Paradise (Second Opportunities 1)

"I've already called him. He's checking around."

Chapter 16

Matt's limousine barged through the Friday afternoon downtown traffic, bullying its way swiftly toward the sixty-story high rise that was Haskell Electronics' national headquarters. In the backseat, Matt glanced up from the report he was reading just as Joe O'Hara swung the limo around a cab, ran a red light, and, hammering repeatedly on the car's horn, bluffed a group of intrepid Chicago pedestrians into getting out of his way. Less than ten feet from Haskell's underground parking garage, Joe slammed on the brakes and swung the car into the entrance. "Sorry, Matt," he said with a wry grin, glancing up and noticing Matt's scowl in the rearview mirror. "One of these days," Matt replied shortly, exasperated, "I'd like you to explain what makes you want to turn pedestrians into hood ornaments." His voice was drowned out as the nose of the long car dipped down, tires screeching endlessly as they wound around and around, descending to the parking level reserved for chief executives, avoiding the wall beside them by scant inches. No matter how elegant or expensive the car was, O'Hara still drove it like a fearless teenager in a souped-up Chevy with a blonde in his lap and a six-pack of beer on the seat. If his reflexes weren't still as quick as any teenager's, he'd have lost his driver's license and probably his life years before.

He was also as loyal as he was daring and, ten years ago in South America, those traits had caused him to risk his life dragging Matt to safety when the truck Matt was driving lost its brakes, plunged down an embankment, and caught fire. For his efforts, Joe had received a case of his favorite whiskey along with Matt's unending gratitude.

Strapped over Joe's shoulder, beneath his jacket, was a .45 automatic that he'd bought years ago when he first drove Matt across the Teamsters' picket lines at a trucking company he'd just bought. Matt privately thought the gun was unnecessary. Although only five feet ten, Joe was 225 pounds of solid muscle with a pugnacious face that verged on ugly, and a scowl that was distinctly menacing. He was better suited to the job of bodyguard than chauffeur: He looked like a sumo wrestler. He drove like a maniac.

"Here we are," Joe called, managing to brake the car to a smooth stop near the private elevator beneath the building. "Home sweet home."

"For a year or less," Matt said, closing his briefcase. Normally when Matt bought a company, he remained on the premises for only a month or two—long enough to meet with his own men while they evaluated the management staff and to make recommendations. In the past, however, he'd bought only well-managed companies that were in trouble because they were short of operating capital for one reason or another. The changes he instituted at those companies were mostly minor and done simply to tune up their operation and make it fit in with Intercorp's. Haskell was different. Old methods and procedures would have to be discarded in favor of new; benefits redetermined, salaries adjusted, loyalties altered, a vast new manufacturing facility constructed in suburban Southville, where he'd already bought land. Haskell needed a major overhaul. Between the shipping company he'd just bought and Haskell's reorganization, Matt was going to be working long, arduous days and nights, but he'd been doing that for years. In the beginning, he'd done it out of some desperate compulsive desire to succeed, to prove he could. Even now, when he'd succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings, he kept up his exhausting pace—not because he enjoyed it or the success anymore, but because it was habit. And because nothing else gave him any more satisfaction either. He worked hard, and when he took the time to play, he played hard. Neither was particularly meaningful or gratifying. But streamlining Haskell, making it into all the things it should be, was a challenging goal. Maybe that's where he'd gone wrong, Matt decided as he put his key into the lock of the private express elevator that went to the executive floors of the building. He'd created a huge conglomerate by buying desirable, well-run companies that needed Intercorp's financial backing. Maybe he should have bought a few that needed more than that. His takeover team had been here for two weeks, making their evaluations. They were upstairs, waiting to meet with him, and he was eager to get started.

On the sixtieth floor the receptionist answered her telephone and listened to the information being imparted to her by the uniformed guard who also acted as a receptionist in Haskell's lobby on the ground floor. When she hung up, Valerie went over to the secretary seated to her right. "Pete Duncan said a silver stretch limo just turned into the garage," she whispered. "He thinks it's Farrell."

"Silver must be his favorite color," Joanna replied with a meaningful glance at the new six-foot-square silver plaque with the Intercorp insignia which had been hung on the rosewood wall behind her desk.

Two weeks after the Intercorp takeover, a band of carpenters had arrived, supervised by a man who identified himself as Intercorp's interior design manager. When he departed two weeks later, the entire reception area on the one hundredth floor, as well as the conference room and Matt Farrell's future office, had been completely redecorated. Where once there had been time-worn Oriental carpets and dark wood furniture gently scarred with age, there were acres of silvery carpet covering every inch of floor and modern burgundy leather sofas arranged in groups with Lucite coffee tables in front and beside them. It was a well-publicized idiosyncrasy of Matt Farrell's that every division and acquisition of Intercorp's was immediately redecorated to look like all his other holdings.

Valerie and Joanna, along with several of the other secretaries on this floor, were now very familiar, not only with Matthew Farrell's reputation and quirks, but with his ruthlessness. Within days after Intercorp acquired Haskell, the president—Mr. Vern Haskell—had been forced to take an early retirement. So were two of the senior vice presidents, one of whom had been Vern Haskell's son, the other his son-in-law. Another VP refused to resign and was fired. The offices of those loyal VPs—which were situated on this floor, but on the opposite side of the building—were now occupied by three of Farrel's henchmen. Three more of his men were stationed elsewhere in the building—spying on everyone, according to rumor, asking prying questions, and making out lists, undoubtedly of whom to fire next.

To make matters worse, it wasn't just the senior executives who'd been squeezed out of their jobs; Mr. Haskell's secretary had been given her "choice" of either working for some minor executive or leaving with her boss, because Matthew Farrell insisted on sending his own secretary in from California. That had caused a fresh furor of fear and resentment among the remaining executive secretaries, but that was nothing compared to how they felt about Farrell's secretary when she actually arrived: Eleanor Stern was a stick-straight, skinny, wire-haired tyrant/busybody who watched them like a hawk and who still used words like "impertinence" and "propriety." She arrived at the office before anyone else, left after everyone else, and when the door to her office was open, which it wasn't now, she could hear the quietest feminine laugh or word of casual gossip. When she did, she would get up and come to stand in her doorway like an irate master sergeant until the recreational chat came to its inevitable and awkward end. For that reason Valerie resisted the impulse to call several of the secretaries and tell them Farrell was about to arrive, so they could come over on some invented excuse and at least have a look at him.