'I know I work too hard,' Morgan Sloat told his son Richard that evening. They were speaking on the telephone, Richard standing at the communal telephone in the downstairs corridor of his dormitory, his father sitting at his desk on the top floor of one of Sawyer & Sloat's first and sweetest real-estate deals in Beverly Hills. 'But I tell you kid, there are a lot of times when you have to do something yourself to get it done right. Especially when my late partner's family is involved. It's just a short trip, I hope. Probably I'll get everything nailed down out there in goddam New Hampshire in less than a week. I'll give you another call when it's all over. Maybe we'll go railroading in California, just like the old days. There'll be justice yet. Trust your old man.'
The deal for the building had been particularly sweet because of Sloat's willingness to do things himself. After he and Sawyer had negotiated the purchase of a short-term lease, then (after a gunfire of lawsuits) a long-term lease, they had fixed their rental rates at so much per square foot, done the necessary alterations, and advertised for new tenants. The only holdover tenant was the Chinese restaurant on the ground floor, dribbling in rent at about a third of what the space was worth. Sloat had tried reasonable discussions with the Chinese, but when they saw that he was trying to talk them into paying more rent, they suddenly lost the ability to speak or understand English. Sloat's attempts at negotiation limped along for a few days, and then he happened to see one of the kitchen help carrying a bucket of grease out through the back door of the kitchen. Feeling better already, Sloat followed the man into a dark, narrow cul-de-sac and watched him tip the grease into a garbage can. He needed no more than that. A day later, a chain-link fence separated the cul-de-sac from the restaurant; yet another day later, a Health Department inspector served the Chinese with a complaint and a summons. Now the kitchen help had to take all their refuse, grease included, out through the dining area and down a chain-link dog run Sloat had constructed alongside the restaurant. Business fell off: the customers caught odd, unpleasant odors from the nearby garbage. The owners rediscovered the English language, and volunteered to double their monthly payment. Sloat responded with a grateful-sounding speech that said nothing. And that night, having primed himself with three large martinis, Sloat drove from his house to the restaurant and took a baseball bat from the trunk of his car and smashed in the long window which had once given a pleasant view of the street but now looked out at a corridor of fencing which ended in a huddle of metal bins.
He had done those things . . . but he hadn't exactly been Sloat when he did them.
The next morning the Chinese requested another meeting and this time offered to quadruple their payment. 'Now you're talking like men,' Sloat told the stony-faced Chinese. 'And I'll tell you what! Just to prove we're all on the same team, we'll pay half the cost of replacing your window.'
Within nine months of Sawyer & Sloat's taking possession of the building, all the rents had increased significantly and the initial cost and profit projections had begun to look wildly pessimistic. By now this building was one of Sawyer & Sloat's more modest ventures, but Morgan Sloat was as proud of it as of the massive new structures they had put up downtown. Just walking past the place where he'd put up the fence as he came in to work in the morning reminded him - daily - of how much he had contributed to Sawyer & Sloat, how reasonable were his claims!
This sense of the justice of his ultimate desires kindled within him as he spoke to Richard - after all, it was for Richard that he wanted to take over Phil Sawyer's share of the company. Richard was, in a sense, his immortality. His son would be able to go to the best business schools and then pick up a law degree before he came into the company; and thus fully armed, Richard Sloat would carry all the complex and delicate machinery of Sawyer & Sloat into the next century. The boy's ridiculous ambition to become a chemist could not long survive his father's determination to murder it - Richard was smart enough to see that what his father did was a hell of a lot more interesting, not to mention vastly more remunerative, than working with a test tube over a Bunsen burner. That 'research chemist' stuff would fade away pretty quickly, once the boy had a glimpse of the real world. And if Richard was concerned about being fair to Jack Sawyer, he could be made to understand that fifty thousand a year and a guaranteed college education was not only fair but magnanimous. Princely. Who could say that Jack wanted any part of the business, anyhow, or that he would possess any talent for it?
Besides, accidents happened. Who could even say that Jack Sawyer would live to see twenty?
'Well, it's really a matter of getting all the papers, all the ownership stuff, finally straight,' Sloat told his son. 'Lily's been hiding out from me for too long. Her brain is strictly cottage cheese by now, take my word for it. She probably has less than a year to live. So if I don't hump myself off to see her now that I have her pinned down, she could stall long enough to put everything into probate - or into a trust fund, and I don't think your friend's momma would let me administer it. Hey, I don't want to bore you with my troubles. I just wanted to tell you that I won't be home for a few days, in case you call. Send me a letter or something. And remember about the train, okay? We gotta do that again.'