He will admit to being pretty cut up yesterday, but he had been mulling over the whole thing with greater clarity today. He agrees with Sam. This whole thing stinks, especially when the ‘victim’ is so eager to get her story out to the press. Most rape victims would rather crawl into a hole and hide. And he’s not exactly some prominent celebrity she wants to tear down for kicks.
He has never even met her in his entire life.
Unless she’s planning to blackmail him for his money. Or more precisely, the Morton family money. But it’s already out in the open. She can’t blackmail him for secrecy. Is she planning to blackmail him then to make it all go away?
But it can’t go away anymore. It’s too public, too huge.
He groans inwardly.
What a mess.
The alternative is too awful to contemplate – that he really did rape her in his moment of genetic madness.
“Oh, and your uncle called. He said he called your cellphone but it went straight to voicemail.”
“It ran out of batteries,” he says tightly.
It’s true. In the mayhem, he had forgotten to charge it. But his uncle calling at a time like this can never be a good thing. Still, at least he called. That’s more than Brian can say about his own parents.
Anyhow, Jefferson Morton is someone you have to absolutely phone back. He has mayors and police chiefs and politicians at his beck and call. Brian sighs as he picks up the landline. Claudia discreetly closes the door behind her.
He dials his uncle’s direct line. It picks up at first ring. Figures. His uncle has caller ID.
“Brian.” The voice on the other end is a whiplash. Jefferson Morton may have had colorectal cancer, but he’s cured now and is as sharp as tack. In fact, he makes Hitler look reasonable. “What the hell have you done now?”
Brian’s defenses immediately spring to the challenge. “Et tu, Uncle Brutus?”
“I warned you about your philandering ways, but you wouldn’t listen. Now you’ve gotten into some hole that not even I can dig you out of.”
“So you assumed I did it.”
“I assumed you were not in your right presence of mind with all the alcohol and drugs you have been taking. You are honestly no better than your father.”
Brian bridles. He opens his mouth to say something he can’t take back, but thinks the better of it.
“Look,” he says, seething, “I may not be the nephew you’ve always craved, but I didn’t rape anyone.”
“If you did, I’d be the first to hang you out to dry.”
“You don’t control me.”
“I put you through college and gave you your start.”
“I made Vanguard into what it is today, and you can’t deny it.”
“No, I won’t, Brian. I won’t deny your brilliance, your ruthlessness, your business acumen and your innovation.”
“It comes with the I.Q. of 190.” Brian is also aware that it comes with genetics. The brilliance might have skipped his father, but it certainly is present in his uncle and cousins.
“But you also have the emotional quotient of a petulant teenager. You are an overgrown club boy who is as irresponsible to yourself as you are to others around you. I was just waiting for a day like this when you’d drag the entire Morton name – an empire I’ve worked so hard to build – into the mud. Not everyone outside this family will be so forgiving of your transgressions.”
“So you’ve decided I’m guilty.”
“I’ve decided that your sins have come back to haunt you . . . and this family. I cut your father off, but I didn’t do it with you because I thought you deserved a chance. And you are trying to f**k it up every chance you get. You’ve gone too far this time.”
“I didn’t rape that woman.”
“But you’re not sure.” His uncle’s voice turns cunning. “You can’t fool me. You think that you can just waltz through this life on sex and booze and drugs – ”
“I only do recreational drugs, never the hard stuff, and you know that.”
“Hasn’t stopped you from trying them in college, until I threatened to cut you out of my will.”
“You’re not going to use that on me again, because it won’t work. I don’t care about your money.”
“You certainly did care about it then. And you’re going to care about it again when I take Vanguard away from you.”
Brian’s mouth twitches.
Ah yes, that little caveat. The one that he had to sign even before Vanguard was incepted five years ago when he was just out of college. The one that gives his uncle the absolute power as Chairman of the Morton group to take Vanguard away from its President and CEO, no matter what that President and CEO has done to grow the company by leaps and bounds.
“So why don’t you?” he challenges.
“Take Vanguard away from you?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t try me, Brian. I really will do it. You think that just because you delivered a third of the clients and have won a couple of Clio awards – ”
“I’ve won exactly twelve.”
“ – that you are indispensable. No one is indispensable to any company. Not even you. And when you become more of a liability than an asset to us, I can just hire some hotshot from New York to take over your place.”
Brian grips the receiver. He’s going to say something he will regret in the heat of the moment, and now is the time to count till ten or whatever it is that stress management advocates do.
One.
Two.
Three.
He’s burning here. He knows what his uncle says is true, but that doesn’t make it any less difficult.
“I have a meeting,” his uncle clips. “Try to stay out of trouble for the next twenty-four hours.”
The line on the other end goes off.
Brian replaces the receiver onto its cradle slowly. He closes his eyes and palms his face.
A knock on his door. Claudia knows he has put the phone down. She opens the door and peeks in when he doesn’t say ‘Enter’.
“The mayor’s office is on the line. They are spooked. They want to pull out of doing business with Vanguard.”
Brian sighs again.
The morning panic has just begun.
18
“And that’s all you have to go by?” says the private investigator. He is a tall, elegant man with grey eyes and a prominent nose.
Funny, Sam had expected a Philip Marlowe type, but this man looks like he has stepped out from the cover of a GQ magazine for the middle-aged. Still, from his credentials, he is apparently an ex-CIA agent.