"I presume," Teresa Van Buren observed, "that everyone has remembered the annual meeting is in two weeks. We're going to face a lot of angry shareholders."
"Angry!" O'Brien grunted; he was relighting his cigar, which had gone out. “They're all be foaming at the mouth and that meeting will need a riot squad to handle it."
"Handling it will be my job," J. Eric Humphrey said; for the first time in several hours the chairman smiled. "I've been wondering, though, if I shouldn't wear a bulletproof vest."
4
Twice since receiving Karen Sloan's letter at Devil's Gate Camp, Nim had talked to her on the telephone. He promised to visit her again when he could. But the letter had arrived on the day that was marred by Wally Talbot's tragic accident and, since then, other events had crowded in, so Nim's intended visit was postponed. He still hadn't made it. Karen had remembered him, however-with another letter. He was reading it now, in his office, in a moment of quietness. Across the top of Karen's elegant blue stationery she had typed in capitals:
I WAS SAD WHEN YOU TOLD ME OF YOUR FRIEND'S
ACCIDENT AND WHEN I READ ABOUT HIS INJURIES
Below was still more of her immaculate stick-in-mouth typing.
Tell him from one who knows:
A sputtering candlewick
Though burning dimly
Is brighter by far
Than Cimmerian blackness.
For life,
On whatever terms,
Outranks oblivion.
Yes!-the "if onlys" do persist forever
As hovering, wraithlike, used-up wishes,
The
ir afterburners spent:
"If only" this or that
On such and such a day
Had varied by an hour or an inch;
Or something neglected had been done
Or something done had been neglected!
The
n "perhaps" the other might have been,
And other others . . . to infinity.
For "perhaps" and "if only" are first cousins
Addicted to survival in our minds.
Accept them,
And all else.
For what seemed a long time Nim sat still and silent, reading and rereading Karen's words. At length be became aware that his telephone was buzzing and realized it had done so twice before.
As he picked it up his secretary's voice said brightly, "Did I wake you?"
"Yes, in a way."
"Mr. London would like to see you," Vicki said. "He can come now if you're free."
"Tell him okay."
Nim put the sheet of blue stationery away in a desk drawer where be kept private papers. When the right moment came he would show it to Wally Talbot. The thought reminded him that he had not spoken to Ardythe since their unsatisfactory encounter at the hospital, but be decided he would leave that problem on the shelf for the time being.
The door of Nim's office opened. "Here's Mr. London," Vicki announced.
"Come in, Harry." Nim was aware that the Property Protection head had been dropping in more frequently of late, sometimes with a work related purpose, more often without. But Nim had no objection. He enjoyed their growing friendship and exchange of views.
"Just read about that no-dividend deal," London said, settling into a chair. "Thought you could stand a bit of good news for a change."
Announcement of the dividend's cancellation, reluctantly agreed to by the board of directors, had made big news yesterday afternoon and today.
Reaction in the financial world had been one of incredulity and stockholder protests were already flooding in. On the New York and Pacific stock exchanges, panic selling, after a four-hour trading suspension, had depressed GSP & L stock a devastating nine dollars a share, or a third of its pre-announcement value.
Nim asked, "Which good news?"
"Remember D-day in Brookside?"
"Of course."
"We just got four court convictions."
Nim ran his mind over the meter-tampering incidents he had seen personally that day. "Which ones?"
"The guy with the gas station and car wash was one. He might have got away with it, but his lawyer made the mistake of putting him on the witness stand. When he was cross-examined he tripped himself up a half-dozen times.
Another was the tool-and-die maker. Remember that?"
"Yes." Nim recalled the small tract house where no one was at home but which London had put under surveillance. As the investigators hoped, neighbors reported the GSP & L activity and the man had been caught trying to remove the illegal wire device from his meter.
"In both those cases," London said, "and two others you didn't see, the court handed down five-hundred-dollar fines."
"What about the doctor-the one with the bridging wires and switch behind his meter?"
"And the haughty wife with the dog?"
"Right."
"We didn't prosecute. That woman said they had important friends, and so they did. Pulled every string, including some inside this company. Even then we might have gone to court, except our legal department wasn’t sure they could prove the doctor knew about the switch and meter. Or so I was told."
Nim said skeptically, "Sounds like the old story-there are two kinds of justice, depending on who you are and whom you know."
"That happens," London agreed. "Saw plenty of it when I was a cop. Just the same, that doctor paid up all the money owing, and we're collecting from a lot of others, including some more we're prosecuting where there's strong evidence." He added, "I got some other news, too."
"Such as?"
"All along I've said that in a lot of these theft cases we're dealing with professionals-people who know how to do good work, then cover it up so our own company guys have trouble finding it. Also I thought the professionals might be working in groups, even a single big group. Remember?"
Nim nodded, trying not to be impatient, letting Harry London get to the point in his own didactic way.
"Well, we got a break. My deputy, Art Romeo, had a tipoff about a 1big office building downtown where current transformers have been tampered with and the gas system, which beats the -whole building, has a massive illegal shunt. He did some checking and found it's all true. Since then I've been in there myself-Art recruited a janitor who's working with us; we're paying him to keep watch. I'm telling you, Nim, this is big-time, and the job's the slickest I've seen. Without the tipoff Art got, we might never have found it."
"Where did he get the tip?" Nim had met Art Romeo. He was a shifty little man who looked like a thief himself.
"Let me tell you something," Harry London said. "Never ask a cop that question-or a Property Protection agent either. A tipster sometimes has a grudge, mostly he wants money, but either way be has to be protected. You don't do that by telling a lot of other people his name. I didn't ask Art."
"Okay," Nim conceded. "But if you know the illegal installation is there, why aren't we moving on it right away?"
"Because then we'd seal up one rathole and close off access to a lot of others. Let me tell you some of the things we've found out."
Nim said drily, "I was hoping you would."
“The outfit that owns that office building is called Zaco Properties,"
London said. "Zaco has other buildings-apartments, offices, some stores they lease to supermarkets. And we figure what they've done in one place they'll try in others, maybe have already. Checking out those other places, without it being known, is what Art Romeo is working on now. I've pulled him off everything else."
"You said you're paying the janitor in the first building to keep watch.
What for?"
"When an operation is that big-even stealing-there has to be a checkup occasionally and adjustments."
"In other words," Nim said, "whoever bypassed those meters is likely to come back?"
"Right. And when they do, the janitor will tell us. He's an old-timer who sees most of what goes on. He's already talked a lot; doesn't like the people he works for; it seems they did him dirt somehow. He says the original work was done by four men who came well organized for it, on three occasions, in two well-equipped trucks. What I want are license numbers of one or both of those trucks, a better description of the men."
It was obvious, Nim thought, that the janitor had been the original informant, but he kept the conclusion to himself. "Assuming you get all or most of the evidence you need," he said, "what then?"