“There weren’t many other choices.” So I was in the line of fire because he had ducked. “Why not the foundation? It was what he had always planned.” I wasn’t used to controlling my anger. I had it under control, but the boiler was going to explode soon.
And I knew the answer. It was obvious. Nathan was no Melvin Boyer. He might manipulate and bully if he had to, but he was a decent man. I might have done poorly with Clinton Grainger, but Nathan would have been laughable. So I laughed. Nathan smiled with me, uncertainly.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Too much pressure, I guess.”
“Of course.” He waited, maybe to make sure I wasn’t going to have hysterics. “To answer your question…”
“No, I understand now. It would be impossible for the foundation to manage this empire. It takes someone like Melvin.” Someone nasty, mean, hard, and efficient. Fred thought I’d done a reasonable job my first couple days. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered: Why had Melvin ever even considered having the Foundation manage his estate?
“I don’t know that you understand,” Nathan said.
But I did. The layers were peeling away like an onion under Rosita’s knife. If Melvin wanted his empire to survive, Nathan was not the man. I was. I was the man. The Boyer blood was in my veins, as much as I hated it. The doom hadn’t fallen that night when he had signed the will and died in a ditch. It had fallen on me the day I was born.
Nathan Kern was still talking. “It isn’t a matter of who is most appropriate to manage the Boyer businesses, and their influence.”
Yes it was. That was the matter, the crucial matter.
“It is more a matter of whether anyone should.” He leaned back and blew more smoke, and I breathed it in. “Fred Spellman has been tutoring you in the use of power, which he understands as few others. But I don’t mean that I, and the foundation, was the wrong one to wield this power. My opinion is that no one should.”
What was he saying?
“Someone has to,” I said. I was disoriented. Wasn’t that Fred’s line?
He shook his head and continued to blow smoke and sanctimony all over Katie’s furniture. We’d have to have the room fumigated. “I think not. Hypothetically, what would happen if you just gave it up?”
That was my line. Just last week, that’s what I’d told everyone I was going to do. I agreed with him, right?
“I disagree, Nathan. That’s not practical.”
“Is practicality important?”
This was suddenly very strange. “Yes. At this level it is. And it isn’t practicality. It’s necessity. It’s too important to treat like a game.”
“What is important? Why is it important? Perhaps those are the questions to answer first.” He meant them literally, not rhetorically. He thought he knew the answers.
“Right now,” I said, “it’s important to me to figure out what I’m doing. I’ll get to the why later.”
He backed off, properly. “I’m not in your shoes.” They wouldn’t go with his suit, for one thing. He sighed, wearily. “And this last week has been very difficult for you. This isn’t the time to philosophize. But I wish you would consider that there is an alternative to where you are right now.” He smiled. “I have an early flight tomorrow. Perhaps we should continue this discussion some other time.”
What? Was the lackey dismissing the billionaire? He would stay and discuss this until I was finished.
I was finished.
“Then have a good trip, Nathan.”
It was time to explode now. Kern was safely away in his Volvo, and with massive self-control, I closed the front door and turned calmly to Katie.
“I’ve got a couple things to do in my office.”
“We need to talk about the house.”
Melvin was murdered. Or maybe not. All I knew was that Governor Bright had thrown a rock right through my front window, and I had to figure out how to put it back through his teeth. And if there was a real murderer, that was a problem, too, because it was probably somebody I knew. I was surrounded by people who were a lot better off with Melvin dead.
“Don’t you think we need something bigger?” she asked.
And now that I was just barely settling down into being king, Nathan Kern had to poke his cigarette holder into the gears and jam them up. I was holding on by my fingernails. It was hard enough trying to kill all those questions I was asking myself without him blowing them at me. The foundation could maybe use a new director, somebody who knew when to shut up.
“I know it’s only been a few days,” Katie said. Angela would know when to shut up. On his second marriage, maybe Melvin had learned from experience.
“We’ll talk about it soon,” I said. “I’d rather not right now.”
“Are you all right?”
“No, I am not, and this is not a good time to talk. About anything. I’ll be in my office.”
I turned away from her and forced my feet to move, one at a time, toward my office door. I opened and closed it with only necessary force, and sat in my chair. I took a deep breath and stared straight ahead.
Straight ahead was my computer screen, and the first thing I saw was a six-digit number. Then I saw that it was an e-mail from Pamela. Then I saw it was Eric’s credit card balances. And then I didn’t see anything for a few moments.
“Jason?”
Katie was standing in the doorway, staring at me, and at the shattered monitor in pieces on the floor, and at the splintered paneling where it had slammed against the wall. I stared back at her.
She saw that I was unharmed, and the alarm in her eyes faded. “I think we should talk.”
I was standing. I wilted into my desk chair, and she sat on the couch.
“I can’t do this,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Being the king is too hard.”
“You don’t know how to be a king? You can learn.”
“I don’t know why to be a king.”
“There’s no answer to that, Jason.” She was speaking very gently, holding in her own frustration. “You were born into your family. Your father made his decision and wrote his will. That’s why.”
“It isn’t. It’s no reason I have to accept it.”
“I was hoping we were past that.”
I held out my hand to her, and she took it. “We are,” I said. “Somehow it happened.”
“I will always be with you,” she said.
“But I need a reason to live this life that’s been dropped on me. It won’t work unless I know why I’m doing it.”
“What would a reason look like? What reason did you have before?”
“I’ve never had one. I just can’t ignore it anymore.”
“What reason did your father have?”
It was time. “Melvin was murdered.”
Her mouth dropped. “By who?”
“I don’t know.” I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if an innocent person’s first thought would be about the victim or the killer.
But she was shaking. It was all too much. I had my arms around her, and one of us was sobbing, or maybe both of us. I wanted so much to get out of it, to go back, but I couldn’t.
Instead I was compelled to fight back. And through the night, I slowly realized how strong that compulsion was.
