“This is a Pinot Noir, from a vineyard in which the family has an interest,” he said. “I tend to feel it whets the appetite for beef. Is it all right?”
Clete sipped the wine.
“Very nice,” he said, nodding at the man in the gray jacket, who then filled the glass before moving to the colonel’s glass.
“That’s a fascinating room,” Clete said. “How did you get all those clippings down here?”
Frade did not reply. He stood up, and with an enormous knife cut the beef. He laid a two-inch-thick rib on a plate held by a maid, who carried it to Clete and then returned to Frade, who was now holding out a vegetable bowl to her.
Frade waved impatiently at her.
“I will ask her to serve the vegetables and the sauce and the pudding,” Frade said. “It is less complicated.”
“How did you get your hands on those clippings?”
Frade sat down, pursed his lips, and shrugged.
“Very well,” he said. “When your mother came to me as my bride, her dowry was an interest—approximately one quarter…”
It wasn’t approximately a quarter, it was twenty-four-point-five percent, precisely. Christ knows, I’ve heard that figure often enough!
“…of the outstanding stock of Howell Petroleum. It wasn’t then worth what it is now, but even then it was of considerable value. When God called your mother to her heavenly home…”
Well, that’s one way of putting it, I suppose.
“…it came to me. I considered it, of course, to be yours…”
Jesus Christ! That means that with the third of the twenty-four-point-five percent of Howell Stock Uncle Jim owned and left me, I will own thirty-two point something of Howell. And if the Old Man leaves me a third of his stock—a third of fifty-one percent is seventeen percent, seventeen and thirty-two-point-something is forty-nine-point-something—I will be majority stockholder in Howell Petroleum. And I think he’ll leave me more than a third. Sarah’s girls don’t need the money, and the Old Man likes me best.
Jesus Christ, Cletus Frade, you are an avaricious sonofabitch, aren’t you?
“…to which end I engaged an American attorney, who established a trust fund for you managed by the First National Bank of Midland. I asked him to keep an eye out for anything…”
“And he hired a clipping service.”
“I presume.”
“I’ve been told some unpleasant stories of my mother’s death,” Clete heard himself say.
“If you don’t mind, I would prefer not to discuss
the matter.”
“I would prefer that you did.”
“No one dares talk to me like that. Just who do you think you are?”
“I’m the only son you have.”
“You are a guest in my house, and you are insufferably rude.”
“I told you, the rules are different. I want your version of what happened. If you don’t want to give it to me, I will have to presume that my grandfather’s version is true…It paints you as the unmitigated sonofabitch of the century. And if it is true, I don’t think I want to be here.”
“You dare to call your father a sonofabitch?”
“That’s what it looks like from where I’m sitting.”
Frade stared down at his plate, then suddenly, furiously, pushed it away from him. It slid a third of the way down the table and then crashed to the floor. The maid made a faint yelping noise and rushed to clean up the mess.