Adam stopped.
Smokey Stephensen knew: This guy Trenton had the goods. Smokey might slide sideways out of some, or even all, the other finagling, but not this. Periodically, auto manufacturers awarded dealer bonuses - usually fifty to a hundred dollars a car - for every new car sale during specified periods. Since thousands of dollars were involved, such contests were carefully policed, but there were ways around the policing and Smokey, at times, had used them all. It was the kind of duplicity which a manufacturer's marketing department, if they learned of it, seldom forgave.
Smokey wondered if Adam knew, too, about the demonstrator cars - last year's models - which the dealership had sold as new after switching odometers. He probably did.
How in hell could one guy find out so much in just that little time?
Adam could have explained. Explained that to a top-flight automotive product planner, such matters as investigative research, detailed follow through, analysis, the piecing together of fragmentary information, were all like breathing. Also, Adam was used to working fast.
Smokey had his eyes cast down on the desk in front of him; he appeared to be taking the time to think for which he had asked a few minutes ago. Now he lifted his head and inquired softly, 'Whose side you on, anyway? Just whose interests you looking out for?'
Adam had anticipated the question. Last night and earlier today he had asked it of himself.
'I came here representing my sister, Teresa, and her forty-nine percent financial interest in this business, I still do. But that isn't to say I'll condone dishonesty, and neither would Teresa, or her husband, Clyde, if he were alive. It's why I'll go through with what I told you.'
'About that. First thing you gonna do is call the bank. Right?'
'Right.'
'Okay, Mr. Smart-ass-noble-high-'n-mighty, let me tell you what'll happen. The bank'll panic. Inspectors'll be around this afternoon, tomorrow they get a court order, padlock this place, seize the stock.
Okay, next you say you'll hand them notes over to your company sales guys. Know what they'll do.'
'At a guess, I'd say take away your franchise.'
'No guessin'. It'll happen.'
The two men eyed each other. The dealer leaned forward across the desk.
'So where's that leave Teresa and them kids? How much you think forty-nine percent of a dead business'd be worth?'
'It wouldn't be a dead business,' Adam said. 'The company would put someone in temporarily until a new dealer could be named.'
'A temporary guy! How well d'you think he'd run a business he doesn't know? Into bankruptcy maybe.'
'Since you've brought up bankruptcy,' Adam said, 'that seems to be the way you're headed now.'
Smokey slammed down a fist so hard and savagely that everything on his desk top shook. 'There'll be no bankruptcy! Not if I play it my way.
Only if we do it yours.'
'So you say.'
'Never mind what I say! I'll get my bookkeeper here right now! I'll prove it!'
'I've already been over the books with Miss Potts.'
'Then, goddamn, you'll go over them again with me!' Smokey was on his feet, raging, towering over Adam. The dealer's hands clenched and unclenched. His eyes were blazing.
Adam shrugged.
Smokey used an inside line to phone Lottie. When she promised to come at once, he slammed the phone down, breathing hard.
It took an hour.
An hour of argument, of assertions by Smokey Stephensen, of the dealer's penciled calculations with which the desk top was now strewn, of amplification of her bookkeeping by Lottie Potts, of examination of financial precedents reaching back to earlier years.
At the end Adam admitted to himself that it could be done. Smokey just might, just could, have the business back in shape financially a month from now, allowing for certain unorthodoxies and assuming a continuing upward trend in new car sales. The alternative was a temporary management which - as Smokey pointed out - might prove disastrous.
Yet to accomplish the survival of Stephensen Motors, Adam would be obliged to condone deception and defrauding of the bank's adjusters. He had the knowledge now; it was no longer a matter of guessing. During their rehash of the facts, Smokey admitted his out-of-trust position and his scheming to survive tomorrow's new car audit.
Adam wished he didn't know. He wished fervently that his sister, Teresa, had never involved him in this at all. And for the first time he understood the wisdom of his company's Conflict of Interest rules which forbade auto company employees to become involved - financially or otherwise - with auto dealerships.
As Lottie Potts gathered together her ledgers and left, Smokey Stephensen stood challengingly, hands on hips, his eyes on Adam. 'Well?'
Adam shook his head. 'Nothing's changed.'
'It'll change for Teresa,' Smokey said softly. 'One month a nice fat check, next month, maybe, nothing. Another thing - all that stuff you accused me of. You never said I cheated Teresa.'
'Because you haven't. That's the one area where everything's in order.'
'If I'd wanted to, I could have cheated her. Couldn't I?'
'I suppose so.'
'But I didn't, and ain't that what you came here to find out?'
Adam said wearily, 'Not entirely. My sister wanted to take a long term view.' He paused, then added, 'I've also an obligation to the company I work for.'
'They didn't send you here.'
'I know that. But I didn't expect to discover all I have and now - as a company man - I can't ignore it.'
'You sure you can't? Not for the sake of Teresa and them kids?'
'I'm sure.'
Smokey Stephensen rubbed his beard and ruminated. His outward anger had gone, and when he spoke his voice was low, with a note of pleading.
'I'll ask you to do one thing, Adamand, sure, it'd help me - but you'd be doing it for Teresa.'
'Doing what?'
Smokey urged, 'Walk out of here right now! Forget what you know about today! Then gimme two months to get finances back in shape because there's nothing wrong with this business that that amount of time won't fix. You know it.'
'I don't know it.'
'But you know the Orion's coming, and you know what it'll do to sales.'
Adam hesitated. The reference to the Orion was like a flag planted in his own back yard. If he believed in the Orion, obviously he believed that, with it, Stephensen Motors would do well.
Adam asked curtly, 'Suppose I agreed. What happens at the end of two months?'
The dealer pointed to the black loose-leaf notebook. 'You hand over them notes to your company marketing guys, the way you said you would. So, okay, I'd have to sell out or lose the franchise, but it'd be a growing business that was sold. Teresa'd get twice as much for her half, maybe more, than she would from a forced sale now.'
Adam hesitated. Though it still involved dishonesty, the compromise held a compelling logic.
'Two months,' the ex-race driver pleaded. 'That ain't so much to ask.'
'One month,' Adam said decisively. 'One month from today; that's all.'
As Smokey visibly relaxed and grinned, Adam knew he had been conned.
And now the decision was made, it left Adam depressed because he had acted against his own conscience and good judgment. But he was determined he would turn over to his company's marketing department, a month from now, the notes on Stephensen Motors.
