Sleeping Beauty (17 page)

“Why not?”

“I wanted the most daring, most controversial architect in the world. He happened to be in Japan, not Denver.”

“Why? Why controversial?”

“To get your attention.” Vince smiled at them, his face as open and honest as a child's. “I want to put Denver up there with New York and Chicago and Rome. I want to make Colorado famous for more than recreation. Why should Colorado rely on the mountains for grandeur? We can do better than that. You give me a few years and a chance to build the other projects we have on the drawing board and you'll see Colorado lead the world in transforming the landscape. Chatham Place is only a beginning.”

“What did it cost?” asked a reporter.

“Eighty-five million dollars.”

“And the return?”

“Respectable. Seventy-eight percent of the shops and all the restaurants are rented and open, the athletic club is open, we have ice-skating competitions scheduled on the ice rink for the next six months. We're confident we'll have one hundred percent occupancy before the end of the year.”

“What's happened with your fight with Greenbriar Village?” another reporter asked. “Those people fought like crazy to keep you out of here. How'd you shut them up?”

“We didn't have to,” Vince said gently. “They know we're as interested in this community as they are. You should ask them yourself. I'll give you the names of the top community leaders; I think you'll find we've become good neighbors.”

“By burning down one of their houses?” the reporter asked.

The room was hushed. Vince gave the reporter a long look. “I assume you're talking about Oscar and Emmy Delaney's house.”

“Right. There was a time when the Delaneys were always going to the newspapers or TV stations or city council meetings or marching in the streets, fighting your mall, them and their neighbors. Until their house burned down.”

Vince nodded. “It was a terrible thing. We built them a new house, a bigger one, and furnished it and made a play yard for their kids. Losing their house was a tragedy, but we were able to help them, and make them part of the excitement of Chatham Place, and all it says about Colorado's future and American productivity and the good life. Oscar and Emmy head up the community council that handles relations between the mall and the neighborhood, and we consider them good friends of Chatham Place. So do they.” He stood. “I'm going to turn this over to Ray Beloit; he has all the facts and figures at his fingertips. When you're finished, there's a buffet lunch in the restaurant. Thank you all for coming; I hope to see you here often.
I'll
be here; I may even learn to ice-skate. If you thought I was on thin ice just now, wait till you see me on the real stuff.”

They laughed, admiring his daring. The official investigation
of the Delaneys' fire had been inconclusive, but rumors persisted that it had been no accident. “Quite a guy,” a reporter said as Vince left the room. “Remind me never to be on the other side of anything he wants.”

Assholes, Vince thought scornfully as he left the building; they won't lay a finger on us. He knew then that he had guessed right: that the reporters, as much as any businessmen in Denver, wanted to fatten the city through tourists, conventions, and shoppers drawn from all the Rocky Mountain states, and they would turn a blind eye to rumors if prosperity was on the line. We're all such cozy partners, Vince thought with a thin smile, but as he drove to his office that morning, he felt a deep contempt for the press that he would never lose.

His secretary rang as he reached his desk. “Mr. Charles Chatham is on the telephone; he said it was important.”

Vince gave a grunt of annoyance. He picked up the telephone. “Yes,” he said impatiently.

“I'm sorry to interrupt,” Charles said, “but I've been thinking about your offer.”

Vince frowned. “What offer?”

“For God's sake, Vince, vice president of your company! When I was there last week you said—”

“I remember. Well? When will you get here?”

“I won't. I can't do it, Vince, at least not yet. Dad needs me. There's nobody else to run the company while he's in Tamarack, and this morning he told me he's going to live there. Full time. He's leaving Chicago—”

“Why?” Vince demanded.

“He says he likes it better than Chicago. He's seventy, you know; I guess he's tired and wants to get away. He told me he's satisfied I can run the company.”

Vince was silent.

“Well, he's right,” Charles said. “I don't do business the way he does, or you either, but he trusts me and I can't walk out on him.”

Still, Vince said nothing.

“I'll be fine,” Charles said loudly. “We'll just be a little more low-key around here. I know you and Dad think I'm
not aggressive enough, but that's the way I am, and if some things slip by me because I don't see them right away, we'll still be fine; we'll do fine. That's the way I am; I'm not a grabber.”

Or a pusher or shover or manipulator, thought Vince. But he is in trouble. Vince had guessed that because Charles never talked about himself when he came to Denver. He tagged along with Vince to dinners and cocktail parties and benefits, and it seemed all he wanted was to hear about Vince.

But he's in trouble, Vince thought again.
If some things slip by me.
He wondered what opportunities had come to Chatham Development and then gone to other companies because Charles wasn't on top of things, and never had been.

But he'd known for a long time that Charles couldn't run that company the way it should be run; it took imagination and guts and he had neither. Ethan did; Vince did. Charles was a natural errand boy, the perfect front man. What I could have done with it, Vince thought, and for a moment, in spite of the brilliant beginning he was making in Denver, the past came back, with its losses and his rage. It was all supposed to have been his. The family company. Tamarack. Anne. His wife. His daughter. Everything he'd been sure of. There wouldn't have been any trouble if Anne hadn't babbled, if Ethan hadn't defended her, if Charles had stood up for Vince, if William had been squarely on Vince's side, if Marian hadn't waffled. He deserved their support—they
owed
it to him—because he was the smartest of all of them. But they'd collapsed, and Vince was on the outside.

“And William and Fred work with me,” Charles went on. “We're a pretty good team. We don't have as many irons in the fire as when you were here, but we're on an even keel, and that's fine. Things don't stay the same, after all. Everything changes. Anne turned eighteen a couple of months ago, in April, and I don't even know what she looks like now. If she'd stayed at home, she'd be in college. How could someone just
vanish?”
he burst out. “If she's working, she's got a social security number; she'd have to pay income tax; if she went back to school, she'd be registered; if she has
a bank account, she'd be on file. People leave a trail, whatever they do . . . how the hell could she just be gone? I've started reading ads, you know, the personals. You wouldn't believe how many people are looking for other people. Sometimes I think the whole world must be lost and there's just a few of us who know where we belong. God, I miss her, Vince. It's a terrible thing to lose a daughter. I've lost two daughters, really; Gail doesn't have much to do with me anymore; she blames me for her sister being gone. I suppose she's right.”

“She'd rather you'd called me a rapist and a liar,” Vince said coldly.

“She's only twelve, Vince; she doesn't understand all that. She just misses Anne.” There was a pause. “We see Dora, you know; Rita brings her for dinner sometimes. She's a beautiful little girl; she reminds me of you. Maybe sometime when you visit her you could bring her for dinner.”

“When Dad invites me, I'll come for dinner,” Vince said. “Is he still pretending I don't exist?”

“He doesn't talk about you, if that's what you mean. He's like steel on that, Vince. He won't say your name; he won't even stay in the room if someone mentions you.”

“Does anyone mention me?”

“Not very often.”

“I have to go,” Vince said abruptly. “I'm busy; we just opened a new shopping mall—”

“I read about it. Chatham Place. It reminded me of Dad naming streets after the family. It sounds tremendous. Maybe one of these days I'll just drop everything and move west. Dad's doing it; next time it'll be my turn.”

Not fucking likely, Vince thought. You'll never break away, little man; you haven't got the gumption to do a fucking thing on your own, not even come out here and lean on me. “Anytime,” he said to Charles. “There's an office waiting for you.” He sat still for a minute after they hung up. The whole family, he thought; out of ammunition. Dad's too old and now he'll be gone. I could sink Chatham Development and make them lose Tamarack, and they couldn't do a damn thing to stop me. Then they'd understand
that they kicked out the wrong man. He felt a brief regret that it would not be a tougher battle.

But that was for later. He'd take care of it as soon as he had time to give it some thought.

But they were still enough in his mind that the next week he sent Charles a clipping from a
Denver Post
special Sunday supplement on Denver that called Vince “Denver's new superstar.” Beloit, purposely keeping behind the scenes, was not mentioned; it was Vince Chatham, president and founder of Lake Forest Development, with his charm and photogenic blond good looks, who was the center of the story. “Put it on Dad's desk,” Vince wrote in a note to Charles clipped to the story. And through the next year, when Chatham Tower, a steel-and-glass office building with Denver's first shopping arcade, opened, and ground was broken for Chatham Center, a complex of office buildings, Vince sent clippings to Charles, telling him to put them on Ethan's desk or send them to him in Tamarack. All the stories said the same thing: Vince Chatham was riding high at the center of the city's business and social life; he was becoming a hero.

From then on, he and Beloit found easy construction financing at better terms than other developers were given. In a few years they had a staff of fifty, and were building office towers, industrial parks, and developments of office and residential towers, shops, movie theaters, and town houses in Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. And Vince, who had never been a joiner or a supporter of charities, joined the boards of directors of the United Denver Charitable Society and The Boys and Girls Clubs of Denver, and contributed money to every organization that came calling.

He went from triumph to triumph. The years slid into each other and he was always on the crest of the next wave. Everywhere he looked he saw the changed skylines of Colorado and neighboring states, the buildings that sprang up under the touch of his hand and grew tall or sprawled out, filling the land. He had made himself Denver's leading citizen, Denver's most sought-after bachelor, Denver's king of construction. It was put most precisely at a banquet honoring him as Denver's Man of the Year. “Vince Chatham,”
said the master of ceremonies, “is the perfect role model for all the youngsters of America.”

*   *   *

“To the whiz kids,” Beloit said, lifting his glass in a toast on their fifteenth anniversary. They were in Vince's office, looking out at the mountains past acres of buildings that had not been there when they arrived. Denver's sprawling metropolis reached out new fingers of growth each year, paving the land and bringing with it a shroud of yellow-brown smog that grew more dense with each mile of expressway that was built. “Fifteen great years,” said Beloit, “and here we are with projects coming like a good woman, one after the other. Best fun I ever had.” He drank and refilled his glass. “You want to go out with Lorraine and me tonight and celebrate?”

“I have plans for tonight.”

“Well, that's true, you usually do. All these girls, Vince; where the hell do you find them? I didn't know Denver had that many. I didn't know anywhere had that many.” He paused. “You thought about getting married again?”

Vince's eyebrows raised. “Why?”

“Oh, you might be happier. Settled down. You don't have to worry about who you're gonna sleep with every night.”

“I don't worry about it.”

“Well, maybe you don't now, but you never know.”

“What's this about, Ray?” Vince asked after a moment.

Beloit shrugged. “Lorraine and I were wondering, is all. I mean, I know it's none of my business, but I've been thinking about it; I believe in mind over what matters. And what's important here is smooth sailing. We've built up a good head of steam; I like where we're going; but calm seas make a prosperous voyage—right?—and the calmest seas come from contented partners. I've got my family, my Lorraine, my little nest in the tree of life, but you're still running around like the playboy of the Western frontier. Don't frown at me, Vince, this is fatherly advice I'm giving you.” He peered at the deepening frown on Vince's face. “Okay, you don't want fatherly advice; call it a partner's advice. All I'm saying is, I'm hoping you'll get tired of this
life and settle down.” He sighed. “And I also worry about all those playmates. I remember how confusing it is—a different name, different positions, different conversations every week or two or whatever—and one of these nights in bed you might whisper sweet business deals in one of those pearly ears—”

Vince stood, his face dark. “You son of a bitch, if you think I'd talk, especially to a woman—”

“It's possible,” Beloit said, unfazed. “A woman is a tender trap and you're a sexy kid, Vince, and it's just possible that you might get carried away by a bundle of sweet charms. Sit down, sit down; we're not fighting; we're discussing. Sometimes things come up in business and you stew about them and you feel like talking at two in the morning. You've got a wife, it's okay. Not great, but okay. I don't talk to Lorraine, but if I did, I know she'd keep her cards close to her very nice chest. So what I'm saying is, you need a nest with a little bird making you happy; you need a companion whose bread is buttered on your side. It's safe and very comfortable.” He drained his glass. “That's all. Not so hard to swallow, is it?”