A Man of Affairs by John D. MacDonald

me.
    “What the hell does that mean?”
    “You’re only thirty, Sam,” Cam said. “It’s still going to take some time before you can work yourself up into a slot where you can get your hands on some stock option deals and make real money. And maybe by that time they will have slammed the door. You can’t tell.”
    I began to sense the way it was going. “I don’t need very much. Your people made a thorough investigation. You probably know I make twenty-five thousand.”
    “You’re worth more,” Mike said.
    “I can get more. Some other place. But Harrison can’t pay more. Not yet. Not for a while. Look, don’t try to buy me. I live fine. I travel on expense account. I have a car and an apartment and all the clothes I need and I eat fine.”
    “We know most of the program you and Dolson have for Harrison,” Bowman said. “Want to fill us in a little on it?”
    I thought that over carefully. I knew the program was sound. I could see no harm in going ahead and telling them. It took me about ten minutes. God knows I’d said it enough times before. There was silence after I finished. They glanced at each other.
    Bowman said, “What’s your slant, Mike?”
    Mike looked over my head and said softly, “I don’t like it.”
    “What’s wrong with it?” I demanded, getting hot.
    Mike said, “Do you know the way some people drown? They try to swim after a boat in the wind. For years Harrison was churning along and the boat was drifting farther and farther away. Now you want to put on a big spurt and catch it. But I don’t think you will. I think you’ll drown.”
    “But why?”
    “You’ve got too heavy a tax burden, local, county and state. It’ll get heavier. Wages are high and productivity is low. Your shipping costs are high. You can fix the rest of the wagon maybe, but you can’t fix that part. Those items are beyond your control. Harrison was half asleep for too long, and the world moves too fast. You’ll never take up all the slack and be in a healthy competitive position.”
    “I think we will. With a quality product plus top designing, people will pay just enough of a premium price to offset those factors we can’t change.”
    “Will they?” Cam asked. “Are you sure?”
    “That’s not a fair question,” Mike said. “Listen to me, Sam. Our little game up until now has gotten some national attention. In spite of the efforts of Guy Brainerd, the public seems to have a morbid interest in the activities of Mike Dean. Okay, suppose you keep the McGanns and the Dodges under your thumb. I may not be interested in putting a couple of men on the Board. I may give up on this thing and get out. So say you go along for five years, and at the end of that time you find out I was right, and Harrison folds. So where are you? By then you’ll be thirty-five and you’ll have wasted five years and worked your heart out for the chance of being associated with a big, loud failure. They’ll remember you stood off Mike Dean and you lost.”
    “Or,” said Cam Duncan smoothly, “look at the other side of the coin. Suppose you win. You won’t hold a share of Harrison, and you won’t have much savings after taxes. You win so that Warren Dodge can live high off the hog. That’s about the face of it.”
    It was indeed very smooth.
    “Suppose,” I said, “you nail down the proxies you’re after. Another way to put it is to say I can’t prevent them from signing after the snow job you do on them. Then what do you do?”
    Mike shrugged. “We make our own survey. That loss record is pretty attractive, you know, in setting up a sale. I can think of a couple of outfits who might be interested.”
    “Even though you say the firm is doomed?”
    “Maybe the buyer would be as optimistic as you are.”
    “So suppose a sale isn’t feasible?”
    “After our own survey,” Bowman said, “we may come around to your way of thinking, Sam.”
    “Don’t try to kid me. Why don’t you level with me? With every