A Man of Affairs Read Online Free

and an attention span as long as a six-year-old’s. She had that miraculous physical co-ordination that enabled her to swim, ride, dive, ski, play tennis, golf, badminton, and table tennis with the experts. She had a sprawling, lounging, boyish lack of body consciousness, and no sense of style. Her lipstick and clothes were always the wrong shade. She moved in a welter of broken straps, scuffed shoes, missing buttons, jammed zippers and smudges. She was everyman’s tomboy sister—and no woman resented her. You could sense the closeness between Tommy and Puss. It seemed a shame they had no children. They wanted them and would have been good with them.
    I sat by the pool and watched them on the green lawn, yelping and panting and beating the bejaysus out of that silly tethered ball. Children at play, lithe and graceful and unselfconscious. In spite of Tommy’s frantic lunges, she belted the ball by him and it wound around the post.
    He threw the paddle into the air, rumpled her red hair, and they walked toward me, hand in hand, breathing heavily. “Hi, Sam,” she said, and went with three running steps toward the pool and in with the oiled perfection of a leaping porpoise.
    Tommy dropped into the chair beside mine and shook his head and said, “One day, dammit, I’ll find a game I can beat her at. What’s on your mind, Sam?”
    “I’m going along on the little excursion to the Bahamas.”
    “Hey, that’s wonderful. We’ll have a ball. Come on, I want to show you something.” I followed him to the garage and up the stairs. With tender loving care he opened a long box, took out a gleaming gizmo, handed it to me and said proudly, “How do you like that?”
    I held it and looked at it and said, “I like it fine, but what is it?”
    “New spear gun. Just came yesterday. And the Bahamas is one of the world’s best places for skin diving. How’s that for timing?”
    “That’s just fine, too. Tommy, I just came from Louise’s house. We had a talk about this Mike Dean and what this might mean to the company.”
    He took the spear gun from me. “This thing is really built. It’s a pilot model, made in West Germany.”
    “Mike Dean will try to swing you and Louise around to his way of thinking, and everything we’ve been working for will go to hell.”
    “There isn’t anything on it to corrode. And the balance is perfect. Works on compressed air.”
    “I’m going along to make sure Mike Dean’s team doesn’t do a complete snow job on you and Louise.”
    “Look at the way they’ve designed this reel attachment, Sam.”
    “Tommy! Damn it!”
    He gave me a quizzical look. “What’s the trouble?”
    “I think it’s a mistake for you and Louise to accept his invitation.”
    Something moved behind his eyes, something that, for a moment, belied the usual impression of general uselessness. “What’s the harm in it, Sam? I don’t know why Louise is going. I don’t know why you’re going. But I’m going for the skin diving. Okay?”
    And I couldn’t get one inch farther. Back by the pool I refused the offer of a drink and the offer of a swim. I looked back as I left. They were swimming the length of the pool, side by side, in perfect rhythm, and the two fat boxer pups, named Meanie and Moe, were on the pool apron barking their fool heads off.

TWO
     
    WHEN I ARRIVED AT THE PLANT I went directly to Al Dolson’s office. Molly, his secretary, said he had gone over to C Building so I asked her to let me know when he got back.
    My secretary for the past three years has been Alice Rice, a six-foot, gaunted redhead of forty something years, loyal, efficient, outspoken and pessimistic. I motioned to her as I went through the outer office and she followed me in, book in hand. She sat at the corner of my desk and told me who had called and when and why and jotted down the order in which I wanted her to get them back on the line for me.
    “Ready for some overtime, Alice?”
    “Oh, Gawd, what now? Just so long