The Inheritors Read online

  “Happy to meet you, Mr. Gaunt,” she smiled. She was in the mold, only with dark hair. For a moment I wondered whether Sinclair had them manufactured especially for their own use.

  “Miss Daniels,” I said. We shook hands. Her hands weren’t as damp as Fogarty’s had been. But then she had much less to lose. She was only number two.

  “There are two entrances to your office,” Miss Fogarty said. She indicated a door near her desk. “This one from our office and one directly from the reception area. Your visitors will be shown in from there unless you instruct otherwise.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  She opened the door to my office and let me walk in ahead of her. I stood there for a moment. It was almost a duplicate of Sinclair’s office. The same ten windows on each side, the same view. There was only one thing that was different. The office looked new, untouched and unused.

  “Who was in this office before?” I asked. Whoever it had been had disappeared without a trace.

  “No one,” she said. “For some reason, I don’t know why, this office has been vacant ever since we moved in four years ago.”

  I glanced at her briefly, then walked over to my desk and sat down behind it. Sinclair had to be a strange man. No one sets up offices like these and then doesn’t use them.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Black with one sugar.”

  She left and returned in a moment, placing the coffee tray on my desk. I looked at it while she poured the coffee. At least he did things in style. The china was Wedgewood. She used silver tongs to drop one lump of sugar in my cup. “Like that?” she asked.

  I raised the coffee to my lips. “It’s fine,” I said.

  She smiled again. “In the center drawer of your desk,” she said, “you will find two folders. One has the personnel records of Miss Swensen, Miss Daniels, and myself. You understand, of course, that we are provisionally assigned to your office. If you have other personnel or preferences we shall understand.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I like what I see so far and I have no ties.”

  She smiled. “In the other folder is a list of the names and positions of certain key executives. Mr. Sinclair especially asked me to remind you to review that list as there will be a meeting at ten thirty in his conference room to introduce them to you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Fogarty would do all right. She had tact and style. She didn’t say introduce me to them.

  “Now, if I may, let me explain some things about the mechanics of the office.” She came around the desk and stood beside me. I was aware of the faint, gentle perfume.

  “The telephone is a conventional call director with ten lines. Outside lines are available by dialing eight or nine first. Of course we are available to get all numbers for you. There are also two direct lines that bypass the switchboard for your personal use, and direct intercoms to each of our desks.

  “On the wall opposite you you will see three television screens. The first is tied into our own network and will always project the current network program. The other two are conventional sets and show all channels. All are controlled from this set of buttons next to your telephone.

  “On the inside wall of the office there is a built-in bar which is revealed by this button.” She pressed it and the bar opened.

  It was stocked and ready for action. I nodded approvingly.

  “To the right of the bar, you will notice a door. That is the entrance from the reception area. It is electrically controlled and locked from our desks or yours. To the left of the bar is a private bathroom. It is complete with a dressing room, shower, and sauna or wet steam; there is also a small bedroom should you desire to rest.”

  I got up and walked over to the bathroom and opened the door. I went inside. It was everything she said it was and more. With a setup like this there was never a reason to go home. I went back into the office.

  The telephone buzzed. She picked it up. “Mr. Gaunt’s office.” She looked at me. “Mr. Sinclair for you.”

  I took the telephone from her hand and walked around the desk. She left. “Mr. Sinclair.”

  “Just a moment, I’ll put him on,” his secretary’s voice said. There was a click.

  “Are you comfortable, Mr. Gaunt?”

  “I am, thank you.”

  He chuckled. “Just keep that in mind whenever you think of complaining because the neighbors upstairs are making too much noise. Remember you asked for that office.”

  I laughed. “I’ll remember, Mr. Sinclair.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you could come up to my office a few minutes before the ten thirty meeting,” he said. “I would like you to meet Dan Ritchie before we go in.”

  “I’ll be there at ten twenty.”

  ***

  Dan Ritchie was a pro. He took being kicked upstairs without rancor. His grip was firm. “Glad to meet you, Steve,” he boomed. He studied me for a minute, a puzzled expression in his eyes. He turned to Sinclair. “I had the impression somehow that he was much younger.”

  Sinclair had the same puzzled expression on his face. I smiled at them. “You age quickly in this business.”

  Suddenly Sinclair caught on. A glint of amusement came into his eyes. Also a curious kind of respect. “You sure do,” he said. “Sometimes it happens overnight.”

  He didn’t know it. But it happened about eight o’clock that morning. I had had my shower and finished buttoning up my shirt as I walked back into the living room.

  “Okay, fellas,” I said brightly. “Any of you think of ordering breakfast?”

  “Christ! Look at him,” Jack groaned from where he was stretched out on the couch. “He stays up all night wearing us out with his questions, then showers and comes out looking bright as a new penny. How did you do it? With benny tabs?”

  I grinned at him. “Just live right, I guess.”

  “It’s youth,” Joe Griffin, his chief research man said. “He almost doesn’t look old enough to vote, much less be president of a major network.”

  I turned to look at him. He put his finger right on it. My big problem would come not from what I wanted to do but from the grayheads who would look at me and think I was nothing but a loudmouthed kid. I turned and picked up the telephone. The only way to lick them was to join them.

  The barbershop had no one who could do what I wanted, but the beauty parlor did. The promise of fifty dollars sent the girl up real quick.

  She was a cute little brunette in a pink smock. She carried a little black cosmetic case and chewed gum. She came into the room with a bewildered expression. “They got some kind of cuckoo word down there that a lady up here wants to put gray in her hair.”

  “They got it right,” I said. “Except it isn’t a lady. It’s me.”

  She almost swallowed her gum. “Now I’ve heard everything,” she said. “You nuts or somethin’? I’m leavin’. You’re all cuckoo.”

  I pulled out the fifty and waved it in front of her face. “I mean it. Don’t go.”

  She looked up at me. “What you wanna go an’ do that for? You look like such a nice kid with your wavy brown hair.”

  “I’m up for a very big job,” I said seriously. “And they think I look too young to get it. Now you wouldn’t want me to lose my big chance, would you?”

  “No,” she said, hesitantly, her eyes going around the room. “I wouldn’t want to do a thing like that.”

  “All you have to do is to shade some gray into it. Not too much, just enough to age me a little.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I guess I can do that.”

  “Come on then,” I said and led the way into the bathroom. When I came back into the living room forty minutes later, I was dressed and ready to leave for the office.

  “I don’t believe it!” Jack sat bolt upright on the couch.

  They clustered around me. “What do you think?” I asked.

  Jack shook his head. “It’s got to be the greatest,”
he said. “It really doesn’t make you look older, but it gives you a kind of solid authority. You know that I mean?”

  I knew what he meant. The edging of gray she combed into my hair somehow worked out just right with my eyes. I still looked young but not that young anymore.

  “Okay,” I said, going to the door. “Time to go down to the mines.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jack said. He picked up the loose-leaf book. “Don’t you want to take this with you?”

  I grinned. “Come on, teacher. Since when do they let you take the books into the examination room?”

  ***

  I was wrong about one thing. The offices weren’t duplicates. Sinclair’s conference room was bigger than mine. There were twenty-eight people at the table. I walked slowly around the table and shook hands with every one of them and tried to tie their names to what I had read last night. It worked pretty good. My memory was better than I thought.

  They were all very pro about it. I could see them studying me but not one of them cracked. They weren’t about to give me anything, they were going to sit it out until they could figure the drift.

  After ten minutes, Sinclair left with a casual remark about leaving the team to get acquainted. Ritchie left with him.

  There was a silence in the room now that you could really cut. I sat alone at the head of the table. And that’s just what I was. Alone.

  I glanced around the table. Strange how a little thing like gray hair helped even up the score. I kept my voice deliberately low so that they would have to strain to hear me.

  “You’re wondering about me and I’m wondering about you. None of us knows each other.

  “But in the next few months we’re going to find out. Some of you will like me, some of you will not. That’s unimportant.

  “What is important is that Sinclair Television is going to climb out of the cellar of broadcasting. What is important is the ratings. That’s the standard by which I will measure you and by which you will measure me.”

  I paused. They were still watching me. “In Washington, when a new president takes office, he is allowed a cabinet of his own choosing. I like that. It’s real democracy.”

  I could feel them tightening up. This was bottom-line talk. “I will expect each of you to submit his resignation effective thirty-one January and have it on my desk by tomorrow morning.”

  There was a collective explosive sigh. I waited a moment until they swallowed that. Then I threw out the lifeline.

  I got to my feet. “My secretary is preparing a schedule of appointments. Sometime within the next few days, I will meet individually with each of you and review the problems of your departments. Thank you, gentlemen.”

  I went downstairs to my own office. Within ten minutes all hell broke loose. Sinclair stormed up and down my office, raging.

  “You fired everybody! How the hell do you expect to run the network? All by yourself? Even you can’t do that!”

  I smiled up at him. “The gods descend from Olympus.”

  That stopped him. He looked down at me. “What do you mean?”

  “They told me you never came down from your floor.” He began to smile. I continued. “Let me set the record straight. I didn’t fire them. I asked for their resignations effective in January. I didn’t say I would accept those resignations.”

  He chuckled. “You really shook them up.”

  “That’s the idea,” I said.

  “You play rough.”

  “This isn’t touch tackle. I meant it when I said I was going to move this network.”

  “Okay,” he said after a moment. “It’s your ballgame.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve booked the private room at Twenty-One for lunch. I want you to meet the board of directors. And I’ve asked PR to set a press conference for you on Friday.”

  “Lunch is all right,” I said. “But Friday is out. I won’t be here” I gave him time to swallow that. “Time enough for a press conference when I have something to say. Right now I have nothing to tell them.”

  “Where will you be?” he asked.

  “In Los Angeles.”

  “What the hell have you got to do out there that’s more important than staying right here?”

  I met his eyes straight on. “I’m going to try to steal Saturday nights back for us.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Is my father with you?” she asked as soon as I came into the room.

  I shook my head.

  “That was his car you came up in,” she accused.

  I looked at her; she was dressed and ready to leave, her small valise packed and standing in the middle of the room. She made no move toward it.

  “He loaned me the limo,” I said. “He thought it would be more comfortable than a taxi.”

  “He knows?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She seemed to deflate. She crossed the room and took a package of cigarettes from her purse. “How did he find out? Did you tell him?”

  “You know better than that, Barbara,” I said. “He already knew. He even knew that I was taking you to the doctor.”

  “Damn!” she said. “He never lets go.” She looked up at me. “I’ll fire that damn maid. Now I’m sure she told him. She was the only other one that knew. She’s always listening at keyholes.”

  “He’s your father,” I said. “It’s only natural that he should care—”

  “What the hell do you know?” she snapped. Her voice turned savage. “He doesn’t care about me or anybody. All he wants to do is to control everything. That’s why my mother ran away from him. But even that didn’t stop him. He hounded her until she killed herself. And that’s just what he wants to do to me.”

  “Easy, girl,” I said.

  She laughed bitterly. “You don’t know. But wait until he gets his hands into you. Then he’ll own you. And you’ll understand. I remember what he told my mother.

  “‘Nobody leaves Spencer Sinclair,’ he said. ‘Unless I want them to.’”

  She ground her cigarette out. “I don’t want to go back to my apartment.”

  “That’s up to you. You’re a big girl. I just came up to get you out of here.”

  She came toward me, her eyes wide. “Let me stay with you, Steve.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Please, Steve.” She reached for my hand. “Only for a few days until I get my head unscrambled. I don’t want to be alone in that apartment.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” I said. “My place is going to be like Grand Central Station the next few days.”

  “I’ll be good. I won’t be in your way.”

  “Why me?” I asked. “You have other friends.”

  She looked up at me, a hurt coming to her eyes. She let go of my hand and went back to her valise. “Okay, Steve,” she said quietly. “I’m ready to go now.”

  I picked up the valise and we went down to the car. I don’t think we spoke two words on the way to town. The chauffeur kept glancing curiously at us in the mirror. It was obvious that she knew him, but she ignored him too.

  The car stopped in front of her apartment on Park Avenue and the doorman came rushing up to get her valise. I got out with her.

  “You okay now?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Take care and get some rest,” I said. “I’ll give you a call later to see how you’re doing.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  I kissed her cheek and she went into the building. It was almost five o’clock by the time I got back to my office and the memos and phone calls were stacked up to the ceiling. I got involved and before I knew it, it was eight o’clock and Jack Savitt was on the phone.

  “Still at your desk?” he laughed. “You’re setting a bad example.”

  I glanced over at the pile of papers still to be gone through. “Yeah.”

  “I’ve been on the horn,” he said. “I think I can put your package together for you.”

  “Good.”

  “Shall I come over and talk about it?”r />
  I glanced at my watch. “No. Meet me over at McCarthy’s Steak House on Second Avenue in fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  I put down the telephone and hit the buzzer. Fogarty came into the office. “Pack up the rest of this stuff,” I told her. “I’ll go over it at home.”

  She nodded and I went into the bathroom and washed up. I looked at my face in the mirror. It was tired and there were lines on it that hadn’t been there in the morning. I grinned. It all went with my gray hair. I wondered how long it would be before I wouldn’t need the treatment.

  I held a hot towel to my face and it felt good. When I put it down, some of the lines were gone. My eyes were still a little bloodshot. Maybe I needed glasses.

  Fogarty had an attaché case ready for me. I looked at it. It was brand new and had my name discreetly engraved on its side. She snapped it shut, locked it and gave me the key. “Everything is in order,” she said. “And I red-flagged the things that were urgent.”

  Joe Berger was standing at the door as I came in. “Congratulations, Steve,” he said.

  “Thank you, Joe.” We shook hands. I followed him to a booth along the wall.

  His pretty wife Claire smiled and called her congratulations from the cash register as we walked by. I smiled and waved to her. “What’ll be your pleasure?” he asked.

  “Jack Savitt is joining me.”

  “I know. He called, he’ll be about five minutes late.”

  That was about normal for Jack. There should be at least two more calls like that before he showed up.

  “I’ll have about four martinis,” I said. “Then a salad with blue cheese dressing, roast beef rare with the bone, baked potato with sour cream, and that’s it.”

  “Take some advice from an expert, Steve?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Develop a taste for Scotch. It’s easier on your stomach. Every ulcer case I know lives on martinis.”

  I laughed. “How about Coca-Cola?”

  “That’s even better. When my son was a baby the doctor told me to give him Coke syrup to settle his stomach.”

  “Okay, Joe,” I laughed. “Now send over the martinis.”