Montaro Caine: A Novel Read online

  Caine was on his way out of his apartment in the Upper East Side hotel where he stayed on nights when he had to work late enough that there was no sense in making the commute back to his home in Connecticut. He was meeting his old buddy Larry Buchanan, an attorney with whom he had attended the University of Chicago, at the “21” Club. Larry had told him he had an important matter to discuss in person. But before he left the apartment, Montaro needed one more drink. He poured himself a generous glass of Glenfiddich, gulped it down, and felt it sear its way into his stomach. He waited for the whiskey to relax him, to slow his heartbeat as it usually did. But he sensed that no amount of alcohol could defuse the explosion of thoughts still going off in his mind like a Chinese fireworks display.

  The past two weeks had marked the worst period of Montaro’s career—there had been a collapse in Fitzer Corporation’s Utah mine, which had trapped sixteen miners; then, three days later, there had been an even more devastating collapse, causing further damage to the already weakened chamber. Rescue of the trapped miners had proved to be futile, and some of the rescue workers had been unable to escape. “Thirty-six Dead” read the newspaper headlines. In strictly business terms, Caine understood better than anyone that without skilled and imaginative damage control the physical disaster could trigger a financial disaster. But no amount of damage control could ever undo the tragic loss to the families of those who had been entombed in the mine.

  To compound Montaro’s anguish and anxiety, the tragedy was emboldening his enemies, who had long been conspiring to wrest his company’s chairmanship from him; before the first memorial service for the miners had been held, they were already launching attacks against him, questioning his judgment, his leadership skills, his fitness as a man of science to lead the company in this time of trial; what was needed was not a scientist but a businessman, Fitzer’s manager of operations, Alan Rothman, had said. In Montaro’s thoughts, the lines between the human tragedy, the economic setback, and his own personal plight had all become blurred.

  Now, there were the inevitable takeover rumors. Mystery raiders were said to be rallying their forces; lesser players were positioning themselves in anticipation of a day, perhaps soon, when Fitzer’s corporate bones would be ceremoniously picked: predators all, with an eye on a place at the table for that imminent feast.

  To compound Montaro’s difficulties, Carlos T. Wallace, senior vice president of finance at Fitzer had, without warning, switched allegiance from Montaro, his CEO, to Alan Rothman. Rothman, a formidably energetic man driven by fierce ambition, was now determined to destroy the career of the man who stood in his way. Rothman’s recruitment of Wallace had been a critical victory. A smooth move, no waves, no hints, Caine had thought. And Wallace, the bastard, had stayed downwind the whole time, giving Caine nothing to go on. Carlos’s raw betrayal was a painful bit of history that had been indelibly tattooed on Montaro’s psyche.

  Montaro was a realist, who had long sought the infusion of cash to finance the growth that market analysts had deemed essential. But under the current circumstances, even that cash infusion would now not be nearly enough to steady the company. Now nothing would help short of a new, bold, imaginative program, designed specifically to see the company through the dark days ahead in the short term, but whose long-term goal would be what it had always been—to maintain and strengthen Fitzer’s independence. Montaro knew that finding the massive amount of cash that didn’t mean death by merger or takeover by a hostile raider would be the most difficult challenge of his entire career. He had no bold, imaginative program, only the hope that one might materialize. And he would have hardly expected a potential solution to his predicament to arrive in the figure of Larry Buchanan.

  Larry was a braggart and a loudmouth, had been ever since he and Montaro met back when both were undergraduates at the U of C. But tonight, when they met at Montaro’s usual back table at the “21” Club, Larry skipped the small talk and went straight to the topic he wanted to discuss. Two of his law firm’s clients wanted to meet with Montaro.

  “Heavyweight investors. I tell you, Montaro, these folks are bona fide, triple-A players. Mega, mega bucks.” Buchanan hoisted his eyebrows for emphasis. “With genuine interest,” he added in a confidential whisper.

  Buchanan was a junior partner in Hargrove, Hastings and Dundas, one of the city’s most prestigious law firms. Their client roster included names long attached to old family fortunes, among them the Steven Phelps clan from the tobacco empire; the Vanderbilt family; the Bishops, whose fortunes had been made in automobiles; even rock stars. It was a client roster rich and powerful enough to camouflage any number of mysterious corporate raiders, Caine speculated.

  Caine listened suspiciously to Larry, who sounded as though he were narrating a PowerPoint presentation.

  “Finance is Carlos Wallace’s department. You know that,” Caine said.

  “I know. I told them Wallace was their man,” said Larry. “But, well—they know that things are sticky right now between you and Wallace, so they think you’re the one they should talk to.”

  “Who are ‘they’?” asked Caine.

  Buchanan hesitated, reached for his drink, and inhaled deeply. “I don’t know. The senior partners are handling this thing.” Twice he slid his index finger around the rim of his Bloody Mary glass, then looked up at Caine. “Whoever they are, they’re important clients. One of the seniors would’ve got ahold of you, maybe even old man Hargrove himself, except they know that you and I are friends from school days, so here I am.”

  For a long time, Caine said nothing, while holding Larry in an expressionless stare. Something about Larry’s story didn’t sit right with Caine—he sensed that there was either considerably more to it or considerably less. Most probably, Larry was unwittingly setting him up to meet with corporate raiders. He looked away. “I’ve got my hands full,” he said.

  “Please, buddy,” Buchanan interrupted with a note of sincerity that signaled an uncharacteristic vulnerability from the typically cocksure lawyer. “Being a junior in a sea of seniors has its disadvantages. Half an hour, no more. And I’ll owe you one.”

  Caine looked at Buchanan and remembered how irritating his friend had been throughout their time together in college. Unbearable. Plus, Larry was also a shithead in other ways, particularly where women were concerned.

  “Do you, at least, know their names?” Montaro asked.

  Larry’s face brightened. “Herman Freich and Colette Beekman. Thanks, old buddy.” Buchanan patted Caine’s arm appreciatively.

  Later that night, on West 52nd Street in front of the “21” Club, Caine watched Larry dart about in the middle of traffic trying to flag a taxi to Grand Central for his commuter train, then saw him suddenly race two elderly ladies in a sprint for an empty taxi, which he unashamedly commandeered after beating them to it.

  “Just you and the clients, O.K.?” Larry shouted before he got into the cab and it sped away.

  Hour by hour, over the following three days, Montaro’s mood darkened until it matched the threatening overcast skies that had blanketed the city for as many days with no relief in sight. The steady downpour that beat against Montaro’s office windows at Fitzer distorted his view of the sprawling panorama of Manhattan, which stretched out before him all the way to the East River and beyond into Queens. To the right, in the distance, at the southernmost point of Manhattan Island, the empty space where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood was barely visible through the drenching rain. Montaro had seen those towers fall, had watched them helplessly through these windows and on TV. Watching that disaster, he felt as though he were witnessing a recurring nightmare, one that he used to have for years after his father’s death—Robert Caine’s jet exploding before it reached the runway in Kansas City.

  Montaro knew that he was steadily losing ground. By the late morning of the day when he would have to make good on his promise to Larry to meet his firm’s clients, he became aware of signs that suggested his b
ehavior was beginning to resemble that of a man under siege. He was drinking more; he was sleeping less. His troubles were enormous—why hadn’t he seen them coming? There must have been a sign, he thought. What had happened to his gut feelings? Hadn’t he always been able to detect even the subtlest of shifts in an opponent’s position?

  “People don’t always mean what they want you to think they mean,” his grandfather, still living in retirement in Carmel, California, and fast approaching the age of 100, had told him when he was just a boy. “So you have to listen for something else.”

  “What, Grandpa?” the then six-year-old had asked, looking up at his protector and teacher. Philip L. Caine had brushed away his grandson’s tears as the child cuddled in his arms, wounded by a playmate’s unkept promise to exchange toys.

  Montaro would never forget his grandfather’s answer to that simple question. It would have a profound effect on his life from that moment on:

  “If you listen hard enough, your ears will begin to see things. And one day you will be able to listen to someone and see their real meaning hidden underneath their words. And sometimes you will even find those meanings sitting right on top of their words, as bold as ever, because a lot of people won’t know that your ears can see the truth.”

  Yes, there had been signs, Caine could now admit to himself, too many for a good ear to miss. Had his instincts shut down suddenly? His grandfather had taught him to search for the meanings that could be lurking underneath his own thoughts. Searching, he realized that he himself was the real object of his anger and not Carlos Wallace, Alan Rothman, or anyone else at Fitzer.

  Unprepared. Damn it. I was unprepared, Montaro thought. Though he was alone in his office, his body stood tense and coiled as if in readiness for the next assault. So lost was he in his thoughts, Montaro didn’t notice when the summer sun unexpectedly blasted through the stubborn layer of clouds that had been hanging ominously over the city, sending floods of light crashing, splashing, and ricocheting everywhere at once through the canyons of Manhattan. Nor did he notice that the long, greenish-gray tinted window that ran the length of his well-appointed forty-first-floor office suddenly glowed with a golden haze that brightened the room.

  “Mr. Caine, should I be with you at your eleven a.m. appointment?”

  Caine spun away from the window to find his assistant, Jeffrey Mason, standing in front of his desk. Jeffrey, a slight, red-haired man in his midforties, had entered Caine’s office through an interconnecting door from his own adjacent office. Jeffrey had waited several seconds before speaking. Usually, Caine would have felt his presence. This time he hadn’t; his instincts were still eluding him.

  “Oh, Jeffrey,” Caine mumbled.

  “It’s 10:56. They should be here any minute,” Jeffrey reminded his boss.

  “Who should be here any minute?”

  “Colette Beekman and Herman Freich. Do you want me to be here with you?”

  As Jeffrey Mason stood before him, Caine fidgeted with objects on his desk; he twisted paper clips a fraction this way, a quarter of an inch that way, and absentmindedly rubbed a small, smooth, sculpted object that resembled a woman’s compact, an object whose significance Montaro had long since forgotten.

  Jeffrey stood quietly, waiting. He had observed Caine’s nervous rituals over many years and knew that whenever his boss fiddled with objects on his desk, the man was shifting gears. Sometimes he was shifting up, from casual preoccupation with run-of-the-mill concerns to more critical matters: sometimes down, from a honed, focused concentration. There was much that Jeffrey admired about his boss, but nothing as much as his reflexes in crucial situations.

  “No, I won’t need you here. I’ll handle it alone,” Caine said.

  “Mr. Caine, Mr. Freich, and Miss Beekman are here now,” a voice breezed through the intercom.

  “Show them in, Nancy,” responded Caine.

  Caine spun the smooth dark object on his desk counterclockwise; then, his index finger teased the blade of a letter opener from east to west. Finally, his thumb glided to the upper-left-hand corner of a neat stack of correspondence to nudge a paper clip from a vertical to an angled position. The ritual completed, he moved around his desk toward the door as Jeffrey exited Caine’s office, making way for Nancy MacDonald, Caine’s longtime secretary. Nancy’s fifty-two years were clearly etched on her face, but she struggled furiously, through creative use of makeup, hairstyle, and affordable, up-to-the-minute fashion, to stay the hand of time. Following Nancy into Caine’s office was a tall, middle-aged man and a stunning young woman with a sense of poise to match her beauty.

  “Miss Colette Beekman and Mr. Herman Freich,” was Nancy’s brief introduction.

  “Good morning, Ms. Beekman,” said Caine, flashing a businesslike smile.

  “Good morning, Mr. Caine,” Colette Beekman returned warmly. She extended her hand in a manner, he felt, meant to put him on notice of some kind. Her handshake was firm, and it seemed to hold within it a promise or a threat.

  “Mr. Freich,” said Caine, looking into the somber, sunken eyes of the nattily dressed man as they pumped hands.

  “Thanks for seeing us,” Freich said.

  Caine politely gestured toward the couches and armchairs in front of his desk and beckoned Freich and Beekman to sit down.

  “Need anything else, Mr. Caine?” Nancy asked.

  “I’m O.K., Nancy,” he said, which was his code to his secretary not to let his appointment run even one second over the half hour he had promised Buchanan. Nancy nodded to her boss before she left the room.

  Colette Beekman sat on the couch next to Herman Freich. She had already cast an appraising eye over the decor of Caine’s office, which had a modern motif interrupted here and there by vagabond pieces of arresting antiques. She admired the Fitzer emblem embossed on the face of the immense crystal tabletop that rested in a sculpted, wrought-iron frame, giving the impression that the company’s emblem was floating free.

  Whenever Colette walked into someone’s office, it was her habit to look for clues. Her experiences had already taught her that to really know a man one must first find out what he’s afraid of. A man’s office, even more than his home, usually revealed the best clues.

  Two portraits, each of a different, beautiful raven-haired woman with classic features stared out at Colette from the wall behind Caine—or was it a woman and a girl? She took into account the bronze sculptures on pedestals, the designer plants in a corner, and the well-stocked bar—the bottle of scotch was nearly empty. Caine was a good man at a crossroads, one that was far from a run-of-the-mill midlife crisis, she figured.

  While Colette Beekman examined Montaro Caine’s office, Montaro examined Colette, reminding himself that corporate raiders could come in all sizes, shapes, and forms, including the stunningly beautiful. Though Caine’s life had seen its share of temptations, he had never strayed from his twenty-year marriage to Cecilia except in his mind, such as now when he gazed upon Colette. Caine guessed her to be about twenty-six years old. And God, what lovely eyes, he thought; they actually sparkled.

  Colette placed her briefcase on the table, then looked up at Caine and flashed a smile. Their eyes locked. When Colette felt satisfied that she had held the look between them a beat too long, she let her eyes fall slowly to her briefcase.

  “Mr. Caine,” Herman Freich began, “we represent an investor whose resources are considerable and whose holdings are quite diverse. However, we’ve come to see you for reasons over and above any interests we may have concerning investments in Fitzer.”

  This information was both surprising and extremely disappointing to Caine. He should have known not to trust Larry Buchanan. “What are those reasons?” he interrupted.

  The lock on Colette’s case sprang open as if in response to his question. With a slight hand movement, Freich deferred to Colette and her briefcase. She removed a monogrammed leather folder with a pearl latch, then leafed through its contents and extracted a standard-size white envel
ope, slightly yellowed with age. The young woman focused on the envelope for a long beat, tapping it against the upturned fingers of her left hand.

  Caine watched her. Herman Freich watched Caine. When the tapping subsided, Colette looked up, smiled at Caine, and held the envelope toward him faceup. “To Professor Walmeyer” was handwritten across it in large letters. She turned the envelope over, “M.I.T. Department of Metallurgy” was written on the flap.

  “Richard Walmeyer,” Caine read aloud. “I’ll be damned.”

  “You recognize the envelope, Mr. Caine?”

  “I certainly recognize the name printed on it,” said Caine.

  “And the handwriting?”

  Not yet ready to acknowledge the handwriting as his own, Caine hesitated, glanced at Freich, and wondered if Colette Beekman was his lawyer, his employer, or his daughter. “It’s not Richard Walmeyer’s,” he said evasively, as he searched Freich’s face for a physical resemblance to Colette Beekman. He saw none. Freich was fiftyish with thinning gray hair, sunken cheeks, and thin, taut lips. On the whole, Caine thought, Freich’s was a stern, cheerless face; laughter did not seem to be the man’s recreational sport. Caine didn’t really figure that Colette was a lawyer because she was behaving too much like one. Unlikely as it seemed, Colette Beekman had to be Freich’s boss, he concluded. But how does Professor Walmeyer connect to whatever it is they’re up to, he wondered. Pointing to the envelope, he asked, “So, what’s in it?”

  “A memo.” Colette lifted the flap and pulled a paper from the envelope. Holding it delicately between thumb and forefinger, she extended her arms, giving him a closer look. It was a signed memo on M.I.T. stationery.