The Secret (29 page)

“Look,” he said to me. “If we get some kind of shit about buying sweatshop merchandise, we can say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a known anti-sweatshop activist looking into things like that for us. Does any other company retain an outside expert to check this kind of stuff?’”

But Ariana didn’t take long to become a nuisance. For one thing, she wanted an expense-paid trip to the Far East to look into shop conditions. I was in Len’s office when he confronted her.

I should say that Len laid stress on having an imposing office. From his several visits to Hong Kong he had become interested in feng shui, the Chinese art of situating buildings and arranging furniture to gain the most restful and pleasing effects, plus taking the best effects of
chi,
the mysterious Chinese life force I cannot begin to define.

Anyway, in his office, nothing sat parallel to the walls. His desk was at an angle. He kept a big saltwater aquarium filled with colorful fish that glided around in the clear water. In a much smaller freshwater tank he had two piranhas. Oddly, two small catfish prowled the bottom of that tank, eating debris. The piranhas never attacked those little fellows. One of them was missing a fin it had lost when it tried. The water being pumped through the filters splashed and gurgled. He had a profusion of plants. Two parakeets chattered away in a huge wicker cage in one corner of the room. The office was comfortable for him and weird for me but, I imagine, formidable for others.

He had before him Ariana’s memorandum asking for a trip to the Far East.

“Why should we send you to Saipan?” he asked. “We do no business with Saipan. We haven’t since my father and I went there and saw the kind of conditions you deplore. Why should we send you to Hong Kong? My father and I go there from time to time and inspect those shops ourselves.”

“Some of the merchandise labeled ‘Hong Kong’ actually originates in Bangkok, Singapore, and cities on the Chinese mainland. What are the conditions in shops in those places?”

“Thread is spun in shops around the world,” said Len. “Fabric is woven. Vinyl is brewed. Leather is tanned and dyed. Buttons are manufactured. Steel is made. Handcuffs are forged. And so on. Are we to look into working conditions in every place where some component of our products is made?
Be practical, Ariana!
”

“People are enslaved!” she shrieked.

“Not … by … us,” he said coldly. “Where we’ve found deplorable conditions, we’ve withdrawn our business, in New York and in Asia. And … and now, Ariana, I have another appointment.” He tore up her letter and tossed it in the trash. He smiled and locked his blue eyes on hers. “Keep up the good work. Find out what you can. I know you can learn a whole lot without going out to the Pacific at the company’s expense. Keep me informed. I do read your memos.”

He stood. The interview was over.

*   *   *

After I was, in effect, retired from the business, I bought a home in Fort Lauderdale, on a canal, and Therèse and I went down for the winter. I really had enjoyed fishing, and I took up surf casting. One night I had a chilling nightmare that I reeled in the corpse of Filly. But I did not give up fishing.

Len was on the telephone to me almost daily. He replaced eighteen store managers and three regional managers. He bought four stores that competed with us, at least in a sense, turned two of them into Cheeks stores, and closed the other two. He began to talk about going public with a stock issue—a subject on which I had to defer to him, since I knew little about it.

Len had become single-focused. He lived and breathed the business. He had developed an incredible discipline—which he had not inherited from me.

In January I went up to New York for a few days to attend the annual meetings of the stockholders and directors of Gazelle, Incorporated. It was nothing very fancy, since I owned 5,500 of the ten thousand shares of stock, Sal owned 2,500, Len and Vicky owned one thousand and one thousand were retained by the company as treasury shares. We sat down at a table in a small conference room. Roger Middleton, Richard Pincus, and Hugh Scheck were also present.

Len could vote 3,500 shares, actually, since before I went to Florida I had given him my proxy to vote 2,500 of my shares—so Sal could not outvote him in a stockholders’ meeting, in case one had to be held suddenly or in case one had to be held with me in a hospital. Though I was present at the January meeting, I did not revoke the proxy. If Len was going to run the company, let him run the company.

As soon as the formalities of a stockholders’ meeting were finished, Len nominated a slate of directors. There had always been five directors: he and I, Vicky, Sal, and Roger. He nominated a slate of seven, adding Pincus and Scheck. The slate was elected.

We adjourned the stockholders’ meeting and convened a meeting of the board of directors.

Len nominated a slate of officers. He omitted nominating Sal as a vice president.

“What is this?” Sal asked angrily. “You squeezin’ me out, son?”

Len shook his head. “Sal, you’ve never functioned as an officer of this company—”

“I was a
partner.
”

“When it was a partnership, which it hasn’t been since 1989. You rarely take part in anything. You rarely even come to the offices. What difference does it make? You’ll still get your dividends.”

“But my name won’t be on the fuckin’ door!”

“Neither will mine,” said Len calmly. “Nobody’s name is on the fuckin’ door.”

Sal turned to me. “Proxy or no fuckin’ proxy, you can vote three thousand shares, and I can vote twenty-five hundred. You goin’ along with this?”

“Sal…” Len said with the air of a man whose patience endures but is being tried. “Stockholders elect directors. Directors elect officers. We’ve already elected the directors. If they want you to continue as a vice president, they’ll elect you.”

“Fat fuckin’ chance,” Sal grunted, glancing at the directors seated around the table. Then he glared at me. “Thanks,
partner.
”

Son of a bitch! I’d been had by my own son. I had not realized that the majority stockholder in a corporation might lose the power to elect its officers.

I could have called for a special stockholders’ meeting a little later. But I didn’t.

Late that night Sal was hauled to the Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in an emergency-squad ambulance. By the time I heard of it and arrived the next morning, he was going. It wasn’t a heart attack. It was a stroke.

I sat down beside his bed. That was when he told me he was the man who had pulled the trigger on Jimmy Hoffa. That’s when he told me that whole story, in a weak voice but with an apparently lucid mind.

“Len’s fucked me,” he whispered. “Maybe you let him.”

“I didn’t mean to fuck you, partner,” I said quietly. “You were right about one thing, wrong about another. Len’s as cold as a whore’s tit. But he’s got guts.”

I wasn’t sure Sal was conscious and heard me, but he said, “Wait’n see.”

“We’ve always been very different guys, Sal.”

“Not so different. They will say kaddish for me. I hope you can be there.”

I was there. He was lowered into a simple earth grave, in a simple pine box, and the mourners did our best to follow and join in the words of the kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.

*   *   *

By now I was not sure if I could take control of my company back from my son. Well … of course I could have, but it would have involved a bitter confrontation, not just with Len but with Vicky.

She and I sat down over a steak at Peter Luger’s one day when Len was in a meeting with the lawyers.

“There’s no point in a bitter fight, Jerry,” she said. “You’d win, but you’d lose.”

“Meaning?”

“Oh, you can take back control of the business. There’s no question about that. And then what? You know Len. You know he won’t sit in an office and draw a salary and not run things. Not anymore. If you take back control, he’ll leave the company. And he won’t go back to his law firm, because its best men now work for the company.”

“So, he’ll—?”

“He’ll come with me at Interboro Fruit.”

“And be bitter,” I said.

She nodded.

“He’ll hate me.”

“No, he’ll never hate you. But he will be bitter.”

“Meaning I won’t see him and you as much, meaning I won’t see the grandkids.”

“Meaning you’ll have won but you’ll have lost,” she said.

“I’ve already done something he won’t like,” I told her. “I bought Sal’s stock from his sons. Len bid for them, but I bid higher. Tell him he’ll get them in my will. Maybe he’ll get them sooner.”

*   *   *

So Len stayed where he was. I didn’t try to put him down.

He and Hugh explained to me their plan to take our shares public. The more they explained it, the more I didn’t understand it. They wanted to raise capital. I understood that. Why? Because they had plans for Gazelle, Incorporated, to buy new businesses. They had targets. Some of them, as I pointed out, were in no business even vaguely related to ours. Among the businesses they were thinking of buying was the foundry that stamped out our handcuffs, along with a hundred totally unrelated products such as a respected brand of kitchen knives. They had eyes on a chain of health-food stores—most of whose merchandise was, in my judgment, nothing but scams. I couldn’t believe that they were also looking at a small, Midwestern commuter airline.

Well, why not? I had tried to sell French spring water.

I felt control slipping away from me. It was damn tough. I’m not the kind of guy who gives up on things. But I supposed I could let my son have his head, so long as he used good judgment.

Then suddenly I learned he wasn’t using good judgment.

Her name was Susan Gillis. She was a thirty-four-year-old public-relations expert who had worked for us for a while and then had been brought into the company by Len, who said he valued her skills.

She had skills, I have no doubt. But they weren’t the skills he admitted to admiring.

She had smoothly styled blond hair. Her eyes were dark green with flecks of brown. Her lips were sensual. Her understated makeup enhanced her beauty. She wore knit dresses, short and tight, clinging to a voluptuous figure. Damn her. She was an uncomfortable reminder of Filly. It looked as if Len and I had similar tastes in women.

I had only to observe the significant glances that passed between them to know what was going on. What was more, I wasn’t the only one who could see it.

I made myself comfortable in a chair facing his desk and accepted a cup of coffee. Then I asked him, “What’s between you and Ms. Gillis?”

“Look,” Len said. He loved to begin conversations by saying “look,” as if he were about to explain something to someone he was not sure could understand it. “When your chief business is Cheeks stores—”

“Our
only
business,” I corrected him.

“When your business is selling our lines, you need to build
respectability.
I mean … on Wall Street, we are only
tolerated.
”

“They like our money.”

“Okay. But to build a diversified business, you need a better image. That’s what Susan is for. I send her to meetings of bankers, brokers, and so on. She is our image. And I like the image she’s helping us build.”

“You’re fuckin’ her, Len.”

His eyes turned hard and cold. “That’s none of your business.”

“You’re fuckin’ her.”

“Dad … yeah, okay, I’ve been with her once or twice. Just for fun.”

“I was married to your mother for eighteen years. During that time I never once had ‘fun’ with another woman.”

“We’re of different generations,” he said, as if that closed the conversation.

“You’ve been married to Vicky for three years. She’s the mother of your children. Of course … she’s fifty years old. Doesn’t she take care of you anymore?”

“It’s not that.”

“What’s gonna happen when she finds out? You think she’s not gonna find out?”

“You going to tell her?”

“I won’t have to.”

“What’ll she do, put out a contract on me?”

I threw my coffee cup across the room. It left a trail of coffee across his white carpet, and shards of cup scattered at the base of the wall where it hit. “Sal said something to me about you,” I growled at Len. “I deeply resented it at the time, but he was right. He said you were a spoiled brat who’d been given everything and never had to work or take a risk for anything. He also said you were colder than a whore’s tit. It doesn’t even occur to you, does it, how much this is gonna hurt Vicky? I know she came on to you hard when she met you, but she married you and has been as good a wife as a man could ask for, and—”

“You think you can run my life the way you’ve always run the business—hands-on personal management.”

“Until you’re man enough to run it yourself,” I said coldly.

He was silent for a moment, then asked, “What do you expect me to do?”

“Go out there and tell Ms. Gillis that she’s fired. Tell her the chief executive officer ordered you to fire her.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Then the chief executive officer gives you another order. Clean out your desk and be out of here in an hour.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I own eighty percent of the stock in this company. If I can’t get you out of here in an hour, I sure as hell can get you out a little later. You might use corporation law to frustrate me for a little while, but not for long.”

Len was tough. I had seen that when he faced down the fag proctor-instructor at Lodge. The man had been a bully, but Len literally destroyed him. I remembered that now. I should have judged that correctly at the time—that there is no honor in beating up cripples.

Len conceded nothing. “If you turn me out of the company, how will either one of us explain
that
to Vicky?”

“I’ll leave that to you,” I said.

“But Susan … I
can’t.
Jesus Christ!”

I was adamant.

“If we fire her, she might sue for sexual harassment.”

“Let’s hear what Hugh has to say about that. He’s our general counsel.”

Hugh Scheck lumbered in, walking with his two canes, and dropped on a couch. Len described the situation very briefly. It was apparent to me that Hugh already knew about Miss Gillis