“I thought you’d be in Paris by now. How’s the weather?”
“Glorious. We’re pushing the season a little, but at least we’re ahead of the crowds.”
“‘We,’ who’s ‘we’? You’re not on a tour.”
“Oh, I met Andrew Moser on the plane when I was bumped up to First. He’s a mushroom grower from California. He’s been sort of looking after me.”
“Nice,” I said through my teeth.
“I’d forgotten how charming some wealthy men can be.”
“Nice. Are you seeing your fill of the galleries?”
“More than that. Andy loves food and we’ve been on a food orgy, on a high level, you understand. We’ve run down a few great spots. It’s like Bloor Street in Toronto. This place is a famous spa, although I haven’t taken more than a sample of the waters.”
“Nice. When will you leave for Paris?”
“My first lecture’s not until Monday, the twelfth, in the old place I told you about on the rue d’Ulm. Remember?”
“I miss you.”
“I’ll be home in a couple of weeks. You can tell me what you’re up to in Toronto when I see you.”
“Right. I’ll be talking to you.” Anna said goodbye, and I started wondering what that was all about. Was it an announcement of some kind? It would be a little after lunch-time in Italy. I wondered whether she’d eaten yet or whether her mushroom millionaire had left her waiting at the hotel. Maybe he was planning a late supper that evening in some out-of-the-way hilltop village. How do I know he’s a millionaire? Is this my day-dream or yours? I thought about the morning coffee I hadn’t had yet. Sally was at the door. It took me a moment to recross the Atlantic. I squeezed the bridge of my nose to force my concentration.
“Do you know where Vanessa’s staying right now, Sally? Since the murder, I mean.”
“If Ms. Moss wants you to know, I’m sure she’ll tell you, Mr. Cooperman. I have instructions not to tell anyone.”
“Good point,” I said, and began sifting through some pages in front of me on my desk, like I was busy at something. When I looked at them, actually focusing, I saw that they were the rundowns I’d asked for yesterday.
On top was a name and phone number: Frances Scerri. Ah, yes: Vanessa’s sister. The one she’s not on speaking terms with. I put it in my pocket. Under that I found a hierarchical chart that divided the page into several boxes. The first box on the left had Chairman written at the top. His name was Hampton Fisher, and he was NTC’s controlling shareholder, owning forty-two per cent of the A shares. Hampton Fisher and I had never met, but I had known his wife, Peggy O’Toole, the movie star, about ten years ago when she was making Ice Bridge in Niagara Falls. I got to know her fairly well, now I come to think of it, but her standoffish, germ-fearing husband so rarely came out in public he was being accused of being Howard Hughes back from the dead. He had surrounded himself with flunkies in Niagara Falls, rented a whole floor at the Colonel John Butler Hotel, and watched people’s comings and goings through a series of TV monitors. If he and Peggy had had any children, I never heard about it. Yet they stayed married, which was an improvement on Hughes. Fisher had not scrimped and saved to make his fortune, nor had he beat his way to the top pushing less dedicated entrepreneurs out of his way. He was born into a successful newspaper family. It was his grandfather who’d done all the pushing and shoving. Hamp simply inherited it all when his father died. For that reason, many tried to write off Hamp Fisher. He was easy to put down: the drinking water he had flown in from California, the thermometer he carried at all times, his peculiar diets. All this gave reporters from opposition papers a field day whenever he threatened to take over another group of dailies. To tell the truth, Fisher had weeded and trimmed his garden of papers, pruning the unproductive ones and fertilizing the promising. His grandfather would have been proud of him. More recently, having put the papers in a holding company, he had been buying up television stations and setting up the newest of our TV networks. I guess it beat collecting stamps.
Two lines had been drawn from the Chairman box. The top one ran to a box marked Board of Directors. On it, I would find that the members, friendly outsiders, plus the chairman and the president, owned another twenty-six per cent of the A shares. The names of the friendly outsiders didn’t light up my sky at once, but on a second reading I recognized the name Ted Thornhill. Hell, I’d even met him! He was the guy who made a guest appearance at the signing of the Dermot Keogh Hall contracts, the man who’d arrived with his own photographer. He was the president and general manager, the chief executive officer of the whole shebang. Not only did his name appear in a list of the Board of Directors, but it appeared just below it in a box all his own, joined by a line to the Chairman box. A vertical line ran down from the President, General Manager amp; CEO box to a horizontal line from which depended several boxes: Finance, Programming, Advertising amp; Sales, News. All of these were vice-presidents. Again, the names here meant nothing to me.
I tried to remember what I once knew about shares in limited corporations. The A shares were voting shares, the preferred shares held by a few insiders. The B shares were publicly traded. The insiders were allowed to own only five per cent of the B shares, according to what my paper said. That left twenty-seven per cent of the remaining B shares widely owned in small batches. I put this page away for future reference after checking to see that Vanessa’s name turned up in a box of its own directly under David L. Simbrow, the vice-president of programming. She was designated Head of Entertainment. Her name had been inserted where that of Nathan Green had been removed.
I called out to Sally, “What happened to Nate Green, Sally? Where did he fit into the frame of things?” Sally looked at me for a good deal longer than I thought necessary to prepare an answer.
“Mr. Green died three months ago, Mr. Cooperman. Cancer of the oesophagus. Very sad.” As soon as she’d said it, I remembered Vanessa telling me on our first official outing together. Meanwhile, Sally had gone back to her reading, once she’d passed on her news. Again I abruptly pulled her attention away from the copy of Billboard she was clipping.
“But Ms. Moss has been here for a year, more or less. What department was Mr. Green moved to?” I was plainly annoying Sally now, and she slapped down the paper on top of a stack of out-of-town newspapers.
“He had several titles: first he was vice-president of Arts and Entertainment for a time, switched to become a senior assistant to Mr. Thornhill, then he was made vicepresident of Arts and Sciences. That was his title at the time of his death.”
“I see. Who’s the vice-president of Arts and Sciences right now, Sally?”
“There isn’t one. I don’t expect there will be.”
“So, it was created for Green and died with him?”
“That’s one opinion, Mr. Cooperman.”
“Do you have another?”
“The charter of the National Television Corporation has always insisted that we have a mandate to keep the arts and sciences within our purview. Some think that we have been lax in this area. Having a vice-president in charge tended to defuse that criticism.”
“So, the ailing Nate Green helped quell the charge of programming for the lowest common denominator.”
“Mr. Cooperman,” she said, colouring just a little, “we program to a wide popular audience, not to the lowest common denominator.”
“You believe that?” I asked, but was destined not to get an answer, for at this moment Vanessa Moss thundered into the room banging down a full briefcase on the broadloom. Once again, she was beautifully turned out, thanks to her friend at Holt’s. This morning she wore a navy pinstripe with a white collar open at the throat and pointing down towards the sort of cleavage that should never be worn by applicants for junior positions at NTC. Boards are notoriously puritanical.