Paul turned around in his chair, put his elbows on his knees, and leaned forward. “She’s been on the phone to me all morning, Charlotte has. She thinks it looks bad, laying off all those thousands of people right before Christmas.”
“Everybody stages layoffs right before Christmas. That’s the end of the fiscal year. It’s that or your paper looks awful when the accounting gets done.”
“She says she thinks it’s that kind of thing that got Tony killed. She got something in the mail, some piece of literature, she called it. Something that said that Tony was ripping off the proletariat, or something like that.”
“Somehow, I can’t imagine Charlotte reading Communist propaganda.”
“Still.” Paul Delafield was stubborn. “She’s going to be able to sit on the board, you know that. She’s going to have control of a tremendous amount of stock, both her own and whatever Tony’s left her—”
“Tony may have left the estate to his daughters. Or to the oldest one. It isn’t as if Charlotte is in any need of money.”
“Even with just her own stock, she could make a lot of trouble. Wouldn’t the daughter side with her? Or is it one of those Greek tragedy things?”
“I don’t think I’d go that far,” David said, “but I don’t think the daughter and the mother see eye-to-eye on much. Marianne, that’s what her name is. Sorry. My mind goes blank sometimes.”
“Charlotte says it looks bad when companies lay off thousands of workers right before Christmas, like they’re all interested in being Scrooge. She thinks we should wait until after the first of the year.”
“Price Heaven can’t wait. If it tries, it will collapse completely.”
“There’s the Christmas buying season. We’re right in the middle of that. That could help them instead of hurt them.”
“Christmas is in five weeks. The only things that make that kind of money in five weeks are fantasy movies. Too bad Price Heaven didn’t produce Fellowship of the Ring.”
“It does look bad,” Paul said. “I can see her point. And don’t think the public doesn’t know the banks are behind those things when they happen. Then all the stories come out. Tony Ross made thirty-two million dollars in salary and bonuses last year, and what he got the bonus for was making sure Price Heaven laid off a bunch of minimum-wage salesladies who aren’t going to be able to go on making the payments on their daughters’ medical treatments. And then it will come out that Price Heaven hired practically everybody part-time, so most of their workers didn’t get health insurance, not even crappy HMOs, and at the same time the Price Heaven executives and us here at the bank all have top-of-the-line fee-for-service plans that pay for everything from extracting ingrown toenails to having yourself cloned.”
David sat back, curious. “So?” he said. “What about that? That’s the way the system works, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s the way the system works.”
“Do you want to change it?”
“Of course I don’t want to change it.” Paul Delafield looked disgusted. “The system does work. You know that. People have to expect a few dislocations. They have to expect—”
“What? Working seventy hours a week at two different part-time jobs and bringing down three hundred and fifty dollars gross before taxes and no benefits?”
“That’s not my fault. They should have stayed in school. They should have learned useful skills for the marketplace.”
“Just as a matter of curiosity,” David said, “what do you think would happen if they all did stay in school and learn some useful skills for the marketplace? What do you think would happen if they all went to Harvard and Wharton?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Paul said.
David laughed. “Tony was smarter than you are about these things. At least he got the point.”
Paul Delafield looked like he was pouting. “Still,” he said. “She’s got a point. With all the things that have been happening. That out there.” He jerked his head in the direction of the window, in what he thought was the direction of the rubble of the World Trade Center. “And Tony dying. Being murdered. There’s a lot going on. People are … restless.”
“What’s the matter, Paul? Are you expecting someone to shoot you in your bed?”
“Maybe we ought to give that possibility more consideration than we do,” Paul said. “It doesn’t hurt to be intelligent about the way we go about things. It doesn’t hurt to be careful.”