Red cent, p.5
Red Cent, page 5
part #2 of Jake Hatch Series
"You ever meet his wife?"
"She traveled with him now and then, but I got the impression she'd rather take a plane for any trip over a hundred miles and only went along from time to time just to keep his temper sweet."
"He had a temper?"
"Well, how should I know?"
"You just said."
"That's just a way of speaking, Jake. You should know that."
"Well, I thought maybe you overheard an argument one time or another."
"I did, as a matter of fact."
"When was this?"
"Last time was about two weeks ago, if memory serves. Why? What's on your mind?" he asked, giving me the cocked eye.
"Nothing's on my mind. I just ask whatever question pops into my head."
"At random?"
"Well, no, not at random. One thing suggests an other."
"What did I say that suggested Mr. Chaney and his wife had fights?"
"I didn't know they had fights. I asked if they had arguments now and then. You said he always took a room. You said she went along, pretty reluctant, now and then. So I figured if they argued there'd be nothing stopping them in the privacy of a room. Why do I have to tell you all this, Halt?"
"I like to know what's going on. How things work."
"All right. I'll satisfy you if and when I can, but I wonder could we just do it so I ask a few questions about this man who was killed and you answer them. I don't mind footnotes, but you keep going off along a spur leading nowhere, and first thing you know, you'll be popping up to do this and that and I'll be left with questions unanswered."
"You having a little indigestion?" Halt asked. "I got something for that in my bag."
"I'm okay. What were they fighting about two weeks ago?"
"Something she wanted to spend a lot of money on, from the bits and pieces I overheard whilst passing by. He pointed out to her that his keystone company was under attack and it was no time to be throwing money around." He looked at his pocket watch, then, and stood up.
"Things to do, Jake," he said, and walked off just like I knew he'd do.
ELEVEN
THE FINANCIAL CENTER OF Chicago is around La Salle Street—the Midwest Stock Exchange—and West Jackson Boulevard, where you've got the MidAmerica Commodities Exchange, the Mercantile Exchange, the Options Exchange, and the Chicago Board of Trade right in a row.
The Options is in the Board of Trade's art-deco building with its three-story marble lobby.
Whenever I'm in town and have the time, I stop into the fifth-floor visitors' center where you can watch the action in The Pit. The frantic activity convinces me that my job suits me just fine, wandering around the plains on the trains, visiting my lady friends here and there, stopping by to chew the fat with old friends, with, every now and then, something exciting or challenging to add a little spice to life. The kind of excitement going on down on the Exchange floor wouldn't suit me at all.
I watched the traders for maybe fifteen minutes and then I went looking for my friend Marcus Sears, who knows about as much about futures trading and Midwestern corporations as anyone I know. He's the chairman of the watchdog committee, doing a job similar to the one the SEC does for the New York Stock Exchange.
When his secretary announced me it was only half a minute before Marcus was out his office door and walking toward me with his hand outstretched.
He may be as old as eighty, but you'd never know it. His grip was like the grip of a man half his age, and when he led me back into his office he didn't lean on me any.
"You want something?" he asked. "I've got some Canadian rye as smooth as anything you can imagine."
"I'll have a finger."
He poured one for me into a highball glass so my nose would have the pleasure before my lips. I noticed that he didn't pour one for himself.
I raised an eyebrow when he handed me my glass. He sat in the big leather chair behind a desk that was about a quarter of an acre of mahogany and poked his stomach with his finger.
"Doctor says no. Go ahead."
I took a sip and made the appropriate appreciative noises. He leaned back on the swivel and grinned with pleasure as though it was his own mouth and tongue getting the flavor.
"Sometimes I take a sip and just roll it around my mouth before I spit it out. Age is a thief, Jake."
"I can feel his hand in my pocket every now and then," I said.
"Visiting?" he asked.
"Railroad business."
"Harry Chaney?"
"I thought I'd ask you about him."
"According to the paper, they caught the boys who were shooting at the train. I suppose the authorities intend to treat it as a manslaughter, don't they? Damn-fool thing to do, but there doesn't seem to be any intent to murder Chaney."
"Well, no intent on the part of those young Indians."
"Like that, is it?"
"I don't know. I'm just looking."
"You want to know about Chaney," he said.
"Whatever you can tell me."
"The last ten years you'd call him an industrialist, maybe an entrepreneur, gathering up businesses, investing in new products, but he started thirty years ago right on the floor here. Started as a clerk for a trading firm. Wasn't long before he was trading on his own account."
"Good at it?"
"Uncommonly lucky, which is to say very good. You have to be lucky as well as smart to deal in futures if you're a speculator instead of a hedger."
I didn't say anything, which told him right away that I needed instruction.
"I don't know if I can make it simple," Marcus said.
"Well, if you see my eyes glaze over, you'll know it's not your whiskey, and you can go over that part again."
"All right. To begin with, you've got cash commitments—what the trader has to pay for the actual commodity, wheat, corn, oats, rye, soybeans, and so forth—and futures commitments. Trading provides insurance for the merchants and processors who actually handle and sell the goods.
"Say, for instance, a grain elevator operator buys wheat and stores it. At the same time he'll sell futures contracts for the same quantity. When the wheat is finally delivered, any change of price in the interval should have been canceled out by compensating changes in his cash and futures holdings.
"So far so good?"
"So far, I'm still on my feet."
"There're two theories about hedging. One is that inventory holders are insuring themselves against future price fluctuations by selling contracts for future delivery. The other says that hedging is done with the expectation of profit. Those're the arbitrageurs, taking advantage of a temporary price difference in two markets by buying in one and selling in the other.
"There are two kinds of hedgers. Short and long. Short hedgers have inventories and they sell futures contracts in like quantity. Long hedgers sell contracts on commodities not yet purchased."
"Sounds like betting both teams in a football game."
"There are similarities. If you could get a bet down for a hundred dollars on the Miami Dolphins at two to one, no points, and another on the Chicago Bears at two to one, no points, you couldn't lose."
"But the odds-makers would've already made the odds and everybody'd know them."
"Almost everybody. That's where inside trading and other illegalities figure in. But even in a well regulated market, since the market is formed by conflicting opinion, there will always be a spread out of which a wily speculator can make a profit.
"Speculation is very risky, but when it pays off, it pays off hugely."
"That was Chaney?"
"In spades, doubled and redoubled. He made his bets and hardly ever lost."
"No suspicion that he was dealing seconds?"
"None at all. It was simply that Chaney was swift, assured, and daring. Don't misunderstand. Sometimes he lost big, but he won big more than he lost. He was also smart enough to leave the wheel when he had his pile and invest his winnings in equities."
"Bought shares in companies."
"And became an important source of venture capital. Until he found his winner and ran with it."
"What winner would that be?"
"A process for pouring, drawing, shaping, and molding exotic alloys with enhanced electrical conductive properties."
"Those super-conductors I've been hearing about?"
"You mean the ones that need to be super-cooled? No. These are fragile amalgams that were short-lived until Lewis Warden turned up on Chaney's doorstep with a method of bonding and amalgamating that maintained these superior, desirable properties over a considerable span of time.
"Well, one thing led to another, and pretty soon the exotic alloys were only a small part of Chaney Enterprises, which is basically a group of companies dealing in exotic chemicals and rare metals."
"Who's their big customer?"
"Nearly everybody's big customer. The Pentagon."
"Figures."
"Defense and Space supports these technologies until entrepreneurs find applications in the consumer markets."
"Which Chaney did?"
"We're starting to cook with his products, eat off his ovenproof dishes, and use his machines in the hobby shops we've got in our basements. You want another finger of that rye?"
"I've had a sufficiency," I said, putting the glass on the leather-topped table at my elbow.
"It's a pity he should get shot when he was at the top of his game. I don't think Chaney Enterprises will be able to resist now that he's gone."
"Resist what?"
"Take-over. When he saw the opportunities in the consumer markets he needed large amounts of capital for plant and expansion. So he went public and sold shares."
"Holding fifty-one percent for himself?"
"If you want to control a small company you might need fifty-one percent of the outstanding voting shares. But when you're dealing with a corporation as large as Chaney Enterprises, sometimes you can maintain effective control with as little as four or five percent. I'm sure Chaney personally held more than that, but I wouldn't know offhand how large his holdings were.
"I'm sure he could have gathered the proxies to allow him to refuse the tender offer, but now that he's dead, his partner and his wife might not have the skills or the means to make the fight."
"His partner? Lewis Warden?"
"Chaney could have played it otherwise but he's always been a fair man and made sure that Warden had a piece of the action even after his discoveries started playing a smaller and smaller part in the overall mix."
"Do you think it's possible Warden and Chaney's wife didn't want to make a fight of it? Maybe wanted the take-over to happen?"
"Are you calling that a motive?" Marcus said, jumping three squares ahead.
"I think it's worth putting it to the test."
I thanked Marcus and got ready to take my leave. He asked me if I'd like to join him for dinner and I said I didn't know how the rest of my day and evening was going to shape up.
"Well, I won't expect you, then, but if you can make it, I'll be at Binyon's in Plymouth Court. You know it?"
"I've been there."
"You have to put up with a lot of cigar-smoking lawyers, but I get a table over in the corner away from most of it, and they have the best turtle soup you've ever tasted."
TWELVE
THE CHANEYS LIVED IN THE Gold Coast section of Chicago. Well, Harold Chaney used to live there and his widow still did, in a turn-of-the-century townhouse designed by Charles Palmer. It occupied a place of pride on Astor Street.
There was a painted iron jockey standing at the curb with his hand out holding an iron ring to which horses were once tethered. I noticed in passing that it had been repainted, not only the silks but the face and hands. Once they'd been black, and now were a pinkish white, proving to one and all that there was no prejudice in the Chaney household.
That didn't stop them from having a black to answer the door.
I'm pretty sure that he made more money than I did, but even so, he had to wear tuxedo pants, a black bow tie, and a white jacket, and I don't think I could've managed that.
He asked me what my business was with that certain brand of snootiness that only the servants of the very rich ever use. That way people can be put off without it looking like the boss had any hand in it.
"My name's Jake Hatch. I met Mrs. Chaney at the morgue in Des Moines. I was in Chicago and I thought I'd stop by to see if I could be of any help."
"In exactly what way did you intend to be of help?" he asked.
"I don't exactly know. Suppose I ask the lady myself?"
"I've been authorized to convey any messages of condolence or offers of assistance."
"I don't want to get pushy," I said, "but instead of you making up her mind does she want to see me, why don't you go ask her while I wait here in the vestibule?"
She appeared at his back just at that minute.
"Charles?" she said, and he stepped aside like she'd pushed a button. "It's Mr. Hatch, isn't it?"
"Yes, ma'am," I said, taking off my hat.
"Did you wish to see me about something?"
"Oh, this isn't official. I was in town and thought I'd stop by and see if you arrived home safely. If you were all right."
"Kind of you. As you can see, I'm quite all right."
With Charles out of the way I stepped inside the house, saying, "If I keep you standing in a draft this way, you'll be sure to catch a cold. I remember when my father died. The doctor told me to keep an eye on my mother because people were especially susceptible to sickness in times of tragedy and distress."
Charles was watching her like a hawk. If she gave the nod I'm sure he would've done his best to hustle me out. But she seemed to make up her mind that it was better to let me have my look and get it over with than play games at the front door.
All of a sudden she turned on her heel and started toward the big double doors on one side of the entrance hall, which was as big as my whole flat back in Omaha.
"Charles. Tea and coffee. In the morning room."
The morning room wasn't a room used in the morning, I didn't think. It was a fancy living room. But I guess they had more than one, giving each one a different name. Like there probably was a morning room, a sitting room, a parlor, a library, a music room, and a living room, too.
There was a fire burning in a fireplace with an Adams mantelpiece. There were two short sofas in front of the hearth with a coffee table in between them. She sat on one of them and indicated that I was supposed to sit on the other.
She sat with her back straight, her knees close together slightly off to one side, her ankles crossed, and her hands lightly folded in her lap.
I didn't know how to sit, so I just sort of squatted on the edge of the chair like I didn't want to use up too much of it. ·
"This is very kind of you to inquire about my well-being," she said.
"Has your husband been brought back from Des Moines?"
"He's at the Adams-Winterfield Funeral Home."
"I don't know that one."
"It's in Downers Grove."
"Downers Grove must be twenty miles from the city."
"That's where Harold was born and raised. His mother still lives there in the old neighborhood. She's in her eighties. I wanted to make it as easy for her as I could."
"Is he going to be laid out?"
"I'd rather he wasn't, but she wanted it. The old ways die hard with some people. But the casket will be closed."
"Well, if you wanted to press it, the custom is that the wife has first claim."
"If she wants it."
"When's the funeral to be?"
"I prevailed so far as that was concerned. It will only be the immediate family and a few—a very few—friends attending a brief ceremony in the funeral chapel in two days' time. Cremation to follow."
"An important man like your husband'll have a lot of friends and associates that'll want to pay their respects."
"They can drive out to Downers Grove and sign the visitors' book or they can attend the memorial service being arranged in the chapel at the Chicago Board of Trade."
Charles came wheeling in a serving cart big enough to hold three pots, two cups and saucers, a sugar bowl, cream pitcher, a saucer of lemon wedges, the necessary silverware, a rose in a silver bud vase, and a three-tiered plate of buttered bread and cookies.
After Charles had left and Mrs. Chaney had poured tea for herself and coffee for me, I said, "Mrs. Chaney, are you completely satisfied that your husband's death was an accident?"
She looked at me as though I'd made a mildly interesting remark about the weather.
"Aren't you?"
"No, I'm not."
"On what evidence?"
"No evidence I can lay my hand on and hold up to the light."
"Well?" she said, her voice as light as a feather and remote as a moonbeam.
"Did your husband have any particular enemies?"
The silvery laugh that broke from her lips nearly made me drop my cup.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Chaney. Are you all right?"
She recovered right off and brushed a handkerchief across her mouth. I had the feeling she was working me.
"Coming from a policeman . . ."
"Railroad detective, ma'am."
". . . your question startled me. Yes. Railroad detective. I'm sure that informs you about the ways of the world. A man doesn't make the success my husband made without making a great many enemies along the way."
"I understand that theory as an abstraction, but making enemies of business rivals isn't exactly what I had in mind. I was thinking of somebody he might've hurt bad enough to grow the will to kill him or have him killed."
She stared at me for half a minute, then turned her head to stare into the fire. I let her have the time. When she looked at me again there was a certain solemnness to her manner.
"Have you asked that question often in your career, Mr. Hatch?"
