Lively Game of Death Page 2

  Scott Miranda has the locks changed on the doors every week or so, and he allows only two other executives to own full sets of keys. I’ve even heard him boast that Trim-Tram has better security than Fort Knox.

  The hush-hush gimmickry is understandable, of course. The company plows hundreds of thousands of dollars annually into R&D, construction of prototypes, package design, test marketing, and promotion; it’s not about to serve it all up on a platter to the first knock-off artist brazen enough to walk through the front door.

  The irony was that the elaborate protective system hadn’t saved the firm from internal attack. Goetz apparently had gathered enough confidential data to copy the firm’s latest Toy Fair entry in the miniature auto-racing line: a flashy little scaled-down speed vehicle called Tricky Tires.

  When I braked to a stop in a parking space, the Trim-Tram lot was practically empty. Hilary, who’d been reclining in the back seat, hadn’t said a word during the ride. But as I turned off the ignition, she spoke, and I couldn’t believe what she said.

  Turning around to her, I pretended not to have heard, asked her to repeat what she’d just said.

  She mumbled, “I said I’m sorry,” and looked out the window, away from me.

  “Sorry? For what?”

  She wouldn’t turn around. “For the way I acted this morning. I made a mistake.” She paused, then added, in a lower tone, “I was wrong about you.”

  What the hell do you say to a naked lady? I could cope with the sarcasms of Hilary the Dominant, but this temporary abdication of authority confused me. I murmured something inept about her being justified in wanting to protect herself, considering her “attractive femininity.” The last phrase was uninspired flattery, and I fully expected it to bring on a healthy caustic sally.

  So I was surprised to see her turn back to me with a little humorous uptilt creasing the corner of her mouth. She said, a little sheepishly, “I guess, after this morning, you can’t help but consider my femininity.”

  She put a hand briefly, too briefly, on my arm.

  4

  “YOU MEAN THEY’RE NOT the same?” I asked.

  Dean Wallis, Trim-Tram’s advertising manager, retrieved the set of eight-by-ten glossy black-and-white product shots he’d given me to examine and shook his head. “These pictures,” he said, fishing a few of the photos from the pile and separating them from the rest, “are the ones that I took. All the rest are of the Goetz knock-off.”

  I looked across the table at Hilary, who shrugged, saying, “I thought they were all pictures of Tricky Tires, too.”

  “And there you are,” Wallis said, spreading his hands and smiling. “If this young man cannot tell the difference between the two toys, what hope is there for us when the consumer sees our car on the same retail counter as the Goetz knock-off? Not to mention the buyers who are going to walk into the two showrooms this week!”

  There were four of us in the combination office/boardroom, a place shaped something like a thermometer on its side. The conference table where we sat ran the length of the long, narrow room, at the far end of which opened a spacious office belonging to the company president, Scott Miranda. The latter cavity contained a few leatherette chairs, several filing cabinets, and a polished teakwood desk holding a phone, blotter and pen stand, and a gold replica of Trim-Tram’s first toy.

  The lanky chief executive—a haggard look on his angular face—was resting against the high-backed chair positioned at the short end of the table nearest the office. To his right and left, respectively, along the long sides of the table, sat Hilary and I.

  Wallis stood between Scott and Hilary at the right angle of the tabletop. My position across from my boss enabled me to watch her attempt to stifle the dislike she felt for the adman, whose pomposity of manner was the perfect match for his short, blubbery frame.

  Scott had said almost nothing so far, choosing to let the other brief us on the problem. So it was Wallis’ show, and he was clearly enjoying his chance to be the center of attention. Pointing a pudgy finger at a colorful chrome-and-plastic toy auto on the table in front of him, he informed us that we were looking at the prototype of Tricky Tires.

  “This handmade model,” he wheezed, “has never left this room in the past seven months. And the master engineering plans are always returned to the office at the end of the day. Unless, of course, they have not been out of the office in the first place, which is the more usual occurrence.”

  “And where are the plans put?” Hilary asked.

  “I was, of course, coming to that next. Mr. Miranda locks them up each night in his desk.”

  “And I’m the only one with a key to the desk,” Scott said, cracking his knuckles in a kind of percussive punctuation.

  Hilary put out a gloved hand and took the proffered prototype from Wallis. She examined the model, turning it over and over, comparing it with the two sets of glossies.

  It was a one-thirty-second scale model of “Buzz” Armstrong-Stewart’s so-called Funny Car, which he named, of course Tricky Tires. The original of the racer was the hottest thing going, for it seemed to defy physics and come in ahead of more logically styled vehicles at various competitions. The Trim-Tram version was miniscule but identical, complete even to the inclusion of a miniature head-and-shoulders of Armstrong-Stewart protruding from the driver’s seat.

  I looked at the photos of the Goetz knock-off. Although I had to mentally transfer the prototype into two dimensions, as well as monochrome, it was obvious to me that both playthings were derived from a common design. (In fact, Wallis had earlier boasted that Tricky Tires followed the precise engineering specs of the life-sized original down to the inch. Since Armstrong-Stewart’s licensor had granted an exclusive permit to Trim-Tram to make a toy version of the car, Goetz could not have achieved the accuracy of his toy in any other way but by copying his competitor’s design.)

  Hilary, removing her gloves, asked Wallis when the photos of the Trim-Tram toy had been taken.

  “Oh, I shot the series about six weeks ago, if I remember correctly.”

  “Where?”

  “In this office, of course! I told you—the prototype has not been out of here ever since it was built.”

  “But what about the film itself?” she asked. “Maybe the lab—”

  Wallis was already shaking his head ponderously, a condescending little smirk on his lips. “No, no, Hilary dear, you’ll have to do better than that. I developed the film myself and personally took the prints to the trade magazines. That’s how we found out just last night that Goetz is knocking us off. Gorman Clancy, the publisher of Buying Toys and Hobbies saw the similarity in the pictures of Tricky Tires and the Goetz knock-off, and he gave me a call. That’s how I got these photos of Goetz’s car.”

  Hilary mumbled something about professional ethics in trade journalism circles, then began to ask Wallis why he’d quit Goetz Sales three years ago to work for Trim-Tram, but Scott cut her short.

  “Dean had better get over to the FAB showroom, Hilary. He’ll have to cover for you today, or at least till we can crack this thing.”

  Hilary nodded curtly, and Wallis, after a few moments of pontification not worth recording, withdrew from the room.

  There was a moment of silence. Scott regarded Hilary with a trace of amusement in his eyes. At last, he spoke.

  “Why can’t you stand Wallis, Hilary?”

  She shrugged. “Two reasons, either one alone conclusive. He is a lamentable adman, like most in this business ...”

  “And ...?”

  “He picks his teeth at lunch.”

  “Okay,” Scott replied, “but don’t let your personal feelings color your judgment. I know where you’re headed, and you can forget it.”

  “Why?”

  “Tricky Tires couldn’t have been copied just by the looks of the prototype, Hilary. That wouldn’t have been enough. Goetz must have had access to the master engineering plans.”

  “Why do you think so?”

 
He lowered his voice. “There’s a new salesman working for Goetz, name of Harry Whelan. Used to be a demonstrator for Trim-Tram at a couple of previous Toy Fairs—”

  “You put a plant in Goetz’s showroom?” Hilary interrupted, surprised.

  Scott shook his head, further disordering his already tousled hair. “I had nothing to do with Sid hiring Harry. I didn’t even know Harry was looking for work this year, or I would have taken him back myself. He’s an actor, and you never know where he’s going to be from one month to the next. But he’s a damn good demonstrator, and I imagine he’d be a good salesman, too. Anyway, I first found out he was working for Sid when I ran into him last month, accidentally, in the Fifth Avenue Club.”

  “Get to the point,” Hilary snapped, still suffering the morning with a right bad will.

  “The point is Harry is naïve enough businesswise to be pumped. When I heard about the knock-off last night, I called up Goetz’s showroom, just in case, and I was in luck, because I was able to talk to Harry. He was working late, setting up. He told me all about Goetz’s version of Tricky Tires. Not only is it identical in exterior design to our toy—which Harry didn’t know till I told him about the knock-off at the end of the talk—but Goetz is going to market it as Tricky Tyres, which only adds to the confusion on the retail shelves.” Scott took a deep breath, getting ready for the coda. “But the worst thing is that Sid’s knock-off can perform every racing maneuver ours can complete.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning he had to have access to every single sheet of engineering plans. Anybody could take a picture of the Armstrong-Stewart car, though I don’t for a minute believe Sid has the skill to translate photos into a to-the-inch copy. But say he could; still, nobody but an engineering genius—like Chuck Saxon—could figure out all the modifications that enable Tricky Tires to outperform any other miniature racer on the market.”

  “What exactly can it do?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s faster, for starters. It’s highly responsive to all sorts of driving styles, it goes—and I mean goes—on any kind of ‘road’ surface.”

  “So,” I said, “apparently Goetz’s car can do all of that?”

  Scott nodded. “That’s what Harry Whelan told me, and he has no reason to lie. No, Goetz has knocked us off all right, and that means there has to be a spy working for us, somebody who managed to get at all of the plans.”

  “Then what about the production people who use the plans?”

  “Impossible. They only get to see portions of the project. Once in a while, if the masters have to be consulted by the operations chief, they’ll be taken out of here, but only in the continual presence of several other executives.”

  “How long ago,” I asked, “would Goetz need to have gotten the smuggled-out plans to be able to go into manufacture?”

  Waving his hand in negation, Scott explained that Goetz probably had only a handcrafted prototype ready to show, along with descriptive material on the item. “As long as the prototype and its packaging looks just like ours, there’s no absolute need for a working model at Toy Fair. It helps, but it’s not essential. He doesn’t have to make a single toy car until he sees how many orders he can get. That is, orders he can get away from us!”

  “In other words,” I replied, “Goetz could have gotten the plans up to the last minute, practically, am I right?”

  Scott nodded, and began to elaborate further, but Hilary abruptly cut in.

  “All of this is purely academic,” she said impatiently, idly plucking her nail against a stray dab of green paint on the model car. “You’ve already told us that the master specs were kept in your own desk, and they were usually locked up. So, if nobody but you has a key to—”

  “That was for Wallis’s benefit,” Scott interrupted. “Actually, there are three full sets of keys to every lock in this building. I keep one, and there are two other men with sets. In addition, my brother-in-law, Abel Harrison, had a key to my desk.”

  I wrote down Harrison’s name, then asked for the names of the other pair, as well as the titles of all three.

  “Tom Lasker is one of them,” Scott answered, “but he only got his set of keys comparatively recently. Maybe six weeks ago.”

  “Who had that set before then?” Hilary asked.

  “Nobody. Tom, you see, was recently promoted to the vice-presidency in charge of operations. Before that, he was heading up operations pro tem, because his predecessor, Arnie Stafford, was out sick for a long time. Arnie finally died, and we moved Tom up to his job—”

  “The keys?” she asked again, her teeth set in mild annoyance.

  “I kept them locked up in my desk, too.” Scott turned to me. “So anyway, now Tom Lasker has that set. And Chauncy—better call him Chuck—Chuck Saxon has the third group of keys. He’s VP in charge of R&D.”

  I transcribed the data, then asked Scott a second time for Abel Harrison’s official position with Trim-Tram.

  He made a face, then shrugged. “Wish I could tell you,” he grumbled. “Right this minute, he’s nominally financial director, but for God’s sake, don’t take stock market tips off him.”

  “If you don’t trust his judgment,” Hilary asked, “why put him in such a job?”

  “Well, he won’t be there for long. It’s just a kind of way station, giving Abel the financial directorship. It was that department’s turn.”

  The boss arched an eyebrow. “Its turn?”

  Scott nodded ruefully. “We have to keep switching the inept little jerk from one department to another, just so he can’t screw up any single operation too long. I have to tell my wife we keep changing his job around so that he can become acquainted with every phase of our business.”

  “Well,” sighed Hilary, “let’s get him in here and find out whether he can at least answer some questions.”

  But at that moment, we were somewhat violently interrupted.

  5

  THE DOOR BUST OPEN and a pale-complexioned young man stormed into the room, despite Scott’s protestations that we were in private conference.

  The newcomer must have been in his early thirties, but his thin yellow hair, frayed outward from the center of his scalp to the edges, showed a generous quantity of scalp and made him look older. He was dressed in plaid shirt and work pants and affected a rimless pair of glasses on a black cord, a peculiar accessory for a man whose greasy hands bespoke an affinity for machinery.

  He strode up to Scott and practically shouted, “What the hell’s this rumor about Sid Goetz knocking off Tricky Tires?” His voice trembled with rage.

  Scott ignored the question. “Sit down, Tom. As long as you’re here, we might as well talk to you.”

  “What the hell’s this rumor—” the other persisted, but his principal cut him short, introducing the young man to us as Tom Lasker, Trim-Tram’s recently appointed head of operations.

  Hilary spoke. “Mr. Lasker, how did you find out about this alleged knock-off?”

  “Word gets round. But I wasn’t talking to you. Scott, let me run over to The Toy Center so I can murder that bastard Goetz!”

  “Never mind, just answer Hilary’s questions.”

  “Why should I?” Lasker asked, still standing. “I don’t even know the broad.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath from the broad. She glared at me, so I gave Lasker the particulars on her name and position, but that only made him more intractable. Still refusing to take a seat, he asked Scott why in hell he had to waste time talking to a flack in skirts (his words, not mine) when he ought to be choking the life out of Sid Goetz.

  Scott attempted to defend Hilary, launching into a lecture on her less apparent assets, but mercifully she cut him short.

  “Forget it, Scott,” she said. “Mr. Lasker can’t help it if he doesn’t know me. I don’t suppose he’s worked here very long.”

  “What do you mean? I’ve been with Trim-Tram for years!”

  “Yes,” she purred, “but I only deal with top manageme
nt.”

  The venom didn’t penetrate his cortex. In fact, it worked out just the opposite, because he finally started to cooperate. “It’s true,” he stated. “I only got promoted to vice-president recently.”

  Hilary was fast to move in on the opportunity. “And what did you used to do?”

  Lasker sat. “Well, I started out chained to a puzzle-feed machine—”

  “Hold it a second,” I interrupted. “What do you mean, chained to the machine?”

  “There’s a gigantic stamper, see? And you have to get the boards right under it while the machine is coming up from the last cut. In case you don’t get your hands out fast enough before the stamper cuts down, the chain automatically yanks them free.”

  Hilary was glaring at me. I asked her what was wrong.

  “The question was immaterial.”

  I flushed. “Sorry. I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  “That,” she said sweetly, “is one of the things I pay you for.” She turned to Lasker. “Go on.”

  “Well, like I said ... I started on puzzles. Then they stuck me in doll production, and I worked up to foreman of blow-molding. Then I was shifted around after that, too. I got to know every damned manufacturing process in the whole Trim-Tram plant!”

  “That’s no exaggeration, Hilary,” Scott interjected. “Tom is our most valuable operations employee. He doesn’t know it, but we had our eye on him for a long time, just waiting for a chance to bump him up to executive level.”

  “What about Tricky Tires?” Hilary asked, pronouncing the name of the product with slight distaste.

  “Well,” Lasker said, “That’s been Chuck Saxon’s baby, but I saw all of the specs, of course, and I helped to tool it up.”

  Hilary paused briefly, then resumed. “Mr. Lasker, when did you receive your promotion?”

  “About a month and a half ago.”

  “And what does your new job entail?”

  “All in-plant production, plus executive duties. I coordinate runs, schedule work timetables, maintain quality control, supervise storage, distribution ... everything a plant manager does, and then some. Officially, I’m VP, operations, and that takes in plenty.”