The Interior (Red Princess 2)

Henry threw his head back and hooted with laughter. “Miles said you were full of vinegar. I like that.”

David continued evenly, “So, I hope you can answer some questions, if only for my benefit.”

“Fire away.”

“Do you have any outstanding lawsuits or any threats of lawsuits that you know are lurking out there somewhere?”

Henry glanced at his son and Sandy, then said, “None. I’ve always run a clean shop. We’ve paid our bills. We’ve never gotten in trouble with the unions.”

“How about product liability?”

“None,” Henry answered.

“You manufacture toys,” David pressed. “It seems to me I’ve read about cases where some kid swallows a part or gets bitten by a doll or some crazy thing.”

“Hasn’t happened with my products,” the older man answered swiftly.

“You’re sure—”

“I already told you, twice.”

David leaned back in his chair, quietly evaluating the meeting. In the U.S. Attorney’s Office he asked questions and, for the most part, people had to answer them. Now he was back in the private sector, where he had clients. He was here because Tartan had hired him for his expertise and advice. But as everyone kept reminding him, the due diligence was done and so was the deal. His role in these final days was reduced to that of cruise director: keep everyone happy, keep the deal moving along, and watch out for possible diplomatic snafus. The problem was that David didn’t know the Knights and they didn’t know him. They were all working against a deadline, but they still needed to trust each other.

“How long have you been in business?” David asked, changing strategies, hoping to get to know the man behind this enterprise.

Henry thought for a moment, regarding David the whole while. Then he nodded as if to say he understood what the younger man was doing. “My grandparents emigrated from Poland in 1910, when my father was ten,” he began. “He was supposed to go to school. Instead he went to work shining shoes. When he was fifteen, he got a job selling penny banks. By the time he was twenty, he’d started a little company for school supplies. Ironic, isn’t it? Here was a man who didn’t finish school, but he made his living selling pencils, slate boards, notebooks, chalk.”

Henry peered over at David. “Knight International. Such a grandiose name for a one-person operation, but my dad liked it. Obviously our last name wasn’t Knight back then. You’d have thought he would have taken a name that was somehow more American, but he loved the idea of knights—the pageantry, the jousts on horseback, the gallantry. The name and all it implied were about as far from Poland and his childhood as he could get.”

“Did he manufacture chess sets?”

Henry shook his head. “No, only school supplies. We didn’t get into chess sets until much later. We were the first to make the pieces out of plastic, but that’s getting ahead of the story. My dad married the daughter of one of his customers. I came along soon enough. I was five when the Depression hit. Schools stayed open, thank God, but really most people couldn’t afford much in the way of extras. Times were hard, sure. But my dad also let people take advantage of him, because, he said, if someone was that desperate he probably needed that something more than we did. Then there was a lawyer who told my father all of the wrong things. He was nearly ruined.”

“Which is why you don’t like lawyers.”

“I just like to make my own decisions. My father almost lost Knight, this company that was his whole life. I was just a little kid, but I’ll never forget it.”

“Something like that can make you pretty tough,” David observed. “Both of my parents were kids during the Depression. They were both raised in families that struggled. I look at my parents now and think that that period—those ‘formative’ years—defined them for life.” David thought for a moment, then added, “That and the war.”

Henry nodded. “Where was your dad?”

“He was in the army, stationed in London.”

“Not bad duty, if you can get it.”

“In some ways it was the most fun my father ever had,” David said.

“And in others?”

“War is hell. That’s what he always said.”

“Well, sport, he was right on both counts.”

David shrugged. He rarely spoke about his family with strangers, but Henry made it seem easy.

“I was stationed in China,” Henry said. “First in Kunming, then…I got around, especially in those months after the Japanese surrender.”

“What were you doing?”