d rather wait awhile before I meet the rest of the family. Let’s say a year or two....”

  “I hate to break it to you, but it’s going to be more like an hour or two.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve got a meeting with Dagny Cavanaugh at three-thirty. Madeline, Mr. Babbage’s secretary, set it up.”

  “Are we doing it here?”

  “No, at Superior Plating.”

  “I guess you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a plating plant,” I groaned. “Wait a minute, don’t I already have something at three?”

  “You had a meeting at three with Skip Tillman and the lawyers for Meteor Software, but it’s been moved up.”

  “To when?”

  Cheryl looked at her watch. “Forty-second-floor conference room in three minutes.”

  “But I haven’t even had a chance to look at the file,” I protested. “I was going to do it this morning, but then this damn Cavanaugh thing came up.”

  “I guess you’ll just have to fake it,” Cheryl advised. “You know how crazy Tillman gets if you’re late. Have you had anything to eat yet today?”

  “Does bourbon count?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I have half a corned beef sandwich in my desk. You can eat it in the elevator on the way up to the forty-second floor.”

  “What would I ever do without you?”

  “Miss your appointments, get lost, and starve to death,” was my secretary’s forthright reply.

  I managed to leave the Meteor Software meeting in time for my meeting with Dagny Cavanaugh and with my reputation intact. Unfortunately, I also took away with me four pages of things that Skip Tillman had, with a nod of his patrician head, managed to dump in my lap.

  I took State Street south from my office and followed Cheryl’s directions through the low-rent end of the loop into the working-class neighborhood that’s produced five of the city’s last six mayors. Bridgeport is an uneven enclave where tidy bungalows and comer taverns fill in the spaces between factories and vacant lots. I passed a meatpacking plant, a cardboard box company, and a lot filled with rusting scrap, including a couple of trucks and a city bus in various stages of disintegration.

  I missed the plant the first time around. I was expecting to see a sign but there wasn’t one, so I ended up driving past it—a squat, windowless brick building set back from the street behind a ten-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Bits of newspaper had caught in the barbs and the shreds of newsprint undulated in the wind like seaweed rocked by an ocean current.

  Inside, it wasn’t much better. A slack-jawed receptionist presided over a scarred Formica desk and a couple of chairs that looked like they’d been salvaged from the waiting room at the bus terminal. It was a wonder that Jack Cavanaugh didn’t get the bends every day going from the opulence of his house on Astor to the industrial shabbiness of his plant. I also thought it was a pretty safe bet that Peaches didn’t drop in on her husband at the office very often.

  “Kate Millholland to see Dagny Cavanaugh,” I said.

  The receptionist dragged her eyes from her copy of Cosmopolitan. “I’ll let them know you’re here,” she replied in a weary voice.

  I wandered the perimeter of the waiting area, an expanse of brown linoleum surrounded by cinderblock walls that had been painted a depressing shade of yellow and hung with grainy photos of industrial goods. Family-owned companies, I knew, were less likely to squander money on nonessentials, and in a company like Superior Plating, where customers didn’t come around to call, the only place they’d give a damn about appearances would be the bottom line.

  “You must be the lawyer who’s taking over for Daniel Babbage,” boomed a curt male voice as I examined a photograph of what I took to be a lamppost.

  I turned to see a broad, battering ram of a man in his late thirties with a shock of black hair, a military bearing, and the imprint of Jack Cavanaugh on his face. He wore navy-blue work clothes, immaculately pressed. The hand he extended was clean, but so callused that when I shook, it did not feel warm, only dry and hard.

  “I’m Kate Millholland,” I said.

  “Eugene Cavanaugh,” he replied. “Around here they call me Gene. Dagny’s still with the auditors. She asked me to show you around.” He cast a disapproving eye over my clothes. “Are those the only shoes you’ve got?”

  “I don’t mind if they get dirty.”

  “Good. They’re going to.” He handed me a pair of safety goggles and reached around the back of the reception desk and pulled out a scuffed white hard hat. “Put these on,” he instructed sternly. “Visitors have to wear them in the plant.”

  I did as I was told and immediately felt ridiculous. My expensive suit of plum-colored wool and my Ferragamo pumps—things that conveyed authority in my world— seemed frivolous and ridiculously out of place here. I followed Eugene down a narrow corridor and through a set of double doors.

  “I don’t know if you know anything about our business,” he said, his tone implying a certainty that I did not, “but we’re a metal plating operation—mostly chrome and bronze. Occasionally we do some gold, but generally there’s not much call for it.”

  “What about specialty chemicals?” I asked. “How much of your business is done by that division?”

  “Like I said, we’re a plating operation. Specialty chemicals are just a sideline.”

  I followed him into a large area that reminded me of the work bays in an auto garage. There was the same rock music playing too loud on an unseen transi
stor radio, the same concrete floor stained with motor oil. In one comer a first-aid kit was bolted to the wall between a fire extinguisher and a greasy, dog-eared safety poster. Wooden pallets loaded with cardboard boxes ringed the walls. Men in dark blue coveralls were slitting open the boxes, pulling out what looked like car wheels. Catching sight of Eugene, the workers sharpened up perceptibly— casual conversation evaporated and everything moved a half step faster.

  “You see how dull the finish is on those?” asked Eugene, pointing to the wheels that, once out of their boxes, were being loaded onto a conveyor belt. “They’re made of aluminum. We polish them and plate them so that they’re shiny like you see on cars in the street. That belt takes them into the polishing room.”

  I followed him into another area separated by a large, overhead garage door. In it, workers muffled to the eyes bent over powerful polishing lathes. The noise was deafening. Sparks flew. Despite the fact that the machinery gave off a lot of heat, the men all wore heavy hooded sweatshirts under their coveralls, which they topped with baseball caps, protective goggles, and bandannas tied around the lower half of their faces. On their hands they wore thick work gloves. In the entire room there was not one inch of exposed skin. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, even the men were all covered with a gray metallic dust.

  “That’s aluminum dust,” bellowed Eugene, looking down at my shoes, which, along with my stockings, were completely covered with gray film. “They’re removing all the irregularities from the metal surface. The plated finish is only as good as the polish job.”

  I picked my way carefully across the work floor and followed Eugene through a doorway hung with long strips of clear plastic that kept the aluminum dust from escaping the polishing area. We walked down a short hall in which someone had dumped the bench seat from an old truck. It was obviously used as a couch by workers on break. Above it hung a hand-lettered sign: THIS CORNER IS NOT A GARBAGE DUMP. PICK UP YOUR TRAHS OR GET SHOT!