Sparkles

Mayberry’s chairman was sitting in his vast mock-Tudor mansion in Bel Air, listening to his wife. He thought he’d rather have been almost anywhere else. Ugh! He wasn’t cut out for the family thing. Why did she have to bother him?

Claudia made a face. “Pete! Enough with the potty mouth. Paulie will be back from camp soon, you want he should hear his father talking like that?”

Pete glanced at his wife with dislike. By now she should know he didn’t give a damn about interior decor. Every goddamn season Claudia had to draft some new high-priced faggot, the latest “it” designer, to redo the Malibu mansion. His furniture changed around so often he could never find anything.

It was the right choice; she beamed at him. “You know, honey, I thought the beige. Purple is a little out there. Donna said we should think about toile de Jouy, but I can’t stand that stuff. It’s so year two thousand. It’s over, you know? And any kind of print gets so dated. Ellie Krebs did her place in shabby chic. Shabby chic! That’s insane, nobody’s done shabby chic since the mid-nineties. . . .”

Claudia was well away. She let loose a stream of babble, seeming not to care when Pete flopped into his couch, the big leather sectional he wouldn’t let her change, and grabbed the remote. There was a baseball game on, Dodgers losing to the Red Sox, and it suited him fine. Pete didn’t give a shit about sports, either, but eventually Claudia would get the message and go away.

He had to stick around to welcome Paulie back from camp. He’d eat supper here, their cook had some kind of roast beef thing going, and then he’d take a ride to one of the girls—Pete was in the mood for Lily today, blonde and stupid and pliant enough as long as he kept the presents coming.

Mostly he let his mistresses slide at the weekends—it was too much trouble to make up excuses—but today he needed it. Claudia’s bleating was too much to take. Pete worked hard and he needed to unwind.

The House Massot deal was the perfect excuse. Even Claudia knew about it—there had been so many urgent phone calls and demanding memos from that self-righteous prick Montfort. If Pete said he had “work,” Claudia would buy it. Sometimes he suspected she knew about his little diversions and she didn’t give a shit.

Well, that was fine. Pete liked his life how it was. He had no reason to disturb things. As long as Claudia didn’t embarrass him by getting herself a bit on the side—everybody knew it was different for men. But he didn’t think there was much danger of that. Claudia hated sex with him, so how horny could she be?

She’d stopped talking now and moved back into the kitchen to yell at the cook. The House Massot diamond earrings he’d given her, three round bezel-set canaries that dangled from her lobes, flashed in the California sunlight; Claudia loved them, never took them off even in the daytime.

Pete liked giving her jewels. A man’s wife was a reliable indicator of his worth, as much as his house or the car he drove. In a town like L.A., where everybody went by limo, a wife was actually more convenient as a status symbol. He didn’t know much about jewels, but even Pete could see that House Massot was altogether classier than Mayberry. He dined out on the success of his firm, but owning House Massot—that would be another step up.

Stockton thought about Hugh Montfort. He couldn’t stand the prick. Yeah, sure, it had been a smart hire. Montfort had made them all a hell of a lot of money. But at what price? His holier-than-thou attitude had bugged Pete from the start. And people gave him the credit, all the credit, even though Pete was the chairman of the board. Hadn’t Pete been the one to hire the guy? As far as he was concerned, Montfort could take that snooty British attitude of his and stuff it. He was just the help. No fancy suit and soldier-boy body would ever be able to hide that.

Not for the first time, he wished he could lose Montfort. The limey got in the way of Stockton’s reputation. Once the Massot deal was done, he’d like to look for another CEO. Hugh Montfort wasn’t the only guy in the world who knew how to run a jewellery chain. He could poach from Tiffany or Louis Vuitton. Even Gucci.

It would have to wait, though, until Massot was in the bag. Things were looking good; Sophie Massot had fallen flat, like you’d expect from a broad, and they only had three months to go. . . .

Claudia smiled serenely and extended the phone. “Call from Europe. It’s that nice Hugh Montfort. You should have him over for dinner. He’s quite the gentleman.”

Pete wanted to respond, “Fuck Hugh Montfort,” but it might be audible down the line. He hated it when Claudia got all moony over that pasty-faced Brit.

“I don’t believe it will be serious, but Mrs. Massot threw her party, and it was a success; she sold vast amounts of jewels, and I have reason to believe there will be good press coverage.”

“And what’s the fucking answer, Montfort?” Pete barked. His heart was thumping; his fat palms were sweaty, thinking of all the money he might lose. And yet there was a distinct pleasure in being able to yell at his CEO.

Pete swallowed his rage and dislike. “You’re right, you’re right, I’m sorry.” The limey would not be bullied; he’d have no hesitation in hanging up on his boss; they both knew it. “We Yanks haven’t learned to be as suave and cool as you Brits.”

“On the contrary, I believe most Americans are extremely courteous,” said Montfort, coldly. I hate the son of a bitch, Pete thought. “At any rate, the answer is, I believe, no.There isn’t much time to go before the stockholders’ meeting, and the stories will run for about a week; I expect the Massot stock price to rise, perhaps up to three points, on anticipation of other possible bids; we will organize a counteroffensive, and perhaps we might, at the last minute, raise our bid by about four percent.”

Pete made a great effort and heaved his bulky body from the leather couch. The body was slow, but his mind was fast.

“There aren’t that many shareholders around,” he grunted. “Thirty percent voted by the wife. Another fifteen is in the family. . . .”

“None. The son is nineteen, the grandmother’s age uncertain, but shareholders won’t like either of them as a candidate to replace Mrs. Massot.”

“And so we basically will need the support of almost all the other shareholders. All the fifty-five percent that’s floating.”

“At least thirty-five percent, in the hands of trust funds, pensions, other institutional investors. They won’t be swayed by press; I’ve had their commitments for some months.”

“Good. Good.” Fucking Montfort, Pete could not deny he was competent. More than competent. “But we still need the rest. There’s a full twenty percent in petty shareholders, private hands?”

Forget Lily, or any of the other girls. Forget his plump son coming home from camp. Pete wanted nothing more than to get out of this sweatsuit and get into his office. It was a dangerous situation. He needed to think.

“This is a freaking disaster,” he yelled. “Two weeks from deal time and you let that French bitch throw some freaking party and—”

His wife was hovering. Like him, Claudia had a finely tuned antenna for money. She had been spending their future Massot cash in her head for the better part of a year.

Stockton considered things for a moment. This was kinda shocking. Everybody knew Hugh Montfort was the hardest-assed businessman in jewellery. He was freakin’ famous. How could he have screwed up like this? How could he let some playboy’s trophy wife—well, widow—put one over on him? Was he banging her, or something?

It wasn’t possible the girl was good at the job. She hadn’t even gone to college. Child bride and kept woman. What would she know about it?

His first call would be to the Crillon, to leave a grovelling message of apology for Hugh Montfort. Otherwise, he knew he’d have a resignation letter on his desk first thing in the morning. Montfort was not the type to threaten; he’d just walk. No, Pete would have to eat humble pie. Again.

The thought made him furious, and he struggled with himself. It wasn’t good for his blood pressure. He kept a flask of twenty-year-old malt whisky locked in his desk drawer; time for a medicinal glassful, Pete thought.