Killed on the Rocks Read online

  In any case, Dost was what people liked to call a corporate raider. He bought companies the way a kid bought baseball cards, and treated them that way, too: collecting them, trading them, rearranging them, and for all I know, flipping them against other corporate raiders, to see who could get his company closest to the stoop without touching, winner take all.

  There were strong rumors that Dost was so crooked that when he died, they were going to have to screw him into the ground. There were equally strong rumors that the Wall Street establishment, the prep school to Hahvud or Wharton business school to The Firm, the “I work on the Street because Dad worked on the Street” crowd, were out to get him because he had risen like a dust storm (a Dost storm) on the Montana prairie, and had parlayed some cows into a fortune that the Wall Streeters couldn’t afford not to pay attention to.

  I thought I knew what was eating Falzet. The Network’s current Chairman of the Board was a former Air Force General who had been a good friend of the founder, Roxanne Schick’s grandfather. He was a nice old man, and no dummy, but he was perfectly content to let Falzet have all the power as long as the profits stayed up, while he worked on his memoirs.

  The General, at least, seemed destined for a golden handshake if the sale went through. Even if Falzet were to be kept around (and there was absolutely no reason why he shouldn’t be—even with viewership for commercial TV down, the Network and the Corporation that surrounded it were positively coining money), he would never have the free hand under Dost that he had currently.

  “Where do I come into all this?” I asked. I suspected I wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if you expect me to quash the deal, you’ve come to the wrong place. It’s not my kind of job; not Special Projects’ kind of thing, either.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “You don’t want me to quash the deal?”

  “Absolutely not! Dost will bring a flood of new capital to the Network. He’ll clean out the deadwood. There are big changes going on in this industry, Cobb. Cable is getting stronger all the time. New technologies. Possible deregulation. In five more years, the industry will be practically unrecognizable.

  “But the board is loaded with fossils. Just because we’re making money now, they expect it to go on forever! They expect me to make it go on forever, without changing anything. A Dost administration will fix that.”

  “You’ve been talking to his people already, I see.”

  “Well, ah, yes. Strictly preliminary, strictly theoretical. The formal offer will be made to the board after our people discuss some concretes with Dost.”

  “I wouldn’t be much help trying to put the deal across, either.”

  “That won’t be necessary. The takeover will make all their shares skyrocket in value. That alone should put it across.”

  “I still don’t see why you need me.”

  “I need you because someone else is trying to quash the deal.”

  “Mr. Falzet, I’m trying to get across to you that no matter what shape these financial dealings take, I’m not the one to help you with them.”

  “Dammit, Cobb, I know we don’t like each other, but you don’t have to act like I’m a complete idiot! I know just what you’re good for and what you’re not. Believe me, the quashing that’s been going on fits directly in with your field of expertise.”

  He opened a desk drawer, pulled out a manila folder, reached across the desk and handed it to me. “Look at that,” he said.

  It was a letter. A photocopy, not an original. It was addressed to Sandy Vath, director of the pension fund of International Radio and Television Employees, which was the union that represented the technicians and support personnel here at the Network. In an inspiring display of self-confidence, the union had been buying stock in the Network since they’d organized the place back in the forties. They now owned enough stock to put their man on the board. A lot of the old-line, cigar-chomping, anti-New Dealers on the board (and believe me, we had them) found Sandy Vath, to their surprise, to be levelheaded and easy to work with, instead of the bomb-throwing anarchist they’d probably been expecting. They were terribly disappointed.

  Falzet’s attitude was similar. He seemed to get along with Vath better than he did with the rest of the gang. Vath respected and trusted Falzet, which was probably how Falzet had wound up with a copy of this letter.

  You can’t tell as much from a copy as you can from an original, of course, but looking at this, I’d say it was done on a nice, anonymous laser printer. There was no date. The letter itself was short and to the point.

  Dear Mr. Vath:

  G. B. Dost is planning to buy the Network. Do not let him. There is insanity in the man and all those around him. There is treachery. There is murder. He will soon destroy himself; he will destroy your Network with him, if you let it happen.

  The letter begged for a signature like “A friend” or “One who knows,” but there was nothing.

  “Okay,” I said. “You win. This is our territory.”

  “I thought you’d feel that way.”

  I nodded. Falzet was the one who had to worry about new technologies and the changing face of the industry. I only had to worry about human weakness and nastiness, and that never changed.

  3

  ... the mystery of ... Cliff House!

  —Sonny Bono, “The Sonny and Cher Show” CBS

  THERE WAS NO MYSTERY about why the place was called Rocky Point. For one thing, it was about two thirds of the way up a mountain, on an overgrown cliff sticking out of the south side. I know any Westerners reading this are chortling now—they always chortle at what we Easterners refer to as a mountain. Tough. Believe me, if you fell off the top of Mount Sumac, or even from as high up as Rocky Point, you would be just as dead when you hit as if you fell off Mount Everest.

  There were also plenty of rocky points hanging around. The whole curving road up the mountain was lined with them on the outer lane. The motif continued even when we hit the level place where the mansion was built, a rough rectangle about the size of a football field. Rocky Point (the house) was built on about the far forty yard line, so that there was a big yard in front of it, leading to the rest of Mount Sumac, and a smaller area behind, leading up to a sheer drop of about nine hundred feet.

  The pointed black rocks lining the drive up to the house were mostly covered by snow, now. The “fresh powder’ had gone well past the predicted four-to-five inches, and showed no signs of stopping. It looked as if there was an enormous conga line of sharks just below the surface. I wouldn’t have wanted to drive across that plateau once they were all covered. The road was by no means straight, and the rocks were just the right height to gut a car completely if you happened to drive across them.

  With the snow, it had taken us about three hours longer to get there than we’d originally planned. Roxanne was fatalistic about it.

  “There’s the lift,” she said. To our left was a chair lift that headed up the mountain. It was not in operation at the moment. “I guess it’s too late to think about getting in any skiing today.”

  “Especially since it’s going to be pitch black in about forty-five minutes,” I said. “Let’s just thank God and the limousine agency that Ralph is such a good driver and get unpacked.”

  I could see Ralph’s grin in the mirror. A good driver is not supposed to talk to the passengers unless directly addressed, but Ralph had earned the right to bend protocol a little.

  “All in a day’s work, sir,” he said.

  The road led right to an eight-car garage. We filled up the eighth spot, obviously the last to arrive. There was a short flagstone walk between the garage and the house. Someone had shoveled it and salted it like bacalao, so it was passable. We zipped up our parkas and stepped outside.

  Under the proper circumstances, I like snow. I liked it now. The air was so cold and clean it felt as if it were scouring my city-blackened lungs pink again, and the
snow danced in the floodlights on the path. I stood for a few seconds in the dark gray twilight and looked at the house.

  It was fabulous. Huge, built of limestone no doubt dug out of these very mountains, with turrets and gables and all sorts of solemn Victorian doodads, Rocky Point was a house built to be haunted. Looking at the place, I could understand for the first time in my life why people who had, say, tens of millions of dollars felt it necessary to press on until they had hundreds of millions and then billions of dollars. They did it so that when there was a chance to buy something like Rocky Point, they could write a check and have it.

  It was the kind of place where time stood still. The lights in the windows could have been candles or gas. Washington Irving could have been in one of them, watching the snow falling. If you turned your back to the ski lift, the only concession to modernity was the thick bunch of wires that ran from the northwest corner of the fourth floor, through the branches of a towering pine, and up over the crest of the mountain.

  Wilberforce offered Roxanne his arm. She smiled prettily and took it. My God, I thought. First Falzet, now him. I was surrounded by humans. Having seen that, I could do no less than offer my arm to Carol Coretti. As she took it, she leaned close to me and spoke softly in my ear.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s only doing it because she’s the major stockholder.”

  “He never struck me as the gallant type.”

  “Me neither,” she said. “Believe me, if Ralph hadn’t already started unloading things to the service entrance, Wilberforce would have had me carrying the cartons of papers.”

  The door was open by the time Carol and I got to the steps. Standing in the doorway was G. B. Dost, himself.

  “Afraid you weren’t going to make it, there, for a while. Kept listening to the radio, hearing about accidents. None with a limo in it, though. Come in, come in.”

  Dost stepped aside and waved us through the door into a high-ceilinged, timbered room with shields and animal heads all over the place. A flagstone hearth that must have been eight feet high and twice that wide roared fire from the other side of the room.

  “Like to have a fire going on a snowy night,” he said. “Atmosphere. Same reason I keep the animal heads here. Guy who built this place was a bloodthirsty cuss. The only thing I ever shot was a Chinese Red in Korea, ’51, and I don’t think I hurt him too bad. Hi! I’m Gabby Dost.”

  He shook hands with each of us, a vigorous, two-handed pump job; complimented Roxanne and Carol on their looks; told Wilberforce and me he was glad to meet us; helped a tall, bald-headed guy wearing a plaid shirt and suspenders (“This is Norman, he and his wife will be looking after us all”) take our coats; and led us to the bottom of a vast marble staircase, where we were met by a gray-haired lady in a gray dress (“Mrs. Norman. Best cook in these hills”).

  “Agnes will see you to your rooms, now,” Dost said. “Heat’s on, so you should thaw out in no time. Dinner’s easy and informal tonight, but it’ll be good.”

  “Mr. Dost?” I said.

  “Dress comfortable. No business tonight.”

  “Mr. Dost?”

  “Call me Gabby, son. We’ll just get to know each other tonight—”

  “Gabby!” I yelled.

  I startled him; he had to take a breath. There was an opening of maybe a hundredth of a second, and I stepped into it.

  “My dog was in the car with the other Network people. Did he get here okay?”

  “That your dog? Fine animal. Looking to sell him?”

  “He’s not really—”

  “No? Don’t blame you. A good dog, you can’t put a price on him. Anyway, don’t worry. He’s been fed, and he’s run around in the snow—he loved that—and he’s been dried off, and the last I knew he was asleep in your room. Bring him down with you at suppertime, I’d like to better my acquaintance with the little guy.”

  “Some other time,” I smiled. “Wilberforce is a little nervous around dogs.”

  “No,” Dost said. “Poor fella.”

  As if you didn’t know, I thought. I was beginning to like Gabby Dost quite a bit. I had to remind myself that even if I weren’t here looking for signs of insanity, treachery, and murder, I’d still be honor bound to try to make it possible for Wilberforce and the gang to get the best possible deal out of him.

  “I’ve got dogs out at the ranch, of course. I bring ’em here when I come in the summer. Man’s life doesn’t seem complete without a dog, somehow.”

  “Sometime after dinner,” I said, “come on up to my room, and we’ll have a real session with Spot. He is quite a dog.”

  “Sounds good. And maybe you and me can have a little personal talk, too.”

  “Suits me fine,” I said.

  In fact, it suited me better than fine. This was obviously one of the most gregarious men on the planet, and I had been wondering how I was going to get him alone. As I rushed up the stairs to catch up with Mrs. Norman and the rest of my traveling companions, I was congratulating myself on how easy clearing that first hurdle had been.

  I’d seen from outside, that Rocky Point had five stories below the roof line, and, as I found climbing the stairs, they were tall stories, twenty-four stairs each. I was hoping that Dost didn’t plan to put us all on the fifth floor so we could be impressed with the view.

  I heard voices up the next flight of stairs. So much for lodgings on the second floor.

  I caught up with them on the third floor. Mrs. Norman was just showing Carol Coretti into her room. Roxanne had apparently already been stashed. Wilberforce and I waited in the hallway listening to the housekeeper’s murmuring voice explaining the room. It seemed to take a long time.

  Mrs. Norman came out of the room, looked back in and said, “Dial six on the phone by your bed if you want anything, dear.” She turned to us and smiled, a nice motherly smile. Wilberforce seemed to shrink from it.

  “Now, gentlemen,” she said, and led us back the way we came. Our rooms were on the other side of the hall. Wilberforce first. She led him in, and there was more murmuring. When Mrs. Norman came out, her smile had turned rueful, and she was shaking her head. “We’ve got to get some good country cooking into him.”

  “Good luck,” I said.

  Then she led me into my accommodation. To say it was a “room” was to say a Rolls-Royce Corniche is a “car.”

  Except for the high ceiling, you would not have believed that this interior went with the outside of the building—or with the room with the fireplace and the stairs and hallways, either. They had been stately, imposing. This was opulent.

  The rug was a golden-beige plush, so soft it didn’t have to be any flashy color to get your attention. The furniture seemed to be (I’m no expert) genuine antiques, scrupulously maintained.

  The bed was a work of art, a mahogany number big enough to use for a game of platform tennis, or any number of other sports. It had a spread of violet velvet, with a matching canopy.

  Spot came bounding out of what must have been the bathroom as soon as I closed the door. I was glad to see him, and he, for a change, wasn’t punishing me for leaving him with strangers for an extended period. When he jumped up in the air to lick my face, I found out why. His tongue and muzzle were ice cold.

  “Been drinking out of the toilet, haven’t you?” Spot is a pedigreed, purebred Samoyed, the offspring and father of champions. He was born in a mansion, and raised in the palatial Central Park West apartment of his true owners—Rick and Jane Sloan, a couple of extraordinarily wealthy friends of mine from college—but he has the manners of a slob.

  Some people have chalked it up to my influence—while my parents weren’t poor, “palatial” was not the first word that sprang to mind when I remembered the neighborhood I grew up in.

  But, poor or not, my parents were very strict about manners. Spot did not learn how to drink out of toilet bowls from me.

  I’d had custody of Spot for the past several years, while the Sloans kept financing and going along
on expeditions (to hot and humid places where Americans are less than popular) to dig for ruins. I’d decided they wouldn’t come back to New York until the place finally collapsed in a heap. Which, of course, could be any day now.

  While they were gone, I watched Spot and had the use of their apartment, which might very well be described as palatial. It was only long exposure to their place that kept me from goggling at this one.

  I checked out the bathroom. Whoever was responsible for the furnishing of this place had not financed the bedroom by economizing on the plumbing.

  I ruffled Spot’s cloud of pure white fur. “That’s the way, boy,” I said. “If you must drink out of a toilet, a marble one with a gold handle is the way to go.” The sink was also marble and gold, as was the bath. If Roxanne’s room was anything like mine (and, according to our relative importance in the scheme of things, it ought to be better) and she didn’t get enough time to ski, she could make up for lost exercise by taking a few laps around the tub.

  Dinner tonight was to be “casual.” That’s a word that means different things to different people. I threw my bag on my bed, opened it, laid out a pair of gray slacks, a button shirt with a small blue check, a black sweater, a red tie, and a corduroy jacket. This was my “casual” outfit—any part of it could be ditched down to shirt and slacks to adjust to whatever the prevailing notion of “casual” at a given gathering happened to be.

  Then I closed the bag and stuck it in a closet bigger than the first apartment I’d rented in Manhattan. I hate to unpack. I hate any kind of work that’s done simply to be undone later.

  I took a quick hot shower in the shower stall in the corner of the bathroom (more marble and gold) to get rid of the sticky feeling traveling for more than an hour always gives me. I remembered to lower the lid of the toilet before I left the room. I’d have to remember to ask for a more suitable water dish for Spot.

  I dressed in the slacks and shirt, then explored the room in greater detail. Spot, having ascertained I was still alive and still interested in him, was now zonked out on the rug. As usual, he had chosen a major traffic lane, and I had to be careful not to step on him as I roamed around.