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“How many pages are there in this?” Calderwood said. “Fifty, sixty?”
“Fifty-three.”
“Some suggestion.” Calderwood snorted. “Did you think this up all by yourself?”
“Yes.” Rudolph didn’t feel he had to tell Calderwood that for months he had been methodically picking Joh
“All right, all right,” Calderwood grumbled. “I’ll look into it.”
“If I may make the suggestion, sir,” Rudolph said, “I think you should talk this over with your lawyers in New York and your bankers.”
“What do you know about my lawyers in New York?” Calderwood asked suspiciously.
“Mr. Calderwood,” Rudolph said, “I’ve been working for you for a long time.”
“Okay. Supposing, after studying this some more, I say Yes and do the whole goddamn thing the way you outline it—go public, float a stock issue, borrow from the banks, build the goddamn shopping center near the lake, with a theater, too, like an idiot, supposing I do all that, what’s in it for you?”
“I would expect to be made chairman of the board, with you as president of the company, at an appropriate salary,” Rudolph said, “and an option to buy a certain amount of stock in the next five years.” Good old Joh
“You’ve got everything figured out, haven’t you, Rudy?” Now Calderwood was frankly hostile.
“I’ve been working on this plan for more than a year,” Rudolph said mildly. “I’ve tried to face all the problems.”
“And if I just say no,” Calderwood said, if I just put all this pile of papers in a file and forget it, then what would you do?”
“I’m afraid I’d have to tell you I’m leaving at the end of the year, Mr. Calderwood,” Rudolph said. “I’m afraid I’d have to look for something with more of a future for me.”
“I got along without you for a long time,” Calderwood said. “I could get along without you now.”
“Of course you could,” Rudolph said.
Calderwood looked down morosely at his desk, flicked out a sheet of paper from a pile, glared at it with especial distaste.
“A theater,” he said angrily. “We already have a theater in town.”
“They’re tearing it down next year,” Rudolph said.
“You sure do your homework, don’t you?” Calderwood said. “They’re not going to a
“Somebody always talks,” Rudolph said.
“So it seems. And somebody always listens, don’t they, Rudy?”
“Yes, sir.” Rudolph smiled.
Finally, Calderwood smiled, too. “What makes Rudy run, eh?” he said.
“That’s not my style, at all,” Rudolph said evenly. “You know that.”
“Yes, I do,” Calderwood admitted. “I’m sorry I said it. All right. Get back to work. You’ll be hearing from me.”
He was staring down at the papers on his desk as Rudolph left his office. Rudolph walked slowly among the counters, looking youthful and smiling benevolently as usual.
The plan that he had submitted to Calderwood was a complicated one and he had argued every point closely. The community was growing in the direction of the lake. What was more, the neighboring town of Cedarton, about ten miles away, was linked with Whitby by a new highway and was also growing in the direction of the lake. Suburban shopping centers were springing up all over America and people were becoming accustomed to doing the greater part of their shopping, for all sorts of things, in them. Calderwood’s thirty acres were strategically placed for a market to siphon off trade from both towns and from the upper-middle-class homes that dotted the borders of the lake. If Calderwood didn’t make the move himself, somebody or some corporation would undoubtedly seize the opportunity in the next year or two and besides profiting from the new trade would cut drastically into Calderwood’s volume of business in the Whitby store. Rather than allow a competitor to undermine him, it was to Calderwood’s advantage to compete, even partially, with himself.
In his plans Rudolph had argued for a place for a good restaurant, as well as the theater, to attract trade in the evenings as well. The theater, used for plays during the summer, could be turned into a movie house for the rest of the year. He also proposed building a middle-priced housing development along the lake, and suggested that the marshy and up to now unusable land at one end of Calderwood’s holdings could be used for light industry.
Coached by Joh
He was sure that his arguments for making a public company out of the new Calderwood Association were bound to sway the old man. The real assets and the earning power, first of the store and then of the center, would insure a high price of issue for the stock. When Calderwood died, his heirs, his wife and three daughters, would not be faced with the possibility of having to sell the business itself at emergency prices to pay the inheritance taxes, but could sell off blocks of stock while holding onto the controlling interest in the corporation.
In the year that Rudolph had been working on the plan and digging into corporation and tax and realty laws, he had been cynically amused by the ma
Professor Denton was waiting for him, at the bar, uncomfortable and out of place among other patrons, none of whom looked as though he had ever been near a college.
“Good of you,” Denton said, in a low, hurried voice, “good of you to come, Jordache. I’m drinking bourbon. Can I order you something?”
“I don’t drink during the day,” Rudolph said, then was sorry he said it, because it sounded disapproving of Denton, who was drinking at a quarter past noon.
“Quite right,” Denton said, “quite right. Keep the head clear. Ordinarily, I wait until the day’s work is over myself, but …” He took Rudolph’s arm. “Perhaps we can sit down.” He waved toward the last booth of the row that lined the wall opposite the bar. “I know you have to get back.” He left some change on the bar for his drink, carefully counting it out, and still with his hand holding Rudolph’s arm, guided him to the booth. They sat down facing each other. There were two greasy menus on the table and they studied them.
“I’ll take the soup and the hamburger,” Denton said to the waitress. “And a cup of coffee. How about you, Jordache?”
“The same,” Rudolph said.
The waitress wrote the order down laboriously on her pad, illiteracy a family heritage. She was a woman of about sixty, gray haired and shapeless in an incongruously pert, revealing orange uniform with a coquettish, small, lace apron, age paying its iron debt to the ideal of youthful America. Her ankles were swollen and she shuffled flatly as she went back toward the kitchen. Rudolph thought of his mother, of her dream of the neat little candlelit restaurant that had never materialized. Well, she had been spared the orange uniform.
“You’re doing well, Jordache,” Denton said, hunched over the table, his eyes worried and magnified behind the thick, steel-rimmed glasses. He waved his hand impatiently, to ward off any contradiction. “I hear, I hear,” he said. “I get reports from many sources. Mrs. Denton, for one. Faithful customer. She must be in the store three times a week. You must see her from time to time.”
“I ran into her only last week,” Rudolph said.
“She tells me the store is booming, booming, a new lease on life, she says. Very big-city. All sorts of new things. Well, people like to buy things. And everybody seems to have money these days. Except college professors.” Indigence creased Denton’s forehead briefly. “No matter. I didn’t come here to complain. No doubt about it, Jordache, you did well to turn down the job in the department. The academic world,” he said bitterly. “Rife with jealousy, cabals, treachery, ingratitude, a man has to walk as if on eggs. Better the world of business. Give and take. Dog eat dog. Frankly. On the up and up.”