The Interior - Страница 33

Henry peered over at David. "Knight International. Such a grandiose name for a one-person operation, but my dad liked it. Obviously our last name wasn't Knight back then. You'd have thought he would have taken a name that was somehow more American, but he loved the idea of knights-the pageantry, the jousts on horseback, the gallantry. The name and all it implied were about as far from Poland and his childhood as he could get."

"Did he manufacture chess sets?"

Henry shook his head. "No, only school supplies. We didn't get into chess sets until much later. We were the first to make the pieces out of plastic, but that's getting ahead of the story. My dad married the daughter of one of his customers. I came along soon enough. I was five when the Depression hit. Schools stayed open, thank God, but really most people couldn't afford much in the way of extras. Times were hard, sure. But my dad also let people take advantage of him, because, he said, if someone was that desperate he probably needed that something more than we did. Then there was a lawyer who told my father all of the wrong things. He was nearly ruined."

"Which is why you don't like lawyers."

"I just like to make my own decisions. My father almost lost Knight, this company that was his whole life. I was just a little kid, but I'll never forget it."

"Something like that can make you pretty tough," David observed. "Both of my parents were kids during the Depression. They were both raised in families that struggled. I look at my parents now and think that that period-those 'formative' years-defined them for life." David thought for a moment, then added, "That and the war."

Henry nodded. "Where was your dad?"

"He was in the army, stationed in London."

"Not bad duty, if you can get it."

"In some ways it was the most fun my father ever had," David said.

"And in others?"

"War is hell. That's what he always said."

"Well, sport, he was right on both counts."

David shrugged. He rarely spoke about his family with strangers, but Henry made it seem easy.

"I was stationed in China," Henry said. "First in Kunming, then… I got around, especially in those months after the Japanese surrender."

"What were you doing?"

Henry didn't answer the question; instead he said, "Like your father, I had the time of my life. You just can't imagine what Shanghai was like back then. Every night we went out dancing and drinking and womanizing. It was fast. Exotic. That's a word that gets shit on these days, but I'm telling you, back then Shanghai was exotic."

"And what were you doing?" David repeated.

But before Henry could answer, his son asked, "Dad, shouldn't we get to work here?"

It was the first time Doug had spoken, and it took everyone by surprise. Henry checked his watch and said, "Give me another minute, then we'll take a quick break, grab some of that coffee Sandy's got brewing somewhere, then come back and get down to it. All right?"

Doug looked away. David wondered if Henry always dismissed his son's suggestions so casually.

But Henry's stride had been broken, and he hurriedly finished. "I thought I'd stay out here after the war. I got to know some people and had some pretty good ideas now that I look back on it. But then China closed and that was that. I went back home to New Jersey and started working for my dad. The baby boom came on strong, but the company wasn't going to feel it until those kids hit kindergarten. I began to think of ways to reach them earlier."

"Mr. Knight practically invented the preschool market," Sandy interjected. "That's why he's in the Toy Industry Hall of Fame in New York."

"I can't take any real credit for that," Henry said modestly. "Ruth and I wanted children. We wanted them to have something fun and educational to play with. That's all."

The phone rang. Sandy picked it up, spoke a few words into the receiver, hung up, and said to the others, "Something's come up in the Assembly Building that I need to take care of, so let's go ahead and take that break."

They left the room and together walked back to what Henry Knight explained to David was the heart of the company. Then the three company men left David to peruse Knight's brag wall. After about ten minutes, David had seen enough and decided to see if he could find the others. He stepped outside into the heat, looked around, and saw Henry and some other men clustered together next to a pile of something in front of a building to his left. David strolled their way, taking off his jacket and loosening his tie.

"I don't see how this could happen," Henry was saying in a quavering voice as David neared. When he reached them, the men stepped aside and David saw the figure of a woman dressed in a pink smock lying crumpled on the hard-packed earth. The smock was stained dark red with blood. The woman's arm was mangled, but this was nothing compared to the terrible thing that had happened to her head, which had flattened and split against the ground. Her dark eyes stared at the sky. Her injuries and the rag-doll quality of her limbs reminded David of Keith, but the familiarity of that nightmare didn't make this one any easier to take.

"Come on, Dad," Doug pleaded. "Step away. Let the others take care of it."

"No!" Henry jerked his son's hand off his shoulder. " Sandy, I'm asking again. How could this happen?"

But Sandy didn't answer. Instead he bolted away, leaned over, and threw up.

"Sir." This wavering syllable came from one of the men in the group. He was young and his face was as white as alabaster. "Sir," he tried again. He swallowed a couple of times and turned his eyes away from the bloody mess at his feet. "It's my fault. I shouldn't have left her alone."

"Who are you?"

"Aaron Rodgers, sir. I'm the manager for the assembly area. There was an accident. She… Does anyone know her name?" When no one answered, the young man gulped again and continued. "Her arm got caught in the shredder. It was bad, but not this bad." Aaron started to sway. David stepped forward, grabbed him, and led him over to the Assembly Building steps.

"Put your head down for a minute," David said. He looked around. "Can someone get some water, maybe a cold cloth?"

A heavyset Caucasian man whom David had yet to meet nodded with military precision, went into the building, and returned with a couple of paper cups filled with water which he gave to David. Then the man went over to the dead woman, flipped open some fabric, and let it settle on her. From here he walked to Sandy and escorted him to the steps to sit with Aaron Rodgers. "Drink this," he said in an Australian accent. Then, as Sandy stared over at the body, the other man said, "I'll get this cleaned up before the women have their lunch break."

"Go ahead, Jimmy," Sandy said.

"Don't you think you should wait for the police?" David asked.

Jimmy turned his squinty eyes on David. "We're way the hell out here in the middle of nowhere. You want to wait for the police and have a thousand women go hysterical when they come outside on their lunch break and see their friend or whatever squashed like a melon?" he asked sarcastically. "Or how about this? You want to sit around and wait five hours for the locals to arrive and have that thing over there start stinking up the place?"

"All I'm saying is, we don't know what happened," David said.

This was Aaron's cue, and he resumed his narration. "I carried her upstairs to my office," he said. "You know how we have those cots in there?" David didn't, but he nodded anyway. "I laid her down. She was upset, screaming about not wanting to die. Why did I leave her alone? Why did I go to another office to make my calls? Why didn't I just carry her straight to the clinic?" His whole body shook as if trying to shake away his guilt. "I don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't, I guess. I called Sandy. I knew Mr. Knight would be here today, and I wanted to tell him about the accident in person. After I called Sandy, I tried Madame Leung. When she wasn't in her office, I called the nurse straightaway."

David thought, Straightaway? It must have been five minutes at least.

"Then I went to find Madame Leung. I wanted her to stay with… with… the injured girl. I thought she would want a woman with her. Madame Leung was in the control area, speaking over the loudspeaker to the workers down on the floor. It was important to keep them calm, don't you think?" The young man looked earnestly at David. "But when we got back to the office, the girl was gone." Aaron's face went a few shades whiter. David put a hand on the back of Aaron's neck and pushed his head back down between his knees.

Doug Knight said, "She must have jumped out of your window."

"No," Aaron mumbled. "My office isn't on this side. My office faces the back and looks out over the wall."

David looked up at the building. There were no windows on this side.

"Well," Doug said conversationally, "she must have climbed up to the roof, then."

"Christ almighty, you're a cold-hearted bastard!" Henry stared at his son, his fists in tight balls at his side. "A woman has died here. Our family has been in business for more than seventy years. We've never lost an employee."

"All I'm saying, Dad, is that she killed herself," Doug went on calmly. "It's not your fault."

The older man, reacting to his son's soothing tones, gradually regained his composure. Then he turned away, walked back to the body, and knelt beside it.