'Whom you happen to represent.'
'There isn't any conflict of interest,' Kirby said. 'The sale's a matter of public record—'
'Or will be once the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed,' Jason said. 'To be accurate.'
Kirby shrugged. 'All I'm asking is that you save me some legwork.'
Jason lowered his Joe DiMaggio to his plate and regarded it with a kind of lusting admiration.
'You suppose they cure the meat themselves?' he said.
'Come on, Jase,' Kirby said.
Jason looked him. 'Sure, why not, but you never got it from me,' he said. 'The high bidder's a firm in Michigan called Midwest Gelatin. I don't guess I need to tell you its specialty.'
Kirby scowled. 'Some local jelly producer has the capital to buy up thousands of shares of UpLink? You're shitting me.'
'I speak the truth,' Jason said. 'And that was gelatin, not jelly. It's used in everything from home insulation to sneaker insoles to ballistic testing. There's also a pharmaceutical variation which goes into the headache pills you gulp by the bottle. For your information, Midwest happens to be the largest chemical manufacturer of its type in the country.'
'It public or private?'
'Number one,' Jason said. 'It's a subsidiary of a canning company which is wholly owned by a public corporation that manufactures plexiglass sheeting. Or chinaware, I frankly forget which.'
Kirby considered that while Jason dove into his sandwich.
'Are you aware if there's anyone, um, of note, in Midwest Gelatin's upper management? Or that of its parent companies?'
Jason was looking at him again.
'You want to follow the paper trail, find out who's behind the move on UpLink, I suggest you talk to Ed Burke when we get to the park,' he said.
'Our Ed?' Kirby pointed to the front of his uniform shirt, on which the word STEALERS was printed in gold capital letters. 'The first baseman?'
'The canner's one of his biggest clients,' Jason said, nodding. 'Just please promise that my name won't enter the conversation.'
'Thought I already had.'
Jason shook his head. 'No, no, you didn't.'
Kirby made the scout's honor sign with his index and middle fingers.
'Promise,' he said.
Satisfied, Jason turned to watch a thin, elderly-looking waiter scoot past the table with a tall stack of dishes expertly balanced on his arm.
'He's been working here since I was a kid,' he said. 'Three decades hustling on his feet, can't imagine how he does it.'
'Could be he loves it here as much as you do,' Kirby said.
Jason's gaze continued following the waiter's energetic trajectory down the aisle.
'Bet that's it,' he said very seriously, and took another huge bite of his improbable sandwich.
Reynold Armitage's twenty-two-room duplex was in a palacial landmark building with balustrades and cornices and an ornate iron-and-glass marquee shading its Fifth Avenue entry opposite Central Park. The trappings of status and wealth were as evident — some would say egregiously evident — within his apartment as they were without; passing through the front door, one entered a long, wainscoted reception hall leading into an octagonal salon and then a living room with a parquet floor, massive fireplace, and haughty oil portraits under a vaulted ceiling. Continental silver gleamed on antique tables, Venetian glass goblets and decanters winked diamond points of light from breakfront cabinets, and dynastic Chinese vases perched like fragile blooms atop finely wrought marble gueridons.
Marcus Caine found it all very impressive, though not nearly so much as the scrupulous attention Armitage had payed to concealing the matrix of integrated electronic systems designed to compensate for his physical disabilities — most of which relied upon Monolith's leading-edge voice-recognition technology.
Ordinary men fit their homes with handicap access ramps, priviliged ones with lifts and elevators, he'd once told Caine. I want you to give me something better than either.
Caine sat sipping his vermouth as the parlor doors opened seemingly of their own volition, and the master of the house made his entrance… the grandiosity of which was unaffected by his wheelchair-bound condition. In a certain way, rather, it lifted him from the merely pretentious and gave him an air of solitary dauntlessness. Don Quixote stalking windmills, Ahab versus the white whale, persistance against any odds. It was the warp and woof of highest drama.
'Close,' Armitage said in a barely audible undertone, his power wheelchair carrying him forward with the faintest mechanical hum. Behind him the double doors swung quietly shut. 'No interruptions, take messages.'
He came up to his guest and halted the chair with a joystick on its left armrest. Once it had been on his right side, but over the past several years that hand had become too seriously atrophied to be of any use.
''Marcus,' he said, raising his voice to a normal level. 'Sorry to have kept you waiting, but I was on a call. Fortunately you look quite settled. Absorbed in meditation, even.'
''Admiration,'' Caine corrected. He indicated his surroundings with a slight flick of his hand. 'This is a fascinating room.'
An intense man of fifty with a narrow face, dark, watchful eyes, and a widow's peak of straight black hair, Armitage appeared surprised.
'And here I've always seen you as all business,' he said. 'It seems you're growing, Marcus. In fact, my estimate of you soared to new heights after your appearance at the U. N. I really want to compliment you on that one.'
Caine gave him a cool glance. 'Do you, now?'
'Absolutely. You came across as very likeable, which is everything from a public relations standpoint. There are pollsters who measure that sort of thing, as you're surely aware. How else would we know which celebrities to hire for product endorsements and situation comedies?' A sardonic grin crept across his lips. 'I'd give you a clap on the back if I could.'
Caine tried not to look uncomfortable.
'Have you considered,' he said, 'that I may have learned a few tricks from watching you on television?'
Armitage shook his head. 'I occupy a unique niche. My readers and viewers don't have to like me, just listen to me. And they will as long as my financial advice is solid… and I'm able to communicate it.' He paused and swallowed, the muscles of his throat straining to perform the basic function. 'Would you like Carl to refill your glass, or should we get right down to what you wanted to discuss?'
'Til pass on the drink, thanks.' Caine wondered if Armitage's brittle references to his disease were shading his own impressions of how quickly it was advancing, or whether his speech in fact seemed thicker than when they'd last sat face-to-face. It was entirely possible, he supposed. That had been well over a month ago, and the progression of ALS could be rapid even with experimental drug therapies. 'Tell me how things went with the president of MetroBank.'
Armitage looked at him. 'Don't hold me to this, but I think I've convinced Halpern to accept your bid.'
Caine felt a stir of excitement. 'Are you serious?'
'What's important is that he seemed to be,' Armitage said. 'Of course, he's going to need his board of directors to rubber-stamp the sale, so it might be prudent to hold off celebrating until after he meets with them next week.'
Caine ignored the caveat. His face was suddenly hot. 'Their stock comes to, what, nine percent of UpLink?'
'Closer to ten, actually,' Armitage said.
Caine made a fist and jabbed it stiffly in the air.
'Son of a bitch, this is fantastic,' he said. 'Fantastic.'
They were quiet. Reynold's crippled right hand twitched a little as a dying nerve cell in his brain misfired, his padded wrist brace rapping the armrest of his chair. Caine looked away. Nine percent, he thought. Added to the stock purchase already in the works, it would give him a hugely dominant share of UpLink. He'd have what he
