The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (11 page)

But for now there was Lisa Eiseman and a stubborn resolve to keep her alive. From the first of Peet’s letters he had begun to feel there was something here that would lead him to the greatest payback of all.

Beyond the window, Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport sharpened in view.

Chapter 10

“IF THERE’S NOTHING ELSE,
I’ll see you all at the demonstration in one hour,” Lisa Eiseman said to close the meeting. “Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.”

The eleven department heads who reported to her waited for the chief executive of TLP Industries to rise before easing their chairs back. The gesture was born out of respect for a person they could call a friend as well as an employer. In fact, everyone from the workers at the company’s Atlanta headquarters to the assemblers in four factories across the country to the drivers who trucked the finished products felt the same way. Lisa Eiseman had at one time or another shaken the hand of everyone who worked for her, and in that moment each had felt more than a simple grasp.

They felt that she cared. About them. And in return their loyalty to the woman who sat in the president’s chair high within Peachtree Towers was fierce.

It was into that chair she now settled after moving through the connecting door from the conference room to her office. She was exhausted. Weekly staff meetings were a necessity, if for no other reason than to reassure her department heads that she continued to maintain a keen interest in the goings-on within their individual domains. But these days that chore did not come easily, with so many other concerns before her. She had never dreamed that success would bring the kind of complications she faced daily. Rising to the top had been great fun, a challenge at every step; but then the real work had begun. Finishing the day with a sense of accomplishment had always been something she treasured. Lately, though, she would leave the office too close to morning and bed down with the realization that far more had been put off than had been completed. The work just kept piling up, and her refusal to delegate authority allowed only the smallest dents to be made in the vast heap.

Her intercom buzzed.

“Yes, Amy?” Lisa said into the speaker built into the phone.

“Mr. Kimberlain called again while you were in the meeting,” her secretary said.

“Did you give him my message?”

“Yes, and he said he was heading over here anyway.”

“You mean he came down? To Atlanta?”

“He called from the airport.”

“Damn. I want you to leave word with security that he is not to be allowed entry to the building,” she said firmly. “Is that clear?”

“Absolutely. I’ll call downstairs immediately.”

Lisa leaned back again, upset she had been so terse with her secretary. Amy wasn’t to blame for her problems, the most recent of which concerned the strange claims by this man Kimberlain, which angered more than frightened her. She had no time for fear.

She looked around the room. This same office had been her father’s, and she had made no changes in it whatsoever since taking over the business. The oversized soft leather chair, which seemed ready to swallow her frame at any moment, the mahogany paneled walls with matching bookshelves and desk, the imported hardwood chairs and tables, even the paintings on the walls were all too masculine to suit her tastes. But they symbolized something she felt she needed to keep in touch with: her father’s life, and the business he had built and then allowed to tumble.

Lisa recalled those early days following his death. He had left a mess behind, and the soundest advice the lawyers and bankers could give her was to sell off all assets, including the business, in order to settle the estate. Her two brothers were all for it, but Lisa would not hear of it. A strange addenda to her father’s will stated that all decisions relating to the sale of the company required a unanimous vote by his children. Accordingly, since another stipulation named her chief executive officer, by casting her vote against selling she effectively gave the business to herself.

Lisa believed that that was what her father had wanted.

Her first move was to dissolve the board of directors when they refused to back her plans to rebuild TLP and make it solvent again. Dissolution proved costly, and almost fatal, for litigation froze Lisa’s operating funds. Then the unions called a strike at all her factories and warehouses the day after the first paychecks weren’t available. Lisa bypassed the union hierarchy totally and went straight to the workers her father had treated like family. She visited all four factories in a two-day whirlwind tour. She reminded the workers of the various innovative plans TLP had provided them, including low-interest loans for emergencies. She told them that this strike would destroy the business and their jobs. She pleaded for just a little time to get things settled. In return, she would institute a profit-sharing plan: the better TLP did, the better its employees would do. She was going to make the company the largest of its kind. She was onto something big, she told them, and it was her only lie.

After they returned to work, Lisa scrambled to put the pieces of the company back together. Every day was worse than the one before, turning up more and more debts that bled TLP’s meager assets dry. Additionally, the dissolved board of directors had joined with Wally Toys in a hostile takeover effort that Lisa was powerless to prevent.

Unless she found that something big.

She turned her attention to the research and development files and discovered an intriguing report by a pair of recently hired young computer whizzes concerning high-tech toys of the future. They were called “interactive” and were capable of accepting commands from an outside source such as a television program. Her father had rejected the proposal because of its huge costs and controversially violent aspects. Lisa read the preliminary report and was fascinated. She had found what she needed.

The price for bringing the program from the research stages into the marketplace would be in the area of $50 million. Even by selling off all liquid assets and subsidiaries of the company, Lisa would barely be able to come up with a tenth of that, and in so doing would leave herself wide open for the Wally Toys takeover bid. She went to the bank her father had dealt with for years and a dozen more after it. The results were always the same: no one wanted to do business with her failing company.

But Lisa was determined to find the money. For a time her father had been part of a golf foursome that included an old Mafia don named Victor Torelli, head of perhaps the most powerful family in the South. As a child, she had often played with Torelli’s son Dominick, and in later years she was continually turning away his overtures. His father had died several years back, and Dom was running the family now. She hadn’t seen him in months, and she hesitated before calling him. But he was her last resort.

“I assume this isn’t a social call,” he said after pleasantries were exchanged and before lunch was served on the terrace outside his office.

“It isn’t. Remember all those swimming lessons I gave you years ago? I think it’s time I was compensated.”

He laughed. “With interest, what’s the tally?”

“Thirty-five million dollars.”

He stroked his chin dramatically, showing no surprise. “I understand you were after fifty from the banks.”

“I’ve scaled down my plans.”

“Why? You don’t want to enter a brave new market without going all out, do you?”

Her eyes brightened. “You mean you also know about—”

“Of course. Somebody’s gotta look after you, right? I think the idea’s brilliant. I’d like nothing better than to get in on the ground floor. But fifty million dollars …”

“In exchange for twenty-five percent of all company profits for the next fifteen years.”

“I was thinking closer to fifty percent.”

“Look, Dom, I could have come in here and said ten, you would have said fifty, and we would have settled on twenty-five. I’m just trying to spare you some time.”

He laughed again. “Assuming I go along with this, you know where the money will be coming from. Are you sure it won’t bother you?”

“I’m absolutely sure.”

All that mattered to Lisa was saving her father’s company. TLP gained a patent on the interactive toy, and the company’s stock more than quadrupled in the next nine months. The profit-sharing plan was already making rich men and women out of many of the employees who had stuck it out, and Dom Torelli earned four times his initial investment. In another move, more Torelli money was used to finance the buy-out of Wally Toys. Lisa harbored no guilt over the fact that organized crime had played such an important role in TLP’s survival and subsequent flourishing. She had tried to make things work through the system, but the system wanted no part of her. Her father had entrusted her with a duty, and that duty was all she was concerned with.

Lisa herself had not grown nearly as rich as many people believed over these last few years. The profit-sharing plan drained much of her cash flow, and payments to Torelli through what amounted to an elaborate laundering operation took much of the rest. She didn’t care, because she knew her father would have been proud of her. It was strange how close they had been. Though he had a son on either side of her, he had nonetheless chosen Lisa to be the one he would cart to the office with him on school vacations. Most of this was due to the fact that when the boys did come, they chose to spend their time within the TLP display areas fiddling with the latest creations, while her greatest pleasure was sitting with her father in his big office. At important staff and board meetings he would sit her right by his side and give her a steno pad she could doodle on while pretending to make important notes.

“Better take that down,” he would say to her occasionally, and that became a signal to the underlings gathered before him that a report had particularly pleased him.

When he died, it created a void in Lisa that she filled by hard work and intense dedication to the company he had founded. The world had to know that Burton Eiseman had been the best at what he did, even if it was left to his daughter to demonstrate that. And yet such a relentless pursuit had led to so many complications, the most recent of which was the bizarre claims made by this man Kimberlain.

Her intercom buzzed again.

“Yes, Amy?” she said into the speaker.

“Miss Eiseman, er, Mr. Kimberlain is here to see you.”

“Just tell them downstairs not to let him up.”

“That’s just it. He’s not downstairs. He’s here. In the office.”

“I thought I told you—”

“I did. I informed the guards to deny him entry, but he’s standing right here … Wait a minute, he’s gone. He was right here a second ago but now he’s …”

It was then that Lisa felt the motion behind her, which was strange because she had no sense of someone having entered the room and her eyes for much of the time had been aimed straight through the open door.

“You must want to die awfully bad, Miss Eiseman,” said the Ferryman.

“I’ve been fed better lines,” she replied.

“Allow me to introduce myself.”

“Don’t bother. Your reputation precedes you.”

“Excuse the intrusion, but I got the feeling I wouldn’t have gotten in to see you otherwise.”

“Orders were to deny you entry. Apparently they didn’t do much to impede you.”

“Not the orders, your security people. Terribly lax. Might as well fire them all if someone can get to you this easily.”

“And that’s what brought you here, isn’t it? The fact that you believe my life will soon be threatened.”

“The indications are there, Miss Eiseman.”

A pair of green-clad security guards charged through her office door with guns drawn.

“It’s all right,” she told them. “Mr. Kimberlain will be leaving soon. I’ve granted him a few moments of my time first.”

The security guards backed warily out. One of them closed the door behind him.

The Ferryman moved around to the front of the desk so the woman would be more comfortable. “I appreciate the few moments.”

“What would have happened if I had ordered the guards to escort you out?”

“I suspect they would have been injured.”

“And if I had ordered them to use their guns on you?”

“I suspect they would have been even more injured.”

“You seem quite sure of yourself, Mr. Kimberlain, or would you prefer I call you Mr. Ferryman.”

“I see you’ve done your homework.”

“You weren’t a difficult man to research.” Her stare turned contemplative. “I suppose you would best be described as an avenger, wouldn’t you say?”

“No, but go on.”

“A Lone Ranger without the mask. The three years of your life for which there is no record, I assume you were working for the government in some capacity.”

“Some.”

“Your story becomes quite an interesting one not long after that gap. Rescuing kittens from trees, walking old ladies across the street—you are one for good deeds, aren’t you?”

Kimberlain showed two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“You’d be more comfortable sitting.”

“Wouldn’t be able to move as fast.”

“And you think you might have to.”

“There’s always that possibility.”

Lisa paused. “I didn’t see you come into the office.”

“I kept myself where you weren’t looking.”

“Neat trick.”

“I have my moments.”

“This isn’t one of them, Mr. Kimberlain. I have no need for your rather unique services. Nothing to avenge on my account.” Then, softer, “I’ve handled that myself.”

“Do I detect a note of disapproval in your voice?”

“Only for your presence here, not for your chosen profession.”

“It’s what I am, not what I do.”

“Very profound, but I’m still not clear on what you’re doing in my office.”

Kimberlain looked at her closely. Her strength and vitality made her beauty even more radiant. She had clear brown eyes and auburn hair. She wore little makeup and was dressed in a fairly simple suit that cast her as anything but the Joan Collins type of female entrepreneur.

“All you have to be clear on is that your life may be in danger.”