She wondered if it would be safe to leave them alone for an hour while she went to the hospital. Dwayne was due to be discharged after lunch.
Just one problem after another.
As she entered the boys’ wing to start changing the beds, she heard a whoop of delight followed by Buster’s exclamation, “Awesomely fatal!”
Awesomely fatal. Tricia Nyeberger silently mouthed the words. It really is another language.
While she waited for her husband at the hospital she talked with his psychologist. “Dwayne’s still somewhat withdrawn, Mrs. Nyeberger. Anything you can do to get him interested will be helpful.”
“That’s just it, Doctor; he’s not interested in much outside of the bank.”
“His children, surely?” Gloria Delmonico’s warm brown eyes and sympathetic voice put Tricia at ease.
“Our kids are kind of… wild, I guess you’d say, but Dwayne doesn’t want to know.”
“Boys, aren’t they?”
“Five.”
“Do they have a play station at home?”
“Sure. Interactive virtual reality, they’re crazy about it. They have their own computers too.”
“Have you heard of neuroscience?”
“I think I saw the word on a game show once.”
“It’s the study of the brain and nervous system,” Gloria explained. “The Chinese were the first to recognize that people were becoming seriously addicted to video games. Now we’re using that same addiction to treat antisocial behavior. Games have been designed with positive and negative stimuli to help reprogram the mind and develop a disciplined cognitive process. In other words, they subliminally encourage mental maturity.”
From the blank expression on the other woman’s face Gloria realized she might as well have been speaking Sanskrit. “The process has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration,” she added comfortingly.
“Oh. Well, that’s good.”
“If you’d like I’ll give you a few games to take home, Mrs. Nyeberger. Just remember to remove the information packet before you give them to your boys, and if you have any questions, let me know.”
Jack Reece watched the chief executive officer of RobBenn impassively. From the other side of his desk Robert Bennett regarded Bea Fontaine’s nephew with an equal lack of expression. It’s like playing chess, thought Bennett. I make a move, he makes a move. Neither of us gives anything away.
That was what he most enjoyed about business. The game. Not even the winning, though he played to win with ferocious determination. The game itself was the ultimate thrill.
Bennett knew the rules and manipulated them to his own advantage. He had no compunction about dishonesty; no businessman ever got to the top without, as he put it, “coloring outside the lines.” The proposal he had put to Jack Reece years earlier meant coloring outside the lines. Reece had gone along with it, helping RobBenn to make a sizeable profit from time to time.
But Bennett didn’t trust Reece. Not an inch.
In their original discussion the two men had chosen their words carefully. Both knew what they were talking about without being dangerously specific. This afternoon they were facing one another across the same desk in the same office, but it was a new game.
Before opening the conversation Bennett tented his fingers and took a moment to study the man in front of him. He was good at reading body language. Reece appeared to be relaxed, but he had the intensity of a coiled spring. Like any good gambler, he knew when to play a hunch and when to walk away.
For Robert Bennett Jack’s value lay in his contacts overseas.
Too many hours behind a desk and too many rich meals had taken their toll on Bennett. His youthful athleticism had been replaced by brute force. In the competitive arena of big business intimidation was his specialty. He often said, “Appear big to win big.” Another of his slogans was, “There is no such thing as enough, believe me.”
Bennett wondered if Jack Reece ever had enough. Of anything. There was something feral about that face.
He opened his hands and laid them flat on the desk. “Remind me, Jack; how many languages do you speak?”
“Five in addition to English: French, German, Russian, Mandarin and Farsi.”
“Farsi. That’s new for you, isn’t it?”
“Fairly recent: I study anything that may come in handy. And I have translation apps on my AllComs.”
Bennett, who spoke no foreign languages, refused to be impressed. “I detect a trace of an accent in your speech now.”
“I’m like a navy blazer, I pick up traces wherever I go. In a week I’ll be back to plain American.”
“Let me guess… you’ve been in the Middle East, right? That’s where you got that tan?”
Jack gave a noncommittal grunt.
“Doing any business for me over there now?”
Instead of answering, Jack swung around in his chair and gazed out the window.
Bennett tried another approach. “How about this trouble with plastic? The media’s calling it ‘the Change’; sounds menopausal, doesn’t it?”
Not by the flicker of an eyelash did Jack react. Bennett’s coarse streak was only one of the reasons he disliked the man. He turned back to face him. “You think it might affect your business?”
Bennett ran one hand across the top of his head to smooth the thinning hair. His palm came away damp. “’Course not. Couple of pieces of plastic dissolved, that’s all. I stay on top of things, believe me. That’s why I asked you to come in as soon as I heard you were back in town. If you have any new—”
“You think that’s all this is?” Jack interrupted. “A ‘little problem’?”
“Sure it is, nobody’s been hurt. The giants of the pharmaceutical industry have a massive financial cushion so our original market will always be there. But what about the market for RobBenn’s more, ah, profitable products? Is that still there?”
“War is still there,” Reece said tersely. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”
“My business has nothing to do with war.”
Jack said nothing.
Bennett cleared his throat. Leaned back in his chair to show that he was at home here. Confident. Very much in charge. “My grandfather started out working in a little dry goods store upstate, did you know that? Saved his money until the owners wanted to retire and bought them out. He had an instinct for what people wanted; he put in a soda fountain and began selling patent medicines. Granddad did well enough to send my dad to college to study pharmacy. In time Dad developed a few patents that were worth something; when he died he left me enough money to go into business for myself when I came back from the war. Took a while to get started, but I never gave up.
“And here we are. RobBenn.” He spread his hands in an expansive gesture meant to take in the entire complex.
“It’s quite an achievement.”
“Damn straight it is! From the beginning I knew I’d have to diversify to make it work. Diversity is the name of the game in business these days. In pharmaceuticals the field was too crowded for me to compete, but I realized the corollaries could be almost as profitable for a smaller investment and lower overheads. That’s why I went into packaging. New drugs are constantly coming onto the market and the demand for more is enormous, especially since the failure of antibiotics. Many medications are inherently fragile. Too much vibration, or the wrong temperature, even a little pressure can cause irreparable damage, so protection is vital.
“I hired people who could design and produce the necessary containers for shipping and storage—which was changing all the time, like drugs themselves. RobBenn also developed protective devices no one else had thought of, and along the way we started to turn out some very interesting—”